Case Histories

Chapter 14. Jackson

"Jesus, Jackson, what happened to you?" The same note of reproach in Deborah Arnold's voice as in Josie's, Jackson noticed.

"Yes, thank you, I'm feeling much better," he said, making his way into the inner sanctum where Shirley Morrison was waiting for him. She visibly flinched when she saw him (and she was a nurse so he must look bad). He had a stunning black eye thanks to David Lastingham (the bastard) and he imagined that being hit over the head and lying unconscious all night in the open air had probably not improved his appearance.

"Not as bad as it looks," he said to Shirley Morrison although it probably was. Shirley Morrison was sitting in a neat lotus. She was straight backed and had a thin dancer's body. She was forty but could have passed for thirty until you looked in her eyes and saw that she'd lived enough for more than one lifetime. He knew who she was, she'd never changed her name, it was before Jackson's time in Cambridge but when he'd asked Deborah to find out about Shirley Morrison she said, "Shirley Morrison – wasn't she Michelle Fletcher's sister? The ax murderer?"

"… She was just sitting on the floor, still holding the ax. I don't know how long she'd been there. Keith had been dead about an hour, according to the pathologist's report." Shirley Morrison held her cup of coffee with two hands as if it were providing her with warmth, although it was as hot as hell inside Jackson's office and the coffee must have gone cold a long time ago. She stared off into the distance and Jackson got the impression that she was mentally reviewing Keith Fletcher's autopsy. "When I walked in," she continued, "she smiled at me and said, 'Oh, Shirley, I'm so glad you're here, I made you a chocolate cake.' So I knew straight away that she'd lost it."

"Her defense pleaded temporary insanity," Jackson offered. Deborah had done the research for him, as well as giving him the gossip. Michelle Rose Fletcher, nee Morrison, eighteen years old. sent down for life for, in the esteemed judge's words, "the coldblooded, calculated murder of your spouse. An entirely innocent man." Jackson didn't believe in the entire innocence of anyone apart from animals and children, and not all children, at that. He offered her more coffee but she just shook her head as if he were a distracting insect.

"Michelle was such a control freak, I mean I loved her to bits, she was my big sister, you know?" Jackson nodded, he knew what big sisters were like. His own big sister, Niamh.

"But everything had to be just so for Michelle, all the time. All the bloody time. I can see why, I mean the way we were brought up – it was…" Shirley Morrison shrugged, searching for a word "Shambolic. Our mother couldn't control a dog, let alone a house and kids. Dad was a drinker and Mum was not exactly capable And so it was really important to Michelle not to be like them. But the baby did her head in. You can't control babies."

"So do you think she was suffering from postnatal depression?" Jackson remembered Josie after Marlee's birth, crying all day with misery while Marlee cried all night with colic. Jackson had felt completely helpless because he didn't know what to do for either of them. And then suddenly it was over, like the sun coming out, and Josie looked at Marlee sleeping peacefully in her cradle and laughed and said to Jackson, "She's cute, let's keep her." Way back when they were happy.

Shirley Morrison gave him a look, as if she was wondering what he could know about postpartum misery, and then shrugged and said, "Maybe. Probably. She wasn't getting any sleep, people go crazy if they don't sleep. But they were out to get her, the press, Keith's family. He didn't do anything wrong, he didn't beat her or anything. He was a nice guy, very easygoing. I liked him. Everyone liked him. And he loved Tanya."

"Michelle had bruising to her face," Jackson said.

Shirley looked at him blankly. "Did she?"

"It was in the arresting officer's report, why wasn't it used in her defense?"

"I don't know."

Shirley's slender feet were very brown, as if she went around bare-root a lot outside. She was wearing Indian sandals, embossed leather, which made her feet look even better. Jackson liked women's feet, not in a fetishistic way (he hoped) and not ugly feet, and, for some mysterious reason, a lot of lovely women had ugly feet, he just thought nice feet were attractive. (Was he trying to justify something to himself here?) Nicola Spencer had big feet, he'd noticed. She was on an overnight to Malaga, doing God knows what.

