The Other Child
THE
OTHER
CHILD
CHARLOTTE LINK
Translated from the German by Stefan Tobler
PEGASUS CRIME
NEW YORK LONDON
Charlotte Link is one of Europe's bestselling crime writers and has sold more than 15 million novels in Germany alone. Her atmospheric brand of psychological suspense made THE OTHER CHILD a massive No. 1 bestseller in Germany and was greeted by rave reviews. Charlotte has been nominated for the Fiction Category of the German Book Prize and her work has been widely adapted for TV, with the adaptation of THE OTHER CHILD transmitted in Germany in 2011.
DECEMBER 1970
Saturday, 19th December
She knew she had to get away as quickly as possible.
She was in danger, and if the people who lived on the isolated farm caught sight of her she was lost.
Suddenly the man appeared out of nowhere in front of her, just as she got to the farmyard gate and was about to hurry down to her car. He was big and not as scruffy as she would have expected among these dilapidated buildings. He was wearing jeans and a jumper; his grey hair was cut very short. She could not see any glimmer of feeling in his pale eyes.
Semira could only hope he had not seen her behind the barn. Maybe he had spied her car and come to see who was snooping around. Her only chance was in convincing him she was harmless, even though her heart was pounding and her knees knocking. Her face was beaded with sweat, in spite of the biting cold on this already twilit December afternoon.
His voice was as cold as his eyes. âWhat you doin' here?'
She tried a smile, but felt her lips quiver. âThank God. I thought no one was here â¦'
He looked her up and down. Semira tried to imagine what he saw. A skinny little woman, not yet thirty, wrapped up warm in trousers, fleece-lined boots and a thick anorak. Black hair, black eyes. Hopefully he did not have anything against Asians. Hopefully he did not realise he had an Asian in front of him who felt like she was going to throw up at any moment. Hopefully he had not realised how afraid she was. Semira had an awful feeling he could smell her fear.
He nodded towards the copse at the bottom of the hill. âYour car?'
It had been a mistake to park it down there. The trees were too sparse and bare â they concealed nothing. He had seen her car from one of the upper windows of his house, and put two and two together.
What an idiot she was, to come here and not tell anyone. And then to park her car in sight of the wretched farm.
âI'm ⦠completely lost,' she stammered. âNo idea how I ended up here. Then I saw your house and thought I could ask if â¦'
âAye?'
âI'm new to the area.' Her voice sounded wrong in her ears, too high and a little shrill, but he did not know how she usually spoke. âActually, I wanted ⦠I wantedâ'
âSo where you goin', really?'
Her mind was blank. âTo ⦠to ⦠what's it called again?' She licked her dry lips. She was standing face to face with a psychopath. He should have been locked up, and the key thrown away, she was sure of it. She should never have come here on her own. There was no one here who could help her. She was only too aware of the absolute isolation and remoteness of the place. No other farm near or far, not another soul.
She could not afford to slip up. âTo â¦' Finally a name popped into her head. âWhitby. I wanted to go to Whitby.'
âYou're right lost. Main road is a fair drive from here.'
âYes, that's what I was starting to figure.' She forced a smile again. The man did not smile back. He stared fixedly at her. In spite of his impassive appearance, Semira could feel his mistrust, his suspicion, which seemed to grow with every second that he talked to her.
She had to get away!
She forced herself to stand there calmly, although she really wanted to run. âCould you tell me how to get back to the main road?'
He did not reply. His glacial blue eyes seemed to go right through her. She really had never seen colder eyes. As cold as if there were no longer any life in them. She was glad she had a scarf wrapped round her neck; she could feel a nerve twitching away under her right jaw.
The silence lasted too long. He was trying to work something out. He did not trust her. He weighed up the risk that this little person posed for him. He examined her, as if he wanted to penetrate deep into her mind.
Then a scornful expression passed over his face. He spat on the ground in front of her.
âBlack bastards,' he said. âFillin' up Yorkshire now, an' all?'
She flinched. She wondered if he was a racist or was just out to provoke, to draw her out of her shell. He wanted her to give herself away.
Act as if this were a completely normal situation
.
She felt a sob rising in her throat, and she could not stop a hoarse sound escaping. It simply was not a normal situation. She had no idea how long she could control her panic.
