The Other Child (51 page)

8

As Leslie had suspected, it was not difficult to find the house in Robin Hood's Bay where Semira Newton lived. She had asked in a gift shop and the assistant had nodded immediately. ‘Of course I know Semira. She owns the little pottery shop down the road. You can't miss it.'

Leslie had walked down the steep village street. Robin Hood's Bay clung to a precipitous hillside, winding down almost to the bay. Although the village had become a tourist destination, full of gift shops and boutiques, it had retained its original charm with its low, small houses, its cobblestones and the little stream which purled down through the village towards the sea. Tiny gardens in which the last flowers of the year bloomed. Small terraces with painted tables and chairs placed close together, telling of lazy summer evenings out in the open. And the smell of salt and seaweed from the sea wafting over everything.

Leslie had quickly found the pottery. It was just above the place where the road widened and opened out onto the beach. The house was as small and crooked as most of the other village houses. It had whitewashed walls and a door of shiny black wood. Beside the door there were two windows in which Semira Newton's wares were displayed: mugs, cups, plates and bowls in glazed clay. They were thick, sometimes unsymmetrical, but certainly unique and highly original. Not one of them was colourfully decorated. Depending on the glaze used and the firing temperature, they varied in tones of brown between light beige and a dark brown, but that was the limit of their variety. Leslie, who had no love of crockery decorated with flowery motifs, liked the simplicity of these pieces.

Unfortunately, Semira Newton was not home, at least not in the shop. A note on the door read
I'll be back around four o'clock!

Leslie looked at her watch. Just before two.

Nevertheless she knocked on the door, and looked up at the upper windows in the hope that she might see a stirring there. Nothing moved behind the white curtains. Obviously Semira really was not home.

Leslie went down to the beach. There were barely any tourists at this time of year. Armed with drawing pads, a class of about twenty eight- or nine-year-olds sat on the long flat rocks at the top end of the bay. Their teacher was reading a book, while the children painted, deep in concentration, often with their tongue between their lips. The sea, the sand … Leslie glanced at a few of the drawings as she passed.

Nice to come out here for the art lesson, she thought.

Two elderly women were walking along the mudflats and collecting stones and shells. A man was leaning against the wall which supported the houses at the edge of the village nearest the bay. He looked thoughtfully into the distance. Another man was throwing a tennis ball for his dog. The dog bounded up and down the beach, barking enthusiastically. Leslie watched him for a while, then she sat on a rock and wrapped her coat more tightly around her. She was not actually all that cold, but she was still shivering. She knew why: she was afraid of the upcoming chat with Semira Newton.

Perhaps she should just drive back to Scarborough, she thought. Let sleeping dogs lie.

Perhaps it was already too late for that. The mystery would pursue her. She could leave the past alone, but would it leave her, Leslie, alone?

The beach slowly emptied of people, because the tide was coming in. The man disappeared with his dog. The class packed away their pads and pencils. The two elderly women turned to go home. When Leslie set off for the pottery at four, only the lone man was still standing at the wall. He continued to look out over the sea at a spot on the horizon which he and no one else could see.

In spite of her promise to be back by four, Semira Newton was nowhere to be seen, not by a quarter past, and not by half past four. Walking up and down in front of the house, smoking cigarettes, feeling increasingly cold and depressed, Leslie was about ready to read it as a sign: their meeting was not to be. There was no point to it; it served no purpose. Perhaps she was being given the chance to not meet Semira, and if she did not take it, one day she would wish she had.

At ten to five she decided to leave Robin Hood's Bay. Just then she saw a figure coming down the road. Instinctively she knew it was the woman she had been waiting for all afternoon. A little woman, who found it difficult to walk and used a Zimmer frame. The steep street did not make it any easier. She walked slowly. It seemed that every step required her determination and concentration. She was wearing beige trousers and a brown anorak. In other words, she was wearing the colours of the pottery she sold. Her dark skin, black hair and coal-black eyes showed her to be Indian or Pakistani.

Leslie's heart was pounding like crazy. She went towards the old lady.

‘Mrs Newton?' she asked.

