The Other Child

by Charlotte Link

  Valerie let her gaze drift around the room. Like every other visitor to Dave Tanner’s room, she was surprised by the mess, the tattiness and unmistakable signs of poverty. Dave Tanner’s language, his bearing and behaviour all pointed to a good upbringing and education, and to a family background that must have been upper middle class. Tanner did not belong in this house, in this room. Almost inevitably Valerie came to the same suspicion that Fiona Barnes and Leslie Cramer had not been able to ignore. The farm that Gwen Beckett would soon inherit – wouldn’t it be a life-saver for Dave Tanner? How scared was he that Fiona Barnes’s venomous comments, which perhaps hit the nail squarely on the head, would dissuade Gwen from marrying him as planned? Might he have thought his future livelihood depended on silencing the old woman by any means necessary?

  Valerie changed tack once more.

  ‘You knew that your colleague Mrs Gardner employed a young woman to look after her daughter when she taught?’

  ‘Yes. She had mentioned it.’ Tanner spoke carefully now, although you could sense that he was struggling to keep calm. Valerie could tell that he had seen through her attempt to confuse him with the abrupt jumps from topic to topic. ‘But I didn’t know her name. I didn’t know the girl herself.’

  ‘You knew where Mrs Gardner lived?’

  ‘No, we had very little to do with one another.’

  ‘But you could have found out her address via the school office at any time, of course.’

  ‘I could have. But I didn’t. There was no reason to.’

  Valerie looked around the room again, with an obvious scorn which Tanner could not help but see.

  ‘Mr Tanner, I think I’m right to assume that your financial circumstances are not all that rosy. You have no other income apart from your earnings from the language classes?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘So you just about get by, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Valerie let the answer hang in the air. She got up. ‘That will be all for now, Mr Tanner. We will most certainly have further questions for you. You don’t have any plans to travel in the near future, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. We’ll be in touch.’ Valerie and Sergeant Reek left the room. In the hall they bumped into the landlady.

  ‘And?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘Has he done something?’

  ‘We just had a few routine questions,’ replied Valerie. ‘Tell me, you don’t know what time Mr Tanner came home on Saturday evening?’

  Mrs Willerton regretted that she really did not know. ‘I nodded off in front of the telly,’ she explained. ‘When I woke up, it was almost midnight. I don’t know if Mr Tanner was home or not.’

  Valerie found that regrettable too. A landlady as curious and nosy as Mrs Willerton was a gift to any investigating officer. Such people knew only too well the details of the lives of everyone around them. It seemed like a cruel trick of fate that Mrs Willerton had slept through that crucial Saturday evening.

  ‘Can you remember 16th July of this year?’ asked Valerie.

  You could see the cogs in the landlady’s brain turning.

  ‘16th July you said? 16th July?’

  ‘That was the day Amy Mills was murdered. You must have heard about the case.’

  The landlady’s eyes opened wide. ‘Was Mr Tanner involved in that?’ she whispered in horror.

  ‘There is no evidence to suggest that at present,’ said Valerie, playing things down.

  ‘You will want to know if he was home that evening,’ deduced Mrs Willerton. She had a despairing look. ‘No idea. Oh, good Lord, I don’t know!’

  ‘Not a problem.’ Valerie smiled at her. ‘It’s three months ago. It’s not surprising that you can’t remember such details.’

  ‘I’ll call you if anything springs to mind,’ promised Mrs Willerton. Reek handed her his card. The woman took it, her hand shaking.

  Valerie did not count on anything. Mrs Willerton was old, lonely and bored. She would probably phone in with information, but it would have to be considered with the utmost scepticism. She might not lie, but she would dress events and incidents up in a way that strained common ideas of truth. She longed for attention, and to be taken seriously. Tanner would be her victim.

  Valerie and Reek stepped out onto the street. It was a glorious day once again, promising to be really warm.

  ‘Now what?’ asked Reek.

  Valerie glanced at her watch. ‘The Beckett farm,’ she said.

