The Other Child

by Charlotte Link

  This was just as astonishing to him. ‘Here? At my place?’

  ‘Did you drive straight here yesterday evening?’

  He looked amused. ‘Is this an interrogation?’

  ‘Just a question.’

  ‘Yes, I drove straight here. I have no idea where your grandmother is, and frankly, meeting her is the last thing I want to do.’ He gestured to the front door. ‘We needn’t talk on the street. Would you like a coffee?’

  Leslie had asked Gwen for a coffee, but now she realised that she had not found time to drink it. It was almost two in the afternoon, and she had not eaten or drunk anything yet. She felt a little wobbly on her feet and her stomach gave signs of being a little upset.

  ‘A coffee would be great,’ she said gratefully.

  Dave went down the steps to the front door ahead of her. Leslie could now clearly see the outline of a person behind the curtain. Dave had seen it too.

  ‘My landlady,’ he explained. ‘She takes an active interest in other people’s lives – to put a positive spin on it.’ He opened the door. ‘Please. Come in.’

  Leslie stepped into the dark narrow hall and almost collided with an elderly woman who was just coming out of the living room: the landlady. She examined Leslie from head to foot.

  ‘Well?’ she said. ‘A visitor?’

  Leslie held out her hand. ‘I’m Dr Leslie Cramer. Mr Tanner and I need to have a quick chat about something.’

  ‘Mrs Willerton,’ said the landlady. ‘It’s my house. I rent out an upstairs room, since my husband is no longer around.’

  Dave squeezed past the two women to get to the stairs. ‘Watch the stairs, Dr Cramer,’ he said. ‘They’re worn and steep, and it’s rather dingy.’

  ‘Find a room somewhere else if you think it’s lousy here!’ exclaimed an offended Mrs Willerton.

  Leslie followed Dave up the stairs, which were indeed a hazard to life and limb. At the top he opened a door. ‘I’m afraid I have to invite you into my bedroom,’ he said. ‘It’s the only room at my disposal.’

  The room was complete chaos. There was a wardrobe, but whatever Tanner used it for, it was not for his clothes. Trousers and sweaters lay strewn over the backs of chairs and armchairs and in piles on the floor. The bed was unmade and the sheets rumpled. There was a bottle of mineral water next to the bed. The whole of the small table in the corner was covered in crumpled newspapers that had obviously been much read. Leslie spied a lipstick on the windowsill and scrunched-up black tights under the chair at the table. She was surprised to find signs that Gwen had often stayed the night, but she said to herself that Gwen was obviously not quite the vestal virgin her aura suggested. Of course she had the right to have fun here with her fiancé. Anything else would not be normal. And yet she had not thought that Gwen used lipstick – she had never seen her made-up, in fact, and nor had she suspected Gwen would use ultra-fine tights. But who knew, maybe Gwen became a vamp when she went out with Dave and the puzzle of the two wildly different people had its solution here: in sex. Maybe they had crazy, fantastic, heavenly sex.

  Although that was, as Leslie had to admit, extremely hard for anyone who knew Gwen to imagine.

  Dave brushed a few T-shirts off a chair. ‘Please. Sit down. I’ll make us coffee.’

  At a sink in a kind of small wet room by the door, he ran water into a kettle and then turned it on. He took a jar from the cupboard – instant coffee, thought Leslie in resignation, I feared as much – and spooned the brown powder into two cups. He pushed the newspapers to the side and placed a little bowl with powdered milk and sugar cubes on the table.

  ‘Voilà!’ he said. ‘Everything’s ready!’

  ‘Have you been out walking?’ asked Leslie.

  He nodded. ‘The weather is too nice to spend the whole day sitting in this room, don’t you think?’

  ‘Did you go to bed straight away yesterday? I mean, after everything that happened, you must have been a little agitated.’

  ‘No. I wasn’t too worked up. And yes, I went straight to bed.’ He brought over the boiling water and filled their cups. ‘Dr Cramer, what’s this all about? You’re asking again and again what I did last night. Why? What’s up with your grandmother? And what’s it got to do with me?’

