Big Sky Page 11

  “Oh, you know,” Vince said, mustering an attempt at bonhomie, “can’t complain.” He had lost the appetite for confrontation with Wendy and said, “Better get going, anyway. See you around, Benny.”

  “Yeah, Vince, see you around.”

  Vince crawled between his stale-smelling sheets. Yes, there was something more pathetic than an about-to-be-divorced middle-aged man ordering a single fish supper—it was an about-to-be-divorced middle-aged man lugging a bag of dirty washing through the streets to a launderette. The company car had disappeared with the job, the dog with the marriage, and the washing machine with the house. What would be taken from him next? he wondered.

  He lay awake, staring at the ceiling. The pubs had just emptied and it was far too noisy to sleep. He could hear the nerve-jangling noise of Carmody’s amusement arcade across the way. The Carmody family still ran it. Every time he passed it Vince could see Carmody’s stringy daughter sitting in the change booth, looking bored to death. They used to call it Carmody’s “empire,” just because he had more than one arcade in more than one town. Four amusement arcades do not an empire make, Vince thought. And now where was Carmody? Sitting in a jail cell somewhere, an emperor deposed. “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Vince thought. He had learned that poem at school. He had an excellent memory, more curse than gift. Was Carmody really going to name names? Depose more emperors? Or just their minions?

  He was dog-tired, but he expected that as with most nights since he had moved here he would have a tortured, restless sleep. The usual pattern was that just as he managed to forget his troubles and drop off, he would be rudely woken by the seagulls performing their morning tap-dancing routine on the pantiled roof above his head.

  Vince sighed. He was reluctantly coming to the realization that nobody would care if he didn’t wake up in the morning. Vince wasn’t sure that he cared himself. If he fell off a cliff, like Lesley Holroyd, he doubted that there would even be a bunch of withered flowers to mark the spot. A tear ran down his cheek. I am very sad, he thought. A very sad man. Perhaps it was time to call time on it all.

  Encore

  “How do you get a nun pregnant?”

  Harry had never listened to the punch line to this joke because when he heard it on the backstage speaker it was his five-minute cue to make sure everything was in place for Barclay Jack’s exit, stage left. No bear to pursue him. Barclay Jack himself was the bear. As soon as he was offstage he had to have a cigarette and a gin—three ice cubes, splash of tonic. (“And I mean a splash, kid. The tonic just waves at the gin from a distance—capiche?”) Harry also had to have a clean towel ready for Barclay Jack to mop the sweat off his face (and his bald pate) and the makeup-remover wipes out. After that Barclay always had to have a burger. Harry had already slipped out and bought one and now it was reheating in the little microwave that the chorus girls kept in their dressing room, where they wandered around half-naked without any embarrassment. (“Zip me up, Harry, will you?”) He was like a puppy to them, amusing and quite cute but utterly sexless. He sometimes dreamt about them at night, but not in a good way.

  They were already queuing in the wings for the finale. Everyone complained about the curtain call, especially the chorus girls, as it wasn’t a proper finale and they had to hang around for most of the second half just to take a bow after a ten-second reprise of cancan kicks. Barclay Jack had insisted on it, said he wasn’t going to be alone onstage at the end as if he had no friends. “But you have no friends, Barclay,” Bunny said to him.

  Harry joined the girls (women, really) in the wings, where they were jostling like a flock of giant restless birds, squashing him with their muscular, fishnetted legs—it wasn’t just the plumes in their headdresses and tails or their enormous eyelashes (almost as big as Bunny’s) that made him think of ostriches. They smelled ripe because their costumes only got dry-cleaned once a week. Their hair lacquer and makeup were industrial strength and gave off an odd chemical aura, like ozone.

  “Because a man will actually search for a golf ball!” Barclay Jack yelled. Conversely, Harry had never heard the first line of this particular joke, not that he wanted to. One of the girls snorted with derision, even though she had heard the act dozens of times—Barclay’s set was the same every night, no changes, no variation. And he hated hecklers because he had no witty ripostes. It was funny, Harry thought, but for a comedian he seemed to have very little sense of humor. Harry liked jokes. He had lots of them. (“Go on, then, make me laugh,” Barclay said. “What cheese would you use to disguise a horse?” “I don’t know.” “Mascarpone. Get it? Mask a pony.” “Jesus, kid, don’t give up the day job.”)

