Case Histories

Chapter 19. Jackson

You forgot it was colder up north. Britain was such a small country you wouldn't think you'd notice a climate change over a couple hundred miles. It was still warm enough to sit in the beer garden though, warm enough for northerners anyway. Jackson got the drinks in. They were at an old coaching inn, in the middle of nowhere in Northumberland. There was a lot of nowhere in Northumberland. Jackson wondered about buying a cottage there. It would be cheaper than Cambridge, where he no longer had a home. His house was still standing but he had lost more or less everything in it – clothes and CDs and books, all of Theo's files on Laura – if not to the explosion then to the water in the fire hoses. Well, it was one way of getting a fresh start, a new life: just blow up the old one.

"Gas?" he'd said hopefully to the fire investigation officer.

"Dynamite," the fire officer said. (A short, manly kind of ex-change.) Who had access to dynamite? People who worked in mines, obviously. Jackson fished in his wallet for DC Lowther's card and phoned him. "The plot thickens," he said, and wished he hadn't said that because it sounded like something from a bad detective novel. "I think we have a suspect." That didn't sound much better. "My house has just exploded, by the way." At least that was novel.

("Quintus Rain," DC Lowther ruminated, "what kind of a name is that?" "A bloody stupid one," Jackson said.)

He carried the drinks outside, an orange juice for himself, a Coke for Marlee, and a gin and tonic for Kim Jessop, except she was called Kim Strachan now because at some point in the last ten years she had married and then divorced a "mad Scottish head case" called George Strachan. Now she owned a bar in Sitges and a restaurant in Barcelona and was partnered up with a Russian "businessman." She was still blond and sported the deep leathery tan of someone who thought skin cancer happened to other people, although, judging by her smoker's cough, it was going to be a race with lung cancer. As befitted a mafia mistress, she was wearing enough gold to furnish an Indian wedding. She hadn't lost any of the Geordie in her – Kim Strachan, nee Jessop, didn't have a single drop of soft southern DNA in her body. Jackson warmed to her immediately.

"It was lucky you got hold of me," she said, taking a deep drag on a Marlboro. "I'm only in the country for a couple of weeks, seeing Mum, she's bad on her legs these days, I'm trying to persuade her to move out to Spain."

Stan Jessop had reluctantly given Jackson his first wife's mobile number, complaining sullenly that he hardly ever saw his daughter, Nina, because "the bitch" had put her in a Quaker boarding school in York, and Jackson thought to himself that a Quaker boarding school in York sounded pretty accessible compared to a school of any denomination in New Zealand.

Kim Strachan and her family were taking a "farmhouse holiday" somewhere in the vicinity. "A sheep farm," she said. "Bloody noisy things, sheep. The silence of the lambs, my arse." Her "family" seemed to include not only Nina and the mother who was bad on her legs but also " Vladimir " and any number of Vladimir's "associates," one of whom was driving Kim and was currently sipping a Fanta two tables away and scrutinizing every passerby as if he or she might be a potential assassin. "Oh, he's a teddy bear, really." Kim laughed. She'd come a long way since her days in the little thirties semi she had once shared with Stan Jessop.

It turned out that Kim had left Stan the week before Laura Wyre's murder. She had already "taken up" with George Strachan and was behind the bar of a British expatriate pub in Alicante when Laura was killed. Kim had never returned to Cambridge, hadn't even spoken to Stan for two years after she left, "because he was such a bloody wanker," so that when Jackson phoned her and said he was "investigating certain aspects of Laura Wyre's death," she said, "Jesus. Laura Wyre's dead? How?" Jackson felt his heart sink because talking about a girl who was ten years' dead was a very different thing to breaking fresh news of that death. "She's only twenty-eight," Kim said.

Jackson sighed, thinking, No, she was only eighteen, and said, Actually she died ten years ago. I'm afraid she was murdered." There was a silence at the other end of the phone, disturbed only by a surly rumble of Russian in the background. Jackson remembered Emma Drake saying that it was worse hearing about Laura's death when "it was already consigned to history for everyone else." It seemed like the whole world had been out of the country when Laura died.

"Murdered?"

"I'm really, really sorry," Kim said, fishing the slice of lemon out of her gin and putting it in the ashtray.