The woman, who had been looking down at the street the whole time, looked up. ‘Yes?'

‘I'm Dr Cramer. Leslie Cramer. I've been waiting for you.'

‘I took longer than expected,' said Semira. It did not look like she was prepared to apologise, although she did explain her lateness. ‘I always have a massage on Thursdays, from a friend here in the village. It's important, because my frame,' by which she meant her body, ‘is so bent and crooked. Today we had a cup of tea too, and a chat, so we lost track of time.' She had reached the door to her shop. Awkwardly, she fished her key out of her anorak pocket and opened up. ‘Not often that someone comes at this time of year wanting to buy something. Busy as anything in the summer, but now … Didn't expect to find someone waiting.' She entered slowly, turning on the light. ‘Do you want to buy something, Dr Cramer?'

The sales room was very simple. Wooden shelves with the displayed pottery lined one wall. A lead box on a big table stood in the middle of the room. Probably it was her cash box. A door led to another room. Leslie assumed her studio lay behind it.

Semira moved laboriously around the table, sinking onto a chair with a sigh. She kept her Zimmer frame to hand.

‘Excuse me for sitting down at once. But walking and standing are very tiring for me. Although I should do them more often. My doctor always tells me off, but, well, he can't feel how much it hurts!' She looked at Leslie. ‘So, you'd like to buy something?'

‘Actually I've come for another reason,' said Leslie. ‘I … would like to talk to you for a little, Mrs Newton.'

Semira Newton gestured to a stool in the corner. ‘Pull it up, and sit down. I'm sorry I can't offer you anything more comfortable.'

Leslie put the stool on the other side of the table from the potter. ‘It's fine,' she said.

‘So?' asked Semira again. Her eyes were focused on her visitor. Leslie saw that they were clever, lively eyes. Semira Newton might move like an eighty-year-old, but mentally she was still agile.

She forced herself to start. ‘I'm Fiona Barnes's granddaughter,' she said. ‘Her maiden name was Fiona Swales.' She waited for a reaction, but none came. Semira remained impassive.

‘You know my grandmother, don't you?' asked Leslie.

‘I met her a few times, yes. But that's an eternity ago.'

‘She was … murdered last Saturday night,' said Leslie. She had trouble saying this. It sounded so odd.

‘I read about it in the paper,' replied Semira. ‘Do they know yet who did it? And why?'

‘No. The police are still in the dark. At least that's what I gather. They haven't suggested in any way that they have a hot lead.'

‘I read recently that many crimes remain unsolved,' said Semira casually, as if just in passing. Leslie could see the woman was withdrawn. It was not going to be an easy conversation.

‘Yes, that's true,' she agreed. Then she looked earnestly at Semira. ‘You can imagine why I'm here, can't you?'

‘Tell me.'

‘I never knew everything about my grandmother's life. Some things I only heard about by chance after her death. There are names I hadn't heard before, like Brian Somerville, for example.'

Semira froze. Not a single muscle in her face moved.

Leslie persisted. ‘You know who I'm talking about, don't you?'

‘Yes. And you do too. What do you want from me?'

‘From a letter which my grandmother wrote to Chad Beckett a few weeks before her death, I gather that there was a scandal in 1970 around Brian Somerville. She wrote that there was a real storm in the press. She wrote about police investigations … and about you. I take it you set things off.'

Semira smiled wanly. She did not look tense; tired instead. Like a person who has to deal with a topic which has been part of her life for decades, and which she barely has the energy for now.

‘Yes,' she said slowly. ‘I did set it all off. I told the police and the press. At least, that was after I narrowly escaped death and could do something.'

‘You told the police and press because you … found Brian Somerville?'

‘It was a December day,' recounted Semira, her voice remaining monotonous and her face immobile. ‘December 19th, to be precise, in 1970. A Saturday. Bitterly cold. Snow was forecast. My husband and I lived in Ravenscar back then. My husband was the cook in an old people's home. I was unemployed. I had been a social worker in London, but we moved to the north because my husband had finally been offered a job here after a long time out of work. I was also hoping to find work at some point, but back then in a rural area like this one … I didn't have the best of chances as a Pakistani. There were still lots of prejudices. Not that I was unhappy. John -my husband – and I loved each other. We were hoping to have a baby.' She paused, and seemed to be remembering the time for a moment.

