Killing a Stranger (7 page)

The screen changed and the machine logged on.

‘Browse.' She turned away from the microphone. ‘See. Soon I'll be able to shop online.'

‘Brilliant. You tried it yet?'

‘Well, no, actually, that's as far as I got, but it's better than nothing. I have hit a problem though.'

‘What?'

‘I'm going to have to memorize a whole heap of web addresses.'

‘Maybe you should persevere with the Braille. I expect there are directories.'

‘Braille
smail
. Patrick, I'll never get that. There's got to be another way. You did better than I can.'

‘Yeah, but I have less years to unlearn.' He dodged out of the way before she realized she'd been insulted. ‘Guess what. No reporters outside the school today.'

‘Oh, that's good. Obviously something more interesting going on. I heard there was a big fire, warehouse or something up by the docks. Maybe they've gone up there. How's things generally, anyway?'

‘Oh, you know. It still doesn't make sense. I nearly got into a row with Dad last night.'

‘What did you do?'

He hesitated, sat down on the floor near her computer table and leaned back against the wall. Napoleon huffed down on top of him. ‘We went to see Clara. Rob's mum. She asked us to.'

‘Did Harry object to that?'

‘No. I got back late and I didn't phone. Naomi, has Alec talked to you about stuff? About Rob, I mean.'

She nodded. ‘Patrick, where is this leading?'

‘Clara told us something, but I didn't tell Harry, I didn't know how and he was worried enough last night and, well, it didn't seem to be the right time. But then, I got to thinking today and I don't think there'll ever be a right time, so I think I've got to tell him tonight. Naomi, I don't know how.'

‘Clara told you about Adam Hensel.'

‘Yeah. She did.' He waited and then he asked what he really wanted to know. ‘Do you think he did? Kill this man, I mean.'

Naomi sighed. ‘You want me to talk to your dad?' she asked him.

‘That sure,' Patrick said. ‘Why?'

‘Because all of the evidence points that way. Adam's blood on Rob. Rob's prints on the knife. No evidence, at least yet, of anyone else on the scene. That's why.'

He said nothing and Naomi wondered if she should be the one to break the silence. Finally, it was Patrick who spoke out. ‘Can you tell my dad,' he asked her. She could tell from his voice that he was trying not to cry.

T
he inquest into Rob's death had been opened and adjourned, though it had been agreed that his body could be released for burial and it was tacitly understood that a verdict of suicide was likely to be the eventual one. Toxicology reports revealed both narcotics and alcohol in his bloodstream. The miracle was that he'd made it to the bridge at all.

It was a factor Clara had problems in squaring with her memory of her son on that night. He'd been distressed, certainly, despairing. But drunk? No. High? She didn't think so.

Nothing had been found in the search carried out at her home and Charlie had been adamant that Rob, though he might get drunk occasionally, didn't do drugs. Patrick backed him up with similar vehemence.

It was only Becky that cast doubt. ‘The past week or so,' she said ‘he'd got himself involved in other stuff.' She either really didn't know or didn't want to say what. ‘It was one of the things we'd rowed about the night of Charlie's party. Mum and
him
were already down on Rob. If he'd turned up at my place the way … the way he was when we met up the night before Charlie's party …'

‘One of the things you argued about?' Patrick asked her but Becky must have felt she'd betrayed Rob's memory enough already. She shrugged her shoulders and looked away. Patrick knew he'd get nothing more from her.

The funeral was a quiet, empty affair. Naomi and Harry attended with Patrick. Harry, to support his son and Naomi because she felt drawn in by her association and because she knew just how much Harry hated funerals. They reminded him too much of the memorial they had for his sister, Helen, and, later, much, much later, Helen's funeral. They, apart from Clara and the odd neighbour, were the only adults present.

Why, Naomi wondered, did they so often sing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful' at funerals? They had, she recalled, sung the hymn at Helen's and at her father's. She mumbled the words, remembering them well enough from long ago school assemblies. Beside her, Harry intoned with more emotion than accuracy and Patrick was silent, his arm pressed close against hers. She could feel him shaking. Napoleon nuzzled at her hand, sensing that his people were upset and ill at ease. She felt Patrick's hand brush hers as he reached down to fondle the dog's silky ears.