"The smell was incredible, awful, that's what I remember most, just… revolting. Tanya was in her playpen and she was screaming, really screaming, I've never heard a baby cry like that before or since. I'm a pediatric nurse," she added, "in the ICU," but Jackson already knew that, he'd phoned up the hospital and asked, "Shirley Morrison, what ward is she on again?" and they'd told him. It was much easier to get information than most people thought. Ask a question and people give you the answer. Not the big questions, obviously, like who killed Laura Wyre and where were the remains of Olivia Land. Big questions like why the woman he had once promised to love and protect as long as there was breath in his body had decided to remove their only child to the opposite side of the world. Just like that. ("Yes, Jackson, 'just like that.'")

"The first thing I did was pick Tanya up but she still wouldn't stop screaming. She was filthy, God knows when she'd last been changed, and, there was blood spattered all over her." This image, and all it implied, tripped her up for a moment, breaking her composure. Shirley Morrison stared out the office window but she wasn't looking at anything to be found outside.

"She was wearing these new dungarees I'd bought her. OshKosh. I had a job working in a corner shop, after school, on Saturdays. Michelle and I had always worked, we'd never have had anything it we hadn't. I remember thinking how much those dungarees had cost and how the blood was never going to come out. My brother-in-law had just been killed by my sister and I was thinking about stain removal."

"The brain disassociates to stop us from going mad."

"You think I don't know that, Mr. Brodie?"

Shirley Morrison's toenails were painted with a pale polish and she was wearing a delicate gold chain around one ankle. Jackson remembered a time when only tarts and whores wore chains around their ankles. There used to be a prostitute who lived on the same street as Jackson when he was young. She wore emerald green eye shadow and red stilettos and had white, veiny legs. Did she wear an anklet? Did she have a name? Jackson used to run past her house in terror in case she came out and caught him because his mother told him that she was "a servant of Satan," which had confused him because "Satan" was the name of a dog – a big rottweiler – owned by a guy on the allotments.

Jackson hadn't thought about that street for a long time, a gloomy terrace with passages like tunnels that went through to a back alley. They'd moved to a better class of street when Jackson was nine. No whores hanging around on the doorstep, smoking their lungs out. Was Shirley Morrison married? She had a ring on her finger but it was neither a wedding ring nor an engagement ring, it was silver, Celtic or Scandinavian, what did that mean?

"When I picked Tanya up, Michelle laughed and said, 'She does go on, doesn't she?' Now that's disassociation."

''She must have had some reason for killing him," Jackson puzzled, "even if it wasn't premeditated. Something must have triggered it."

It felt as if all the air in the office had been used up. It wasn't midday yet but it was already sweltering. Shirley's light brown hair was screwed up carelessly on top of her head and the fine hairs at the nape of her neck were dark with sweat. He wondered what she'd do if he invited her to lunch, a nice pub with a garden, or buy a sandwich and go for a walk by the river. It wouldn't be unprofessional, it would just be moving this appointment outside. Who was he kidding? His motives were entirely unprofessional.

If Josie died Jackson would get sole custody. Marlee wouldn't go to the other side of the world ("Lord of the Rings," she'd said to him, quite thrilled, as if Bilbo and Gandalf and the rest of their crew actually lived in New Zealand and were waiting for her to join their fellowship. She hadn't read the books, only seen the DVDs, which were far too scary for an eight-year-old in Jackson's opinion, but not in the opinion of David Lastingham apparently).

For her part, of course, Josie had failed to keep any of the promises she had made – to love and honor him, to be faithful to him – he could still hear that little flutter of emotion in her voice when she said, "Until death us do part." They had opted for the Traditional wedding service. Now she was planning a tropical beach ceremony with a Maori gospel choir and homemade vows. She was going to marry that wanker and "start a new life."