âMy ⦠husband is English,' she said. She never did that usually. She never hid behind John when she was faced with prejudice about the colour of her skin. But an instinct had led her to give that answer this time. Now he knew that she was married and that there was someone who would miss her if anything happened to her. Someone who was not a stranger in this country and who would know immediately what to do when someone disappeared. Someone whom the police would take seriously.
She could not tell if her reply made any impression on him.
âGet yourself away,' he said.
It was not the moment to be indignant about his rudeness, or to argue for equal rights for people of different colours. She had to escape and find the police.
She turned to go. She forced herself to walk at a measured pace and not to give in to the urge to run. He had to think she was insulted without knowing that she was going mad with fear inside.
She had taken four or five steps when his voice stopped her.
âWait!'
She froze. âSorry?'
He strode over to her. She could smell his breath. Cigarettes and sour milk.
âYou were over at t' shed, weren't you?'
She had a knot in her throat and broke out in a sweat all over her body. âWhat ⦠what shed?'
He stared at her. She could read in his emotionless eyes what he could see in hers: that she knew. That she knew his secret.
He no longer had any doubts.
She ran.
JULY 2008
Wednesday, 16th July
1
The first time he saw the woman he had just left Friarage School and was about to cross the road to go home. She was standing in the open doorway, clearly hesitating to set foot outside in the pouring rain. It was almost six and already unusually dark for the time of year. The day had been oppressively hot, then a storm broke over Scarborough with mighty claps of thunder. The heavens opened and it seemed that the end was nigh. The schoolyard was deserted. Water immediately gathered in giant puddles on the uneven tarmac. Angry blue-black clouds massed in the sky.
The woman was wearing a calf-length, flowery summer dress. It was somewhat old-fashioned but quite suitable for the day, until the storm came. She had long, mousy-blond hair, which she wore in a plait, and was carrying a shopping bag in her hand. As far as he knew, she was not a teacher. Maybe she was new. Or on a course.
Something invited him to step closer and to consider talking to her. Maybe it was her unusually old-fashioned appearance. He guessed her to be in her early twenties, yet she looked completely different to other women of her age. Not that looking at her was going to send a man into ecstasies, but something would hold your attention. You would want to know what her face looked like. How she spoke. Whether she represented some kind of alternative to her era and her generation.
He, at any rate, wanted to know. Women fascinated him, and as he knew almost all kinds of women by now, the unusual ones exerted a particular fascination.
He walked over to her and said, âYou don't have an umbrella?'
It was not that he felt himself to be particularly original at this moment, but in view of the torrential rain outside the question was almost inevitable.
The woman had not seen him approaching and jumped. She turned towards him and he realised his mistake. She was not in her early twenties, but at least her mid-thirties, perhaps even older. She looked friendly, but plain. A pale face without make-up, not pretty, not ugly â the kind of face that you would not remember for more than two minutes. Her hair was drawn back from her high forehead in a rather loveless way. It was obvious that she was not consciously trying to embody a particular type, but simply had no idea what to do to look more attractive.
A nice, shy thing, he judged, and completely uninteresting.
âI should've known there'd be a storm,' she said. âBut when I left home at lunchtime, it was so hot that a brolly would've been silly.'
âWhere are you going?' he asked.
âOnly to the bus stop in Queen Street. But I'll be soaking by the time I get there.'
âWhen does your bus go?'
âIn five minutes,' she said in a whining tone. âAnd it's the last one today.'
She seemed to live out in the sticks. It was astonishing how quickly the countryside swallowed you up outside the town boundaries. Without much of a transition, you were suddenly in the middle of nowhere, among settlements of just a few scattered farms, which were barely served by public transport. The last bus just before six! Young people there must feel that they were still in the Stone Age.
If she had been young and pretty, he would not have hesitated an instant to offer her a lift home. He would have asked if she would like to go for a drink with him first, somewhere down in the harbour with its many pubs. He was not meeting someone until later in the evening and it was nothing important. He had no great wish to sit around bored until then in his lodger's room in a house at the end of the road.
Yet there was nothing enticing about the idea of sitting over a glass of wine in a pub and looking all evening at the colourless face of this elderly girl â for that was the impression you got: she was an elderly girl.