Big Sky

by Kate Atkinson

  It wasn’t just the parties either, Mick and Tony’s friends came to the trailer sometimes as well. The passion wagon, Mick laughingly called it. (Awful to recall. The kind of memory you spend thirty years trying to block out.) “Don’t complain,” he said. “You’ve got nowhere else to go. And anyway, you know you like it. You’re a right pair of little slags.”

  Crystal could feel her brain curdling at the memory. They had been children. Little girls, not so very much older than Candy. No one had come looking for them. Not Giddy, not Davy. Not the police or social workers. They were scrap, not worth bothering about.

  She remembered Fee was always telling her that they were lucky because Mick and Tony took care of them, but there was that word “care” again. Care shouldn’t mean a grotty trailer and sweets and fags for doing “favors” to old men. They’d seemed old, anyway. Looking back, they probably weren’t that old at all. Not then, at least. The judge had once said to her that he knew he was getting old when bishops started looking young to him. Bishops, knights, pawns. They were all pieces on the universe’s big chess board, weren’t they?

  She’d been taught to play by one of the judge’s friends. Sir Something, a double-barreled name. Cough-Plunkett. Something like that, anyway. A “knight of the realm,” Tony Bassani said. He was proud of his connections. Cough-Plunkett, or whatever, had brought a chess set with him to the trailer. He said she was “a clever girl.” He was the first person who’d ever said that to her. It was an odd thing to want to do, when she thought about it now, but then the men had many worse kinks than wanting to play chess. Of course, in the end he’d wanted more than just chess. It was a long time since she’d made herself think about the judge and his friends. The magic circle.

  That was what they called themselves. The magic circle. “Up to tricks,” one of them laughed.

  This morning, in the welcome absence of patrons in Transylvania World, Harry was sticking his head in Cranford. He liked Cranford, it was a safe place where small events were accorded great dramatic significance. Harry thought that this was better than big things being treated as if they weren’t important.

  A better attraction than the World, in Harry’s opinion, would be Cranford World. A place where for the price of the entrance fee you could call on Miss Matty and drink tea, or have an evening of cards, or sing around the piano with your neighbors. (“A place of safety,” Miss Dangerfield had called Cranford.) He would enjoy listening to the Captain reading aloud from The Pickwick Papers. He could—

  “Harry?”

  “Crystal?” He dropped abruptly out of his Cranford reverie. “What are you doing here?” She was carrying Candace in her arms and dropped her onto the ticket counter with a sigh of relief.

  Harry frowned. “You’re not wanting to take Candace in there, are you?” he puzzled, indicating the dark mouth of the tunnel that led to Transylvania.

  “Fudging carrot, no.”

  Crystal made this big effort not to swear. It was such an effort that Harry thought she must have sworn a lot before she married his dad. It was funny, really, because sometimes she made all the silly innocuous words she’d chosen as proxies sound just as bad.

  “I need you to look after her for a bit, Harry.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes, here.”

  “I’ve got to leave for a matinée soon.”

  “I won’t be long.”

  What the fuck is that?” Barclay Jack asked when he encountered Harry backstage, lugging a bedraggled Snow White in his arms.

  “She’s my sister,” Harry said. “Not a that.”

  “Sister?” Barclay Jack frowned as though having a relative was an outlandish idea. Perhaps Barclay didn’t have any. Harry had never heard him mention a wife or a child and it was almost impossible to imagine him as a father, he barely qualified as a human being.

  Despite her promise, Crystal had failed to return when it was time for Harry to hand over his shift to Amy, and Amy, almost as blunt as Emily, refused point-blank to babysit, and so Harry had had to bring Candace all the way on the bus, a switchback ride over the moors. She had never been on a bus before and the novelty of it kept her quiet for quite some time, as did Harry’s packet of Monster Munch—strictly forbidden by Crystal, obviously, but she needn’t have worried if she’d known because Candace threw it all back up again minutes later and then promptly fell asleep on Harry’s knee. He did his best to clean up the orange-colored mess but it was difficult without the bottomless bag of accessories with which Crystal normally traveled—an entourage of wet wipes, sippy cups, changes of clothes, drinks, snacks, facecloths. At the very least, Crystal could have remembered Candace’s stroller. (“Yeah, that would have been super-helpful,” Amy said as she watched him hauling his sister out of the World and running for the bus.) And something to amuse Candy with—a toy or a book or, better still, her little DVD player and a selection from the Peppa Pig “oeuvre,” as Miss Dangerfield would have called it, although he doubted that Miss Dangerfield had ever come across Peppa. Where had Crystal been going in such a hurry? In retrospect she hadn’t seemed like her normal self. She wasn’t wearing heels, for one thing. It was a sign of something.

