Текст книги "When Will There Be Good News?"

Автор книги: Kate Atkinson

Соавторы: Kate Atkinson,Kate Atkinson
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

*

'Now what?' Jackson said when they finally made their escape. 'Fish and chips?' Reggie said hopefully. 'I'm starving.' 'No one eats in my car.'

Road Trip 'I GOT FOUR FISH SUPPERS, BOSS,' MARCUS SAID CLIMBING BACK IN the car. 'I didn't know what to do about the dog but he can have some of my fish, although it'll be a wee bit hot for him just now.' 'A dog person, are you?' Louise said, but he failed to catch her sarcasm and said, 'Love 'em. They're everything people should be.'

He was in the front passenger seat, Jackson and Reggie in the back, the dog sitting awkwardly between them. Louise had suggested putting the dog in the boot, an idea that was received with a chorus of horror from Reggie and Marcus. 'Just kidding,' she said, although they clearly didn't believe her.

'Still a hard-hearted woman, I see,' Jackson said. 'You know that I'm not actually going in the same direction that you are.'

'How true. In so many ways.'

'If you could just drop me somewhere -a train station, a bus station, the side of the road, anywhere really. I'm on my way home, to London.' 'Tough,' Louise said. 'You've committed a crime, several crimes actually. Obviously you're taking the stupid pills again -driving on a licence that isn't yours, driving when you're not fit to drive, what were you thinking? Let me guess, you weren't thinking at all. You've got mince for brains.'

'You haven't arrested me,' he said.

'Not yet.'

The Espace had been towed away, Louise had confiscated his driving licence -Andrew Decker's driving licence. It was obvious that neither Jackson nor Reggie had a clue who Andrew Decker was.

'So this,' Marcus turned and looked at Jackson, 'this is the guy in the hospital bed, the guy who was mistaken for Decker. Who keeps on being mistaken for Decker.' He blew on a chip to cool it down. 'And you know him, boss?'

'Unfortunately.' 'You never said. Shouldn't you have let the NorthYorkshire police charge him?' ('Ma'am,' one of the bookending officers had ventured, 'are you taking the prisoner back into custody?'

'He's not a prisoner,' Louise said. 'Just an idiot.')

'Yes I should. Anyone got any more questions to plague me with, or can I just drive?'

When they set off she claimed the driving seat before Marcus had a chance to offer to drive. Everyone in this car, as far as Louise was concerned, needed to know who was in charge.

'You look terrible,' she said, studying Jackson in the rear-view mirror. 'Even worse than you did earlier.'

'Earlier? When was there an earlier?'

'In your dreams,' she said.

'Congratulations,' Jackson said.

'On what?'

'Your promotion. And your marriage, of course.' She glanced round at him and he nodded at her wedding ring. She looked at her hand on the steering wheel, she could feel how tight the ring was on her finger. The diamond was back in the safe but she had kept her wedding ring on even though it was squeezing her flesh. A penance, like wearing a hair shirt. A hair shirt reminded you of your faith, a wedding ring that strangled your finger reminded you of your lack of it. Strangled, estranged -fat Hayley had been right, the words were very similar.

'You're married as well, apparently,' she said to him in the mirror. 'Sorry I didn't send a card or anything, that would be because -oh yes, you forgot to tell me.' She could feel Marcus cringing in the passenger seat next to her. Yeah, the grown-ups are fighting. Never pretty.

'It didn't take you long to get over Julia,' she carried on. 'Oh no, wait a minute, she cuckolded you, didn't she? Carrying another man's baby and all that. That must have made being dumped easier.' Jackson, rather admirably in Louise's unvoiced opinion, didn't rise to this remark. 'So don't even think about commenting on my relationships.'

'Your small talk hasn't improved,' he said, and then, unexpectedly, 'I missed you.'

'Not enough to stop you getting married.'

'You got married first.'

'I never had a full set of parents,' a small VOIce m the back interjected. 'I often wondered what it would be like.' 'Probably not like this,' Marcus said.

