The Gifted Child

by Penny Kline

  Today made winter seem like another place. Sweat gathered on his neck and he wiped it with the sleeve of his jacket. The suit he normally wore had been dropped off at the cleaners by Julie in the mistaken belief that the smarter his appearance, the more likely he was to be promoted. The fact that he had no interest in promotion, couldn’t stand the thought of being stuck in an office, was seen by her as a way of cushioning himself against feelings of failure.

  Ever since she started borrowing popular psychology books from the library, she had been blathering on about self-esteem and the evils of categorising individuals according to their sex – she called it gender – age or social class. Oh, and “human aggression”, that was another of her interests. Are we born bad or does a sick society turn us violent? Grace’s course had included some psychology but she’d taken it with a pinch of salt, hung on to her critical faculties.

  The terrace on the other side of the road had given way to a small stretch of grass.

  ‘Just think,’ Brake said, ‘the dog man could be living in this street.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  Brake shrugged. ‘It’s a well-known fact most petty criminals do their thieving within a mile of their own home.’

  Tisdall checked the statement Wisdom had given. His wallet had been taken from the jacket he had removed when he crawled through some bushes searching for the pickpocket’s dog, but he had taken the incident philosophically, even blamed himself for being such a mug. In his early thirties, with a PhD in Computer Science, and – according to Dave Wood – an expensive taste in clothes, he was just the type the dog man favoured: younger rather than older, reasonably well to do. If Tisdall had not known better, he could have seen the dog man as a bit of a Robin Hood character, robbing the rich to give to the poor. A more likely explanation was that victims were selected because they looked the helpful kind rather than types who’d tell you to sod off.

  The block of flats where Wisdom lived was purpose built with concrete steps leading to the first and second floors. Brake rang the bell and the door came open at once, revealing a slightly built man in the process of drying his hair with a purple towel.

  ‘Sorry, have you been waiting long? I had the water running.’ He led them into a small study with a desk and a swivel chair then realised there would be nowhere to sit and continued on into a larger room, sparsely furnished with three steel-framed chairs, a bookcase and a bamboo table. Everything was so spotlessly clean and tidy, Tisdall would not have been surprised to find the books were in alphabetical order.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Wisdom folded his towel and roughed up his short, brown hair, ‘I was more upset about the wallet than the money. It was a present from my sister, had sentimental value. Only contained a small amount of cash. And my credit cards, of course, but I cancelled them before I called the police.’

  ‘Very wise,’ said Tisdall. ‘As I mentioned on the phone, the reason we wanted to talk to you again was because of the exceptionally detailed description you provided.’

  Wisdom leaned back in his chair, with both hands supporting the back of his head. ‘And you still think the same person could have killed William Frith? The guy who nicked my wallet didn’t look the violent type. I’d have thought Frith would have had very little trouble overpowering him.’

  ‘You knew Frith then?’ Brake had adopted his most inquisitorial expression.

  Wisdom shook his head. ‘Knew of him. He’d been one of Alex Howell’s research assistants.’

  ‘You know Dr Howell,’ Tisdall said.

  ‘Only by name. So you still haven’t discovered where the guy lives?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ Tisdall focussed on a Japanese print. At least he assumed it must be Japanese because the picture was of tall reeds and a dragonfly. ‘It would be a help if we could go through your description once more. Sometimes after a gap of a few weeks…’

  Wisdom started to protest but Tisdall held up a hand. ‘Yes, I’m sure you’d have been in touch, but going over it with a third party –’

  ‘An anorak.’ Wisdom stifled a yawn. ‘Fawn, beige, you know the kind of thing. Flat cap. I didn’t notice the trousers or shoes. Age anything between late twenties and early forties. Impossible to tell with the way he had his collar turned up and a scarf over his chin.’

  ‘I believe you thought the cap could have been two shades of brown,’ said Brake, ‘would that be a check pattern?’

