Dark Saturday

by Nicci French

  She picked up her coat and slung her bag over her shoulder. She was going to get wet, but she didn’t mind that. As she pushed open the door into her anteroom, the first things that she saw were the shoes: brown brogues, old. Then the legs, stretched out in their brown corduroy trousers, ending in blue socks. She opened the door fully.

  Walter Levin sat up straighter in the armchair and pushed his spectacles back up his nose. He beamed at her.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Levin stood up. He was wearing a tweed jacket with large buttons that reminded Frieda of men’s clubs, open fires, wood-paneled rooms, whisky and pipes. When she shook the hand he held out, it was warm and strong.

  “I thought we could have a chat.”

  “No, I mean, literally what are you doing here? How did you get in from the street?”

  “A nice woman was coming out as I was coming in.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Why couldn’t you have rung to make an appointment, like a normal person?”

  “I tried that and it didn’t work.” He raised his eyebrows at her. Frieda didn’t reply. “Can I carry your bag for you?”

  “No, thank you.”

  He took his coat from the back of the armchair and buttoned himself into it, then wound a checked scarf round his neck. “I have an umbrella,” he said genially.

  “I’m probably going in a different direction from you.”

  “I’m here to ask you to dinner.”

  “Dinner?”

  “Not just any dinner.” He patted his pockets vaguely, one after the other, then bent down to look in the leather briefcase at his feet. “Here we are,” he said, pulling out a cream envelope and handing it over to Frieda.

  She slid out a thick card. In gold-embossed letters she was cordially invited to a gala dinner at a hall near Westminster on the coming Thursday. An auction of promises to raise money for the families of soldiers fallen in the line of duty. Black tie. Carriages at ten.

  “What is this?”

  “A gathering of the great and the good.”

  “Is this the favor?”

  “It’s an introduction to the favor.” He took off his glasses and rubbed them against the hem of his scarf. His eyes were cool, like pale brown pebbles.

  “Can’t you just tell me?”

  “It isn’t necessary. Shall I send a car for you?”

  “I can make my own way.”

  Frieda waited until he was gone before leaving herself, walking out into the wild February day with a sense of relief. Water was running down the sides of the streets and collecting in puddles on the pavements. The shapes of buildings dissolved. All over the country there were floods, a deluge. She walked fast, feeling drops of rain slide down her neck, and soon was at Number Nine, enveloped in its warmth, the smell of coffee and fresh bread. She pushed the thought of Thursday evening away from her.

  INTERLUDE ONE

  After Dory is sewn up, they put her into bed with a drip in a private ward, full lockdown. They don’t want her talking to other patients. Or prisoners. Patients. Prisoners. Even the guards get confused with the distinction and drift between one word and the other. It doesn’t change the reality, whichever word they use. She is at the far end of wing D, by a window. Two owls hoot at each other the whole night. Dory can’t separate the sound from the sounds in her head, from the sounds in her dreams, from the memories of her own screams as Hannah pushed Dory’s own knife into her, their faces so close they were like lovers.

  But she knows that Mary needs to be told. Mary will know what to do. Hannah will be dealt with.

  THREE

  The party was at a gentlemen’s club in St. James’s. Women were excluded, except on special occasions. When Frieda entered the hall, she was dazzled by the chandeliers, the glint of jewelry, the gleam of light off the wine glasses. She heard the noise, a bray of voices, little screams of laughter. She smelled perfume, leather, money.

  “Splendid,” said a voice.

  Levin was beside her, putting a flute of champagne into her hand, tucking her arm through his, leading her into the crowd, murmuring niceties, his eyes behind their glasses darting this way and that. There were men wearing medals and ribbons. Levin pointed out a senior politician and her portly husband, whose speech was already slurred, a sprinkling of CEOs, a general.

  “Is everyone head of something?” asked Frieda.

  “Apart from you.”

  She glanced at him suspiciously. His face was bland. He introduced her to a woman who was something important in finance but, before she could say a word, led her away again. Dinner was announced. They sat at a table with the head of a company that made solar panels, a lawyer who said she specialized in divorce settlements, a man with beautiful silver hair and an aquiline nose, whose name and job Frieda never discovered, an architect with a glass cane, and the architect’s wife, who drank too much and kept poking the silver-haired man with her forefinger whenever she wanted to make a point. They ate scallops, then duck lying on a daub of pomegranate, plums and tiny yellow mushrooms. Frieda couldn’t stomach it and drank only water. She thought about sitting by her fire with a bowl of soup, looking into its flames, hearing the wind and rain outside. The man at the table next to her pushed his chair back and rammed into her.

  “Sorry,” said a familiar voice.

  Frieda turned and found herself staring into the florid face of Commissioner Crawford, the man who had wanted to discipline Karlsson, who had dismissed her, who had wanted her sent to jail. He gazed at her, still chewing slowly. He glanced back at the people at his table and found them watching with interest. He fixed a smile to his face. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “I didn’t expect to see myself here.”