'The aunt, the aunt,' Reggie had chanted when she first saw Louise. 'The aunt lives in Hawes, it's not far away. We have to go and see if Dr Hunter's there. She's been kidnapped.'

'Well, not by the aunt, I can assure you of that,' Louise said.

Reggie's little face lit up. 'You're down here to see the aunt!You've spoken to Dr Hunter? You've seen the baby?' 'No.' The little face fell. 'No?' 'The aunt's dead.' 'She must have been very sick then,' Reggie said solemnly. 'Poor Dr Hunter.'

'She's been dead a while,' Louise admitted reluctantly. 'Two weeks to be precise.'

'Two weeks? I don't understand,' Reggie said.

'Neither do I,' Louise said. 'Neither do I.'

Reggie inventoried the entire contents ofJoanna Hunter's handbag again, announcing each item loudly from the back -'A packet of Polos, a small pack of Kleenex, a hairbrush, her Filofax, her inhaler, her spectacles, her purse. These aren't things you leave behind.'

Not unless you were in a hurry, Louise thought.

'Not unless you were in a hurry,' Jackson said.

'Don't start thinking,' Louise warned him.

'Look at the facts,' he said, ignoring her advice. 'The woman has definitely gone AWOL, but whether voluntarily or against her will, that's the question.'

'No shit, Sherlock,' Louise muttered.

'Something bad has happened to Dr Hunter,' Reggie said stoutly. 'I know it has. I keep telling you the man in Mr Hunter's house was threatening him, he said something would happen to "you and yours". He wasn't joking.'

'I'm just kicking the wheels on this,' Jackson said, 'but maybe the husband's covering for her?'

'Why?' Louise said.

'Dunno. He's her husband, that's what spouses do.'

'Do they?' Louise said. 'What's she called?'

'Who? What's who called?'

'Your spouse.'

'Tessa. She's called Tessa. You would like her,' he added. 'You would like my wife.'

'No I wouldn't.'

'Yes you would,' Jackson said.

'Oh,just shut up.'

'Make me,' Jackson said.

'Stop it,' the small voice of reason in the back seat said.

'She left everything,' Reggie said. 'Her phone, her purse, her spectacles, her inhaler, her spare inhaler, her dog, the baby's blanket. Plus she didn't get changed, the first thing she does is get changed and the men who were threatening Mr Hunter said he would never hear from them again if he didn't come up with the goods. And the aunt doesn't exist! WHAT MORE EVIDENCE DOYOU NEED?'

'Get her to breathe into a paper bag or something, will you?' Louise said to Jackson.

*

'But,' Marcus said, 'does it have anything to do with Decker or not? Is it just a coincidence that he appears at the exact moment that she disappears? And what? He just walked away from the train crash?'

'He hasn't actually appeared anywhere,' Louise pointed out. 'He's the invisible man.' 'Decker,' Jackson murmured, gazing thoughtfully out of the car window. 'Decker? Why do I know that name?'

The absence of Decker, the presence ofJackson. As if they had changed places in some mysterious way. Jackson had lost his BlackBerry in the train crash and mysteriously acquired Decker's driving licence at the same time. Had he unknowingly swapped with Decker? Was Decker the man who rang Joanna Hunter's phone when Louise was in the house yesterday morning? He had been looking for ']0', not Joanna, not Dr Hunter. Is that what she had said to him when she visited him in prison -Call me Jo? What else did she say to him?

'What else did you lose?' Louise asked Jackson. 'Credit cards, driving licence, keys,' Jackson said. 'There's an address book in the BlackBerry.'

'So your whole identity, basically. What if Decker's using it? You get the driving licence of a Category A prisoner with a warrant out against him and he gets you -upstanding citizen -so-called -credit cards, money, keys, a phone. The last person who phoned Joanna Hunter on Wednesday called on your phone, your BlackBerry, so perhaps it was Decker. He phones Joanna Hunter and then she disappears. Neil Hunter says she left at seven but we only have his word for it. Maybe she left later, after the phone call. And if she did drive away -somehow or other, not in her car, not in a rental -and she wasn't driving down to see the aunt then where was she going? To meet someone else? Decker? Did he catch the train to Edinburgh because they had arranged a meeting? He gets derailed, literally, he phones her afterwards and she goes off to meet him.'

