Killing a Stranger Read online

  Ernst figured that if the evidence for any of this existed, it would be in the flat. Adam’s personal effects had been returned to him and Ernst had gone though them again today but there was nothing exceptional. Adam’s wallet, with cards and money, his mobile phone – the numbers were all ones Ernst expected to be there – a few coins, his keys, a shopping list and a couple of till receipts. Normal things. Unremarkable items.

  The hall was tidy and empty but for a small table; a Victorian plant stand, actually, Ernst noted, on which Adam sat the phone. The shelf beneath held directories and a small green book in which he had written telephone numbers. Again, only family, friends, work colleagues. Adam had been meticulous enough to state which was which. He had always been organized, finicky even, Ernst thought. Even as a little boy his toy shelves had been organized according to type of toy, or colour, or shape, whatever his present mood might be. Elizabeth piled her possessions into a big chest and could never find anything. It was a common theme of childhood arguments that Elizabeth couldn’t find her pencils and wanted to borrow his. Or that she left their paints with the colours all muddied. Or that his books came back with the corners turned down when she borrowed them. In the end, Ernst had told Beth that she must use only her own things and that if she didn’t leave Adam’s toys alone, he would give him a padlock for his door to keep her out. He never did and Elizabeth never really ceased to annoy her brother with her messy ways. They simply grew up and their interests differed and Adam’s possessions held less appeal.

  Ernst left the hall and wandered through the first door into the living room. Here there was the impression that Adam had just stepped out for a moment and would soon be home. A newspaper lay on the coffee table, folded and placed square with the corner. The tidiness of the room marred only by the soft fall of dust which now covered every surface, something Adam would not have permitted.

  Ernst opened the sideboard drawers, the cupboards, rifled quickly and carefully through the bills and letters, the stacked plates and china cups. He recognized the remnants of a dinner service he and Lisle had bought not long after their marriage. He hadn’t even noticed it was missing, and that Adam had it safe both irritated and yet pleased him. Adam’s computer stood on an oak table Ernst had given him. It had come from the family home and, when he’d moved to a smaller place after Lisle’s death, Adam had asked if he could have this and a few other pieces for the flat.

  It took Ernst a moment or so to find the on button, finally discovering it on the back of the tower unit and not at all where he expected it to be. Typical, somehow, for Adam to be different and just a little difficult. He waited for it to fire up, thinking how like this process was to turning on his old valve radio. He could go and make a cup of tea while it did its thing. He recalled Adam saying that this was an old machine and he should think about updating it, but, as he only used it for the odd letter and to do his accounts, anything more sophisticated seemed a waste. Ernst sat down and clicked the mouse on ‘My Documents’. Somewhat to his surprise, a blue screen appeared with instructions to input the password.

  ‘Password?’ Ernst was taken aback. ‘What on earth did he have to protect with a password?’

  He closed the window and tried ‘my computer’ got the same response. The blue screen again with the password prompt.

  Ernst stared at the offending screen, puzzled and irritated. What password would his son use? How many chances would he get? He had a vague memory of Jennifer saying that you got three tries before the machine locked up. She’d been criticizing a television programme they were watching, hadn’t she?

  Reluctantly Ernst closed the whole thing down wondering who he could ask about password protection. Would Jennifer know what to do? Ernst wasn’t sure anyway that he should involve her.

  Feeling like an intruder he searched the kitchen and bedroom. There were papers and letters in the bedside cabinet on the right hand side of the bed but nothing that related obviously to his quest. The left hand cabinet was empty.

  Would he even know if something was out of place? Would he be aware of it if he found something relating to Rob?’

  Ernst honestly didn’t know. He glanced again at the empty cabinet. Suzanna, he thought, his son’s ex-wife. It was really nothing to do with her any more but she had lived here and she might, just might be able to see what he could not. She had obviously still cared enough to have come to the funeral. Should he ask her to help him now?

  He couldn’t recall her number but, hadn’t he seen it in the green book. Ernst hurried though to the hall. Yes, it was there and, to his amusement, Adam had written next to it the abbreviation ‘ex’ as though he might be able to forget just who she was. The amusement was tempered with regret. His son had always been a bit of an odd ball, he thought, but for all that – or perhaps because of it – Ernst loved him deeply and missed him so much it hurt. It hurt more when he thought of the last time they had met, a few days before Adam died. They hadn’t argued or even been in conflict, but they hadn’t really talked either. They had, instead, exchanged just the surface information about their respective lives. The how are you, fine thank you sort of interchange that might have passed between acquaintances and not close kin.

  Twenty-Two

  Ernst arrived at his daughter’s house and walked into the middle of a row. It didn’t take a genius to work out that Jennifer had told them about Rob. Her timing, Ernst thought, left something to be desired. He’d told her he would tackle the subject with Beth sometime over the next few days, but that he would do so gently. He could well imagine that Jennifer, having practised by revealing her secret to him and then elaborated on the disclosure at the meeting with Clara and the others, would most likely have blurted the whole thing without preliminaries. Or, worse still, in revenge or response to some disagreement with her mother.

  Aiden opened the front door when Ernst rang the bell – the volume of the dispute, if not the words, had been audible in the drive-way. He took one look at Ernst and then gestured at the room beyond from which the sound of furious female voices issued.

  ‘You sort it,’ he said. ‘I’ve said my piece, now I’m off down the pub.’

  He grabbed his coat from the peg and strode off into the dusk. Ernst wondered if he could join him without the women of the house noticing, but that seemed cowardly, particularly as he, it could be said, had conspired with his granddaughter in some respects.

  Instead, he closed the front door, took a deep breath and crossed the expanse of Victorian tiled hall.

  The evidence of Beth’s rage seemed to extend to the very roots of her short blonde hair. She crackled with fury, face flushed, eyes blazing with it. The static charge of her anger lifting the tresses from her head and the fibres of her mohair sweater.

  Jennifer, no less incensed, faced her mother and screamed across the six inches of distance between them. At first, so concentrated was the sound of pure rage that Ernst failed to make out the words, then, as he focused, the battle lines began to coalesce

  ‘I’ve done nothing wrong!’ Jennifer screeched.

  ‘Nothing! Colluded. Deceived. You’re no daughter of mine. Get out of my house. Just get out of my sight.’

  So, it had gone that far. ‘Beth, Beth,’ Ernst cried. ‘Be calm. This will do no good.’

  She hadn’t registered him until then, but both women turned now and Ernst felt himself physically lashed by the wave of bitterness. Beth’s because he had kept her in the dark. Jennifer’s, less forceful – she’d not had her mother’s experience – but generated by her resentment that he had not been there when she had to face her mother with this truth. The fact that she and not Ernst had picked the instant of revelation an irrelevance.

  ‘You! Just what the hell did you think you were doing? Jen I can almost forgive. She’s a child, but you!’

  ‘Beth, calm down. No one has done anything …’

  ‘Not done anything? She knew Adam’s killer and she didn’t say a bloody word. Not a bloody word and then you, instea
d of telling me about her little liaison, you go behind my back and see that woman. That woman. For all I know, he could be the father of the little bastard she’s carrying. Now wouldn’t that be just perfect.’

  ‘Beth. Enough.’

  She stopped in her tracks and drew herself up and in, her father’s command cutting through the weight of years. It might have calmed then, but Jennifer was not so adept at recognizing the moment.

  ‘You stupid bitch,’ she yelled. ‘I thought he was my bloody brother! Yeah, right, like I was going to fuck my brother.’

  Beth wheeled around, hand raised and Ernst was almost tempted to let it find its target. He sighed, swore under his breath and then stepped between the warring factions.

  ‘Enough! No more.’

  Beth froze. She stared at her father and lowered her hand. She was shaking and, Ernst saw, she had begun to cry. He wanted to take her in his arms and rock her as he had when she’d been a little girl. To hold her tightly while she cried. But he knew he couldn’t. She’d resent that weakness almost more than she resented what he’d done. It would be to admit that he might not be as guilty as she painted him but the pain was too raw for her to let go of it just yet.

