The Other Child (63 page)

‘He shouldn't have lied so much. He just made everything worse.'

Valerie Almond's eyes narrowed. ‘A good number of people shouldn't have lied so much. Omitting to mention important facts is also considered a lie. At least in a murder investigation.'

Leslie knew at once what she meant. ‘But what happened to Brian Somerville wasn't Gwen's motive, Inspector,' she said. ‘The little boy who became a helpless man – he hadn't touched her heart at all. She just saw it as her chance to give in to her hate and throw people off the right scent.'

‘I should still have been told,' Valerie had said. ‘Your silence could even have legal consequences for you, Dr Cramer. The same goes for the Brankleys, of course. Maybe even for Dave Tanner.'

Leslie had just shrugged.

Now she tried to shake off the threat in DI Almond's words and to remember Semira Newton's directions.

Cross the river, left at St Hilda's Catholic Church. The station on the right. Follow the signs to the home.

She reached the port. That was in Semira's directions. She breathed more easily. At least she had not gone the wrong way.

‘Right opposite the home you'll find a big car park,' Semira had said. ‘You have to get a ticket, but at least you don't have far to walk.'

She saw the car park and turned in. It was busy, but there were still spaces. She parked and got out.

When had the wind turned so cold? It must have been overnight. She shivered, pulled her coat tighter round her body and looked around.

She thought the area might look nicer on a day that was not as cloudy and grey. The view of the port facilities was ugly and depressing: the big black cranes, the long warehouses and the ships on the dull grey waves. And above it all the constant presence of the seagulls with their piercing cries.

She turned away. So this was where Brian Somerville would die. With the view of this port every day. Did he like it? Did he look at the ships? Did the cranes fascinate him? Perhaps, she thought, he sees the movement and life of it all.

She hoped so. The bleakness of the grey day weighed on her. Across from the port rose the hill where the abbey stood, but you could not see the impressive building from here. A row of houses ran down the road below her. The Captain Cook Memorial Museum. A hairdresser. A teashop. An Italian restaurant. A pub.

The nearby red-brick building must be the home.

Leslie gulped. She went over to the ticket machine, got a ticket and put it carefully behind her car's windscreen. Her movements were slower, so much slower, than usual. She knew why. She was dragging out the moment before she visited the home.

She would meet a very old man who, if you believed Fiona's writings and Semira's words, had the mental age of a child. She found it hard to imagine him. Would he be playing with building blocks? Would he just be staring apathetically in front of him? Or would there even be days – beautiful, sunny, special days – when a nurse would take his arm and accompany him on a walk, maybe even inviting him to a cuppa and a piece of cake in the teashop?

She breathed in deeply and crossed the road.

When she stepped outside less than an hour later, she saw Stephen. He was leaning against her car with his hands buried deep in the pockets of his coat. His shoulders were hunched up against the cold. He looked out over the harbour. Nothing had changed in the time she had been inside. Not the cold wind, and not the almost aggressively bleak day.

Stephen turned around when he heard her steps approaching. He looked completely frozen.

‘What are you doing here?' she asked by way of a greeting.

He made a vague gesture. ‘I thought … you might not want to be alone.'

‘How did you know I was here?'

‘You suddenly disappeared. I just guessed. You said that Brian Somerville lives in a care home in Whitby, and using Directory Enquiries the rest was easy. There are only two possible homes in Whitby. I was just lucky on my first try. I saw your car parked here and … well, I decided to wait for you.'

She smiled wanly. ‘Thank you,' she said quietly.

He was looking at her attentively. ‘Everything OK?'

‘Yes. Yes, I'm OK.' She looked past him and fixed her gaze on the top of a crane. Its dark metal stood out against the clouds in the sky. A seagull sat up there and looked down with concentration at the water far below. Somewhere in the distance a ship sounded its horn.

‘He's still waiting,' said Leslie. Her voice sounded strange, and she knew it was because she was struggling to remain calm. ‘He's still waiting, Stephen, and he's convinced she's going to come. He's been looking forward to her visit since February 1943. This old man asked after her and I … I couldn't bring myself to tell him …' She had to stop.

‘You couldn't tell him that she's dead,' Stephen finished her sentence. ‘You couldn't tell him that she'll never come.'

‘No. I couldn't. All he has is his hope. It's carried him through his whole terrible, horrific life. It will be with him until he dies, and perhaps … the most merciful thing we can do for him is not take it away.'

‘Thank God,' said Stephen. ‘Thank God, that was what you decided.'

‘How about walking a bit?' asked Leslie. ‘It's so cold.'

They left the car park, strolled down the road and went up the little cobbled alleyways, which criss-crossed the harbour town like a spider's web. Souvenir shops, pubs, all kinds of small shops with nautical equipment. Stephen had taken Leslie's arm. She let him.

‘Gwen used his story,' said Leslie. ‘I just can't believe how coldly calculating that was. It's as if now at the very end of his life he's been taken advantage of once more. Just to quench the hate and thirst for revenge of a woman who felt hard done by – and a failure. How could she do that?'

‘How could Gwen do any of it?' asked Stephen. ‘Kill Fiona, kill Chad, then try to kill Dave Tanner. You too. She lost control completely. Our Gwen! The nice young lady with a friendly face. Hard to grasp …'

‘We didn't really know her, Stephen. We just saw her façade. And if we're honest, none of us really made an effort to see behind it. Perhaps just Jennifer Brankley. But she obviously couldn't see how dangerous things were getting.'

