Текст книги "When Will There Be Good News?"

Автор книги: Kate Atkinson

Соавторы: Kate Atkinson,Kate Atkinson
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

Her father spent years in exile in Los Angeles, trying to make a new career and she spent the school holidays with Aunt Agnes and Uncle Oliver, dreadful people who were terrified of children, and treated her as if she was a dangerous wild animal to be harried and contained at every turn. Now their contact was limited to the exchange of Christmas cards. Joanna could never forgive her aunt for not wrapping her in love, the way she would have done in her place.

It was only because she saw an obituary in the newspaper that she knew her own father was dead. His fifth, forgetful wife had omitted to tell her and had him cremated and scattered before she even knew he'd finally gone. He was living in Rio when he died, like a criminal or a Nazi. The fifth wife was Brazilian and Howard might have neglected to tell her that he had a daughter.

She could have sunk but school made up for the Masons' shortcomings. By sheer chance Howard put her into a boarding school that fostered her and cared for her and in return she proved buoyant, embracing school life with the order of its days and the comfort of its rules.

By the time Joanna left school for university Howard had worked his way through another wife and a couple ofmistresses but he never had any more children. 'I had my children,' he would drunkenly declare in company, like a grandstanding tragic actor. 'They are not replaceable.'

'You still have Joanna,' someone would remind him and he would say, 'Yes, of course. Thank God, I still have Joanna.'

'There were ten in the bed,' she sang quietly to the baby, even though he was asleep. 'And the little one said, "Roll over, roll over." , He had fallen asleep easily on the lumpy mattress they were sharing but woke as usual at four in the morning for a feed. The time of night when people died and were born, when the body offered least resistance to the coming and going of the soul. Joanna didn't believe in God, how could she, but she believed in the existence of the soul, believed indeed in the transference of the soul and although she wouldn't have stood up at a scientific conference and declared it, she also believed that she carried the souls of her dead family inside her and one day the baby would do the same for her. Just because you were a rational and sceptical atheist didn't mean that you didn't have to get through every day the best way you could. There were no rules.

The best days of her life had been when she was pregnant and the baby was still safe inside her. Once you were out in the world, then the rain fell on your face and the wind lifted your hair and the sun beat down on you and the path stretched ahead of you and evil walked on it.

It was black night outside, a winter-white moon rising. The baby was the same age as Joseph was when he died. His foot stopped short when he was so young that it was impossible to imagine what kind of a man Joseph would have become if he had lived. Jessica was easier, her character already fixed at the age of eight. Loyal, resourceful, confident, annoying. Clever, too clever sometimes. Too clever Jar her own good, their father said but their mother said, That's impossible. Especially Jar agirl. Did they really say those things? Was she just making it up to fill in the gaps, the same way that she imagined (ludicrously, a daydream shared with no one) a Jessica living in the present, a parallel universe in the Cotswolds, in an old house with wisteria strung out along the front wall. Four children, a government adviser on Third World policies. Argumentative. Brave. Reliable. And her mother, living somewhere dazzling with sunshine, painting like a crazy woman, the eccentric English artist.

All made up, of course. She couldn't really remember any of them but that didn't stop them still possessing a reality that was stronger than anything alive, apart from the baby, of course. They were the touchstone to which everything else must look and the exemplar compared to which everything else failed. Except for the baby.

She was bereft, her whole life an act of bereavement, longing for something that she could no longer remember. Sometimes in the night, in dreams, she heard their old dog barking and it brought back a memory ofgrief so raw that it led her to wonder about killing the baby, and then herself, both of them slipping away on something as peaceful as poppies so that nothing hideous could ever happen to him. A contingency plan for when you were cornered, for when you couldn't run. A famine or a nuclear war. The volcano erupting, the comet dropping to earth. Ifshe was in a concentration camp. Or kidnapped by evil psychopaths. If there were no needles, if there was nothing, she would hold her hand over the baby's face and then she would hang herself. You could always find a way to hang yourself. Sometimes it took a lot of self-discipline. Elsie Marley's grown so Jine, she won't get up to Jeed the swine.

If she could she would run, she would run with the baby, she would run like the wind, until she was safe. She heard footsteps coming up the stairs and held the baby closer. The bad man was commg.

Reggie Chase, Warrior Virgin SHE HAD PHONED CHIEF INSPECTOR MONROE THREE TIMES SO FAR and got no answer. When she phoned Dr Hunter's phone it no longer rang out, now a recorded voice on the other end informed Reggie that the number she was trying to reach was currently unavailable. Perhaps it had run out of battery, it must be ailing by now, if not dead. The slender thread that still connected Reggie to Dr Hunter was broken. Dr Hunter's lifeline. Reggie's too.

