The Other Child

by Charlotte Link

  ‘So far it’s just someone’s life story. A love story.’

  ‘She wrote about guilt.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Don’t play it down. She wrote about guilt. She was receiving anonymous calls. Then she was murdered. That means that anything which in any way can give an insight into Fiona’s life should be made available to the police.’

  ‘Her notes are very personal, Stephen. Even as her granddaughter I feel a little uneasy reading them. They are memories she only wanted to share with Chad. Now Gwen, Jennifer and Colin know them too. Soon me too. Frankly, I’m disappointed in Gwen and her snooping around. She certainly shouldn’t have let Jennifer and Colin, who aren’t even family, read them. Do they have to know Fiona’s thoughts and feelings as a child and young woman?’

  ‘Maybe there are things in it that Gwen couldn’t deal with on her own. Leslie …’

  She reached for her cigarettes impatiently and lit one. ‘Yes. OK. I’ll read it. And if there is anything which might be relevant, of course I’ll tell the police.’

  ‘I hope you can judge what’s relevant,’ said Stephen. ‘And Leslie, you know you are not allowed to keep things to yourself, even if you read something which …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If you read something which doesn’t throw a good light on your grandmother. The main thing is to find her murderer. That’s more important than anything else.’

  ‘Stephen, there’s something you don’t know. A young woman was murdered here in Scarborough in July. In a similar way to Fiona. So it’s very possible that Fiona’s murder had nothing to do with her own life. She might just have had the bad luck of running into a psychopath who is going around killing women.’

  ‘Possibly. Anything’s possible.’

  She got up. Stephen was too dose now. The room was too small. And the coffee was cold, too.

  ‘You know what,’ she said, ‘I’m hungry, and this breakfast really wasn’t enough. Let’s go into town and have something proper to eat. Then let’s go shopping. Let’s … do something normal!’

  In his eyes she could read what he thought: that there would be no normality in their lives for a long time. That their escape into the fog could only bring them a momentary respite from events, nothing else.

  2

  The morning had been a mixed bag for Valerie Almond, but she resolved to look on the bright side.

  Jennifer Brankley? Bingo! Valerie congratulated herself on her good memory. Even if she had not recalled the details, the name had at least clearly rung a bell. Entering it in to the database had confirmed her hunch. Brankley had been involved in a scandal seven years ago.

  She had been a teacher at a school in Leeds. She had been extremely popular with her pupils, respected by her colleagues and appreciated by parents. Jennifer was known for her very direct and intense relationship with the young people she taught. She did not see her job as solely about passing on knowledge and helping the pupils obtain good grades. She had wanted to be their partner, their confidante, the person they would turn to. She had really wanted to be there for them, and it seemed that they accepted her offer. Jennifer Brankley was often voted the pupils’ teacher of the year. You could not find a person in the school who did not have something good to say about her. At least, that was before the incident.

  ‘That went too far,’ as another teacher said anonymously in the internet edition of one paper. ‘However much she understood her pupils and was ready to help them, she shouldn’t have done that!’

  ‘That’ was to supply a seventeen-year-old pupil with strong tranquillisers, and for several months no less. The girl had always suffered from a violent fear of exams, and as she neared her A levels the fears were becoming acute. She would become extremely scared and have panic attacks, and she confided in her teacher, Jennifer Brankley. Before an exam she was particularly dreading, Jennifer had given her some tranquillisers, and she had indeed been calmer and more relaxed as a result. Since the exams were stretched out over four months and the pupil was both enthusiastic about the effects of the tablets and felt they helped her to achieve better grades than normal, she did not want to be without the pharmaceutical support. The papers reported that Jennifer Brankley later said she had been absolutely aware of the balancing act of what she was doing, and that it had been clear to her she was on a collision course with the law. However, she had not been able to refuse the girl’s heartfelt pleas.

