The Gifted Child

by Penny Kline

  ‘Now, we’d better find something to eat. Oh, I see, you’ve helped select Vi’s paintings, now you’d prefer to go straight back to your flat.’

  ‘I didn’t say a word.’

  Cameron laughed. ‘No need to. Why don’t I drive us to Severn Beach and we can watch the sun set over the water?’

  ‘You make it sound like Acapulco.’

  ‘I’ve never been to Acapulco.’ He switched on the engine.

  ‘I used to take Theo to Severn Beach,’ Kristen said. ‘He liked to collect tiny pieces of coloured glass from the shingle on the beach and use them to make pictures.’

  ‘So you’ll come. It won’t take long, we’ll be there and back in forty minutes.’

  ‘If you drive like a maniac.’

  What was she doing? They were talking like two people in a play. A bad one. Before they left Vi had opened a bottle of wine to celebrate the fact that her studio was going to be cleared out and she could make a fresh start, as she put it. Kristen had said very little about the paintings, apart from a few comments that they all seemed very good to her, and if she had the money she would buy one herself.

  ‘I’ll give you one,’ Vi had told her, ‘No, not now, another day when you’re feeling better…’

  Cameron was whistling through his teeth. ‘So,’ he said, turning on a blast of loud music then switching it off again, ‘time Vi branched out a bit, tried something new?’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘Not me, wouldn’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Problem is, people like Vi have a tendency to become increasingly more skilful and start to lose the particular style the gallery wants.’

  They were passing under the motorway. Cameron had one hand on the steering wheel and with the other he was searching for something in the pocket by his door.

  ‘Selling paintings is a tricky business,’ he said, ‘things go in fashions, gallery owners can’t afford to make mistakes.’

  ‘I don’t see how they can lose. If the stuff doesn’t sell –’

  ‘Yes, but it takes up precious space. Incidentally, those prints in your flat, where did they come from?’

  ‘William found them.’

  ‘You don’t remember where?’ He passed her a street map. ‘Have a look at page twelve. I’ve been thinking, if William had wanted some exercise he would have done better to run across the playing fields rather than down to the river.’

  She took the map but didn’t bother to find the page. ‘There’s a steep path, the kind that would make you out of breath, just the sort of place he liked.’

  ‘You’ve been there have you? With William?’

  ‘I went there the week before last.’

  ‘On your own?’

  She nodded.

  He was silent for a moment then he started asking about her flat. Did she like living in a basement? Was the back of it at ground level? Had she got locks on the windows? Was there a garden?

  ‘Yes, but it belongs to the ground floor flat. We – I don’t own the place, it’s on a lease that runs out in November. When we came back from Ohio we’d used up most of our spare cash.’

  ‘What’s Theo like?’ he said. ‘He’s eight, am I right?’

  ‘Nearly nine.’

  ‘Would you say he takes after his father?’

  She sighed. ‘What is it you’re trying to say?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

  ‘He’s quieter than William. Sensitive but fairly confident for a boy of his age. Very perceptive. Very intelligent.’

  They drove through Easter Compton and on past the dark outline of a row of pylons stretching towards the lights of Avonmouth.

  ‘What went wrong in the States?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘Didn’t William tell you?’ Her voice was light, artificial, and bore no relation to how she was feeling.

  ‘As I said, I only met him a couple of times. The job didn’t turn out the way he’d hoped?’

  Kristen stared at the road ahead and Cameron gave a short laugh. ‘Right, don’t want to talk about. Fair enough. What now then? I know, do you have any brothers and sisters?’

  ‘No, What about you?’

  ‘One sister. Lives in Kent. Three kids and a surveyor husband. Nice enough guy but a bit boring.’

  ‘My father was a surveyor.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Three years after my mother died, he gave up his job so he could travel round the world. Sold his car and cashed in an insurance policy or something. Later, he wrote a book about Vietnam and Cambodia and it did rather well. Actually, he’s written several others since then.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  Cameron laughed, and she joined in, stopping abruptly when he asked if her father had met William. ‘I imagine the two of them would’ve got on pretty well. Two of a kind, or am I wrong?’