‘Only someone trained in those things could have,' said Stephen. ‘It was too much for us.'

‘Still. I wonder how I could have been so blind,' said Leslie. ‘It was all so clear that night in her father's study. When she talked to me. In that strange monotone, with no expression in her eyes. She's a person with no empathy whatsoever. Without the slightest feeling for anyone else. That can't just have been for one night!'

‘Probably not. But she hid it perfectly. She was our gentle, good-natured, friendly Gwen. And she was a person full of hate who was out to kill. She was both people. Hard to grasp, but true. And whether or not we understand it – we have to accept it.'

Their walk had taken them to the quay. They could look out towards the open sea. Below them quiet waters lapped on a small strip of sand. Leslie took her arm out of Stephen's and leant against the railing. In the distance the water and sky merged. She found this sight soothing, although she could not have said why. Perhaps it was just a more beautiful sight than the cranes and the steel warehouses.

‘I think that the whole affair with Brian Somerville has been like a poison acting on the Beckett family,' Leslie said. ‘And on mine. A crime which is so thoroughly suppressed, a guilt which isn't worked through, doesn't just trickle away because you don't talk about it. You can see how powerful it was by the fact that it stopped Chad and Fiona getting together. And caused them to choose the wrong partners. And so the poison also acted on their children and grandchildren, who all lived with that jarring situation of having two people whose path to each other was blocked, and yet who weren't free for others. Fiona kept some kind of ownership on Chad's life, and we all suffered as a result. Chad's wife got cancer so young. My mother ended up a drug addict. I had to be brought up by my grandparents. And Gwen … well, Gwen most of all. With her father closed in on himself. And Fiona meddling. For decades on the farm she had to put up with the woman who she, at first intuitively and then quite consciously, blamed for her mother's death. That can make a person sick …'

‘Yes,' said Stephen. ‘Probably. But … we can't change things now. We have to find our own way forwards.'

‘What'll become of the farm?'

‘It'll be sold, I bet. Chad's dead, Gwen will be behind bars for a long time, if not for ever.'

Leslie looked at him. ‘If no one had stuck their nose in, then Gwen and Dave might have married. Dave would have made something gorgeous out of the farm. And Gwen might have made her peace with life. If—'

‘Leslie,' Stephen interrupted her gently. ‘She's sick. She's been sick a long time. Her life has been heading towards tragedy for years. Something bad would have happened in any case. Nobody and nothing could have stopped it. I'm sure.'

She knew he was right. And realising it, the tension which she had taken to Whitby with her suddenly evaporated. Suddenly she felt very tired. Her eyes hurt. It was not just the lack of sleep last night. She was tired of everything which had happened during the past week. And during the most recent years of her life. When everything changed.

As if he could guess where her thoughts were heading, Stephen asked suddenly in a quiet voice, ‘And us? What's to become of us?'

She had been fearing that question since she had seen him beside her car. And yet she was relieved that he was there. He knew her. He had guessed that she would look for Brian Somerville, and he had known that she would not feel good afterwards. That was how he was and, she hoped, always would be: a friend who knew how she felt. A friend who took her in his arms and gave her his shoulder to cry on. A friend who talked to her when she needed it, and was silent with her when she could only make herself understood without words.

But not more than that. Not more than a friend.

She looked at him, and he saw in her eyes what she was thinking. She knew because of the grief that flooded his face.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I thought so. No, I knew it. I just … had a spark of hope.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Leslie.

For a while neither of them knew what to say, then Stephen broke the silence. ‘Come on,' he suggested. ‘Let's go and find a hot cup of tea. If we stand around too long we'll catch a cold.'

‘There's a teashop just beside the home,' said Leslie. Then she was suddenly overwhelmed by an urge to go back to the home where Brian Somerville was numbly approaching his death, having to look at the port day after day. To the home where he was waiting for a woman who had promised him sixty-five years ago that she would come back and look after him. Anger and despair mingled in her at the thought that she would never escape everything that had happened. That from now on, it would always be part of her life.

‘I don't know how to deal with it, Stephen,' she said, and immediately knew that what she said was an understatement. She did not even have the faintest glimmer of an idea how she was to work through what she had experienced over the last few days.

‘She was my gran. But she's a demon to me. Maybe I'll come to understand some things, but there's one thing I'll never get: why didn't she visit him, just once? In the course of all those years. Semira Newton kept asking her to. Why didn't she? Why wasn't she capable of even that little display of humanity?'

Stephen hesitated. He only knew one answer. It would not satisfy Leslie and not absolve Fiona of guilt, but it seemed to be the only true answer. ‘Because no one likes to face up to their guilt,' he said.

They went back to the car park slowly. They stood in front of the teashop. No one was inside except for a bored-looking woman who was drying a few cups behind the counter.

‘And what should I do now?' asked Leslie. Stephen understood that she was talking about her grandmother. It took him a moment to dare to say what he thought.

‘Forgive,' he said. ‘In the end that's the only thing to do. In every case. Forgive her. Try. For your own sake.'

‘Yes,' said Leslie, ‘I can try.'

She looked out over the port.

She felt the wind. It stung her cheeks as it dried her tears.

She had not realised she had been crying.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Charlotte Link

Translation copyright © 2012 by Stephan Tobler

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