Killing a Stranger

by Jane A. Adams

  Ernst released the lock when Alec rang the bell and he found himself in a spacious and airy lobby. The marble floor, though a little scuffed now, and the elaborately panelled walls, reminded Alec of an expensive hotel, an impression enhanced by the presence of a desk like that found in a hotel lobby. Once upon a time there would have been a concierge on duty in the daytime and a night porter, Alec thought. Luxury indeed.

  There were two staircases leading off and a lift. Alec chose the stairs. Ernst had told him that the flat was on the second floor and to take the right hand staircase. He arrived, slightly out of breath, to find Ernst standing in the doorway. He looked older, Alec thought, more worn down. He’d looked like that in the days following his son’s death, but recently had seemed to recover.

  What had happened now to cause such a relapse?

  Inside, Ernst led Alec through to the main living room. It was a spacious, well proportioned area with high ceilings and large windows with curiously shaped panes like stretched oblongs. It was dark outside and Alec wondered what the view would be like on a fine day. The flats were high up on a hill almost on the edge of town. On a good day, most like, he’d be able to see Pinsent beach.

  The computer was on and Ernst had drawn two chairs close to the oak table.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Sit down. I have something to show you. I don’t want you to see, but, frankly, I don’t know what else to do. I have run this problem so many times through my head I feel my brain has absorbed so much it can hold no more. I am run ragged with this.’

  ‘Show me,’ Alec said. And Ernst did, bringing up the two files: the one of Angel and the images of Jennifer, posing in only the briefest of bikini bottoms.

  Alec said nothing for a moment, then he glanced swiftly round the room.

  ‘Yes, they were taken here.’

  ‘Right. How did you come to find this?’

  ‘I was looking. For answers, I suppose. All I find is questions.’ He told Alec how he wanted to look around before the flat was sold. How Suzanna helped him gain access to the computer. How, when he looked again, he found that the machine was more powerful than he had thought. And how he had found these.

  ‘What do I do now? Do I confront Jennifer? Do I tell her mother that Adam … that Adam may have had …’

  ‘An inappropriate relationship with his niece?’

  ‘Inappropriate. Yes.’

  Alec thought hard. ‘If Jennifer was sixteen when these were taken and if she gave her full and informed consent, then there may be nothing left to tell. Legally, I mean. It might be … inappropriate to take … glamour portraits of one’s niece, but, providing she was of age and provided she wasn’t coerced or pressurized …’

  ‘And if she was not?’

  ‘The pictures should be dated. Or, at least, we should be able to find out when they were transferred to the hard drive. Probably both.’ He frowned, trying to recall how he’d find out, finally got there. ‘August of this year. So she’d be …’

  ‘Just turned seventeen, but, Inspector Friedman, even so. This is hardly right. What if. What if …?’

  ‘Did you find anything to suggest there was more going on?’

  Ernst shook his head. ‘No, but Inspector,’ he took a deep breath, ‘she became pregnant not so long after that. What if. What if Adam was the father?’

  There, he’d said it and the heavens hadn’t opened and struck him down. Vaguely, Ernst realized he’d almost expected them to.

  ‘She was still of age. Yes, there would be the question of two close blood relatives … not to mention the moral questions surrounding any relationship where one partner is so much younger, but …’ He sighed. ‘The thing that occurs to me as well, and I’m sure must have occurred to you; what if Jennifer told Rob about this? What if Rob decided Adam had seduced or coerced? That would give us additional motive for him attacking your son. Perhaps, the whole motive.’

  Ernst nodded again. ‘Do I talk to her?’ he asked. ‘What do I say?’

  ‘I think we have to,’ Alec said, choosing to share responsibility with this shocked and anguished old man. ‘We have to for two reasons at least. We need to know what Jennifer told Rob about all this and we need to know too if Adam did have a relationship with her, because if he did, with them being such close kin, the child’s welfare becomes a paramount question. And we need to know for a third reason. Ernst, you’ll never rest easy until you’re sure, one way or another. Grief on top of grief can wear you down until there’s nothing left.’

  It was late, Harry was thinking about bed. He’d been surprised at Patrick’s friends leaving separately and Patrick not coming down to say goodbye. Had they quarrelled?

