Killing a Stranger Read online

  Lisle, his wife had died of cancer some ten years before and the family had clung tight for a time, Ernst practically living in the spare room, unable to face the return to an empty house and his daughter, Beth, knocked sideways by the death of a mother she – and her husband for that matter – had adored.

  Adam, Ernst thought, had gone through the motions of grief, and Ernst was equitable enough to believe him to have been sincere, but he had soon drifted out of the family circle once again, picked up his own life and moved along.

  At the time, it had seemed natural; Ernst regretted it now.

  The room was warm and quiet, a fire burning in the grate adding its friendly crackle to the close drawn curtains and the soft light. Music played, Jennifer’s choice, a male singer Ernst quite liked despite his lack of musical range. David something, Jennifer had said, adding that she liked his lyrics but the volume had been turned low enough not to interrupt their conversation and Ernst could not judge. Childhood evening spent together, she might have pestered him to play chess, a game he had taught her to play, as she grew older he’d be presented with homework garnished with pleas for help he was sure she did not need. It was his attention she craved, not his expertise.

  Tonight, parents out visiting friends and the two of them left alone, she sat with a blanket spread across her lap and a mug of hot coffee clasped between her hands, staring at the fire.

  Ernst, busy with his own thoughts, left Jennifer to hers, sensing she was building up to something important and that she needed time. He gazed fondly at the long fair hair, shining with red notes in the fire light, the pale skin, always pale even in a hot, dry summer. The dark eyes that seemed at odd with the otherwise fragile colouring. Lisle’s eyes, he thought. Years ago, he had fallen in love with those eyes.

  ‘Did you have a good day?’ he asked at last. ‘Beth said you were out for most of it.’

  ‘Did she want you to find out where I’d gone?’

  ‘She didn’t say. I think she was relieved you had gone out. You have been something of a recluse, my love.’

  ‘Yeah, well. It’s hard. People stare.’

  ‘Perhaps not as much as you might think. People, I have found, think only of their own lives most of the time.’

  She shrugged, her mouth turned down.

  He sipped his wine.

  ‘Granddad, do you think I’m going to love this baby?’

  He considered. ‘Most mothers do. I suppose instinct teaches you to love.’

  ‘Did you love Mum and Uncle Adam straight away?’

  Ernst smiled. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘But I freely admit I was terrified as well, especially the first time. There he was, this perfect, tiny person, screaming loud enough to shake the walls of Jericho and yes, I loved him.’

  ‘I think I’ll just be terrified.’

  ‘Perhaps, at first.’

  ‘But isn’t that bad? I mean, how can I be a good mother if I’m just scared?’

  Ernst laughed softly. ‘Darling, I think it is the fear that makes us good parents, not the lack of it. The desire to protect.’ He looked quizzically over the rim of his glass. ‘Do you love the baby now?’

  Jennifer shrugged. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Sometimes is a beginning. And –’ he hesitated – ‘the father. Did you love him sometimes?’

  He had trespassed. For a moment he thought she might get up and walk out of the room, but she just clutched the coffee mug more tightly and looked away.

  ‘I never loved him,’ she said at last. ‘Not even sometimes.’

  ‘Then I am doubly sorry for you.’

  ‘Doubly?’ Her look accused.

  ‘Because, my darling, for one thing, you have to endure this alone and far too young. Second, because the memory of how this came about is not even a pleasant one.’

  She stared at him, mouth set in a tight line and again he wondered if he’d gone too far. Then she sighed, relaxed, slumping back in the chair and dragging the blanket more closely around her. ‘Granddad,’ she said. ‘I need to tell you something but please, can you promise not to judge me for it?’

  Clara was getting almost used to these late night visits, but, looking through the glass panel in the front door, was surprised to see that Ernst was not alone. The girl standing beside him had about her an aura of nervous excitement, something pent up that was about to be released.

  ‘This is Jennifer,’ Ernst told Clara when she opened the door. ‘I know it’s late, but may we come in?’

  Clara stepped back, aware that the girl was staring at her with unnerving intensity.

  ‘Jennifer has something to say to you.’

