‘Knowing everything I know now about the world?’ She sighed, a weighty sigh. ‘I would have looked at the father more closely. I would have suspected abuse.’
‘Really? Why?’
‘There was something wrong with Sylvia, the eldest. There were things she was hiding, things she wasn’t saying. She would start to disassociate if you questioned her too closely. And she was … I don’t know – strange.’ Strange – the same word Binky Rain had used about Sylvia.
‘And the father was a cold fish,’ Marian Foster continued, ‘controlled and controlling. The rest of them were a mess – the mother, the other girls. I’ve forgotten their names.’
‘Amelia and Julia.’
‘Of course. Amelia and Julia. You want my honest opinion?’
‘More than anything,’ Jackson said.
‘I think the father did it. I think Victor Land killed Olivia.’
Jackson removed the crucial evidence from his pocket and laid it down on Marian Foster’s kitchen table. Tears welled in her eyes and for a moment she couldn’t speak. ‘Blue Mouse,’ she said finally. ‘After all this time. Where did you find him?’
The thing about Sylvia was that she hadn’t really been surprised to see Blue Mouse. It was as if she’d been waiting for him to turn up eventually. And she hadn’t been curious as to where Jackson had found him; Jackson had told her but she hadn’t asked. Wouldn’t that be your first question? It was Marian Foster’s first question: ‘Where did you find him?’
Jester wagged his tail when he saw Jackson again but Sylvia looked less pleased to see him on the other side of the grille in the visiting room. She frowned and said, ‘What do you want?’ and Jackson thought he caught a glimpse of a different Sylvia, a less spiritual one.
Jackson’s painkillers were wearing off. He would have liked to take his head off and give it a rest. How was he going to go about this? He took a deep breath and looked into Sylvia’s mud-coloured eyes.
‘Sister Mary Luke,’ he said, ‘Sylvia.’ Her eyes narrowed when he spoke her real name but her gaze didn’t waiver. ‘Sylvia, think of me as a priest in the confessional. Whatever you say to me will never go beyond me. Tell me the truth, Sylvia, that’s all I want.’ Because in the end that was what it came down to, didn’t it? ‘Tell me the truth about what happened to Olivia.’
He had to push hard on the gate to open it. He felt like an intruder. He was an intruder. There was a piece of crime tape caught on one of the branches of Binky’s apple trees. It wasn’t a crime scene any more. Binky had died of natural causes, ‘old age really’, the pathologist said to Jackson. Jackson supposed it was pretty much a triumph if you went that way. He hoped Marlee died of old age, under an apple tree somewhere, long after Jackson himself had gone.
The place was like some kind of nature conservation area. There were bats flitting in and out of the eaves of the house, and a frog lolloped lazily away from him as he approached and, despite sweeping the path with his big police-issue Maglite, he almost stood on a baby hedgehog as he worked his way round the thorns and weeds to the corner of the garden. The brambles were almost impenetrable in this area and Jackson could see how something could get overlooked here. Something precious. It wasn’t going to be as easy as simply raking through grass and dead leaves, in fact, Jackson didn’t actually expect to find anything. It wasn’t just that there was so much wildlife around – you could hardly walk into one of these gardens without encountering a fox – it was simply so rare that when you went searching for something precious that had been lost you actually found it.
In the corner, Sylvia said, beyond the apple trees, beyond the big beech. Jackson couldn’t tell a beech from a birch, couldn’t do tree identification at all, so he followed the wall round until it turned into another wall and reckoned that must be the corner.
He dug with his hands, an inefficient, filthy way of doing it, but a spade seemed too brutal. He didn’t dig, he excavated. Delicately. The ground was hard and dry and he had to scrape at the soil. It was pitch black by the time he uncovered the first sign of her. His face and forearms were prickling with dirt and sweat. He kept thinking about Niamh, about the two days he and Francis had searched for her, in every stinking bin and rubbish heap, every corner of every piece of waste ground, until Jackson felt like a feral animal, a creature that had moved far beyond the normal bonds and bounds of society. He had watched the police dragging the canal and had seen them lifting his sister’s body, sluicy with mud and water. He remembered that the first feeling he had, before all the other more complex feelings flooded in, was one of relief that they had found her, that she wouldn’t be out there, lost for ever.
