The Other Child (35 page)

‘I see. And …'

‘And naturally Mrs Krusinski was still very worried all evening. She was scared that he might still be lurking somewhere near her house, so she kept peeking out, from this living room window and from the kitchen window. She planned to call the police immediately if she saw him.'

‘And that's how she saw Tanner leave the house?'

‘Yes,' said Reek, Marga and Mrs Willerton together.

Valerie turned to Marga. ‘And you are quite sure it was Dave Tanner?'

‘Now listen here,' protested Mrs Willerton. ‘How many men do you think leave my house every night?'

Valerie could not imagine that any did, she had to admit.

‘Was Mr Tanner,' insisted Marga. ‘Have recognised him. Am completely sure!'

‘How sure are you about the time?'

‘Quite sure, but not to the minute. Was so restless, so I always looked at clock. One time was quarter to nine. And I saw Mr Tanner maybe quarter of hour or twenty minutes later.'

‘What exactly was Mr Tanner doing?'

‘Got in car and drove off.'

‘Was he alone?'

‘Yes. Completely. Took time for car to start. I know that already. His car not OK.'

‘You didn't see him come back?'

Marga shook her head. ‘I was up late that evening. Just before twelve went to bed, but couldn't sleep. Every noise scare me.'

‘So until midnight he wasn't there?'

‘No. Always kept looking at road, but car was not there. Only next day. I got up nine o'clock. Then it was parked there.'

Valerie rubbed her fingers against her temples. She was starting to feel a painful pounding there, saying
overlooked, overlooked, overlooked
.

Nevertheless she had to ask the question which would poke at her own wound. Sergeant Reek would notice, the two women probably not.

‘So why is it that you have told this to Mrs Willerton now?'

‘I got this ball rolling,' interrupted Mrs Willerton not without pride. ‘I can't sleep in my own house, and with good reason. Anyway, today I came over to Mrs Krusinski and asked if I could sleep at her house tonight. So we started to talk about Mr Tanner and I told her that I don't know for sure whether he was at home at the time of Fiona Barnes's murder. Suddenly she looks at me and says, But I know he wasn't home! And tells her story!' Mrs Willerton took a long sip of her whisky. ‘I'll never have a lodger again, never again, I can tell you that! I gave him notice for 1st November, but if you don't arrest him today, then I'll throw him out today anyway, I swear it! Not a day longer, not a single day longer in my house!'

‘He's not at home now, I take it?' Valerie turned to Reek.

He shook his head. ‘No, he isn't – I've checked.'

‘You could have thought of that yourselves – asking the neighbours,' said Mrs Willerton in a tone of reproach. ‘Instead I have to come and solve the case!'

Valerie had a sharp reply on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it. She should not be stupid enough to get into an argument with this unsophisticated and aggressive woman who was desperate to be admired. Especially not about this, where Valerie had slipped up. Better not to make a mountain out of a molehill. She ignored the comment and said calmly to Sergeant Reek, ‘Wait here for a while, Sergeant Reek. In the car, I suggest. If Tanner appears, bring him in for questioning.'

‘All right, Inspector.'

She turned to Mrs Krusinski. ‘Thank you for your statement, Mrs Krusinski. I might have to take it all down in writing again, but I'll call you beforehand. Mrs Willerton!' She shook Mrs Willerton's hand and hurried out of the house. Outside she leant against the wall for a moment to catch her breath. Her face was burning hot. For the first time that day the fog was just what she needed.

I messed up, she thought.

She forced herself to breathe in and out deeply.

It will be all right.

7

The fog was going to lift today. You could see it already. It was still there – a thick wall of wool that swallowed everything and dampened every sound. But now and then a weak beam of light cut through it as if by accident, heralding a blue sky somewhere else, and that the fog would not stay over the bay and town for ever.

Leslie and Dave had left the cafe and were now walking along the promenade, Marine Drive. It was a wide, paved road which went round below the castle and led to the North Bay.

On the left the jagged rocks of the hill towered up. On the right the pavement ended at a wall of light coloured stone. Blocks of concrete protected the road against high tides. Behind the blocks lay the sea, but they could only just see it. It was still too foggy.

