Case Histories

by Kate Atkinson

  * * *

  Forty-eight hours later they took her body out of the canal. She was still wearing her skirt, knee-length green bouclé that she’d bought with the Christmas money her father had given her. Her umbrella was found near the bus stop. Her shoes, and some of her clothes, including her good herringbone-tweed coat, were found on the bank of the canal and her handbag was found a week later by the side of the A636. Her blouse was never found, nor was the little gold crucifix that her mother had bought her for her first communion. The police thought the chain must have broken and perhaps her killer had taken it as a ‘souvenir’. The only souvenir Jackson had was a little pottery wishing well that Niamh had brought him back from a trip to Scarborough two years ago. It had ‘Wishing you Well from Scarborough’ painted on the side.

  What was known was that Niamh had caught her bus home from work as she did every day and she had got off the bus at her usual stop, and then somewhere along the ten-minute walk from the bus stop to her front door someone must have persuaded (or forced) her into a car and taken her down to the canal where they had raped her and strangled her, although not necessarily in that order. Jackson moved into her room the night that her body was found and didn’t move out of it until he left home to join the army. He didn’t change the sheets on her bed for two months – even then he was sure he could still smell the old-fashioned violet cologne that she liked to sprinkle on her sheets when she ironed them. For a long time he kept the teacup she had drunk from at breakfast that last day. She was always complaining that no one washed the pots after breakfast. The cup still carried the pink-lipstick outline of her mouth, like the ghost of a kiss, and Jackson treasured it for weeks until one morning Francis caught sight of it and threw it out of the window on to the concrete of the backyard. Jackson knew that Francis felt guilty that he hadn’t picked her up from the bus stop that night. Some dark part of Jackson felt that he was right to feel guilty. After all, if he had picked her up she wouldn’t now be under six feet of heavy, wet soil. She would be warm and living flesh, she would be complaining that no one did the washing-up, she would be going off to work in the miserable winter mornings and her pink mouth would still be talking and laughing and eating, and kissing Jackson’s reluctant cheek.

  One day, six months after the funeral, Francis gave Jackson a lift to school. It was raining, a summer monsoon downpour, and Francis said, ‘Hop in, our kid.’ He parked the car at the school gates and took a pack of cigarettes out of the glove compartment and handed the whole pack to Jackson. Jackson said a surprised, ‘Thanks,’ and opened the car door but Francis pulled him back and gave him a rough punch on the shoulder that made him yell with pain and then Francis said, ‘I should have picked her up, you know that, don’t you?’ and Jackson said, ‘Yes,’ which in retrospect was the wrong answer. ‘You know I love you, tyke, don’t you?’ Francis said, and Jackson said, ‘Yes,’ embarrassed for Francis who never used words like ‘love.’ Then Jackson scrambled out of the car because he was late and he could hear the bell ringing. In the middle of the most boring maths lesson that had ever been taught in the history of the school, Jackson remembered it was Niamh’s seventeenth birthday and he was so shocked at the realization that he leaped up from his desk. The maths teacher said, ‘Where are you going, Brodie?’ and Jackson sat down and muttered, ‘Nowhere, sir,’ because she was dead and she was never coming back and she was never going to be seventeen. Ever.

  When he came home from school and walked in the house it felt as if there was something missing but it was only after he’d changed out of his school uniform and made himself a sandwich that he went into the living room to watch television and that was where he found Francis’s body hanging from the fake-chandelier light fitting that had once been Fidelma’s pride and joy. His sister’s killer was never found.

  21

  Jackson

  THEY STOPPED IN AT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND JACKSON lit two candles, one each for his brother and sister. Marlee asked to light one for Fidelma. Passio Christi, conforta me. Both Fidelma’s sisters were now dead of cancer – Jackson prayed that Marlee had missed that particular gene. Jackson’s father was an only child so Marlee was the only blood relative that Jackson had in the world now that his father was dead. It seemed unlikely that Jackson would have more children. This was it – one girl in pink jeans and a T-shirt that was emblazoned with the message, ‘So many boys, so little time.’ Did the people who designed these T-shirts, did the people who made these T-shirts in size ‘8–10 yrs’, ever stop to think that what they were doing might actually be immoral? Of course the people who made the T-shirts were probably themselves ‘8–10 yrs’ in a sweatshop in the Philippines somewhere.

