The Other Child (5 page)

On the spur of the moment he abandoned the plan to drive to Scarborough with her. It would be too embarrassing if they met anyone who knew him. Some country pub or other would be better … He wracked his brains but could not think of one – and it had to be cheap. As always he was completely broke.

She smiled. ‘Dave!'

He walked up to her, forced himself to envelope her in his arms and give her a peck on the cheek. Luckily she was so naive that until now she seemed not to have missed frantic petting or even sex. He knew that her favourite books were cheaply produced little romances and suspected that his reserve corresponded pretty much exactly to the romantic image she had already created in her head of her future husband. Sometimes he found her almost touching. And then he would ask himself again if it was all worth it.

‘Do you want to say hi to Dad before we go?' she asked.

He pulled a face. ‘I'd prefer not to. He never hides the fact that he doesn't really like me.'

Gwen did not try to deny this. ‘You have to try to understand him, Dave. He's an old man, and it's all just going a little too fast for him. Whenever he gets taken by surprise by something, he closes himself off even more. It's always been like that.'

They climbed into Dave's rickety old car, which as usual played up a bit before starting. He asked himself yet again how long the rust bucket would keep going.

‘Where are we off to?' asked Gwen as they drove down the drive and out. The large brown gate hung crooked on its hinges. For years it had not closed, but no one had repaired it. On the whole of the Beckett farm, which had been handed down from generation to generation of the family, it seemed as though no one repaired anything any more, either out of inability or a lack of money.

‘Let me surprise you,' replied Dave mysteriously, although he himself still had no idea and hoped something would turn up spontaneously.

Gwen leant back, then sat bolt upright in her seat again. ‘Today that policewoman was on the telly. Detective Inspector What's-Her-Name. The one who's investigating the Amy Mills case. You know, that girl …'

It was almost three months since the horribly mutilated corpse of the twenty-one-year-old student had been found in the Esplanade Gardens in Scarborough, and people around here still talked about it almost every day. Nothing like that had happened here for a long time. The victim had been grabbed by the shoulders and her head smashed repeatedly against a stone wall. Leaked forensic details had left the public shocked. The culprit had repeatedly paused in order to let his victim become conscious once more, before then redoubling his violence. Amy Mills had suffered for at least twenty minutes, regaining consciousness again and again, before she finally died.

‘Of course I know who Amy Mills is,' said Dave, ‘but I haven't seen the news today. Has there been a development?'

‘There was a press conference. There's a lot of pressure on the investigators, so they had to talk to the public again. But at the end of the day it looks like they don't have anything. Not a trace, not a clue. Nothing.'

‘Must have been a real crazy, the guy who did it,' said Dave.

Gwen shrugged, with a shiver. ‘At least she wasn't raped. She didn't have to endure that too. But that also means the police are completely in the dark about a possible motive.'

‘I'll say one thing though: it wasn't too clever to walk through that empty place on her own at night,' said Dave. ‘The Esplanade Gardens – what a godforsaken place that late at night!'

‘It can't have been about money,' stated Gwen. ‘Or jewellery. Her purse was still in her handbag, and she was still wearing her watch and two rings. It's almost as if … as if she died for nothing.'

‘Do you think it would have felt any different to her if he had smashed her head in for a thousand pounds?' asked Dave rather sharply. Seeing her shocked face he added soothingly, ‘Sorry, I didn't mean to say that. Either way it's not a pretty thought that there's a madman running around in Scarborough and apparently killing women without any reason. But who knows? Maybe it was motivated by jealousy or something like that. A ditched boyfriend who couldn't deal with his anger … Some people lose it when they are rejected.'

‘But if there had been an ex-boyfriend who could have done something like that, then the police would know about him,' replied Gwen.

They were driving through the dark October evening. The Yorkshire Moors began here. Under the pale light of the moon the landscape was hilly and bare. Wooden fences alternated with stone walls. Now and then the shape of a cow or sheep loomed out of the night. It was late for an evening meal, but Dave had had to give a Spanish lesson and had only managed to leave Scarborough after eight.

