Killing a Stranger Read online

  Ernst himself, she would treat with icy disdain far beyond the spring thaw. He calculated it might well be midsummer before the chill lessened and in his heart, he couldn’t blame her. It weighed heavy on him that he might be the bearer of still more bad news, that the winter of the soul could only deepen should he reveal what he had found on Adam’s computer.

  He had been up all night thinking but the dawn had brought no clarity and his conversation with Beth only deepened his indecision. For all their differences, Beth had adored her elder brother and he was loath to deliver more pain to her door. He thought about confronting his granddaughter with the evidence and demanding an explanation, but held back. Ernst himself was still considering what all this meant. He was unready for the exposure; unprepared for the implications, though he knew that he could not altogether hide his anxiety from Jennifer and that she would probably misconstrue the distance that had seemed to have appeared, chasm like, since the night before.

  The photographs could, he thought, have some logical and innocent explanation but he was hard pressed to think of one and he had still not quite put into words what the most likely reason for Adam having such pictures might be. His thoughts had played around the periphery of this all night, reaching out, half grasping the nettle, then pulling back.

  He piled Jennifer’s bags into the boot of the car, convinced she had more now than she had arrived with. The bulk, he thought, was most likely made up of glossy magazines. He’d had no concept that so many existed aimed at young women. Lisle had occasionally bought one or other of the weeklies, liking the stories and the recipes, but a swift glance through these revealed neither: sex, fashion, music and more sex, oh and a great wedge of problem pages. Was this the intellectual fodder upon which girls Jennifer’s age habitually grazed?

  Yesterday he would have been amused; yesterday he had been amused. Today, he regarded the glossy, garish publications with a more jaundiced eye. Today a world that had slowly been regaining the colours lost the day that his son died, had reverted to monotone, and even the chill, watery sun failed to lift his mood.

  ‘Jennifer,’ he began. Jennifer, was your uncle Adam … ‘Jennifer, the father of your baby. Was he … is he someone we might know. The family might know?’

  She looked puzzled and shrugged her shoulders. He knew she was nervous about returning home. Nervous and trying hard to be offhand. Her answer reflected that mood. ‘What’s the matter, Granddad? You afraid of what the neighbours might think?’

  He could see from her face, from the way she looked away and swallowed hard that she regretted her words as soon as they were out. They were unfair and unreasonable. Another time he might have chided her, gently told her how hurtful that was and elicited an apology and a smile. A hug and a plea for forgiveness. But he didn’t seem to have the patience for that today. He could tell that Jennifer was hurting more even than he was, that her barbed words pierced her more deeply, but he needed the harshness to keep the questions and the fears at bay.

  When he finally dropped her at her mother’s house, the ten-minute journey seeming to take three times as long, she took her bags and stalked into the house, not even pausing to say goodbye.

  Thirty

  At first Clara didn’t recognize the rather portly man who knocked on her door, then when he spoke, it dawned on her.

  ‘Hell, Clara,’ he said. ‘I had to come and see you.’

  ‘James? Jamie Scott?’ She couldn’t believe it. Where was the skinny, dark haired teenager she had known? This man, thinning on top and dressed in belted jeans that he had chosen should go under his belly because, presumably, they wouldn’t fit over the top, was not the James she remembered.

  To be fair, the years had passed for her too, but, as she closed the door and caught a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror, her years had been a darn sight kinder.

  ‘Why are you here? For that matter, how did you find me?’

  ‘I went and asked your mother. She’s still at the old place. She gave me your address. I would have called first, but I thought, you know, make it more of a surprise.’

  More of a shock, Clara thought, than a surprise.

  ‘And you wanted to see me, why?’

  He was taken aback. ‘Well, I thought that was obvious.’

  ‘Not to me. No.’ She sighed. OK, let the man say his piece, then she’d at least have the satisfaction of knowing she’d been fair. Though what he had to say to her after all this time she couldn’t comprehend.

  ‘OK,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I’ll make you a coffee, you can say your piece and then you can go.’

  ‘Don’t be like that, Clara. Don’t I deserve more than that after all we shared?’