They had only wanted to go for a short stroll, but the cold air in their lungs was a delight. Even the wetness on their cheeks was seductive. They walked on and on, without a thought about their destination or when they would go back.

He had asked her what her mother had been like, and she was surprised to find herself answering freely and without hesitation.

‘She was always happy. She wore long, colourful dresses. Her hair went down to her waist, and she would braid colourful ribbons into it. She was as blond as I am, but she always dyed her hair red with henna. The henna coloured her palms too. I can only remember my mother's palms with that strange orange colour.

‘I think she was always happy because she was always stoned. She travelled from one hippy festival to the next. I can see campfires, lots of men and women I didn't know, and all of them dressed like my mother. People were always playing the guitar. Joints were always going round. I think she also tried LSD and who knows what else. She would dance with me. Around the campfires, but also at home in our living room. She loved Simon and Garfunkel's music. She would listen to
Bridge Over Troubled Water
until I was sick of it.'

Then she paused and looked at him, puzzled that she was confiding this. ‘I still can't listen to that song, Dave. Not without thinking of her and wanting to scream, mourning her. I immediately turn the radio off and leave the room when it comes on. I can't bear it.'

His face was damp with droplets of fog. ‘She was your mum. She loved you. You loved her.'

She looked past him into the grey emptiness. ‘I remember she often said I was the greatest present of her life. The greatest present ever.'

‘Your father …'

She shrugged. ‘She didn't know. My grandmother didn't know. Mum sometimes said that she
captured
me at a festival – that I was like a wonderful butterfly that flew over to her and stayed with her. Later I understood that this just meant she had been screwing around madly, not yet eighteen years old, and that she had got pregnant and no matter how much she tried, was unable to say who could be the father. I don't know, Dave. I'll never know. When I was a child and even into my early teens I made up all sorts of fathers. Brilliant men who travelled the world, which was why I never saw them. Once I said that my father worked in the White House in Washington, but no one in my class believed me. After that I was picked on. They asked if my dad was the President of the United States, and then laughed themselves silly. From then on I never spoke about my father. There's nothing to say, anyway.'

He smiled, but he still had a serious look in his eyes. ‘It can't be easy. I mean, lots of children grow up without their fathers for all sorts of reasons, but they know them or at least know who they are. They have a name and a face. A job, a background, a family they come from. But not to even know
who
your father is. Without anything to hold onto … I suppose there's no way to research it?'

‘No, how would I? She had a ball with whoever came along, mainly with men she didn't know, and she was always so spaced out that she wouldn't have recognised them five minutes after the sex. I was much too small to know where we travelled to, let alone who else was hanging around there. It was the late sixties, the early seventies. My mum was right in the thick of it.'

Cautiously he asked, ‘She took drugs, you said. That means … I can imagine she wasn't always fun, caring, gentle. People who take drugs …'

He did not say anything else but she knew what he wanted to say.

‘The crazy thing is, Dave, that when I think of her I always see and feel the wonderful moments. I see her dancing and laughing. I feel how she hugged me. I couldn't think of anything off the top of my head to spoil those impressions. But when I think back, concentrating hard … then there is something else, and it's not pretty. I see other things then … I see her sleeping in bed all day long, and I'm standing there beside her trying to wake her, because I'm so hungry. And because I'm cold. But she doesn't wake up. And again I feel the fear that I felt when I would wake up in the night and realise she wasn't there. I'm alone in my house. I search everywhere, every corner, I even creep down into the cellar … For a while we lived in London, in a dilapidated summer house in someone's garden. She could rent it for peanuts. The beams creaked all the time. The window frames rattled in the wind. There was a constant draught. You could only heat the place with a big iron stove … if someone had bought wood – if
she
had bought wood. Did she ever do that? Fiona later once told me that she was amazed I survived my childhood. It had always been ice-cold at our house, she said. The fridge was bare, and strange long-haired men would be sitting in the corner rolling cigarettes. Well, Fiona didn't visit much. She and my mum didn't get on. Mum had run away from home at sixteen, spent a year in care, came back, then ran away again before her eighteenth birthday, got pregnant and then muddled through with a number of little jobs which often didn't earn her much. She had to keep in touch with her mum, because she needed to keep asking her for money. Fiona said she had always helped out for my sake. If it weren't for me, she wouldn't have wanted to have anything more to do with her daughter. When I was eighteen Fiona told me that she had even started proceedings for custody of me. I was three at the time, and Fiona was convinced that I wasn't being brought up properly with Mum. Imagine that, Dave, she took her own daughter to court. She lost, but would later harp on about it, so that I knew how much she had fought for my well-being and how grateful I should be. And maybe I should be – grateful.' To her horror she realised tears were welling up, and she tried to fight them back.