  Clara closed the door wondering if this presaged a tirade of hate or something else. Something else, she decided. Ernst was not one to allow such cruel confrontation; not now.

  It was clear that Jennifer could not wait. The secret she had carried, now outed once this evening could not remain concealed.

  ‘I knew Rob,’ she blurted suddenly. ‘Mrs Beresford, Rob thought that my dad might be his.’

  Eighteen

  Jennifer sat on the floor of Clara’s living room, legs crossed and her shoes off. She wore odd socks, Clara noted. Both stripy, but one red and green, one in shades of blue. Before her, spread out on the hearthrug, lay scattered photographs and stacked albums. She held one image in her hand, stared hard at it and then turned it over and handed it to Clara.

  ‘Oh,’ Clara gasped. Finally, she understood what her son had seen and the conclusions he had reached. She turned the image back over and examined the picture, wondering at the number of times she had looked at it and not grasped its possible significance.

  ‘He showed you this?’

  Jennifer nodded.

  Ernst held out his hand. ‘May I?’

  Clara handed him the picture.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘But this is Denny.’

  ‘Aiden,’ Clara corrected softly. ‘Aiden Ryan. If you’d said his name, I might have realized.’

  ‘There was never a reason to. And I have never called him Aiden, he has always been Denny.’

  ‘I know, I know. Everyone focussed on Hensel. No one said anything about Aiden Ryan or any connection that would have made sense of it. But I don’t understand, how did this picture lead Rob to you? I’ve pictures of all sorts of people in here, why pick on this one?’

  Jennifer took the picture back and examined it again. The face of her father, not much older than she was now, stared back at her. He looked different now, of course. Years had added weight and lines and greying hair, but he was still perfectly recognizable. As was the girl standing beside him. Clara, grinning happily, her hand in Aiden’s. Friends around them, mugging for the camera.

  ‘We were celebrating the end of exams,’ Clara said. ‘Aiden grabbed my hand and pulled me into the middle of the group. It was such a good day. We were so relieved to get the tests over and done with I don’t think we even cared if we’d passed or not.’

  ‘You wrote the names on the back,’ Jenny said. ‘Look, everyone named and Rob … Rob knew some of the people. You still kept in touch with a couple of them. He said he found out where they lived by looking in your address book and told them he was trying to get a surprise party together. That he wanted to get as many people together as he could from your school days.’

  Clara shuddered. ‘What a horrible thought. And they swallowed that?’

  ‘Apparently one gave him the brush off, and told him she thought it was a daft idea. The other, I think Rob said he was called Bill, he told Rob where a couple of the others lived and even gave him other names.’

  ‘Hum, that sounds like Bill Price,’ Clara said. ‘He was always a bloody pain. And the heart drawn round Aiden’s name, I suppose that gave it away, didn’t it? God, that boy of mine knew how to put two and two together and make five, didn’t he?’

  ‘He said, if you’d actually told him anything, he wouldn’t have had to do it. But he wanted to know. Wanted it so badly.’

  �
��I’m beginning to see that. God, if I’d realized how much … He pestered a bit when he was younger but I always told him they weren’t worth knowing. I told him, when he was eighteen, I’d tell him all he wanted to know and it would be up to him. Why the hell couldn’t he have waited? He only had a few months to go.’

  ‘Why was it so important that he didn’t find out sooner?’ Ernst enquired.

  ‘Because … For God’s sake, I didn’t even tell my parents who Rob’s father was. I didn’t let on to my sister, though she probably guessed. Most people thought it must have been my boyfriend …’

  ‘Aiden wasn’t your boyfriend?’

  ‘No.’ Clara shook her head. ‘Aiden was … I fancied him something rotten and he knew it. All the girls did, but he wasn’t interested in anything … I mean …’ She felt embarrassed. It was this girl’s father she was talking about.

  ‘He was seventeen,’ Jennifer said matter of factly. ‘He liked sex.’

  Clara stared at her.

  Ernst humphed uncomfortably.