At least he finally had an idea where they could go: a simple pub not far from Whitby. Not exactly romantic, but cheap and certainly not a place where the people whose opinion mattered to him would go. He had already realised that Gwen never complained – she made no demands at all. He could have promised her a candlelit dinner and then taken her to Kentucky Fried Chicken. She would have accepted without a word. The only man in her life until now had been her father. Although she was devoted to her father, feeling love, loyalty and a need to care for him, she had no illusions – as Dave had found out – about their lives. Their monotonous existence, without any hope of a change, on an isolated and dilapidated farm in Staintondale was neither healthy nor fulfilling. She knew that and was thankful that Dave had turned up so unexpectedly in her life. Day and night she was tormented by the fear that she might lose him again. She made every effort not to annoy him with complaints, demands or even by quarrelling.

I'm a scoundrel, he thought, a real scoundrel. But at least I'm making her happy for now.

And he wouldn't hurt her. He would see the matter through. He had decided to do it, and there was no alternative.

Gwen Beckett was his last chance.

And I'm her last chance, he thought, and he only suppressed the dawning panic with difficulty. He would spend the rest of his life with this ageing girl at his side. That could be another forty or fifty years.

He often thought about her. She had told him some things about her life. Other things he had worked out for himself. Her father had always been very indulgent with her. She interpreted this behaviour as displays of his love, although Dave sometimes thought that it could also be an expression of his indifference. When she was sixteen she had left school, because it ‘wasn't fun any more' as she said. Not even then did Daddy object. Gwen had never trained for a skilled job, but had considered that keeping house for her widowed father was her life's task. She contributed to the family kitty by turning two rooms in the farmhouse into B&B bedrooms. The little business pottered along without any real success, which was no surprise to Dave. The worn old house desperately needed renovation if it were to attract people who wanted to spend their free time on the North Yorkshire coast. After a number of decades, the region was again becoming popular as a holiday destination. However, people today wanted a decent bathroom, a shower with a boiler whose hot water had not run out after a few minutes, pretty and clean crockery for breakfast and a place which looked reasonably attractive as they rolled up for what would be the most expensive weeks of their year. Overgrown with weeds and decorated with muddy potholes, the Becketts' farmyard hardly invited people to stick around. Indeed, apparently there was only one couple who came back regularly to spend their holidays here. The main reason, as Gwen had admitted, was that they had two Great Danes which no one else allowed them to bring.

Who is this Gwen Beckett, he asked himself many times each day, much too often.

She was very shy, but he had the impression that this resulted largely from the fact that she led such a retiring life and had forgotten how to deal with other people. She spoke warmly and respectfully about her father, and sometimes she gave the impression that she could imagine nothing more wonderful than to spend time with him, letting her best years pass her by in the isolation of Staintondale. Yet then he had to remember her words from that July evening, when they had met: ‘It's not as if I was particularly happy with my life.'

Off her own bat she had found a course that aimed to give people like her self-confidence and a winning appearance. She had registered and driven every week for three whole months to Scarborough, to not miss a single hour. She had done exactly what the agony aunts in women's magazines suggest to readers with the same problems as Gwen: do something! Go beyond your comfort zone! Meet other people!

Gwen must really have the feeling, thought Dave, that in the blink of an eye she had been as successful as they promised. Sometimes she herself seemed barely able to believe it. She had gathered her courage and driven to the Friarage School, and on her very first day there she had met the man whom she was now going to marry and spend the rest of her life with.

She was happy. And yet he also sensed her fear – the fear that something could still go wrong, that the dream could still burst like a bubble, that everything looked too beautiful to be true …

And when he thought of that, he felt rotten. Because he knew that her fear was justified.

