“DI Tom Janssen,” he said slowly, rolling his tongue across the inside of his lower lip. “Tom, eh? Trying to make yourself sound English doesn’t count, you know? You’ll always be an outsider with a name like that.” He fixed Janssen with an impassioned stare.
“Right back at you, Mr McCall,” he replied, with a flick of the eyebrows. Callum smiled, apparently enjoying the confrontational exchange. Janssen took a couple of steps backwards before turning and opening the car door. He climbed in alongside Tamara who had already fastened her seatbelt. Starting the engine, he pulled the car forward, coming alongside Callum and lowering his window. “Have Mark call me, for his own sake.” He then depressed the accelerator and moved off gently.
Callum watched them go. Tamara adjusted the rear-view mirror without asking, enabling her to observe the man as they drove away. He remained fixed in place, watching the car leave with an expressionless face. She kept her eye on him until they cleared the copse and he disappeared from view. She angled the mirror back to roughly where she imagined she found it. She was way off but Janssen didn’t comment, merely setting it back as he desired.
“Pleasant man.” Her sarcasm was barely masked.
“He has form for all manner of things. Came out after a short stretch for assault just last summer. I’m surprised he was as helpful as he was.”
“Is it true, what he said?” Tamara asked him. He glanced across at her with a questioning look. “I know there isn’t necessarily much in a name these days but are you Scandinavian? I see it with the hair and possibly your build but not your complexion or eyes.”
He was momentarily thrown. Then he laughed. Tamara echoed it with one of her own.
“Not far off. My grandfather was Dutch, from Friesland, north-east of Amsterdam up on the coast. He was part of the free Dutch army stationed in North Africa when the country was occupied during the war.” She nodded along as he continued the story once they’d passed back along the track and re-joined the highway. “He met my grandmother while he was over here, prior to the build-up of the D-Day landings.”
“So, he stayed on after the war?” Tamara asked, appearing genuinely interested. He shook his head, smiling.
“Not quite. After the war, he returned to The Netherlands to help rebuild the country but… he missed her, I think.” Glancing across, he assessed her interest. She was listening intently. “They were always a bit sketchy on the details. I imagine there were some complications they never wanted to share with the rest of the family, but he came back for her a couple of years later. They never left.”
Tamara looked away, staring off into the countryside. He didn’t feel the urge to elaborate further, worried perhaps he’d misread her level of interest. A couple of minutes later, he caught her looking over at him.
“That’s a beautiful story.” She spoke softly before turning her gaze back towards the passing landscape.
Chapter Nine
He’ll have calmed down by now. It will be safe. The thought was more hopeful than assured. Of all the times to have triggered an angry response from his father, this came as the least expected. He can’t blame me, I didn’t do it. Putting his foot through a stick lying on the ground, it launched sideways into the brush. Sheep muttered to one another in the field alongside the path. It was lambing season.
Mark’s stomach groaned. He was hungry. Unsurprising when he thought about it. He couldn’t eat yesterday. The shock of coming across Holly… like that… the thought of it made him feel physically sick. Seeing her, so pale, so peaceful. She could have been asleep, if it weren’t for her eyes staring to the heavens, cold and lifeless. Then there was the mad woman. The one Holly always referred to as the neurotic, psychopathic witch, standing over him, watching. He had run as far and as fast he could until his legs gave out beneath him and he’d fallen to the ground gasping for air. The fright was something else, a new experience, and he thought he knew everything there was to know about fear. He was wrong.
There was his stomach again. A sense of betrayal coursed through him. Admitting to and feeding such a base level need felt somehow deceitful, guilty. It was strange. Holly was gone and he couldn’t understand it. Eventually returning home the day before in the early afternoon, he found his father up and about. Gingerly wandering about nursing his sore head… his ever-present sore head, he had told him about Holly, immediately feeling the need to protest his innocence. After all, his father always told him to be careful where he went and who he confided in. The rest of the world aren’t like you son. You can’t trust them. You can only trust us. He meant the family, himself and the other children, his siblings but not his mother. Definitely not his mother. She had proven the point by vanishing one night, years ago, when Mark was barely into double figures. Disappearing as they slept, without a word, and leaving them all to get by without her.
Thinking back on his father’s reaction, it had surprised him. First, he stared at him, straight-faced and silent. At school, his English teacher once quoted Shakespeare as saying the eyes are the windows to your soul. That was a wonderful expression. If so, his father’s soul was a terrifying place. Having gazed on him, Mark remembered the feeling of nervousness under the scrutiny, he had sniffed loudly, a habit he had when he was under stress and then dismissed it. Dismissed Holly’s death like it meant nothing! Anger flared within him then. Just as it did on occasions when people came too close. Penetrated his personal space, his support worker once said.
The night had been cold, unforgiving, but it wasn’t the first he’d spent outdoors and undoubtedly, it wouldn’t be the last.
