Case Histories

by Kate Atkinson

  ‘I’ve cleaned out the pus, Jackson,’ Sharon whispered softly, ‘and I’m going to put a dressing on, but we can’t keep on treating the symptoms, we have to eliminate the cause. The root.’

  Laura’s closest friends at sixth-form college had been Christina, Ayshea, Josh, Joanna, Tom, Eleanor, Emma, Hannah and Pansy. Jackson knew this because Theo had a handy wall chart with the heading ‘Students at Laura’s college’, as opposed to another chart, ‘Laura’s friends outside of college’ (scuba-diving club, people from the pub she’d worked with, and so on), and yet a third chart for ‘Laura’s casual acquaintances’ (which was basically anyone whose path had ever crossed hers).

  ‘Students at Laura’s college’ was a numbered list, the numbers indicating the closeness of the friendship – number one being her best friend and so on. Every student at the college was listed. How much time had Theo spent trying to decide if someone should be ranked one hundred and eight or one hundred and nine on the list? He hadn’t even done the list on a computer but had laboriously handwritten all the names. The guy was crazy.

  The friends were also colour-coded by sex – blue ink for the girls, red for the boys, which made it easy to see that Laura’s closest friends were mostly girls. The top ten were all blue with only two exceptions – Josh and Tom. Laura Wyre had obviously been a girl’s girl, one destined never to become a woman’s woman. Towards the end of the list there was an almost solid phalanx of red names – great clusters of boys, most of whom Laura Wyre had probably never even noticed, let alone spoken to. The use of the red ink made the boys stand out and look more dangerous, or incorrect somehow. Jackson had a sudden image of his essays at school, spider-webbed with the angry red-ink annotations of his teachers. It was only after he left school and joined the army that he discovered he was intelligent.

  The police had interviewed all the students at Laura’s college, except that unfortunately most of the top ten were missing. ‘Gap year,’ Theo had said to Jackson. He had worried that Laura would want to take a gap year, visit the dangerous corners of the world, but she would have been safer in a flea-infested, heroin-filled doss house in Bangkok than she was in her father’s office. ‘Mea culpa,’ Theo said to Jackson with his sad, dog smile.

  Throughout the whole investigation the police never really believed that Laura was anything more than an unfortunate bystander, they were always convinced that Theo was the real target. Jackson suddenly remembered Bob Peck in Edge of Darkness – they really didn’t make TV like that any more, in fact it might have been the last good BBC drama that Jackson had seen. 1984? 1985? He tried to remember 1985. Three years after the Falklands. Howell left the army and Jackson signed on for another five years. He was going out with a girl called Carol but then she joined CND and announced that her political views were ‘incompatible’ with her relationship with Jackson. Jackson pointed out that he wasn’t exactly in favour of nuclear warfare himself but she was more interested in chaining herself to things and shouting abuse at the Thames Valley police.

  In 1985 Laura Wyre would have been nine years old and Olivia Land was fifteen years dead. In Edge of Darkness, Craven, the Bob Peck character, had also been obsessed with his daughter – Emma, that was her name, the same name as the number-five-ranked girl on Theo’s red-and-blue list and the only one of the top-ranking girls who lived within easy reach of Cambridge. Christina, the number-one best friend, was married and living in Australia, Ayshea was a teacher in Dorset, Tom worked for the EC in Strasbourg, Josh seemed to have disappeared off the map, Joanna was a doctor in Dublin, Hannah was in the States, Eleanor a solicitor in Newcastle, Pansy was working for a publisher in Scotland. A hejira of girls. Were they in flight from something? (‘If you run for ever you come back to where you started from, Jackson.’) He wanted to speak to someone who knew a different Laura from the one Theo knew. It wasn’t that Theo’s Laura wasn’t genuine, but no matter how close he’d been to his daughter there were going to be things about her that he didn’t know or wouldn’t understand. That was how it was supposed to be. It didn’t matter how much you hated it, they were always going to have secrets.

  Emma Drake lived in Crouch End and worked for the BBC. When he phoned her she said she’d be happy to speak to Jackson and arranged to meet him after work, across the road from Broadcasting House, at the Langham, ‘for cocktails’.