  And then there was Jennifer, sniffing and snivelling and equally in need of love.

  ‘Dad, just get her out of here. Please. I can’t cope with this.’

  The hurt in her voice cut him to the core but it told him also that this would pass, given space and time. He nodded. ‘Jennifer,’ he said without taking his eyes from his daughter’s face, ‘go and pack a bag. You can stay with me for a few days.’

  ‘Damn right I will,’ Jennifer exploded. ‘And don’t think I’m coming back.’

  She fled the room leaving her elders alone. Beth held up a hand. ‘Don’t say anything, Dad, I couldn’t bear it, OK?’

  Ernst nodded. ‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘But Bethy …’

  ‘No, I said not a word. Please, Dad.’

  He nodded again and left the room, went to sit on the stairs, Jennifer and Adam’s favourite roost, while his daughter wept and his granddaughter slammed around upstairs packing her bags and vowing never to come back home.

  Twenty-Three

  Aiden’s local was the Rose a couple of streets away. Ernst told Jennifer to stay in the car, the tone of his voice such that she didn’t argue. He went inside, finding Aiden playing darts in the Lounge Bar.

  Aiden glanced his way, played his shot before coming over, carrying his beer.

  ‘What do you know about all this mess then?’

  ‘I know that Rob, the boy who killed Adam, he thought you might be his father.’

  ‘His father?’

  ‘You knew his mother. Clara. Clara Beresford.’

  ‘Clara … Rob Beresford. His name was Rob Beresford? The police said they knew who it was, that he committed suicide, they never told us his name. I … How did you find out?’ He sat down in the nearest chair. ‘You want a beer?’

  ‘No, no, I have Jennifer in the car. She’s coming to me for a few days.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Clara.’ Aiden was stunned. ‘But how did you know? Did the police tell you?’

  Ernst shook his head. ‘I read the papers, watch the news. The police also told me that the killer took his own life. One even mentioned how, though I don’t think he even noticed his slip. So, I went through the newspaper reports and I found the story. There was only one. A boy, who killed himself by jumping from a bridge into the canal. It did not give his name, but mentioned the district where he lived. I went there, drank in the local pubs, chatted to the landlord and the locals. Everyone knew who it was. Most felt grief for the mother and said how terrible it must be for her. I watched the papers for the funeral. I knew they would say something about such loss of a young life. There was no connection made to my son, but the boy, Robert, he was only seventeen and his name protected by the law which, concerning his mother, is as it should be. I followed her home after the funeral. Then, I went to visit her.’

  ‘You went … why? For God’s sake, what did you plan to do?’

  Ernst shrugged. ‘I no longer know, Denny, and it was only much later as small things emerged that we realized a connection was in fact there, between my son and Clara’s. The connection was you.’

  ‘But …’ Aiden reached for his beer, but his hand was shaking. ‘Was he mine? My God, was he mine?’

  Ernst shook his head. ‘Clara believes not,’ he said. ‘We may not ever know for certain.’ He looked around at the early evening drinkers and the wooden tables, bright red walls. This was not the place for such intimate revelations, but it had to be told and, if he invited Aiden back to his home, Jennifer would be there to interrupt and interfere.

  ‘You knew she was pregnant?’ Ernst asked.

  Aiden nodded. ‘Yeah. I was shit scared she’d … she’d name me. We had sex once. That was it.’

  ‘She didn’t name you,’ Ernst said. ‘In fact, she was adamant that neither you nor the boyfriend who seemed the other choice should be involved. All those years, she managed on her own. Clara says you were something of a bad influence,’ he said fondly. ‘That you were not capable of being serious or being there for her and she felt you and the other one no longer had a place in her life.’

  Aiden smiled, half sad, half, Ernst thought, flattered. ‘I wasn’t much of a catch then,’ he admitted. He laughed. ‘I cultivated the wild child image, fast bikes, running with the wrong crowd.’

