The yellow golfing sweater. That was the thing, the thing that should have led them to the murderer. None of Theo’s clients had expressed any interest in golf (was golf ‘the royal game’ or was that tennis?). This indifference to the game stemmed from the fact that most of Theo’s clients were women – his caseload was almost entirely matrimonial and domestic. (So why was he in Peterborough on a boundary dispute the day his daughter died?) It was a depressing business going through his files, containing as they did an endless parade of women who were being battered, abused and defeated, not to mention the string of those who were just plain unhappy, who couldn’t stand the sight of the poor schmuck they were married to. It was an education (although one Jackson had already been subject to) because Theo was extraordinarily good at documenting the banal details of failure, the litany of tiny flaws and cracks that were nothing to an outsider but when you were on the inside looked like canyons: ‘He buys me carnations, carnations are crap, every woman knows that so why doesn’t he?’ ‘He never thinks to run a bit of Toilet Duck round the bowl, even though I leave it out where he can’t miss it and I’ve asked him, I’ve asked him a hundred times.’ ‘If he ever does any ironing it’s “Look at me, I’m ironing, look how well I’m doing it, I iron much better than you, I’m the best, I do it properly.” ’ ‘He’d get me my breakfast in bed if I asked him to, but I don’t want to have to ask.’ Did men know how much they got on women’s nerves? Theo Wyre certainly did.
Jackson had always been good, never left the toilet seat up and all that clichéd 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 kick-off. 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 appliqué of a golfer swinging a club. Would you wear that if you weren’t a golfer? You might buy it in a second-hand shop and not care because it was a good sweater (‘60% lambswool, 40% cashmere’) and you could afford it.
Yellow for danger, like those tiny poisonous yellow frogs. That homeless girl this morning on St Andrew’s Street, her hair was the colour 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 B., 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 was 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 be sitting with them in a café 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 colour, 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 prise 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 graves not knowing what happened to her.’
‘Why now, after all this time?’ Jackson puzzled.
‘It’s not “after all this time”,’ Amelia said, bristling, ‘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?’
‘our eldest sister,’ Amelia said dismissively. Jackson waited, letting 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 was 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 battle 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 was 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.
And as for the tourists … enthralled by the colleges, by history, they didn’t want to see what was behind all that, the money and power. The vast tracts of land the colleges owned, not just in Cambridge, though they owned most of Cambridge anyway. The colleges still wielded influence over licences and leases and God knows what else. Someone had once told him that they used to say that you could walk the length of England and never leave land owned by Trinity. And all those beautiful gardens they had that you had to pay to go into. All that wealth and privilege in the hands of a few while the streets were full of the dispossessed, the beggars, the jakies, the mad. Cambridge seemed to have a particularly high incidence of insanity.
Still – and it was a close call – Jackson preferred the summer population to the yahs and Hooray Henrys of termtime. Was it just the envy of the underclass? Was it his father’s voice in his head that he could hear? Jackson worried that he was turning into a grumpy old man. Perhaps being a grumpy old man wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Having a permanent toothache didn’t help, of course. (‘Endodontic treatment,’ Sharon had murmured seductively in his ear during his last appointment.)
Jackson double-parked outside the house. The windows had wooden Venetian blinds pulled up so that he could see inside the living room – floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, potted palms, big couches – shabby but arty, academics, probably. The street was choked with oversized SUVs, the middle-class mother’s vehicle of choice, the rear windows all sporting the obligatory ‘Child on Board’ and ‘Baby on Board’ signs. Jackson lit up a cigarette and put on Lucinda Williams’s Sweet Old World as an antidote. There were balloons tied to the gatepost signalling its status as a house en fête. The sound of little girls’ hysterical screams rose up from the garden at the back and filled the air like the call of some terrifying prehistoric bird. The SUVs were empty, the drivers all inside, but Jackson decided to stay in the car. He didn’t feel up to facing the inquisitive female warmth that always seemed to greet him whenever he walked into the midst of a pack of mothers.