  Wisdom closed his eyes. ‘More like lines crossing each other, and the scarf was woollen, thick for the time of year. It was April. April the twenty-second, the day before my mother’s birthday. I’d forgotten to post her card.’ He sat up straight with his hands on his knees. ‘I’m not sure if I mentioned this before but he was wearing gloves, not leather, more the kind a woman might wear, and I remember noticing what exceptionally small hands he had for a man.’

  Small hands. Tisdall thought about the print on the anonymous letter Kristen Olsen had received. Brake had made the connection too. Did Wisdom know Howell better than he was letting on? Was it likely he would have heard of him since he worked in a different university? Still, what did he know about university departments? Academics were a cliquey bunch, thought themselves a cut above.

  Leaning well back, Wisdom seemed almost to be enjoying their company. ‘Read me back what I told you before,’ he said, ‘the part about his face. You get an impression. Very pink skin, although I suppose that might have been because he’d climbed up the bank, pretending to have lost his dog. He was wheezing badly, that’s why I agreed to help.’

  ‘And the dog,’ Tisdall said, ‘you thought it was a terrier.’

  ‘Although after you phoned it occurred to me I wasn’t certain I’d seen an actual dog, just its eyes, and I’m not even a hundred percent certain about that. People tend to see what they expect to see. One thing occurred to me.’ Wisdom shifted on his chair and Brake leaned towards him in the “attentive” pose he had perfected. ‘If you knew about this guy’s technique – pretending he’d lost his dog or it had got stuck in a hole – why didn’t you publicise it, save the rest of us from falling for the same ploy?’

  Brake jumped in fast. ‘If we publicised all the crazy tricks people come up with…’

  ‘Yes, sure, I get it, copycat crimes.’

  ‘Just one last thing,’ Tisdall said. ‘Bimbam’s. Name mean anything to you?’

  ‘You mean the club?’ Wisdom’s feet had started to tap.

  ‘Frith used to go there,’ Brake said.

  Wisdom glanced at each of them in turn. ‘I’ve heard of the place but I’ve never been there. Nor has my partner. If you’ve checked your notes you’ll know his name is Chris Silvester. He’s away at present. His mother’s been unwell.’

  ‘I believe he was away last time someone called round,’ Brake said.

  Wisdom pushed his hands in the pockets of his white jeans. ‘That was when his mother was first taken ill. She had a heart attack.’

  Driving back to the city centre, Tisdall listened with half an ear as Brake gave a blow-by-blow account of his impression of Wisdom, but the rest of him was thinking how he was running out of ideas and would have to admit as much to Liz Cowie. The visit to the hostel off Fishponds Road, together with a few remarks made by Ros Richards, had led to investigations that had shown Frith to be a liar and probably a womaniser, but they had come no nearer to finding a new suspect.

  ‘Now what?’ Brake said, ‘Inspector Cowie mentioned something about putting me on another case but if you have a word with her, tell her you still need me.’

  ‘For what?’

  Brake looked disappointed. ‘So you think we’ve been wasting our time.’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘So where is this dog man character? You’d have thought by now someone would have…’

  Tisdall was watching the car in front. From the back of her head, the driver could have been Grace. Same hair pushed behind her ears, same long neck, strong shoulders, except Grace wou
ld never have been seen dead in a jacket that colour.

  ‘If the so-called dog man’s an amateur we haven’t a hope.’ Brake sounded thoroughly pissed off. ‘Mind you, whether he killed Frith or not he must have been shitting himself these past eight or nine weeks.’

  Tisdall was thinking about Kristen Olsen. If he introduced them both which would she hit it off with best, Julie or Grace? No contest.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, trying to keep Brake’s spirits up. ‘I reckon Liz Cowie will give us another four or five days.’

  18

  Before she drove to the college, Kristen walked on the Downs. It was not yet nine o’clock but plenty of people were out and about, exercising their dogs. A golden retriever bounded up to her then swerved away at the last moment, continuing on into the bushes with its nose to the ground, sniffing from side to side. Theo had wanted a dog. Not much chance of it now, living in a flat in Putney, although Ros was the type to see an appealing little puppy and make an impulse buy she regretted almost at once.