Jackson wondered if he was capable of killing Josie. He was better placed than most people – he knew all kinds of ways to do it, it wasn't doing it that was the problem, not being found out, that was the thing. He wouldn't wait around for hours with an ax sitting in his lap. What was that Lizzie Borden rhyme? "Lizzie Borden took an ax, gave her mother forty whacks." If he killed Josie it would have to be done in a "calculated, cold-blooded killing" – fire, explosives, a gun. A gun for preference, an L96 Al sniper with a Schmidt and Bender sight, so you could be as far away as possible – he couldn't do an intimate killing, something close-up and personal like strangling or a knife, he couldn't be there, watching the blood stop pumping round her cheating heart, couldn't watch the life fade from her eyes. And not poison. Poison was for psychopaths and deranged Victorian women. Had he really been mugged the other night? Nothing had been taken from him, his wallet, his watch, his car, were all left behind, but then he'd fought back before the guy could take anything. In Jackson's experience, muggers didn't usually try and smash your skull in. "There's a lot of bad people out there, sir," the DC ("DC Lowther, sir") who took his statement said. They'd sent a DC where they'd normally have sent a PC. Jackson supposed he should feel flattered. He remembered DC Lowther when he was an eager young recruit in uniform. "There's been a spate of mugging? recently, Inspector," DC Lowther said, and Jackson said, "It's just plain 'Mr. Brodie' now." It was funny, he'd never really been Mr. Brodie, he'd joined the army at sixteen and until then he'd just been Jackson, sometimes "Brodie!" from the male teachers. Then it was "Private Brodie" and so on up the ranks until he left the army and then he'd started again as "PC Brodie." He wasn't sure how he felt about being "plain Mr. Brodie."

"Do you have any enemies, sir?" DC Lowther asked hopefully.

"Not really," Jackson said. Just about everyone he'd ever met.

Jackson's shirt was sticking to his skin, it was way too hot to be in an office.

"I don't know what triggered it," Shirley said. "She just went berserk."

There was always a trigger, there was a lot of things that the defense could have used – psychotic episodes, sleep deprivation, baby blues, shit childhood, self-defense (what about the bruise on her face?). "In court," Jackson said, "Michelle said that he woke the baby. The baby was asleep and Keith woke her up, that was the nearest she got to giving a motive." Jackson could imagine how that went down with the judge. She might as well have pleaded guilty. Michelle Fletcher hadn't run away or made up a story, she had simply waited to be found. By her sister.

If she had served two-thirds of her sentence Michelle Fletcher would have been back on the outside in 1989, at the age of twenty-eight. The same age Laura Wyre would be if she'd lived. Jackson would lay a bet that Michelle had been a model prisoner, transferred to an open prison by '85, catching up with her exams probably, so she could start her "new life" when she came out. Like Josie. A fresh start, wiping out the past. Just like that. What was Michelle doing now? Shirley Morrison didn't know, of course she didn't know. That was why she was here.

"I promised Michelle I would look after Tanya," Shirley said, "and I would have done, of course I would have done, but I was only fifteen and social services decided our parents were unfit – which they were – and gave custody to Keith's parents. But they weren't much better. The last time I ever saw my sister was in the court the day she was sentenced. She refused to see us, knocked back all our visitor's orders, refused to read letters, there was nothing we could do about it. I could have understood if she didn't want to see Mum or Dad, they both died without seeing her again. But not to see me… I mean I didn't care that she'd killed Keith, she was still my sister, I still loved her." She shrugged and added, "Anyone's capable of killing, given the right circumstances." She was looking at that faraway world again, the one that existed on the other side of the office window, and Jackson supposed he could have said, "Yeah, I've killed people," but that didn't seem like the kind of dialogue he wanted to enter into at half past eleven on a Monday morning in these temperatures, so he said nothing at all.

"They told us when she was released," Shirley continued, "but she never got in touch. I don't know where she went or what she's doing now. In the end she got a new life and we were stuck with her old one. 'Murder' – it's such a stigma, isn't it? It's so… trashy. I wanted to go to medical school, be a doctor, but that was never going to happen, not after everything we went through." "And now you want me to look for your sister?" Shirley laughed as if he'd said something absurd, "God, no. Why would I want to look for Michelle when she's made it so obvious she doesn't want to be found? She doesn't care about me anymore. I don't want to find Michelle. I want to find Tanya."