‘Anyway, at the beginning of December the children of one of John's fellow workers told me something,' she continued. ‘They had been wandering around the countryside and had ended up near Gordon McBright's farm. And, by the way, all the parents had strictly forbidden their children to go near it. Barely anyone ever saw McBright, but there were any number of rumours about him. Apparently he was unpredictable, brutal and dangerous. Some saw him as the devil incarnate.'

‘Gordon McBright …'

Semira Newton looked past her visitor and out of the window. The October day was turning to twilight. ‘It exists,' she said. ‘Evil. More unimaginable, merciless and sly than most of us ever guess. In any case, I was then twenty-eight, and although I had certainly not only seen the sunny side of life in my time as a social worker in London, I didn't then know
real evil.'

She was skirting around the topic, Leslie could see that. She found it difficult to return to that December day almost forty years ago.

‘Do you know what I read a few months ago?' asked Semira. ‘I read how a lot of people get rid of their dogs in Spain. They hang them up on trees. But not in a way that lets them die quickly. They hang them up so that the claws on their hind legs just scrape the ground. That delays death. The dogs struggle for hours before dying.'

Leslie swallowed.

‘And do you know what they call it?' asked Semira. ‘The Spanish?'

‘No,' said Leslie. Her
No
was a barely intelligible croak. She cleared her throat.

‘No,' she repeated.

‘They call it
playing the piano,'
said Semira. ‘Because in their desperate attempts to keep the tips of their paws on the ground, to avoid the slow strangulation, the dogs pitter-patter from side to side. Just like the movements of a pianist's fingers on the keys.'

Leslie did not say a word. She was horrified.

‘Yes,' continued Semira. ‘That was what shook me. Not that fact that they do it. But the name they gave to the cruel show. Maybe we feel the full power of evil most when we aren't faced with simple brutality, but when the brutality is accompanied by cynicism. Because then we see that the rational faculties are involved. And isn't it unbearable to know that
rational
people do things like that?'

‘Yes, it is,' said Leslie.

‘But that's not why you came, to chat with me about the evil in the world,' said Semira. ‘You came about my particular story, about which I've thought so much over the years. About Gordon McBright, and Brian Somerville.'

‘And my grandmother?'

Semira laughed. ‘Oh, you want to know if I murdered your grandmother last Saturday night? You want to know if I have a motive? Yes, Dr Cramer, I did. But I'm going to have to disappoint you. If I had wanted to kill Fiona Barnes, I wouldn't have done it a couple of days ago, sparing her the troubles, hardships and loneliness of old age. Why would I have been that nice? And also – look at me. I read that your grandmother was beaten to death and thrown into some kind of gorge by a meadow. In the middle of the night. Do you think I could have done all that? Stuck as I am in this wreck of a body?'

Leslie shook her head. ‘Hard to imagine.'

‘Impossible. I'd have trouble killing myself. Someone else? No. I'm afraid not.'

‘I didn't want to suggest that you—'

‘No, I know you didn't, my dear. You just want to understand a few things, I understand. You know, I always hated your grandmother. And Chad Beckett. The innocent couple – they made things easy for themselves. They would do anything to save their own skin. At the end of the day, my messed up life has a lot to do with their selfishness, cowardice and egotism. I can tell you about it, Dr Cramer, if you like. I can tell you how Gordon McBright beat me so badly I became an incurable cripple. I can tell you everything he did to me, and it won't be like anything you've experienced in your life, Leslie. I don't imagine life is easy for someone whose grandmother is Fiona Barnes, but it's nothing compared to my suffering. You can bet your life on it.'

‘I'd like to hear about it,' said Leslie.

9

‘But why did you do that?' asked Colin.

He stood with his back to the little window of the garret they had always stayed in during their holidays on the Beckett farm. And although he was not a particularly wide-shouldered man, he covered almost all the pane and blocked out the late afternoon light.