  Was Ros really like that or was she cool, calculating? Kristen had been thinking about Alex Howell’s remark that Ros was unable to have more children. He must have made a mistake. It was unlikely William would have forgotten to mention something so important. He had talked enough about the five years he had lived with Ros, mostly complaints, although occasionally Kristen had sensed that his life at that time had not been quite as fraught as he liked to make out.

  An old man was walking towards her, a stick in one hand and a brown vinyl shopping bag over his arm. He looked a little unsteady on his feet and when he drew closer she noticed how frail he looked.

  ‘Can you give me a hand?’ he whispered, ‘I shouldn’t have gone so far but it was such a lovely morning.’

  Kristen slipped her arm in his. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Over there.’ He nodded in the direction of the large houses adjoining the Downs. ‘But if you could take me to those bushes, I need to spend a penny.’

  Walking, half running back to where she had left the car, she glanced over her shoulder and saw the man stagger out from behind a tree. Was it something he tried on several times a week? How did his other “victims” respond? Tell him to get lost or give him the benefit of the doubt, and walk away feeling a mixture of anger and disgust?

  He was like the dog man. Only worse. The world was a horrible place. Everything good turned rotten, everyone you loved was taken away. She thought about William, lying in the mortuary freezer. What happened after the post-mortem? Was the body put back together again or were the organs kept in separate bags, pending a possible second post-mortem while the defence counsel was preparing its case?

  She could ask Tisdall. He would tell her the truth, at least as far as such technicalities were concerned. In every other way he liked to keep her guessing, even allowed her to think she was one of the suspects. Why had Theo been staying the night with a friend? Was it something he did fairly often? No? In that case wasn’t it rather a coincidence …

  Switching on the engine, she checked the driving mirror but without registering whether or not a car was coming up behind her, and accelerated in the direction of the Gorge. Once, because Theo had begged her to, she had walked the whole length of the Suspension Bridge, from Sion Hill to Leigh Wood, and back again. Sensing her fear, he had been scathing, then understanding. You can’t fall, nobody could, not unless they climbed the railing.

  Kristen had laid out scraps of paper that covered most of the carpet. The notes for her thesis that she had made over the last few months and not yet had time to transfer to her computer. She was trying to assemble them in some kind of order when the doorbell rang. What did Mrs Letts want this time? To tell her again how the woman on the first floor kept coughing and did Kristen think she had TB since it was a notifiable disease these days? Or perhaps she wanted to tell her the Betterware man had left a brochure and the window cleaning spray was really good value. In answer to Mrs Letts’ veiled inquiries, Kristen had explained why she would be out three mornings a week, even told her a little about the classes, not that the old woman had been satisfied. She always wanted to know more.

  It was nearly nine o’clock and getting dark. When she opened the door a crack there was no sign of Mrs Letts, or anyone else, then a voice spoke her name and Cameron Lyle stepped out of the shadowy area behind the steps going up to the street.

  ‘Sorry.’ His voice had the apologetic tone that irritated her so much. ‘Didn’t mean to give you a fright. The exhibition, I wanted to talk but there wasn’t a chance. Then Vi dragged you off for lunch.’

  ‘What did you want to tell me?’

  He jerked his head towards the open door. ‘Is someone with you?’

  ‘Vi told you to come round?’ She led him into the room where she now ate, slept, and worked, and left him to pick his way between the scraps of paper. ‘How did you know where I lived? Vi told you that too?’

  ‘I’ve interrupted your work,’ he said. ‘Still, it looks like you could do with a break. Why all the paper, why not put stuff straight onto the computer? I’m sorry about the pub, I wanted to help but ended up –’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She had no wish to cover the same ground again. ‘You haven’t answered my question. How did you know where I lived?’