As if she could guess that he was going over and over the relationship in his head and that his thoughts were not all completely happy ones, she asked out of the blue: ‘The engagement is still on for Saturday?' She sounded apprehensive.

Dave managed to ease her worries with a smile. ‘Of course, why ever not? Unless your father suddenly boycotts the whole event and doesn't let us leave the house. But then we can still find a restaurant.'

Please, not that! A friend, of Gwen's was coming from London, then the married couple with their two Great Danes who happened to be holidaying on the Beckett Farm right then, and Fiona Barnes, the old family friend. He could not quite see how she fitted in with the Becketts. Seven people! He had almost no money left. He would not be able to afford a visit to a restaurant. If old Mr Beckett caused a ruckus, he would be in a real jam.

He tried to not let his worries show. ‘Nothing will wreck our engagement,' he reassured her.

Gwen reached a hand out to him, and he took it in his. It was ice-cold to the touch. He turned it over, drew it to his lips and breathed warm air onto her palm.

‘Trust me,' he said. Those words always worked well, he knew that. They worked particularly well with women like Gwen, not that he had ever met such an extreme example of this kind of woman before. ‘I'm not playing with you.'

No, it was not a game. It certainly was not.

She smiled. ‘I know, Dave. I can feel it.'

Not true, he thought. You are afraid, but you know that you cannot give in to your fear. We have to go through with it. Both of us get something out of it. Each in our own way.

It had now grown completely dark around them. They drove on into the lonely night and Dave felt like he was driving through a black tunnel. His throat tightened. He would feel better after the first whisky, he knew that; after the second even better, and he did not care whether or not he would still be fit to drive by then.

Just as long as these thoughts stopped hammering so hard in his head. Just as long as his future started to feel more bearable.

Friday, 10th October

1

Jennifer Brankley was reminded of her school days – not so much of the years when she dressed in a blazer, pleated blue skirt and wore a big brown satchel on her back, but rather the years when she herself taught. Every morning she would arrive at school ready for action and looking forward to the day that lay ahead of her. It felt as if it were decades ago; sometimes it felt as if it were a memory of another life. And yet only a few years separated her from that time which she privately called ‘the best time of my life'. A few years … and now nothing was like it had been once.

She had leant the plastic bags with the shopping – mainly dog food for her Great Danes, Wotan and Cal – against a tree just behind the high black wrought-iron fence which surrounded the Friarage Community Primary School. It was a large complex, with a number of one- or two-storey red-brick buildings. All with blue blinds in the windows. Up to the left behind the school rose the hill on which the castle stood. In front of that was St Mary's Church, widely known because Anne Brontë is buried in its churchyard. The castle and church seemed to protect the town, the school, the children.

A pretty place, thought Jennifer.

It was the sixth or seventh holiday that she and her husband Colin had passed on the Beckett Farm in Staintondale, and Jennifer, in particular, had come to love North Yorkshire. It had high windswept moors and wide valleys; endless meadows with stone walls; precipitous cliffs which plunged straight down into the sea; and small sandy bays nestling into the rugged rocks. She loved the town of Scarborough also, and its two large, semi-circular bays divided by a spit of land, as well as its old harbour, the fine houses up on South Cliff, and all the old-fashioned hotels whose façades had to stand up to the wind and the salt water and so were always peeling a little. Colin mumbled sometimes to himself that it might be nice to spend the holiday somewhere else, but that would have meant leaving Cal and Wotan in kennels, which was out of the question for such highly sensitive animals. Luckily it had been Colin's idea originally to have pet dogs, and he had been clear that they should be particularly big dogs. Jennifer could always remind him of that when he complained. The main point for Colin had been the daily need to take them for walks of several hours. ‘A miracle cure for depression,' he had said, ‘and healthy in every other respect too. One day you won't be able to do without the activity and fresh air.'

He had been right. The dogs and walks had changed her life. They had helped her to climb out of the trough. They might not have made her a really happy woman, but certainly one who found a meaning in her life once more.