If Reggie could get her hands on Dr Hunter's phone, then the socalled aunt would be in her 'Contacts' list. She could phone the aunt and ask to speak to Dr Hunter. And then Dr Hunter would answer and Reggie would say -very casual -'Oh, hi, I just wanted to ask when you'd be back. Everything's fine here. Sadie sends her love.' And Dr Hunter would say, Thanks so much for phoning, Reggie. We're both missing you. And then all would be right with the world.

All she had to do was go into the house and find the phone. And if Mr Hunter came back she could always say that she'd left something behind, a book, a brush, a key. It wouldn't be like she was breaking in, technically speaking, you couldn't break in if you had a key, could you? She had to know that Dr Hunter was all right.

She got off the bus on Blackford Avenue and bought a packet of crisps in the Avenue Stores before setting out to walk the rest of the way to Dr Hunter's house. The crisps were cheese and onion flavour and as soon as she tasted them she had to put them away in her bag because they reminded her too much of the night of the train crash, breathing into Jackson Brodie's airless lungs, willing him into life.

There was no Range Rover which meant that Mr Hunter wasn't at home, as the two of them didn't go anywhere without each other. Reggie crouched down in the bushes and watched to make doubly sure that there was no sign of life in the house. Maybe she should have brought Billy along, for once his talents as a natural-born sneak would have come in useful. Billy wasn't answering his phone either. What was the point of phones if no one ever answered them?

Sadie gave a whine of homesickness at the sight of the house and Reggie stroked her ears comfortingly and said, 'I know, old girl. I know,' the way Dr Hunter would have done.

Searching for the Hunters' door keys, Reggie's fingers touched the bit of grubby blanket that was nestled in her pocket. A little green flag of distress left for her to interpret, a clue to be tracked, a trail of breadcrumbs to follow. How sad the baby must be to lose his talisman. How sad she was to lose the baby.

'Right,' she whispered to Sadie and the dog looked at her enquiringly. 'Let's do it.'

First the mortise, then the Yale, so far so good. In the hallway she paused for a second to check the coast was clear while Sadie raced up the stairs looking for Dr Hunter, although it was quite plain to Reggie that neither Dr Hunter nor the baby was here. The house was empty of breath, as quiet as the grave. Dead air. Even the clocks had stopped with no one here who cared to wind them. The absence of Dr Hunter from her own house weighed heavily on Reggie's heart.

The kitchen was messier now, although there was no sign of Mr Hunter having cooked anything. There were the remains of a pizza and a lot of dirty glasses that he hadn't bothered to put in the dishwasher. The fridge was still full of the same food that had been in there on Wednesday. The bananas in the truit bowl were black now and the apples were beginning to shrivel. There was a large cobweb slung across one corner of the ceiling. It was as if time was accelerating in Dr Hunter's absence. How long before the house reverted to some kind of primal state? Before it disappeared altogether and was replaced by field and forest.

Reggie searched everywhere in the kitchen for the phone -the drawer in the table, all the cupboards, the fridge, the oven, but there was no sign of it anywhere. She was wondering where else to look when she heard the Range Rover approaching with its usual brutal pace and dramatic finish. It was followed by another equally aggressive-sounding car.

Car doors slammed and heavy tell-tale footsteps crunched on the gravel path at the side of the house -they were corning to the back door, to the kitchen. Reggie sprinted up the back stairs, like a scullery maid caught with her hand in the biscuit tin, and ran into Dr Hunter's bedroom where she found her companion in crime asleep on the bed. Sadie woke when Reggie entered the room and gave a little bark of excitement. Reggie jumped on the bed and clamped her hand over the dog's muzzle. A person could die from a heart attack under this kind of stress.

Down below she could hear voices, in the hallway now. Mr Hunter and two other men by the sound ofit, their voices raised. She couldn't make out the conversation but it was moving nearer, they weren't in the hallway any more, they were coming up the stairs. A person was definitely going to die of a heart attack in these circumstances. Reggie grabbed hold ofSadie's collar and tugged at it. 'Come on,' she whispered desperately. 'We've got to hide.' There was, of course, only one place to hide in the bedroom, the louvred closet, the last refuge of the slasher's innocent victim in horror films. Reggie stepped quickly into Dr Hunter's side, pulling a reluctant Sadie in with her.