  ‘Daddy?’

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘Can we light a candle for my hamster?’

  ‘You should get a T-shirt,’ Jackson said, ‘ “so many hamsters, so little time”.’

  ‘Not funny. Now are we going home?’

  ‘No. We’re going to take a quick detour. I have to go and see a woman called Marian Foster.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just because.’

  They were on the bypass when Jackson realized something was wrong. The swiftness of the feeling took him by surprise. One minute he felt OK – cracked, bruised, sore and aching but OK – the next minute he felt himself spiking an incredible temperature and only a few seconds later he was seeing the world very much how he imagined a fly would see it and the next he was slipping into unconsciousness. Every last bit of his remaining energy was concentrated on bringing the car to a stop on the hard shoulder, after that – nothing.

  The next thing he was waking up in a hospital and looking into Howell’s eyes.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Jackson noticed that he seemed to be using someone else’s voice.

  ‘I’m your next of kin, apparently.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Jackson said weakly, ‘Josie didn’t want the job any more.’

  Howell grinned. ‘I always knew you had black blood in you somewhere, Jackson. You never used to be the kind of guy that carried an organ donor card.’

  ‘Well, I guess I’m that kind of guy now.’ Jackson struggled to sit up. ‘Someone’s trying to kill me, Howell.’

  Howell seemed to think this was incredibly funny. When he stopped laughing he said, ‘Don’t be so paranoid, Jackson, you’ve got blood poisoning. Apparently you had a tooth you were supposed to get seen to.’

  Jackson panicked suddenly: what was he thinking? ‘Where is she, where’s Marlee? Is she OK?’

  ‘She’s fine, keep your hair on your chest.’

  ‘But where is she, Howell?’

  ‘On a sheep farm,’ Howell said.

  Jackson didn’t know why Marlee had given the police Kim Strachan’s number – he supposed she’d scrolled through the address book in his phone and thought Kim was a trustworthy person. Maybe it was because Kim had given her five pounds (Marlee was that kind of girl). Was it Marlee who called the police and the ambulance? Was the first call she made on her Barbie-pink phone to the emergency services? What if he hadn’t managed to stop the car? Or an articulated lorry had ploughed into them as they were stuck on the hard shoulder? He supposed his daughter would be pretty safe on a sheep farm in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by Russian gangsters.

  ‘How long have I been here?’ he asked Howell.

  ‘Three days.’

  ‘Three days. Jesus, Josie’s back tomorrow, I need to get Marlee back to Cambridge.’

  ‘Didn’t know you were pussy-whipped, Jackson.’

  Jackson ignored this comment. ‘Josie’s taking Marlee to New Zealand.’

  ‘Well, it’s only for a year,’ Howell said. ‘It’ll pass in no time.’

  ‘No, it’s for good,’ Jackson said.

  ‘No, it’s not, Jackson,’ Howell insisted, ‘it’s just a year. Ask Marlee.’

  ‘You fucking bitch,’ Jackson shouted, ‘your wanker boyfriend’s only going on a year’s exchange to New Zealand, you told me yo
u were going for good.’ Josie said something indistinct on the other end of the phone – her voice had a throaty, lazy timbre that it took on straight after she’d had an orgasm. If she hadn’t been in the Ardèche and he hadn’t been in a hospital somewhere south of Doncaster he would definitely have killed her. He was sitting on a bench outside the hospital, still tied to his drip. A lot of people were giving him odd looks and he dropped his voice a little.

  ‘Why, Josie? Why did you lie to me like that?’

  ‘Because you were out of order, Jackson. Get over it,’ she added. ‘Get over me.’

  Jackson wanted a cigarette, very badly. His tongue found the empty socket of his tooth. Both tooth and root had been removed by the emergency dentist on call while Jackson was blissfully unconscious. Sharon was going to be very annoyed when she discovered she had been denied the pleasure of torturing him. He caught sight of himself in the plate glass of the hospital, looking like the walking wounded you saw in war documentaries.