It was teatime in Binky's garden. Everything was so wildly overgrown that a machete would have been a more fitting accompaniment at the tea table instead of the extensive array of tarnished butter knives and jam spoons that formed part of Binky's complex tea ceremony. " Darjeeling," Binky announced, but it was a gray washy brew that hadn't seen a tea plantation in years and which tasted like old socks. The cups didn't look as if they had been cleaned for a long time. "We are being joined today by a guest," she announced like a rather grand chat-show hostess, "my great-nephew. Quintus." What kind of a name was that to get stuck with for life, for God's sake?

"Really?" Jackson said. Binky had never mentioned having family. "I hardly know the boy," she added, with a dismissive wave of her hand. "My nephew and I weren't close, but the boy's the only family I have." Had Binky Rain ever been close to anyone? Strange to imagine that there had once been a Dr. Rain who had shared bed and board with her. She couldn't always have been old, but it was hard to believe she had ever been a young nubile wife, compliant to "Julian's" sexual needs – ah, Jesus, Jackson, shoot that idea right out of your head. He was so alarmed by the unpalatable image he'd conjured up that he knocked over his tea, not that one more stain could make any difference to a cloth that was a palimpsest of previous tea-related accidents. "Something wrong, Mr. Brodie?" Binky inquired, mopping up the tea with the hem of her skirt, but before he could reply a cry like a huntsman's tantivy from the top end of the garden announced the arrival of Quintus Rain.

Binky's use of the word "boy" had led Jackson to expect a teenager, so he was surprised when "Quintus" turned out to be a substantial forty-something with broad, bland features and floppy hair. He was built like a rugby forward but his muscle had turned to flab and he looked too soft to survive a scrum. He was wearing chinos and a blue-and-white-striped shirt with a white collar and a pink tie and had a navy blue blazer slung over his shoulder. Break him in two and you'd find "Tory" written right through him. Brought up in Herefordshire," Binky murmured to Jackson as if this somehow explained everything about Quintus. The really interesting thing about Quintus, interesting to Jackson anyway, was that Quintus was sporting a considerable plaster across a nose that looked damaged in just the way you would expect a nose to be damaged if you'd been nutted by someone who was trying to stop you from pistol-whipping them.

But why on earth would someone he'd never met before, with whom he had no relationship whatsoever, want to attack him like that? Quintus seemed particularly put out to see Jackson in his great-aunt's garden. Binky herself blithely ignored the fact that she was taking tea with two hostile, beat-up men and kept wittering on about Frisky.

Quintus didn't give the impression that he had been a frequent visitor to his elderly great-aunt, but then the boy had led a busy life – shipped over from the daughterland at an early age to be made into an English gentleman – Clifton, Sandhurst, a commission in the Royal Lancers (Jackson thought he'd recognized the braying tones of the officer class), then "a stint down the mines," and now something vague that occupied his time in London.

"Down the mines?" Jackson repeated doubtfully, fishing cat hair out of his teacup.

"Efrican," Binky said.

"Efrican?"

"Sarth Efrican. Diamond mines. In charge of the blecks."

Binky went inside to make a fresh pot of tea, saying, "You two should have a lot to talk about, Mr. Brodie. You're both army men, after all."

Jackson hadn't thought of himself as an army man for a long time, he wasn't sure he'd ever thought of himself as an army man "Which regiment?" Quintus asked gruffly.

"Infantry. Prince of Wales's Own," Jackson said laconically.

"What rank?"

What was this, Jackson wondered, a game of "Mine's bigger than yours?" He shrugged and said, "Private."

"Yeah, I could have guessed that," Quintus said. He pronounced all the vowels in "Yeah" and then a few extra for luck.

Jackson didn't bother saying that although he went in to the army as a private he came out as a warrant officer, class one, in the military police, because he had no intention of playing Billy Big-Dick with him. Jackson had been offered a commission before he left the army but he knew he'd never be comfortable on the other side, taking dinner in the mess with pricks like Quintus who thought of the Jacksons of this world as bottom-feeding thugs.

"I could show you my tattoos," Jackson offered. Quintus declined, which was just as well because Jackson didn't have any tattoos. Shirley Morrison had a tattoo, between the base of her neck and her shoulder blades, a black rose on the fifth vertebra. Did she have other tattoos on her body, in less visible places?

