Big Sky Read online

  “Dunno,” Nathan said.

  He would get a less one-sided conversation with Dido, Jackson thought. “No, neither do I,” he said. “But it doesn’t feel good.”

  The first time Jackson had seen the unicorn it had been in Scarborough, twenty miles further south. Had the currents brought it this far? Or had it been lost—or jettisoned—closer to here? Winds and tides and currents—they were the engines that drove the world, weren’t they? And yet he had no understanding of them at all.

  The Girl with the Unicorn Backpack. It sounded like one of those Scandi noir books that he didn’t read. Jackson didn’t like them much—too dark and twisted or else too lugubrious. He liked his crime fiction to be cheerfully unrealistic, although in fact he hardly read anything anymore in any genre. Life was too short and Netflix was too good.

  The unicorn backpack had yielded no clues. No purse, not so much as a hairbrush or soggy bus pass. “I’ll take it into a police station later,” he said to Nathan. There was no police station where he was living. Just the valley, the wood, a shop, a string of estate-worker and holiday cottages. Sometimes the cows. There was a hotel of sorts, too—the Seashell. He’d had a so-so pub lunch in the beer garden with Julia and Nathan. Fish pies, sticky toffee puddings, that kind of thing. They were served in individual pottery dishes. “Freezer to microwave,” Julia said dismissively, even though that pretty much described her own cuisine.

  “Okay,” Nathan said with a shrug, interested in neither the genesis nor the exodus of the unicorn backpack. His own backpack was enormous, with a huge swoosh on it. Even his phone cover was branded with logos. Teenage boys were like living sandwich boards, covered in free advertising for corporate evil. Whither individuality? Jackson wondered. (“Oh, enough with the ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth,’” