The Gifted Child

by Penny Kline

  ‘Wait!’ A woman had her hand on the frame of her half-open window. ‘Was it you who was round at the club?’

  Kristen kept the engine running but lowered the window. The woman was in her late thirties or early forties with a heavily made-up face. She was out of breath, flushed, but there was no trace of resentment in her expression.

  ‘I was looking for someone called Pascale,’ Kristen said, and the woman nodded.

  ‘You’re Kristen? You wanted to ask about Will? You’re just as I imagined you. Strange, isn’t it? Listen, we can’t talk here but if you gave me a lift …’ And when Kristen hesitated, ‘Fair enough, you don’t know me from Adam, but if I wasn’t who I said I was I wouldn’t have known your name. Gus on the door gave me your note. How’s the little boy? Theo. Is he doing all right?’

  Kristen opened the passenger door. ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Home. Downend. But not yet. We could drive out towards Yate then round and back through Westerleigh. Give us time to talk. Then later you can drop me off.’

  ‘What about the club? It’s only nine fifteen.’

  ‘Place is dead tonight, don’t know why I bother. I’m sorry about Gus, I just wanted to be sure you was who you said you were. Thought you might be the Old Bill.’

  Serena was staying the night with a friend, a sleepover, Grace called it. Tisdall pretended it had slipped his mind but he had never been able to fool Grace.

  ‘Still working on the same case.’ She stood back to let him into the house, treating him like a visitor. ‘Bit late, isn’t it? Does Julie know where you are?’

  ‘We’re looking for a man who was seen hanging about near Kristen Olsen’s flat,’ he told her. ‘Could be nothing to it but a neighbour gave a description and there’s just a chance we may be able to trace him through his van.’

  Grace switched off the television. ‘Your dog man?’ Her voice was contemptuous. ‘It’s Friday, I told you Serena was stopping over at Karen’s house.’

  ‘I know. I forgot.’

  She gave him a look of resigned disbelief. ‘Yes, well, you’d better give Julie a ring, she’s probably wondering where you’ve got to.’

  He nodded, hating the way she was able to show concern for Julie’s well-being. ‘She likes me working long hours, thinks it’ll improve my chances of promotion.’

  ‘You don’t want promotion.’ Grace balanced on the arm of a chair. ‘Come on then, let’s hear it. What’s the problem, what’s it all about?’

  ‘As if you didn’t know.’ He kept his head turned away but she moved to where she could see his face.

  ‘That’s just it, I don’t, not unless you tell me. All right, so absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. You know your trouble, Ray, you always want what you can’t have, and when you’ve got it…’

  He sat down heavily. ‘If Julie hadn’t made sure you found out it would all have blown over.’

  ‘So it’s Julie’s fault now. You wanted a bit on the side but when things started to get out of control … What about me … what about Serena?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He braced himself for her sarcastic retort. You’re sorry. Oh I see, so that makes everything all right. But it never came.

  ‘Does Julie know,’ Grace said quietly. ‘Must do, I suppose, just like I knew you were carrying on even though you kept telling me I was imagining things.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘At least have the courage to face up to what you’ve done instead of trailing round like a wet weekend. You made your decision and to hell with everyone else. Now …’ She looked at her watch. ‘Serena was going to phone, said she’d let me know what time she’d be back in the morning. I hope she hasn’t forgotten.’

  ‘I’d better go,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I think you’d better.’ She followed him out into the hall and switched on the outside light.

  ‘Ought to put it on as soon as it gets dark,’ he said.

  ‘I know. I forgot.’

  ‘There’s been a spate of break-ins in this area.’

  ‘Thanks for telling me. Thanks for helping me sleep more easily in my bed. And don’t mention any of this to Serena.’

  ‘Any of what?’ He turned to face her but she was picking up a coat that had slipped from one of the hooks on the wall. She gave it a shake, screwing up her nose when she noticed how the loop it was supposed to hang by had come unstitched.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t.’ The sharpness of her voice made him flinch. ‘If things have gone wrong between you and Julie it’s her you ought to be talking to, not me.’

  ‘How can I?’

  ‘Oh, Ray, I don’t know.’ She reached out to touch his face and he grabbed hold of her, kissing her hair, her neck, then breaking free and holding her at arm’s length.

  ‘I’m such a fool,’ he kept saying, ‘such a stupid bloody fool.’

  ‘You are that.’ Her head was thrown back and for a moment he thought she was going to burst out laughing.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ he whispered, and she let go of his hands and started up the stairs.

  ‘I should think that’s fairly obvious,’ she said.

  ‘Down there,’ Pascale said, ‘no, sorry, straight on! I meant, that’s where I live. Who was it put you on to me, that copper I suppose, old whatsisname.’

  ‘Tisdall,’ Kristen reminded her, ‘he said you and William were friends.’

  ‘And you put two and two together and made … If it was like that, me and Will, I wouldn’t lie to you, there’d be no point.’

  They were passing the Downend Tavern, and a sign told them they were entering South Gloucestershire, although the landscape still looked like North Bristol. The learner driver in front had stalled the engine and was having trouble getting started again. Kristen gripped the steering wheel and tried to prepare herself for what Pascale was going to tell her. Almost certainly not something she would want to hear. ‘Why did you agree to talk to me?’ she said.

  Pascale pushed up the sides of her hair, fluffing it out with her fingers. ‘Because of Will. Because you deserve to know the truth.’

  ‘If you knew something you should have told Tisdall.’

  She shrugged. ‘Will’s dead, nothing’s going to bring him back. Whoever did it deserves what’s coming to them, only sometimes … sometimes I reckon things are best left buried. Anyway, if anyone’s going to decide it ought to be you. How’s Theo? You never said. Will was ever so fond of him – and of you, of course.’

  They passed between rows of shops, a Chinese takeaway, a place selling replacement windows and conservatories. Estate agents, building societies, then the shops gave way to suburban houses with lights in their windows, a red-brick pub, an estate of newly built ‘executive homes’.

  Pascale started to light a cigarette then changed her mind and pushed it back into the packet. ‘Will had this way of making people feel better about themselves. He thought I ought to make something of my life. I do a bit of singing, used to.’ She hummed a few bars of an old Shirley Bassey number. ‘I can sing in tune all right but that’s not it, is it, better to be off key and have that little something extra.’

  Kristen opened the car window then closed it again for fear the noise of passing traffic meant she failed to catch something Pascale said. Did she really know something or was she just curious to find out what Kristen was like, to exchange notes about William or ‘Will’ as she called him? Somewhere along the way would she ask Kristen to stop outside a house then introduce her to another of William’s friends that he had never told her about? Someone who knew the man called Steve? Or Steve himself? Or perhaps it would be a woman.

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’ Kristen asked.

  ‘End of May? Couldn’t say for sure. Not long after you came back from America. He walked into the club and I thought I was seeing things, we all did. Then he drew me aside, said he couldn’t stay long, just wanted to check if I’d signed up for a course in the autumn, whi
ch I hadn’t. I asked if he was back on holiday but he said America hadn’t been what he’d expected, he’d got homesick.’

  ‘Homesick?’

  ‘I know.’ Pascale laughed. ‘Doesn’t sound like Will, does it? The next we heard … I couldn’t believe it. If I knew who’d done it, if I knew for sure…’

  When they crossed over the M4, most of the traffic was going west – to South Wales or Devon and Cornwall. Kristen watched the receding light of the cars moving in the opposite direction and wondered if Theo had calculated the exact distance from Bishopston to Putney. Ever since she could remember he had loved measuring things, drawing patterns, making maps. In a week’s time he would be starting at his new school. When she asked him about it he would say he liked the old one better – because everything he said was designed to make her think he had been happier in Bristol – but it wouldn’t be true. Matthew, his friend, had been replaced by a boy called Marcus. John was no good at playing football but had promised to buy him tickets to watch Chelsea. Lately it had even occurred to Kristen that secretly – telling her and William would have impossible – he had always wanted to live with Ros.

  The houses gave way to fields, a farm, a private nursing home at the end of a short driveway. Pascale was sitting very still, staring straight ahead. ‘That woman,’ she said suddenly, ‘the wife of the bloke Will worked for at the university.’

  Kristen felt her throat constrict. ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘Brigid, her name is, got a baby, a little girl. I’ve a daughter, Chloe. She’s thirteen, looks older more’s the pity. Me and two others share this house in Downend, take turns looking after the kids. Don’t know about you but I reckon that’s how it’s meant to be. Blokes are just for having a good time, not to have around you morning, noon and night.’

  ‘You may be right.’ Kristen was desperate to hear about Brigid but if she showed her impatience she might have to wait longer.

  ‘I lived with Chloe’s father for a couple of years.’ Pascale took out a cigarette and this time she lit up. ‘After she was born things changed. I reckon it’s always the same. Same for Lisa and Dottie. Lisa’s got twin boys, one with cerebral palsy only he’s ever so bright, and Dottie’s girl’s a bit younger than my Chloe. Quite a laugh we have when things are going well. Don’t know how long it’ll last, mind. Could still be together when we’re drawing our pensions. I reckon with lesbians it’s because they want a partner who understands them, knows how they’re feeling, what they’re thinking, instead of just asking if the kettle’s on. Trouble is, I like blokes.’

  She broke off, twisting her head to glare at the car behind that had come up far too close. ‘They should have let Theo stay with you, Kristen. He should never have gone to that Ros.’

  So William had told her everything. But that didn’t explain how she knew Theo had returned to his real mother.

  ‘Copper told me.’ She had read Kristen’s thoughts. ‘Probably believed the more information he passed on, the more he buttered me up, the more likely I was to tell him what he wanted to know.’

  ‘About Brigid Howell?’ Kristen checked the petrol gauge. It was only a quarter full. ‘Since you keep changing the subject I assume you’re going to tell me they were having an affair.’

  ‘Well, you assume wrong. I’ve never met the woman, well, I wouldn’t, would I, but from what Will told me about her there was no way he’d have … There’s no easy way to break this to you but maybe you won’t see it as such a terrible thing. It’s what happened afterwards, that’s why I’m telling you now.’

  Kristen began to cough and almost missed the sign to Westerleigh then, as Pascale shouted at her to turn right, took the corner too fast and only narrowly avoided ending up in the hedge.

  ‘She wanted a baby,’ Pascale said, ‘was desperate for one. Her husband’s got something wrong, not enough sperm or they’re not strong enough to swim up.’

  ‘Go on.’ Kristen had guessed what was coming next. ‘So William agreed to oblige.’

  ‘It was all done properly, like at a clinic, except there wasn’t a doctor or anything.’

  ‘William told you this, did he?’ Kristen said, and Pascale took her tone of voice to mean she didn’t believe a word of it.

  ‘Why would he have lied?’

  Pictures were forming in Kristen’s mind. Rebecca in her bouncy chair. Rebecca on the Downs with Alex. William’s nose, his mouth – how could she have been so stupid? People said all babies looked alike but it wasn’t true. By the age of three or four months each one was totally different and if you bothered to look you could see, more or less, how they were going to turn out.

  ‘But you still think Will could have made it up,’ Pascale said.

  Kristen sighed. ‘I’m not so sure about the clinical part. Surely sleeping together would have been simpler, and more likely to have had the desired effect.’

  Pascale thought about this for a moment. ‘But what about her husband? I don’t suppose he’d have been too pleased.’

  ‘Alex knew about it? Are you sure?’

  ‘According to Will it was his idea. Will was picked because he was good breeding stock, brainy, tall, nice-looking. Alex couldn’t give Brigid a baby and he didn’t want to adopt a foreign kid, so as far as he was concerned it was the best arrangement, a fair deal.’

  ‘Fair deal! How could it be a fair deal?’

  ‘William supplied what was needed and Alex found him a job in the States. Trouble was the silly bugger decided to come back to Bristol a few months later.’

  They had driven through Westerleigh and were on their way back to Downend. In ten minutes or so Pascale would ask Kristen to drop her off at her house and that would be the last time they met.