‘In the years I lived with Fiona, visiting friends of hers would often stroke my hair and say how lucky I was to have such a grandmother, and what a blessing it was that things had turned out like this. What they meant was “what a blessing that your mother died so young”.' Now her tears were falling down her cheeks. It felt like she would lose control any moment.

‘So I was grateful. And I did what Fiona hoped for. I was a good schoolgirl. I studied medicine. I'm a successful doctor. Fiona hoped I would find a reliable husband, so I married Stephen. We had a nice flat. We earned good money. People respected us. And I felt good, because Fiona showed me she was happy with me. I was making up for what her daughter had done to her. The hippy daughter who had died from an overdose. Now at least she had a model granddaughter. But there was one thing I didn't do for her. She wanted me to see Mum for who she was: an irresponsible, careless person who couldn't cope with life. I can't do that, Dave.' She looked at him, and her voice trembled with a sob. Shit, she thought, I'm bawling like a little girl.

‘I want to keep the other pictures, Dave. The pictures where she's singing, dancing and laughing. And where she says I'm the greatest present she's ever had. She loved me. She could love. Fiona couldn't. Never did.'

She cried as if she would not ever stop. Suddenly she thought, How could this happen? What did he do to make me tell him? How did he make me cry? I've never told it to Stephen like this. I've never cried with Stephen.

She let him hold her close. Somewhere a seagull cried, muffled in the fog. She stood there with her face hidden on a stranger's shoulder and cried. She was crying for her dead grandmother, crying for her mother. Crying because she was freezing. And because she had been freezing all her life.

8

‘I'm afraid to make a mistake,' said Ena. ‘Or that I'll come to regret my decision terribly sometime. I've been alone so long, you know. And then when Stan came … But somehow … It's not working. It's not like it should be.'

They were sitting in a little cafe in the town centre. On the small round bistro table in front of them stood two empty coffee cups and two glasses of water. The cafe was full of people seeking shelter from the inclement weather and smelt of wet woollen coats. Every time someone went in or out the damp air rushed in. Ena looked worried and unhappy.

Jennifer leant forward. ‘What
mistake
are you so afraid of making?'

Ena breathed deeply. ‘Breaking it off. I'm afraid that'd be a mistake. I'm also afraid it'd be a mistake to stay. I want to do the right thing.'

‘What do you do for a living?'

‘I work for a lawyer here in Scarborough.'

‘And do you have the day off today?'

‘I took the day off. To think about things. Because … I can't concentrate. I can barely sleep at night.'

Jennifer signalled to the waitress to come over and ordered two more coffees. They would be there a while, as she had rightly guessed.

‘How long have you and Stan been together?'

Ena did not need to think. ‘Since 20th August. A Wednesday. He invited me out for a glass of wine after the course and told me that he … that he was in love with me.'

‘Did that take you by surprise?'

‘Gwen had said the whole time that he had been eyeing me up. Gwen and I had become friends by then. And from the start of August the construction firm had been working in the school. They were moving walls and enlarging rooms in almost all the buildings, so it wasn't a quick job. Stan was always there, even after all the others had gone. And he always had some flimsy excuse to do work near the room our course was in. He would look at me … yes, I had noticed that. That was something new for me. For a man to look at me, I mean.'