  The catastrophe snowballed when the pupil told one of her friends about the pills and this girl told her parents. They immediately told the first girl’s parents. The headmaster and the police were informed, and the press. Overnight, Jennifer Brankley had found herself at the centre of a storm and looked on helplessly as a wave of malice, scorn and anger hit her. Of course the papers had not been able to hold back from manipulating the story to their own ends.

  Valerie found unbelievable headlines in the archives. The most harmless of them said Teacher drives pupil into pill addiction, and: Addicted: what did treacherous teacher Jennifer B want?

  At some point it came out that Jennifer Brankley herself sometimes took tablets to get through the working week. This would not normally have interested anyone, as it did not affect her work and nor was she in any way addicted to the medicine. Yet once she was caught in the maelstrom of suspicion, accusations and people’s desire for sensation, then anything and everything could be used against her. Naturally, her consumption of these tablets – which quickly ballooned into a dangerous pill addiction – was the first thing to be seized upon, although if there had been anything in her marriage or previous life which had lent itself to a spectacular frontpage headline, it too would have been taken apart. In the area around Leeds and Bradford, at least, Jennifer was put through the media mill.

  After this ordeal she lost her job as a teacher.

  Valerie got up from her desk and reached for her coat.

  Sergeant Reek, who sat at the desk opposite hers, looked up. ‘Inspector?’

  ‘I’m driving out to talk to Paula Foster,’ explained Valerie. ‘I don’t actually think that Fiona Barnes was killed by mistake, but I’d like to be sure. And then I might head on over to the Beckett farm.’

  On the way down to the car park she thought about the less positive news that morning. The post-mortem had not come up with anything of use. It looked as if Fiona Barnes had met her murderer on the road at night and then, either attempting to escape or at the murderer’s insistence, had taken the small path that went through the Trevor farm. The culprit had hit her repeatedly with a large rock on the back of her head, with increasing force and brutality. As the doctor at the scene of the crime had suspected, Fiona Barnes had still been alive when the murderer finally stopped hitting her. She had died in the early hours of the morning of a brain haemorrhage, following a fracture to the skull. The attack must have taken place between eleven and half past eleven that night.

  Fiona had probably lost consciousness with the first blow, or at least lost the ability to react. There was no sign that she had defended herself from her attacker. There was no one else’s skin under her fingernails, nor was anyone else’s hair found on her.

  The weapon used was not found near the scene of the crime. There was no shortage of rocks. This suggested that the culprit was not armed when he met his victim. He had spontaneously grabbed a weapon and been clever enough to either take the rock with him or to dispose of it far from the scene. There were a number of streams around here. If he had dropped it in one of them, it was unlikely it would ever be found.

  This was also just like the Amy Mills case, thought Valerie, getting into the car. The murderer was not armed in that case either. He used the wall to kill his victim. Either he knew the place very well, or he was relying on coming up with something at the right moment. In neither case did there seem to be much forethought. Nevertheless, the places where the victims were intercepted might have been chosen carefully. In the Mills case, the attacker also wore gloves. Mills often went
through the Esplanade Gardens on Wednesday nights. There was still no explanation as to why the mesh fences had blocked her usual route. They could well have been part of a planned murder.

  However, it would have been impossible to predict that Fiona Barnes would walk down that road on her own that evening. Until her sudden decision to walk part of the way, she herself had not even known. What was more, she would normally have been driven home in her granddaughter’s car.

  Normally …

  Valerie drove slowly out of the police compound. The fog was so thick that you could only see a few feet in front. She turned on the headlights and sadly remembered the sunshine of the day before. Then it had been fun to get up and throw herself into the work ahead. Now the whole world seemed to be moving slowly and heavily, as if in a cocoon which swallowed all sound and made images blurry.

  A shitty day, thought Valerie, as she crept up the street.

  All the circumstances of Fiona Barnes’s murder seemed to lead to the conclusion that her murderer must have been one of the people who took part in the engagement party which ended up going so wrong that nothing could repair it. Valerie’s problem was that she could not really see a motive. Only Tanner – and possibly Gwen – might have had one, and that motive did not seem sufficient for such a brutal murder.