There wasn't enough room to breathe, it was horrible, it was like going into Narnia except there was no other world beyond, just Dr Hunter's clothes, pressed up against Reggie's face, all smelling of Dr Hunter's perfume. Reggie's heart wasn't even in her chest any more, it was too big and too loud to fit any more, it was filling the whole of the bedroom. Boom, boom, boom.

The men were having a conversation with Mr Hunter on the landing outside the open bedroom door. Through the slats in the closet door Reggie could see the back of one of them. He was big, bigger than Mr Hunter and was wearing a leather jacket, she could see the thick trunk of his bull neck and his bald head. There was a big, shiny gold watch on his wrist and he tapped the dial ostentatiously and said to Mr Hunter, 'Time's running out, Neil.' Another Glaswegian by the sound of him.

They must be able to hear her heart from where they were standing, a great big drum of sound banging away in the closet, boom, boom, boom. Any moment one of them would yank the doors open to find the source of the noise. Reggie stretched out her fingers and felt the soft fur on top of Sadie's head for comfort.

'I'm doing my fucking best,' Mr Hunter said and the man with the gold wristwatch said, 'You know the score, Hunter. You and yours. Think about it. Sweet little wife, pretty little baby. Do you want to see them again? Because it's your call. What do you want me to tell Anderson?'

Sadie gave a low growl, upset by the proximity of so much nasty human testosterone. Reggie crouched lower and put her arms round her in an effort to keep her quiet. 'Right,' Mr Hunter shouted and suddenly he was in the bedroom, halfway across the floor to the closet. Reggie thought her heart was going to explode all over the bedroom and they would find it, like a burst balloon, on the floor of the closet. He opened the door on his own side, pulling on it aggressively so that Reggie could feel the whole closet shake. He threw things around, looking for something, and must have found it because he left and the men followed him downstairs. Reggie laid her face against Sadie's big body and listened to the dog's heartbeat, solid and regular, unlike her own fluttery organ. The back door slammed and first one and then the other car started their engines and both drove away. Reggie rushed to the window in time to see Mr Hunter's Range Rover following a monstrous black Nissan. She repeated the registration over and over again until she could grab a notebook and pen from her bag and write it down.

The air in the house felt polluted by the conversation she had just heard. On the one hand it was very bad -the man with the gold wristwatch seemed to have kidnapped Dr Hunter and the baby -but on the other, good hand, they weren't dead. Yet.

Climbing cautiously out of the closet, Reggie almost tripped on something on the floor inside it -Dr Hunter's expensive Mulberry handbag (The Bayswater, Reggie -isn't it handsome?). Reggie snatched it up and said to Sadie, 'Come on, we have to go.'

Reggie caught a relay of buses. While still inoculated against fear by her experience in Dr Hunter's house, she was going to go back to her flat in Gorgie. Her phone was about to run out of battery and if nothing else she could salvage her phone charger.

She sat on the top deck, holding Dr Hunter's black Bayswater on her lap, investigating the contents. Technically theft of course, but Reggie didn't feel that the normal rules applied any more. Sweet little wife, pretty little baby. Do you want to see them again? Every time she thought ofthose words her insides hollowed out. They had been kidnapped, that was what had happened to them. They were being held to ransom by gold-watch-wearing Glaswegians. Why? Where? (And what did the aunt have to do with it?)

The innards of the handbag seemed complete -a hairbrush, a packet of mints, a small packet of tissues, a packet of baby wipes, a copy of That's Not My Teddy, a small torch, a granola bar, a Ventolin inhaler, a packet of birth control pills, a Chanel powder compact, Dr Hunter's driving spectacles and her purse and -fat to bursting -her Filofax.

Now surely Inspector Monroe would believe her? Dr Hunter wouldn't go away without her driving spectacles, her purse or her inhaler (the spare one was still on the dressing table). No aunt could be so sick that you left everything behind. The only thing missing was her phone but that didn't matter any more because inside the Filofax was an address for an 'Agnes Barker' in Hawes. The mysterious Aunt Agnes, found at last.

Reggie got off the bus and turned the corner of the street to find that the all-too-familiar calling cards of catastrophe were waiting for her -three fire engines, an ambulance, two police cars, some kind of incident van and a knot of bystanders -all muddled up in the street outside her flat. Reggie's heart sank, it seemed inevitable that they would be there for her.