Quintus suddenly pulled his chair closer to Jackson as if he were going to tell him a secret and in a menacing voice said, "I know your game, Brodie." Jackson tried not to laugh, he had (with little enthusiasm) fitted two wars into his army career and it took more than guys like Quintus rattling their sabers to frighten him. By the look of him Quintus wouldn't last three rounds with a rabbit.

"And what game would that be exactly, Mr. Rain?" Jackson asked but never got to find out because at that moment a particularly manky torn decided it needed to spray its territory and favored Quintus's leg as one of its outposts.

Jackson walked down to the river and found some shade on the rank. He had a squashed sandwich in his pocket that he had bought in Pret a Manger and now he shared it with a group of eager ducks. There was a continual traffic of punts along the river, most of them containing tourists being chauffeured by students, or student types, dressed in straw boaters and striped blazers, the boys in flannels, the girls in unflattering skirts. The tourists were a mixed rag – Japanese, Americans (fewer than before), a lot of Europeans, some unidentifiable (a kind of generic East European), and northerners, who in the torpid air of Cambridge seemed more foreign than the Japs. They all appeared to be thrilled, as if they were having a genuine experience – as if this was how the natives spent their leisure hours – punting down the river and eating cream teas to the sound of the Grantchester clock chiming three. What a load of shite, to quote his father.

"Mr. Brodie! Yoo-hoo, Mr. Brodie!"

Oh, dear God, Jackson thought wearily, was there no escape from them? They were punting, for fuck's sake, or at least Julia was punting, while Amelia watched her from beneath a big floppy sun hat that looked as if it had last seen better days on her mother's head. She was also wearing sunglasses and gave the general impression of someone who'd just been discharged from the hospital after a particularly challenging face-lift.

"What a beautiful day!" Julia shouted to Jackson. "We're going to Grantchester for tea, hop in. You have to come with us, Mr. Brodie."

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do," Julia said cheerfully. "Get in. Don't be so curmudgeonly." Jackson hauled himself up from the grass with a sigh and helped pull the punt into the bank. He climbed in awkwardly and Julia laughed and said, "Not a sailor, then, Mr. Brodie?" Why were they still in Cambridge? Were they ever going home? Amelia, at the other end of the vessel, gave him a vague acknowledgment without making eye contact. The last time he saw her she was distraught about the dog's death ("Please, Jackson, please come, I need you"). She'd looked rough, she'd looked like a dog actually, wearing an old dressing gown, and makeup – he'd never seen her in makeup before – it looked terrible, as if she'd applied it in the dark, and she hadn't put her hair up so that it hung in dry hanks around her face. All women come to an age when they're just too old to wear their hair down, even beautiful women with beautiful hair, and neither Amelia nor her hair had ever been beautiful.

Jackson thought it was best if he behaved as if nothing had happened the other night. What had happened the other night? ''I didn't know you were married, Mr. Brodie?" – what the hell was that all about? As if he was an adulterous lover who'd betrayed her. He had never given Amelia Land a single reason to think there was anything between them. Had she really developed a crush on him? (Please, God, no.) Stan Jessop had a crush on Laura Wyre. Were crushes dangerous things? They sounded so harmless.

"Crikey, what happened to you, Mr. Brodie?" Julia was peering at him in a shortsighted way. "You've been in a fight!" Amelia looked at him for the first time, but when he caught her eye she looked away. "How exciting," Julia said.

"It was nothing," Jackson said. (Just someone's trying to kill me. "What day is it today?"

"Tuesday," Julia said promptly.

Amelia grunted something that sounded like "Wednesday."

"Really?" Julia said to her. "Cor lummy, how the days fly, don't they?" (Cor lummy? Who said things like that? Apart from Julia? "I always think," Julia said, "that Wednesdays are violet." Julia seemed

in an exceptionally merry mood. "And Tuesdays are yellow, of course."

''No, they're not," Amelia said. "They're green."

"'Don't be silly," Julia said. "Anyway, today's violet and it's a jolly good day for the Orchard Tea Rooms. We used to go there a lot when we were children. Before Olivia. Didn't we, Milly?"

