Case Histories

Chapter 17. Jackson

Jackson washed down a couple of Co-codamol with a cup of foul-tasting coffee. He was waiting in the terminal for Nicola and the rest of her flight crew to disembark from their aircraft. It was seven in the morning, which seemed a particularly hellish time to be in an airport. If an unknown assassin didn't kill him he supposed his tooth would.

The plane had already emptied its bedraggled, disoriented passengers. Jackson had never been to Malaga. When they were married Josie had insisted that they take an expensive holiday every year, villa holidays, "villas with private pools" in "lovely" places, Corsica, Sardinia, Crete, Tuscany. All he could do now was conjure up a kind of generic Mediterranean memory – Marlee slippery with suntan cream and buoyant with armbands, splashing in the shallow end of the pool; Josie lying on a recliner, reading a novel, while Jackson himself lapped the pool, his body a dark shape under the blue water, like a restless, obsessive shark.

Watching Nicola was just displacement activity, trying to keep his mind off the fact that someone was trying to kill him (although, let's face it, it was quite hard to forget something like that).

And now he had Tanya to think about as well. What was it that Shirley hadn't been telling the truth about? Walter and Doreen Fletcher, Keith's parents, moved to Lowestoft after the murder and seemed to have done a pretty poor job of parenting their only son's only child. Shirley had tried, she said, to stay in touch with her niece, but the Fletchers told her to keep away from them. "The sister of the woman who murdered their only child," she said. "You can't entirely blame them." When she was twelve, Tanya started running away from home. When she was fifteen, she stopped coming back. "I've looked for her everywhere," Shirley said, "but she seems to have slipped through the cracks."

Jackson added Tanya to the grim table of calculations that he carried in his head these days. Presuming she was alive, Tanya Fletcher would be twenty-five now. Olivia Land would be thirty-seven. Laura Wyre would be twenty-eight, Kerry-Anne Brockley. twenty-six. He hoped Tanya was living her future, that she really was twenty-five and that her days rolled by unstopped, unlike the holy girls, the Kerry-Annes, Olivias, and Lauras. And Niamh. Jackson's big sister, who would have been fifty years old this week the crew appeared in the terminal, wheeling their neat little flight bags behind them, going at a cracking pace across the tarmac, focused entirely on getting home, being off duty. If any passenger had intercepted them, looking for a miniature of whiskey or a second bread roll, they would probably have knocked them down and barreled right over them with their flight bags. All the flight attendants were women, no men – not that it seemed likely that Nicola would have an affair with a male flight attendant, Jackson had yet to spot a heterosexual one. The women were wearing hats that looked as if they belonged on the heads of girls from St. Trinians. Nicola was bringing up the rear with the copilot. He looked as if he was in his thirties, good-looking (in a pilot kind of way), but not much taller than Nicola. Was he touching her? The pilot – older, more gravitas than the copilot – turned and said something that made Nicola laugh. This was more promising. Jackson couldn't recall seeing her laugh before.

Jackson followed them outside the terminal and into the car park. Nicola and the pilot had parked their cars next to each other and Jackson thought that maybe this was a sign of something, but they said good-bye nonchalantly with no kissing, no touching, no meaningful looks. No hint of adultery. Nicola got in her car, revved up, and was off in her usual grand-prix style. Jackson followed at a less suicidal pace. He had a Fiat Punto rental in place of the Alfa.

The Punto was an orange color that made him feel conspicuous. It was definitely a woman's car. His own car was still in the police garage, where forensics was doing more tests on it. "The police take sabotage like this very seriously, Mr. Brodie," a new DS (new to Jackson anyway) had said to him, and Jackson said, "Right." He hadn't mentioned Quintus's name, Jackson didn't see how the police were going to do much that he couldn't do himself.

He'd been round to Binky's house the previous evening to see if Quintus was there, but there'd been no answer when he rang the bell. The Lexus was gone and Jackson wondered if Quintus had taken Binky for a drive or out for dinner. Did that seem likely?

He lost Nicola within minutes and when he pulled up, a discreet distance from her front lawn, she had already changed into jeans and a sweatshirt and was aggressively cutting the front grass with a push-and-pull mower in a way that reminded Jackson of Deborah's combative attitude toward her computer keyboard. Or of Josie's combative attitude toward everything – before David Lastingham gave her the Stepford lobotomy. Nicola was still wearing the full protective camouflage of her makeup, incongruous against her casual clothes. Her body language may have been belligerent but her face was a mask.

He should have brought Theo something, flowers, fruit, a good book, but he hadn't thought and now it was too late. Theo seemed smaller in the hospital bed. Less of a mountain man and more of a little, motherless boy. Jackson wished there was a way of making him happy. He told him about going to London to see Emma, but he seemed too zoned out to be really interested, although he had asked Jackson if he was okay (which was ironic given Theo's circumstances), and Jackson said, "That would very much depend on your definition of 'okay,' Theo."