  Just the iceberg-lettuce joke to go and it would be over. Even from here you could see the pearls of sweat on Barclay Jack’s face. He looked horribly unhealthy. From the opposite wing, Bunny, in full sequin mode, winked at Harry and made a rude gesture in the direction of Barclay Jack. Bunny was second on the bill, closing the first half of the show. He’d had a standing ovation tonight—his act finished on such a crescendo that sometimes the audience seemed unable to stop themselves leaping to their feet. Barclay fumed every time Bunny had a good show.

  “A man walks into a doctor’s surgery with a piece of lettuce hanging out of his arse!” Barclay yelled. “And so the doctor says, ‘I’d better have a look, drop your trousers and bend over. Hm,’ he says, ‘I see what you mean. It certainly looks as if you’ve got a problem there.’ And the man says, ‘It’s just the tip of the iceberg, Doctor.’” The audience howled their approval.

  “That’s all, folks. Ladies and gentlemen, you have been a fucking brilliant audience, see you all again soon, I hope.” Barclay Jack walked offstage to rowdy applause before pirouetting in the wings and walking back out and taking a bow. The lights were killed before he’d got offstage a second time, giving him no chance to milk the applause. Harry knew the ASM would be in for it later.

  Harry watched as Barclay’s audience-pleasing grin turned to a grimace. “Get my drink,” he growled at Harry. “And get your skates on.”

  “Yes, Mr. Jack.”

  WWMMD?

  Jackson was idling on his phone. He was on a messaging app, but no one had a message for him. There were two sofas in the living room of the cottage, Jackson occupied one, a snoring Queen of Carthage the other. The television was still on, one of those channels aimed at the insomniac elderly that showed old crime shows, presumably because they were cheap to buy. An ancient Midsomer Murders gave way to an early episode of Collier. Jackson was keeping a weather eye out for an appearance by Julia. When it came it was fleeting. She was in the mortuary, holding what was meant to be a human heart in her hand. (“Healthy male,” she said. “No sign of heart problems.”) There was a metaphor in there somewhere but he wasn’t sure what it was. Did she hold his heart in her hand? (And was he a healthy male?)

  Since he’d started living up here and seeing her regularly on account of the endless dropping off and picking up of Nathan, they’d fallen into a comfortable routine with each other. “Like putting on a pair of old slippers,” she said. “Thanks,” Jackson said. “Just what I’ve always wanted to hear from a woman.” They had kissed once—no, twice—but it had gone no further, and one of those times had been Christmas, which didn’t really count.

  He’d finally managed to persuade Nathan to go to bed—the same tedious tussle every evening. “Why? I’m not tired,” he repeated endlessly in the hope of wearing Jackson into indifference. He’d gone up to say good night, stifling the instinct to hug his son for fear of rejection. He should be more hands-on, like Julia. (Hold him down for me, will you?) He was probably still awake up there, Snapchatting by the light of the silvery moon. It was more golden than silver tonight, fat and round, dominating the dark night sky above the wood. Jackson hadn’t drawn the curtains and he could see it climbing up the window. He heard an owl. He had thought before living here that owls made gentle, fairy-tale sounds—twit-ta-whooo—but this one sounded like an old m
an with a bad smoker’s cough.

  The phone rang. Jackson sighed. There was only one person who called him this late.

  “Are you in bed? Shall I tell you story? Bedtime story?” Tatiana purred. Jackson wished she didn’t always sound like a sex-phone operator. And, no, he had never phoned a sex line—but he always imagined they were manned (or womanned) not by the Tatianas of this world but by harassed yet practical women, mothers who were talking filth to their unseen clients while sorting out their son’s football kit or stirring a spaghetti sauce for tea. Older women, supplementing their pension, half an eye on a muted Countdown while pretending to be in the grip of ecstasy.

  “No, I’m not in bed,” he said. Even if he had been he would have denied it. It would have made him feel vulnerable and weirdly unsexed when talking to Tatiana. “How about you just tell me what happened,” he said. “Everything all right?”