  ‘Subterfuge.’ He picked up a note at random and started to read. ‘“Francis Galton on genius. Academic achievement is not sufficient; success in the real world is just as important.” Why genius? Your thesis, why did you choose … William’s idea, was it?’

  ‘I read a book by Eysenck.’

  ‘The personality test guy. Introverts and extraverts. So your background’s psychology.’

  ‘My degree was in Psychology and Philosophy.’

  ‘Really? Anyway, this quote from Galton – I thought your thesis was about kids.’

  ‘It is.’

  He nodded, replacing the slip of paper exactly where he had found it. ‘I’ve a friend who works for BT. I gave him your number and he … No, not true. I rang Neville at the college, said I was on my way to Bishopston to deliver a print you’d had framed, knew the number of your house and that your flat was in the basement but couldn’t read the name of the street. Hilldown? Millhouse? He soon put me right.’

  He selected another piece of paper. ‘“Adult intelligence, combined with childish emotions, leads to certain difficulties.” Yes, well, I should think that’s fairly obvious. You won’t say anything to Neville? He’s a nice guy, would feel bad if he thought he’d let you down.’

  She took the paper from his hand. ‘Exceptional children with an IQ above one hundred and eighty.’

  He reached the sofa and sat down with a thump. ‘The kids you teach are in that bracket?’

  ‘Most of them are probably around a hundred and twenty or thirty.’

  ‘How do their teachers pick them out? Choose the ones with nice neat hair and posh accents?’

  ‘There are ways of guessing, not very scientific, but based on experience. The classic signs of a high-ability child …’ She broke off, annoyed by his bored expression.

  ‘No, go on. The classic signs?’

  ‘Very good general knowledge, learn fast, sensitive, magnanimous, hate being told something hasn’t been done right, always look bored, bone idle.’

  He laughed. ‘Did Vi show you her painting of a little girl called Daisy, a neighbour? Neville had an idea she might be gifted but –’

  ‘Vi said it was one of her first.’

  ‘The family moved to another part of Bristol. I just wondered if Vi had said anything.’

  Did he know something? That Neville had a taste for young girls? But if there had been an unpleasant incident it seemed highly unlikely Vi would have shown Kristen the portrait.

  Cameron knelt by one of the bookcases and began reading out the titles. Brazzaville Beach, The Tortilla Curtain. Ah, Tony and Susan. What did you think?’

  ‘It gave me nightmares.’

  ‘Brilliant.
D’you want me to go?’

  She could have said yes. Instead, she offered him a drink. If he knew more about William it was better to get it over with, better to find out here and now.

  He looked surprised at the offer but not in the smug, self-satisfied way she had expected. ‘A beer would be good.’ He had returned to the sofa and was feeling under where he was sitting, making contact with the broken spring. ‘Actually, I’d prefer a cup of tea. Then before I leave you could tell me some more about your thesis. Would you say intelligence is one generalised attribute or could a person be brilliant in one particular area and useless at everything else?’

  She started moving towards the kitchen, knowing he would follow and probably remark on the mess. ‘The majority of very clever people do well at most of the things that interest them.’

  ‘How about getting on with other people? Has anyone tested the streetwise characters who never did anything at school but make their fortune in the outside world. Incidentally, where did William go to school? Some private place, was it? Isn’t it a fact that all geniuses are a little crazy? Maybe William inadvertently stepped on someone’s toes.’

  She turned the tap on too hard and water splashed on the floor. ‘Someone who decided to teach him a lesson, you mean. Someone who lured him down to the river and smashed his head in with half a brick.’

  ‘I’ll wash some mugs,’ he said. ‘If you ask me the cops have run out of ideas, just stick with the same old theory to make it look like they haven’t been sitting on their arses doing bugger all. The reason I came round, it was partly to apologise but there’s something else.’

  ‘Go on.’ Cameron had Theo’s mug in his hand, the one with a picture of a hippo, and she was terrified he was going to drop it.