  3

  She stared at the phone, waiting for it to ring, and knowing at the same time that it was fatal to wait for a phone to ring. She listened to the sounds of the flat: the quiet hum of the fridge in the kitchen, the ticking of a clock, the dripping of a tap that was not properly turned off. Someone walked around upstairs. Now and then a floorboard creaked. Outside the late summer presented itself in all its glory once more, spilling its light on the waves, causing the leaves on the trees of the Esplanade Gardens to catch flame. The sky was a crystal-clear blue. That morning on the radio they had said you should take full advantage of the day; rain and fog were coming.

  Leslie tried to understand that her grandmother was dead.

  That her grandmother would never come home to her flat.

  That everything Leslie saw around her – all the familiar furniture, the pictures on the walls, the curtains, a jumper thrown carelessly onto an armchair – they were all relics, objects that had been left behind, earthly possessions for which their one-time owner now had no need. It was impossible to take in, because Fiona’s life was expressed so clearly in all these things. Her favourite cheese in the fridge, the stash of packets of cigarettes, the roses on the table, which Fiona herself had been the last person to water. And under the wardrobe the wellies in which she had always trudged off when it was rainy. Her toothbrush, comb and hairdryer in the bathroom, and the few cosmetics she had used.

  She would not return to any of them.

  She won’t return to me, thought Leslie.

  Fiona had been like a mother to her. Now she had lost her mother.

  When she had lain in bed in the early hours of last Sunday morning, and had tucked her knees up to her chin and cried, so cold and alone, her mother had either already been killed or was dying.

  And she had not died peacefully in her bed. She had not been able to say goodbye to anyone. A crazy man had murdered her, had lain in wait for her and smashed in her skull, had left her at the bottom of a wooded gorge.

  It was unimaginable. It made the mind reel. It was beyond what she could understand. Leslie knew that she was suffering from shock. Although she understood with absolute clarity what had happened, although she had understood every word that Detective Inspector Almond had said to her the night before, she still did not grasp the full horror of it. There was still a barrier that shielded her from the terrible realisation that what had happened would have an effect on the rest of her life. She would never really be able to come to terms with the death of her grandmother, who was the only person in her childhood and youth to whom she had been deeply attached emotionally. The thought of the brutal, wild crime would be linked to her grandmother’s death. She would never be able to visit Fiona’s grave without thinking about the old woman’s last hours. There could never be consoling phrases such as: She didn’t suffer, or: It was a blessing she died, or: At least it happened quickly. One thing was sure: Fiona had suffered. The only way in which her death was a blessing was that it ended the torture she had suffered at the hands of a criminal. And it had not happened quickly. She had been dragged, driven, forced to go to the isolated pasture by that person, whoever it was. She must have had a sense of what was to come. Had she called out to her granddaughter when she feared death?

  At least the shock had meant that Leslie had been able to have a surprisingly calm conversation with Valerie Almond. The officer had told her of her grandmother’s violent death with careful, gentle words.

  ‘Unfortunately I’ll have to ask you a
few questions,’ she ended by saying. ‘But they can wait until tomorrow.’

  Leslie had sat numbly on the sofa. Shaking her head, she said, ‘No, no. Ask me now. It’s fine.’

  The conversation had helped her to cope with the first hour. She had run through every detail of Saturday evening in a rational and concentrated way. It did her good to make her mind work hard, trying to remember every little thing.

  In the end she asked, ‘Will I have to identify my grandmother?’

  Valerie had nodded. ‘It would be helpful. Not that there’s really any doubt about her identity, sadly, but it would make things one hundred per cent certain. First the post-mortem needs to be completed, but … it would be good if someone could go with you. Do you have any other relatives here in Scarborough?’

  Leslie had shaken her head. ‘No. Fiona was my only relative.’

  Valerie felt for her. ‘There’s no one you can go to now? It might not be good for you to spend the night alone in the flat.’

  ‘I want to stay here. It’ll be all right. I’m a doctor,’ she added, and although her job really was not relevant right now, somehow the remark seemed to convince Valerie Almond.