  ‘You say you went to Manchester University?’

  ‘Got a crap degree in Politics.’

  ‘And then?’ They were passing an estate of new houses, built in a semi-circle round a kind of village green. ‘After you got your bad degree?’

  ‘Messed about, worked for a trade journal until the tedium became too much, bought and sold what people call “collectables”.’

  ‘In Bristol?’

  ‘No, London. I moved to Bristol five years ago when –’

  As they rounded a corner a cat darted across the road. Cameron swerved but it doubled back and there was no way he could avoid it.

  ‘Shit.’ He pulled over to the side and sat, gripping the wheel, then climbed out and started walking back to where the dark shape lay close to the gutter.

  Kristen wanted to stay in the van, have nothing to do with it. Instead she forced herself to join him and together they crouched over the limp body, jumping when the cat moved its leg.

  ‘It’s alive.’ His voice was shaky. ‘Could be stunned, although without a proper examination … We can’t just leave it.’ He picked up the cat and carried it to the nearest lamppost where he began inspecting it very gently, first its head, then its back, then each leg in turn. ‘Unless there are internal injuries I reckon it’s going to be OK. What do you think?’

  Kristen squatted beside him. The cat was grey with green eyes that shone in the dark. She reached out to stroke the soft fur but as her hand made contact with its head it scrabbled free, scratching Cameron’s hand in the process, and darted towards a house, disappearing over a low wall.

  ‘Let’s tell ourselves it’s all right,’ he said.

  ‘It is all right.’

  He put his arms round her and held her against his chest. ‘I’m sorry, it gave you a shock. Look, shall we go on to Severn Beach or would you prefer –’

  ‘Let’s go on.’

  ‘If you’re sure.’

  Back in the van, she fastened her seat belt and sat, staring out of the side window, trying to calm herself.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ Cameron said, ‘to Vi’s I mean. It was a cop-out inviting you there instead of arranging something for just the two of us.’

  ‘I thought it was Vi’s idea.’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’ He leaned towards her and she felt the roughness of his cheek. ‘You’ve got me down as an arrogant, unfeeling bastard, and who could blame you. Now it’s up to me to prove you wrong.’

  21

  The call from Malcolm Wisdom had come while Tisdall was visiting his daughter. Back at the station, Martin Brake conveyed the message as if he personally had been responsible for Wisdom getting in touch.

  ‘I had a feeling he might. Something about the expression on his face as we were leaving.’

  ‘So what did he want?’ Tisdall was in no mood for games. Grace had left the house almost as soon as he arrived, saying it would be nice for him and Serena to spend time alone together. When it was time for him to leave she still hadn’t returned, even though her excuse had been feeble in the extreme. They were short of milk. She would buy som
e at the local shop.

  ‘It was about the club,’ Brake was saying.

  ‘Which club is that?’ As if he didn’t know. ‘Wisdom lied to us, did he? It didn’t look the kind of place gays frequent, apart from that Glen bloke.’

  ‘Gays don’t have to go to gay clubs,’ Brake said priggishly.

  ‘What?’ Tisdall was trying to decide if Grace had been avoiding him deliberately. And if so, why? What was it Julie had once said? If you love someone enough it makes you think they must love you back.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Brake, ‘Wisdom wants us to believe it was only after we’d left he remembered how he and his partner had called in at Bimbam’s one evening about a year ago, only they’d never gone back because someone had joined them and started an argument.’

  ‘Who joined them? What argument? Get to the point, Martin, I want to go home.’

  ‘He didn’t know his name but he thought he was some kind of dealer.’

  Tisdall yawned. ‘Dealer in what? Stocks and shares, scrap metal?’

