Killing a Stranger (9 page)

‘I think it's Dutch, or German, maybe. Adam's father was an immigrant in the 1950s, I believe. Adam and his sister were born here and Adam had an ex-wife. She came to the funeral, but left when I did. I think someone invited her to the wake, but I got the impression she wouldn't really have been welcome.'

‘Oh?'

‘Now, before you start reading anything into that, they divorced five years ago after ten years of marriage. No children and she's since remarried. Lived close on a hundred miles away and has a rock solid alibi for the night he died. I figure it's natural that the family might not want her there; equally natural, unless the divorce was really messy, that she'd want to say goodbye to someone she shared at least a decade with.' He paused. ‘The father, Ernst, is an interesting man. Very strong, very proper. Looks like an old soldier.'

She laughed. ‘What does an old soldier look like?'

‘Oh, I don't know. Ramrod straight. That was the thing that struck me the first time we met and it struck me again today. I often wonder what happens to people like that if they have to bend.'

‘Tough time, Christmas,' Naomi said thoughtfully. ‘To lose family in any way. To have them die violently … must be even tougher.'

‘Um, so it must be. It'll be tough on Clara too, the first year without her son and, from what I've seen, precious little family support elsewhere.'

‘Hopefully she has friends.'

‘Hopefully so, but having a killer for a son must put the dampner on your social life.'

‘That's a callous way of putting it.'

‘It's a truthful way, you know that.'

‘Not if her friends are genuine,' Naomi objected.

Alec sighed. ‘I suppose I'm feeling rather jaundiced,' he admitted. ‘I wanted to be able to go there today and say, “Look, this is why Rob Beresford did what he did. It doesn't make it better or Adam any less dead, but at least you've got a reason.” Instead, they were all terribly polite and very, very resentful. And frankly, I can't say I blame them. We had a good idea who the killer was the night it happened. It must seem to the family like we've done nothing since.'

‘It hasn't really been that long,' Naomi objected. ‘Two weeks, give or take. Frankly, they're lucky to have had the body released so soon.'

‘I think the coroner pushed things through. Christmas and all that. You still fancy going out tonight or shall we get a film and a take away?'

‘Add a nice bottle of wine and I'll settle for that. Why? Feeling lazy?'

‘Hmm,' he kissed her again. ‘Not exactly lazy, just not that sociable, if you know what I mean.'

She kissed him back. ‘I've got a pretty good idea.'

‘You wish that we would all go away?' Ernst asked her.

Jennifer was out on the staircase again. She didn't think anyone had noticed her slip away. ‘Not you, Granddad,' she told him. ‘I don't mind you being here.'

He seated himself one step down and handed her the second of the two glasses he was holding.

She took it uncertainly. ‘I'm not supposed to drink wine. Not … you know.'

‘While you are pregnant. Say it, Jen, there's no hiding it and you have to get used to the idea.'

‘
I
am used to the idea. It's …'

He patted her hand. ‘I know, I know. And that isn't wine, it's that fizzy grape stuff your mother likes.'

‘Oh. OK, thanks then.' She placed it down beside her on the step.

Ernst peered at her over the rim of his own red wine. ‘I was sorry you didn't come to the funeral.'

So that was it. Her parents had sent him out here to make her feel guilty. Guiltier, actually.

‘Sorry,' he continued, ‘but not surprised. Had I been able to find a good reason, I too would have stayed away.'

‘You?' His accent was heavier tonight, she noted. Always there in the background and sometimes in the oddity of word order, it was more pronounced tonight, thickened by emotion. ‘How could you have stayed away? Adam was …' She broke off and bit her lip.

‘My son, yes. My child. As this,' he reached his hand and touched her, butterfly light, upon her belly. ‘This is yours. A new life should not be hidden away.'

Jennifer's eyes filled with tears and she blinked them away, then wiped them on her sleeves when they insisted on pouring down her cheeks. ‘That's not what they think,' she spat bitterly. ‘Not them. All they can think about is how pissed off they are.'

