Case Histories - Страница 30

"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 appointment," 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 that 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."

"I'm not smoking now. Sit on the other side, not behind me."

"Why?"

"Why not?" (Because if for some reason the seat belt fails you'll go straight through the windscreen, which will be marginally safer than going straight into the back of me.) Marlee moved over into the left passenger seat. The Diana seat. She locked the door. "Don't lock the door, Marlee."

"Why not?"

"Just not." (So that if the car catches fire it'll be easier to get you out.)

"What did that lady want?"

"Miss Morrison?" Shirley. It was a nice name. "Are you buckled in?"

"Yeah."

" 'Yes,' not 'yeah.' I don't know what Miss Morrison wanted." He did know. He could see it in her eyes. She'd lost something, someone, another entry to make on the debit side of the lost-and-found register.

The most interesting case he'd had in months had been Nicola Spencer (which just about said it all really). Otherwise it had been dull, routine stuff, and yet now, suddenly, in the space of a couple of weeks, he had acquired a cold murder case, a thirty-four-year-old unsolved abduction, and whatever fresh misery Shirley Morrison was about to lay at his feet.

He glanced at Marlee. She was writhing around in the backseat like a miniature Houdini. She ducked down out of view. "What are you doing? Is your seat belt still on?"

"Yes, I'm trying to reach this thing on the floor." Her voice was muffled with the effort.

"What thing?"

"This!" she said triumphantly, reappearing like a diver coming up for air. "It's a tin, I think." Jackson looked in the rearview mirror at the object she was holding aloft for his inspection. Oh, Christ, Victor's ashes.

"Put it back, sweetheart."

"What is it?" She was trying to open the ugly metal urn now and Jackson reached round and grabbed it off her. The car swerved and Marlee gave a scream of horror. He settled the urn in the foot well of the front passenger seat. Julia had asked him to collect it from the crematorium this morning "because you have a car, Mr. Brodie, and we don't," which Jackson didn't think was a particularly valid reason, given that he'd never known Victor. "But you were the only person at his funeral," Julia said.

"You're not going to cry, are you?" he said to the mirror.

"No" – said very angrily. Marlee could be like a force of na-ture when she was angry. "You nearly crashed."

"No, I didn't." He raked around in the glove compartment for sweets but all he could find were cigarettes and loose change for parking meters. He offered her the money.

"What's in the tin?" she persisted, taking the money. "Is it something bad?"

"No, it's not anything bad." Why wouldn't he tell her what was in the tin? She understood about life and death, she'd buried enough hamsters in her eight years on earth, and last year Josie had taken her to her grandmother's funeral. "Well, sweetheart," he began hesitantly, "you know when people die?"

"I'm bored."

"Let's play a game then." "What game?"

Good question. Jackson wasn't very good at games. "I know. If you were a dog, what dog would you be?"

"Don't know." So much for that. Marlee began to grumble in earnest. "I'm hungry, Daddy. Daddy."

"Yeah, okay. We'll get something to eat on the way."

"Say 'yes' not 'yeah.' Way to what?"

"A convent."

"What's that?"

"It's a bunch of women locked up together."

"Because they're bad?"

"Because they're good. I hope."

Well, it was one way to keep women safe. Just put them in a convent. "Get thee to a nunnery." The convent smelled like every Catholic church Jackson had ever been inside – an excess of incense and Mansion House polish. People always said to him, "Once a Catholic, always a Catholic," but it wasn't true. Jackson hadn't been inside a church for years – except for funerals (weddings and christenings never seemed to figure on his social calendar) – and he had no belief in any god. His mother, Fidelma, had done her best to raise them in the church but somehow it had never stuck with Jackson. Sometimes there were fragments of memories, his mother's long-forgotten voice. Anima Christi, sanctifica me.

Their parents had somehow emigrated to the north of England – how and why, Jackson never knew. His father, Robert, was a miner from Fife and his mother was from County Mayo, a not entirely harmonious Celtic union. Jackson and his brother, Francis, and his sister, Niamh. Francis was named for his mother's father and Jackson himself was named for his father's mother. Not that his grandmother was called Jackson, of course – it was a maiden name (Margaret Jackson) and it was a Scottish tradition, his father informed him.

Jackson didn't know who (if anyone) Niamh was named for. His big sister, a year younger than Francis and six years older than Jackson. After Niamh's birth his mother had become a successful practitioner of the rhythm method, and Jackson had been an unexpected addition to the family, conceived in that boarding house in Ayrshire. The baby of the family.

"What are you thinking, Daddy?"

"Nothing, sweetheart." They both whispered, although Sister Michael, the fat, almost boisterous nun in whose wake they were being swept along, had a booming voice that echoed along the hallway.

Sister Michael, he knew from Amelia and Julia, was an "extern." There were six externs at the convent, negotiating with the outside world on behalf of the "interns" – the ones who never left, who spent their days, day after day, until they died, in prayer and contemplation. Sylvia was an intern.

Marlee was rapt with fascination at this new world. "Why does Sister Michael have a man's name?"

"She's named after a saint," Jackson said. "St. Michael." Why did Marks and Spencer use St. Michael as their trademark label? To make them sound less Jewish? Would Sister Michael know the answer to that? Not that he was about to ask her. Michael was the pa-tron saint of paratroopers, Jackson knew that. Because of the wings? But then all angels had wings. (Not that Jackson believed in the existence of angels.) The corridor, which turned into another one, and then another one, was dotted with statues and pictures – St. Francis and St. Clare, naturally, and multiples of doe-eyed Christs on the cross, bleeding and broken. Corpus Christi , salva me.

Jesus, he'd forgotten how physically extreme this stuff was. Or "'Sadomasochistic, homoerotic nonsense," in Amelia's caustic summary. Why was she so uptight all the time? He was sure it had nothing to do with Olivia. Or her father's death. He knew it was the most politically incorrect thing he could think, and, God knows, he would never have voiced it out loud, not in a million years, but, let's face it, Amelia Land needed to get laid.

"And this one is Our Lady of Krakow," Sister Michael was explaining to Marlee, indicating a small statue in a glass case. "She was rescued from Poland by a priest during the war. At times of national crisis, she can be seen to cry." Jackson thought it might have been better if the priest had rescued a few Jews instead of a plaster statue.

"She cries?" an awestruck Marlee asked.

"Yes, tears roll down her cheeks." Jackson wanted to say, "It's shite, Marlee, don't listen," but Sister Michael turned and looked at him, and, despite her plump, jolly face, she had nuns' eyes, and nuns' eyes, Jackson knew, could see right inside your head, so he nodded respectfully at the statue. Sanguis Christi, inebria me.

"Sister Mary Luke" was expecting them, Sister Michael said, moving on, escorting them deeper into the complex corridors of the convent, her habit flapping as she marched purposively onward. Jackson remembered how nuns had a way of moving around very fast, without ever running, as if they were on wheels. Perhaps it was part of their training. He was surprised more criminals didn't use a nun's habit as a disguise. It was perfect misdirection – no one would ever notice your face, all they would see would be the outfit. Look at all the witnesses to Laura's murder, all any or them had seen was the yellow golfing sweater.