All the glass in the windows of her flat was broken and black streaks of soot marked where flames had shot out from the living room. A horrible smell still lingered in the air. A thick hose like a boa constrictor snaked into the close. The paramedics were leaning nonchalantly against the bonnet of their ambulance rather than trying to revive her charred neighbours so hopefully Reggie wasn't going to have the deaths of everyone in the building on her conscience as well. Reggie's life was like the Ilian plain, littered with the dead.

'What happened?' she asked a young boy who was gazing in awe at the aftermath of disaster.

'Fire,' he said.

'Duh. But what happened?'

Another boy leaned into the conversation and said excitedly, 'Someone poured petrol through the letterbox.' 'Of which flat?' Please don't say number eight, she thought. 'Number eight.' Reggie thought of the books piled on the living-room floor like a bonfire waiting to be lit. All her schoolwork, Danielle Steel, Mum's miniature teapots. Virgil, Tacitus, good old Pliny (young and old), all the Penguin Classics she'd rescued from charity shops. Photographs. 'Oh,' Reggie said. A little sound. A little round sound. Weightless as a wren. A breath. 'Was anyone hurt?'

'Nah,' the first boy said, looking disappointed.

'Reggie!' Mr Hussain said, appearing suddenly from out of the crowd. 'Are you all right?'

A piece of charred paper floated slowly down from the sky like a soiled snowflake. Mr Hussain picked it up and read out loud, 'He felt the heart still fluttering beneath the bark.'

'Sounds like Ovid,' Reggie said. 'I was worried you were in there,' Mr Hussain said. 'Come into the shop, I'll make you a cup of tea.'

'No, really, I'm OK. Thanks anyway, Mr Hussain.'

'Sure?'

'Sweartogod.'

A fireman who looked as if he was in charge came out of the building and said to a policeman, 'All clear in there.' Firemen began to coil up the fat hosepipe from out of the close. Reggie saw the goodlooking Asian policeman who gave a twitch of recognition at the sight of her, as ifhe knew her but couldn't place her. She turned away before he remembered who she was.

She turned up her collar and hunched herself into her jacket and walked away briskly, Sadie at her heels. She had no idea where she was going, she was just walking, away from the flat, away from Gorgie. It took her a moment to realize that she was being followed by a white van, which was kerb-crawling along behind her in a really creepy way. She picked up the pace, so did the van. She started running, Sadie lolloping along excitedly as if it was a game. The van accelerated too and cut her off at the next crossroad. Blondie and Ginger climbed out. They both walked with a bow-legged swagger, like apes.

They stood intimidatingly close to her, she could smell Ginger's breath, meaty, like a dog's. Close up, Blondie's skin was even worse, pitted and pocked like a barren moon.

'Are you Reggie Chase's sister, Billy?' Blondie demanded.

'VVhose sister?' Reggie asked, frowning innocently. As if she didn't know, as ifshe wasn't poor Reggie Chase, sister of the Artful Dodger. (As if she wasn't all the poor unwanted girls, the Florences, the Esthers, the Cecilia Jupes.)

'That wee shite Reggie Chase's sister,' Ginger said impatiently. Sadie growled at his tone ofvoice and the two men seemed to notice the dog for the first time, which was pretty slow of them considering how big she was but then they didn't look like they were at the front of the queue when brains were being handed out.

Ginger took a step back. 'She's a trained attack dog,' Reggie said hopefully. Sadie growled agam.

Blondie took a step back.

'Give your brother a message,' Ginger said. 'Tell the wee cunt that if he doesn't come up with the goods, if he doesn't give back what isn't his then-' he made a slashing motion across his throat. The pair of them really did like miming weapons.

Sadie started to bark in a way that even Reggie found quite alarming and both Blondie and Ginger retreated into the van. Ginger rolled down the passenger window and said, 'Give him this,' and threw something at her. Another Loeb, a red one this time, the Aeneid, Volume One. It flew through the air, its pages fluttering, and hit Reggie square on her cheekbone before dropping and spreadeagling on its spine on the pavement.

She picked it up. Same neat hole cut into its centre. She ran a finger around the sides of the little paper coffin. Was someone hiding secrets inside Ms MacDonald's Loeb classics? All of them? Or only the ones that she needed for her A Level? The cut-out hole was the work of someone who was good with his hands. Someone who might have had a future as a joiner but instead became a street-dealer hanging around on corners, pale and shifty. He was higher up the pyramid now but Billy was someone with no sense of loyalty. Someone who would take from the hand that fed him, and hide what he took in secret little boxes.

Reggie didn't mean to cry but she was so tired and so small and her face hurt where the book had hit it and the world was so full of big men telling people they were dead. Sweet little w~fe, pretty little baby.

Where did a person go when they had no one to turn to and nowhere left to run?

Jackson Leaves the Building THERE WERE SOME METAL STAPLES IN HIS FOREHEAD THAT GAVE HIM a passing resemblance to Frankenstein's monster. His bandaged left arm was strapped to his chest in a sling that kept his hand pledged on his heart all the time, which was one way ofmaking sure that you were alive. He had a recurrent vision of the artery inside his arm rupturing and spilling his blood again. But he was no longer fettered to a hospital bed. He was free. A little groggy, very sore -some ofhis bruises could have won competitions -but basically on the road to being a fully functioning human again.

He had to get out. Jackson hated hospitals. He had spent more time in them than most people. He had watched his mother take an eternity to die in one and as a police constable he had spent nearly every Saturday night taking statements in A and E. Birth, death (the one as traumatic as the other), injury, disease -hospitals weren't healthy places to hang around in. Too many sick people. Jackson wasn't sick, he was repaired, and he wanted to go home, or at least to the place he called home now, which was the tiny but exquisite flat in Covent Garden containing the priceless jewel that was his wife, or would contain her when she stepped off the plane at Heathrow on Monday morning. Not his real home, his real home, the one he never named any more, was the dark and sooty chamber in his heart that contained his sister and his brother and, because it was an accommodating kind of space, the entire filthy history of the industrial revolution. It was amazing how much dark matter you could crush inside the black hole of the heart.

WheneverJackson started to get fanciful he knew it must be time to go. 'I'm better now,' he said to Dr Foster.

'They all say that.'

'No, really. I am.'

'The clue is in the word "patient".'

'I don't need to be in hospital.'

'Yesterday you were going on about how you died and today you're ready to walk? Roll away the stone? Just like that?'

'Yes.'

'No.'

'I'm OK to leave now,' Jackson said to the boy-wizard doctor.

'Really?'

'Yes, really.'

'No, no, no, you missed the sarcastic inflexion. Listen agam Really?'

Pumped-up little Potter pillock.

'I'm A-OK,'Jackson said to Australian Mike. 'I need to get out ofthis place, it's doing my head in.'

'No worries,' the Flying Doctor said.

'Does that mean I can go?'

'Knock yourself out, mate. Discharge yourself. What's stopping you?'

'I haven't got any money. Or a driving licence.' (The latter seemed more important than the former.) 'Bummer.' 'I haven't even got any clothes.'

'They're your size,' Reggie said, indicating a large Topman bag at her feet. 'I went to Topman because I've got a store card. It might not really be your style. I bought you one of everything.' She looked embarrassed. 'And three pairs of underpants.' She looked even more embarrassed. 'Boxers. I took the size from your old clothes, the nurse gave them to me. They were ruined, they had to cut them off you and anyway they were covered in blood. I've got them in a black plastic bag, you probably want to throw them away.'

'Why did they give you my clothes?' Jackson puzzled when she paused for breath.

'I said I was your daughter.'

'My daughter?'

'Sorry.'

'And you're doing this because you're responsible for me?'

'Well, actually ...' Reggie said, 'it's more of a two-way thing.'

'I knew there had to be a catch,' Jackson said. There was always a catch. Since Adam turned to Eve (or more likely the other way round) and said, 'Oh, by the way, I wondered if ...' She had another fresh bruise, on her cheek this time. What did she do when she wasn't visiting him? Karate?

'You used to be a private detective. Right?' she said.

'Amongst other things.'

'So you used to find people?'

'Sometimes. I also lost people.'

'I want to hire you.'

'No.'

'Please.'

'No. I don't do that any more.'

'I really need your help, Mr Brodie.'

No,Jackson thought, don't ask for my help. People who asked for his help always led him down paths he didn't want to tread. Paths that led to the town called Trouble. 'And so does Dr Hunter,' she went on relentlessly. 'And so does her baby.'

'You're changing the rules as you go along,' Jackson said. 'First it was "you save me, I save you". Now I have to save complete strangers?'

'They're not strangers to me. I think they've been kidnapped.'

'Kidnapped?' Now she was getting really extreme.

He knew what she was going to say. Don't say it. Don't say the magic words. 'They need your help.' 'No. Absolutely not.'

'We should start with the aunt.' 'What aunt?'

Chapter V

And Tomorrow.

The Prodigal Wife.

