The Other Child (24 page)

Valerie slapped her hand on the steering wheel. Poking around in the fog, that was what she was doing. Desperate guessing, stumbling around in the dark, hypotheses, and dismissing them again. No clues, nothing.

Go through it all again with a fine-tooth comb, she told herself. Try not to miss anything. Why was Tanner the chief suspect?

Not only because he was the only one to have a motive – even if not a particularly convincing one – to attack Fiona Barnes, but also because he was the only one who could be connected to the Amy Mills case, however tenuous the connection might be. Was there anyone else? Someone else who had known Mills?

She had now turned onto the road leading to Staintondale. Banks of fog lay on the ground like giant cushions. Tall wet blades of grass bent down towards the damp tarmac. Valerie took her bearings from the fog banks, in order to follow the course of the road.

Gwen Beckett. She had attended the Friarage School course. Linda Gardner had taught there. Amy Mills had worked for Gardner.

In any case, it was a connection. Even if it led to absurd conclusions. She could not imagine Gwen Beckett as a cold-blooded double murderer. Nor was there any apparent motive in Amy Mills's case. As for Fiona – she had messed up the engagement party, was that reason enough?

Valerie's instinct told her: No!

Amy Mills. She let the facts of the murdered young lady's life pass through her mind and suddenly sat bolt upright. How could she have missed that … Amy Mills was from Leeds. Had gone to school there. Jennifer Brankley had taught in Leeds … It was a faint possibility, but still …

Using her car's hands-free radio, she immediately called Sergeant Reek.

‘Reek, please find out which school Amy Mills went to in Leeds. And which school Jennifer Brankley taught in – also in Leeds. There could be more than one school in each case. Check if there was any overlap and if the two knew each other.'

‘I'll do that. But according to her statement, Mrs Brankley had never heard Amy Mills's name.'

‘Statements can be true or false, Reek. It's up to us to find out which.'

‘OK,' said Reek.

Valerie finished the call. Her heart was beating faster as she drove on. Excitement. The thrill of the chase. Whatever it was, it was a feeling she had been desperately waiting for. Finally a step forward, finally a lead. It could be a hot one.

Just in time she saw the little lane leading to the farm where Paula Foster lived. She yanked the steering wheel round and turned up the lane. She had to concentrate on the young woman now, had to eliminate the possibility that she was the intended victim, otherwise she would still be in danger. Even if she had already crossed off this alternative in her own mind.

3

‘Really, Dave. Nothing, absolutely
nothing
that Fiona said the other evening has changed what I feel for you. I'm still … I still love you. I believe in a future with you.' Gwen looked at him unflinchingly. She was sitting on a chair in his room, dressed as usual in a long woollen skirt and a jumper she herself had knitted in an indefinite colour. She was carrying a large bag. It had been quite a journey, by foot, then by bus, and then from the bus stop again by foot. The humidity outside had turned her hair into something that looked like candy floss and stuck out frizzily in all directions. Her dark eyes were like two pieces of coal in her very pale face. A little blusher might have helped to improve her general appearance, a dab of lipstick …

She would never learn how to make herself more attractive, thought Dave, looking at her. He was sitting on his bed and had just managed to slide Karen's scrunched up tights under the bed frame. Thank God Gwen had not seen them. She was so preoccupied with what she had to say, with convincing him, that he had even managed to make Karen's lipstick disappear discreetly as he moved around the room and made the tea. Gwen had not said she was coming. Suddenly there she was at the front door: a delicate creature appearing out of the fog. The landlady was not at home, which was why Dave himself had opened the door. At least he was dressed. That in itself was a miracle, for when he had woken up late that morning one glance out the window had been enough to convince him that it would be better to spend the day in bed. After all, he only had to teach in the school that evening. In the end a strange inner restlessness had got him up. It had taken him a while to work out that it was not at all unnatural for him to feel unsettled in his situation. He had no idea what would happen next. Above all, he had no idea what serious consequences the investigations into Fiona Barnes's death could have for him.