  By the time they alighted from the Coastliner, both Harry and Candace were more than a little the worse for wear.

  Well, keep her out of my way,” Barclay said truculently.

  Barclay was “back from the dead,” as Bunny put it. Bunny had (reluctantly) accompanied Barclay in the ambulance to A&E last night, from where he had been discharged after a couple of hours. “Panic attack,” Bunny reported to Harry. “Shame, I was hoping it was curtains for him. It was something on his phone that set him off, wasn’t it?”

  “Don’t know.” Harry shrugged innocently. Barclay had dropped his phone when he collapsed and it was only later, after the ambulance had departed, that Harry noticed it had skittered beneath the heavy red stage curtains. As he had bent to retrieve the phone it had lit up with a message. Just so we’re clear, DO NOT ignore my last message. Intrigued, Harry had opened Barclay’s messages. Barclay had no password on his phone—Harry knew because he had helped him remove it after he’d forgotten it for the umpteenth time last week. It could be termed an invasion of privacy, Harry supposed, but then for all he knew Barclay was currently knocking on death’s door and his messages might be relevant in some way. “Or you’re just being nosy,” Bunny said. True, Harry agreed. The message that was not to be ignored had been sent at 10:05 last night, pretty much when Barclay’s blood had sunk into his boots and he had fallen to the floor. It was from a number, not a name, and was direct enough in its content. Don’t open your big mouth, Barclay, or something VERY bad will happen to you.

  Harry had slipped the phone into his pocket, where it was currently burning a guilty hole. He hadn’t returned it to Barclay yet, partly because the sight of it might precipitate another panic attack or even a genuine heart attack, and partly because—well, Harry wasn’t sure why. Because there was something compelling about it. Thrilling, even. Like a detective novel. What did Barclay know that had made someone threaten him like that? “Well, Barclay’s always been a man of bad habits,” Bunny said, squinting at the text through a pair of reading spectacles that looked so unfashionable they were probably fashionable. “Bad habits bring bad men in their train.” Which sounded quite Shakespearean the way Bunny said it.

  “Well, anyway, the kid’s too young to be back here,” Barclay said, scowling at Candace. “And by the way, have you seen my phone anywhere?”

  “Um.” He was going to confess, he really was, but then Barclay said, “Make sure you keep that fucking kid out of the way, will you?” and Harry decided to punish him by keeping the phone a bit longer.

  “Yes, Mr. Jack,” he said. “I’ll do my best.”

  Mustn’t Grumble

  “Are you arresting me?”

  “You keep asking that and, as I keep answering, no, we’re not, Mr. Ives,” Inspector Marriot said. “You have attended this interview vol
untarily and are free to leave at any time, as I’m sure your solicitor will verify.” She nodded curtly at Steve Mellors, who patted Vince on the arm and said, “Don’t worry. It’s just procedure.” (Do you feel you need a solicitor at a routine interview, Mr. Ives? Yes, he did!)

  “You’re not being interviewed under caution, Mr. Ives. No one is accusing you of anything.”

  Not yet, Vince thought.

  “I’m here as a friend, really,” Steve said to DI Marriot, “not as a lawyer. Although,” he said, turning to Vince, “it might be a good idea to answer ‘No comment’ to all their questions in case they do arrest you at a future time.”