Sylvia said Olivia had simply been left, more or less, where she died, covered up with some branches and grass. Every square inch of this garden should have been searched on hands and knees: that was how Jackson would have done it, a fingertip search of the immediate vicinity. He remembered Binky saying something about seeing the officers off her property, giving them ‘short shrift’. Was that all it took, one domineering old Tory to tell you to get lost and you did? And all this time Olivia had simply been lying here, patiently waiting for someone to come and find her. Jackson thought about Victor, covering his smallest child up with weeds and garden rubbish as if she wasn’t worth anything, leaving her behind in a strange place while her body was still warm. Not taking her home. Victor, who then went back to his bed, locking the back door, leaving Amelia outside alone to discover her sister gone. Victor who for thirty-four years had kept Blue Mouse locked up like the truth. The Land girls used to play in Binky’s garden and then Sylvia told them to keep out. Because she knew Olivia was here.
The first thing he found was a clavicle and then what looked like an ulna. He stopped his excavating and moved the Maglite around until it caught the small, pale moon of the skull. Jackson took out his phone and called the station at Parkside.
He sat back on his heels and examined the clavicle, brushing the soil off it with the tenderness of an archaeologist finding something rare, something unique, which it was, of course. The clavicle was tiny and fragile, like an animal’s, a rabbit or a hare, the broken wishbone of a bird. Jackson kissed it reverently because he knew it was the holiest relic he would ever find. It started to rain. Jackson couldn’t remember when it had last rained. Aqua lateris Christi, lava me. Jackson wept. Not for Niamh, or Laura Wyre or Kerry-Anne Brockley or any of the other lost girls, he wept for the little girl with gingham ribbons in her hair, the little girl who had once held Blue Mouse in her arms and told him to smile for the camera.
Jackson settled into his economy seat, row 20, a window seat. He could have afforded to fly business class but he wasn’t going to start throwing the money around. He was still his father’s son, it seemed.
He was rich. Unexpectedly, absurdly rich. Binky had made him the sole beneficiary of her estate – two million pounds, in bonds and stocks, all of which had been sitting in a safe-deposit box all these years while she hadn’t spent a bean on anything but her cats. ‘To my friend, Mr Jackson Brodie, for being kind.’ He had cried when her solicitor had read that out to him. Cried, because he hadn’t been particularly kind to her, cried because she didn’t have a better friend, that she had died alone, without a hand to hold. Cried because he was turning into a woman.
Two million on condition that the cats were looked after. Did that mean their offspring as well? Would he have to look after Binky’s cats for ever and ever, until he died, and then would Marlee and her descendants have to look after them? The first thing he would do would be to have them all neutered. He knew he didn’t deserve it, of course he didn’t deserve it, it was like winning the lottery without buying a ticket. But then, who did deserve it? Not Quintus, her only blood relative, that was for sure. Quintus who had found his aunt’s will made out in favour of Jackson and then had tried to kill Jackson to stop him inheriting, Quintus who would probably have killed his aunt if she hadn’t pre-empted him by dying quietly of old age.
&
nbsp; At first Jackson had worried that the money was tainted, that it had originated in the diamond mines, made out of the blood and sweat and slave labour of ‘bleck’ miners. Filthy lucre. He had wondered about just handing it all over to Howell. ‘Because I’m black?’ Howell said, looking at him as if he’d just grown an extra head. ‘You stupid fucker.’ Jackson supposed it was a bit much to make Howell the token representative of the whole sordid history of imperial exploitation. Howell and Julia were playing cribbage, sitting at Victor’s dining-room table, drinking gin, Julia slamming her empty glass down, saying, ‘Hit me again,’ to Howell. Jackson would never have taken on either of them in a drinking competition.
Howell and Jackson were staying in the Garden House Hotel now that Jackson no longer had a home in Cambridge. Julia had offered to put them up but Jackson couldn’t bear the idea of staying in Victor’s old, cold house, sleeping in a room last occupied by one of the lost Land girls.
