Friday on My Mind

  Nicci French

  * * *

  FRIDAY ON MY MIND

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Follow Penguin

  To Kersti and Philip

  1

  Kitty was five years old and she was cross. The queue for the Crown Jewels had been long and they weren’t so special anyway. The queue for Madame Tussauds had been longer, and she didn’t even recognize most of the waxworks, and she couldn’t see them properly with all the crowds. And it had been drizzling. And she hated the Underground. When she stood on the platform and heard the rumble of an approaching train, it felt like something terrible coming out of the darkness.

  But when they got on the boat she became a little less cross. The river was so big that it felt almost like the ocean, heaving with the currents and the tide. A plastic bottle floated past.

  ‘Where’s it going?’ said Kitty.

  ‘To the sea,’ said her mum. ‘All the way to the sea.’

  ‘The Thames Barrier will stop it,’ said her dad.

  ‘No, it won’t,’ said her mum. ‘It’s not a real barrier.’

  As the boat pulled away from the Embankment, Kitty ran from one side of the boat to the other. If she was seeing something interesting on one bank of the river, that meant she was missing what was interesting on the other or in front.

  ‘Calm down, Kitty,’ said her mum. ‘Why don’t you write a list in your book of everything you see?’

  So Kitty got out her new notebook, the one with the elephant on the cover. And her new pen. She opened the notebook at a fresh page and wrote a number one and drew a heart-shaped circle around it. She looked about her. ‘What’s that big thing?’

  ‘Which big thing?’

  ‘That one.’

  ‘The Eye.’

  So that was number one.

  The boat was almost empty. It was a Friday and it had only just stopped raining. Kitty’s parents drank coffee and Kitty, whose school was closed for a training day and who had been looking forward to this trip for weeks, frowned over her notebook while a voice on the Tannoy said that the River Thames was a pageant of history. It was from here, said the voice, that Francis Drake had set off to circle the globe. And it was here that he returned with a ship full of treasure and became Sir Francis Drake.

  Kitty was so busy that she was almost irritated when her dad sat down beside her.

  ‘We’ve stopped,’ he said, ‘so we can look at the Thames and at London Bridge.’

  ‘I know,’ said Kitty.

  ‘Do you know “London Bridge Is Falling Down”?’

  ‘We done that at school.’

  ‘Did it.’

  Kitty ignored this and carried on writing.

  ‘So what have you seen?’

  Kitty finished the word she was writing, the tip of her tongue protruding from the side of her mouth. Then she held up the notebook. ‘Five things,’ she said.

  ‘What five things?’

  ‘A bird.’

  Her dad laughed. She frowned at him. ‘What?’

  ‘No, that’s very good. A bird. What else?’

  ‘A boat.’

  ‘What? This boat?’

  ‘No.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Another boat.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘A tree.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘It’s gone.’ She looked back at her notebook. ‘A car.’

  ‘Yes, there are lots of cars driving along by the river. That’s very good, Kitty. Is that all?’

  ‘And a whale.’

  Her dad looked at the notebook. ‘“Whale” has an h in it. W-H-A-L-E. But this is a river. It doesn’t have whales in it.’

  ‘I saw it.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘Where?’

  Kitty pointed. Her dad stood up and walked to the side of the boat. And then the day that was already exciting got more and more exciting. Her dad shouted something and then he turned to Kitty and shouted even louder. He told her to stay exactly where she was and not to move a single step. Then he ran along the deck and down the steps, and the man who was talking on the loudspeaker stopped and then said things in a loud voice that sounded completely different. Other people started running around on the deck and looking over the side and shouting and a fat woman began to cry.

  The loudspeaker said that people should move away from the side but they didn’t. Kitty’s mum came and sat next to her and talked to her about what they were going to do afterwards and about the summer holidays, which weren’t long off now; they were going camping. Then Kitty heard the loud noise of an engine and she got up and saw a huge motorboat heading along the river and getting closer and closer until it stopped and she felt the waves from it move their own boat up and down so that she almost fell over. Kitty’s mum got up and stood with everyone else at the railings. Kitty could only see their backs and the backs of their heads. It was like being at Madame Tussauds where her dad had had to put her up on his shoulders.

  This time she could go to the edge of the group and look through the railings. She could read the writing on the side of the boat: ‘Police’. That would be number six on her list. Two men were climbing down on a little ledge at the back of the boat. One of them had big yellow clothes on and gloves that looked like they were made out of rubber and he actually got into the water. Then men used ropes and they started to pull the thing out of the water. There were groaning sounds from the people on the boat and some of them moved away from the railings and Kitty got an even better view. Other people were holding their phones up. The thing looked strange, all blown up and blotchy and milky-coloured, but she knew what it was. The men wrapped it in a big black bag and zipped it up.