ACCORDING TO HER SAT NAV IT WAS A HUNDRED AND SIXTY-ONE miles to Hawes and should take them three hours and twenty-three minutes, 'So let's see,' Louise said combatively as she started up the engine. Marcus, riding shotgun, gave her a salute and said, 'Chocks away.' An innocent. He was handsome, polished and new, like something just out of a chrysalis. Archie would never look like that at Marcus's age. Technically, she was old enough to be Marcus's mother. If she'd been a careless schoolgirl.

She hadn't been careless, she was on the Pill by the age of fourteen. Throughout her teens she had sex with older men, she hadn't realized at the time how pervy they must have been. Then, she was flattered by their attentions, now she'd have them all arrested.

With Patrick, in their courting period, when they were exchanging all those little intimacies ofa life -favourite films and books, pets you'd had ('Paddy' and 'Bridie', needless to say, had been the keepers of a childhood menagerie of hamsters, guinea pigs, dogs, cats, tortoises and rabbits), where you'd been on holiday (pretty much nowhere in Louise's case), how you lost your virginity and who with -he told her that he met Samantha during Freshers' week at Trinity College, 'And that was it.' 'But before that?' she said and he shrugged and said, Just a couple oflocal girls at home. Nice girls.' Three. Three sexual partners until he was widowed (all nice). There'd been girlfriends after Samantha but nothing serious, nothing indecorous. 'And you?' he asked. He had no idea how sexually incontinent Louise had been in her life and she wasn't about to enlighten him. 'Oh,' she said, blowing air out of her mouth. 'A handful of guys -if that -pretty long-term relationships really. Lost my virginity at eighteen to a boy I'd been going out with for a couple ofyears.' Liar, liar, pants on fire. Louise was ever a good deceiver, she often thought that in another life she would have made an excellent conwoman. Who knows, maybe even in this life, it wasn't over yet, after all.

She should have told the truth. She should have told the truth about everything. She should have said, 'I have no idea how to love another human being unless it's by tearing them to pieces and eating them.'

'A bit of fresh country air to blow away the cobwebs,' she said to Marcus. 'Just what the doctor ordered.'

Or, on the other hand, not. 'Late again?' Patrick said when she phoned to tell him about their 'wee jaunt' (as Marcus insisted on calling it). 'Couldn't you get the local police to pay this aunt a visit?' he said. 'It seems a long way to go just to check this thing out. It's not as if it's a case, it's not official, is it? Nothing's happened.'

'I don't tell you how to do surgery, Patrick,' she snapped, 'so I would really appreciate it if you didn't instruct me in police procedure. OK?' He had taken her on thinking she would improve, get better under his patient care, must be disappointed in her by now. The rose with the worm, the bowl with the crack. Nothing the doctor can do here.

'You're pissed offwith me,' she continued, 'because I got drunk on my own last night instead ofcoming to the "theatre", aren't you?' She put a camp emphasis on 'theatre' as if it was something boring and middle-class, as if she was Archie at his adolescent worst.

'I'm not accusing you of being drunk,' Patrick said placidly, not rising to the argument. 'You're doing that yourself.' Louise wondered about killing him. Simpler than divorce and it would give her a whole new set of problems to be challenged with instead of the tediously familiar old ones. She wondered if there was a part of Howard Mason that had been relieved when his family was conveniently erased. Just Joanna left, a permanent marker. Much better for him if she'd been wiped out as well.

'Don't get so het up,' Patrick said. 'That Scottish chip on your shoulder is getting in the way.'

'In the way of what?'

'Your better self. You're your own worst enemy, you know.'

She bit down on the snarl that was her instinctive response and muttered, 'Yeah, well, I've got a lot on my mind. Sorry,' she added.

'Sorry.'

'Me, too,' Patrick said and Louise wondered if she should read more into that statement.

They had crossed the border. Over the Tweed and under the wire. Frontier country.

'English rules apply now,' she said to Marcus.

'Wild aunt chase,' he said happily. 'Shall we have some music on, boss?' He inspected the Maria Callas compilation in the CD player and said doubtfully, 'Jings and help me Bob, boss. Not really road trip music, is it? I've got a couple of discs with me.' He raked around in the rucksack he always had with him and retrieved a CD carrying case and unzipped it. 'Be prepared,' he said. Yes, of course, he would have been a Boy Scout. The sort of boy who relished being able to tie knots and light a fire with a couple of sticks. The kind ofboy any mother would like to have. And she would bet her bottom dollar that he had joined the police because he wanted to help, to 'make a difference' .