  The investigation was going nowhere. They had re-interviewed all the dog man’s victims, and talked to all the witnesses who claimed to have seen a man answering his description close to the scene of the murder. For a time Tisdall had thought the hostel for the homeless, or the club, would come up with something they could get their teeth into. Frith had skeletons in the cupboard – that much was clear – but who didn’t, and none of them seemed likely to provide a motive for smashing his head in with a brick. Asking round the pubs, in the Fishponds area and near to where he had lived, had come up with nothing of any importance. A handful of people admitted to being on nodding terms but none of them had known much about him. Surely if Frith had been involved in anything dodgy an informant would have come forward weeks ago.

  ‘I could call round on my way home,’ Brake said. ‘See if Wisdom’s partner’s returned, try to find out a bit more about them.

  ‘Yes, you do that.’ Tisdall was so tired he could hardly keep his head upright. ‘Tell me in the morning, only don’t take too long over it, don’t want your Kelly feeling neglected. No case is so important it’s worth wrecking your home life.’

  ‘Matthew’s father came round on Wednesday.’ Mrs Letts licked her lips in anticipation. ‘He was asking after you.’

  ‘Matthew’s father? Oh, you mean Mr Reynolds.’

  Mrs Letts put down the damp cloth she had been using to wipe the tiles outside the front door and folded her arms to indicate she was in no hurry, wouldn’t mind providing more details if required. She had been to the hairdresser’s and her white curls were even tighter than before.

  ‘Did he come round specially or was he just passing?’ Kristen asked.

  Mrs Letts pressed a hand against her flat chest. ‘Indigestion. Had a kipper for my tea. He was parked in a van across the road, old wreck of a thing. There quite a while he were.’

  ‘Matthew’s father was driving an old van?’

  She nodded, happy now she had aroused Kristen’s curiosity. ‘Now if people was more neighbourly, kept their eyes open … You heard about Mr Parsons’ cat?’

  ‘No.’ Not another cat knocked down, crushed under somebody’s wheels.

  ‘Disappeared.’ Mrs Letts spoke the word as dramatically as possible and waited for Kristen’s follow up questions.

  ‘How long has it been gone? Cats often go off for a few days.’

  The old woman’s tongue moved round her lips. ‘I reckon they took it for one of those laboratories where they test face cream. He’s looked all over, stuck notices on lamp posts, and he’s going to put notes through all the doors in the road.’

  ‘I’ll watch out for it.’ So the light in the garden earlier in the week had been Mr Parsons. ‘When did it go missing?’

  ‘Theo was fond of that cat, used to try and stroke it but it was never the friendly kind. Bite you soon as look at you. What time’s he arriving? You’ll be ever so pleased to see him. Wait, I almost forgot – little treat I promised him.’ She took a paper bag from her pocket that Kristen assumed contained sweets or a bar of chocolate. But after she had thanked Mrs Letts and the older woman had returned to her flat, she looked inside the bag and was surprised, and rather touched, to see a packet of football stickers and two one-pound coins.

  When Ros arrived she looked thinner, or perhaps it was the effect of her black trousers and dark green jacket. Theo was wearing red Kickers boots, black designer trousers, and a T-shirt with a caricature of Einstein on the front. His hair was longer and parted on one side and he looked like a miniature adult, not a child who would be celebrating his ninth birthday in a month’s time.

  Kristen had no idea how to greet him, nor he her. It was only four weeks since he left but it could have been months.

  ‘Theo.’ She moved awkwardly towards him. ‘It’s lovely … so lovely to see you.’

  He gave her a slightly self-conscious hug then craned his neck, looking past her at the door to his old room.

  ‘It’s just as you left it,’ she said, ‘ready for you to come whenever you like.’

  He glanced at Ros and frowned, chewing the inside of his cheek.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Ros said, ‘did I forget to ring you? How stupid of me. John brought us down – he’s in the car – but after he’s seen this man he’s meeting I’m afraid we’ll have to drive straight back so he can take his children to the zoo in the morning.’

  Kristen took a tight grip on herself. ‘You still haven’t got your licence back?’