  The two boats moved together and one of the men climbed from the other boat onto the lower deck of this boat. The other man, the one in the big yellow clothes, stayed on the other boat. He was fixing a rope and tying a knot. When he had finished he stood up, and he looked at Kitty at exactly the same moment that she was waving at him. He smiled and gave a wave and she waved back.

  Nothing was happening now, so she went and sat down again. She wrote a number six and circled it and wrote ‘Police’. Then she looked at number five. Carefully, letter by letter, she crossed out ‘Whale’ until it was entirely obliterated. With great concentration she wrote: ‘M-A-N’.

  2

  Detective Chief Inspector Sarah Hussein and Detective Constable Glen Bryant climbed out of the car. Hussein fished her mobile from her pocket, and Bryant took a packet of cigarettes and a pink plastic lighter from his. He was tall and burly with cropped hair, big hands and feet and broad shoulders, like a rugby player; he was sweating. Beside him, Hussein looked small, cool, compact.

  ‘Something’s come up and I’ll be back late,’ said Hussein, into the phone. ‘I know. I’m sorry. You can give the girls pasta. Or there are pizzas in
the freezer. I don’t know what time I’ll be home. They shouldn’t wait up. Nor should you. Nick, I’ve got to go. Sorry.’

  A man was approaching them. His face was flushed and his hair was rough and untidy. He seemed more like a trawlerman than a policeman.

  ‘Hello.’ He held out a hand to Bryant, who looked sheepish but took it. ‘I’m Detective Constable O’Neill. Marine Policing Unit. You must be DCI Hussein.’

  ‘Actually …’ began Bryant.

  ‘This is Detective Constable Bryant,’ said Hussein, coolly. ‘I’m DCI Hussein.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry. I thought –’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m used to it.’

  Hussein looked along the river to her right at Tower Bridge and to her left at Canary Wharf and across at the smart new riverside flats of Rotherhithe. ‘Nice position.’

  ‘You should see it in November,’ O’Neill said.

  ‘I’m surprised it hasn’t been sold off for flats. Riverfront property like this.’

  ‘We’d still need somewhere to put our boats.’

  DC O’Neill gestured at what looked like a large square tent made out of blue plastic sheets. Hussein pulled a face. ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s where we put them for a quick check. So we can decide whether to call you guys.’ O’Neill pulled the sheet aside and showed her through. Inside the sheets, two figures in plastic caps and shoes and white gowns were moving softly around the body. ‘Sometimes we’re not sure. But this one had had his throat cut.’

  Bryant took a deep, audible breath and O’Neill looked round with a smile. ‘You think this is bad? You should see them when they’ve been in the water for a month or two. Sometimes you can’t tell what sex they are. Even with their clothes off.’

  The body was lying in a large shallow metal basin. It looked swollen, as if it had been inflated with a pump. The flesh was unnaturally pale but also blotchy, marbled and bruised on the face and hands. It was still dressed in a dark shirt, grey trousers, robust leather shoes – almost more boots than shoes. Hussein noticed the laces were still double-knotted, and she couldn’t help thinking of him stooping and tying them, pulling them tight.

  She made herself examine the face. There were remnants of the nose, little more than exposed cartilage. All the features seemed blurred, corroded, but the slashed neck was plain to see. ‘It looks violent,’ she said finally.

  Bryant made a small noise of assent beside her. He had his handkerchief out and was pretending to blow his nose.

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ said O’Neill. ‘Apart from the throat. The river really knocks them about, the birds get at them. And then in summer things happen more quickly.’

  ‘Where was he found?’

  ‘Up near HMS Belfast, by London Bridge. But that doesn’t mean anything either. He could have gone into the river anywhere from Richmond to Woolwich.’

  ‘Any idea how long he’s been in the water?’

  O’Neill cocked his head on one side as if he were doing some mental arithmetic. ‘He was floating. So we’re looking at a week. No more than ten days, the way he is.’

  ‘That’s not much help.’

  ‘It’s a good way of getting rid of a body,’ said O’Neill. ‘Much better than burying it.’

  ‘Was there anything in his pockets?’

  ‘No wallet, no phone, no keys, not even a handkerchief. No watch.’

  ‘So you’ve got nothing?’

  ‘You mean you’ve got nothing. He’s your baby now. But, yeah, there is something. Look at his wrist.’

  Hussein pulled on her plastic gloves and bent across the corpse. There was a faint sweet smell she didn’t want to think about. Around the left wrist there was a plastic band. She lifted it gently. ‘It’s the sort of thing you get in hospital.’

  ‘That’s what we thought. And it looks like it’s got his name on it.’

  She leaned right down close. The writing was faint, barely legible. She had to spell it out for herself, letter by letter. ‘Klein,’ she said. ‘Dr F. Klein.’