  He made them both hot chocolate, frothing it in the special pot Mari had given him at Christmas. Mari knew how he loved his kitchen gadgets. He stood at the foot of the stairs with both mugs on a tray, wondering whether he should call Patrick down or take his mug upstairs. Instinct induced him to take both mugs and to go up to his son’s room.

  He knocked.

  ‘Come in, Dad.’

  Patrick was drawing, using the new pens Harry had bought him. He’d been delighted with them as Naomi said he would be. Harry had, at the time, thought it was an odd sort of gift and an expensive one considering they were only glorified felt tips.

  ‘Good, are they?’

  Patrick nodded. ‘Brilliant. Thanks.’ He looked up and eyed the mugs. ‘Frothy chocolate?’

  ‘Frothy chocolate.’

  Patrick grinned and for an instant looked about eight years old again. Such a barrel of contradictions, Harry thought. ‘I wondered if you wanted to come down for it.’

  Patrick shook his head. ‘No, but Dad, sit down a minute?’

  It was unusual to be invited to stay in Patrick’s domain. Harry sat, placing the tray beside the computer.

  ‘These are good,’ he was genuinely surprised. ‘How do you grade the tone like that?’

  ‘That’s what the pens are designed for. It’s easy to keep the wet edge moving.’ He demonstrated. ‘See, you don’t get lines and every colour will blend or overlay the others.’

  Harry studied the images more closely. The comic book style came naturally to his son. Graphic novel, he corrected himself. He had to confess too that, though he might once have been dismissive of such things, his son had taught him that there was a real art to the storytelling and to the pared down graphic style. It wasn’t his thing, but, he admitted, there were skills involved.

  ‘Is this Rob?’ he asked gently.

  ‘Yeah. Look Dad, I know you might think it’s a bit macabre, but …’

  ‘Does it help you cope? With his death, with the other stuff you’re going through?’

  Patrick hesitated, and then nodded. ‘It’s like, I can make it happen to someone else, not to my friends and me. It’s like I can kind of make it into a story. It hurts, but it makes it further away. Does that make any sense?’

  Harry nodded. ‘I think so. Yes.’

  Patrick made a grab for his chocolate and nearly upset the mug. He had always tended towards the clumsy but his awkwardness magnified when he was upset.

  ‘These new ones. What are they about?’

  Patrick hesitated then pushed the stack of drawings towards his father. His manner warned Harry that he must be careful what he said, that Patrick was expecting a reaction; it had to be the right one. Harry slowly worked his way through the stack. The illustration was swiftly done and the pictures followed one from the other. He cleared a space and laid them out upon the table. Rob again, standing toe to toe with another man. His back was to the viewer and his shoulders hunched. ‘Adam Hensel,’ Harry said.

  The next picture showed Rob backing off, his gestures spoke of irritation, even desperation and the other man was turning now as though to walk away.

  In the third, it was clear that something had gone wrong. Harry spaced it so that a missing picture would fit in the space. He heard his son release held breath and knew he’d guessed right. Th
is was the point at which Patrick was at a loss. He couldn’t work it out. The next image showed Adam Hensel with a knife clutched in his hand. Harry knew that the actual weapon had been a folding pocket knife, but in Patrick’s pictures, the blade was long, vicious, brutal and it glinted in the light from the street lamp Harry now saw featured in all of the designs. Another gap and the knife was in Rob’s hand. Hensel lay at his feet and the look on Rob’s face was one of shock, horror, sheer despair. His son had captured the emotion of the moment so vividly, done so with a few strokes of the pen that Harry was at the one time moved by the strength of it and awed at his skill.

  ‘You really are good,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ Patrick said. ‘But I still don’t know why or how it really happened. But we found something. In Rob’s computer stuff.’

  Harry sensed that he’d passed some test in the last few minutes. That, probably without realizing it himself, his son had been waiting to see if he could be trusted with something else he couldn’t work out and didn’t understand.

  ‘What did you find?’

  Patrick squeezed his lips together in a long flat line. He looked pinched and tired and in the harsh light of the desk lamp his hair seemed very black, his skin unearthly pale.