  ‘Whatever little we shared was almost two decades ago.’

  He looked crestfallen. ‘Well, I suppose I expected more of a welcome,’ he admitted. ‘But, all right,’

  He flapped flabby arms against his sides reminding her of a penguin. No, he was too fat to be a penguin. They were streamlined. He was more like one of those big seals.

  ‘Coffee it is then and a nice chat. Between friends.’

  She showed him through to the living room and told him to sit down, then went through to the kitchen and used the time it took to boil the kettle to gather her thoughts. She’d already decided he only deserved instant coffee and, after a further moment, she searched in the cupboard for the cheap supermarket stuff she kept for making cakes. What right had this flabby man to come here, to go and see her mother, to expect …? What exactly did he expect?

  She carried the coffee through and handed him the sugar bowl.

  ‘Oh, no thank you. I’m trying to lose some of this.’ He patted the stomach which now hid the belt of his jeans altogether. ‘I’ve been under a lot of strain,’ he explained. ‘So I’ve eaten a bit too much lately, I suppose. Still, it’ll soon go.’

  Did he have some miracle diet up his sleeve? Clara wondered. Or was he planning to deflate? She didn’t want to be around if he planned on the second option. Clara, she chided herself. Since when have you been fattist? Clara’s sister was a plump woman and it would never have occurred to Clara to have such thoughts as these about her.

  He sipped his coffee and, much to Clara’s annoyance, seemed to be enjoying it.

  He smiled. ‘I can’t tell you how good it is to see you again and you look so well, especially, considering … You never married then? Your mother was telling me.’

  ‘Seeing as I rarely speak to my mother I’m surprised she knows one way or another,’ Clara said. ‘I never married because my early experience of men taught me they weren’t worth the bother.’

  She was irritated that he merely clucked his tongue and refused to take offence. ‘Women can be just as disappointing, Clara,’ he said sententiously. ‘I married and look at me.’

  You blame your wife for what? Looking like a seal or being a slime ball? Clara, for god’s sake you don’t know anything about the man. He’s as good as a stranger to you. She wondered if she should say something sympathetic, but there was no need for her to bother. Her sympathy was anticipated and assumed and for the next ten minutes Clara sipped her coffee and listened to Jamie Scott wallow. His marriage had been a disaster, his children likewise. He had a lousy job, but other opportunities never seemed to arise. He hated his life and should have stayed with her.

  ‘I would have stood by you, given half the chance,’ he assured her.

  ‘Your mother phoned up and told me I was a whore.’ So did mine, but that doesn’t count.

  ‘I never knew that.’

  ‘I passed you in the street one day and you shouted “scrubber” at me and a few more choice expletives as I remember.’

  ‘I was with my friends, you know how it is. Anyway, I was mad as hell because you’d gone with that Aiden bloke. Can you blame me?’

  ‘Yes, actually. I had sex with Aiden out of spite, because you’d been snogging Maureen Hargreaves. Rumour has it you’d done more than that. Who did you marry in the end an
yway?’

  ‘Oh, well, I married Maureen but, like I said, it isn’t working out. You and me, though …’

  ‘Didn’t work out either.’ She took a deep breath. The emotional turmoil evoked on seeing this man amazed her. She’d been convinced that she’d put all this aside long ago. Moved on. Now it bubbled from some deep dark pit marked unresolved anger and she couldn’t seem to swallow it back down.

  Was it really all his fault? Hadn’t she been just as foolish? ‘Look,’ she said in a more conciliatory tone, ‘I appreciate the gesture in you coming here, but I really do think you should go. It’s been too long and I don’t think anything can be gained from raking over old coals, do you?’

  His look was pitying. ‘I just can’t help but think,’ he said, ‘that if we’d still been together things might have been different. Robert might not have gone off the rails if he’d had a father, a man around.’

  ‘A man around?’ She blinked, not quite believing what she heard. ‘Off the rails. Look,’ she shook her head. ‘You didn’t know Rob and you don’t know me. Maybe you should go back to your wife and kids. Be the man for them, huh?’