  The police had phoned him first thing this morning, asking him to come in again. Vince had phoned Steve in a panic, spilling out the whole sorry tale of Wendy’s murder and the fact that the police were expecting him to come in for a second interview and how he had thought about running away or going over a cliff but then he remembered Ashley and he couldn’t deprive her of both parents at once even though it seemed like it was only her mum she cared about, not that he was resentful, he loved her, and he hadn’t killed Wendy—swear to God—although he’d nearly killed this other bloke up on the cliffs last night—

  “Vince, Vince, Vince,” Steve said, “calm down. I’m on my way over. Everything’s going to be fine.” Although as soon as he arrived at Vince’s flat he said, “I’m not a criminal lawyer, Vince,” and Vince said, “Well, that’s good, because I’m not a criminal, Steve.” What was a corporate lawyer exactly? he wondered. It seemed to be mostly defined by what it wasn’t.

  “Naturally they’re going to want to talk to you,” Steve said. (“Christ, is this really where you’re living, Vince?”) “You’ve got to look at it from the viewpoint of the police—”

  “I don’t want to see it from their viewpoint! I want them to see it from mine!”

  “Take it easy, Vince. You don’t want them to see you so agitated. It’s all about appearances. You were married for—what? Twenty years?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “Twenty-one. And you’re in the middle of a divorce. The police are going to suspect acrimony, even anger on your part. You’re bound to be top of the list of people they want to talk to.”

  And you definitely didn’t see Ms. Easton—Mrs. Ives—your wife” (as if he didn’t know who Wendy was) “when you visited the house the other night?”

  “I never went inside the house. I told you that. I’ve told you everything a million times.” No, he wasn’t about to say “No comment” to everything, he had lots of comment!

  When he’d woken this morning, at stupid o’clock—he supposed he would never sleep soundly again—he’d gone for a walk up to the house. No longer the “marital home” but a crime scene, it was festooned with yellow and black tape. Crime Scene Do Not Cross. They still hadn’t been able to get hold of Ashley and he imagined her coming home unexpectedly and finding her childhood home wrapped up like a macabre gift. A police officer appeared out of nowhere and said, “Sir? Can I help you?”

  “I doubt it,” Vince said. He doubted anyone could. Nonetheless, it had seemed like a good idea to phone Steve Mellors. Vince had saved his life a long time ago, it was time to call in the favor and get Steve to save his.

  He’d phoned him at home and his wife, Sophie, had answered. “Oh, Vince,” she said, “how are you? It’s a long time since we’ve seen you. How’s Wendy?”

  “Wendy?” Vince hesitated. It was only eight o’clock in the morning and in the background he could hear the boy, Jamie, asking where his clean rugby kit was and the girl moaning about something. It didn’t seem polite to pollute this unsullied family atmosphere with the grisly facts of his life. “Good. She’s good, thanks. Fighting off a bit of a cold,” he added. He didn’t want to make her sound too well.

  “Well, give her my best. I’ll fetch Steve, you just caught him. You and Wendy must come to dinner again soon. I think it’s our turn.”

  Vince thought Sophie probably wouldn’t want Wendy sitting at her dinner table in the state she was in at the moment.

  “Smashing,” he said.

  There was a young detective sergeant tag-teaming with Inspector Marriot. He kept showing photos of the murder scene to Vince, pushing them across the table toward him for Vince to push them back. And they kept asking him the same questions, again and again, as if he would break down and confess from the sheer relentless tedium of it all.

  “I didn’t kill Wendy,” he said. “How many more times?” Steve laid a placatory hand on his arm again but he shook it off.

  “We’re not saying you did, Mr. Ives. We’re just trying to find out what happened.”

  “I know what happened!” Vince said. “Someone killed Wendy! Someone that wasn’t me! I was in the Belvedere.”

  “Except for when you were at your house.”

  “I was there for five minutes. Literally.”

  “Five minutes is long enough for a lot of things to happen, Mr. Ives.” Inspector Marriot sighed heavily as if she was disappointed with him. He was alarmed to find that his natural inclination was to make her less disappointed by giving her something she wanted. And what she wanted was for him to say he’d killed Wendy. But he hadn’t! He was beginning to understand how people confessed to crimes they hadn’t committed. It was easier than continually protesting your innocence.