  They waited for the van to arrive, gazing out over the river glinting in the late-afternoon sun. The rain had cleared and the sky was a pale blue, streaked with rose-coloured clouds.

  ‘I wish it hadn’t happened on a Friday,’ said Bryant.

  ‘That’s the way of things.’

  ‘It’s my favourite day, usually. It’s like an extra bit of the weekend.’

  Hussein snapped her gloves off. She was thinking about the arrangements she would have to cancel, her daughters’ crestfallen faces, Nick’s resentment. He would try to hide it, which would make it worse. At the same time she was running through the list of tasks that lay ahead, sorting them into priorities. It was always like this at the start of a case.

  ‘I’ll go with the van to the morgue. You find out who this Dr Klein is and what hospital that tag comes from, if it is a hospital. You’ve got a photo of it.’

  Bryant lifted up his phone.

  According to the plastic bracelet, Dr Klein’s date of birth was 18 November but they couldn’t make out the year. There were two letters and a series of barely legible digits underneath the name, alongside what looked like a bar code.

  ‘Missing People,’ said Hussein. ‘Male, middle-aged, reported between five days and two weeks ago.’

  ‘I’ll call you if I find anything.’

  ‘Call me anyway.’

  ‘I meant that, of course.’

  The plastic ID came from the King Edward Hospital, in Hampstead. Bryant called them and was put through a series of departments until he ended up with an assistant in the executive medical director’s office. He was told very firmly that he would have to come in person with his request before they gave out personal information about staff or patients.

  So he drove there, up the hill in thick rush-hour traffic, hot and impatient. It could almost have been quicker to walk: he should buy a scooter, he thought, or a motorbike. In the medical director’s office, a thin woman in a red suit carefully checked his ID and he repeated what it was he wanted, showing her the image on his phone.

  ‘I thought it must be someone who works here.’

  The woman looked unimpressed. ‘Those wristbands are for patients, not for staff.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Sorry.’

  ‘The staff wear laminated passes.’

  ‘I’m more interested in this one.’

  He was asked to wait. The minute hand on the large clock on the wall jerked forward. He felt sweaty and soiled, and kept picturing the bloated, waterlogged thing that had once been a man. The woman returned holding a printout.

  ‘The patient was admitted here three years ago,’ she said. ‘As an emergency.’ She looked down at the paper. ‘Lacerations. Stab wounds. Nasty.’

  ‘Three years ago?’ Bryant frowned and spoke almost to himself. ‘Why would he still be wearing his hospital ID?’

  ‘It wasn’t a he. The patient was a woman. Dr Frieda Klein.’

  ‘Do you have an address?’

  ‘Address, phone number.’

  Hussein felt a small twitch of memory. ‘Why does that name ring a bell?’

  ‘I don’t have a clue. Shall I call her?’

  ‘Yes. Ask her to come to the morgue.’

  ‘To identify the body? I hope she’s up for that.’

  Hussein stood outside the forensics suite eating a bag of crisps and watched Frieda Klein following the officer down the windowless corridor. She was probably the same kind of age as Hussein herself, but taller, and dressed in grey linen trousers and a high-necked white T-shirt. Her nearly black hair was piled on top of her head. She walked swiftly and lightly, but Hussein noticed there was a slight drag to her gait, like that of a wounded dancer. As she got closer, she saw that the woman’s face, devoid of make-up, was pale. Her eyes were very dark and Hussein felt that she was not just being looked at but scrutinized.

  ‘Dr Frieda Klein.’

  ‘Yes.’

  As Hussein introduced herself and Bryan
t, she tried to assess the woman’s mood. She remembered what Bryant had said after he had spoken to her: Dr Klein didn’t seem that surprised.

  ‘You might find this distressing.’

  The woman nodded. ‘He had my name on his wrist?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  The morgue was harshly lit and silent and very cold. There was the familiar smell, rancid and antiseptic, that caught in the back of the throat.

  They stopped in front of the slab. The shape was covered with a white sheet.

  ‘Ready?’

  She nodded once more. The morgue attendant stepped forward and drew back the sheet. Hussein didn’t look at the body, but at Frieda Klein’s face. Her expression didn’t alter, not even a tightening of the jaw. She stared intently and leaned closer, unblinking. Her eyes travelled down to the gaping wound at the neck. ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘I can’t tell.’

  ‘Perhaps it would help to see the clothes that he was found in.’

  They were on a shelf, folded into transparent plastic bags. One by one, Hussein lifted them down for inspection. A sodden dark shirt. Grey trousers. Those heavy leather shoes, whose laces were blue and double-knotted. Hussein heard a tiny intake of breath beside her. For an instant, the expression on Frieda Klein’s face had altered, like a landscape that had darkened and chilled. She curled one hand slightly, as if she were about to lift it to touch the bag that contained the shoes. She turned back towards the terrible body and stood quite upright, staring down.