The Other Child

by Charlotte Link

  It was not Almond at all but Gwen. Now she had been sitting in his room for a quarter of an hour talking at him. She had got so cold and wet that the first thing he had done was to make her a hot cup of tea. At least she did not nag him about the mess, as Karen always had. Gwen had only been to his place twice and had never said anything about its calamitous disorder. Nevertheless he had never liked to have her there. His room was a den, a place to retreat to, away from Gwen. He needed some space without her, a place that was taboo for her.

  Suddenly the thought crossed his mind that he would perhaps even have preferred receiving DI Almond into his room. Not his fiancée. That is, if they were actually engaged. After all, the party had ended rather abruptly. Maybe she was more like his almost-fiancée. Even that felt a little threatening to him.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said soothingly, realising that Gwen had stopped talking and was looking at him expectantly. ‘Really, Gwen, I don’t hold it against you. It’s not your fault Fiona said all that.’

  ‘In all honesty, I’m not all that sad she’s dead,’ admitted Gwen suddenly with a violence unlike her usual self. ‘I know it’s a sin and that you shouldn’t think such a thing, but she went too far this time. She always meant well, but sometimes … I mean, you can’t meddle in everything, can you? Just because my father and she once …’ She did not finish her sentence.

  Dave guessed what she had wanted to say. In any case, he had thought along those lines already himself. ‘There was something between the two of them at one point, was there?’ he asked. ‘I don’t think that’s a surprise to anyone. You feel it somehow.’

  ‘If only it were just that,’ said Gwen. The disturbed look in her eyes did not escape him. ‘My father and Fiona were … they …’

  ‘What?’ asked Dave, as she hesitated.

  ‘It’s a long time ago,’ said Gwen quietly. ‘Maybe those things are irrelevant now.’

  Normally he would not have been interested in the lives of Chad Beckett and Fiona Barnes, for both of whom he harboured an equally strong dislike, but in view of the current situation, particularly his own situation, he should not ignore any such comments.

  So he leant forward a little. ‘Perhaps it is relevant, who knows. After all, Fiona was killed pretty brutally.’

  Not a little astonished, she looked at him as if he had just confronted her with some new monstrosity, rather than an incident being discussed in all the streets and alleys of Scarborough. ‘But … that doesn’t have anything to do with her and my father,’ she said. ‘Or with what they shared. The murderer is probably the same person who killed Amy Mills, and there’s no connection between her and them.’

  ‘How do you know? That it was the same murderer, I mean?’

  ‘That’s what I understood from Detective Inspector Almond,’ replied Gwen, now unsure.

  Almond had thrust a photo of Amy Mills in front of his face too. He knew that there had been considerations along the lines that the cases might be connected, but he had been under the impression that although the officer had some clues which suggested a link, there was not a shred of evidence.

  ‘Could be,’ he said. ‘But needn’t be. Gwen, if you know anything that could help the police, then you should—’

  ‘Dave, I … perhaps we shouldn’t talk about it any more.’ She had tears in her eyes.

  So why start at all then, he thought angrily, if you don’t want to talk about it.

  ‘You do know that I’m one of the police’s main suspects, don’t you?’ he asked.

  She must have known, but it seemed to shock her, hearing it bluntly from him like that.

  ‘But—’ she began.

  He interrupted her. ‘Of course I didn’t do it. I don’t have either Amy Mills or old Barnes on my conscience. Amy Mills I didn’t know, and Fiona Barnes … Good Lord, just because she’s said some vicious things about me, I’m not going to go and smash her head in with a rock. I was mightily peeved on Saturday night, but I don’t take an eighty-year-old woman seriously enough to murder her for some out-of-order insinuations.’

  ‘They won’t really believe that you did it, and if you haven’t done anything, then you’ve nothing to fear,’ she said in such a tone of voice that revealed her utter trust in police investigational procedures.