  She had talked to the coroner for a long time. ‘Man or woman? What do you think?’

  The forensic doctor had hesitated. ‘Hard to say. It was definitely someone driven by rage, I’d say. He – or she – got more and more angry. You need strength for the blow which led to her death.’

  ‘More strength than women normally possess?’

  ‘Not necessarily. There was real hate behind this. Hate doubles your strength. No, I wouldn’t rule out a woman attacker. One thing’s for sure, the culprit is right-handed.’

  Great, thought Valerie sarcastically, that narrows things down. Right-handed, like at least three quarters of the population, and it could be a man or woman. Now I’m getting somewhere.

  She felt a familiar pressure descending. She knew that she would have to have a lead soon, or better yet solve the case – or both cases – if she did not want her superiors to get involved. Then she would be out of it – pulled off the case and a complete failure as far as clearing up crime. If the suspicion grew that it was a serial killer whom this relatively young officer was unable to track down, then someone from Scotland Yard would be brought in. She needed a clue urgently.

  Jennifer Brankley. The woman had seemed strange to her from the first moment. Not just because she spent her holidays on this desolate farm and always had the two giant dogs with her. It was something else. Now that she had read the old press reports she knew what it was: Jennifer Brankley was a deeply bitter woman. She felt she had been treated badly by life, by people and by fate. She had never got over her dismissal. The incident was still eating her up, years later.

  What would her psychogram look like?

  She has that so-called helper syndrome, thought Valerie, peering into the fog of a barely visible crossroads. What she did for her pupil was not normal. She could have done all sorts of things for the girl – talked to her parents, or a doctor, asked a psychologist for advice, whatever. But she wanted to help her herself, spontaneously and directly, and so she risked everything. Her job – no, her career. It could even have wrecked her marriage. All the filth the papers printed would have destroyed many relationships. Colin Brankley worked in a bank. His bosses cannot have been pleased. No doubt the incident caused him some trouble. Jennifer Brankley risked that too. As if the only thing she had seen was her pupil’s need. As if nothing else had mattered.

  She still believed that she had been treated badly, unfairly, that a great injustice had befallen her. You could see it: she only wanted the best; she was being punished for it.

  What was her relationship with Gwen?

  A strong relationship, you could feel that. Jennifer was a little like a mother, a big sister, a confidante. What would she not do for Gwen?

  Could she have felt Gwen’s future happiness with Tanner was so threatened that evening that she decided to wipe out the source of the danger – that danger being Fiona Barnes?

  Or was nothing of the kind planned? Had someone – Jennifer? Dave? – confronted Fiona, wanting to have a talk or an explanation for her meddling? Had the situation got out of hand, and escalated into a fight and then violence?

  Valerie slapped her hand on the steering wheel. Poking around in the fog, that was what she was doing. Desperate guessing, stumbling around in the dark, hypotheses, and dismissing them again. No clues, nothing.

  Go through it all again with a fine-tooth comb, she told herself. Try not to miss anything. Why was Tanner the chief suspect?

  Not only because he was the only one to have a motive – even if not a particularly convincing one – to attack Fiona Barnes, but also because he was the only one who could be connected to the Amy Mills case, however tenuous the connection might be. Was there anyone else? Someone else who had known Mills?

  She had now turned onto the road leading to Staintondale. Banks of fog lay on the ground like giant cushions. Tall wet blades of grass bent down towards the damp tarmac. Valerie took her bearings from the fog banks, in order to follow the course of the road.

  Gwen Beckett. She had attended the Friarage School course. Linda Gardner had taught there. Amy Mills had worked for Gardner.

  In any case, it was a connection. Even if it led to absurd conclusions. She could not imagine Gwen Beckett as a cold-blooded double murderer. Nor was there any apparent motive in Amy Mills’s case. As for Fiona – she had messed up the engagement party, was that reason enough?