  She was a nice girl, polite and chatty, and she drank three Manhattans, one after the other, in a way that suggested she liked to take the edge off the day as quickly as possible. She wasn’t really a girl, Jackson reminded himself, she was a twenty-eight-year-old woman.

  ‘I remember thinking that could have been me,’ she said, tossing a nut into her mouth. ‘I haven’t eaten all day,’ she added apologetically, ‘been locked in a studio. I suppose that was a selfish thing to think, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Not really,’ Jackson said.

  ‘I mean it couldn’t, not really, I wasn’t there, in that office, at that moment in time, but there’s something about random violence …’

  ‘Was it? Random?’ Jackson said. ‘You don’t think that maybe the guy who killed Laura meant to, that she was his target, not her father?’ A man in a dinner jacket sat down at a piano in the corner of the room and lifted his fingers above the keys with a Liberace kind of flourish before beginning to play a loud, florid version of ‘Some Enchanted Evening’.

  ‘Oh dear.’ Emma Drake made a face and laughed. ‘Maybe she’d met someone, I don’t know. Everyone seemed to be travelling or working abroad. Laura was one of the few people who were going straight to university after the summer holidays. I was in Peru, I didn’t hear about her death until weeks afterwards. It made it seem worse somehow that it was already consigned to history for everyone else.’

  ‘The tiniest scrap of something that no one thought to mention?’ Jackson persevered. He wondered if another Manhattan would help or hinder, and whether he should be plying young women with alcohol and then letting them go and fend for themselves out on the mean streets of London. Was Marlee going to do this, get a good education, go to university and end up in a crappy job with the BBC, drink too much and go home alone on the Tube all the way to a rented flat in Crouch End? He suggested coffee to Emma Drake and was relieved when she agreed.

  ‘I’m sorry, I really can’t think of anything,’ she said, frowning at the pianist who had moved on to an Andrew Lloyd Webber medley. ‘I suppose there was that thing with Mr Jessop.’

  ‘Mr Jessop?’

  ‘Stan.’ Her frown grew deeper but it didn’t seem to be related to The Phantom of the Opera. ‘Her biology teacher.’

  ‘A thing? As in a relationship?’ He had seen the name of Stan Jessop before, it was written on another of Theo’s wall charts – ‘Teachers at Laura’s college’. He had been interviewed by the police two days after Laura’s murder and eliminated from their inquiries.

  Emma Drake bit her lip and swirled the dregs of her Manhattan round the glass. ‘I don’t know, you’d have to ask Christina, she was much closer to Laura than me. She was in Mr Jessop’s class as well.’

  ‘She’s on a sheep farm in the middle of the Australian outback.’

  ‘Is she?’ Emma said, brightening up for a moment. ‘That’s amazing. We all seem to have lost touch. You wouldn’t think you would, would you?’ Oh, you do, Jackson thought, you lose touch with everyone eventually.

  The coffee arrived and Jackson thought he should have ordered a sandwich for her as well. What did girls like her eat when they finally made it home? Did girls like her eat at all?

  ‘We all promised to meet up ten years to the day after we left college,’ she said. ‘Outside the Hobbs Pavilion, a couple of weeks ago. Of course, no one came.’

  ‘You went?’

  She nodded and her eyes filled up with tears. ‘Stupid. I felt stupid, standing there, waiting. I never thought anyone would come, not really, but I thought I should, you know, just in case. It wasn’t that no one turned up, it was that Laura didn’t turn u
p. I mean I know she’s dead, and I didn’t expect her to appear, it was just that it brought it home to me – there was no “ten years’ time” for Laura, no future. Everything stopped for her. Just like that.’

  Jackson handed her a tissue (he always carried tissues, half the people he met seemed to end up in tears). ‘And Mr Jessop?’

  ‘It was a rumour, really. Laura wasn’t secretive exactly, but she was very discreet, kept herself to herself. God, I sound like my mother. I don’t think about Laura. That’s awful, isn’t it? Awful that you end up being forgotten and when people do remember you they talk about you in clichés. I mean, I thought about her when I was standing in front of Hobbs Pavilion, because I knew there was a chance that the others might come, but there was no hope at all that Laura would turn up. But the rest of the time …’ She chewed on her lip and Jackson wanted to stop her because she was going to make it bleed. ‘It’s as if she didn’t exist,’ she concluded flatly.