'And then what?' Marcus said.

'That's the bit that worries me. What about CCTV, there must be cameras up where she lives, lots of rich people live on that street, and-' 'Back up a minute,' Jackson said. 'Why are you so interested in this guy Decker? I don't understand.' 'Yes,' Reggie said. 'Who is Andrew Decker? And what's he got to do with Dr Hunter?'

Sorry, kid, Louise thought. She hadn't wanted to be the one to tell Reggie aboutJoanna Hunter's past. As she expected, this information made Reggie even more vocal. (,Murdered? Her whole family?') The girl was a terrier, you had to hand it to her. She wasn't even related to Joanna Hunter and yet she seemed to care about her more than anyone else. Louise couldn't imagine Archie feeling like this about her.

'Jesus,' Jackson said. 'Of course -Andrew Decker. How could I have forgotten that name? We were on manoeuvres on Dartmoor. We were called in to search for the missing girl, the one that got away.'

'Joanna Mason,' Louise said. 'Now Joanna Hunter.'

'And now you have to look for her again,' Reggie said to Jackson.

'Just because something bad happened to her once doesn't mean it's happened again,' Louise said to Reggie.

'No,' Reggie said. 'You're wrong. Just because something bad happened to her once doesn't mean it won't happen again. Believe me, bad things happen to me all the time.'

'Me too,' Jackson said.

'You're worried that this Decker's going after Joanna Hunter?' Jackson asked Louise. 'It seems unlikely, I've never heard of anyone doing that.'

'To tell you the truth I'm beginning to worry that Joanna Hunter is going after Andrew Decker.'

'On the other hand,' Louise said.

They were parked on the forecourt of a service station. Marcus and Reggie were in the shop buying snacks and Jackson had slipped into the front passenger seat. He was giving off heat. Louise wondered if he had a fever or ifshe was imagining it because of her own overheated state. She wanted him to hold her, she wanted to let her bones melt, even if for a moment. She never felt like this with Patrick, never wanted to stop being Louise, but sitting here on the brightly lit forecourt she wanted to give in, leave the battlefield. Was there a way of keeping him this time, locking him up in a prison, a box, a safe, so he couldn't get away again?

'On the other hand what?' he prompted.

'Neil Hunter, Joanna's husband, is hardly above suspicion. For all we know he's done away with her himself. And the baby. Maybe she was leaving him and he lost it.'

'It happens.'

'On the other hand ... he also knows some quite interesting people.'

'Interesting?'

'What we in the trade call "criminals". Some guys from Glasgow we've been hearing rumours about for a while. A guy called Anderson. He's trying to get into town, muscle in on some legit businesses. Private car hire being a particular favourite apparently.'

'Mini-cabs?'

'Yeah. And amusement arcades. Health clubs. Ropy beauty parlours. Guess who owns all of those?' 'Neil Hunter?' 'Bingo. One ofhis amusement arcades burned down last week and there's been some other stuff.'

'Stuff?'

'Technical term. We were looking at Hunter for wilful fire-raising but now I'm seriously beginning to wonder. What if Anderson's threatening Hunter's family? Kidnapped, Reggie keeps saying and she's been right about everything else so far. Bizarrely.'

'You and yours. Think about it. Sweet little wife, pretty little baby. Do you want to see them again? Because it's your call. That's what Reggie said.'

'You've got a good memory for an old man.'

'Lot of rote learning at school. And I'm forty-nine. Younger than your spouse, I believe. Do you want to see them again? Do you think they're being held somewhere?'

'And the aunt was just a red herring. A wild goose. A way of throwing anyone offwho was worried aboutJoanna Hunter's sudden disappearance,' Louise said. 'The ironic thing is that her husband needn't have bothered, Decker leaving prison gave Joanna Hunter a really good reason not to be around. Neil Hunter should never have gone down the aunt route.'