  He punched another number into his phone. ‘Theo?’

  ‘Jackson!’ Theo sounded almost happy. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In hospital,’ Jackson said.

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Yeah, again.’

  Jackson discharged himself against the hospital’s advice. The only way they could be mollified was by Howell promising to drive him to Northumberland to pick up Marlee and then home to Cambridge.

  ‘Christ, Jackson,’ Howell said as he eased his huge frame into the driver’s seat of the Punto, ‘what happened, have you turned into a woman?’

  ‘Worse things could happen,’ Jackson said. ‘I can drive.’

  ‘No, you can’t.’ Howell raked through Jackson’s CDs. ‘You still listening to this shit, Jackson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Howell tossed Trisha and Lucinda and Emmylou and the rest of the women in pain on to the back seat and put on one of Marlee’s Christina Aguilera CDs. By the time he’d played it three times they were up the A1 and almost back in the middle of nowhere again.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ Jackson said.

  ‘Yes, I do, I’m your friend. Anyway I could do with a break, bit of culture, city of dreaming spires and all that.’

  ‘I think that’s Oxford.’

  ‘Same difference,’ Howell said. ‘Who’s trying to kill you?’

  ‘Guy in a gold Lexus.’

  ‘That would be the one that’s following us, then?’ Howell said, glancing in the rear-view mirror.

  Jackson tried to turn round to see but his neck didn’t really turn any more. Howell read out the number plate.

  ‘Yeah, that’s the one.’ Jackson reached for his phone and said, ‘Don’t turn off the main road,’ just as Howell swung a sudden violent left on to the slip road.

  ‘Why not?’ Howell said. ‘We’ll lead the Lexus somewhere quiet, a nice country lane, and then we’ll deal with him.’

  ‘Deal with him?’ Jackson said. ‘As in what, take him

  out?’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t thinking anything that drastic, but if you want, yeah, why not?’ Howell said.

  ‘No, I don’t want. I want everything done by the book. I’m going to call it in. There’s a warrant out for the guy’s arrest.’

  ‘You’re such a policeman, Jackson.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. I’m a policeman, I’ve turned into a woman, I’m pussy-whipped and I carry an organ donor card, it’s called middle age.’

  The Lexus was glued to their tail. Jackson turned the rear-view mirror so that he could catch a look at Quintus. His posh moon face was choleric. Jackson couldn’t imagine what it was he’d done that had enraged the guy so much.

  They could hear sirens in the distance. Jackson stayed on the phone with the dispatcher, although he was having a hard time giving her an idea of their position. They were on a narrow road now, made narrower by the overgrown hedgerows. Howell was driving as if he was playing Grand Theft Auto. They turned a sharp bend and found themselves almost bonnet to bonnet with a Mercedes SL 500 being driven at equal speed. Jackson closed his eyes and braced himself but somehow or other the driver of the Mercedes went to her left and Howell went to his left – it felt to Jackson as if they were on the Wall of Death – and they missed each other by a feather. ‘Fucking hell,’ Howell said admiringly, ‘what a babe, what a driver, what a car.’ ‘Jesus,’ Jackson said. He looked at his hands: they were actually shaking.

  The Lexus seemed to have disappeared off the radar. Howell stopped the Punto and reversed cautiously back up the road and round the bend. The sound of police sirens was growing progressively nearer. The Lexus had managed to avoid the Mercedes but not the bend and had ploughed relatively harmlessly into the overgrown hedge, where it was caught like an insect in a net. Quintus could just be seen inside, pushing helplessly at the door.

  A couple of traffic cars appeared, followed by a plain-clothes patrol car, all of them slewing to a stop in an overexcited way. An approaching police helicopter added to the sense of adrenalin-filled drama. Jackson knew how much they’d be loving this, anything that was out of the routine of speeding tickets and the misery of road accidents.

  Howell and Jackson got out of the car and walked over to the Lexus. ‘Why does he want to kill you, anyway?’ Howell asked.

  ‘I’ve got no idea,’ Jackson said. ‘Let’s ask him.’