  “I was in the Belvedere all evening. Tommy and Andy will confirm that. Tommy Holroyd and Andy Bragg—I gave you their names yesterday—have you gotten in touch with them? They can tell you what time I left.”

  “I’m afraid that so far we haven’t been able to reach either Mr. Holroyd or Mr. Bragg, but obviously we’ll keep trying.” She paused and looked serious, as if she was about to ask something of great import. “You were in the Army, weren’t you, Mr. Ives?”

  “Yes, Signals, long time ago.”

  “So you know how to conduct yourself.”

  “Conduct myself?”

  “Yes. Conduct yourself. You know, for example, how to handle weapons.”

  “Weapons? I thought you said that Wendy was killed with a golf club.”

  “Well, it was used as a weapon. Anything can be used as a weapon. Just read Agatha Christie.” (But that was fiction, Vince protested silently.) “We haven’t ruled anything out yet. We’re at the early stages of the investigation,” Inspector Marriot continued. “We’re still waiting on the pathologist’s report for an accurate time of death. That will give us a better idea as to whether that tallies with your movements and with your story.”

  “It’s not a story,” Vince insisted. “And if I’m free to leave, then that’s what I’m doing.” He stood up abruptly, pushing his chair back noisily. He hadn’t meant to be so dramatic and now he felt like a bit of a flouncing idiot.

  The inspector opened her hands wide in a gesture of helplessness. “It’s entirely up to you, Mr. Ives. We’ll be in touch again soon. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t leave town.”

  You probably didn’t do yourself any favors in there by losing your temper,” Steve said, pointing his keys at his car parked on the police station forecourt. The Discovery tweeted meek acquiescence.

  “I know, I know, but the whole thing’s a nightmare. Like something out of Kafka.” Vince had never actually read Kafka, but he had a pretty good idea of what people meant when they invoked his name. “Have they really tried to talk to Tommy and Andy? Why can’t they get hold of them?”

  “Yes, Tommy and Andy,” Steve said thoughtfully. “I’m sure they’ll say the right thing.”

  “The true thing, Steve.”

  “You’ve got to admit, it looks pretty bad, though, Vince,” Steve said.

  “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

  “I am, Vince, I am. Trust me.”

  Vince was about to set off back to his flat, but Steve said, “Come on, we’ll go to the Belvedere, have lunch there. We need to talk strategy.”

  “Strategy?” Vince puzzled.

  “You�
��re in a war zone, Vince. We have to neutralize the enemy. We need to get your story straight.”

  That word “story” again, Vince thought. His life was turning into fiction. Kafka would be proud of him.

  They had barely set off when Steve’s phone rang. He answered it hands-free and it was a mostly one-sided conversation of uh-huhs and okays. He looked grim when he finished.

  “Trouble at t’mill, Steve?”

  “Just a bit, lad.”

  Comedy Yorkshiremen, Vince thought. Neither of them had ever had a particularly strong accent. Vince’s parents had been from further south and had met during the war and then drifted north after it. They had characterless Leicestershire accents that had mitigated the broad cadences of West Yorkshire that surrounded Vince in his childhood. Steve, on the other hand, had had the local accent wrestled out of him by elocution lessons—something he hid from the other boys at school for fear of seeming like a Jessie. Vince knew. He had once been the keeper of Steve’s secrets. Steve’s mother had been hell-bent on her son “bettering himself.” And he had, hadn’t he? In spades.

  (“Have you been back to the old hometown?” Steve had asked when he and Wendy had gone over for dinner. “Not for a long time,” Vince said. His father had died not long after his wedding to Wendy and he had never had a reason to return. “I have work there sometimes,” Steve said. “It’s not the same. Full of Pakis. Imams and mosques.” Sophie had flinched at the word “Pakis.” Not Wendy, though. Sophie laid a remonstrative hand on her husband’s arm. “Steve,” she half laughed. “That’s terrible.” “We’re among friends, aren’t we?” Steve said, shrugging his prejudices away. “I’m only saying what everyone thinks. Another glass of wine, Wendy?” “Always,” Wendy said.)