  Only a few years previously Dave had thought of all policemen only as ‘pigs’, and he was not ready to share her faith in them. Things were clear to him: DI Valerie Almond wanted to work her way up the career ladder – of course, that was what everyone wanted. So she needed to solve the ‘Dales Deaths’ as a paper had already called the two crimes. To do so, a culprit needed to be convicted. The longer she stumbled around in the dark, the more stubbornly she would cling to the few tenuous clues she had, and unfortunately that meant him. Thanks to the fact that Barnes had torn him off a strip in front of a whole host of witnesses, he was now in the firing line. Of course he still had an ace up his sleeve, and he would play it if need be, but only if he had no other choice.

  ‘Gwen, you know—’ he started before stopping, seeing the naivety and blind submission in her face. He had wanted to explain to her about people who are wrongly accused and imprisoned, about ambitious policemen and corrupt judges, about the press’s power to put officers under pressure and push them in false directions, about the shenanigans of high level politics, how an important citizen might be sacrificed to the needs of an ambitious careerist. He would never have assumed that as long as you did not commit the crime, you would never be punished for it. He had never believed in the justice system. He had always considered it to be cynical and open to bribery, and this conviction had caused the irrevocable split with his father – a total servant of the system – twenty years ago. He had not had the slightest contact with his family since then.

  He could have explained to Gwen that this was the reason for the life he had now, which others might see as a failure, and which he himself often enough saw as a failure – and that was the depressing nub of the problem for him. He was unable to make any kind of peace with his country, his state or any of the whole political and social structure. He would be unable to become part of the society of Great Britain as long as he rejected and scorned it. He could have talked to his fiancée about the predicament which had crystallised for him with the passing of the years. His predicament was that he recognised, in spite of everything, that he too was a part of the system and had to come to terms with it. He did not have the strength to reject it for ever and in every way. Yet at the same time he felt that he was a traitor to his convictions and to his own nature.

  He would have liked the woman he planned to marry to be someone to whom he could open up and share his internal contradictions, but he knew that Gwen would not be able to follow him. Her life was the farm, her wonderful dad, her romance novels, cheesy television dramas and her waiting and hoping for a miracle. He did not think she was stupid. But her life had happened in its own particular space. Unlike most people nowadays, it had been marked all too strongly by seclusion, ignorance of the ways of the world, and shyness. He had told her about his youthful protests against the stationing of cruise missiles and she had stared at him as if he were talking about little green men from space. He had started a long and excited speech in which he had given vent to his unhappiness with the Thatcher years and how much that era had determined his later way of life against the system. She had listened with a despairing look on her face. He knew this was not because she had a different political opinion. He could have lived with that and found the intellectual friction in their differences interesting. The problem was that she had absolutely no political opinion. She was completely indifferent as to whether Labour or the Tories were in power. Indeed, neither party was going to change her personal situation one iota. That was probably true of many people, but they did not then simply ignore everything unrelated to their immediate environment. It was unusual to do that. It was disastrous that Gwen could obviously not do anything else.

  ‘Oh, noth
ing,’ he said simply and so refrained from another doomed attempt to let his future wife see inside him and to share with her some of the thoughts, fears and confusions he felt.

  ‘Please just promise me that if you know something important about Fiona, you will tell the police,’ he added. That was where they had started: that Fiona and her father had done something stupid, which Gwen had trouble digesting. It could be relevant.

  Probably not, he thought.

  She looked at him. She was somewhere else entirely. Where she had started.

  ‘Will you still … are we still … I mean … has anything changed?’

  Now, his inner voice told him, you could get out. With a pretty plausible reason. She would be in despair, but she would not have to blame herself for the break-up. It would all be Fiona’s fault – the old cow with the evil tongue, and Gwen could hate her for all eternity and would not have to beat herself up about her own inadequacy. Do her the favour. Use this merciful opportunity.

