Friday on My Mind by Nicci French

the table and they sat opposite her. Nobody wanted tea or coffee; there was no small talk.
    Hussein had met Tanya Hopkins once before. She was a middle-aged woman, plump, with greying hair and a face bare of make-up. She wore soft, rumpled clothes with flat shoes and there was a maternal air about her – but her grey eyes were shrewd and when they got down to business she was incisive.
    ‘I have several questions,’ said Hussein.
    Frieda Klein nodded and rested her hands on the table in front of her. She didn’t seem nervous and she kept her dark eyes on Hussein’s face, but there was a subdued air about her.
    ‘It is very clear that Alexander Holland was still obsessed with you. Would you like to tell me something about that obsession?’
    Hopkins leaned over to Klein and murmured something that Hussein couldn’t make out. Klein didn’t reply but just gave her a curious smile.
    ‘It’s all right,’ she said to Hussein. ‘Sandy and I broke up about eighteen months ago.’
    ‘You broke up with him.’
    ‘Yes. He found it hard to accept that something that was once so important to both of us was over. I wouldn’t call that an obsession.’
    ‘He was wearing your old hospital tag on his wrist.’
    Frieda’s face was serious. ‘People can be strange,’ she said.
    ‘Indeed. I understand that he came back from America in order to be with you.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And that he was very supportive of you when you found yourself involved in a case that stirred painful memories for you.’
    ‘You can call it by its proper name. When I was a teenager I was raped. I went back to my home town to find out who had done that. Yes, he was very supportive.’
    ‘And yet you ended it.’
    There was a pause. Hussein waited. Frieda said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think that was a question. Yes, I ended it. You cannot stay with someone simply out of gratitude.’
    ‘Was he extremely angry?’
    ‘He was upset.’
    ‘Angry?’
    ‘Sometimes being upset takes the form of anger.’
    ‘Eighteen months later, he was still angry?’
    ‘He was still upset.’
    ‘Did you ever encourage him to think there was a chance?’
    ‘No.’ Her voice was clipped. ‘I did not.’
    ‘You never got back together with him?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Yet he rang you or texted you almost every day, sometimes several times a day.’
    Frieda had been speaking in a quick, precise tone. Now she paused and when she spoke it was almost in a sigh. ‘It was painful.’
    ‘For you or for him?’
    ‘For both of us, of course. But probably more for him.’
    The door opened and Bryant came in, shutting it quietly behind him. He nodded at Frieda, introduced himself to Tanya Hopkins and pulled a chair to the table. Hussein waited until he was sitting before she spoke again.
    ‘Did you talk to him when he called?’
    ‘Not very often. At first I did, but not recently. I thought it would be …’ She frowned. ‘Counterproductive,’ she said at last.
    ‘When you did talk, what were the conversations like?’
    ‘I don’t understand the question.’
    ‘It’s quite simple. Did he plead with you, shout at you, insult you?’
    ‘Sandy was a proud man.’
    ‘That’s not an answer.’
    ‘You’re making him sound …’ she slightly lifted a hand from the table, then let it drop ‘… disordered.’
    ‘Was he disordered?’
    ‘He was in a dark place in his life. So he probably did all those things. Usually I didn’t answer his call. I let it go to voicemail.’
    Hussein pulled the photocopy of the dates and times that had been found at the dead man’s flat. ‘Do you recognize this?’
    Frieda looked at it. ‘That’s when I’m scheduled to be at the Warehouse,’ she said, in a low voice.
    ‘So he knew your movements?’
    ‘He must have done.’
    ‘You told me at our last interview that it had been a long time since you had actually met him but that you had – what was the word? – yes,
glimpsed
him a couple of weeks before he was found dead. On