The Other Child (15 page)

At night it must be pitch black here. At least it was almost impossible to get lost, because you could not leave the road. And you were protected from the gorge by the walls. Someone completely drunk might still manage to fall to their death, but Fiona had been sober as a judge, as always.

A deep fear was creeping up on Leslie. Something here was just not right.

They walked to Whitestone Farm and then a little farther, peering into the roadside bushes and letting their gaze wander over the pastures behind them. Wotan and Cal would leap on ahead happily and come back, not appearing to sense anything at all unusual.

‘Could the dogs follow a scent?' asked Leslie. ‘For example, if we gave them something Fiona had worn?'

Jennifer shook her head. ‘A dog has to be trained for that. The two of them wouldn't know what to do.'

Frustrated, they went back to the farm. Whatever had happened to Fiona, there was no trace of her on the path she had wanted to take.

At the gate to the farm Gwen was waiting for them. She had tried to call Dave Tanner a number of times. ‘He just doesn't answer his phone,' she said. ‘It's as if he's been swallowed up by the earth!'

‘Just like my grandmother,' replied Leslie and pulled her car key from her trouser pocket. ‘So I'm going to drive over to him. Do you want to come, Gwen?'

Gwen hummed and hawed, in the end deciding against it. Leslie thought it typical of her friend: she never took the initiative. She didn't risk things. This had led to a life where little happened, and for long periods nothing at all.

Leslie got the address off Gwen and was soon sitting in her car again. Still plagued by a headache and driving along the sunlit country road she felt an intense need to call Stephen, to tell him that something terrible had happened, to let him console her and give her advice, to hear his warm voice which had always had a calming effect on her. But then she forbade herself this sudden weakness. Stephen was no longer the man at her side. And also: nothing terrible had happened.

At least, there was as yet no reason to think so.

5

Dave Tanner lived in the town centre, only a few steps away from the pedestrian zone with all its department stores and small shops, right by the Market Hall and the Friarage School where he gave his lessons. Friargate was lined with two rows of terraced houses of red brick and white-painted front doors. Most of the houses lay a little lower than the road and were accessed via downward-leading steps, giving a certain dark, subterranean feel to them.

When Leslie stopped and got out of her car, parked just behind Dave Tanner's bucket of rust, she could smell the sea in the light wind, and that blew away some of the trepidation in her. You could not see the water from here, but it still conveyed a sense of freshness and purity and managed to make even this monotonous road something special.

She looked at the houses. She noticed that signs had been put up in almost all the front gardens and on the walls saying that ball games were prohibited on this road. It seemed that so many windowpanes had been broken already, no doubt because the school was nearby, that the residents were unanimously trying to eliminate this constant danger.

In the house where Dave Tanner lived, a faded yellow curtain twitched almost imperceptibly on the ground floor. Leslie guessed that she was already being watched. A little further up on the other side of the road a young woman rushed out of her house with a child on her arm. She looked around nervously before heading towards St Helen's Square and the pedestrian zone. She threw Leslie a suspicious glance.

Either, thought Leslie, unknown people are rarely seen in this street, or my relatively new car makes me look very exotic.

She had just decided to ring the bell when she saw a figure approaching out of the corner of her eye. She turned around.

Dave Tanner came strolling up the street. He was quite relaxed, or at least gave the impression of being so. When he saw Leslie, he started to walk faster.

‘Well, well,' he said, when he reached her, ‘what gives me the honour of your visit today? Are you here to represent the Beckett family and examine my living conditions and social milieu?'

As he had not greeted her, Leslie also omitted to wish him a good morning. She asked him directly: ‘Why don't you answer Gwen's calls?'

He looked at her in surprise, then he suddenly laughed. ‘That's why you came? To ask me that?'

‘No. Actually I'm looking for my grandmother. Fiona Barnes.'

This was just as astonishing to him. ‘Here? At my place?'

‘Did you drive straight here yesterday evening?'

He looked amused. ‘Is this an interrogation?'

‘Just a question.'

‘Yes, I drove straight here. I have no idea where your grandmother is, and frankly, meeting her is the last thing I want to do.' He gestured to the front door. ‘We needn't talk on the street. Would you like a coffee?'