Of course he was the number one suspect, and he recognised that the short conversation the day before with DI Almond would not have changed that. They could not prove anything against him, but he was under suspicion. If they found no other leads, he would be firmly in their sights. The noose would tighten around his neck. He was a man without a great reputation, a man who lived in unusual conditions, and this would not help. The whole affair could prove tricky, he was well aware of it.

To hell with Fiona Barnes, he had thought, drinking a strong cup of coffee to warm up. It was a cold day, but as usual his landlady was being stingy with the heating.

To hell with all that. Sod Gwen and her clan. It brought you bad luck, the Beckett farm and everything around it. Find another way to go
.

Easier said than done. He could not see another way. He had not seen one for years. It was unlikely that one would suddenly appear in front of him now. When the doorbell rang, at first he had expected to see the police officer in front of him once again, ready to fire questions at him. He had briefly considered not opening the door at all, pretending that no one was at home. But then he had given himself a kick up the backside. It was better to face the situation. Better to know what they had against him than for him to close his eyes to it.

It was not Almond at all but Gwen. Now she had been sitting in his room for a quarter of an hour talking at him. She had got so cold and wet that the first thing he had done was to make her a hot cup of tea. At least she did not nag him about the mess, as Karen always had. Gwen had only been to his place twice and had never said anything about its calamitous disorder. Nevertheless he had never liked to have her there. His room was a den, a place to retreat to, away from Gwen. He needed some space without her, a place that was taboo for her.

Suddenly the thought crossed his mind that he would perhaps even have preferred receiving DI Almond into his room. Not his fiancée. That is, if they were actually engaged. After all, the party had ended rather abruptly. Maybe she was more like his almost-fiancée. Even that felt a little threatening to him.

‘It's all right,' he said soothingly, realising that Gwen had stopped talking and was looking at him expectantly. ‘Really, Gwen, I don't hold it against you. It's not your fault Fiona said all that.'

‘In all honesty, I'm not all that sad she's dead,' admitted Gwen suddenly with a violence unlike her usual self. ‘I know it's a sin and that you shouldn't think such a thing, but she went too far this time. She always meant well, but sometimes … I mean, you can't meddle in everything, can you? Just because my father and she once …' She did not finish her sentence.

Dave guessed what she had wanted to say. In any case, he had thought along those lines already himself. ‘There was something between the two of them at one point, was there?' he asked. ‘I don't think that's a surprise to anyone. You feel it somehow.'

‘If only it were just that,' said Gwen. The disturbed look in her eyes did not escape him. ‘My father and Fiona were … they …'

‘What?' asked Dave, as she hesitated.

‘It's a long time ago,' said Gwen quietly. ‘Maybe those things are irrelevant now.'

Normally he would not have been interested in the lives of Chad Beckett and Fiona Barnes, for both of whom he harboured an equally strong dislike, but in view of the current situation, particularly his own situation, he should not ignore any such comments.

So he leant forward a little. ‘Perhaps it is relevant, who knows. After all, Fiona was killed pretty brutally.'

Not a little astonished, she looked at him as if he had just confronted her with some new monstrosity, rather than an incident being discussed in all the streets and alleys of Scarborough. ‘But … that doesn't have anything to do with her and my father,' she said. ‘Or with what they shared. The murderer is probably the same person who killed Amy Mills, and there's no connection between her and them.'

‘How do you know? That it was the same murderer, I mean?'

‘That's what I understood from Detective Inspector Almond,' replied Gwen, now unsure.

Almond had thrust a photo of Amy Mills in front of his face too. He knew that there had been considerations along the lines that the cases might be connected, but he had been under the impression that although the officer had some clues which suggested a link, there was not a shred of evidence.