'Good theories,' Jackson said. 'How are we going to prove or disprove them?'

'We're doing nothing. Just me. I'm the real police, you're just a waster. Basically.'

'Thanks.' He reached his hand out and took hers and said, 'I really did miss you, you know.' Her mouth went dry and her heart slipped into overdrive as ifshe had some kind ofvirus and she thought about starting the engine and driving him away to the nearest hotel, barn or lay-by, but Marcus and Reggie were already barrelling out of the shop and she only just had time to reclaim her hand before they bundled back into the car, bringing in a draught of cold night air and ripping open crisp packets.

'Do you want your seat back?' Jackson said to Marcus and he said, 'No, you're all right, I'm happy back here with the dog,' but Louise said to him, 'Actually, you can drive, I'm feeling tired, I'll sit in the back,' because she couldn't bear to be so close to Jackson and not be able to touch him again.

'No probs,' Marcus said. 'All change. Men in the front, women in the back, just how it should be. Joking obviously,' he added swiftly, catching sight of Louise's face in the rear-view mirror.

It was dark long before they recrossed the border. The miles after Berwick dragged. They dropped Reggie and Jackson in Musselburgh. 'You're sure you want him staying with you?' Louise said doubtfully to Reggie.

'He hasn't got anywhere else to go.' 'Well, I do have a home to go to actually,' Jackson pointed out. 'It's just that the world and his wife seems intent on stopping me reaching it.'

'You have to help find Dr Hunter,' Reggie said.

'Finding Dr Hunter is my job, not his, Reggie,' Louise said. 'I don't want any amateur interference.' She turned to Jackson and said, 'We can do this without your help, thank you.'

'Go home to your kids, Herb, kind of thing?'

'Exactly.'

'Nice wheels,' he said, patting the roof of the BMW affectionately as if it was an old friend. 'Bugger off.' 'I'll see you tomorrow,' he said. 'Will you?' 'Yes, of course.' Her heart lifted, she would see him again tomorrow. This was how teenage girls felt, how Louise had never felt when she was a teenage girl. Patrick was right, she'd never had an adolescence. Making up for it now.

'I wouldn't go home without saying goodbye,' he said. Bastard. She wasn't enough to keep him, couldn't compete with the pull of his new wife. Tessa. Bitch.

She wanted to say, come home with me -well, not home, she could hardly take him home, introduce him to her husband, to Bridget and Tim, 'This is Jackson Brodie, the man I should have married.' Not married. Marriage was for fools. The man she should have run away with. Over the hills and far away. 'Take a leap of faith with me,' that's what she wanted to say to him. But of course she didn't.

'Who's Herb?' Marcus puzzled.

'Shit. I should have taken that handbag off Reggie.' What was happening to her? She wasn't usually forgetful. Now she was beginning to feel as if her brain was fraying.

'I'll organize a uniform in the morning, boss.'

'You're a wee treasure, so you are.'

Marcus said, 'Just drop me somewhere,' and she said, 'Don't be silly, I'll drop you off at home.' He lived in South Queensferry, miles out of her way.

'I'm miles out of your way, boss.'

'Not a problem, really. I've got my second wind.' He still lived with his mother. Archie wouldn't still be living with her when he was twenty-six. 'Girlfriend?' She'd never thought to ask before, Marcus had never seemed like a boy who had a girl.

'Ellie.'

'But not living with her?'

'Next step, boss. We went to view a house last night as a matter of fact. Malbet Wynd.'

Yes, of course, he was a boy who did things properly, in steps and stages. A girl called Ellie, a house in Malbet Wynd. He prepared for things.

After he'd climbed out of the car Louise slid back over into the driving seat and rolled the window down. 'First thing in the morning we need to find out ifJackson Brodie's credit cards have been used and where. And see if we can put some kind of trace on that phone.'

'Right, boss.'

'Night, Scout.'

'Night, boss.'

