Killing a Stranger (23 page)

‘I'm sorry?' Clara was mystified. ‘So what does he have to do with me? He must deliver and pick up from half the people round here.'

‘Probably, but I don't think that mattered to Rob. You had contact with him and that's what counted.'

‘I still don't understand.'

‘Rob … was checking up on people. This list, it's people we found on his computer. Details hidden inside other files and folders. Rob practically stalked Adam Hensel in the weeks before they died.'

‘Rob? God, Jennifer said something similar, but I couldn't believe it then and I'm not sure I do now.' She looked to Alec for confirmation, reassurance. ‘No. I don't believe that. I don't believe any of it.'

Gently, Alec began to take her through what Patrick and his friends had found. Harry had printed out relevant sections and cross referenced information with names. Or started to. Alec had already realized this was a bigger job than any of them had suspected.

‘No,' Clara said again. ‘No, I still don't believe it. What was he trying to do?'

‘I think,' Alec said, ‘that what started out as very natural curiosity became unbalanced, somehow. It tipped over into secrecy and obsession.'

‘So you're saying it's my fault. I should have told him who his father might be. I should have noticed something. I should …' She broke down. ‘When he was a little boy he'd go up to men in the street and ask them, “are you my daddy?”. It was embarrassing at the time, but I've known other single parents whose kids have done the same. They grow out of it. They begin to understand that you don't do that sort of thing. I thought Rob had just moved on. Oh, he'd ask from time to time and I knew, when he turned eighteen, I'd have to tell him more.'

‘Didn't he ask your family? Your mother? Sister?'

‘My sister, yes, but she didn't know anyway. She couldn't, wouldn't tell him anything. My mum. I don't know. I doubt it, we hadn't seen her in years.'

‘But he knew where she lived?'

Clara nodded. ‘
He's
not on the list though. James Scott.'

‘No, he's not. Which, considering how thorough Rob seems to have been, surprises me.'

‘So it wasn't just Aiden he was trying to make contact with.'

‘No, it seems not, but I think events overtook him this time. He got involved with Jennifer and the notes on his computer indicate they'd become very close.'

‘And her uncle might have objected?'

‘He may have done. There are a number of possibilities, but nothing concrete just now. Clara, there were never any complaints from anyone that Rob was making a nuisance of himself. Hanging round, asking questions.'

She thought about it. Nodded. ‘Once, that I can think of, but it was years ago. There was a man came to work in my office and we got to be good friends. He was going through a divorce and for a while we went out, just casually. I even brought him home, though, to be honest, I never thought anything would come of it. He was looking for a bit of company and so was I and a romance would have been nice but … The funny thing was, I'd been at school with his sister. She was in my year and we'd been friends, though, you know how it is, you drift off. Anyway, he turned up for work one day and said did I know where Rob had been this weekend. I thought Rob was at his friend's on a sleepover, but he'd spent the Sunday and maybe part of the Saturday as well, hanging round this bloke's house just watching him.

‘I tackled Rob and he came out with something about being worried about me seeing as how I was getting a bit close to this guy. He wanted to check him out a bit. I told him off and apologized and it all blew over. Ended the relationship, mind. But Rob was always a bit protective of me and I put it down to that. Far as I know, so did Carl, the man. I think he went back to his wife a few months later anyway and they moved somewhere else to make a fresh start. I often wondered if they managed it.'

She picked up the list. ‘He's not on it, anyway.'

‘He'd obviously been dismissed. And Rob was, you say, thirteen or so.'

She nodded.

‘So, maybe he learnt to be more circumspect after that.'

‘So I drove the behaviour underground.'

‘Clara, you didn't do anything. Rob got himself into a situation of his own making. But it swallowed him in the end. It probably did start out as idle curiosity and from what I've seen of kids, most of them play detective at one time or another. Rob did it a little more assiduously.'

‘But this behaviour wasn't normal. You used the word stalking.'