  “What brings you?”

  “I’m here as a guest.”

  “Aren’t you going to introduce us?” asked the woman at his side.

  Crawford frowned and introduced them.

  “And how do you two know each other?” asked the woman, playfully. “Business or pleasure?”

  “Neither,” said Crawford, and turned back to Frieda. “Are you up to something?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Frieda. “I won’t do anything to embarrass you.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  She turned back to her table and saw Levin watching her with a speculative air. There was a break before the auction of promises. Levin came round to her chair and said, “Let’s mingle, shall we?”

  He led her to the long table at the end of the room where they were serving coffee, one hand lightly under her elbow. “I was considering bidding for a weekend cookery course in Wales. What do you think?” His expression altered. “Ben. I didn’t see you there.”

  Frieda’s immediate impression of the man he was addressing was that he seemed larger than life. He was broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, chestnut-haired, white-toothed, tanned, exuding an air of bonhomie and genial, slightly flashy charm. He made Levin look small and plain and he towered over the people around him. He laid his hand on Levin’s shoulder. “You do pop up in the most unlikely places.”

  With an equable smile, Levin introduced him to Frieda as Ben Sedge. His eyes were very blue. He took her hand in his firm grasp. “Bidding for anything?” he asked, looking around. “The prices are a bit steep for me.” He bent slightly toward Frieda. “More money than sense, wouldn’t you say?”

  “It’s in a good cause, I suppose,” said Frieda. She noticed that Levin had slipped away.

  “So they say. You’re not a journalist, are you?”

  “No.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a psychotherapist. What are you?”

  “I’m a police detective,” he said. “Best job in the world.”

  Before Frieda could say anything else, Levin reappeared. He handed her a cup of coffee and put his hand under her elbow once more. “If you’ll excuse us,” he said to Sedge, and
led Frieda back into the center of the room.

  “I think we’ll give the auction a miss,” he said. “If that’s all right.”

  “Are we leaving?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why did we come?”

  He blinked at her. “I wanted you to meet Detective Chief Inspector Sedge.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m interested in him.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  He dipped his hand into his breast pocket, brought out a small card and handed it to her. “Nine tomorrow morning, please. Then I’ll tell you what your favor is going to be.”

  FOUR

  At half past eight the next morning, Frieda left her house and headed east across Fitzroy Square. The sun was shining out of a blue sky. When she had first moved to the area, one of her neighbors had been an old woman who had lived there since she was a little girl. Frieda used to do her shopping for her sometimes and Doris talked about how the area had changed. “Along Warren Street it was all second-hand-car dealers,” she used to say. “Car dealers and criminals.”

  By the time Frieda had moved in, the car dealers were long gone. The grand houses around the square had been broken up into dingy little offices, for solicitors and travel agents. Now the solicitors had moved on, travel agents were as obsolete as lamplighters, the square had been pedestrianized and spruced up, and the offices had been turned back into town houses. They were occupied by TV celebrities, who complained about the possibility of paying tax on the millions that their houses were now worth. Frieda wondered whether it was time to move to wherever the car dealers and criminals now lived.

  Levin’s address was just a short walk away. Frieda could visualize it like a geometric game, touching four leafy squares: Fitzroy, Bedford, Bloomsbury and Queen Square. She walked through them one by one, turning off the last down a shady, almost hidden street of narrow houses. She looked at the dark green front door. Could this really be Levin’s office? She pressed a little plastic buzzer. The door was opened by a young woman with short, spiky hair, dressed in a blue and white striped shirt and blue trousers, with heavy black leather boots. She smiled at Frieda. “You don’t recognize me,” she said.

  Frieda paused for a moment. “Yes, I do.”

  “Where from?”

  “Your other office. In Chapel Market.”

  “That’s right. I let you in. When Walter interviewed you.”

  “It wasn’t exactly an interview.”

  “I’m Jude. Follow me.”

  Inside, it was a normal terraced house, with framed engravings on the wall. Ahead there were stairs, and to the side of them, the corridor led to a kitchen. Jude opened the door to the left and showed Frieda inside. “Can I get you tea or coffee?” said Jude.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Then I’ll fetch Walter.”

  She left the room and Frieda heard her walking up the stairs. She looked around. It was like a million other ground-floor rooms in London, a front room and a back room knocked together. There were two little fireplaces and two mantelpieces. It had all the components of a home—pictures on the wall of landscapes that looked vaguely rural, a sofa and two chairs, a low coffee-table—but it was clear that nobody lived there. The glass in the window that gave onto the street was frosted. There were none of the fragments of an actual life, no ornaments on the shelves, no books, no magazines. Instead, there were files everywhere, box files and cardboard files and plastic files, piled on the floor, arranged on shelves. Two filing cabinets—slightly different colors and slightly different shapes—were jammed together against a wall. At the far end, there was a stripped-pine desk with a computer and a printer and another laptop.