  ‘I drove back to her flat last night without her. I was angry and had no wish to talk to her. She stayed on the Beckett farm for a good while, and then she asked Colin Brankley to order a cab for her, to pick her up at a farm fifteen minutes’ walk from the Beckett farm. She was over-excited, Colin says, and wanted to have a walk. The cabbie didn’t find anyone at the agreed meeting place, circled around for a while and then drove back to Scarborough. Fiona neither showed up at her flat nor back at the Beckett farm. She’s just disappeared, and I’m pretty worried.’

  ‘Naturally. But why do you think I might know where she is?’

  Leslie took a sip of coffee and burnt her tongue. An awful brew. She reached for the sugar, although she did not usually take any.

  ‘I just hoped you might know something. Fiona might have gone looking for you, because she had acted so badly towards you. I was just … looking for answers.’

  ‘Unfortunately, I really have no idea where she could be,’ said Dave.

  And why should he lie to me, thought Leslie. She felt tired and scared. Nevertheless, something in her refused to consider that anything serious could have happened to her grandmother. Fiona was not the kind of person something could happen to. But then she asked herself if there was a kind of person nothing happened to? Wasn’t that what was so eerie about fate, that anything could happen to anyone anywhere?

  She looked around the room and wondered how a grown man could live like this. A student, yes, but a man in his forties? What had gone wrong in Dave Tanner’s life? His eyes were restless, perhaps even a little despairing. He hated this room, and did nothing to make it nicer. On the contrary, he had let it become a complete tip. The room embodied his anger at his life – at the poor, rundown terraced house and his intrusive landlady, at his car which was always letting him down and finally also at his job which did not even start to satisfy or fulfil him. He seemed intelligent and educated to her – why had he ended up in this hole of a room under the same roof as that awful woman?

  ‘I think it must have been about half-eight yesterday evening, when I left the Beckett farm,’ said Dave. ‘I reckon I was here by about nine. I drank a little wine and then went to bed. I didn’t see or talk to Fiona Barnes. That’s all that happened.’

  ‘You must have been pretty mad.’

  ‘I was mad, because she had attacked me in front of everyone. Because she ruined the evening. Even if she had never expressed them that directly till then, her opinions about me were not exactly a surprise. I had always felt her suspicion.’

  ‘She looks after Gwen.’

  ‘With what right?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Leslie surprised.

  He stirred his coffee so violently that the coffee splashed over the side. ‘What I said. With what right? She’s not Gwen’s mother or grandmother. She’s not kin. Why does she feel she can meddle in Gwen’s life?’

  ‘She’s been friends with Gwen’s father for ever. Gwen is very attached to her – has always seen her as a second mother. So Fiona feels responsible. And she’s suspicious.’

  ‘Why?’

  Leslie chose her words carefully. ‘I suppose you know you are a rather attractive man, Dave. And you probably don’t have any difficulty in attracting young pretty women. So why Gwen? She’s …’

  He looked at her, waiting for her to continue. ‘Yes?’

  ‘She’s not exactly a beauty,’ said Leslie. ‘That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, if she was witty and a sparkling conversationalist. Or if she had a remarkable intelligence, or a fascinating self-confidence, great ambition, cleverness … something. But she’s shy, rather naive and not very … not very interesting. My grandmother doesn’t understand what attracts you to her.’

&nb
sp; ‘Your grandmother understands it all perfectly. The farm. All those acres of wonderful land that will be Gwen’s in the not too distant future. And she says quite clearly that I’m only interested in that. In the property.’

  ‘And is she right?’ asked Leslie, challenging him.

  ‘How do you mean?’ replied Dave.

  ‘I don’t want to be rude, but …’

  ‘No, do.’

  ‘OK. I can’t imagine that you’re satisfied with the life you lead here. I think you’re looking for an opportunity to escape all this.’ She made a gesture that took in the room’s chaos. ‘You are a man who makes a strong impression on women, but you have nothing to offer them, and that limits quite considerably your options of marrying someone better-off. A woman of your age would be horrified to see this room. Young women would be less shocked, but they tend not to own anything and so can’t help you out of your mess. From that perspective, Gwen is an extraordinary piece of luck – and moreover, one that you’re not going to let slip away, as you won’t be given another one like it any time soon, if ever.’