  ‘You know, she wasn’t a virgin,’ Jackson said tentatively, and Emma sighed and said, ‘Well, no one was. She wasn’t a saint. She was just like everyone else, she was normal.’

  ‘But she didn’t seem to have any boyfriends. The police didn’t interview any.’

  ‘She never really went out with anyone. Slept with a few boys, that’s all.’

  Was that normal behaviour? Was that what girls did ten years ago? If so, what were they doing now? And what would they be doing in ten years’ time? When Marlee was the age at which Laura Wyre ceased to exist. Jesus.

  ‘She was really thick with Josh, they were at primary school together. I never liked him much. He was always full of himself. He was very clever.’

  ‘I can’t find out where he is,’ Jackson said.

  ‘He dropped out. Now he’s a DJ in Amsterdam, apparently. Laura lost her virginity to him.’

  ‘Her father thought she was still a virgin,’ Jackson said, and Emma Drake laughed and said, ‘Fathers always do.’

  ‘Even when there’s evidence to the contrary?’

  ‘Especially then.’

  ‘And Mr Jessop?’ Jackson prompted.

  ‘Oh, we all fancied him.’ Emma smiled at the memory. ‘He was really cute, far too good-looking to be a teacher. Laura and Christina were in his A-level class. Laura was definitely his favourite, star pupil and all that. There was nothing in it, he had a wife and a baby.’ (As if that ever stopped anyone.) ‘Laura used to babysit for them, I used to go and keep her company. Laura didn’t think she was good with babies, but she was OK with Nina – the Jessops’ baby. Laura liked his wife, Kim. They got on well. I always thought that was funny. Kim was really common.’ Emma Drake’s hand flew to her mouth in horror. ‘Oh God, that’s a dreadful thing to say, it’s so snobbish. But, you know what I mean, she was really sort of blond and tarty. A Geordie. Oh dear. I should shut up.’

  This girl was a mine of information. And yet she’d never been interviewed. Kim Jessop had never been interviewed either. ‘No one mentioned anything about Mr Jessop and Laura at the time,’ Jackson said.

  ‘Well, they wouldn’t, he wasn’t the crazy guy who stabbed her, was he? Look – it was just a rumour, nothing more than a crush. I feel bad just talking about it.’

  ‘Having a crush on your teacher’s hardly unusual. I’m sure Laura wouldn’t mind us talking about it.’ As if she were alive, as if she were real. Laura Wyre didn’t care about anything any more.

  ‘Oh no, no, I don’t mean Laura had a crush, it was Mr Jessop who had the crush. On Laura.’

  Jackson put Emma Drake in a cab and gave the driver a ridiculously generous twenty-five pounds to take her back to Crouch End and see her into her flat. Then he made his own, cheaper, way to King’s Cross and spent the whole journey home staring out of the window at nothing.

  ‘There you go, Jackson, all patched up and ready to go.’ Sharon pulled her mask down and smiled at him as if he was three years old. He almost expected her to give him a badge or a sticker.

  ‘Let’s make an appointment to take out the root, shall we?’

  He thought she’d been speaking metaphorically when she’d talked about the root cause, not an actual root. In his head.

  Out in the street he checked his phone. There was a voice message from Josie, asking him to look after Marlee for the afternoon and informing him that his daughter was waiting in the office for him. Except that she wasn’t. There was no one in the office and it was unlocked. A message on the door in handwriting that he recognized but which was neither Deborah’s nor Marlee’s said, ‘Back in ten minutes.’ He had to think for a moment before he realized it was Theo’s handwriting (God knows, he’d seen enough of it in the last few days). This time it was in neutral black ink. ‘Back in ten minutes’ meant nothing when you didn’t know when the ten minutes started. Jackson felt an unexpected twinge of panic: what did he really know about Theo? He seemed like a good guy, seemed completely harmless, but evil psychopaths didn’t have ‘evil psychopath’ tattooed on their foreheads. Why did he think Theo was a good guy? Because his daughter was dead? Was that a guarantee?

