Killing a Stranger (25 page)

‘Yes,' he said. ‘You did. I was trying to help.'

‘I know.' He moved on and she fell into step beside him. ‘Walk me to the bus stop? It's on the promenade.'

He hesitated and then nodded. ‘OK.'

They walked in silence for a few minutes. God, Jennifer thought, this isn't going the way I wanted. She tried to find an opening, a way of getting to what she wanted to say, but none seemed obvious. Finally, she just went for it.

‘Have you ever done something you're ashamed of?'

He glanced sidelong at her. ‘I suppose. Everyone must have some time or other. Why?'

‘I let him take pictures of me.'

‘Who? Rob?'

‘No. Like I told you the other night. Uncle Adam. God, you must think I'm a right slapper.'

‘No, why would I.'

‘You must do. I told you about Adam's pictures and then you asked if I let Rob take them too and anyway, look at me. Pregnant and it wasn't even a boyfriend.'

‘You told me there were pictures,' Patrick pointed out. ‘You didn't actually tell me they were of you.' He seemed to hesitate and then he asked bluntly. ‘Was it your uncle?'

Momentarily shocked she halted and stared at him, then shook her head. ‘No, I'm pretty sure it wasn't. I wanted … that night when he took the pictures we'd been flirting and mucking about and I'd got a bit drunk and I was messing about on his computer and I'd found these photographs of this woman and I thought … or rather I didn't think … you know. If that's what he wants, well, so I handed him the camera and I started posing, with my clothes on and then I started to get undressed and at first he got all, you know, get dressed again and I should take you home, but I told him he couldn't drive because he'd been drinking and anyway … he took the pictures of me. I woke up the morning after and I wasn't sure, you now, if we'd … if it'd gone further than that.'

‘Did you tell Rob?'

‘Yeah, I told Rob. He was all, you know, have it out with him. But I know Uncle Adam didn't get me pregnant. I never stayed in his flat again after that night and that was in August so …'

‘Who was it then?' Patrick asked directly. ‘Was it a one night stand sort of thing? Clara said that's what happened with …' He stopped as though belatedly realizing he was talking about Rob's mum and her dad. He remembered too that Clara had more or less discounted Aiden.

‘Yeah, I know,' she said. ‘Yeah, it was pretty much like that. I was at this party and there were these two boys there and I got talking and drinking and one thing led to another and I'd had a row with my mum so I guess I wasn't … I guess I wasn't as in my head as I should have been and anyway these two boys, I sneaked out the back with one of them and we did it. Next thing I know I'm pregnant and I don't even know his name.

‘Anyway, like I'm going to land him in it just because of one night'

‘Didn't he use anything?'

She rolled her eyes like one of her favourite emoticons. ‘I was meant to be on the pill. Mum doesn't know and it's the mini pill and sometimes I forgot to take it. I forgot to take it more often that I remembered, I suppose. By the time I'd figured out what was going on it was too late for the morning after pill and I didn't feel right about killing it. Not its fault its mum's stupid, is it?'

Patrick was the first person she'd said any of this to. She watched his face in the yellow light of the street lamps as this dawned on him and wondered what he'd do with the knowledge. Part of her wanted him to tell. Tell someone, anyone, save her the difficulty. Part of her was terrified he would.

Patrick's next question showed her he'd worked out something else as well. ‘You let Rob believe it was Adam, didn't you?'

‘I didn't
let
Rob think anything. He made up his own mind. I think he was going to talk to Adam no matter what I said, but, Patrick, I didn't even know he'd been in contact with Uncle Adam, never mind arrange that stupid meeting. Then, they were both dead.'

‘How do you know Rob arranged the meeting?' Patrick asked.

‘I don't but he must have done, mustn't he?'

She'd gone beyond tears, all cried out. She tucked her hands into the sleeves of her coat and stared miserably ahead into the gloom. They'd reached the bus stop now and she leaned against the wall, staring out to sea until the bus arrived and Patrick said goodbye.

There, she'd said it all now but telling her parents would be ten times as difficult again.