  ‘We think Rob was stalking Adam Hensel,’ he said. ‘And he’d been doing it for a while. And, Adam Hensel wasn’t the only one.’

  Thirty-Three

  Aiden was at work, Beth preparing to leave for her part time job and Jennifer still in bed when Ernst arrived with Alec following close behind. Ernst had printed out the pictures at Alec’s suggestion. They felt that confronting Jennifer with the indisputable evidence might be a shock tactic that would jolt more truth from her than the softly softly approach everyone had tried so far.

  ‘Dad, what’s going on?’ Beth wanted to know.

  ‘Call work,’ Ernst told her. ‘You’ll be late today.’

  ‘I’ll be … don’t be silly. Why should I be late?’

  ‘I have some questions to ask your daughter,’ Alec told her quietly. ‘You need to be here.’

  Beth was about to argue further but thought better of it. ‘Oh what now,’ she muttered. ‘What else is bloody wrong with this family.’ She phoned her job, went to get Jennifer out of bed. Ernst made tea in the kitchen and a bleary eyed, dressing gown clad teenager arrived protesting, her mother in tow, a few minutes later.

  Alec noted that Beth made no move to invite them into the lounge. She was obviously seething, preparing for the next round of battles. Silently, Alec laid the prints out on the table.

  The silence thickened as the two women studied them. Then Jennifer tried to get in first. ‘Mum, I can explain. It isn’t what you think.’

  ‘How the hell,’ Beth said slowly, ‘can you possibly know what I think?’ She jabbed a finger at the offending pictures. ‘What are these? Dad, Inspector, just what the hell are these? And you, you’d better have a bloody good story.’

  ‘I do,’ Jennifer protested, but she was struggling, drowning, eyes darting looking for a means of escape, of relief. ‘I do, honestly I do.’

  ‘These were on Adam’s computer,’ Ernst said.

  ‘On what?’ Beth turned on him throwing her hands in the air. ‘Oh, now I’ve heard it all. What is this, some kind of smear campaign? My brother was murdered. Have you forgotten that? What? Does that make him fair game for every rumour, every accusation, every bloody …’She turned back to Jennifer. ‘So,’ she said. ‘And what explanation do you reckon you have that’s so damned good?’

  Jennifer looked away, her blonde hair fell across her face and Alec could not read her expression.

  ‘Did Adam take them?’ Ernst asked her.

  She nodded.

  ‘Adam? Oh for heaven’s sake. Adam would never.’

  ‘Then,’ Alec asked Beth, ‘how come they turned up on his machine?’

  ‘How should I know? Maybe you lot planted them there. You seem so keen to blame the bloody victim here and that’s what he was, don’t you forget. That little shit murdered my brother. He stabbed him with his own knife and he ran away and then he killed himself, so I don’t even have the satisfaction of seeing him rot in jail.’

  ‘Rob wasn’t like you think.’ Jennifer’s head was up, her cheeks flaming. ‘Rob was kind and nice and he wanted, wanted …’

  Beth hit out. She couldn’t help herself. It was all too much. Her fingers raked her daughters face and then she stood, horrified at what she’d done but shaking and staring as though she’d like to do it all over again.

  ‘Beth!’

  ‘Mrs Ryan!’

  Jennifer leapt to her feet overturning the chair and ran from the room. Beth sank back into her chair and buried her face in her hands.

  ‘I’d better go,’ Ernst headed for the door. ‘Lord, what a mess this is.’

  Alec waited until the crying had almost ceased. It seemed to be his week for weeping women. He found a roll of kitchen towel and nudged her hand. She lifted her head slightly and, reluctantly, took the towel. Wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

  ‘He’s right you know,’ Alec said. ‘It is a mess. A big mess and we have to sit down like sensible adults and sort it out.’

  ‘Jennifer isn’t a sensible adult.’

  ‘No, she’s not, she’s a scared seventeen-year-old. We have to be adult for her as well.’

  ‘You sound like you think I’m behaving like a kid,’ she spat at him.