  Jackson ran down the stairs and on to the street. Where was she? With Theo? With Deborah? On her own? With a stranger? He’d wanted to buy Marlee a mobile phone but Josie objected (when had she become the only one who got to make decisions about their child?). Think how useful it would be now. Jackson caught a glimpse of Theo coming out of the burger bar along the street. He was so big you couldn’t miss him. And Marlee was with him. Thank you, God. She was dressed in a tiny skirt and a crop-top; there were pictures of little girls dressed like that all over the internet.

  Jackson pushed his way through a crowd of Spanish teenagers with no attempt at civility and grasped Marlee’s arm and shouted, ‘Where’ve you been?’ at her. He felt like punching Theo, although he didn’t know why, as it was obvious that Marlee was fine, stuffing her face with chips. She would probably follow a stranger for a single Malteser.

  ‘I’m babysitting,’ Theo said to Jackson, ‘not cradle-snatching,’ and Jackson felt ashamed. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘of course, I’m sorry, I was worried.’

  ‘Theo’s looking after me,’ Marlee said, ‘and he bought me fries. I like him.’ Jesus, was it as simple as that?

  ‘Did your mother just dump you here?’ Jackson asked when they got back to the office.

  ‘David brought me.’

  ‘So David dumped you?’ What a tosser.

  ‘Deborah was here.’

  ‘Well, she’s not here now.’ (Where the hell was she?) ‘You left the office open so anyone could have walked in, and you went off with a complete stranger. Do you have any idea how dangerous that could be?’

  ‘Don’t you know Theo?’

  ‘That’s not the point, you don’t.’

  Marlee’s lip began to wobble and she whispered, ‘It’s not my fault, Daddy,’ and his heart lurched with guilt and contrition. ‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ he said, ‘you’re right, it’s my fault.’ He put his arms round her and kissed the top of her head. She smelt of lemony shampoo and burger grease. ‘My bad,’ he murmured into her hair.

  ‘Is it all right to come in?’ A woman stood uncertainly in the doorway. Jackson loosened his grip on Marlee, who’d been letting him squeeze the air out of her in a long-suffering kind of way.

  ‘I only came to make an appointment,’ the woman said. Late thirties, jeans, T-shirt, thonged sandals, she looked fit (Jackson imagined kick-boxing) but she had dark shadows under her eyes. A Sarah Connor type. Or that nurse from ER that all men knew they would treat so much better than her on-screen boyfriends did. (Jackson had started to watch a lot of television since the break-up of his marriage.) There was something familiar about her. Most people who looked familiar to Jackson usually turned out to be criminals but she didn’t look like a criminal.

  ‘Well,’ he said, gesturing vaguely round the office, ‘we can talk now if you like?’

  The woman glanced over at Marlee and said, ‘No, I think I’ll make an appointm
ent,’ and Jackson knew right then that it was something he didn’t want to know about.

  She made an appointment for eleven o’clock on Wednesday, ‘because I won’t be on nights then’, and Jackson thought ‘nurse’, which was why she looked familiar because nurses and policemen saw far too much of each other professionally. He liked nurses, and not because of any Carry On films or mucky postcards or porny outfits or any of the usual reasons, and not the big, practical nurses with huge backsides and no imagination (and there were a lot of them), no, he liked ones that understood suffering, the ones that suffered themselves, the ones with dark shadows under their eyes who looked like Sarah Connor. The ones that understood pain, in the way Trisha and Emmylou and Lucinda did when they sang. And maybe when they weren’t singing as well, who knew?

  She definitely had a certain something. A je ne sais quoi. Her name was Shirley, she said, and he knew, without having to ask her, what she was here for. She’d lost someone, he could see it in her eyes.

  ‘Are we going home now?’ Marlee asked with an extravagant sigh, as she clambered into the back of the car. ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘Yes, I am. I’m growing,’ she added defensively.

  ‘I would never have noticed.’

  ‘The car smells of cigarettes, it smells disgusting, Daddy. You shouldn’t smoke.’