  Valerie’s instinct told her: No!

  Amy Mills. She let the facts of the murdered young lady’s life pass through her mind and suddenly sat bolt upright. How could she have missed that … Amy Mills was from Leeds. Had gone to school there. Jennifer Brankley had taught in Leeds … It was a faint possibility, but still …

  Using her car’s hands-free radio, she immediately called Sergeant Reek.

  ‘Reek, please find out which school Amy Mills went to in Leeds. And which school Jennifer Brankley taught in – also in Leeds. There could be more than one school in each case. Check if there was any overlap and if the two knew each other.’

  ‘I’ll do that. But according to her statement, Mrs Brankley had never heard Amy Mills’s name.’

  ‘Statements can be true or false, Reek. It’s up to us to find out which.’

  ‘OK,’ said Reek.

  Valerie finished the call. Her heart was beating faster as she drove on. Excitement. The thrill of the chase. Whatever it was, it was a feeling she had been desperately waiting for. Finally a step forward, finally a lead. It could be a hot one.

  Just in time she saw the little lane leading to the farm where Paula Foster lived. She yanked the steering wheel round and turned up the lane. She had to concentrate on the young woman now, had to eliminate the possibility that she was the intended victim, otherwise she would still be in danger. Even if she had already crossed off this alternative in her own mind.

  3

  ‘Really, Dave. Nothing, absolutely nothing that Fiona said the other evening has changed what I feel for you. I’m still … I still love you. I believe in a future with you.’ Gwen looked at him unflinchingly. She was sitting on a chair in his room, dressed as usual in a long woollen skirt and a jumper she herself had knitted in an indefinite colour. She was carrying a large bag. It had been quite a journey, by foot, then by bus, and then from the bus stop again by foot. The humidity outside had turned her hair into something that looked like candy floss and stuck out frizzily in all directions. Her dark eyes were like two pieces of coal in her very pale face. A little blusher might have helped to improve her general appearance, a dab of lipstick …

  She would never learn how to make herself more attractive, thought Dave, looking at her. He was sitting on his bed and had just managed to slide Karen�
�s scrunched up tights under the bed frame. Thank God Gwen had not seen them. She was so preoccupied with what she had to say, with convincing him, that he had even managed to make Karen’s lipstick disappear discreetly as he moved around the room and made the tea. Gwen had not said she was coming. Suddenly there she was at the front door: a delicate creature appearing out of the fog. The landlady was not at home, which was why Dave himself had opened the door. At least he was dressed. That in itself was a miracle, for when he had woken up late that morning one glance out the window had been enough to convince him that it would be better to spend the day in bed. After all, he only had to teach in the school that evening. In the end a strange inner restlessness had got him up. It had taken him a while to work out that it was not at all unnatural for him to feel unsettled in his situation. He had no idea what would happen next. Above all, he had no idea what serious consequences the investigations into Fiona Barnes’s death could have for him.

  Of course he was the number one suspect, and he recognised that the short conversation the day before with DI Almond would not have changed that. They could not prove anything against him, but he was under suspicion. If they found no other leads, he would be firmly in their sights. The noose would tighten around his neck. He was a man without a great reputation, a man who lived in unusual conditions, and this would not help. The whole affair could prove tricky, he was well aware of it.

  To hell with Fiona Barnes, he had thought, drinking a strong cup of coffee to warm up. It was a cold day, but as usual his landlady was being stingy with the heating.

  To hell with all that. Sod Gwen and her clan. It brought you bad luck, the Beckett farm and everything around it. Find another way to go.

  Easier said than done. He could not see another way. He had not seen one for years. It was unlikely that one would suddenly appear in front of him now. When the doorbell rang, at first he had expected to see the police officer in front of him once again, ready to fire questions at him. He had briefly considered not opening the door at all, pretending that no one was at home. But then he had given himself a kick up the backside. It was better to face the situation. Better to know what they had against him than for him to close his eyes to it.