  She stood up, signalling more emphatically that it was time to go, but he sipped his coffee and refused to move. ‘Leave,’ she said. ‘Go now.’

  He set the mug down and looked at her with pity in his eyes. It was, she realized with shock, genuine emotion. He had convinced himself of the rightness of what he was saying. Clara couldn’t get her head around it, but his next words tipped her over the edge of reason.

  ‘I can understand your grief and how much you resent my not being there for you,’ he told her. ‘But you should have some sympathy for me as well. After all, Clara. I’ve lost a son too.’

  The next moment he was dripping coffee and yelling about assault. The broken mug lay on the rug.

  ‘Get out,’ Clara said. ‘Get the hell out of my house.’

  Alec’s arrival a few minutes later found Clara wiping coffee from the chair and warning him about the damp patch on the rug.

  ‘Oh, sod it,’ she said. ‘Come through to the kitchen, will you? I can still see that toad of a man sitting in that chair.’

  For Alec, she made tea. Properly, in a pot.

  ‘You want to tell me what’s happened,’ he asked. ‘Or do I have to ask which toad?’

  She laughed, sat down opposite and poured out, verbatim, what Jamie Scott had said. ‘And you know what’s worst? I missed with the bloody mug.’

  ‘Maybe just as well,’ Alec told her. ‘You might have knocked him out and been stuck with him until he came round.’ He smiled at her. ‘Seriously, are you all right?’

  She nodded and got up to pour the tea. ‘Oh, bugger. It’s got a bit strong, do you mind?’

  ‘No. Like it that way. And that’s the first you’ve seen of him since you got pregnant?’

  ‘Yep. I moved a couple of times. Not far, but far enough and we just never crossed paths. Amazing what a difference a couple of miles can make. You know, I really didn’t recognize him at first. Makes me wonder how much I’ve changed. You just don’t think, do you? You look at your own reflection in the mirror every day and the changes happen little by little and then, it’s only when you’re confronted by … well. It’s not a comfortable feeling.’

  ‘You look good,’ he said. ‘And I don’t give out complements readily.’

  ‘Thanks. I could do with one right now. But I’m being rude. What brings you here? Any developments?’

  Alec shook his head. ‘It’s more of a courtesy call, I’m afraid. The CPS have decided that Rob’s personal effects can be released. I came to see if I should bring stuff over. We can hang on to things a while longer if you like. Some families … they like to wait.’

  Clara shook her head. ‘May as well,’ she said. ‘Charlie phoned me, told me what you’d managed to do with the computer stuff. Charlie wasn’t hopeful, but, well, I’m grateful.’ She paused. ‘They really aren’t interested in this any more are they, the police, the CPS, no one. I mean, no one but you.’

  Alec shrugged. ‘I’m keeping it alive,’ he said. ‘Best I can. It’s down to allocation of resources …’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry the tea’s so strong.’

  ‘It’s fine. Really.’

  ‘You know, I made him …’

  ‘The toad?’

  ‘Yes, the toad. I made him cheap supermarket coffee. How petty is that?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t even have given him that, but then, if you hadn’t you wouldn’t have got to throw it over him.’

  ‘Oh, no. That was mine. Still instant, but decent instant.’

  ‘Now, that was a waste.’

  ‘Can he really accuse me of assault?’

  ‘Technically, yes. But don’t worry, he tries anything I’ll send the boys round.’

  She smiled. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘For listening and making me laugh. I need to laugh and yet, I’m afraid to in case anyone sees me. In case they think I’m a bad person, laughing in spite of things. You know, I even close the curtains early when I’m watching television in case someone should think I’m being flippant watching rubbish on the telly. Or they catch me, not crying, not being sad and they think, oh, that dreadful woman. Her son killed a man and then killed himself and there she is, laughing.

  ‘How long is it before you can laugh and it not matter. Is there a rule, a book of etiquette?’

  Tears welled, but Alec didn’t try to stop her crying. He sat quietly on the other side of the table and waited until the storm burned itself out and then he filled the kettle again and made more tea. ‘You can laugh,’ he said. ‘It’s good to laugh and I will personally throw cheap supermarket coffee over anyone who dares object.’