  ‘No. Yes.’ Ros pulled a face. ‘You have to apply and I’ve been so busy I haven’t got round to it. If it’s all right I think I’d better rush off or John will be late for his appointment.’ She ruffled Theo’s hair. ‘All right if I pick him up about six?’

  Five hours and twenty-five minutes. ‘Six will be fine.’ Kristen looked straight into Ros’s heavily made up eyes. ‘Has your father returned to France? Did he enjoy his visit?’

  ‘Had to put it off, I’m afraid.’ Ros gave an apologetic smile. ‘Chest infection, nothing serious but since he’s getting on in years … I’d have let you know but it was all rather last minute, then John said he had to see someone in Bath this weekend so…’

  She broke off, moving quickly towards the door. ‘Have a lovely time, darling, and don’t eat too much junk food.’ She turned back to Kristen. ‘What a struggle, providing them with a decent diet. Oh, heavens above, I’m not blaming you, they’re all the same! Theo has made a little friend in the Close, a boy called Marcus who goes to his new school. Nice little chap but I’ve never seen a child eat so many bags of crisps.’ She glanced at Theo, who had wandered to the other end of the room. ‘Anyway, I’ll love you and leave you. Oh by the way, no news from the …’ She silently mouthed the word ‘police’. ‘I told you, didn’t I, how I’d had another visitation? I know what they say about the police but personally I’ve always found them very well-mannered.’

  22

  As soon as Ros left, Kristen told Theo about her plan to drive to Cardiff.

  ‘Yes, all right.’ She was disappointed at his lack of enthusiasm, wondered if he would have preferred to stay in the flat, even wondered if he had wanted to come and see her at all.

  ‘If you don’t want … No, silly of me, you must be sick of sitting in the car.’

  ‘I’m not.’ He screwed up his face. ‘I told her I could stay the night and go back on the train but she wouldn’t let me, she thinks I’m a baby.’

  He was fiddling with the smartphone Ros had given him. William had always refused to buy him one, not because he thought he was too young, he just “hated the things”.

  Driving through Bristol, Kristen asked a few questions about the flat in Putney and the places Ros had taken him to, but each time he changed the subject, wanting to know what she had been doing, wanting to hear about the gifted children. What were their names? What kind of lessons did they have? Could they do long division in their heads?

  ‘How can you work out which five consec
utive numbers add up to ninety?’ He was staring straight ahead and his voice was very serious.

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Do you promise? You’re not just saying it? Divide ninety by five and that makes eighteen. Then you take the two numbers that come before and the two that come after. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen and twenty. That makes ninety. I read it in a book.’

  ‘Very good.’ She wanted to ask which book. One Ros had bought him or had he asked Kimberly to take him to the local library? Instead she told him about Vi and the exhibition of children’s paintings. Then about Mr Parsons’ cat and how it had gone missing but would probably turn up in a day or two. And the money Mrs Letts had given her for him. And the football stickers.

  He listened attentively – the smartphone was switched off and in his pocket – but his responses were formal, polite, and it was only when they were approaching the Severn Crossing that she sensed he was starting to relax.

  ‘Mum’s not like you.’ He shaded his eyes to look upstream at the other bridge.

  ‘Well, no.’ Kristen wondered what was coming next. ‘Things are bound to be a bit different but you seem to be having a good holiday.’

  ‘Has the policeman been to see you? Mum thinks I can’t hear what she says. She thinks I’m thick.’

  ‘I’m sure she doesn’t. Yes, he came round not long ago.’

  He leaned forward, hugging his knees. ‘They haven’t found the man though, have they? Did you know Dad was younger than Mum? She’s thirty-six next birthday.’

  ‘Is she?’ Kristen knew exactly how old Ros was.

  ‘When I was a baby.’ His voice was so quiet, she only just heard. ‘When I was a baby, I mean when I was four … why did she leave? Dad told me she had to travel about, only why didn’t she take me with her like Marcus’s mother does?’

  It was a question she and William had expected years ago but when it came she was unprepared. ‘Marcus’s parents are divorced?’