  He listened to her in silence. If her words annoyed him, his face did not betray it. He gave the impression of being calm.

  ‘I’m listening,’ he said when she paused. ‘Carry on, now you’ve started.’

  ‘Gwen is lonely,’ continued Leslie, feeling surer of herself. ‘In spite of her love for her father she feels so alone. She senses that her life, as she leads it now, doesn’t have a future. She is dreaming of a prince and would be prepared to make a lot of compromises, if only she could find one to whisk her up onto his horse and ride into the future with her. She would throw caution to the wind and ignore everything that might make other women hold back.’

  ‘And that would be?’

  ‘Your circumstances. That you lodge in this room. Your job, which really can only be called a job, and not a career. Your car, which threatens to give up the ghost at any moment. You’re no longer a student. Why do you live like this?’

  ‘Maybe I like it.’

  ‘I don’t believe that.’

  ‘But you don’t know.’

  ‘Then let me rephrase my question,’ said Leslie. ‘If your life is fine and dandy, and if Fiona is wrong and it’s not the Beckett farm that attracts you to Gwen, then what is it? What do you like about Gwen? Why do you love her?’

  ‘Why do you love your husband?’

  Leslie flinched, and to her annoyance she felt her cheeks were burning. ‘I’m divorced,’ she said.

  ‘Why? What went wrong?’

  She slammed down her coffee cup, which she had just put to her lips. Now she had a brown puddle in front of her. ‘That’s none of your business,’ she said brusquely.

  He remained calm. ‘True. And nor is it your business, or Fiona Barnes’s, what Gwen and I feel. When people interrogate me I feel just the same as you felt just now at my question. It’s nobody’s business. And one more thing …’ his voice had taken on a dangerous edge, ‘you should let Gwen lead her own life. All of you. Let her finally grow up. Let her make her own decisions. In the worst case: the wrong decisions. The wrong man. Or whatever. But stop trying to make her happy. You’re not helping her get over her lack of experience and inability to deal with life – you should all think about that!’

  She took a deep breath. ‘You egged me on to be impolite, Mr Tanner.’

  ‘Yes. So that you finally understand.’

  She was angry, but she was not sure what she should be angry about. She felt like he was treating her like a schoolgirl, telling her off, but she also realised that he was right. Fiona and she had meddled in what was not their business. They were treating Gwen like a little girl and Dave like some con artist. It had only caused confusion and unhappiness. Dave had left his own engagement party early, Gwen was sitting at home bawling her eyes out, and Fiona seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. In all, a pretty crushing set of results for the weekend.

  The thought of Fiona brought Leslie back to the really pressing issue. She finished her coffee quickly, leaving just a pile of undissolved sugar and coffee powder at the bottom. She stood up.

  ‘I didn’t want to offend you,’ she said, ‘and thanks for the coffee. But now I really have to look for my grandmother. I’m afraid that if she hasn’t appeared by this evening, I’ll have to inform the police.’

  He stood up too.

  ‘Not a bad idea,’ he said. ‘But maybe she’s already home now, waiting for you.’

  Leslie doubted that somehow. She felt her way down the steep dark stairs. The landlady was standing in the hall at the bottom of the stairs, wiping the frame of a mirror with a cloth. It was obvious that she had tried to hear every word spoken upstairs.

  How could Dave put up with her, thought Leslie, and she immediately knew the answer: he could not. He was a deeply unhappy person.

  Dave went down to her car with her. Getting in, she said, ‘Do me a favour, would you, and call Gwen? What happened yesterday isn’t her fault. Don’t take this as further meddling – just a friend’s request.’

  ‘Let’s see,’ he said vaguely.

  Driving off she looked in her rear-view mirror, but he was not watching her. He had turned around immediately and gone back inside. With a little shudder Leslie imagined what a long, quiet Sunday in that wretched room must be like. She would not have wanted to swap places with Tanner.

  Fiona’s flat was as empty as it had been that morning. There was no sign that anyone had been here in the meantime Leslie felt ravenously hungry. She got a frozen meatloaf out of the freezer and put it in the microwave. Then she called the Beckett farm, to see if there was any news, but Chad told her he had not heard anything.