Ernst shrugged. Never one to dress things off, he nodded. ‘Yes, they are “pissed off” as you put it. They are disappointed too and a little shocked, especially because you will not say who. I think, if you had a boyfriend …?' He turned the last into a question and left it hanging in the air.

‘You missed out “ashamed”,' she snapped at him. She started to get up, wanting to retreat to her room and shut the door. Ernst reached out once more and took her hand.

‘Sit down,' he said gently. ‘I did not say “ashamed” because they are not ashamed. You are their child, as Adam was mine, as your mother is mine. They are shocked, yes, afraid for you, yes, but they and we all love you, Jennifer, and we will love your child when it arrives.' He sipped his wine, thoughtfully. ‘One lost, one just beginning, that, I think, is the way of the world.'

His hand was shaking, Jennifer noticed. ‘Do you hate him?' she asked. ‘The one that did this?'

‘That got you pregnant or killed my son?'

‘I …' she realized with a shock that she didn't know. ‘It's not the same thing, is it?'

‘No, but both could be reasons to hate.' He hesitated. ‘The … boy … who made you pregnant. Do you care for him? Does he know? Oh, I know, I know, you are sick to death of the questions. I won't ask them again. If he hurt you, left you, then yes, I hate him. If you left him, if perhaps he doesn't know? Then no, I feel sorry for his loss.'

‘His loss?'

‘You don't tell him he has a son? That is loss.'

‘It might be a girl.'

‘Son, daughter, still a child. He or she. And the one who took my child? Of course I hate him. One day, if I ever understand, I might find it in my heart to forgive.'

‘Mum will never forgive,' Jennifer said with absolute certainty.

‘No, I don't think she will,' Ernst agreed. ‘She and your uncle did not always see the world the same way. They often fought, even as children. That makes it worse for her.'

‘How?'

‘Because she has guilt too. Guilt that she might not have loved him enough when she still had the chance.'

‘But that's stupid.'

‘No, just human. Me, I have had a lifetime to get used to forgiveness. I have practice, you see. In time, if I understand the reasons, I might begin to forgive.'

Jennifer looked away. She couldn't think what to say. ‘What if he had a reason,' she asked, finally, not looking at Ernst, but instead fixing her gaze upon the Christmas tree star. The tears had returned and the star fragmented into a thousand crystal shards. ‘To kill someone. How big a reason would it have to be?'

C
lara had locked her doors and was about to go up to bed. The house still felt appallingly empty.
Clara
still felt appallingly empty and it could only get worse in the coming days.

She'd taken to avoiding town, anywhere she would be forced to confront the bright lights and artificial cheerfulness concurrent with the season. She and Rob had never made a big thing of Christmas, anyway. More often than not it had been just the two of them on the day, though, as Rob had got old enough to have his own social life, she had renewed old friendships and created the odd new one; made for herself a little round of parties and drinks and events that, for the past few years at least, had become traditional.

How long, she wondered in that random fashion her brain had tracked in these past weeks, how long does a pattern have to be established before you can classify it as tradition?

This year, anyway, this fragile custom had been broken. The invitations had materialized; some of them, anyway, but, she sensed, they had been half hearted and given in hope of her declining. She had become the ghost at the feast; the souvenir of mortality.

Clara was heading up the stairs when the doorbell rang. She checked the time on her watch. Just after eleven. Who on earth? Ignore it, she thought. Whoever it was, they had no right to be calling so late and in her experience only bad news came this late in the day. Resolute, she continued up the stairs, but whoever it was gave up on the bell and was banging upon the door. It seemed unlikely they would go away.

She returned to the hallway, trying to make out the shape she could just see through the obscure glass panel of the door. Should she call the police?

No doubt he could see her too. It looked, she decided, like a he. The banging increased in volume and insistence. She glanced at her watch again. He'd have the neighbours up and Steve next door was on earlies this week; that wasn't fair.

‘Oh, for goodness sake!'

Putting the chain in place she opened the front door a crack. ‘Who the hell do you think you are making that kind of noise? Do you know what time it is?'

The old man squared his shoulders and peered at her through the narrow gap. ‘My name is Ernst Hensel,' he said. ‘Your son killed mine.'

