Case Histories - Страница 21

Jackson had always been good, never left the toilet seat up and all that cliched stuff, and anyway he'd been outnumbered, two women to one man. Boys took a long time to become men but daughters were women from the kickoff. Jackson had hoped they would have another baby, he would have liked another girl, he'd have liked five or six of them, to be honest. Boys were all too familiar but girls, girls were extraordinary. Josie had shown no interest at all in having another baby, and on the one occasion Jackson had suggested it, she gave him a hard look and said, "You have it then."

Did anyone wear a golfing sweater who wasn't interested in golf? And if it came to that what made it a golfing sweater as opposed to merely a sweater? Jackson had searched through the police photographs until he found the one of a yellow sweater that the eyewitnesses were agreed was "very like" the one worn by Laura Wyre's killer. As eyewitnesses went, they were rubbish. Jackson peered closely at the logo on the sweater, a small applique of a golfer swinging a club. "Would you wear that if you weren't a golfer? You might buy it in a secondhand shop and not care because it was a good sweater ("60 percent lambswool, 40 percent cashmere") and you could afford it.

Yellow for danger, like those tiny poisonous yellow frogs. That homeless girl this morning on St. Andrews Street, her hair was the color of poisonous frogs. He'd almost tripped over her on the way to Bliss. She had a dog with her, a whippety sort of thing.

"Can you help me?" the homeless girl said to him, and he squatted on his haunches so that he wasn't towering over her and said, "What do you want me to do?" and she'd stared off into the middle distance somewhere and said, "I don't know." She had bad skin, she looked like a druggie, a lost girl. He'd been late so he'd left the girl with the frog-yellow hair and thought, On the way back I'll ask her name.

And the spouses of all those disgruntled women in Theo's filing cabinet – did any of them play golf? The police had investigated every single one of them and found two who were golfers, both with cast-iron alibis. They had scoured the exes for grudges over divorces and affairs, over custody disputes, alimony and child support, and couldn't find a single likely suspect. They interviewed everyone, took alibis from everyone, they had even taken DNA and fingerprints, although there were no fingerprints at the scene and no DNA because the man had touched nothing, he hadn't even opened the door to the office – the lower door had been propped open and the receptionist (Moira Tyler) reported that he had pushed the inner door open with his elbow. And that was it, straight through to the boardroom at the back, slash, slash, and out again. No messing, no shouting, no name-calling, no anger vented. Like a contract killer rather than a crime of passion. Crime passionnel. He'd taken the knife away with him and it had never been found.

Jackson had scrutinized the exes who'd had restraining orders taken out against them. Nada. Rien. Everyone had been interviewed, everyone had alibis that held up. And as for the killer being someone from Theo's personal life, well, Theo didn't seem to have a personal life, outside of his daughters, outside of Laura. He hardly ever mentioned the other one, Jennifer. (Why not?)

Julia seemed to be asleep. Amelia, slumped in her seat, stared glumly at the carpet. She had terrible deportment. Jackson had been assuming that someone was going to acknowledge a death had occurred, that a vicar would appear from somewhere and say a few impersonal words before launching Victor into the unknown, and so he was astonished when Victor's coffin suddenly slid quietly away and disappeared behind the curtains with as much ceremony as if it had been a suitcase on a baggage carousel. "That's it?" Jackson said to Julia.

"What did you want?" Amelia asked, standing up and stalking out of the chapel on her red bird legs. Julia took Jackson 's arm and squeezed it and they walked out of the crematorium chapel together as if they'd just been married. "It's not illegal," she said brightly. "We checked."

It was hot, not funeral weather at all, and Julia, who had begun to sneeze the moment they were outside, said cheerfully, "Not as hot as where Daddy is at the moment." Jackson put on his Oakleys and Julia said, "Oo-la-la, how serious you look, Mr. Brodie, like a Secret Service agent," and Amelia had made a noise like a rooting pig. She was standing on the path, waiting for them. "That's it?" Jackson repeated, disentangling himself from Julia's grip.

"No, of course it's not," Amelia said. "Now we have tea and cake."

If you were a dog, what do you think you would be?" Julia stuffed a large piece of cake into her mouth. "I don't know." Jackson shrugged. "A Labrador maybe?" and they had both, in unison, shouted, "No!" incredulously, as if he were insane even to contemplate being a Labrador. "You are so not a Labrador, Jackson," Julia said, " Labradors are pedestrian."

