One Good Turn

by Kate Atkinson

  The gaunt woman, Martin had no idea what her name was and now never would probably, clapped her hands and said, “Well, I’m sorry. That’s all we have time for, it’s been such a treat, but if you all want to make your way over to the signing tent, you will be able to buy copies of the books by our authors here and have them signed. So if you would just put your hands together, please . . .”

  In the signing tent they sat at three identical tables. Every time an eager reader approached him, Martin felt a little knock of panic to his heart, imagining each newcomer reaching across the table as he signed his name and stabbing him with a knife, shooting him with a gun. Or, indeed, suddenly producing whatever weapon had been used to smash Richard Mott’s skull and bringing it down on top of his own. Of course, most of them were ladies of a certain age, half of them were wearing tweed, for heaven’s sake. Death Wore Tweed, Martin thought gloomily. It would be a good title for a Nina Riley book.

  Jackson was standing behind him, in the same bodyguard pose as before, and after a while Martin began to relax into the rhythm of things. “And who shall I sign this to? To you? Or is it for someone else?”“Is that a ‘Clare’with an ‘i’or without an ‘i’?”“To Pam,with all best wishes,Alex Blake.”“And one for your friend Gloria? Certainly.”

  When the last of the queue had dribbled away and they were making their way back to the “authors’ yurt,” Betty-May Heller caught his sleeve and said, “How about a crime writer for lunch?” Martin couldn’t help but notice the faint six o’clock shadow on her lip.

  “I’m afraid he has to go,” Jackson said, taking hold of Martin’s elbow and steering him firmly away.

  “Gosh,” Martin heard Betty-May Heller murmur, “your publi-cist is so strict.”

  41

  Now this was what you call a murder inquiry. People who were busy, busy, busy. People with a real body and crime-scene photographs pinned up to prove it. A room humming with life because of a death. Louise studied the color photographs of Richard Mott’s corpse pinned up in the major incident room at St. Leonard’s. The police station at Howdenhall was too small to accommodate something this big. Louise had worked out of St. Leonard’s when she was still in uniform. It was like going back to your old school. It felt familiar and alien at the same time.

  “Nasty whack to the head, that,” someone said behind her, making her jump. She turned round and found Colin Sutherland standing behind her, smiling for Scotland. If he was in The Bill, he’d be known as something like “Smiler Sutherland,” but this being real life, he was usually referred to as “that tosser Sutherland.”

  “Were you looking for me?” he asked, a hopeful expression on his face.

  Louise smiled back at him and said conversationally, “What’s this guy Canning like? Is he a suspect?”

  “Nah,” Campbell said. “He’s a funny little guy, bit of an old woman, if you ask me, but I doubt he’s the killing kind.”

  “So,” Louise said casually, “are you thinking burglary? Is any-thing missing from the house?”

  “His phone, we think.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Not that we know of.”

  She could hardly be blatant and say, “No computer disks or any-thing like that?” Would they notice if a CD was missing? Probably not, but Martin Canning would know, wouldn’t he?

  “Where is he? Canning?”

  “In a hotel, the Four Clans, I believe.”

  She wanted to say, “So you’re not thinking two fourteen-year-old boys might have broken in and beaten the victim to death?” She gazed at a photograph of Richard Mott, he’d made a very messy corpse. Could her son be responsible for that? No, definitely not. Hamish maybe, but not her baby.

  “You’re very interested in this case, Louise. Do you want me to find room for you on the team? We’ve lost a couple of people to the ‘flu.’We could bring you over from Corstorphine if you’re not busy over there.” He moved a step closer to her, and she moved a step back. Perfect rhythm, they’d be doing the fox-trot next.

  “No, no, just idle curiosity, boss.” Lies came easier than the truth. She pulled out a name from the past. “Actually I was looking for Bob Carstairs.”

  “Went upstairs a few months ago, Louise. Didn’t you hear?”

  “Upstairs?”

  “To meet the big boss.” The man was like a walking riddle. “Dead. Heart attack,” Sutherland said with a huge grin. “One minute here, the next minute gone.” He snapped his fingers like a magician. “Just like that.”