Amelia had lapsed back into silence and waved a hand vaguely in answer. For the first time since he'd met them they were dressed suitably for the weather. Amelia was wearing a baggy cotton dress and ugly hiking sandals. If she got a good haircut and some decent clothes she'd improve 100 percent. At least Julia wasn't hard on the eye, and she was pretty competent at the punting thing. She was wearing a skimpy top that belonged on a teenager but it revealed her neat, hard biceps (she definitely worked out) and at least she had triceps, unlike Amelia, who had the kind of swinging under-arm flesh that would have made it easy for her to glide among the treetops. Despite the sunshine Amelia had remained pale and uninteresting, whereas Julia had turned the color of toasted cashews. He looked at her, hauling on the pole, fag hanging out the corner of her lipsticked mouth, and thought that she was a good sport and was surprised to realize that he was growing genuinely fond of Julia. And that "good sport" was her language, not his.

"You're looking at my tits, Mr. Brodie."

'"I am not."

"You are so." Julia gave a sudden little yelp of surprise and Jackson swiveled round to see what she was looking at. A middle-aged man was climbing out of the river onto the bank – bollock-naked and skinny and tanned all over. A nudist? They called themselves naturalists now, didn't they? The man toweled himself off and then lay down on the riverbank, completely unselfconsciously, and started reading a book.

''Golly gosh," Julia laughed. "Did you see that? Did you see that, Milly? Is that legal, Mr. Brodie?"

"Not really."

"Wouldn't that be lovely," Julia said, "just to take off all your clothes and plunge into the water? The neo-pagans used to swim naked in Byron's Pool, couldn't you just do that, Mr. Brodie, strip off and dive in?" Julia licked her top lip with her pink cat's tongue and Amelia made an unattractive snorting sound. Jackson suddenly remembered Binky Rain saying that the Lands were "wild girls." It was hard to believe Amelia had ever been wild, but Julia, definitely Julia. He thought he might quite like to swim naked with Julia.

"What was he reading?" Julia asked, and Amelia, who had giver. no sign of having even looked at the naked man, said, "Principle Mathematica," and glared at Jackson.

"More tea, Mr. Brodie?" Julia asked, pouring the tea without waiting for an answer, "And is there honey still for tea? Yes, there most certainly is and we shall have it on our scones. Milly, do you want honey on your scones?"

At least the tea in the Orchard Tea Rooms was decent, unlike Binky's. Julia's little finger had a scar, like a thin silver ring, that ran all the way round it. She had it crooked, in a very ladylike way, as she drank her tea. She caught Jackson looking at it. "Chopped it off," she said breezily. Amelia snorted. "Accidentally," Julia added. Amelia snorted again. "You'll turn into a pig if you carry on like that, Milly," Julia said.

It struck Jackson that he'd asked Binky Rain about the Land girls but he'd never asked the Land girls about Binky Rain. "Binky Rain," Jackson said, "your neighbor, Victor's neighbor?" Julia looked vague. "Cats," Jackson said.

"I was a tabby in the chorus," Julia said, "but I only lasted a few weeks, I got bronchitis, it was a shame, it was a number-one tour."

"No," Jackson said patiently. "Binky Rain, she keeps cats."

"The old witch," Amelia said suddenly, and Julia said, "Oh, her. We never went anywhere near her."

"We used to," Amelia said. "And then we didn't."

"Why not?" Jackson asked, but Amelia seemed to have lapsed back into her catatonic state.

"Sylvia told us not to," Julia said. She frowned with the effort of remembering. "That was after Olivia, I think. She said the garden was cursed and if we went in there we'd be turned into cats. That all her cats were people who'd gone into her garden. Sylvia was always a bit strange, of course. Mrs. Rain isn't still alive, is she? She must be three hundred years old by now."

"Almost," Jackson said.

There was something undeniably pleasant about being sprawled in a deck chair beneath the trees. The hum of insects and tourists was soporific and Jackson could think of nothing he wanted to do more than close his eyes and drift off, but Julia kept prattling on about neo-pagans and Wittgenstein and Russell.

"Weren't they all right-wing snobs?" Jackson asked.

"Oh don't spoil it by being all northern and socialist," Julia said.