‘Could be,' he said. ‘But needn't be. Gwen, if you know anything that could help the police, then you should—'

‘Dave, I … perhaps we shouldn't talk about it any more.' She had tears in her eyes.

So why start at all then, he thought angrily, if you don't want to talk about it.

‘You do know that I'm one of the police's main suspects, don't you?' he asked.

She must have known, but it seemed to shock her, hearing it bluntly from him like that.

‘But—' she began.

He interrupted her. ‘Of course I didn't do it. I don't have either Amy Mills or old Barnes on my conscience. Amy Mills I didn't know, and Fiona Barnes … Good Lord, just because she's said some vicious things about me, I'm not going to go and smash her head in with a rock. I was mightily peeved on Saturday night, but I don't take an eighty-year-old woman seriously enough to murder her for some out-of-order insinuations.'

‘They won't really believe that you did it, and if you haven't done anything, then you've nothing to fear,' she said in such a tone of voice that revealed her utter trust in police investigational procedures.

Only a few years previously Dave had thought of all policemen only as ‘pigs', and he was not ready to share her faith in them. Things were clear to him: DI Valerie Almond wanted to work her way up the career ladder – of course, that was what everyone wanted. So she needed to solve the ‘Dales Deaths' as a paper had already called the two crimes. To do so, a culprit needed to be convicted. The longer she stumbled around in the dark, the more stubbornly she would cling to the few tenuous clues she had, and unfortunately that meant him. Thanks to the fact that Barnes had torn him off a strip in front of a whole host of witnesses, he was now in the firing line. Of course he still had an ace up his sleeve, and he would play it if need be, but only if he had no other choice.

‘Gwen, you know—' he started before stopping, seeing the naivety and blind submission in her face. He had wanted to explain to her about people who are wrongly accused and imprisoned, about ambitious policemen and corrupt judges, about the press's power to put officers under pressure and push them in false directions, about the shenanigans of high level politics, how an important citizen might be sacrificed to the needs of an ambitious careerist. He would never have assumed that as long as you did not commit the crime, you would never be punished for it. He had never believed in the justice system. He had always considered it to be cynical and open to bribery, and this conviction had caused the irrevocable split with his father – a total servant of the
system
– twenty years ago. He had not had the slightest contact with his family since then.

He could have explained to Gwen that this was the reason for the life he had now, which others might see as a failure, and which he himself often enough saw as a failure – and that was the depressing nub of the problem for him. He was unable to make any kind of peace with his country, his state or any of the whole political and social structure. He would be unable to become part of the society of Great Britain as long as he rejected and scorned it. He could have talked to his fiancée about the predicament which had crystallised for him with the passing of the years. His predicament was that he recognised, in spite of everything, that he too was a part of the system and had to come to terms with it. He did not have the strength to reject it for ever and in every way. Yet at the same time he felt that he was a traitor to his convictions and to his own nature.

He would have liked the woman he planned to marry to be someone to whom he could open up and share his internal contradictions, but he knew that Gwen would not be able to follow him. Her life was the farm, her wonderful dad, her romance novels, cheesy television dramas and her waiting and hoping for a miracle. He did not think she was stupid. But her life had happened in its own particular space. Unlike most people nowadays, it had been marked all too strongly by seclusion, ignorance of the ways of the world, and shyness. He had told her about his youthful protests against the stationing of cruise missiles and she had stared at him as if he were talking about little green men from space. He had started a long and excited speech in which he had given vent to his unhappiness with the Thatcher years and how much that era had determined his later way of life against the system. She had listened with a despairing look on her face. He knew this was not because she had a different political opinion. He could have lived with that and found the intellectual friction in their differences interesting. The problem was that she had
absolutely no
political opinion. She was completely indifferent as to whether Labour or the Tories were in power. Indeed, neither party was going to change her personal situation one iota. That was probably true of many people, but they did not then simply ignore everything unrelated to their immediate environment. It was unusual to do that. It was disastrous that Gwen could obviously not do anything else.