  ‘No, I don’t, but I think you have to wake up to the fact that your brother may not have been purer than the driven snow. He took those pictures, they were taken in his flat and even if that was all that happened, it was … well, at best unwise. You must see that?’

  Beth stared miserably at the pictures. ‘What the hell did she think she was doing?’

  ‘No. What the hell did either of them thing they were doing? Adam was the adult here. Even if it was some kind of semi-innocent prank, he should still have put the brakes on.’

  He waited, wondering if he should tell her about Angel, decided now was as good a time. ‘Jennifer was copying poses,’ he said. ‘From some pictures Adam already had on his computer. A young woman who calls herself Angel. We believe Adam was seeing her.’

  ‘Adam had a girlfriend? She posed for pictures. I mean that’s not so …’

  ‘No. Angel wasn’t Adam’s girlfriend. Adam … paid her. She’s an escort, a prostitute.’

  ‘No! Adam wouldn’t.’ She stared at Alec. ‘Jesus, how much more sordid can all this get?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Alec told her honestly. ‘I really couldn’t say.’

  Ernst sat on the top step outside Jennifer’s door. He could hear her sobbing. Angry, aching, self-pitying sobs that made him want to slap her and comfort her all at the same time. Beth, he figured, must be feeling the same, though the more violent impulse had momentarily won out over the maternal one.

  ‘Jen darling, talk to me.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk to anyone. She hit me.’

  ‘And she’s sorry.’

  ‘No, she’s not. She’s a bitch. She hates me. She’s hated me for a long time. Uncle Adam never liked her. She was just jealous of him and me.’

  Ernst felt his stomach tighten. He forced himself to stay calm. ‘Jennifer, my love, come and talk to me. You have to talk to me.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I don’t have to talk to anyone.’

  ‘Why did he take the pictures? Was it a game?’

  ‘Game! Like I’m a kid.’

  The door opened and she came out. Her face was red, but Ernst doubted it would bruise too much. She had anticipated the blow and ducked backwards even as her mother lashed out at her. ‘If not a game, then what?’

  ‘I don’t know. He liked me. He said I was pretty.’

  ‘And you are.’

  ‘Huh. Not now I’m not. Look at me. Fat and shapeless. I’ll probably be like that forever now.’

  ‘No, you won’t. You’ll get your figure back after the baby. I
t won’t take long.’

  ‘But then I’ll be saddled with it, won’t I? My life’s over, Granddad.’

  He slid an arm around her shoulders and hugged her tight. ‘No, no it’s not. You’ll go back to your studies and you’ll get a good job, maybe go to university. There are nurseries and crèches for the little one.’

  ‘Mum thinks I should look after it.’

  ‘And so you should. But not on your own and not to the exclusion of everything else. There are ways of dealing with this, Jennifer. Besides, when it’s born, you’ll love it. I told you that. Then it won’t seem so hard. Now, talk to me because I need to know. Why did Adam take the pictures? Hey?’

  She shrugged. ‘Because I asked him to.’

  ‘You asked him to?’

  ‘I was round at his place and he gave me some wine and we cooked a meal and he said I’d suddenly got very grown-up and very pretty and we got giggly and a bit silly, I suppose and he showed me these pictures on his computer of this woman and he said I was prettier than her and he took my pictures. And afterwards I woke up with a hangover and he promised he’d erased them. He broke his promise, Granddad. Why did he do that?’

  ‘Hush now, darling. I don’t know why. Maybe he forgot. Maybe.’

  He kissed her hair and hugged her even tighter. ‘Jennifer, I have to ask this. Did anything else happen while you were there?’

  ‘You mean, did we have sex.’ Irritably, she pulled away.

  ‘Yes, I mean that. Jennifer, it’s important. Did you then, or any other time?’

  She shrugged, not looking at him, hiding again behind the fall of blonde hair. ‘I don’t know,’ she said finally. ‘Maybe. I just don’t know.’

  Thirty-Four

  Harry had phoned in and asked for a half day’s holiday, something he’d never done at the last minute before. It was a measure of his concern for his son that he had done so now. He turned up at Naomi’s flat while she was having breakfast.

  ‘I’ve got something to read to you,’ he said. ‘Can you spare a few minutes?’