Alec nodded. ‘I think, in Adam Hensel's case, that's what it became. This was probably the best lead Rob had had in a long time. It genuinely seemed to lead somewhere. The trouble was I think the act of doing probably began to overshadow the reasons behind it and he found himself unable to slow things down. Kids don't always have the ability to make things stop.'

He left Clara with a copy of the list and other information. She had given him addresses for a few of those named and rough indicators for the others. Alec would be able to follow up from the voters' register.

Alec recalled Ernst's plea of the day before. ‘Let this drop,' Ernst had said and Alec was tempted to do just that. Hand everything he had discovered over to his boss and leave it up to him whether or not it should be pursued further. After all, what good was he doing? He was only causing more pain to an increasing number of people.

He folded everything he had together in his briefcase and made a decision that he'd let go of the curious streak that had drawn him back into this mucky business. It wasn't as if he didn't have other work to do.

D
espite the promise he had made to himself, Alec found himself drawn back into Rob Beresford country almost by chance, and once issuing its challenge, he could not but take it up

It had been a busy day. A break-in at the local supermarket which looked like the latest in a series of such crimes. The third dead cat in a month on the Campbell Estate where, it appeared, there was a growing fashion for shooting felines with air guns. A painful and difficult interview with the mother of a rape victim, a girl attacked so viciously she had spent three weeks in intensive care. It was clear that the girl could identify her attacker but was too afraid to do so. Alec had the job of telling the family that they had enough evidence to bring a police prosecution and, whether their daughter wanted it or not, she might well be called upon to give evidence in court.

Two in the afternoon found him within a street or so of where Clara had grown up and where her mother still lived. Alec hadn't really known what to expect when he knocked on the door of Mrs Beresford senior, but the woman who opened it didn't match any of the vague conceptions he had formed from Clara's description.

Her hair was short, greying, and, Alec suspected, coloured, though skilfully enough not to conceal but rather to enhance the grey. Dressed in jeans and a pale pink cardigan over a lighter shirt, she looked comfortable, neat, at ease. In fact, Alec thought, she looked very like her daughter must have been before grief bit hard at her features and creased them before their time.

Alec introduced himself and showed his identification.

‘Oh,' she said. ‘Is this about Robert?'

‘It is, yes.'

‘Then you'd better come in.'

She showed him through to a lavender room. The décor a little overbearing for Alec's taste. He liked lavender, but not on every surface. He declined the offer of tea. He'd drunk it by the bucketload in the course of the morning and felt as though his body was sloshing.

‘What can I do for you? I've tried to call Clara but she doesn't say much when I do get through. Mostly it's that machine telling me to leave a message and I hate the damn things.'

‘They have their uses,' Alec smiled. ‘My pet hate is voice mail. I'm sure people just leave it on regardless of whether they're there or not.'

She smiled but looked confused and he guessed he'd lost her on the technical front.

‘I came to ask you if Rob ever visited,' he said.

‘Did Clara send you?'

‘No one sends me anywhere apart from my boss,' Alec told her. ‘Clara is convinced Rob never came, but Rob was bound to wonder about you.'

She nodded. Sighed. ‘Yes, Rob came,' she said. ‘Once he was old enough to make the trip across town. I guess he must have been fourteen or so the first time. Perhaps a little younger. It wasn't a regular thing, he'd just appear out of the blue from time to time.'

‘And did you enjoy his visits?'

‘He was still my grandson. So like his mother.'

She had avoided his question, Alec noted. ‘And you got on well with him?'

‘Yes, we got on well enough though, as I said, it would be occasional visits just out of the blue. I know his mother didn't know and that worried me, but if I'd phoned to let her know, I don't suppose she'd have thanked me.'

‘And on these visits, what did the two of you talk about?'

‘Oh, this and that. How he was getting on at school. Sometimes he'd tell me about Clara. He was very proud of her, coping on her own.' She pursed her lips as though that left a bad taste. ‘I didn't know him well enough to discuss much else. Sometimes, I used to wonder why he came at all.'