  Valerie had said she would go to the Beckett farm in the morning to talk to everyone there.

  ‘That will be about ten o’clock. It would be good if you would come too. Should I send a car for you?’

  ‘I’ll be there. I’ll drive myself, thanks.’

  The officer had said goodbye and given Leslie her card with the request that she get in touch if anything else occurred to her which could be connected to her grandmother’s murder.

  ‘Even if it seems trivial to you,’ she had added, ‘it might be vital to us.’

  Leslie had called the farm and told a stunned Gwen what had happened. Gwen had asked question after question, had said how horrified and shocked she was, had asked more questions. Gwen went on so long that Leslie thought she would lose it and start to scream.

  ‘Listen, Gwen, as you can imagine, I need some peace,’ she had interrupted her friend. ‘We’ll see each other tomorrow, all right?’

  ‘But don’t you want to come over? You can’t be alone now! I mean, it’s not good for—’

  ‘See you tomorrow, Gwen.’ Then she had hung up.

  How had the night passed? She could not have said. Had she wandered aimlessly from room to room? Had she sat on the sofa and stared at the wall? Had she lain on Fiona’s bed with insomnia and her eyes wide open? Had she leafed through old photo albums? Only hazy images remained the next morning. She had done all of those things in that terrible night, as the hours dragged by so painfully slowly, as if it would never be morning again. She remembered that at one point she had got into her car and driven to a garage. She had come back with a bottle of vodka and drunk a good lot of it. She was ashamed of that, but why the hell didn’t Fiona have even a drop of alcohol at home?

  She did not manage to eat breakfast. She had not eaten anything but a few mouthfuls of meatloaf since that supper two days ago. But she had poured litres of alcohol down her throat. Never mind.

  At half past eight she had not been able to bear it any more and had called Stephen in the hospital. She was told he was carrying out an operation, but they’d pass on the message. Then she just sat by the phone. She ground her teeth, because two years ago she had sworn never again to go to Stephen for help, for company or for his support. She had held firm, even in the blackest, saddest hours after the separation. Even on weekends that seemed to last for ever, which she had spent with a bottle of wine in front of the television, feeling like she was the most lonely person in the world. She had known that he would come flying back into her arms if she gave him so much as the smallest sign. But she had gritted her teeth.

  Until today. Until this incident, which she did not know how she would survive once the paralysis wore off.

  The phone rang.

  She forgot her pride and picked it up at once. ‘Yes? Stephen?’

  The other end of the line was silent.

  ‘Stephen? Leslie here.’

  She could hear someone breathing.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  Breathing. Then the person hung up.

  She shook her head and also hung up. Immediately afterwards the phone rang again. This time she heard Stephen’s voice.

  ‘Leslie? The line was busy just now. It’s me.’

  ‘Yes, hi, Stephen. I just had a strange call.’ She dismissed the thought of it. Someone had misdialled or been playing a prank.

  ‘I’ve just come out of the operating theatre, else I’d have called earlier. Has something happened?’

  ‘Fiona is dead.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She was murdered. On Saturday night.’

  ‘That can’t be,’ exclaimed Stephen, horrified.

  ‘She was found yesterday. It’s … I can’t believe it, Stephen.’

  ‘Do they know who did it?’

  ‘No. At the moment they don’t have any idea.’

  ‘Was she robbed?’

  ‘Her handbag was still there. Her purse too. No, it wasn’t … about money.’ She talked in a monotonous tone of voice.

  Stephen needed a few seconds to compose himself and gather his thoughts. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’ll find someone to cover for me. Then I’ll come up to Scarborough as fast as I can. To you.’

  She shook her head violently, although Stephen could not see that. ‘No. That’s not why I called. I just wanted …’ She paused, and took a deep breath. What had she wanted?

  ‘Maybe you just need someone to hold you,’ Stephen said.

  It sounded tender, sensitive, understanding, warm-hearted. Actually, he was exactly what she could do with now. Someone to hold her, someone whose shoulder she could lean on, someone who she could pour out her heart to and talk about her feelings of guilt.