He was the one who had told Julia. He had taken her to see the delicate leveret bones laid out in the police mortuary. (‘Against the rules, Jackson,’ the forensic pathologist rebuked him mildly.) Julia was strong, he knew that, she could look at what was left of Olivia’s tiny skeleton without growing hysterical. She reached out a hand to her sister and the pathologist said, ‘Don’t touch, dear. Later, later you can touch her,’ and Julia had retracted her hand and held it over her heart as if her heart hurt and said, ‘Oh,’ very softly and Jackson hadn’t realized that such a small word could be so unbearably sad.
Jackson’s story went like this – he had been out walking a dog when the dog had nosed his way into Binky’s garden where it had rooted around in the undergrowth, barking its head off until Jackson had come and investigated, at which point he had discovered Olivia’s body. ‘And where’s the dog now, Inspector?’ the first detective on the scene asked. ‘Ran off.’ Jackson shrugged and didn’t bother to add, ‘It’s plain Mr Brodie now.’ He didn’t mention his visit to the convent, either to the police or to Julia. He felt, rightly or wrongly, that if Sylvia wanted to tell the truth then it was up to her. He had offered her the shelter of the confessional, he had given his word. ‘Looks like a tragic accident,’ he said to the investigating DS. ‘Poor police procedure. Thirty-four years ago, what can you do?’
Howell poured more gin for himself and Julia. ‘Why don’t you join us, Mr B.?’ she said. ‘We can play three-handed Gladstone. I’ll teach you.’
‘We can try and win some of your excessive and undeserved wealth off you,’ Howell said.
Jackson declined.
‘Miserable bugger,’ Howell said.
Perhaps Jackson could set Howell up in business. He would put some of the money in trust for Marlee. And he could give some to Lily-Rose. He had been to see Theo, had seen the postcard with the picture of the pink flower propped up on the mantelpiece. Neither of them mentioned it. Lily-Rose had made them a pot of tea and they sat and drank it in the garden and ate slices of a Victoria sponge sandwich that Theo had made. ‘Good, in’t it?’ Lily-Rose said appreciatively.
And he would have to give some of the money to charity, to salve his conscience if nothing else. It turned out that the money hadn’t come from diamonds. A long time ago one of Binky Rain’s forebears had invested in the building of the American railroads so the money had been made from the blood and sweat of whoever built the Union and Central Pacific lines (Chinese? Irish?), which wasn’t particularly ethical either, Jackson supposed, but what could you do?
Which charities? There were so many. He thought about asking Amelia, it might be good to give her something to get her teeth into. She had become ‘a little overwrought’, Julia had explained to him, and had taken too many pills and was now ‘resting’ in hospital.
‘You mean she tried to kill herself?’ Jackson interpreted.
Julia frowned. ‘Sort of.’
‘Sort of?’
* * *
He had volunteered to bring Amelia home from hospital. She was doped up and untalkative but when they reached the house in Owlstone Road Julia was waiting at the door with the black cat formerly known as Nigger, which she pressed into Amelia’s arms as a welcoming gift. ‘He’s called Lucky,’ Julia said. Mean-while Frisky – once lost, now found – entertained herself by trying to claw her way up Jackson’s leg.
Observing Amelia burrowing her face into Lucky’s black fur, Jackson realized that he might have found the perfect custodian of Binky’s legacy.
‘What do you think?’ he asked Julia later. ‘Binky’s place would have to be done up, obviously, but then Amelia could live there and look after the cats.’
‘Oh, and she could rescue the garden as well,’ Julia said excitedly. ‘She would love that. Oh, what a splendid idea, Mr Brodie!’
Jackson hadn’t thought about the garden. ‘Do you think that would be all right though?’ he said. ‘I mean with Olivia being there all that time, it wouldn’t freak Amelia out?’ Amelia hadn’t been told about Olivia yet, Julia was still trying to find the ‘right time’, and Jackson had said, ‘There never will be a right time,’ and Julia said, ‘I know.’