P
atrick wandered back to Naomi's. It was later than usual and he arrived just as his dad pulled up in front of the flats.

‘I got chatting,' he said. He didn't say who to.

They took a moment to explain to Naomi and then drove home, Patrick thinking hard about Jennifer and Rob and the whole conundrum. He found his thoughts were chasing themselves in circles, like dogs with too many tails. He could begin to appreciate how confused Rob must have been feeling and why he had seemed so moody and out of sorts in the weeks before his death. He wondered if Adam Hensel had felt the same. If he too had tried to make sense of something that, well, that just didn't.

What Patrick couldn't really get his head around was why Jennifer thought it better to let people think the father of her baby might be either her uncle or the boy who thought he was her half brother, than that it was the product of a stupid one night stand. OK, so that wasn't something she might want to shout from the rooftops, but it was a little less reprehensible, in Patrick's eyes, anyway, than was incest.

Was it still incest if it was your uncle?

He might not be the most popular kid in school, may not be invited to many of those sorts of parties, but that didn't mean he wasn't aware of them or aware of how much sex went on – along with how much booze. He had heard girls talking to one another about this boy or that and how they'd never … not at a party and then heard the boys in question boasting how they had. Actually, Patrick thought, sometimes it was the other way around and he knew this wasn't a new phenomena. He'd once – and yes, he was ashamed of it, sort of – eavesdropped on Naomi and Mari gossiping about Naomi and her sister and their teenage years. The conversation had involved a lot of semi-shocked giggling and exclamations of ‘you never', but he had heard enough to know they were talking about an old flame of Naomi's and what she now wished she hadn't done.

At least he found it comprehensible that Jennifer should indulge in a quickie behind the shed in someone else's garden. What he found less comprehensible was that she would pose for her uncle to take pictures. Or she should then tell her uncle that the father of her unwanted baby might be the same person she was trying to introduce to the family as her half brother.

Had she told Adam that? Either of those things? She had admitted that she had let Rob believe that Adam was more than just a maternal uncle. Patrick wanted to know, desperately wanted to know, if she had played the game the other way.

‘Dad, did you know Naomi when she was my age?'

‘Well, yes. I've always known Naomi.'

‘No, I mean as a close friend, like you are now.'

‘No, we sort of drifted apart in our teenage years. I was the quiet sort, I suppose.'

‘And Naomi wasn't.'

Harry chuckled. ‘Oh no.' He sobered quickly. ‘Why the questions?'

‘Oh, I don't know. I'm not close to many girls. Becky, yes, but girls are …'

‘It doesn't improve when they turn into women,' Harry said. ‘I certainly never understood your mother. That's why she left me.'

Patrick laughed. ‘You get on OK now though.'

‘Oh yes, but we've got all that ocean between us and the only thing we really talk about is you. We've always been in agreement when it comes to what we feel about you. And, you know, I'm really glad you get on with her new family. Relations are a bit thin on the ground this side of the pond and I've always had this worry, you know, what might happen if I …'

‘Oh, Dad.'

‘What is it Naomi says? Part of a parent's brief to embarrass their offspring?' He pulled into the drive and Patrick got out and opened the front door. He dropped his bag in the hall, picked up the mail and went through to the kitchen.

‘And is there a particular girl that's causing this grief?' Harry asked him, following him into the kitchen.

‘Oh Dad, like I'd tell you.'

‘No, I thought not. But I have to try. Another section of the parent charter. All I can say is, I'm glad you're not a girl. I don't think I could cope.'

Patrick smiled at his father. ‘Well, at least I did something right. I got myself born the right sex.' Then he frowned and his expression darkened, closed. ‘It's Jennifer,' he said. ‘Adam Hensel's niece, you know. I met her at Clara's that night and I've been talking to her on MSN.'

A
lec was summoned to his boss's office as soon as he arrived that morning. A complaint had been made against him. One James Scott, accusing him of intimidation,

Chief Inspector Lyndon was a relative newcomer to Ingham and he had Alec's record open on the table in front of him. ‘Not the first such accusation that's been made, is it?'