Leslie had asked Gwen for a coffee, but now she realised that she had not found time to drink it. It was almost two in the afternoon, and she had not eaten or drunk anything yet. She felt a little wobbly on her feet and her stomach gave signs of being a little upset.

‘A coffee would be great,' she said gratefully.

Dave went down the steps to the front door ahead of her. Leslie could now clearly see the outline of a person behind the curtain. Dave had seen it too.

‘My landlady,' he explained. ‘She takes an active interest in other people's lives – to put a positive spin on it.' He opened the door. ‘Please. Come in.'

Leslie stepped into the dark narrow hall and almost collided with an elderly woman who was just coming out of the living room: the landlady. She examined Leslie from head to foot.

‘Well?' she said. ‘A visitor?'

Leslie held out her hand. ‘I'm Dr Leslie Cramer. Mr Tanner and I need to have a quick chat about something.'

‘Mrs Willerton,' said the landlady. ‘It's my house. I rent out an upstairs room, since my husband is no longer around.'

Dave squeezed past the two women to get to the stairs. ‘Watch the stairs, Dr Cramer,' he said. ‘They're worn and steep, and it's rather dingy.'

‘Find a room somewhere else if you think it's lousy here!' exclaimed an offended Mrs Willerton.

Leslie followed Dave up the stairs, which were indeed a hazard to life and limb. At the top he opened a door. ‘I'm afraid I have to invite you into my bedroom,' he said. ‘It's the only room at my disposal.'

The room was complete chaos. There was a wardrobe, but whatever Tanner used it for, it was not for his clothes. Trousers and sweaters lay strewn over the backs of chairs and armchairs and in piles on the floor. The bed was unmade and the sheets rumpled. There was a bottle of mineral water next to the bed. The whole of the small table in the corner was covered in crumpled newspapers that had obviously been much read. Leslie spied a lipstick on the windowsill and scrunched-up black tights under the chair at the table. She was surprised to find signs that Gwen had often stayed the night, but she said to herself that Gwen was obviously not quite the vestal virgin her aura suggested. Of course she had the right to have fun here with her fiancé. Anything else would not be normal. And yet she had not thought that Gwen used lipstick – she had never seen her made-up, in fact, and nor had she suspected Gwen would use ultra-fine tights. But who knew, maybe Gwen became a vamp when she went out with Dave and the puzzle of the two wildly different people had its solution here: in sex. Maybe they had crazy, fantastic, heavenly sex.

Although that was, as Leslie had to admit, extremely hard for anyone who knew Gwen to imagine.

Dave brushed a few T-shirts off a chair. ‘Please. Sit down. I'll make us coffee.'

At a sink in a kind of small wet room by the door, he ran water into a kettle and then turned it on. He took a jar from the cupboard – instant coffee, thought Leslie in resignation, I feared as much – and spooned the brown powder into two cups. He pushed the newspapers to the side and placed a little bowl with powdered milk and sugar cubes on the table.

‘Voilà!
' he said. ‘Everything's ready!'

‘Have you been out walking?' asked Leslie.

He nodded. ‘The weather is too nice to spend the whole day sitting in this room, don't you think?'

‘Did you go to bed straight away yesterday? I mean, after everything that happened, you must have been a little agitated.'

‘No. I wasn't too worked up. And yes, I went straight to bed.' He brought over the boiling water and filled their cups. ‘Dr Cramer, what's this all about? You're asking again and again what I did last night. Why? What's up with your grandmother? And what's it got to do with me?'

‘I drove back to her flat last night without her. I was angry and had no wish to talk to her. She stayed on the Beckett farm for a good while, and then she asked Colin Brankley to order a cab for her, to pick her up at a farm fifteen minutes' walk from the Beckett farm. She was over-excited, Colin says, and wanted to have a walk. The cabbie didn't find anyone at the agreed meeting place, circled around for a while and then drove back to Scarborough. Fiona neither showed up at her flat nor back at the Beckett farm. She's just disappeared, and I'm pretty worried.'

‘Naturally. But why do you think I might know where she is?'