He leafed through some of the many papers and files he had brought with him from Theo’s house. The room – the incident room as he now thought of it – wasn’t Laura’s bedroom, that was at the back of the house, overlooking the garden. Jackson had half expected it to be preserved as it had been the day that Laura left it for the last time – he’d been in those kinds of shrine before, sadder and more faded by the year – but to his surprise Laura’s bedroom showed no sign of her. It was decorated in neutral colours in the style of a hotel and was nothing more than a guest bedroom. ‘Not that I have guests,’ Theo said, with that sad, drooping smile he had. He was like one of those big melancholic dogs, a Newfoundland or a St Bernard. Oh no, he was thinking like Julia. What kind of a dog was he? He’d said ‘Labrador’ because it was the first dog that came into his mind. Jackson didn’t know dogs, he’d never had one, not even as a kid. His father had hated dogs.
Jackson remembered what Laura Wyre’s room looked like ten years ago. There’d been a patchwork quilt, a tank of tropical fish, a pile of teddy bears on the bed. Books everywhere, clothes on the floor, cosmetics, photographs. It was as untidy as you might expect an eighteen-year-old’s bedroom to be. That wasn’t the impression of Laura that Theo gave now. In death, she had become incapable of untidiness, of flaws. Laura had become a saint in Theo’s memory, a holy girl. Jackson supposed that was natural.
Ten years ago there had been a framed photograph on the wall of her bedroom – a picture of Laura with a dog. She was pretty and had a lovely smile. She looked like a nice girl, not a saint, but a nice girl. Jackson thought of Olivia, safe in the wallet in his pocket, grinning, unseen in the darkness. ‘Enclosed’. That’s what Amelia had said about Sylvia when he asked her if she’d been invited to the funeral. (‘Not even Sylvia?’) ‘Of course we told her,’ Amelia said, ‘but she can’t come, she’s not allowed out. She’s enclosed.’
Was Olivia enclosed somewhere, under a floor, in the earth? No more than a tiny pile of leveret-thin bones waiting to be found.
Jackson had been in Laura’s bedroom by chance. He was working on another case at the time, a girl called Kerry-Anne Brockley who had disappeared from the Chesterton area of town. Kerry-Anne was sixteen years old, unemployed and certainly no virgin. She had been killed on her way home from a night out with friends – raped, strangled and dumped in a field outside town. She had been walking home from a nightclub at two in the morning, wearing a lot of make-up and very few clothes and there were some unspoken assumptions that she had somehow invited what had happened to her. Not on Jackson’s team. If he’d thought that any of his officers thought that he would have hung them out to dry.
They still didn’t have a suspect in custody but Jackson was returning home for his first night’s sleep in days, cadging a lift in the back of a squad car with a family liaison officer (a woman called Alison whom Jackson should have married instead of Josie). Alison was returning some photographs of Laura to Theo. Photographs, always photographs. All those poignant images of girls who had gone.
The Kerry-Annes and the Olivias and the Lauras, all of them precious, all of them lost for ever. All of them holy girls. Sacrifices to some unknown, evil deity. Please God, never Marlee.
Theo Wyre had answered the door, a man hollowed out by grief, his face, Jackson had thought at the time, the colour of Wensleydale cheese. He offered them tea and Jackson thought – neither for the first nor for the last time – how strange it was that people just kept on going, even when their world no longer existed. Theo had even produced cake from somewhere, saying, ‘Cherry and almond, I made it the day before she died. It keeps well.’ He shook his head sadly as if he couldn’t believe that the cake still existed but his daughter didn’t. Needless to say, neither of them ate it. Jackson said, ‘Do you mind if I have a look at Laura’s bedroom, Mr Wyre?’ because he knew that as far as Theo Wyre was concerned he was just another detective, not someone who wasn’t on this case. It wasn’t much more than curiosity on Jackson’s part, there was nothing to suggest that Laura Wyre’s murder was linked to ‘his’ murder, Kerry-Anne Brockley. And it was just a bedroom, an untidy bedroom that a girl was never going to enter again, never fling down her bag on the floor and kick off her shoes, never lie on the bed and read a book or listen to her stereo, never sleep the restless, innocent sleep of the living.
That was two years before Marlee was born and Jackson didn’t know then what he knew now – what it was like to love a child, how you would give your own life in a heartbeat to save theirs, how they were more precious than the most precious thing. He no longer missed Josie as much as he thought he would but he missed Marlee nearly all the time. That was why he didn’t want to take on Theo Wyre. Theo terrified him, it made the death of his own child a possibility, it forced him to imagine it, to substitute Marlee for Laura Wyre. But what could he do? He could hardly say no to the poor guy, the size of a blimp, wheezing and puffing on his inhaler, nothing left but a memory – the shape of a space where a twenty-eight-year-old woman should have been.