  A rock. That’s what he had been for her at one time. She had believed he would always be a rock for her. Until the end of time.

  In spite of her misery and her helplessness, her anger at his betrayal rose up in her again. She remembered vividly the shock and pain of that moment. He wanted to take her in his arms? He was the last person she wanted that from.

  ‘You can keep that skill of yours for your pub acquaintances,’ she said, ending the conversation by slamming down the receiver.

  Perhaps it was not fair of her, not after she had made him call her. The conversation had not been his idea, after all.

  But it was what she felt.

  4

  ‘Anonymous calls?’ asked Valerie Almond sharply. ‘What kind?’

  Chad Beckett thought for a minute. ‘It were that nothing were said. The phone rang, someone breathed, didn’t answer questions an’ then ‘ung up.’

  ‘And how long had that been going on for?’

  ‘She didn’t rightly say. Recently, she said, I believe.’

  ‘Fiona Barnes told you about this on Saturday evening?’

  ‘Aye. After Dave Tanner had left and my daughter had taken t’ room cryin’. She asked t’ talk. An’ that’s when she told me ‘bout the calls.’

  ‘It must have affected her.’

  ‘Distressed her a little, aye.’

  ‘And did she have any idea who could be behind the calls?’

  Chad shrugged his shoulders again. ‘No, lass.’

  ‘Not the slightest idea? Someone who couldn’t stand her? Someone she had once had a massive fight with? A fallout, something like that? Everyone has things like that happen in their life.’

  ‘But they don’t normally lead t’ anonymous calls. Anyroad, Fiona couldn’t work it out.’

  ‘And you?’ Valerie looked attentively at the old man. ‘Can you work it out?’

  ‘No. I told Fiona what I suspect. Someone disturbed, who found random victims int’ telephone directory. A harmless madman who enjoyed this strange power game. Mostly it’s types like that who’re behind such calls.’

  ‘Of course. Except that their
victims do not normally find themselves murdered soon afterwards in a gorge in a wood. We have to take this seriously as a lead, Mr Beckett. If anyone springs to mind, who you think could be the caller, you should let me know their name.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Beckett.

  His face was grey, and his skin glistened slightly. It looked as though he was not well. Talking to him, Valerie had discovered how long he had known Fiona Barnes: since he was fifteen. She had arrived at the Beckett farm as an evacuee during the war. They had become friends for life. The way his friend had died seemed like something out of a nightmare to Beckett, but he was the kind of person not to talk about it. He would deal with the whole thing on his own, and whatever sleepless nights he suffered, whatever horrific images filled his days, he would not open up to anyone.

  Valerie said goodbye and stepped out of the study. She met Leslie and Jennifer at the front door. They had been talking quietly. Valerie decided to bring up the calls right now.

  ‘Dr Cramer, I’m glad to see you again. Did your grandmother mention anything to you about receiving anonymous calls?’

  ‘No,’ said Leslie, ‘she didn’t, but …’ she remembered, ‘this morning I got a strange call. Someone was just breathing down the line and then hung up. I didn’t think anything more about it.’

  ‘That is pretty much exactly the way Fiona Barnes described the calls to Mr Beckett on the evening of her death,’ said Valerie. ‘No words, just breathing. You were called in your grandmother’s flat, were you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leslie.

  Valerie thought for a moment. She had gathered all the people on the farm in the living room to talk about the fatal Saturday evening. She had then talked with each one of them individually. She had asked about enemies that Fiona Barnes might have. No one had thought of anyone. It really seemed as though the only claimant to the title was Dave Tanner. By all accounts, Fiona had humiliated him deeply. However, everyone declared that they could not imagine it had caused him to murder her.

  ‘He’s just not that kind of guy,’ Jennifer Brankley had said. Valerie had avoided saying that you could rarely see who was or was not likely to commit criminal acts. She had come across brutal murderers who seemed so lovely you could easily have entrusted yourself to them along with everything dear to you.