She waited until he'd unlocked the front door and turned and waved goodbye before disappearing into the house. A curtain twitched in a downstairs room, his aspirational mother she supposed.

She sat for a while longer wondering if there was somewhere she could go that wasn't home. Fife and all points north was just across the water. How far could she get before anyone noticed she was gone?

Tribulation WITH HINDSIGHT, REGGIE COULD SEE NOW THAT PERHAPS SHE should have mentioned her criminal relations to Jackson Brodie. If she'd warned him about her brother, for example, before inviting him to stay with her tonight, then he might not have walked into Ms MacDonald's living room ahead of her (while she locked the front door so they would be safe -irony, ha, etcetera) and found himself with a nasty-looking penknife nicking the skin covering his carotid artery at almost the exact spot where she had desperately felt for a pulse on the night of the train crash. Billy was on the other end of the knife.

'Surprise!' Billy said flatly. 'Who is this joker?' He pressed the knife deeper into jackson's neck. 'What's he doing here?'

'Let him go,' Reggie said. There was no point in appealing to Billy's better nature because he didn't have one, but a person had to try. 'He's nobody to you.'

To her surprise, and Jackson's too, Billy did let go of him, shoving him to the floor where he landed heavily as he only had one good arm to break his fall. Reggie was caught off guard by Billy grabbing her instead, putting his arm round her neck, almost crushing her windpipe. He used to do the same thing when they were little. Mum would say, Give your little sister a kiss to say sorry, because he was always having to apologize for some misdemeanour -snatching her doll, kicking over her Lego, biting -he was a terrible biter -and he would sing out 'Soreee, Reggie,' and under cover of kissing her would halfstrangle her and Mum would say, Bad boy, Billy. He looked wild-eyed, like the horses in Midmar field did when Sadie got too close to them.

Jackson struggled on to all fours and then got slowly to his feet. Billy stopped trying to choke her and instead pressed the point of the knife against her neck and said to Jackson, 'Don't even think about doing anything.' She could feel the blade, cold and sharp on her skin. It was such a small knife yet it could do so much damage to her.

There were books allover the place. Jackson stood in the middle of the floor amongst the wreckage ofMs MacDonald's library, tensed and on his toes like a fighter ready to go into battle. She could see him thinking, weighing up possibilities and she thought, oh no, don't.

'I'm your sister, Billy,' she whispered to her brother. 'Your own flesh and blood.' Better nature, appealing, no point etcetera, but still you had to try.

'He's your brother?' Jackson said. 'You little fucker,' he said to Billy. 'It's your job to look after your sister.' 'Says you and whose Bible?' Billy said but she did feel his hold on her lessen a fraction.

'Your friends have been looking for you,' she said to him.

'What friends?' Billy said. 'I don't have any friends.' The sad thing was that he said it like he was proud of the fact.

'You told them you were called Reggie, didn't you?' Reggie said. 'Told them you lived in Gorgie. They came and threatened me, they set fire to my home.'

'Yeah, it's a funny old world, as dear old Mum would have said.'

'Don't speak about Mum like that.' Ifshe could just keep him talking he would get bored, he had the lowest boredom threshold of any human being ever, and then he would leave and then Jackson wouldn't do whatever it was he was about to do -going for Billy with his bare hands by the look of it.

And then she heard it. It was the primeval sound of a huge wolf roused from its ancient lair. The creature was standing in the doorway, its hackles raised, its fangs bared, a great growling, snarling noise in its savage chest.

Reggie had forgotten about Sadie. The dog had raced up the stairs when they first came in the house, still in pursuit of Banjo's ghostly trail.

The dog rose on its haunches and with one leap was on Billy, grabbing on to his forearm and sinking its teeth in so that Billy dropped the knife and started screaming at Reggie to get the dog off him. Reggie tried yelling, 'Down, Sadie,' but it had no effect. Then Jackson did something you wouldn't expect him to do, he punched the dog hard on the side of the head and her jaws slackened and she dropped to the floor like a sandbag. That was when things went a bit blurred for Reggie. Within a second,Jackson had Billy on the ground, kneeling on his kidneys while he shoved his good hand on the back of his neck.