Clara had not, she decided, been in her right mind when she opened the door. Had some part of her, she wondered, been hoping he had been here looking for revenge? Would she have welcomed that?

Truthfully, Clara didn't know.

She had taken Ernst Hensel through to the kitchen, not into the living room as she would most guests, and she had told him to sit down in the chair Rob had settled in that night. Then, when the ordinary, normal things had been done, she had been at a loss, stood hovering in the doorway wondering what was expected. Was there etiquette for such moments?

Ernst seemed equally at a loss. He looked around at the tidy, nondescript kitchen with its bland beech effect cabinets and dark melamine worktops. At the shelves that housed her collection of blue and white plates. At the round table and spindle backed chairs and blue bowl, usually full of fruit but which was now home to only a single banana and an overripe pear. Clara looked where he looked, seeing, as though for the first time, as a stranger might, the chip showing white earthenware beneath the blue glaze, the mottled skin of fruit that, rightly, should have been binned days back. She caught the overripe smell of it, sickly sweet and verging on rot. She noted the tidiness of the shelves and the lack of crockery in the drainer, signs that she had cooked only when hunger drove her to heat soup or make toast. She became aware, and wondered if he was aware too, that she had eaten properly only once or twice since Rob had died, and then only when someone else had, with forceful kindness, urged food upon her.

And finally, she looked upon the man himself, scrutinizing her as closely as she was him and with as much hostility. Or was it hostility? Looking into the cool grey eyes, slate grey set in a face that was itself grey with grief and weariness and crowned with a mane of hair, worn just that bit too long, that seemed to become more pallid even as she looked at it, she fancied there was no hostility. Just puzzlement.

‘Why did you let me in?' he asked.

‘I don't know. I suppose I was worried about the noise you were making.' She grimaced, aware of how odd that must sound. ‘I was worried what the neighbours might think. Why did you come here?'

Ernst Hensel nodded slowly as though considering the question. ‘I came,' he said, ‘because, today, I buried my son. I wanted to see for myself what kind of woman could give birth to such a creature that might take his life away.'

‘W
hat did you talk about?' Patrick was awed and aware that the others felt the same. The idea that Clara and the father of the victim should meet, should talk, was an outrageous one.

‘How did he find out where you lived?' Becky demanded. ‘Did the police tell him? They had no right!'

Clara shook her head. ‘No, he says he followed me home from the funeral. From Rob's funeral. He said he had no idea why, just the need to know. He'd figured out from the news reports and odd things the police let slip that Rob had to be the one and he wanted to confront me at the funeral, but then, when he got there it seemed inhumane.'

‘Inhumane! Coming here was bloody inhumane.' Charlie couldn't get to grips with the idea. ‘He was too fucking scared to come out and say anything at the funeral with all of us there, so he came round when he knew you'd be on your own. You've done nothing. It's all wrong. All fucking wrong.'

Clara leaned across the table and, briefly, touched his hand. ‘It's all right,' she said. ‘In a strange kind of way, I'm glad he did. And I'm glad you all came over tonight, but shouldn't you be with your families?' It was, after all, Christmas Eve.

The glances they exchanged were puzzled, embarrassed. ‘Mum and
him
have gone out for the evening,' Becky said finally.

‘Mine are at my uncle's, then they'll go to Mass,' Charlie admitted. ‘I said I'd maybe join them later. Mam is a bit funny about it, you know. She doesn't bother any other time, just Christmas and Easter.'

Patrick said nothing. He was supposed to be with his dad and Mari, but when Becky had phoned, felt it more important to be with his friends and come to see Clara.

‘I might not have been here,' Clara said gently. ‘I might have been out.'

Another awkward glance. It had not occurred to any of them that she had places to go or maybe people to be with.

‘I'm sorry,' Becky said. ‘If you were going out?'

Clara's shoulders slumped. ‘Oh, who am I kidding,' she said. ‘No, I'd no plans. Friends invited me over, but, frankly, I think I'd have been a right wet blanket. I'm sure they were relieved when I said no.'