Four officers had gone through Gibson’s flat with a fine-tooth comb – without finding anything conclusive. Valerie felt like crying out of frustration. She had had to cross Dave Tanner off the list of suspects today. And now it looked as if she could say goodbye to the next challenger for the crown of chief suspect. Even before he had really come on the scene.
‘That’s just not nearly enough for a murder charge,’ she said dully.
Reek had to agree. ‘Not even for an arrest warrant, if you ask me,’ he added.
She dismissed the idea with a gesture. ‘Arrest warrant! If I go to the judge for that, he’ll throw me out! He’ll be annoyed he let me talk him into the search warrant. We have to question Gibson. Our hand is not that strong, but we have a few cards up our sleeve. He stalked a woman, invaded her privacy, and that woman was then brutally murdered in a park at night. He has a little explaining to do!’ Valerie looked grim. ‘For example, I’d like to know where he was on Saturday night. When Fiona Barnes was murdered.’
She heard a laugh behind her and turned around. Reek looked towards the door too. The man who had appeared looked young for his age. He was wearing jeans and trainers, and had to be the flat’s tenant. Stan Gibson.
‘I can tell you that,’ he said. He smiled in a friendly way, which seemed extremely strange considering the chaos in his living room and the presence of the police officers. ‘I was in London. From Saturday morning to Sunday late afternoon. At my parents’ house. With my girlfriend Ena Witty. I introduced them to each other. Both my parents and Ena Witty can confirm that.’
Valerie took a moment to recover from her shock and surprise at the absurdity of the situation. Then she approached the stranger.
‘Stan Gibson, I take it?’ she asked in a sharp tone. ‘Do you have any ID?’
He fished around in his jeans’ pockets. Finding his wallet, he showed Valerie a card.
‘Happy?’ He was still smiling. ‘And … um … Ma’am, do you have any ID?’
She flashed her ID and waved the search warrant at the same time. ‘Detective Inspector Valerie Almond. And this is the judge’s warrant to search your house.’
‘All right. It would be great if you could tell me what this is all about.’
‘Happily. But I’d ask you to please accompany me to the station. We will need to have a long chat. About Miss Amy Mills. And her murder.’
‘Are you arresting me, Inspector?’
‘It’s just a chat,’ replied Valerie politely. Inside she hissed: Happily, you bastard! You don’t know how much I’d like to arrest you this instant, you and your revolting perma-grin!
The man was obviously not quite right in the head. When you come home and find your flat turned upside down by the police you don’t smile as fixedly as that. At least, not if you are innocent. Stan Gibson had a skeleton in his cupboard, she was sure of it. He was grinning like a Cheshire cat because he thought he was safe. He found the situation amusing. He was looking forward to a little game with the police.
Just watch out, she thought.
‘You can have a lawyer with you.’ She reluctantly made him aware of his rights. After a moment’s badly acted consideration, Gibson shook his head. ‘No. Why should I? I don’t need a lawyer. Come on, Inspector. Let’s go!’
He looked as if he had just invited her to go for a pint, like a cheery mate.
Don’t let him get to you, she told herself, as she went downstairs with him and Sergeant Reek. That’s just what he wants, and it won’t work. He’d better be prepared. He’ll soon stop grinning.
She had always claimed she had a nose for psychopaths.
She would have bet anything that she had one in front of her now. The worst kind of psychopath.
One that was exceptionally intelligent.
The Other Child.doc
11
It was a long time, a very long time, until I saw the Beckett farm again. The rest of the war and one further year. Why? My mother. She came back from hospital a different person. She was never the same as before. I had known her to be an energetic, resolute woman, sometimes rather hard and brusque, but also cheerful and confident. Someone who took life by the horns, as we say. But after she had lost the child, the son which Harold had wished for so keenly, her optimism and forward-looking nature evaporated. She not only looked worse, thin and grey, but she also seemed deeply sad. She often burst into tears for no apparent reason. She would sit at the window for hours staring out. Everything was too much for her – the war, the bombed-out city, the badly dressed people and the rationed food. The shocking thing about her depression was that she had been someone who did not let things throw her.
‘Could be worse,’ she used to say before it happened.
Afterwards she said, ‘Life was never as hard as it is now.’
And yet there was more and more to be hopeful about. The Germans were running out of steam. They would lose the war. Everyone was sure of it by now, even the worst pessimists – except my mother. The only thing that puzzled people was why the Germans had not given up yet.
The Nazis’ fate was sealed on 6th June, 1944, D-Day, when the Allies began Operation Overlord and the armed forces of many nations landed on the beaches of Normandy in their thousands.
France would soon be free, everyone said so, and then things would move swiftly. A powerful Russian army was pushing in on the German borders from the east. Listening to the BBC, you asked yourself why Hitler did not throw in the towel immediately.
Instead he used his soldiers as cannon fodder. Apparently he was set on not surrendering as long as there was a single soldier in his army who still had his head on his shoulders.
‘A madman,’ Harold often said. ‘A complete madman!’ Not that Harold had any real understanding of politics, but I thought he was right in his estimation of Hitler. Admittedly, you did not need to be particularly intelligent to recognise the madness of the Führer.