Billy's arm was bleeding from the dog-bite but not in a lifethreatening way, not in a way that made Reggie want to rush to his help. Like any good first-aider she treated the most injured party first, cradling Sadie's big head in her lap and murmuring soothing words to her. Jackson got to his feet and said to Billy, 'Don't move. Not so much as a twitch.'Then he turned to Reggie and said, 'Your brother, your call. Want me to phone the police?'

They let Billy go. Gave him a second chance. Not really a second, more like a hundredth. 'Blood is blood,' Reggie said. 'After all.' Considering he used to be a policeman, Jackson didn't seem to care one way or the other. Anyone could see, he said, 'anyone except his sister perhaps', that 'Billy-boy' was hurtling at breakneck speed towards a bad end without any intervention from anyone. No, she assured him, his sister could see that too.

'What was he after anyway?' he asked and Reggie shrugged and said, 'Oh, something and nothing. This and that. You need to go to bed,' she added. 'It's been a long day.'

'Bit of an understatement,' he laughed.

High Noon 'YOU NEED TO GO TO BED,' REGGIE SAID TO HIM. 'IT'S BEEN A LONG day.' 'Bit of an understatement,' he said.

He couldn't sleep. The thin, damp pillow and even thinner, even damper sheets didn't help. (Who was this Ms MacDonald to have lived in such a bleak house?) He lay awake for a long time listening to Reggie moving about in the living room. He couldn't work out what she was doing but when he came down to investigate he found her putting all the books back on the shelves, like a busy little nocturnal librarian. 'Tidying up,' she said. 'I'm not keeping you awake, am I?'

He went back to bed and looked for something to read but the only thing he could find in the bedroom was an ancient copy of Latin unseen translations. He hadn't gone to the kind of school where they did Latin. After tossing and turning some more he went back down to look for some livelier reading matter and found Reggie fast asleep on the sofa with all the lights on. The dog was lying on the floor next to her and when it heard Jackson it woke up and stared intently at him. He lifted his hands in a no-threat gesture, a mime which did little to mollifY the dog who tracked Jackson with its eyes all the way round the room. You could hardly blame it for distrusting him, he'd given it a real whack to the head, but it seemed none the worse for the blow. Nonetheless Jackson felt bad about hitting it, the dog was only doing what he would have done himself, after all.

He couldn't find a readable book in the whole place. Then he forgot about reading because he caught sight of Joanna Hunter's handbag, sitting on what was probably a coffee table but it was covered in so much crap that it could have been a SecondWorld War tank and you wouldn't have been able to tell.

He was surprised that Louise hadn't taken the bag into her custody. If it had been his case he would have found it very interesting that a woman who for all intents and purposes had disappeared off the planet had left a bag full of information behind. He carefully opened the bag, watched all the time by the dog, lifted out the bulging Filofax and leafed through it until he found what he was looking for. Joanna Hunter's address.

She had been found once, she would be found again. She wasn't Joanna Hunter any more. She wasn't a GP or a wife, she wasn't Reggie's employer ('and friend'), she wasn't the woman that Louise was concerned about. She was a little girl out in the dark, dirty and stained with her mother's blood. She was a little girl who was fast asleep in the middle of a field of wheat as men and dogs streamed unknowingly towards her, lighting their way with torches and moonlight.

Later, when he was a policeman himself, he never went on a search in the countryside that carried on after nightfall and he realized that on that warm summer night in Devon all of them -squaddies, policemen, members of the public -must have entered into some unspoken communal agreement to carry on looking for Joanna Mason even when it was impossible, so great was their sense of desperation.

He covered Reggie with the tatty crocheted blanket that was on the back of the sofa. He was surprised at how paternal he felt towards her, he had thought he would only ever feel that way towards his own. He made a kind of farewell gesture to the dog and turned the lights out before tip-toeing down the hall to the front door.