The real worry for Jackson was that he might actually find the man in the yellow golfing sweater (although it hardly seemed likely) and it wouldn't do a damn thing to help Theo's pain. In fact it would make things worse because then he would have the "closure" he was looking for. And Laura would still be dead.

Jackson made his way through the overheated corridors of the hospital, from the medical admissions ward to the pediatric ICU. He walked into the unit unchallenged; the nurse at the desk recognized him and didn't question him. He would have preferred it if she had. It shouldn't be this easy to walk into places.

Jackson observed Shirley through a glass wall that felt like a oneway mirror for all the attention anyone paid to him. Shirley was wearing blue surgical scrubs. Jackson didn't think there was anything much sexier than the sight of a woman in surgical scrubs and wondered if he was alone in thinking that or if most guys did There should be opinion polls on these things. Shirley was standing over an ICU cot, delicately lifting a small waxy baby. It still had an array of tubes and monitors attached to its body so that it seemed like some odd, fragile creature from outer space.

"Give me a sec and I'll let her know you're here," a young male Australian nurse said to him. (Who was running Australia? They were all over here. God knows why.)

Jackson watched a doctor walk over to Shirley and touch her on the shoulder and say something to her. There was something indefinably intimate about the gesture, and from the way she turned to him and smiled Jackson instantly knew that they'd slept with each other. They both gazed down at the baby. Jackson felt even more like a voyeur than usual. The nurse who had recognized him (What was her name? Elaine? Eileen?) came and stood by his side and said, "Ah, sweet."

"Sweet?" Jackson said, wondering what could be sweet about this little tableau. A woman he'd recently spent a night of unfettered lust with cooing over a sick baby with another lover.

"Well, sad, really, I suppose," Elaine/Eileen said. "They can't have children of their own."

"They? They're married? Shirley Morrison and the doctor guy?"

"Doctor Welch, head of pediatrics." Elaine/Eileen frowned at him.

"They're married?"

"Yes, Inspector Brodie. Are you investigating Shirley?"

"It's Mr. Brodie. I left the force two years ago, Eileen."

"Elaine."

"Why would I be investigating her?"

Elaine shrugged. "The way you're interrogating me, maybe."

"Sorry."

Elaine moved closer to him, her tone more confidential. "You know, don't you, that she's the sister of –"

"Yes," Jackson interrupted her. "I know." Shirley Morrison hadn't changed her name after her sister's conviction, she hadn't changed it when she got married. He had asked her, somewhere in the druglike haze of their morning after, "You never changed your identity?" and she said, "It was the only thing I had left." Her husband moved on to inspect another alien baby and Shirley put the one she was holding back into its little spaceship cot.

The Australian nurse entered the ICU and said something to Shirley Morrison, who looked up and frowned when she saw Jackson. He shrugged at her and made a helpless face. He pointed at his own naked ring finger and then pointed at her. She raised her eyes heavenward as if she couldn't believe he was communicating in this ridiculous way. She signaled to him to go to the entrance of the unit. She opened the door a fraction, as if Jackson posed a threat.

"Why didn't you tell me you were married?" he asked her.

"Would it have made a difference?"

"Yes."

"Christ, Jackson, what are you, the last good man standing? It was just sex, get over it." She closed the door on him. He'd had a bad feeling about her, he should have gone with it. Was she a good liar or was she just good at avoiding the truth? Was there a difference? He liked to think truth was an absolute, but maybe that made him into a tight-arsed moral fascist.

On his way out of the ward, Jackson almost bumped into the yellow-haired homeless girl who was lurking in the corridor. She was muttering under her breath, as if she were saying the rosary, and Jackson wanted to say hello to her because he'd seen her around so much recently that he felt he knew her, but of course he didn't, so he said nothing and was surprised when she spoke.

"You know him, don't you?"

"Who?"

"The old fat geezer."

"Theo?" he guessed.

"Yeah, is he going to be alright?"

"He's okay," Jackson said. The girl started walking away from the ICU and Jackson said, "Visiting time isn't over, you can go in and see him, he's in medical admissions."

"No, I saw him this afternoon, I came to find someone else."

Jackson accompanied her out of the hospital. She shivered even though it was a balmy evening and lit up a cigarette and then said, "Sorry," and offered one to Jackson. He lit up and said, "You're too young to smoke," and she said, "And you're too old. And anyway I'm twenty-five, old enough for anything." Jackson thought she looked about seventeen, eighteen tops. She retrieved her dog from where it was tied to a bench outside. "Are you a friend of his?" she asked him.