  He could not. Even knowing it was the right thing to do, he just could not. She was the way out of this cold room, out of this life on the breadline, out of sleeping all day and drinking all night, and above all out of the feeling of being a loser who would never sort his life out.

  ‘No, Gwen,’ he said with a voice raw with the effort of getting through this moment. ‘No. Nothing has changed.’

  She got up. She smiled.

  ‘I want to sleep with you, Dave,’ she said. ‘Now. Here. I so much want to.’

  Good Lord, he thought, horrified.

  4

  The phone rang just as Colin was starting to think seriously about lunch. It was already half past two and he was starving. No one on the Beckett farm seemed to feel responsible for cooking today. Gwen had disappeared since the morning, no one knew where to, and Chad had barricaded himself into his room – literally: the door was locked. Colin’s tentative query was answered with a rough growl.

  Detective Inspector Almond was there. She had suddenly appeared and had said that she wanted to talk to Jennifer on her own. For the last half hour the two had been sitting downstairs in the living room while Colin waited upstairs with increasing unease. And hunger.

  He hurried down to the study to answer the phone. At least he now had an excuse to get closer to the living room.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, while simultaneously straining to hear something of the conversation in the next room – in vain.

  ‘Hello.’ A woman was on the other end of the phone. She was not easy to understand because she spoke so quietly. ‘Excuse me, who am I talking to?’

  ‘Colin Brankley. On the Beckett farm.’

  ‘Oh, Colin! You’re Jennifer’s husband, aren’t you? This is Ena. Ena Witty.’

  Colin did not have the slightest clue who she was. ‘Right?’ he said.

  ‘I’m … I’m a friend of – an acquaintance of Gwen’s. Is Gwen there?’

  ‘Unfortunately not,’ said Colin. ‘She’s not in. Can I take a message?’

  Ena Witty seemed thrown by this news. ‘She’s out?’ she asked in disbelief.

  ‘Yes. Would you like her to call you back?’

  ‘Yes. It’s that … I have to talk to her about something important. At least, I think it’s important. But I’m not sure, so I … perhaps … I’ll call her back …’

  The woman sounded rather confused to Colin. He was keen to end the call. He had just heard the front door close and then a car engine start in the yard. Thank God the Almond woman was finally buggering off. He had to see how his wife was doing.

  ‘Right then, Ms Witty,’ he said impatiendy. ‘I’ll let Gwen know you’ve called. Does Gwen have your number?’

  Ena did not know. She dictated her number for Colin, and after a moment’s hesitation as to how much she should confide in the stranger at the other end of the line, she added: ‘I’ve got … you see, I’ve got a really big problem … I don’t know what to do, and I have to talk to someone. It’s urgent. But of course I know that … well, Gwen will have other worries. I read about the horrible crime at the Beckett farm in the paper. Apparently the victim was a good friend of the family? How terrible for Gwen!’

  ‘We’re all here for her,’ said Colin. He did not want to go into it any further. He did not know this acquaintance of Gwen’s and he had no idea how close the two friends were.

  ‘So, Ms Witty …’ he said and she finally realised he was in a hurry.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ she said. ‘And please, do get Gwen to phone me. It’s really very important.’

  He promised her once again that he would pass on her request, and then he said goodbye and hurriedly put the phone down. He rushed to the living room, where Jennifer, very pale, was sitting on the sofa. Colin thought she looked pretty upset.

  ‘Darling, finally! She’s gone. Should I make us a cuppa? Or do you want something to eat?’

  Jennifer shook her head. ‘I’m not hungry. But if you …’

  ‘I can’t be bothered just for myself,’ Colin said. He shivered. ‘God, it’s cold and clammy in this room! And so foggy outside … horrible day, isn’t it?’

  She did not reply. Resolved, he knelt down in front of the fireplace. ‘Help me, will you?’ he asked. ‘If no one else is going to do it, we’d better do it ourselves.’