While everyone waited for. the war to end and made hopeful plans about what would come next, my mother could not find a single positive thought in her.
‘Yes, perhaps the war will be over soon,’ she would admit. ‘But who knows what will come next? Maybe things will only get worse. Maybe only terrible things will happen and one day we’ll say that the 1940 bombing wasn’t as bad as what came later!’
In view of her deep depression I had given up fighting to be allowed to return to Yorkshire; or at least I put it off for now. Even when the Nazis made one last attempt after Operation Overlord to fight back and started bombing London with their infamous V2 rockets, I never once considered fleeing the city. It was clear that Mum needed me, the child she had left. I could not leave her in the lurch. She clung to me nervously if I came home from school half an hour late or if I was longer than usual doing the shopping. I accepted how she was. I was not happy about it, but what could I do?
In any case, were I in Staintondale I would not have had Chad, as he was at the front. Our correspondence had trickled out. I had no address to send a letter to, and he … well, he had never liked writing. Later I heard that he had taken part in the Normandy landing. With hindsight I was glad we had not been in touch over that period. I would have gone mad with fear, as we heard in the news how many soldiers had to pay with their lives for the invasion. Of course, later, when it all ended happily for him, I was very proud that he had been at that decisive event.
I no longer suffered as much from living in London, probably because Mum’s mental condition forced responsibilities on me. There seemed to be a reason for my stay.
And Harold changed. He did not change fundamentally, of course. But Mum’s weakness drew out his strength. He was no longer just hanging around drunkenly. Instead he helped me with the housework when he got home from work. Only once that was done did he get drunk, which was a step in the right direction. I saw him differently too, because the whole miscarriage and my flight to Yorkshire had showed me that he really loved my mother and wanted, in his own way, to make her happy. It was important to him t
hat she was not hurt in any way. So I kept to our agreement. Mum should never hear about my lightning trip up to Staintondale in February 1943. Until her death in 1971 she still did not know.
In May 1945 the war ended and people danced in the streets. Winston Churchill appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with the royal family, and thousands of people cheered them, singing ‘God Save the King’ and ‘Rule, Britannia’. I was there, tears pouring down my face, as we all held hands and sang the most popular, patriotic – and sentimental – war-time song:
There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover … Tomorrow, when the world is free …
Many families were mourning their dead, and whole streets were still in ruins, but we were looking to the future, clearing the rubble, and starting the work of reconstruction. Everyone was happy to know that husbands, sons and friends were out of danger now, that we need not fear air raids or tremble at the thought of Nazis occupying our island.
The nightmare was over.
I left school in 1946, and had no idea what was to come next. My happy, even euphoric sense of a new start at the end of the war had collapsed, swallowed up by the realisation that I had to get a grasp on my life, although I did not know what path to take. What had I been thinking about these past years? I had been dreaming about Yorkshire. Apart from that I had just been trying to cope with each day as it came. I had usually seen my future in a sunny light, but that was all. I had not come up with any plans I could put into action.
‘Do something with children,’ suggested my mother when at the end of July we were having coffee and cake on my seventeenth birthday. (We used beaten egg whites instead of icing for the cake.) I had been moaning about not knowing what to do next. ‘I think being a nurse on a children’s ward is a wonderful job!’
Since she had lost Harold’s baby she thought constantly about children. Without asking for any payment she looked after children in the neighbourhood, took them for walks, read to them and helped them with their homework. Harold and I were starting to get fed up with it, but we did not say anything, as her behaviour was obviously a kind of therapy for her. Personally, I felt no connection to anyone under fourteen, and immediately rejected her idea. ‘No, Mum, no. I can’t deal with children, you know that!’
‘I think you should learn bookkeeping,’ said Harold. ‘They are always looking for people for office jobs, and you can work your way up.’
That sounded deadly boring.
‘No. I don’t know … oh God, I think I won’t ever find the right job!’ I looked darkly at the wall. Bookkeeper. Children’s nurse. I might as well let them bury me alive.
Then a suggestion came which surprised me, and from my mother of all people. ‘Maybe you just need to get away from London for a bit. From us. You’re like someone who is running around in a little cage and can only see its bars, not the world behind them.’
I looked at Mum in astonishment. She had hit the nail on the head.
‘You enjoyed Yorkshire so much during the war,’ she continued. ‘Perhaps you should go and visit for a few weeks. Walk by the sea, breathe in the fresh air. Sometimes a new place is all that’s needed to see a new direction.’
Harold and I looked at each other in surprise.
‘What was the name … of that lady who took you in? Emma Beckett, wasn’t it? Maybe she would let you visit? Of course you would give her something to help with the extra expense, but we’d scrape that together.’
As Mum knew nothing about my flight up to Yorkshire, we had also not told her that Emma was no longer alive. And no doubt it was better that she did not know. I was not sure she would let me stay with Chad (if he had survived the war), Arvid and Nobody.
‘Mum, are you serious?’ I asked.
She was astonished. ‘Why ever not?’
I looked at Harold again and saw that he would keep quiet about Emma’s death.
My heart began to pound. The day had looked dark and without hope. Now everything ahead looked brighter.
