Claire S. Duffy - The Stranger - Season 1

‘I know how you feel about TV,’ Fergus spat, bristling at her tone.

This wasn’t going how it was supposed to. They’d been chatting civilly enough over a glass of wine, feet companionably side by side on the coffee table, when he brought up the odd incident in the laundry room.

He had half expected Tess to laugh and say, ‘of course Alfie speaks Swedish!’ and explain why and he would feel daft and they would laugh. Instead she snapped that he was overreacting and Fergus felt his hackles rise and now it was all spiralling dangerously out of control.

‘It’s not just that anyway — it was the way he spoke, he wasn’t just parroting the odd word, it was natural, as though…’ Fergus trailed off, unable to articulate quite what it was as though.

‘Fergus you’re freaking me out,’ snapped Tess. ‘I don’t understand what it is you want me to do —’

‘Nothing Tess. I don’t want you to do a fucking thing. I’m just telling you —’

‘Are you bored at home? Is that what this is about?’

‘What are you talking about? I’m just telling you something that happened. The neighbour spoke to him and he replied and she could understand.’

‘So she was indulging him like you do with a toddler, Fergus. I chat to Alfie and he replies in baby talk all the time.’

‘He said his name was Alfie. Heter Alfie, he said. I heard it.’

‘Well, what did the neighbour say about it? Did she say he was speaking proper Swedish?’

‘The neighbour doesn’t speak English, I couldn’t ask her anything.’

‘They all speak English.’

‘This one doesn’t. She’s elderly.’

‘For fuck’s sake Fergus.’ Tess turned away from him, rubbing her forehead. ‘It’s not just this Swedish nonsense, is it? It’s this bloody crying baby as well. You’re talking about making official complaints — do you have any idea how nuts you sound?’

‘Thanks.’ Fergus’s smile was bitter. So that’s why she had flown off the handle.

‘I’m sorry, I —’ her face was stricken.

‘I’m not my Dad, Tess.’

‘Do you want to give up on this?’ Tess demanded. ‘Can you not handle Alfie all day?’

Fergus looked up, shocked. ‘That is absolutely not what this is about.’ But it was as though she didn’t hear him.

‘Do you want to go back to London? Is this some screwed up way of acting out, so we go home and you go out to work and I stay home all day with Alfie and everything is normal, and traditional, and —’

‘And you fuck the neighbour while our baby naps?’

The words were like a bullet. Fergus regretted them instantly, but it was too late. Tess flinched as though physically struck. She turned to face the window. There was silence, yet the echo of the words reverberated around the room.

Tess met his gaze for the first time since he had mentioned the laundry room. The fear in her eyes mirrored what he felt. They stared at each other for a long time.

‘No, I don’t want to go back to London.’ Fergus said finally, his words measured and strained. He felt as though he were shouting into an echoing abyss between him and Tess, his words thin and reedy and meaningless. In the dim light of the living room lamp Tess was silhouetted against the orange streetlights, across the room and a million miles away. She stood deathly still, her arms wrapped around herself as though she might shatter otherwise.

Fergus forced himself to take a breath. ‘I don’t want things back how they were. I’m happy at home with Alfie. It’s working. That’s not what —’

A scamper of little feet dashing down the hallway and childish giggles pierced his consciousness.

‘Brilliant, you’ve woken him,’ Fergus muttered, relieved at the interruption. ‘Now I’ll have a night of it.’ He strode to the door and flung it open. ‘Alfie! Get back to bed this instant —’ he commanded as the door banged open, but the hallway was empty.

From the bedroom, Alfie started to cry.

‘What were you doing out of bed?’ Fergus demanded. He opened the bedroom door and light from the hallway flooded into the dark room. He was acutely aware that he was being sharper than Alfie deserved. ‘You know better than to get up by yourself.’

Alfie, lying in his bed, wailed.

‘You don’t need to shout at him,’ Tess said from the doorway behind him, but there was no fight in her words. As Alfie howled, Fergus sat on the bed and pulled him onto his lap, rocking him as though he were a baby.

Alfie’s bedroom door.

Fergus had opened it.

It was shut tight.

Alfie wouldn’t have closed it behind him. Couldn’t have.

‘I’ll take care of him,’ Fergus said to Tess. She hesitated in the doorway a moment, then returned to the living room.

Fergus held Alfie, stroked his hair, until he felt him drift back to sleep in his arms. The shouting hadn’t woken him, he thought, Alfie was fast asleep until Fergus stormed in to tell him to go back to bed. The scampering footsteps weren’t Alfie’s. Fergus buried his face in Alfie’s curls, holding his baby tightly as he snuggled into the crook of his shoulder.

***

Alexander held her hand, because he didn’t know what else to do. No one else would come near her. Of course it would be weeks, perhaps months, before an official verdict was declared, but no one would look at the mother.

The first detective, a veteran known for his quiet humour and sharp mind, quit within ten minutes of arrival. He had a little girl of around the same age, he explained, with his most recent ex-girlfriend, and he just, couldn’t. No one was surprised when Lia Svensson arrived to take charge of the investigation. She won’t quit, they thought.

The day care teacher, Josefin Björkstedt, in faded workout gear and neon trainers, jabbered her statement to Per Nordgren, one of the newer members of Lia’s team. Josefin’s fingers trembled as she unconsciously picked at a loose thread on her clothes.

Per was almost two metres tall, with a shaved head and the chain at the top of the gigantic anchor tattoo that covered his muscular back was visible creeping up his neck above his police uniform. She had been worried about Oskar for months, Josefin said softly. He was often dropped off late, always grubby, regularly in the same stained clothes he had been wearing for days. It was the day care’s policy that parents hand each child physically to a teacher, but Oskar often toddled in by himself with no sign of Kati.

‘She swore to me that they would come on time today,’ Josefin muttered, her strained voice barely audible. ‘We had a development talk arranged for this morning and she had already cancelled three, so I reminded her every day this week and she said — she said…’

Josefin’s breath caught painfully in her throat and she moaned over and over, “ how could she how could she how could she how could she…”

In the kitchen, Alexander watched as the abyss of emptiness reached Kati’s eyes. Her tousled blonde hair, so chillingly reminiscent of her son’s, hung limply around a chalk-white face that reminded Alexander of a porcelain doll. Kati turned to meet his gaze, the first time she had moved since he sat down next to her. A brief expression of confusion flitted across Kati’s face before all understanding drained from her eyes and she was gone.

Fergus woke. The darkness was so deep it felt almost palpable and the silence so thick it echoed. What had woken him - Alfie? No. He heard Alfie stir in his sleep in his cot at the foot of the bed, then all was silent again. Something else had woken Fergus.

The room was freezing. Fergus pulled the covers over his shoulders and snuggled back down, waited for sleep to return, but none came. Alfie coughed and muttered something under his breath, then was quiet once more.