A little distance away, a woman wept, her sobs a constant backdrop to the singing and then to the eulogy which spoke of lost opportunity and a life cut short too soon. As if we needed telling that, Naomi thought.

There was to be no wake.

Charlie and Becky joined them outside, and Patrick stepped away from his father and Naomi to speak to them, their voices hushed as though overcome by the solemnity of the moment.

‘I should be going,' Harry said uneasily. ‘I can stay,' he added, addressing his comment to his son.

‘No, Dad, you'd better go. You've got that meeting and stuff. Look,' he added, ‘thanks for coming. I'm glad you did.'

‘I'm glad too,' Harry told him. ‘You sure you'll be OK? How are the three of you getting back to … wherever?' It was a school day, but Harry wasn't so naïve he thought that's where they'd go.

‘We'll be OK, thanks,' Charlie answered for them. ‘We'll walk back home, I think. We can go back along the towpath.'

‘The towpath?'

Naomi could feel Harry force back the protest. The canal was where Rob had died, where … other bad things had happened. ‘OK, then,' he managed, his voice just fractionally unsteady. ‘Nomi? You want for me to call a taxi? Or I could give you a lift?'

‘I can do that,' a woman's voice. ‘I'm Rob's mother,' she added. ‘Clara Beresford. I just wanted to thank you. For coming along. All of you.'

Not many had, Naomi thought. The echoing emptiness of the crematorium and the few voices raised to praise the ‘Bright and Beautiful' had told her that. She wondered if Clara had invited others or chosen not to. Clara's voice was thickened by the tears she had shed.

‘You must be Naomi,' Clara said quietly. ‘And Harry, Patrick's father.'

Harry confirmed his identity and repeated his excuses. He kissed Naomi on the cheek and checked again that she would be alright to get home.

Naomi found herself walking down the path from the crematorium, Patrick and his friends behind and Clara at her side.

‘I really am so sorry,' she said. ‘I can't imagine what you must be going through.'

‘I don't know what's worse,' Clara told her candidly, ‘losing my son or knowing he killed someone else's. It's all right,' she added, ‘Patrick told me you knew. It's a relief, actually, feeling I can say something. Everyone has been so nice, so sympathetic, and I feel almost like a fraud. If they suspected … My God, if they knew.'

‘We don't know what happened,' Naomi reminded her. ‘Not yet. There could have been some kind of accident.'

‘It could have been,' Clara agreed. ‘But, frankly, it doesn't seem like it, does it, and everyone's going to draw their own conclusion sooner or later, aren't they? I mean, the papers have reported the police know who killed Adam Hensel and that the killer is believed to have committed suicide. You won't need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out even if they aren't allowed to print Rob's name.'

‘Are you scared of reprisals?' Naomi asked her. ‘The police can give you protection if you feel threatened; you know that, don't you.'

Clara laughed harshly. ‘No policeman can protect me from my own thoughts,' she said. ‘No one can take the bad dreams away. You know, my family, what's left of them,
they
didn't even bother to come today. Didn't want to be involved. Not that they've ever been involved in Rob's life anyway. Too bloody ashamed of me for that.'

‘Ashamed of you?'

‘For having Rob. For not having married his father, regardless.'

Regardless of what, Naomi wondered. ‘There are a lot of single parents,' she protested. ‘It's not such a big thing in this day and age.'

‘No? No, not to most people. Just to my bloody lot. I told my sister not to come,' she admitted. ‘She wanted to, but I know what hell Mam would put her through if she did, she's not been right since Dad passed on. Everything got worse after that. God, listen to me, giving you my life history, aren't I?' She tried to laugh and Naomi smiled in her direction. ‘I just can't seem to think straight.'

‘I'm not surprised.' Naomi told her.

They paused, having reached the gates and the parked cars.

‘Nomi, we're going back to Charlie's place,' Patrick told her. ‘Is Clara giving you a lift home?'