  ‘I’ll wait until five,’ said Leslie. ‘Then I’m calling the police.’

  ‘Right,’ said Chad.

  She sat down by the living room window to eat and looked at the sun-drenched bay, the beach full of walkers and of dogs playing crazily, the harbour, the castle above it. After only a few mouthfuls, it felt like her stomach was in a knot, although a few minutes earlier she had thought she would faint for hunger. The growing feeling of foreboding was almost overpowering, and she could only hope that it came from her overwrought state and was unfounded.

  Maybe Fiona in her anger had wanted to be awkward, and had taken a room in a hotel, to let them all stew.

  Would she do that to me? Leslie wondered.

  She knew the answer, because she knew the woman who had raised her only too well. Fiona did not care too much about other people, not even her own granddaughter.

  If she felt like disappearing for a bit, she would not worry about the effect it would have on her only relative and on her friends.

  6

  The gorge on the edge of a pasture up by Staintondale was bathed in a blinding light. The hurriedly erected spotlights lit the scene with a horrific, unsparing clarity. People, police cordons, cars. Somewhere further off sheep were bleating.

  Detective Inspector Valerie Almond had been called away from a family party. She hated her job in moments like this. Without any gentle transition, she had been taken from the warm, cheery atmosphere of a living room full of people she loved and saw much too infrequently, and plonked in this dark pasture. Her colleague had picked her up, as she had been out without her car. She was wearing a suit and stiletto heels, not the most suitable attire in which to traipse along a grassy verge towards a cliff. To make things worse, it was dark and a cold wind was blowing inland from the sea.

  ‘Where’s the woman who found her?’ she asked.

  Sergeant Reek, who was accompanying her, led a figure out from the shadow of a parked car and into the spotlit area. A young woman, Valerie guessed she was not yet twenty-five. She was wearing jeans, wellies and a thick sweater. She looked frighteningly pale and shocked.

  ‘You are …?’ Valerie asked.

  ‘Paula Foster, Inspector. I live down there on the Trevor farm.’ She made a vague gesture downwards into the night. �
��I’m working there for three months, as an intern. I’m studying agriculture.’

  ‘And what time was it when you came here?’ asked Valerie. ‘And why?’

  ‘Around nine. I wanted to take a look at one of the sheep,’ Paula replied.

  ‘What was the matter with it?’

  ‘It’s had a pus-filled wound on its leg for two days now. I spray the wound in the morning and evening with a disinfecting spray. Normally I’m here around six o’clock.’

  ‘Why nine today?’

  Paula lowered her head. ‘My boyfriend was here,’ she said quietly, ‘and somehow … we lost track of the time.’

  Valerie did not think that was something she needed to be ashamed of.

  ‘I understand. And how did you know the sheep would be here? The animals are spread over a massive grazing area.’

  ‘Yes, but there’s a shed over there.’ Again she gestured into the impenetrable darkness beyond the cordons. ‘Not far, but you can’t see it now. We’re keeping the injured sheep in there for now. But today …’

  ‘Yes?’

  Paula Foster was the personification of a bad conscience.

  ‘When I got here, the door was open. I probably didn’t close it properly this morning. I was all excited and rushing, because my boyfriend was coming. And then I saw the sheep was gone.’

  ‘And so you went looking for it?’

  ‘Yes. I had a torch with me, and I shone it in wider and wider circles, starting from the shed. And then I heard it. From down there in the gorge.’

  She paused. Her lips were trembling lightly. ‘I heard it bleating quietly,’ she continued, ‘and knew that it had slipped down the slope and couldn’t make it up on its own.’

  ‘So you climbed down into the gorge,’ deduced Valerie.

  ‘Yes, the slope is pretty steep, but it’s only earth and leaves. It wasn’t hard to get down.’

  ‘And then you saw the dead woman.’

  Paula went even paler. She had difficulty in continuing. ‘I almost slipped down onto her. I … I was scared to death, Inspector. A dead woman … right at my feet. I was stunned …’ She put both her hands to her head. She was obviously still stunned.