‘I don’t know,’ said Frieda. ‘Just a feeling.’
‘I get worried about your feelings.’
Frieda began to close the door, then hesitated. ‘What was it you wanted to say to me? I mean, apart from my so-called fight.’
Yvette looked at the people behind Frieda. ‘Some other time,’ she said.
THIRTY-ONE
Josh Kerrigan was making roll-ups, adding thick tufts of tobacco to the Rizla paper, rolling it deftly between thumb and forefinger, licking the edge and laying the thin, straight tube beside the others he’d already assembled. He had six so far and was on to his seventh. Yvette was finding it hard to concentrate on what he was saying. Perhaps that was the point: he was making it quite clear that she was simply an interruption. She was getting a bit tired of these Kerrigan boys.
‘Josh,’ she said, ‘I can understand why you might be upset –’
‘Do I seem upset?’ He passed the Rizla over the tip of his tongue.
‘– but I’m afraid I’m not going until you’ve answered my questions.’
‘No. You’re fine.’ He laid the seventh cigarette beside the others and tapped it into line with a finger, tipping his head on one side to examine them. He had a small vertical scar just above his lip that pulled it up slightly, giving him the suggestion of a perpetual smile.
‘Where were you on Wednesday, the sixth of April?’
‘Cardiff. Is that a good enough alibi?’
‘It’s not an alibi at all yet. How can you prove you were in Cardiff then?’
‘Wednesday, the sixth of April?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have lectures on Wednesdays, until five. I don’t think I could have got back to London in time to murder my father’s lover, do you?’
‘You didn’t have lectures that Wednesday. Your term had ended.’
‘Then I was probably out somewhere.’
‘You need to take this more seriously.’
‘What makes you think I’m not?’
He started on the next roll-up. At least there wasn’t much tobacco left in the tin, only enough for one or two more.
‘I want you to give proper thought to where you were on that Wednesday and who you were with.’
He lifted his head and Yvette saw the glint of his brown eyes. ‘I was probably with my girlfriend, Shari. We got together at the end of term, so it was pretty intense. The things you’re finding out about the sex life of the Kerrigan family.’
‘You think or you know?’
‘I’m a bit hazy on dates.’
‘Don’t you have a diary?’
‘A diary?’ He grinned as if she had said something unintentionally funny. ‘No, I don’t have a diary.’
‘When did you return to London for the holidays?’
‘When? At the end of that week, I think. Friday? Saturday? You’ll have to ask Mum. I know I was back by the Saturday because there was a party. So it was probably the Friday.’
‘Did you come back by train?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you can look at the ticket or your bank statement to confirm the date.’
‘If I paid by card. Which I’m not sure about.’
He had finished the tobacco at last. One by one he delicately lifted the roll-ups and put them into the empty tin. Yvette thought his hands were trembling, but perhaps she was imagining things: his expression gave nothing away.
‘Did you have any idea about your father’s affair?’
‘No.’
‘What do you feel about it?’
‘Do you mean, am I angry?’ he asked mildly, one dark eyebrow lifting. ‘Yes. Especially after all Mum’s gone through. Am I angry enough to kill someone? I think if I was going to kill anyone, it’d be my dad.’
‘I really don’t think I can help you.’
Louise Weller was still wearing an apron. Maybe she lived in it, he thought. She must always be clearing up mess or cooking meals, scrubbing floors, helping her children splash paint on to sheets of paper. He saw that her shirt sleeves were rolled up.
‘How old are your children?’ he asked, following his train of thought.
‘Benjy’s thirteen weeks old.’ She looked down at the baby asleep on the bouncy chair beside her, eyes twitching in dreams. ‘Then Jackson is just two and Carmen is three and a bit.’
‘You do have your hands full.’ Karlsson felt tired just thinking of it and at the same time dizzy with a kind of nostalgia for those days of mess and tiredness. For one brief moment, he let himself think of Mikey and Bella in Madrid, then blinked the image away. ‘Does your husband help?’
‘My husband is not a healthy man.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘But they’re good children,’ said Louise Weller. ‘They’re brought up to behave well.’
‘I’d like to ask you a few general questions about your sister.’
Louise Weller raised her eyebrows. ‘I don’t see why. Someone broke in and killed her. Now you have to find out who. You seem to be taking your time about it.’
‘It might not be as simple as that.’
‘Oh?’
Karlsson had spent years in the Met. He’d told mothers about children dying; he’d told wives about their husbands being murdered; he’d stood on countless doorsteps to deliver bad news, watching faces go blank with the first shock, then change, crumple. Yet he still felt queasy about telling Louise Weller that her sister had lived a double life. Ridiculous as it was, he felt that he was betraying the dead woman to the prim-mouthed living one.
‘Your sister,’ he said. ‘It turns out that she had a complicated life.’
Louise Weller didn’t move or speak. She just waited.
‘You don’t know about it?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Has Mr Lennox not said anything?’
‘No, he hasn’t.’
‘So you had no idea that Ruth might have had a secret she was keeping from her family?’
‘You’re going to have to tell me what you’re referring to.’
‘She was having an affair.’
She made no response. Karlsson wondered if she’d even heard. Finally she spoke. ‘Thank goodness our mother never lived to find out.’
‘You didn’t know anything about it?’
‘Of course I didn’t. She would have known how I would feel about it.’
‘How would you have felt about it?’
‘She’s a married woman. She has three children. Look at this nice house. She never did know how lucky she was.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘People are very selfish nowadays. They put freedom before responsibility.’
‘She’s dead,’ Karlsson said mildly. He suddenly felt the need to defend Ruth Lennox, though he wasn’t sure why.
The baby woke, his face crinkled and he gave a piteous yelp. Louise Weller lifted him up and calmly unbuttoned her shirt, placing him at her breast and casting Karlsson a bright look, as if she wanted him to object.
‘Can we talk about the specifics?’ Karlsson said, trying neither to look at the naked breast nor away from it. ‘Your sister, Ruth, who has been killed and who was having an affair. You say you had no idea?’
‘No.’
‘She never said anything to you that, now you think about it, might have suggested there was something going on?’
‘No.’
‘Does the name Paul Kerrigan mean anything to you?’
‘Is that his name? No. I’ve never heard it.’
‘Did you ever see any sign that there was a strain in her marriage?’
‘Ruth and Russell were devoted to each other.’
‘You never got the impression that there was any problem?’
‘No.’
‘Did you notice that he was drinking heavily?’
‘What? Russell? Drinking?’
‘Yes. You didn’t see that?’
‘No, I did not. I have never seen him drunk. But they say that it’s the secret drinkers who are the problem.’