‘I said I would,' Clara confirmed. ‘That is, if it's OK with Naomi. I don't want to seem to be organizing you.'

‘No, a lift would be welcome,' Naomi told her. ‘If it's not putting you out.'

‘Not at all and the truth is, I've got some things to ask. Patrick thought you might be able to help me out.'

‘I can try,' Naomi told her cautiously. ‘But you've got to understand, I'm probably no more in the loop than you are.'

‘I know. I just need to know what will happen now,' Clara said. She had helped Naomi into the front passenger seat. Napoleon sprawled happily in the back. ‘I mean, the police have said they aren't looking for anyone else, but that the case is still open. Why?'

She wants it all to be over, Naomi thought. Over, closed, put away so she can start to grieve for her boy and put out of her mind the reasons he jumped off that bridge.

‘I know they found that man's blood all over Rob. Rob's fingerprints were on the knife that killed him. He confessed. He's dead. What further punishment … what more can they do? Can't they just … What more do they want to know?'

Naomi hesitated, caught between compassion for this woman and the need – Clara's need too – for her to give a straight reply.

‘Why?' she said softly. ‘We might know that Adam Hensel died and that in all probability Rob killed him, but Clara, what the police need to know now, is
why
.
You
need to know why. You'll never be able to get over this unless you do. And,' she added, gently, ‘don't you think Adam Hensel's family deserve to understand that just as much as you do?'

A
fter a crisis, Naomi thought, you get to make a choice. You either cling to the old and the familiar as if it were moulded into some kind of clumsy, misshapen life preserver, or you draw a line, step over it and leave as much of the past as you feasibly can.

She'd be the first to acknowledge that both the line and the leaving were largely symbolic. The same people – with a few additions – were important to her now as they had been before she went blind. In fact, many of those relationships had deepened. Conversely, others had been abandoned altogether.

Similarly, after the bank siege, having dealt with the genuine fear that they would not get out alive, Naomi had drawn another line, crossed it and left behind any part of herself not determined to live life to the absolute max. Unfortunately, the Naomi that had moved on was also possessed of, or possessed by, a dissatisfaction that the old Naomi would never have given house room to. She was restless, irritated, unable to settle.

Post traumatic stress, Alec called it. Mari wondered, tentatively, if she might be depressed, an irony that was not lost on Naomi. After all, she had no right, did she, to be depressed or self-indulgent; she was alive and safe and loved and it could all have been very different. Or perhaps that was the problem? Was she so conscious of the need to be grateful and for her every action to be life-affirming that she somehow felt she was cheating or cheapening the experience should she, even for a moment, forget to be either?

She recognized a similar sense of confusion in Patrick. It had been present after the bank siege. It was heightened now. Patrick, though, was trying the opposite tack. While Naomi, to Alec's horror, signed up to do a tandem charity skydive and wondered if she could find a salsa class that could cope with someone not only blind but totally lacking in that kind of co-ordination, Patrick immersed himself in the ordinary and the mundane. For the first time in his school career, he was up to date with his assignments and didn't have to be nagged to get his homework done. Harry, while glad that Patrick's grades were improving, nonetheless admitted his anxiety; it didn't seem normal, at least, not for Patrick. And, while previously he'd been someone content with his own company, Patrick now hated to be alone in the house. After school, when not with his friends, Patrick inevitably showed up at Naomi's flat. The third time she came back to find him sitting on the wall outside, she went and got him a key cut. He could, he said, cope with her flat. It was small, there was nothing upstairs. He could look out and see the sea if he cricked his neck sideways and, as if it were relevant, she had a filter coffee machine.

His visits, always frequent, became so commonplace that Harry would now stop off on his way home to collect his son, knowing that their house would be empty.

This was not normal either. Not for Patrick.

‘Do you still have bad dreams?'

It was rare for Harry to accept her offer of coffee. Usually he just called in to say hello, check that she was all right, gather Patrick's belongings and leave for home, eager to get a meal and a rest after a long day. Today, though, he had accepted the coffee and seated himself next to his son on the old blue sofa.