Leslie took a sip of coffee and burnt her tongue. An awful brew. She reached for the sugar, although she did not usually take any.

‘I just hoped you might know something. Fiona might have gone looking for you, because she had acted so badly towards you. I was just … looking for answers.'

‘Unfortunately, I really have no idea where she could be,' said Dave.

And why should he lie to me, thought Leslie. She felt tired and scared. Nevertheless, something in her refused to consider that anything serious could have happened to her grandmother. Fiona was not the kind of person something could happen to. But then she asked herself if there was a kind of person nothing happened to? Wasn't that what was so eerie about fate, that anything could happen to anyone anywhere?

She looked around the room and wondered how a grown man could live like this. A student, yes, but a man in his forties? What had gone wrong in Dave Tanner's life? His eyes were restless, perhaps even a little despairing. He hated this room, and did nothing to make it nicer. On the contrary, he had let it become a complete tip. The room embodied his anger at his life – at the poor, rundown terraced house and his intrusive landlady, at his car which was always letting him down and finally also at his job which did not even start to satisfy or fulfil him. He seemed intelligent and educated to her – why had he ended up in this hole of a room under the same roof as that awful woman?

‘I think it must have been about half-eight yesterday evening, when I left the Beckett farm,' said Dave. ‘I reckon I was here by about nine. I drank a little wine and then went to bed. I didn't see or talk to Fiona Barnes. That's all that happened.'

‘You must have been pretty mad.'

‘I was mad, because she had attacked me in front of everyone. Because she ruined the evening. Even if she had never expressed them that directly till then, her opinions about me were not exactly a surprise. I had always felt her suspicion.'

‘She looks after Gwen.'

‘With what right?'

‘What do you mean?' asked Leslie surprised.

He stirred his coffee so violently that the coffee splashed over the side. ‘What I said. With what right? She's not Gwen's mother or grandmother. She's not kin. Why does she feel she can meddle in Gwen's life?'

‘She's been friends with Gwen's father for ever. Gwen is very attached to her – has always seen her as a second mother. So Fiona feels responsible. And she's suspicious.'

‘Why?'

Leslie chose her words carefully. ‘I suppose you know you are a rather attractive man, Dave. And you probably don't have any difficulty in attracting young pretty women. So why Gwen? She's …'

He looked at her, waiting for her to continue. ‘Yes?'

‘She's not exactly a beauty,' said Leslie. ‘That wouldn't necessarily be a problem, if she was witty and a sparkling conversationalist. Or if she had a remarkable intelligence, or a fascinating self-confidence, great ambition, cleverness … something. But she's shy, rather naive and not very … not very interesting. My grandmother doesn't understand what attracts you to her.'

‘Your grandmother understands it all perfectly. The farm. All those acres of wonderful land that will be Gwen's in the not too distant future. And she says quite clearly that I'm only interested in that. In the property.'

‘And is she right?' asked Leslie, challenging him.

‘How do you mean?' replied Dave.

‘I don't want to be rude, but …'

‘No, do.'

‘OK. I can't imagine that you're satisfied with the life you lead here. I think you're looking for an opportunity to escape all this.' She made a gesture that took in the room's chaos. ‘You are a man who makes a strong impression on women, but you have nothing to offer them, and that limits quite considerably your options of marrying someone better-off. A woman of your age would be horrified to see this room. Young women would be less shocked, but they tend not to own anything and so can't help you out of your mess. From that perspective, Gwen is an extraordinary piece of luck – and moreover, one that you're not going to let slip away, as you won't be given another one like it any time soon, if ever.'

He listened to her in silence. If her words annoyed him, his face did not betray it. He gave the impression of being calm.

‘I'm listening,' he said when she paused. ‘Carry on, now you've started.'

‘Gwen is lonely,' continued Leslie, feeling surer of herself. ‘In spite of her love for her father she feels so alone. She senses that her life, as she leads it now, doesn't have a future. She is dreaming of a prince and would be prepared to make a lot of compromises, if only she could find one to whisk her up onto his horse and ride into the future with her. She would throw caution to the wind and ignore everything that might make other women hold back.'