"Chocolate Labs aren't so bad," Amelia said. "It's the yellow ones that are… tedious."

"Chocolate Labradors." Julia laughed. "I always think you should be able to eat them."

"I think Mr. Brodie is an English pointer," Amelia said decisively.

"Really?" Julia said. "Golly. I wouldn't have thought of that one." Jackson hadn't realized that people still said "golly." They were very loud, the Land sisters. Embarrassingly loud. He wished they would be less demonstrative. Of course, madness was endemic in Cambridge, so they didn't stick out so much. He would have hated to have been sitting with them in a cafe in his native northern town, where no one had ever said "golly" since the beginning of time. They both seemed remarkably skittish today, a mood apparently not unrelated to having just cremated their father.

Julia embarked on a second cup of tea. It was too hot for tea; Jackson longed for an ice-cold beer. Julia's white teacup bore the imprint of her mouth in lipstick and Jackson experienced a sudden memory of his sister. She had worn a less strident color, a pastel pink, and on every cup and glass she ever drank from she left behind the ghostly transfer of her lips. The thought of Niamh made his heart feel heavy in his chest, literally, not metaphorically.

"I don't think so," Julia said, after having mulled over the dog question (did they ever agree about anything?). "No, not a pointer. And certainly not an English one. Perhaps an Old Danish pointer. That's 'Old' with a capital 'O,' Mr. Brodie, in case you think I'm referring to your age. Or perhaps a Large French one. Ditto with the 'L' there, Mr. Brodie. But you know, Milly, I think Mr. Brodie is a German shepherd. You can just tell he would drag you out of a burning building or a river in flood. He would save you!" She turned to Jackson and gave him the benefit of a brilliant theatrical smile. "Wouldn't you?"

"Would I?" Jackson said.

Amelia stood up abruptly and announced, "That was lovely but we can't spend all day enjoying ourselves," and Julia roused herself and said, "Yes, come on, Milly, chop-chop, we have shopping to do. Mystery shopping," she added, and Amelia groaned and said, "I hate mystery shopping."

Jackson took out his wallet to pay the bill. He had been keeping the photograph of Olivia in his wallet and every time he opened it to prize out one of his almost-exhausted credit cards, he saw her face, grinning at him. Not really grinning at him, of course, but at whoever was behind the camera.

"Mummy," Julia said. "Daddy never took photographs." All three of them stared sadly at the photograph.

"Julia and I are the only ones left," Amelia said. "We're the only two people left in the whole world who remember Olivia. We can't go to our grave not knowing what happened to her."

"Why now, after all this time?" Jackson asked.

"It's not 'after all this time,'" Amelia bristled. "We never forgot about Olivia. It's just that finding Blue Mouse, I don't know, it's as if it found us."

"Three of us," Julia corrected Amelia. "Sylvia remembers Olivia."

"Sylvia?" Jackson puzzled.

"Our eldest sister," Amelia said dismissively. Jackson waited, let-ting his silence ask the question for him. Eventually, Julia answered, "She's a nun."

"And when exactly were you going to tell me about her?" Jackson asked, trying not to sound as annoyed as he felt.

"We're telling you now," Julia said as if she were the embodiment of reason. "Don't be a crosspatch, Mr. Brodie. You're a much nicer person than you pretend to be, you know."

"No, I'm not," Jackson said.

"Yes, you are," Julia said. (Why didn't they just go, for God's sake?) Suddenly, to Jackson 's surprise, Julia stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you," she said, "for coming to the funeral and everything."

Jackson started to worry about being late. On the way back to the car park he had to fight his way against a herd of foreign-language students, all entirely oblivious to the existence of anyone else on the planet except other adolescents. Cambridge in summer, invaded by a combination of tourists and foreign teenagers, all of whom were put on earth to loiter, was Jackson 's idea of hell. The language students all seemed to be dressed in combats, in khaki and camouflage, as if there were a war going on and they were the troops (God help us if that were the case). And the bikes, why did people think bikes were a good thing? Why were cyclists so smug? Why did cyclists ride on pavements when there were perfectly good cycle lanes? And who thought it was a good idea to rent bicycles to Italian adolescent language students? If hell did exist, which Jackson was sure it did, it would be governed by a committee of fifteen-year-old Italian boys on bikes.