  ‘I want to know everything,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve told you.’ Pascale lit a second cigarette. ‘Didn’t want to, not after everything you’ve been through but I reckoned you deserved –’

  ‘Everything? If you were me wouldn’t you want to know the truth however much it hurt? You say you saw William after we returned from Ohio. What did he tell you? Had he been in touch with Brigid, seen the baby?’

  There was a long pause. ‘She told him having the baby had changed her, made her feel…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She told him she was in love with him, wanted them to be together.’

  ‘And what did William want?’

  Pascale sighed. ‘Didn’t know what the hell to do, poor bloke. How to get rid of her, stop her getting in touch with him all the time. No, it’s true, I promise. And you’re right, it is better to know the truth.’

  28

  As Kristen ran down the steps she heard the door to the ground floor flat open and Mrs Letts call her name.

  ‘Yes, what is it?’ She had to phone Tisdall. He was unlikely to be at the police station but someone would contact him.

  ‘Cat’s back.’ Mrs Letts leaned over the railing. ‘Ever such a state it was in, poor thing, half-starved and its fur all matted. Mr Parsons looked all over, all the gardens, but it could've been shut in a shed – or stolen by one of them cat-nappers and managed to escape.’

  ‘Good. I mean I’m glad it’s back. I have to go now, Mrs Letts, but –’

  ‘Nothing to do with that man, is it? Hasn’t been following you, giving you a fright?’

  ‘No, nothing like that.’

  Kristen had left the number on a slip of paper by the phone. It took her a few minutes to find it and when she got through a voice asked if she could hang on.

  ‘No, I can’t. It’s important. Sergeant Tisdall. I need to speak to him now.’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s not here, Madam, but I could –’

  ‘Where is he? Tell him it’s Kristen Olsen and I’ve been talking to Pascale. Pascale from the club. She’s told me everything. The so-called dog man had nothing to do with William Frith’s murder. I’m at my flat. I’ll wait here till he calls back.’

  ‘If you could give me an idea what it’s about, Mrs O
lsen. There might be someone else you could talk to.’

  ‘Just ask Sergeant Tisdall to call me as soon as he gets the message.’

  Later, much later, Tisdall woke and lay on his back, noticing how the street light still shone through the curtains, and remembering how Grace had said they ought to be lined but it was such a boring job she knew she would never get round to it. She was asleep, curled on one side and snoring lightly. He touched her hair, but not enough to wake her, and slipped out of bed and started dressing, cursing under his breath as loose change fell out of his trouser pocket and rattled on the wooden chair. What was he going to tell Julie? He’d had to follow up a sighting of the dog man, hadn’t had a chance to phone because he and Brake had left in such a rush. Then what? That it had been a false alarm, that they were no nearer finding who’d killed Frith than they had been a month ago when Liz Cowie had agreed to let him and Brake work on their own for a couple of weeks.

  A dark shape was lying on the floor. He reached down and picked up his phone, realising with a jolt that he had switched it off and forgotten to switch it back on. Or had it been what people called “a Freudian error”?

  It was nearly midnight and all the lights were out at the front of the house. Kristen had waited for Tisdall to call back, grown increasingly angry and frustrated, and finally decided to go round to the house herself. Now that she had calmed down a little, it occurred to her that Pascale might have got it all wrong. Or that William had invented the story to get her attention. Showing off, making her laugh, except she had not found anything she said amusing. And would William have invented something so preposterous? If she had never met Pascale would she have thought Rebecca looked like William, or was it simply a case of fitting the facts? At the very least, she should give Alex and Brigid a chance to explain.

  When she lifted the letterbox, a dim light reflected on the polished pine floor at the foot of the stairs. If she knocked or rang the bell it might wake the baby and in any case the more she thought about it, the less confident she felt that her decision to leave the flat had been a good idea. Tisdall might be round there now. She should have waited till the morning, told him everything she knew and let him interview Brigid and Alex in his own time. He would have spoken to them separately so they had no chance to concoct a story and stick to it.