  Back at Corstorphine she went looking for Jeff Lennon and found him hiding away in a corner of the open-plan office, sitting at his desk, eating a bar of chocolate. Louise imagined him in retirement, lardy and bored. Or, more likely, on his way upstairs to meet the “big boss.”

  “Did you check the owner for that Honda, Jeff?”

  Jeff took in a deep nose-breath as if he were in a yoga class. Louise had tried yoga, but she found herself wanting to yell at the teacher to get a move on. Now she wanted to yell at Jeff Lennon. “Certainly did,” he said eventually. “I was just coming to find you.”

  He didn’t look like a man who was planning on finding any-thing in a hurry.

  “It’s a business called Providence Holdings.”

  “Not Terence Smith, then?”What did that mean, that Jackson Brodie had been wrong (or lying) when he said that Honda Man had been involved in the road rage? Or was Honda Man driving someone else’s car, someone he worked for? Providence Holdings. “Never heard of it,” she said. “Does it mean anything to you?”

  “No, but I did you a favor and looked it up in Companies House.”

  “And?”

  “The director is one Graham Hatter.”

  “The Graham Hatter?”

  “One and the same,” Jeff said.

  “So Honda Man—I mean Terence Smith—works for Graham Hatter?” And Jackson had been asking about “Real Homes for Real People” this morning. Making his bloody “connections” everywhere. What did he know that he wasn’t telling her? With-holding evidence, that was an offense, for God’s sake. What was wrong with the man?

  “I handed the info on to the team investigating the road rage,” Jeff Lennon said.

  “It’s a team?”

  “Well, no, a couple of wee lassies.”Ah, sexism, thy name is Jeff Lennon.

  “You’re a star, Jeff. I owe you one.”

  “Aye, you do,” he said cheerfully. “How’s that son of yours? Andy?”

  “Archie. He’s fine, thanks.”

  42

  Jackson worked hard at suppressing a yawn. The Spiegeltent was thick with overheated air. “Deconstructed romantic irony,” said the ca-daverous woman who had introduced the writers on the platform, her words seemingly addressed to no one in particular. Jackson had no idea what she meant. She was wearing a low-cut top that revealed a bony sternum and breasts that hung like flaps. Someone give that woman a good meal, Jackson thought. Retaining an impassive expression on his face, he conjured up a picture of Julia’s breasts, breasts he hadn’t seen enough of recently. Louise Monroe had much smaller breasts, you didn’t have to see her naked to know that. But she had them, there was no doubt about that. He mustn’t think about Louise Monroe naked. He felt a stab of cuckold’s guilt. Very, very bad dog.

  And, he noticed, here were yet more people who didn’t seem to have jobs to go to, how did the economy of the country not collapse? Who was actually working? The foreign and the dispossessed—girls named Marijut and Sophia. And computer geeks, thousands of spotty boys who never saw daylight, the suits in the financial district, a few orange sellers, and that was it. And the emergency services, of course, they never rested. He wondered how Julia’s day was going. He checked his watch discreetly. Per-haps she was having lunch with someone. Acting wasn’t real work, not by anyone’s definition of the word.

  Martin, who clearly should be lying down in a darkened room listening to soothing music, seemed hysterically insistent that he appear at the Book Festiv
al today even though it seemed an un-necessary kind of engagement to Jackson. He already had to have a quiet word with a journalist who wanted to interview Martin. “Sub judice,” Jackson said to the man, rather more menacingly than he’d intended. He really wasn’t in the mood today to be messed around with.

  A lot seemed to have happened to Martin since Tuesday. A lot had happened to Jackson as well, of course, but Martin was winning hands down in the having-a-bad-day stakes.

  “My laptop disappeared after I threw it at the Honda driver,” he said breathlessly when Jackson caught up with him at the Book Festival in Charlotte Square. He seemed slightly deranged. Of course, there was deranged and then there was deranged, Jackson wasn’t sure he was up to the second kind, but Martin seemed lucid and articulate. Perhaps a little too articulate for Jackson’s liking.

