Waiting for Wednesday Read Free Page A

nearby.’ He saw Riley coming up the stairs.
    ‘There’s someone to see you, sir,’ he said. ‘He says you know him.’
    ‘Who is he?’ said Karlsson.
    ‘Dr Bradshaw,’ said Riley. ‘He doesn’t look like a policeman.’
    ‘He’s not,’ said Karlsson. ‘He’s a sort of consultant. Anyway, what does it matter what he looks like? We’d better let him in, give him a chance to earn his money.’
    As Karlsson walked down the stairs and saw Hal Bradshaw waiting in the hall, he saw what Riley meant. He didn’t look like a detective. He wore a grey suit, with just a speckle of yellowish colour to it, and an open-necked white shirt. Karlsson particularly noticed his fawn suede shoes and his large, heavy-framed spectacles. He gave Karlsson a nod of recognition.
    ‘How did you even hear about this?’ Karlsson asked.
    ‘It’s a new arrangement. I like to get here when the scene is still fresh. The quicker I get here, the more useful I can be.’
    ‘Nobody told me that,’ said Karlsson.
    Bradshaw didn’t seem to be paying attention. He was looking around thoughtfully. ‘Is your friend here?’
    ‘Which friend?’
    ‘Dr Klein,’ he said. ‘Frieda Klein. I expected to find her here, sniffing around.’
    Hal Bradshaw and Frieda had worked on the same case, in which Frieda had very nearly been killed. A man had been found lying naked and decomposing in the flat of a disturbed woman, Michelle Doyce. Bradshaw had been convinced that she had killed the man; Frieda had heard in the woman’s meandering words some kind of sense, a distracted straining towards the truth. Gradually she and Karlsson had pieced together the man’s identity: he was a con man who had left behind him many victims, each with motives for revenge. Frieda’s methods – unorthodox and instinctive – and her actions, which could be obsessive and self-destructive, had led to her dismissal during the last round of cuts. But clearly this wasn’t enough for Bradshaw. She had made him look stupid and now he wanted to destroy her. Karlsson thought of all of this. Then he thought of a dead woman lying a few feet away, and a family grieving, and swallowed his angry words.
    ‘Dr Klein’s not working for us any more.’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ said Bradshaw, cheerfully. ‘That’s right. Things didn’t go very well at the end of that last case.’
    ‘It depends what you mean by “well”,’ Karlsson said. ‘Three murderers were caught.’
    Bradshaw pulled a face. ‘If the consultant ends up in a knife fight and then spends a month in intensive care, that’s not exactly an example of success. In my book, at least.’
    Karlsson was on the point of saying something but again he remembered where he was.
    ‘This is hardly the place,’ he said coolly. ‘A mother has been murdered. Her family are upstairs.’
    Bradshaw held up a hand. ‘Shall we stop talking and go through?’
    ‘I wasn’t the one talking.’
    Bradshaw stepped inside and took a deep breath, as if he were appraising the aroma of the room. He moved towards the body of Ruth Lennox, treading delicately to avoid the pool of blood. He looked towards Karlsson. ‘You know, blundering into a crime scene and being attacked, doesn’t count as solving a crime.’
    ‘Are we talking about Frieda again?’ said Karlsson.
    ‘Her mistake is to get emotionally involved,’ he said. ‘I heard she slept with the man who was arrested.’
    ‘She didn’t sleep with him,’ said Karlsson, coldly. ‘She met him socially. Because she was suspicious of him.’
    Bradshaw looked at Karlsson with a half-smile. ‘Does that trouble you?’
    ‘I’ll tell you what troubles me,’ said Karlsson. ‘It troubles me that you seem to feel competitive with Frieda Klein.’
    ‘Me? No, no, no. Simply concerned for a colleague who seems to have lost her bearings.’ He gave a sympathetic grimace. ‘I feel very sorry for her. I hear she’s depressed.’
    ‘I thought you’d come to look at a murder scene. If you