  “Everything okey-dokey.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In taxi. Just left Malmaison. Robbie is very naughty boy.” Sometimes—often, in fact—Jackson got the feeling that Tatiana was perfectly capable of using tenses and articles and all the other little bits and pieces of grammar but she just preferred to sound like a comedy Russian. “I meet him in hotel bar and say, ‘You want to buy lady drink?’ and then after drink, I say I have room here, does he want to come up? He say da. I say, ‘Do you have girlfriend?’”

  “And he say?”

  “Nyet. Says he’s single and fancy.”

  “Fancy-free,” he corrected. “Did you record all this?”

  “Da. Don’t worry.”

  Should he worry? His job was to protect women (yes, it was), not pay them to put themselves in positions where they might be at risk. What if it got her into trouble? She wasn’t most women, of course, she was Siberian and could probably smash a man’s head like a walnut with those nutcracker thighs.

  Tatiana was off the books, although Jackson was more than willing to pay her and gather PAYE and National Insurance and whatever else was legally required, but she was Russian, which was synonymous with cash. There was no cliché she couldn’t live up to. He sometimes imagined that one day he would discover she wasn’t Siberian at all but had actually been born somewhere like Scunthorpe or Skegness and had worked on the counter at Greggs before deciding to reinvent herself.

  “Poor girlfriend—whatshername.”

  “Jenna,” Jackson said. “You know her name very well.”

  “No wedding bells now.” Tatiana was entirely devoid of sympathy. She would make a perfect assassin. In fact, he wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t moonlight as one.

  “Where is he now?” he asked. “Robbie.”

  “In hotel room waiting for me. Ha. Long wait. I’m going home.”

  Jackson had no idea where Tatiana lived. “Home” sounded far too cozy a word for her. It was easier to imagine her in a forest lair or lying on a tree branch, one eye open even in sleep, ready to swoop on an unsuspecting victim, but no, she was a creature of surprises. “Going to have hot chocolate and watch old Marple,” she said.

  As he ended the call, Jackson suddenly remembered the girl on the Esplanade. He thought about the backpack with the rainbows and the unicorn and the speed with which she’d slipped into the Peugeot and disappeared. He felt a surge of guilt. He still had some contacts in the police. Tomorrow he’d try to find out if any girls were missing, perhaps see if anyone could do anything with that blurred number plate. He felt bad for having forgotten about her, but it had been a long day.

  Barclay Jack was still niggling away at him, struggling to rise free of the anchor that was keeping him on the neglected seabed of Jackson’s memory. Oh, yeah. He’d done a gig for Britain First. That would be about right.

  On the TV Miss Marple was deadheading roses in her garden in St. Mary Mead. What would she have done about the girl? he wondered. He was distracted from this line of thought by the herald of a little ding from his phone. He had a message.

  EWAN: Hi. How u doing? u good?

  CHLOE: Yh, good. WUUP2?

  EWAN: Not much? Sos u 14?

  CHLOE: 13.

  EWAN: U don’t look it.

  CHLOE: Lols wish i wasn’t.

  EWAN: Btw. Send more photos. No clothes, yh?!

  CHLOE: Don’t know. Do u—

  “Dad?”

  Shit. Jackson signed off hastily:

  CHLOE: Gtg. Parents here.

  EWAN: TLK2UL8R

  Nathan smirked and said, “Catch you watching porn, did I?”

  “Ha, ha. Work, actually, for my eyes only.” It was true, it was work. A different version of the honeypot. Jackson was masquerading as a teenage girl called Chloe, which was precisely as challenging as he had envisaged it would be when he took on the job. “Why aren’t you in bed?”

  “Couldn’t sleep. There’s something making a racket outside.”

  “It’s an owl.”

  “And I thought I heard screaming.”

  “A fox. It’s a jungle out there, son.”

  Darcy Slee

  On a dark street the nondescript gray hatchback slithered quietly to a halt beneath a streetlight that was helpfully broken. The car’s engine was killed and the driver, almost as anonymous-looking as the Peugeot itself, climbed out and shut the car door with a quiet clunk. The passenger door opened and a girl climbed out. The driver waited on the pavement for her to heave her backpack from out of the footwell. The colors of the little rainbows had all turned to gray in the dark and the unicorn had been rendered almost invisible. She closed the car door and heard the little chirrup as the man locked it. He went ahead of her, then turned and smiled and said, “This way, follow me.” He approached a house, the door key ready in his hand. Darcy hesitated for a moment. Something told her that she should run, but she was only thirteen and hadn’t learned to listen to her instincts yet, so she slung her backpack over one shoulder and followed the man into the house.