  Clara nodded slowly. ‘I guess neither of us was much wiser than that,’ she admitted. ‘Jamie, my boyfriend, he was possessive, didn’t like me even looking at other people. So, one night when we had a major row … One thing led to another. Then Jamie found out and, well, the rest as they say …’

  ‘But you must have liked my dad, you drew a heart round his name.’

  Clara laughed, but it was laughter on the verge of tears. ‘That’s the most stupid thing,’ she said. ‘I didn’t draw that. My friend did, she was winding me up and threatening to show the picture to Jamie. He’d have gone mad if he saw me holding hands with Aiden. He heard about it, of course, and that didn’t help, but, you know, things blew over and we made up. Then things happened with Aiden and … after that it was just me and Rob.’

  Jennifer had been watching her intently. ‘He didn’t want to hurt you,’ she said finally. ‘He told me, you’d been on your own, bringing him up and no one gave a shit for either of you. He understood why you didn’t want his dad back in your life but, I don’t know, I think part of it was he thought my dad, his dad, owed you something. You’d struggled with money and no one had ever given you a hand. It hurt him, Clara. That was part of the reason. The other part was he just wanted to know about himself, you know, the part of him that you hadn’t given him. He said he had all these feelings and thoughts buzzing round in his head and they weren’t like anything you ever seemed to have. He’d get angry, flare up, and you were always so calm.’

  Clara laughed harshly. ‘Calm! Me, Lord no. I just learnt to hide my feelings, I suppose. He might have thought I was floating but I was paddling like mad just to keep from drowning. I wanted to protect him from all that. Surely, it’s what a parent should do? Protect?’

  Jenny shrugged. ‘Sometimes it helps to know your mum and dad aren’t perfect.’

  They fell silent, considering her words, then Clara asked, ‘But how did you meet Rob? How did he find you?’

  She shrugged, as though it was obvious. ‘He worked his way through the phone book,’ she said. ‘Then he came to have a look at us. My dad and one other bloke were the right age, but when he saw my dad he knew he was the one in the photograph.’ Jennifer paused and bit her lip. ‘This wasn’t the first time,’ she said. ‘He’d been looking since he was fourteen or fifteen years old.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He said he’d … investigated about seven different people but this time he thought he’d got it right.’

  ‘Investigated? Who? I mean, what did he do?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know, exactly, but he’d start by finding out how long you knew people and if you’d known them a long time … he’d investigate.’ She bit her lip again. ‘I think he got a bit obsessed,’ she added.

  ‘Obsessed! How did I not notice? How could he do all this and I not know?’

  Jennifer sighed. She was looking at Clara as though considering whether or not she should reply at all and if she did how far she should go. ‘Rob did OK at school, didn’t he?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘He had friends you liked and brought them home, or at least talked about them a bit.’

  ‘Yes, and?’

  ‘This last year he got drunk sometimes, but not so drunk he was falling over so you thought that was normal and OK. You were pretty sure he wasn’t doing drugs. He liked girls and all the stuff you’d expect someone male and seventeen to like.’ Jennifer shrugged.

  ‘So,’ Clara felt her anger rising. ‘You’re saying I didn’t look any further than the obvious. You’re telling me I didn’t care about my son. You’re saying …’

  ‘No, none of that,’ Jennifer said. ‘Look, he didn’t give you any reason to look for other stuff. He was doing the things you wanted him to do and he was getting on well with you. Rob thought you were pretty cool, actually. He was grateful, glad you got along. Like I said, he didn’t want to hurt you, he just thought you were owed and it was the one thing he didn’t agree on, that you should keep the truth about his dad from him. It isn’t your fault he hid stuff. Everybody does.’

  ‘No.’ Clara was shocked, emphatic. ‘I was never dishonest with Rob, with anyone.’

  ‘You didn’t tell your parents about my dad,’ Jennifer pointed out. ‘Look, Mrs Beresford, I don’t want to hurt you. I liked Rob and I can’t get my head around what he did to Uncle Adam. It just doesn’t make any sense. I wanted to say something before, but can you imagine what it would be like to say to your dad, here, look, you’ve got a son you don’t know about and we’ve been seeing one another. I mean, not in that way, just like friends. Rob wanted me to try and talk to him, to set up some kind of meeting, but I was scared and I didn’t know how and then, all of a sudden, it was too late. It was all too fucking late.’