"Her killer was never found," Jackson said. "Laura might not even have been the intended victim." Jackson cast a doubtful glimpse at Marlee. He probably sounded like he was talking about an episode of Law and Order or CSI rather than real life. He hoped he did, he hoped she didn't actually watch Law and Order and CSI, he hoped she watched Blue Peter and reruns of Little House on the Prairie. He had told Marlee about Laura, that she had been killed by a "bad person" because "sometimes bad things happened to good people," and Marlee frowned and said, "Theo said she was called Jennifer," and Jackson said, "That's his other daughter." How did Jennifer feel, always being the other daughter, the one that got less attention than a dead sister?

"Laura was a nice girl," Kim Strachan said. "She was stuck-up when I first met her, but she was just middle class, you know. You can't hold that against a person, can you? Aye, well, you can, but not Laura. She had a good heart."

"I'm just following up on a few things, people who weren't interviewed at the time," Jackson said. "I'm working for her father."

"Fat bloke?"

"Yeah, fat bloke."

"Theo," Marlee said. "He's nice."

"Yes, he is," Jackson said. He looked at Marlee and said, "Do you want to go and get yourself a packet of crisps, sweetheart?" He reached into his pocket for change but Kim Strachan had already opened her purse and produced a new five-pound note that she gave to Marlee, saying, "Here you go, pet, get what you want. Bloody stupid Brits," she added to Jackson. "Why can't they just get with the euro? Every other bloody country in Europe's managed it."

Kim Strachan lit another cigarette, shaking one out for Jackson, and when he refused she said, "For God's sake, you're gagging for one, man, I can tell."

Jackson took a cigarette. "I was off them for fifteen years," he said.

"What started you again?"

Jackson shrugged. "An anniversary."

"Must have been a big one," Kim Strachan said.

Jackson laughed humorlessly "No, it wasn't. A thirty-third, that's not a significant one, is it? Thirty-three years since my sister died."

"I'm sorry."

"I think it was just one too many. She would have been fifty this year. This week. Tomorrow."

"There you go, then," Kim Strachan said, as if that explained everything. She lit his cigarette with a heavy gold lighter that had something in Cyrillic engraved on it.

"Don't tell me," Jackson said. "From Russia with love."

Kim Strachan laughed and said, "Much filthier than that."

"You wouldn't have any idea who might have wanted to kill Laura, would you?" Jackson asked her. "Any idea, however unlikely."

"Like I said, she was a nice middle-class girl. They don't usually have many enemies."

Jackson produced the photograph of the yellow golfing jumper and held it out to her. She took it from him and studied it carefully. Then her face sort of fell apart. "Jesus Christ," she said.

"You recognize it?" Jackson asked.

Kim downed the rest of her gin and took a long drag on her cigarette before stubbing it out. She had tears in her eyes but her voice was raw with anger. "I should have known," she said. "I should have fucking known it would be him."

I hey drove to Bamburgh and he took Marlee for a long walk on the beach. He kept his shoes and socks on (like an old man, like his father), but Marlee rolled up her gingham pedal pushers and ran in and out of the waves. They didn't bother going to look round the castle, even though he thought it had some kind of Harry Potter link that Marlee had been excited about initially. Jackson tended to close his ears to her incessant Harry Potter chatter (he had a wizard-free childhood himself and failed to see the attraction), in the same way he closed his ears to Christina and Justin and the cloned pubescent boy bands that she had brought with her and insisted on alternating with his own CDs. She was more interested in playing with the mobile phone he'd bought for her. It was a kind of Barbie pink and she spent her whole time texting her friends. He couldn't imagine what they said to each other. Instead of going in the castle, they ate vinegary fish-and-chips in front seats of the car, looking at the sea (like pensioners), and Marlee said, "This is nice, Daddy," and Jackson said. "Isn't it just?"

He was supposed to have taken Marlee for the last two weeks of the school holiday, but Josie had phoned him and said, "Look, we've been offered this gite in the Ardeche for a week by friends of David, and we thought it would be nice if just the two of us went."