  “I spent the night in a hotel with the Peugeot driver because the hospital was worried that he might be concussed. His name was Paul Bradley, only it turns out that it wasn’t, because there’s no such person. He doesn’t exist. But of course he exists, you saw him, didn’t you? He had a gun. It was a Welrod. But then I passed out because I think he drugged me and then he stole my wallet. I wouldn’t mind, but I saved his life.”

  “A Welrod?” Jackson queried. How did Martin know about guns? About Welrods, for heaven’s sake.

  “And someone broke into my office, well not broke in, there was no sign of a break-in, but there was a sweet wrapper on the floor—”

  “A sweet wrapper?”

  “I don’t eat sweets! And now it turns out that Paul Bradley doesn’t even exist! And he was my alibi.”

  “Alibi?”

  “For murder.”

  “Murder?” Jackson revised his opinion, maybe this was the second kind of deranged.

  “A man was murdered in my house! Richard Mott, the come-dian, and then he phoned me.”

  “Whoa. Richard Mott was murdered in your house?”

  “Yes. And then he phoned me.”

  “Yes, you said that.” Could Martin tell the difference between fact and fiction? He was a writer, after all.

  “Not him, I know it wasn’t him. The murderer must have taken his phone—his phone was missing—and then he phoned me on it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Okay, okay, stay calm.” Jackson sighed. You said five little words to someone—How can I help you?—and it was as if you’d mort-gaged your soul out to them.

  Despite the fact that everything Martin said sounded out-landish, there were little anchors of truth in his story. And who was Jackson to criticize, after all? He had tried to save a dead girl from drowning, he had killed a dog with the power of his thoughts. Jackson wondered if Martin still lived with his mother. Not that there was anything wrong with that, Jackson would quite like to be living with his own mother, his time with her having been cut so short. No, Martin didn’t live with his mother, he lived with Richard Mott, didn’t he?

  “Not lived,” Martin corrected. “He was staying with me while he was up for the Festival. I hardly knew him, actually. I didn’t even like him. What if his killer is coming after me next?”

  “I think you need to talk to the police, Martin.”

  “No!”

  “Give them your phone so they can try to trace the call.”

  “No!”

  They were a contentious bunch. He had never heard of Dougal Tarvit, nor E. M. Heller. He’d never heard of Alex Blake, come to that, until yesterday evening. On his way over to the Book Festi-val, he had popped into a bookshop and leafed through one of “Alex Blake’s” books in the coffee shop. It was innocuous stuff, depicting a kind of retro-utopian Britain that was rife with aristo-crats and gamekeepers—although no one seemed to have sex (which would fit with Martin’s neutered demeanor). It was a non-sensical kind of setting where murders were tidy affairs that resulted in inoffensive corpses, the stuff of Sunday-evening television, the equivalent of a hot bath and a warm mug of cocoa. The serfs weren’t revolting, they were positively happy in their chains, and the rank smell of death didn’t corrupt the genteel, heather-scented air around Nina Riley’s head. “‘Don’t go in there, Miss Riley,’ the gillie said,‘it’s no’ a sight for a bonny young lassie’s eyes.’”

  Nina Riley had a sidekick. Didn’t they all? Robin to her Bat-man. “I’ve discovered something important, Bertie. I must see you.” There was a guy named Burt who used to be his brother Francis’s best friend. Both welders, both rugby players. Burt had broken down at Francis’s funeral—it was the only thing Jackson could remember about his brother’s funeral—Burt crying at the graveside, ugly masculine sobs, coughed up by a macho guy who probably hadn’t cried since he was a baby. Francis had killed himself, in a brutal, casual way that Jackson now recognized as being typical of his brother. “You stupid fucking bastard, Francis!” Burt had shouted angrily to the coffin as it was lowered, before a couple of guys wrestled him away from the open maw of the grave. Francis had never been “Frank” or “Fran,” he had always been called by his full name, it had lent him a certain dignity that he had possi-bly never really earned.

  Jackson didn’t remember his sister’s funeral because he hadn’t attended it, staying with a neighbor instead. Mrs. Judd. It was a long time since he’d thought about Mrs. Judd, the sooty smell of her back parlor with its overstuffed cut moquette, the gold eyetooth that gave her a slightly rakish, gypsy air although there had been nothing unconventional in a life that had been defined by the pit—daughter of a miner, wife of a miner, mother of a miner.