  Clara was shocked, Jennifer swearing seemed oddly out of place. Most kids did it for affect, but this was born of genuine feeling and therefore had an effect.

  ‘None of this gets us closer to understanding why,’ Ernst said softly.

  Jennifer rubbed her eyes and Clara saw that she was crying. ‘I told Uncle Adam,’ she said at last. ‘Granddad, I wanted to talk to you, but there never seemed to be a time. Then Uncle Adam came for Mum’s birthday and, he’d had a drink or two and I’d been allowed some wine and we sat on the stairs and talked like we always do … did … and then. After that. It all went wrong.’

  ‘Beth’s birthday,’ Ernst mused. ‘So, about a month before … he died. Did he tell you what he planned to do about it?’

  Jennifer shook her head. ‘I thought he must have forgotten, not taken me seriously. I don’t know.’

  Clara was exhausted. Another piece of the puzzle had fallen into place but there was so much else she wanted to know. How, for instance, had Rob made contact with this young woman, convinced her he was genuine and she should help. Right at this moment, though, she didn’t feel she had the strength to pursue the matter further.

  ‘So we still don’t know what happened that night,’ Ernst said. ‘But at least we begin to see a connection between things.’

  Clara shook her head. ‘An imagined connection,’ she said quietly. ‘Jennifer, it’s my fault, isn’t it? This whole mess. My fault for not being open or honest. For him not being able to come to me.’

  ‘He didn’t think so,’ Jennifer said, but she didn’t sound convinced.

  ‘Imagined?’ Ernst asked. ‘You said an imagined connection.’

  ‘The trouble is,’ Clara said softly. ‘I was probably pregnant even before I slept with Aiden. He wasn’t Rob’s dad.’

  Nineteen

  It took some organizing, but the obvious thing, Clara had decided was to pool resources. It seemed to her – and to Ernst – that the problem of the police investigation; why it had revealed so few leads was down to two factors. The first was simply that they had stopped looking. The second, that they actually had no clue as to what questions to ask. It had been established by the post mortem that Rob had
been drinking and taking some cocktail of methamphetamine and cannabis. The inference was, some chance encounter with the unfortunate Adam Hensel had led Rob to stab him. No one suggested that this was in character. The official report spoke of a tragic incident and hinted that this was just another indicator of the drug problem spreading into an erstwhile clean town. Clara almost laughed aloud at that inference; drugs had been part of the scene when she was Rob’s age and probably long before. She wondered if the official report reflected official naiveté or genuine stupidity.

  No one had connected Adam Hensel with Rob Beresford because, on the face of it, there would be no connection and, even had the police interviewed Jennifer, which, under the known circumstances they had no reason to do, she would probably not have confessed to knowing him. Clara could imagine that revelation adding to the girl’s existing troubles. Why should she have made life harder for herself?

  But now, Clara felt, the time for secrecy and half truth and even the sparing of feelings was long gone. She phoned Alec Friedman and told him her news, then demanded a meeting with him. Having got agreement on that, she saw to it that Ernst and Jennifer and Rob’s friends were also appraised of her demands.

  And, she thought, demand or command it had been. A new energy had flooded her mind, brought a restlessness to her body since Jennifer’s visit and Clara could not keep still.

  Alec arrived first, then Ernst, accompanied by Jennifer. Patrick, Charlie and a reluctant Becky kept the others waiting only for a few minutes before they too settled, perched on chairs or on cushions on the floor. Clara had brought tea and coffee pots on trays with mugs and milk. She set the sugar bowl down upon the low table and seated herself in the vacant chair.

  ‘Now,’ she said, nodding at Alec. ‘No more secrets, no more lies. Everything there is to know, we share now. And we’ll begin with you.’

  Alec took two files from his briefcase – a present from Naomi he was still getting used to using; his usual style was a plastic carrier from the local supermarket. He glanced uncertainly at Clara. Personally, he thought this was a crazy idea. The two girls were looking daggers at one another, Becky taking in Jennifer’s swelling belly and her eyes darting questions at Clara.