  “So you found us?” said a familiar voice. Frieda looked round. It was Levin. With him was another man, with heavy, puffy features, wearing a gray suit and a dark tie. He looked at Frieda with an expression that was bored, as if he were waiting to be impressed and didn’t expect to be.

  “This is Jock Keegan,” said Levin. “He used to be a policeman.”

  “What are you now?” asked Frieda.

  “He’s working with us,” said Levin. “Did Jude offer you tea?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Let’s make ourselves comfortable.”

  Levin and Keegan sat on the sofa. Frieda took a wooden chair from the desk, placed it opposite them and sat.

  “It feels like you’re interviewing us,” said Levin, with a smile.

  “I think I should warn you about something,” said Frieda.

  “Really?”

  “If what you want from me is some sort of profiling, I need to say that I’ve got no interest in it. I don’t believe in it and I don’t do it. If that’s what you want, then you should get someone else.”

  There was a pause. Levin and Keegan looked at each other.

  “I’m not exactly sure what you mean by profiling,” said Levin. “But at this point I feel we could go in two different directions. You could keep making guesses about what you think I want you to do and what you would say if I did. Or, on the other hand, I could simply say what I want you to do. I think the second option would probably be quicker.”

  “All right.”

  “Did you enjoy last night?”

  “It wasn’t really my kind of thing.”

  “I didn’t think so. But you met, or encountered, DCI Sedge.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was his name familiar to you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know about the Geoffrey Lester case?”

  “No.”

  “It was in the papers,” said Keegan.

  “I don’t read the papers.”

  “The details aren’t important,” said Levin. “Lester was—is—a career criminal. Last year he was convicted of murdering a rival. As it turned out, it was one of the few crimes he hadn’t actually done. Last month, the conviction was quashed and he was released. During the course of the appeal, it emerged that there had been irregularities in the investigation. An investigation that was led by our friend Ben Sedge.” Levin paused as if he were waiting for Frieda to speak, then continued. “You’re probably wondering whether the murder was solved.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “It’s not actually our concern. The fact is that when a case collapses it raises other issues. It’s like—”

  “A house of cards,” said Keegan.

  “I was thinking more of dominoes,” said Levin. “You know, one domino falls and it knocks over another and then another. I mean, not when you’re playing dominoes. When you arrange them in a line. Hence the domino effect. Or cliché.”

  “In what way?” said Frieda.

  “As we speak,” said Levin, “lawyers will be picking over Sedge’s earlier cases. All of them. People may be released as a result. Guilty people.”

  “Or innocent people,” said Frieda.

  “Or innocent people. Which would, of course, be a good thing.”

  “Why aren’t the police doing this?”

  “Because that’s not what the police do. This is a quick preliminary check, just to see if any nasty surprises are coming.”

  “Who wants to know?”

  Levin looked puzzled. “Everyone, I suppose. Or everyone who cares about doing the right thing.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Good,” said Levin. “We’ve finally got to that. It’s really very simple. We just want you to go and talk to someone, then tell us what you think.”

  “I think I’m here under false pretences,” said Frieda. “I’ve no special skills. I’m not a detective. I’m not an interrogator.”

  “The woman in question is clinically insane,” said Levin. “That’s not a comment. That’s her diagnosis. We sent someone to interview her.”

  “Me.” Keegan leaned back and folded his arms. To Frieda he looked like an illustration in a psychology textbook: folding of arms demonstrating emotional withdrawal, self-defense bordering on hostility.


  “He couldn’t get any sense out of her,” said Levin.

  “You can say that again.” Keegan gave a snort.

  “Who is this woman?”

  “It might be interesting if you come to her fresh, as it were,” said Levin.

  “She killed her family,” said Keegan.

  “Well, now she won’t come to her fresh,” said Levin, mildly.

  “They’ll tell her at the gate. The warders will tell her.”

  “Nurses, strictly speaking,” said Levin.

  “Nurses with handcuffs. Anyway, Klein knows how to go online.”

  “Dr. Klein,” Levin corrected him.

  “Klein is all right,” said Frieda. “Is there something particular that you need to find out?”

  “The woman is trouble,” said Keegan. “And she’s dangerous. What we want to know is whether she’s going to be trouble to us. As far as I can tell, she’s completely out of it. The question is whether she’s going to start making sense and saying she’s been wrongly convicted.”

  “Which would be a bad thing?”

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” said Levin. “As we agreed, you owe me a favor. All you need to do is go and see this woman and tell us what you think. Once you’ve talked to her, you might want to have a look at what we have about her case. Then we’ll be all square.”

  “As simple as that?”

  “As simple as that.”

  Frieda thought for a moment. “What is all this?” she said. “Who do you work for?”

  “That’s really a philosophical concept.”

  “No, it isn’t. Who pays the bills? Who owns this house?”

  “I’m a sort of freelance consultant,” Levin said. “Like so many people nowadays. And I’m hiring you—or at least talking to you—as another freelance consultant. And you owe me a favor. And we’re all on the side of righteousness. And what harm, really, can it do for you to talk to this woman?”