‘I think,’ Julia said, ‘that it would be a very good thing. It would be somehow appropriate.’ She turned her head on the pillow to look at him – because they were conducting this conversation about Amelia’s future in bed – and gave him one of her big lazy smiles. She stretched extravagantly and one of her warm feet rubbed up and down his calf.
‘Oh, Mr Brodie,’ she said, ‘who would have imagined this would be so delicious?’
Who indeed, Jackson thought. ‘You might try calling me Jackson now,’ he said.
‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘I much prefer “Mr Brodie”.’
As the plane went through its pre-flight routine Jackson perused the estate agents’ details. There was a nice chateau, not too showy, in the Minervois (chateaux seemed to be ten-a-penny in France), a thirteenth-century presbytery in a small village south of Toulouse and a maison de maître in a village near Narbonne. Not that he’d decided which area to live in, but you had to start somewhere. He imagined he could motor his way round France viewing houses, take his time. He’d sold his business to Deborah Arnold. If she’d been only a slightly nicer person he might have knocked something off the price. He closed his eyes and thought about France.
‘Can I get you a drink, sir?’ He opened his eyes and looked into Nicola Spencer’s bland, indifferent face. She smiled at him without warmth and repeated her question. He asked for an orange juice in order to prolong the encounter a little. In some ways he knew everything about Nicola Spencer and in other ways he knew absolutely nothing. She gave him a small packet of pretzels with his orange juice and moved on to the next passenger. He watched as she pushed her trolley past him, her muscular buttocks straining against her uniform skirt. He thought about following her when they landed – out of curiosity and because she was unfinished business – but by the time he’d gone through the rigmarole of picking up a hire car at Toulouse airport he’d lost interest.
22
Caroline
JONATHAN SAID, ‘WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY?’ and she said, ‘A Mercedes SL 500,’ joking obviously, and he said, ‘Any particular colour?’ and she said, ‘Silver,’ and fuck me (she thought), if it wasn’t sitting there in the driveway, seventy thousand quid’s worth, tied with a big pink ribbon. He must be even richer than she thought. She had no idea how much money he had, she didn’t want any of his money, she hadn’t even wanted the car, not really, although now she had it she loved it. Two seats, no room in the back for dogs or kids.
‘Goodness,’ Rowena said when she saw it. It was amazing how much meaning you could pack into one two-syllable word.
Maybe the car was a farewell gift. Maybe he was getting ready for his next wife. She was pretty sure he had someone in London. She’d be surprised if he didn’t, men like Jonathan always had mistresses. They never married them though. She should have been a mistress, temperamentally she was much better suite
d to being a mistress than a wife.
They still didn’t know about the baby, safe inside her. She was getting ready to shed her skin again, grow another new one. She had to leave before she got stuck in inertia, before someone found her. Before they stopped her when they knew about the baby. They would want to get their hands on the baby. And it was a shame because she really loved the school and the job but there were other schools and other jobs – everything was possible when you turned your mind to it. And she was taking the baby with her (obviously) out of this place because it wouldn’t be a good environment for it, it might grow up speaking French on Wednesdays and not understanding about love. She ached with love for this baby. That was something that no one in this house was capable of understanding. There was a time when she hadn’t been capable of understanding love, and what a mess that had made of everything. She’d said to Shirley, ‘Treat me as if I’m dead,’ but she hadn’t expected her to actually do as she said. But there’d been nothing, no visits, no cards, no birthday gifts, no word at all. For months she waited for Shirley to turn up on visiting day with Tanya in her arms (Look, here’s Mummy) or chaperone their useless parents (Come on, you have to visit Michelle), but no. All her letters went unanswered, all her hopes were knocked back until she came to think maybe it really was for the best, let them get on with their lives, let them be free of her, because what good had she ever done them? She hadn’t loved the people that she’d had a duty to love and you had to pay the price of that, sooner or later.
When you left you didn’t leave any traces. You packed minimally, you walked out as if you were going to Leeds for the day (but you took the beautiful car). You didn’t leave evidence, you didn’t place your fingerprints all over the handle of the bloody axe to protect other people. This time she was taking the bug, the new bug, and she would love this baby so much that it would wake up every day in a state of bliss and she herself would be in a state of grace, at last.