"So you can fuck each other without your child being present?" Jackson asked and Josie put the phone down on him. It took them another two phone calls before they managed a semicivilized exchange on the subject. Of course, David would have "friends who had a gite in the Ardeche," wouldn't he? He was sure it wasn't coincidence that "git" and "gite" were almost the same word.

Jackson shook their chip papers out for the gulls, instantly recreating a scene from The Birds, and then drove away as quickly as possible before the Punto got covered in gull shit.

Are we going home now?" Marlee was eating a Cornetto that was melting faster than she could eat it. It dripped on the upholstery of the Punto. There was something to be said for hired cars after all.

"Daddy?"

"What?"

"I said are we going home now?"

"Yes. No."

"Which, Daddy?"

Jackson found them a ropy-looking B and B, which nonetheless seemed to be the best one available in his old hometown. It had a red neon vacancies sign in the window that made him feel he was checking into a brothel. The drive had taken longer than he expected and had brought them through a series of depressing post-industrial wastelands that made Cambridge seem positively paradisial in comparison. "Never forget this is what Margaret Thatcher did to your birthright," Jackson said to Marlee, and she said, "Okay, I won't," and popped the top on a tube of Smarties. Kim Strachan's five-pound note had been fully utilized in the last Shell Shop they visited.

The B and B was run by a sharp-faced woman called Mrs. Brind who looked dubiously at Marlee before glaring at Jackson and informing him that she had "no twins left, only doubles." Jackson half expected her to call the vice squad the minute he was inside the gloomy room, with its years of nicotine impregnated into the wall-paper and curtains. It was like smoking-aversion therapy. He would give up smoking, he would give up tomorrow. Or the next day.

The next morning Mrs. Brind scrutinized Marlee for signs of distress or abuse, but she cheerfully scrunched her way through a bowl of Frosties, a cereal outlawed in David Lastingham's muesli-inclined household. Marlee followed the Frosties with a slippery fried egg that was served up with a stiff strip of streaky bacon and a single obscene-looking sausage. Jackson imagined getting up in the morning in France, wandering down to a village bakery for a warm baguette, making one of those little espresso pots of freshly ground coffee. For now he had to make do with a cup of acrid instant coffee and a couple of Nurofen because he'd run out of Co-codamol. He wasn't really sure what hurt anymore, whether it was his tooth, his head, the punch David Lastingham had surprisingly landed on him. It was just pain, generic pain. "You shouldn't take those on an empty stomach," Mrs. Brind said to him unexpectedly and pushed a plate of toast in front of him. It was raining when they got back in the Punto and drove across town. Jackson noticed a leaden feeling growing in his bowels that owed nothing to the miserable weather or the cheap, acidic coffee. "Okay, sweetheart?"

"Yes, Daddy."

He pulled up on a garage forecourt and filled up the Punto. breathing in the comforting smell of petrol. There were buckets of flowers arranged outside the shop, but there wasn't much in the way of choice. There were big pink daisies that looked artificial, some brightly colored dahlias, and lots of carnations. He recalled the heartfelt testimonial of one of Theo's divorce clients. He buys me carnations, carnations are crap, every woman knows that, so why doesn't he? Jackson beckoned Marlee out of the car and asked her to choose, and without any hesitation she picked the dahlias. Dahlias always reminded Jackson of the allotments where his father had spent most of his spare time. Jackson's mother used to say that his shed was kitted out better than their house. They'd passed the allotments a couple of streets back and if they took the next left at the crossroads they would come to the street where Jackson lived between the ages of nine and sixteen, but they didn't take a left and Jackson didn't mention it to Marlee.

Jackson hadn't visited the cemetery for ten years, but he knew exactly where to go, there was a map that had been burned into his memory a long time ago. There had been a time when he came here nearly every day, long ago when the dead were the only people who loved him. "This is where my mother's buried," he said to Marlee. "My grandma?" she checked, and he said, "Yes, your grandma." She stood respectfully in front of a headstone that looked more weather-beaten than it should have been after thirty-three years and he wondered if his father had ordered a cheap sandstone for his wife's memorial. Jackson didn't feel much when he looked at it. He found it hard to conjure up many memories of his mother. They walked on and Marlee worried that he hadn't left the flowers on his mother's grave and Jackson said, "They're not for her, sweetheart."