"Theo? Sort of." Was he a friend of Theo's? Maybe he was. Was he a friend of Amelia and Julia? God forbid. (Was he?) And he wasn't a friend of Shirley Morrison no matter what they'd done under the cloak of darkness the other night. "Yes," he said finally, "I'm a friend of Theo's. My name's Jackson."

" Jackson," she repeated as if she were trying to lodge it in her memory. He took a handful of his cards out of his pocket – Jackson brodie: private investigator – and gave one to her.

"This is the bit when you tell me your name," he said, and she said, "Lily-Rose." Close-up, she didn't look so much like a druggie, more a victim of neglect and malnutrition. She seemed insubstantial enough to blow away on the wind, and Jackson wanted to take her to the nearest PizzaExpress and watch her eat. She had a little bowl of a belly like the starving African children you saw on television. Jackson wondered if she was pregnant.

"I found him," she said, "in the park. Christ's whatever."

"Pieces."

"Stupid name."

"Very stupid," Jackson agreed.

"He was having an attack."

"He said someone gave him an inhaler."

"That wasn't me," Lily-Rose said. "It was some woman. He's going to be alright?" she persisted.

"Absolutely fine," Jackson said and then realized he was talking to her as if she were Marlee's age. He couldn't believe she was twenty-five. "No, he's not really alright," Jackson said. "His daughter was murdered ten years ago and he can't get over it."

"Why should he?"

Stan Jessop taught at a different school now but lived in the same small thirties semi-detached that he had ten years ago. "Stan" made him sound like an old allotment guy, but he was only thirty-six. When Laura died Stan Jessop was only twenty-six. Twenty-six sounded incredibly young to Jackson – just a year older than Lily-Rose, two years younger than Emma Drake (he had to stop doing this). There was a well-worn Vauxhall Vectra in the driveway with a baby seat in the back, the floor littered with toys and sweet wrappers and general domestic grunge. Stan Jessop had one child, Nina, ten years ago, according to Emma Drake. Now he seemed to have a zoo of them – the front garden looked like a battleground for a war being fought with the contents of Toys "R" Us. "Kids." Stan Jessop shrugged. "What can you do?" And Jackson thought, Well, tidy up for a start, but he shrugged in return and accepted the mug of weak instant coffee that Stan made him and took a seat in the living room. The mug had drip marks down the side as if it hadn't been washed properly. Jackson put it down on the coffee table and didn't drink from it.

Emma Drake said Stan Jessop was "really cute" ten years ago. and he still had a handsome, boyish air about him. "I'm looking into some aspects of the Laura Wyre case," Jackson said, and Stan said, "Oh, yeah?" in an offhand way that didn't convince Jackson somehow.

From upstairs came the thunderous noise of small children resisting bedtime and the increasingly frustrated voice of a woman. It sounded like an old routine. "Three boys," Stan said, as if that explained everything. "It's like trying to put the barbarian hordes to bed. I should help really," he added and slumped down on the sofa. He looked like the barbarian hordes had defeated him long ago. "What about her?" he asked irritably.

"Who?"

"Laura – what about her? Is the case being reopened?"

"It was never closed, Mr. Jessop. I've been speaking to some of her friends. They think you had a crush on her."

"A crush?" Jackson thought he saw a shadow cross Stan Jessop's face. "Is that why you're here, because I had a 'crush' on Laura Wyre?"

"Did you?"

"You know" – he sighed, as if whatever it was he was about to explain wasn't really worth the effort – "when you're a young guy and you're put in that position, sometimes things can get out of hand." He grew sullen. "All those girls, intelligent, pretty girls, their hormones are off the scale, they come on to you all the time."

"You're supposed to be the grown-up."

"They're all little prick teasers, they're screwing all the time, they open their legs for anyone at that age. Don't tell me you'd act differently. If it was offered to you on a plate, what would you do?"

"I'd refuse."

"Oh, don't give me that holier-than-thou crap. At the end of the day you're just a man." (What had Shirley said, What are you, Jackson, the last good man standing? Was he? He hoped not.) "Put any man in that position and they'd be tempted. You would."

"I would refuse," Jackson said, "because I've got a daughter. As you do."

Stan Jessop got up from the sofa as if he were about to punch Jackson (Why not? Everyone else did), but his wife came into the room at that moment and glared at both of them suspiciously. She didn't conform to Emma Drake's description of "blond and tarty"

("common"). She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and had short dark hair. Emma said that she and Laura got on well together, yet no one had ever interviewed Kim Jessop. (Why not?) Jackson held out his hand and said, "How d'you do, Mrs. Jessop, my name's Jackson Brodie. I'm looking into some aspects of the death of Laura Wyre," and she looked at him blankly and said, "Who?"

From the car Jackson phoned Deborah Arnold at home and said, "Can you write a standard kind of letter to Miss Morrison and tell her that we're unable to act for her anymore?"

"Have you ever heard of office hours?"

''Have you?"