‘No, nor do I expect it to be the last. I was acting on a hunch, sir.'

‘A hunch. I don't suppose you checked the bloke's alibi before you stormed in on your hunch?'

‘Alibi? I didn't accuse him. I asked. I made the suggestion that the brick through the window might have had something to do with him.'

‘You told him he'd have to give a sample of his DNA.'

‘Strictly for elimination purposes. Nothing more.'

Lyndon snapped the file closed and glared across the desk. ‘Don't you think you're getting a bit involved with this Beresford business? Hardly the best use of police time, is it? Drop it, Alec. The case is closed, to all intents and purposes. Hensel is dead, so is the kid that did for him. Nothing more for us to do.'

‘Apart from find out why.'

‘You want to fund the overtime to do that? Fine. The resources of this department are stretched thin enough as it is without you skimming them out on things that don't matter.'

‘Funny, I thought establishment of motive was a prime concern.'

‘Don't play games, Alec. Motive matters when you're trying to find the perp. Not after the event. What's eating you, anyway?' he asked in a more conciliatory tone.

Alec sat down. Where to begin. ‘I found a link between murderer and victim,' he said.

‘So I believe. The boy thought the dead man's brother-in-law might be his dad.'

‘It's likely Rob also thought the dead man got his niece pregnant.'

‘And did he?'

‘I don't know. He did take some rather compromising pictures. But she was over sixteen at the time and at least semi-consensual.'

‘Semi?'

‘Drunk.'

‘Oh. Tell me something new. OK, so you have a possible motive. Rob Beresford taking revenge for uncle getting girl pregnant. That your angle?'

‘That's part of it,' Alec said slowly.

‘So, you have possible motive, end of story.'

Alec wondered if he should bother getting into what was found on the computer drive. ‘Look,' he said. ‘Give me some bodies, a couple of hours for house to house. We cover a narrow area, the cul de sac where the attack happened and say, a hundred yards each way up the main street. We turn up nothing new, I leave it at that.'

‘Alec, you're talking like you're calling the shots.'

‘I wouldn't presume.'

‘Like hell you wouldn't. Christ, Alec … OK, you and three others. No more than two, three hours. I'm not calculating the cost. Make use of the Community Liaison bods and the Specials, I can't spare anyone on shift. Now get out of here.'

Alec grinned. ‘Thanks,' he said. ‘Oh, one more thing?'

‘What now?'

‘Did he have an alibi? Scott?'

‘Only corroborated by about fifty witnesses. He was down the pub, performing on the flaming Karaoke.'

Patrick went straight to Naomi's after school and asked her if he could use MSN. He'd recently set up an account for her and taught her to use the message record function so she could speak into it and he could talk back. She'd not really used it much yet, but the idea appealed as she could manage that with only a couple of key strokes. Patrick had put clear, textured sticking plaster on the relevant keys so she could find them.

Jennifer was already online. He'd started to think she must sign on the moment his school day finished and be waiting for him. He came straight to the point.

Did you make Adam belive that Rod was the dad?

Well hello to you too. What's all that about.

Straight question but I want an answer. Did you?

How should I know what he thought? I didn't make him think anything.

But you didn't tell him otherwise did you? Very clever wasn't it making Rob think it was Adam and Adam think it was Rob. Bet that made you feel really good having them both fighting over you.

What? Why are you doing this Patrick I thought you were my friend.

So did Rob. Look I want to know thats all.

Nothing came back from her for so long he thought she'd just logged off and that would be that, but eventually she typed:

Maybe they thought that I didn't know. It was easier in the end to let them think it and stop asking me stupid questions.

Why not just tell the truth.

The truth. Yeah great.

Patrick was confounded. The more he thought about it the more certain he was that her lie – no, it wasn't even a lie – her failure to tell the truth had led at least in part to this tragedy. He could imagine, both men, righteously angry; Adam carrying, perhaps, the added guilt that it
might
be his baby. Or might
have
been if things were different.