  Looking at the middle-aged man in his grey slacks and comfortable wooly sweater, Ernst found that touchingly hard to believe. ‘We were all young once,’ he said softly. ‘Young and stupid.’ He reflected sadly that some don’t get past that age.

  ‘I think our Jen is starting to realize that,’ Aiden said. ‘You know, this makes me wonder …’ He looked embarrassed. ‘That it might be in the blood, you know. Me and Clara and Rob … if, if I was … you know. And Jen and whoever.’ He paused, reached for his pint and managed to hold on this time, took a long swallow. ‘She’s not … told you who, has she?’

  Ernst shook his head. They talked for a little longer, Ernst filling in what gaps Jennifer’s explosive confrontation had left out and warning Aiden of what reception he was likely to receive at home. Then he went back to a now complaining Jennifer and drove her to his flat, settling her in before telling her he needed groceries if she planned to stay. Ernst himself ate simply and the cupboards weren’t exactly stocked to teenage requirements.

  He stocked up at the local supermarket, loading the trolley with a combination of what he termed ‘real food’ and the kind of junk he knew she liked. Impulse took him back to the Edwardian road where Adam had died.

  Sitting in the cul de sac, opposite the road sign, he could see the flowers he had laid, faded now and brown behind their plastic wrapper. It pleased him that no one had tidied them away but he, always a tidy man, felt grieved too at the unsightliness.

  What had happened here?

  Ernst sat in the rapidly cooling car and closed his eyes, behind the lids he could visualize the scene. His son, waiting on the corner. The young man, Rob, crossing the road, standing just a little away from him, uncertain and maybe just a little scared. Adam wouldn’t have been scared. He brimmed with confidence and oozed a quiet authority. Would the boy have felt threatened by that? Adam could appear arrogant. That could intimidate and aggravate. Lord knows, Ernst thought, it sometimes aggravated him and he loved his son.

  He could see them now, easy to visualize, he had spent so long studying Rob’s picture he fancied he could even see the gestures, the body language, the way he walked and moved. He saw Rob gesture, see the attitude – the Jennifer type attitude – in his gestures and the shrug of his shoulders. See as he threw his hands up in a gesture of dismissal as he half turned away. Could imagine Adam’s response. Sarcastic, maybe. Assertive certainly.

  The boy would have turned back then, aggressive, irritated at another adult who failed to see his point of view. The anger Clara talked ab
out would have flared and …

  Ernst opened his eyes unable to cope with the film that played out behind the closed lids.

  He felt chilled. Stiff. Old. His eyes blurred and he blinked hard, then wiped them with gloved hands.

  ‘Adam. What the hell was going on? That’s all I want to know.’

  All Rob wanted was to be taken seriously. To be told, as Jennifer had been certain this man would, that he would get a hearing. That maybe they could find out the truth once and for all. Rob had been saving for years now, knowing that a DNA test would sort things out once and for all. Hetried to tell this man that was all he wanted but all he got back was scorn. Advice to go home and leave them all alone.

  Alone, that’s the way Rob had always been. Rob and Clara. Clara and Rob and a wall of silence and he was never expected to complain.

  Twenty-Four

  Jodie was as good as her word and called Naomi on the Monday afternoon.

  Only one girl remembered Adam. Would Naomi like to set up a meeting with her?

  ‘Yes,’ Naomi told her. That would be great and yes, she could get to Jodie. If necessary, she’d take a taxi.

  ‘Take a taxi where?’ Patrick wanted to know. He was seated at her computer, trying to construct an essay on the life and work – and influence on Patrick’s artwork – of David Hockney. So far as Naomi could tell, Hockney hadn’t had any particular influence, but Patrick said his teacher didn’t think Frank Miller or Neil Gaiman were suitable subjects for an AS level essay.

  ‘To see a contact,’ Naomi told him.

  ‘A contact? What kind of contact? Someone you used to know?’

  ‘Yes, someone I used to know.’

  ‘Who? Is this anything to do with Dad taking you to Pinsent? He wouldn’t tell me anything about it.’