I was going to see everything I loved. Chad. The farm. The sea. Our bay. Yorkshire’s wide, rolling fields.
And all of that with Mum’s blessing.
12
I arrived in Scarborough in August 1946. No sooner had I stepped onto the platform than I knew I was home again, and would never leave. I had needed to trick my mother a little. She had wanted to contact Emma, but I had claimed to be corresponding with the Becketts and that they invited me each time they wrote. As Emma’s affection for me at the time of my stay had not escaped my mother, this seemed plausible to her. We did not have a telephone, nor did the Becketts, and the post was extremely slow and unreliable in those post-war times. If she wrote to the Becketts, my mother could expect to wait a long time for an answer, assuming her letter arrived in Staintondale. In the end she had allowed me to travel more or less into the unknown, and I had breathed a sigh of relief when I was finally sitting in the train. Right until the end I had feared that she might reconsider.
But I was a little nervous. More than three years had passed. Who and what would I find? Was Chad still alive – and if so, had he returned to the farm? What had become of Arvid? Perhaps a bitter, lonely old widower, who would not be at all happy to see me? He might have become an alcoholic and be in a worse state than Harold in his glory days. Only Nobody would not have changed. He must be about fourteen years old by now. Yet the fact that at forty he would still act like a small child made him someone you could depend on, in a way.
I had to wait a long time for the bus and it was already evening when I finally arrived in Staintondale. Fortunately it was not getting dark early, as it was August. Nevertheless, when I walked across the fields to the farm from the main road the light was already dim. The day was cool and sunny. I carried what I owned in a rucksack on my back. It was not much. I felt free and happy. Horses, sheep and cows grazed around me.
And above me seagulls screeched.
Once I could make out the farm in the distance, I began to run. I was not only running out of a joyful anticipation, but also out of nervous fear. I wanted to finally know how things were on the farm.
The summer evening presented the farm in the best possible light, but I was still horrified at how dilapidated it had become. The farm gate was hanging on broken hinges and could obviously no longer be closed. It would never be repaired again. I was always amazed that in over half a century no one had found enough energy and resolve to deal with the problem.
All kinds of scrap equipment were strewn around the farmyard. In among these items, chickens pecked. In the past they had lived in their own separate chicken run. The sheep pasture fences were in desperate need of repair, and so many stones had fallen out of the walls that the animals could easily climb through them. The house looked dark and almost uninhabited. Weeds grew almost to the front door. The bench was missing where Emma had loved to sit in the evening sunlight. It had probably been turned into firewood. The windows were thick with dirt. It was not likely that you could recognise much of the splendid landscape, when you looked out.
But the air smelt just as it always had, and the sea would be the same, as well as the bay and the particular light there in the evening.
The thought of the bay crystallised a decision in me. I suddenly knew where my first walk should take me.
I put my rucksack down in the nettles by the front door. Freed from its burden, I set off with a spring in my step.
As soon as I had plunged through the dark gorge and stepped onto the twilit beach, I saw Chad. The sun had disappeared behind the cliffs, and the sea was an opaque night-blue. The beach, normally so wide, was just a thin strip of sand, but the tide had passed its height and the water was gradually retreating.
Chad sat on a rock, his face in his hands.
I stepped up closer.
‘Good evening, Chad,’ I said in the end.
He gave a little jump, looked up, and then sprang to his feet. He seemed completely confused. ‘Fiona! Where d’you come from
?’
‘From London.’
‘What … I mean … just like that?’
He did not sound as excited as I would have hoped, but nor was he unfriendly. He was simply surprised.
‘Well, looks like you survived the war,’ I said, not thinking of anything more witty. I added, ‘Not that I could have known this happy situation from your lively correspondence with me!’
He ran a hand through his hair. It was a gesture which reminded me of the fifteen-year-old boy he had been when I met him, the boy who – I could see this even in the rapidly diminishing light – was now a distant memory. He was twenty-one years old, and he had changed completely. At that moment I would not have been able to put into words exactly what the change was, except for the obvious fact that he was four years older than the last time we had met. But of course I had expected that. I think what amazed me was that he had aged much more than I had expected. More than the furrows and wrinkles on his face, it was in his expression. He did not look like someone who was twenty-one. He could have been thirty or forty.
When I had time to think about it in the following weeks, I realised that war had speeded time up. These men, who had still been boys really when they reported for duty, full of patriotic fervour and a naive idea of what was awaiting them at the front, had experienced more things, and harder things, than others experienced in a lifetime. They had seen mates fall and the possibility of their own death was a constant presence. They had killed in order not to be killed. They had held out in ice-cold trenches, enduring hours of nerve-shattering gunfire, and had been forced to listen to the sharp screams of the dying. Nothing remained of their earlier lives in which they had often not had a care in the world, and had been safe. The Allies had vanquished Hitler’s Germany. This knowledge remained for men like Chad, giving all they had endured a meaning. It did not change the images they would carry inside them for the rest of their lives. It did not change anything about the unsparing brutality to which they had been confronted from one day to the next – a side of life that none of them would have imagined beforehand.
The Other Child Page 31