Was he being petty? Okay, so she was married, and she'd slept with him, adultery happened all the time (look at his own wife). Did that explain the bad feeling he'd had about her? Did that explain why there was something wrong with her story about Michelle? Perhaps if Tanya wanted to find Shirley she would already have done so? Jackson didn't want to help Shirley. He didn't want to see Shirley. He rooted around in the glove compartment for a Lee Ann Womack CD and jumped to the "Little Past Little Rock" track. Every other country song was about women leaving – leaving town, leaving the past, but mostly leaving men. After his own woman left Jackson made a compilation tape of all the women in pain, the Lucindas and Emmylous and Trishas, singing their sad songs about departing on trains and planes and buses, but mainly driving off in cars, of course. Another hejira.

When he got home Jackson heated up something tasteless in the microwave. It was only nine o'clock but he was dog tired. There was only one message on his answering machine; it was from Binky. He'd meant to swing by her house to check on her, but now he didn't think he had the energy. He played the message. "Mr. Brodie, Mr. Brodie, I really need to see you. It's urgent," and then nothing, not even good-bye. He phoned her back but there was no answer. The second he replaced the receiver the phone rang and he snatched it up.

It was Amelia. A hysterical Amelia. Again.

"Who's dead now, Amelia?" he asked when she paused for breath. "Because if it's anything smaller than a large horse I'd appreciate it if you took care of it yourself." Unfortunately, this response had the effect of making her twice as hysterical. Jackson cut her off, counted to ten, and then hit the "caller redial" button and watched as Binky Rain's number came up. He had a bad feeling. (Did he ever have good ones?) "What is it?" he said when Amelia

answered, and she managed to calm herself long enough to say, "She's dead. The old witch is dead."

It was one in the morning when Jackson got home. He felt like he'd gone beyond sleep into some other place, a gray, foggy place where all his energy was being used to keep his automatic nervous system ricking over and the rest of his brain and body had shut down long ago. He actually went up the stairs on his hands and knees. His bed hadn't been made since the night he'd spent with Shirley Morrison. He wasn't sure whether he'd actually slept since that night. She'd been wearing that Celtic ring on her wedding finger. It was his own fault for not asking. "Are you married?" – it would have been a straightforward enough question. Would she have lied? Probably. The woman who loved babies who couldn't have any of her own, is that why she'd slept with him, to get pregnant? God forbid. Did her husband know? The woman who loved babies who'd lost touch with the one baby above all others that she was supposed to look after. Tanya. Something scratched at the edge of his memory, but he was so tired he could hardly remember his own name.

He opened a window. There was no air in the bedroom. Heavy weather. If a thunderstorm didn't break the heat soon, people would start to go mad. The weather had broken after Olivia disappeared. Amelia reported that Sylvia had said it was "God crying for his little lost lamb." Amelia had been behaving even more oddly than usual, blethering about Olivia even though it was Binky's body she had found. Blethering. That was one of his father's words. It was nearly a year now since the old man had died. Lonely and alone in his hospital bed. He was seventy-five and had everything possible, silicosis, emphysema, cirrhosis of the liver. Jackson didn't want to become the man his father had been.

What had Binky wanted to tell him? He was never going to find out now, was he? He thought of Binky's small featherweight body lying in the remains of her orchard, the long grass damp with dew, although not the grass beneath her body, which had remained as dry as her old bones. "She's been lying here for hours," the pathologist said, and Jackson felt his heart lurch. He had driven by her house. Maybe he could have helped her. He should have broken in, he should have climbed the wall. He should have helped her.

He was about to close the curtains when something caught his eye. Walking along the wall on the other side of the lane, weaving its way in and out of the hollyhocks that grew like weeds. A black cat. If Binky Rain were reincarnated, would she come back as a cat? A black one? How many black cats were there in Cambridge? Hundreds. Jackson opened the window wider and leaned out and – and truly he couldn't believe he was doing this – softly shouted, "Nigger?" into the warm night air.

The cat stopped in its tracks and looked around. Jackson ran down the stairs and out of the house and then slowed himself down to a cartoon kind of tiptoe so that he wouldn't frighten the animal. "Nigger?" he whispered again, and the cat meowed and jumped off the wall. Jackson picked it up and felt its skinny weight in his arms. He experienced an odd sense of comradeship with the bedraggled animal and said, "It's okay, old boy, do you want to come in my house?" He didn't have any cat food in the house – he didn't have any food in the house – but he had some milk. He was surprised by an unexpected surge of affection for the cat. Of course, it probably wasn't Nigger (and, dear God, that name would have to be changed by whoever took this cat on). The cat would probably have responded to anything, but the coincidence seemed too much for Jackson in his exhausted state. He turned to go back into the house. And the house exploded. Just like that.

What was it Hank Williams had sung? Something about never getting out of this world alive?