  As they worked to get a fire started, Colin asked, as if by the by, ‘What did she come back for? Almond, I mean.’

  Jennifer, who was passing him a log, froze. ‘She knows,’ she murmured.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The whole affair from back then. That I was a teacher and … well, all of that. She told me.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with this case?’

  ‘She wanted to know if I knew Amy Mills. You know, the girl who was murdered here in July.’

  ‘Why should you?’

  ‘She was from Leeds. Went to school there. She thought I might have taught her.’

  He froze now, and stared at her. ‘But you didn’t, did you? You said you’d never heard the name, and …’

  ‘No. I don’t know her.’

  He stopped what he was doing, although they still did not have a fire to take the edge off the cold in the room and the bleakness of the foggy day. Jennifer was sitting on the rug next to the logs and staring in front of her. He squatted down and took her hands in his. They were cold as ice. ‘You’re sure you don’t know her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s just …’ He was breathing heavily, trying not to get wound up, but he could feel the anger rising in him. ‘They don’t have anything,’ he said bitterly. ‘Nothing at all. Not the slightest clue, and so they start to poke around in people’s pasts. This policewoman is completely lost, if you ask me. And out of her depth. Now she’s digging up old stories and trying to make something of them. Can’t wait to see what she finds out about the lot of us!’

  ‘She knows that I used to take pills sometimes back then.’

  ‘And? Is that illegal?’

  ‘She wanted to know if I still took them.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I said the truth. That I sometimes take a tranquilliser, before going into town, for example, or when I’ve got something on. But that I don’t often.’

  ‘Right. And a lot of people do that. Listen, she’s got no right to ask you those things. And you don’t have to answer. It’s none of her business.’

  ‘She didn’t believe me,’ whispered Jennifer.

  ‘What didn’t she believe?’

  ‘That I … I have a normal life. She looked at me so strangely. I think she wants to pin an addiction on me, because then she could claim I’m unpredictable and possibly also dangerous. And her colleague is already checking my statement about Amy Mills. He’s asking the schools in Leeds and Amy Mills’s parents.’

  ‘He won’t find anything they can use against you.’

  ‘Probably not,’ said Jennifer, but she spoke in a monotonous, helpless tone.

  Colin pressed her h
and more firmly. ‘Darling, what is it? What’s worrying you? They haven’t got anything on you, and that’s how it’ll stay. Don’t let them get to you.’

  She looked at him. He could feel her fear. Damn it, he was angry. Angry at this Almond, this thoughtless woman. He knew why Jennifer was so agitated.

  ‘It drives you crazy having to talk about it all again, doesn’t it?’ he asked cautiously. ‘Having it all brought up again? Churned up once more. Is it the old feelings bothering you?’

  She nodded. Her depression had her in its grip. You could actually see how it paralysed her. During the first three years after the affair she had been like this constantly. Then she had got it under control, but he had never let himself be deceived. Her fragile state of mind could easily come undone, especially if that was what someone was aiming for.

  He could have throttled DI Almond.

  ‘It won’t ever be over,’ she whispered.

  ‘That’s not true. It’s over. It’s over, even if some stupid policewoman talks about it.’

  ‘It was my life. The school. The girls. It was everything.’

  ‘I know. That’s how it felt to you. But so many things make life worth living. Not only work.’

  ‘I …’

  ‘We have each other. We have a happy and strong marriage. How many people would give an arm and a leg for that? We have a beautiful home. We have nice friends. We have our two darling, enchanting dogs …’ He grinned, hoping to tease a smile from her. She tried, but did not manage.

  ‘You see,’ he said anyway. He reached out, brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. ‘Listen, I don’t think Almond will bother you again. She’s just stumbling around in the dark – literally, just look outside! She won’t get anywhere with Leeds, the schools and Amy Mills. She’ll drop this lead and have to find other ones. And in any case: you were out walking with the dogs. Gwen was with you, she can vouch for you. You told Almond that too?’