He had his hand on the latch when a voice said, 'I hope you're not thinking of going anywhere without me.' A little, insistent voice. 'As if,' Jackson said.

There was a Nissan Pathfinder parked in the drive of the Hunters' house, behind Neil Hunter's Range Rover. 'I've seen it before,' Reggie said. 'The guys who threatened Mr Hunter were driving it.'

'And here they are again.'

'We should follow them,' Reggie said. 'When they leave. If they leave.'

'On foot?' Jackson said, 'I don't think that will work.' They had taken a taxi from Musselburgh and it had dropped them off at the end of the Hunters' street. The place was deserted, not a light on, not a cat out.

'Well,' Reggie said, 'we can take Dr Hunter's car. It's in the garage.'

Jackson wondered if it was possible to hot-wire a Prius. Modern car technology was killing the handy criminal methods of car-starting. 'The spare keys are in the garage,' Reggie said. 'On a shelf, behind an old paint pot. Clouded Pearl.'

'What?'

'Clouded Pearl, it's the name of the colour. Dr Hunter said no one would ever look there. I'll get them.'

He held back. It was a while since he'd tailed anyone in a car. First it had been criminals, then it was adulterous spouses. Now it was big men in bad cars. Or vice versa. They had crept across the lawn and into the garage only seconds before two guys came noisily out of the house and climbed into the Nissan. Jackson had come with the intention of interrogating Hunter but he reckoned there might be a chance that the Nissan would lead them, if not to Dr Hunter, then to something or somewhere interesting. Louise had proposed three theories on the garage forecourt -revenge, murder and kidnap. He was going with kidnap. He should have kissed her. He had held back because they were both married but maybe he was using that as an excuse, maybe he was just a coward. Anyway, she would probably have hit him if he'd tried.

To drive, he removed his arm from the sling. Adrenalin was keeping the pain away, in fact he felt remarkably energetic, thanks to a fresh dose from Australian Mike's pharmaceutical cornucopia.

'Don't crash this car,' Reggie said.

The dog in the back seat gave a soft whine. 'She's happy to be back in Dr Hunter's car and at the same time sad that Dr Hunter isn't in it.'

'You speak Dog, do you?'

'Yes.'

Reggie had insisted they bring the dog. Jackson could feel its eyes boring into the back of his head and he wondered if it was planning on getting its own back on him. Reggie was reading road signs again. 'Loanhead, Roslin, Auchendinny, Penicuik,' she said.

'OK,' Jackson said, 'I can read.'

'Just like old times,' she said.

'You mean yesterday, which since neither ofus has slept still counts as today?' He was getting really good at this time thing now.

The road out of Edinburgh was quiet but not deserted, it was five 0'clock on a winter morning but there were already people on the move, making their grudging way through the early morning dark. A few supermarket lorries thundered along and a speeding motorcyclist hurtled past, eager to donate an organ in time for someone's Christmas, but nothing happened to stop Jackson keeping the Nissan in his sights.

It became more difficult when it turned offthe main drag. Jackson held back as much as he could, but he didn't know these roads and he was worried the Nissan would take an unexpected turning and be gone before he could spot it. For a while he did think he'd lost it but then he saw taillights ahead, sitting high on the road, and guessed it was his target. They turned off on to what looked like a farm road, tail lights bouncing along now. Jackson drove past the turning and then reversed back, turned off his lights and followed from afar. There had been no sign at the turning to indicate where it led to but it didn't seem like the kind ofroad that went many places.

After a couple of hundred yards he parked the car at the entrance to a field. It wasn't entirely hidden from view but it wasn't completely in the open either.

'Right,' he said to Reggie. 'You -and the dog -both stay here. I mean it, OK? I know that you are exactly the kind ofperson who will get out of this car the minute I'm out ofsight, but I'm asking you to solemnly promise to stay here. Promise?'

'Promise,' she said meekly.

He had found a hefty Maglite in Joanna Hunter's glove-box. In an emergency it was an excellent weapon and he could have done with it himself but he gave it to Reggie and said, 'If anyone comes near you, hit them with this.'