  Beachcombing

  Jackson took Dido for her usual morning constitutional. He’d left Nathan sleeping in bed. He was old enough, surely, to be left on his own? It wasn’t illegal and anyway Jackson could guarantee that he’d still be fast asleep when he returned. When Jackson was thirteen—he could almost hear Julia sighing at whatever he was about to think, so he caved in and let the thought go free, where it floated down to join the rest of the jetsam lying on the seabed of his memory. He’d go home in a minute, turf Nathan out of his pit, feed him breakfast, and then drive him and the dog over to Julia. Twenty-four hours of freedom, he thought.

  He tossed a ball for Dido, a gentle throw that went just far enough to remind her that she was still a dog, but not so far that her rusty hips seized up altogether. She trotted ponderously off in pursuit before returning with the ball and dropping it at his feet. It was covered in slobber and sand, and Jackson made a mental note to buy one of those ball-launcher doodads.

  The beach was pretty empty at this hour, just Jackson and the congregation of early-morning dog walkers. They acknowledged each other with a murmured “Morning” or “Lovely morning” (it was). The dogs were more enthusiastic, sniffing each other’s nether regions like connoisseurs. Thank God the owners didn’t have to do that, Jackson thought.

  He could see Whitby from here, two miles south along the beach, the skeleton of the abbey standing on top of the cliff. The tide was definitely going out, he decided. The beach was clean and gleaming in the morning sun. Every morning was a promise, Jackson thought, and chided himself for sounding like a greeting card. No, not a card—it was something he had seen written in Penny Trotter’s shop, the Treasure Trove—on a sign, a painted wooden one. She had a lot of them, along the lines of Caution—Free-Range Children and Count the Memories, Not the Calories (a motto she lived by, if her waistline was anything to go by), not to mention the ubiquitous Keep Calm and Carry On, banal advice that particularly raised Jackson’s ire.

  A little further ahead something had been washed up by the tide. Dido was di
pping her paws in the water as delicately as a dowager taking a paddle, and sniffing at whatever it was. It looked like a bag. Jackson called for Dido to come back to him because he didn’t like abandoned bags, even ones that looked as if they’d spent the night at sea. He had a sinking feeling as he approached it. Despite the fact that it was sodden and water-darkened, he could still make out the little rainbows. And a unicorn.

  “Shit,” he said to Dido. She gave him a sympathetic if uncomprehending look.

  I used to be a policeman.”

  “Yeah, they all say that,” the desk sergeant said.

  “Really?” Did they? Jackson wondered. And who were “they”? Men who came into the police station claiming that something bad had happened, which was what he had been asserting for the last ten minutes, to no avail?

  “I really was,” he protested. “With the Cambridgeshire Constabulary. And now I’m a private investigator. I’ve got a license,” he added. It sounded lame, even to his own ears.

  He had taken the unicorn-and-rainbow backpack home to the cottage and examined it while Nathan was shoveling Crunchy Nut Cornflakes into his mouth like a fireman stoking the boilers on the Titanic. They were on the forbidden list, but where was granola when you needed it? “Don’t tell your mother,” Jackson said to him.

  “What is that? It looks gross.”

  “It’s not gross, just wet.” The backpack had dried out quite a bit by now, as it had spent the last hour hanging on the rail of the Aga. Yes, Jackson was living with an Aga. He liked it. It was a more manly object than he had previously been led to believe.

  “Don’t you recognize it?” Jackson asked.

  “Nope.”

  “That girl yesterday—the one on the Esplanade who was hitching?”

  Nathan shrugged. “Kind of. The one you thought was hitching.”

  “Yes, that one. She was carrying one just like it. It seems too much of a coincidence to think it’s not hers.” Jackson didn’t believe in coincidences. “A coincidence is just an explanation waiting to happen”—that was one of his mantras. Also “If you get enough coincidences they add up to a probability,” which he’d gotten from an old episode of Law and Order. “Why would it be in the sea?” he puzzled.