‘Did he ever talk about his father?'

The lips pursed and tightened once again. ‘He asked me,' she said frostily. ‘Natural I suppose that a boy should be curious about his origins.'

‘And did you tell him anything?'

‘No. That was for Clara to do. Besides, I don't think she knew.'

That still rankled, Alec realized, even after all this time. ‘But were names mentioned? Aiden Ryan. James Scott?'

She flinched and he knew he had hit home.

‘They may have come up in conversation, yes. But I told him nothing. That,' she repeated pointedly, ‘was for Clara to do.'

She got up, indicating that the interview was at an end; he'd had his allotted time and now it was done he should go quickly. Alec leaned forward in his seat but didn't stand. ‘You must miss him, though,' he said. ‘Even though the visits were few and far between.'

Clara Beresford's mother regarded him with cold dead eyes. ‘He was dead to me long ago,' she said. ‘Those visits were like brief appointments with a ghost. With the past. To be truthful, I was glad when he stopped coming.'

‘And when was that?'

‘About a year or more ago.'

‘Do you know why?'

She shifted restlessly, awkward standing while he continued to sit. ‘I assumed his mother found out. Other than that, I wouldn't know.'

‘All right, Mrs Beresford.' Alec decided to let her off the hook. He stood and dug into his pocket for a card. ‘If you remember anything more about your conversations with your grandson, please let me know.'

She made no move to take the card so he placed it on the arm of the lilac chair.

C
lara had closed the curtains and shut out the world. The world seemed especially unkind today. First Alec with his blasted list – he meant well, she knew, but she was beginning to wish he would go away. Then not a half hour after he'd gone a couple of officers in uniform. A rather serious looking man who described himself as Sergeant Brodie and a young woman who was introduced as Constable Wyatt.

A complaint had been made against her. A complaint!

The toad, it seemed had made good on his promise to accuse her of assault. Clara hadn't known whether to laugh in their faces or burst into tears. Fortunately, she'd managed to refrain from either and they had outlined the possible charges made against her and taken a formal statement.

Truthfully, there wasn't much Clara could argue with. She had thrown coffee over him and had followed the liquid with the mug, though that had missed and just bounced off the chair. It had broken when it hit the coffee table not the toad.

Clara, in her own defence, had explained the circumstances. Brodie just continued to look serious and dour. The woman, Wyatt, had made what Clara supposed were soothing and sympathetic noises, though to Clara's rather jaundiced ears, the clucks and coos belonged in a kindergarten not in her kitchen.

Well, Clara thought, if he wants his day in court, I shall be happy to oblige and they can say what they like about me. No doubt it'll be like mother like son. Violent and impulsive.

She flopped into her chair preparing for an evening staring at the television. She didn't have a clue what might be on and, frankly, she didn't care. It was not real – unless she happened on news or a documentary and, should that misfortune arise, she'd simply flip the channel. Clara, these days, just wanted the not real.

The sound of a car being driven rather too fast in the quiet road attracted her attention. ‘Silly buggers, with all the parked cars this time of night.' She heard it screech to a halt outside her door.

And then the crash, the sound of shattering glass. The living room curtains belled inward for an instant and then the missile, trapped and cushioned by the layers of thick, soft fabric, thumped on to the floor.

‘Oh!'

Clara got up and stared. Dimly, she was aware of a second screech of tyres as the car sped away. She stared at the object that had landed on her carpet. A brick. A flaming house brick. Someone had thrown a brick through her front room window.

Clara could hardly believe it. She'd half expected some violent reaction when and if people had realized what Rob had done, but, to her face at least, she'd had nothing but sympathy from her neighbours. Had this happened when … she might have understood. But weeks had passed.

Belatedly, she ran to the window and pulled the curtain aside, peered out into the street. The car had gone. Of course it had. She'd heard it go.