  Jackson was all dressed, ready to go to Niamh’s funeral, he could recall the black suit he was wearing, made from a cheap, felty ma-terial, he’d never seen it before and never saw it again, but when it came time to go, he simply couldn’t, shaking his head mutely when his father said, “Best get going, son.” Francis said gruffly, “Come on, Jackson, you’ll be sorry if you don’t come and say good-bye to her proper-like,” but Jackson had never regretted not going to that terrible funeral. Francis was right, though, he had never properly said good-bye to Niamh.

  He was twelve years old and had never worn a suit before, and it would be years before he wore one again—Francis’s funeral hadn’t merited one, apparently—and all he remembered about that day was wearing someone else’s ill-fitting suit and sitting at Mrs. Judd’s little kitchen table with its worn Formica, dotted with cigarette burns, and drinking sweet tea and eating a Birds Eye chicken pie. Funny the things you remembered. “Bertie, this was no accident, this was murder!”

  He had expected someone to come up to him in the coffee shop and ask him with a sarcastic sneer if he was intending to buy the book or just sit there all day and read it for free, but then he realized that no one cared and he could indeed have sat there all day, with a sickly latte and an even more sickly blueberry muffin, and read Alex Blake’s entire oeuvre without paying, if he so wished. Nobody worked and the books were free.

  Jackson didn’t read much fiction, never had, just the occasional spy or thriller thing on holiday. He preferred factual books, they gave him the feeling that he was learning something, even if he forgot it almost immediately. He wasn’t really sure he saw the point of novels, he didn’t go around saying that, because then people thought you were a philistine. Maybe he was a philistine. Julia was a great reader, she always had a novel on the go, but then her whole professional life was based on fictions of one kind or another, whereas his whole professional life had been based on fact.

  He wasn’t much better with art. All that fuzzy Impressionism didn’t do it for him, he’d looked at endless water lilies and thought, What’s the point? And religious paintings made him feel as if he were in a Catholic church. He liked representational art, pictures that told a story. He liked Vermeer, all those cool interi-ors spoke of an ordinariness he could relate to, a moment in time captured forever, because life wasn’t about legions of Madonnas and water lilies, it was about the commonplace of details—the woman pouring
milk from a jug, the boy sitting at the kitchen table, eating a chicken pie.

  You could tell Tarvit was an arrogant prick, and E. M. Heller (what kind of a name was that?) was just plain odd, she was either a badly put-together woman or she was a man in drag. Trans-vestism was a mystery to Jackson, he had never in his life worn a single item of female clothing, apart from once borrowing a cash-mere scarf from Julia when they were going for a walk and being troubled all afternoon by its perfumed softness around his neck. Martin seemed blithely unaware of the signals that E. M. Heller was sending his way. The guy definitely had a look of celibacy about him, he reminded Jackson of a vicar or a monk. E. M.— Eustacia Marguerite or Edward Malcolm? Whichever, E. M. was going to have her work cut out with Martin.

  Jackson felt faintly ludicrous, standing like a Secret Service agent behind Martin in the “Signing Tent” (he had originally mis-read it as the “Singing Tent”—an idea that had both alarmed and confused him). The Book Festival was a jamboree of tents and reminded him vaguely of an army field camp. He had a sudden flashback to the smell of the big top last night, the familiar scent of grass under canvas. The crazy Russian girl like a bandit queen, with her knife at his throat.

  Martin glanced up nervously as each new person approached him, as if he were waiting for an unknown assassin. Jackson didn’t understand why he was doing the event if he was so worried. “I’m not going to hide away,” Martin said. “You have to face the thing you’re afraid of.” In Jackson’s experience it was often best to avoid the thing you were afraid of. Discretion really was sometimes the better part of valor.

  “But at the same time you’re worried that someone’s after you? The person who stole Richard Mott’s phone, the person who broke into your office?”

  “No, that’s not who’s after me,” Martin said. “Cosmic justice is after me.”

  “Cosmic justice?” Martin made it sound like a person, an out-rider for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.