  ‘And when you see your mother,’ Jackson said to Marlee, ‘it might be a good idea not to show off your Russian to her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because …’ Jackson frowned, thinking of all the things he really didn’t want Josie to know. ‘Just because. OK, sweetheart?’

  She looked doubtful. Jackson gave her a ten-pound note.

  ‘Spaseeba,’ Marlee said.

  When Jackson had phoned Theo from the hospital Theo told him that Lily-Rose, the yellow-haired girl, was staying with him. Jackson didn’t know what to make of that but as it wasn’t anything to do with him he decided not to think too much about it at all. He was trying not to think too much because thinking did actually physically hurt his brain. He said to Theo, ‘That’s good,’ and hoped it was.

  Jackson told Theo on the phone that he was going to send him a name, the name, the one he had been looking for for ten years, the name that Kim Strachan had given him. Of course, it might not be the name of the man who killed Laura (innocent until proved guilty – did he believe that? No) and Jackson knew that he should tell the police about his suspicions, but this was Theo’s quest and it was up to Theo where he took it from here.

  He wrote the name and address on the back of a postcard that he picked up in a service station near the Angel of the North. The picture on the postcard was of one of the artificial-looking pink daisies that he’d passed over for Niamh’s grave. Maybe it was a new kind of flower. He put a stamp on the postcard and Marlee ran to the postbox with it because she was still young enough to find posting a letter quite an exciting thing to do. When she came back in a year perhaps she would be blasé about it. She wouldn’t be the same Marlee in twelve months’ time: she would have different skin and different hair, she would have outgrown the shoes and the clothes she was wearing, she would have new buzzwords (New Zealand words) and she might not like Harry Potter any more. But she would still be Marlee. She just wouldn’t be the same.

  Jackson dropped Marlee off at David Lastingham’s house. Josie looked him over dispassionately. ‘You look terrible, Jackson.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He turned to leave but Marlee ran down the path and caught him at the gate. She threw her arms round him and hugged him. ‘Dasveedanya, Daddy,’ she whispered.

  * * *

  Jackson went back to what remained of his own house. The building smelt sour and sooty, as though the dormant spores of ancient diseases had been released into the air. He raked with his foot through the clinker and slag that now carpeted his living room. He wondered what had happened to Victor’s ashes; there was no sign of his urn. Ashes to ashes. He found
a broken piece of pottery, a large piece of wishing well, the letters ‘l from Scar’ still legible. He let it fall back into the debris. Just as he was turning to leave, something caught his eye. He squatted on his haunches to get a better look. One blue arm, covered in ash, was sticking up in the air, like an earthquake survivor signalling for help.

  Jackson tugged at the arm and pulled Blue Mouse out of the ruins.

  Superintendent Marian Foster had moved to Filey on her retirement from the force, and was still doggedly unpacking cardboard boxes in her kitchen when Jackson and Marlee arrived on her doorstep. Jackson had phoned her from the car to tell her he was coming and she seemed pleased to be interrupted, as if she already realized that burying herself in a small seaside town might not be the best way to spend her nonworking life. ‘I expect I’ll find a committee or two that needs a firm hand,’ she said, laughing, ‘finally do that OU degree, join an evening class.’ She sighed and added, ‘It’s going to be fucking awful, isn’t it, Inspector?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, ma’am,’ Jackson said, ‘I’m sure you’ll get used to it.’ Try as he might, Jackson couldn’t think of anything more positive to say. He could see his own future reflected only too clearly back at him.

  Marian Foster could obviously recognize a sugar junkie when she saw one and she sat Marlee down in front of the television with a can of Coke and a plate of chocolate biscuits. She made a mug of achingly strong tea for herself and Jackson. ‘Gone soft?’ she said when she saw him flinch at the taste. ‘You’re back in Yorkshire now, boy.’

  ‘Don’t I know it.’

  ‘So,’ Marian Foster said, suddenly businesslike, ‘Olivia Land? What can I tell you? I was just a DC, and a woman to boot. I interviewed the Land girls but I doubt whether there’s anything I can add to what you know.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Jackson said. ‘Feelings, impressions, instincts, anything. Tell me what you would have done differently if you’d been in charge.’