Amelia remained a brooding presence, communicating in mono-syllables. "Brooke used to run around with no clothes on," Julia said. "Maybe nudism is some kind of Cambridge thing."

"Rupert Brooke was just a protofascist," Amelia said suddenly, from somewhere beneath her sun hat, and Julia said, "Well, he's dead and he was a terrible poet, so he's had his comeuppance," and Amelia said, "That's a specious argument if ever I heard one," and Julia said – but Jackson was asleep by then.

Jackson retrieved his car from where it was still parked, in front of Binky's house. A gold Lexus, not a vehicle (nor a color) that Jackson had any time for, was parked right up against the Alfa's bumper and Jackson felt pretty sure it belonged to Quintus. He had no idea what was going on between them. Surely Quintus hadn't attacked him?

He drove down Silver Street, listening to Gillian Welch's Hell Among the Yearlings album. His taste in music was getting more depressive by the minute, if that was possible. He was on his way to a meeting in The Eagle with Steve Spencer, not that he had anything to report about Nicola, but his mind was still on Quintus when all of a sudden he found himself driving straight into the back of a Ford Galaxie that was stationary at traffic lights by Fitzbillies on Trumpington Street.

The front of the Alfa Romeo came off a lot worse than the back of the Ford Galaxie, but things would have been more serious if Jackson hadn't already been easing up for the red light. That wasn't a fact that impressed the driver of the Galaxie, who leaped out and started yelling at Jackson that he had intentionally endangered the life of her children. Three small, inquisitive faces peered out the rear window of the Galaxie. When the traffic police rolled up, the woman was standing in the middle of the road, jabbing her finger at the child on board sticker on her rear window.

"The brakes failed," Jackson said to the older of the two traffic policemen.

"Liar! Bloody liar!" the woman shouted.

"Jeez, Jackson," the policeman said, "you really know how to pick them."

The crash had jolted something loose in Jackson's head. His tooth felt less like a tooth and more like a knife being pushed through his gum. He didn't think his body could take much more punishment.

The traffic cops breathalyzed Jackson, took down details of the accident, and sent the Galaxie and its furious driver on their way. Then they called a police tow truck and had Jackson's car taken to the police garage, where a mechanic looked it over. The older traffic cop owed Jackson a tenner from a derby sweep three years ago and Jackson reckoned it was a debt paid in full now.

"The brakes failed," Jackson said for the umpteenth time. The accident had unnerved him. He'd been in accidents before, skids and shunts, but he'd never been the one doing the shunting. He could still see himself gliding helplessly into the back of the Galaxie, magnetically drawn on by the child on board sign. "I think the brake fluid must have leaked," he said to the mechanic.

"It leaked alright," the mechanic said, "leaked through the bloody great hole that was drilled in the reservoir. I think there's someone out there who doesn't like you."

"Christ," one of the traffic policeman said cheerfully, "that'll make it hard to narrow down."

''Thanks." Perhaps he should mention Quintus Rain's name to the eager young DC Lowther who had taken his statement in the hospital.

A police car dropped him off outside his front door. He sensed he was beginning to lower the tone of the neighborhood. It was nine o'clock and the smell of barbecue was everywhere on the air. He knew without looking at his mobile that it was full of messages from Steve Spencer wondering what had happened to him. He avoided thinking that the day couldn't get any worse and was rewarded with a sight that suddenly made everything better. Shirley Morrison was sitting on his doorstep, two bottles of cold beer in her hand. "I thought maybe you could do with some nursing," she said.

Later, much later, when there was already light in the sky and the dawn chorus had struck up and it was Thursday (which was blue according to Julia and orange according to Amelia), Jackson turned and looked at Shirley's sleeping face and tried to remember why he wasn't supposed to sleep with her? Oh yes, because she was a client. Ethics. Nice one, Jackson. He wondered if he had crossed a line he was going to regret. It wasn't so much that she was a client, or that he thought there was going to be anything between them, they'd swerved out of their orbits and collided, that was all.

(Although it was nice to think there might be more.) It had been cataclysmic, extraordinary, but he didn't see a future in it. It wasn't that that was worrying Jackson, it was the fact that when Shirley was telling her awful story to him yesterday, she had spent most of her time looking up to the right.