  Thirty-One

  Once they knew what to look for it was so obvious they could not believe they’d missed anything. Apart from a few compositions like the one Patrick had found, the other evidence was hidden within the body of essays and exercises. One essay might have several drafts as Rob revised and saved each one, not choosing to merge the changes but instead saving as a separate file each time. Patrick did something similar with his work, always paranoid about losing something that might actually be better than his revisions.

  Where Rob’s method differed was that within the earlier drafts he had grafted notes and ideas and names. Information accumulated in the search for his father. Anyone just opening files and scanning would see academic work at various stages. Patrick knew from what Alec said that no one had been assigned to look more closely than this. Alec’s taking the computer and books from Rob’s home had probably been perceived as almost unnecessary. Rob’s guilt had never been in doubt.

  Even to Patrick’s eyes, these notes seemed random and eclectic. He seemed even to have recorded times when he noticed his mother chatting to sales people in shops. Did she know that man, who was he? Was he anything to do with her past?

  It was obsessive and it was weird and it had, judging from the dates these observations had been recorded, been going on for quite some time.

  ‘What was he playing at?’ Becky wanted to know. ‘It looks like he was spying on people.’

  Patrick and Charlie exchanged a glance. They didn’t like the word, but the content certainly led to that conclusion.

  ‘So, what do we do?’ Patrick wanted to know. He left his seat at the computer and sat down on the bed, staring accusingly at the screen.

  ‘I think we should tell Alec we couldn’t find anything,’ Charlie said. ‘This is going to make Rob look so bad.’

  ‘Worse than a murderer?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘Yeah, kind of.’

  Becky took Patrick’s vacant seat and began to examine some of the newer files. ‘There’s a lot about Adam Hensel,’ she said. ‘And about her.’

  Patrick assumed she meant Jenny.

  ‘It looks like he followed Adam around,’ Becky said. ‘This is just one Saturday: “Adam Hensel, 11 a.m at the supermarket. Walks back to flat. 12.30 goes out agai
n in car. 5 p.m home. Jennifer with him.”’

  ‘What was he doing?’

  Charlie sprawling on Patrick’s bed, shrugged. It was clear to Patrick that he wanted shut of this whole thing. Patrick was inclined to agree. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘We either tell Alec we couldn’t find anything or we tell him about this and then let the police do the rest. I really don’t feel good about it.’

  Charlie sat up. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘What good’s this going to do?’

  ‘Us and Clara, we all said we wanted to know why,’ Becky objected.

  ‘Yeah, but, we didn’t know he’d turn out to be a weirdo.’

  ‘Rob wasn’t weird, he was …’ Becky chewed her bottom lip. She seemed transfixed by the revelations, opening another file and scrolling down.

  ‘Alec would never have set us going on this if he’d thought there’d be this much stuff,’ Patrick said. ‘He just told me to look for anything that didn’t fit.’

  ‘Well, we found that, all right. We struck the motherload of “doesn’t fit”. Look, I don’t want to sound harsh, but I can’t deal with all this shit. I’ve got exams to take and a life and … Becks, what’s up?’

  She got up, grabbed her coat and ran from the room and down the stairs. They heard the front door slam.

  ‘What? Whoa.’ Charlie stared at the screen. ‘Mate, I’d better go after her,’ he said.

  Patrick nodded, then went to look at the computer file. ‘I like her a lot,’ Rob had written. ‘I wish she wasn’t who she is. My sister and all that. It’s like, that Shakespeare thing, you know wherefore art thou and all that. Well, wherefore fucking art thou Jennifer Ryan. Life isn’t fucking fair.’

  Thirty-Two

  Alec looked up at the 1930s block of flats that included the home of the late Adam Hensel. It was a handsome building with a heavy front door set back in an art deco porch. Expensive, Alec thought, and carefully restored to make the most of the original features.

  Hensel’s name was printed in neat black letters above the bell. Alec hadn’t been the one who’d checked out his flat after the murder, and until Ernst had called him an hour ago, not really known where the man had lived.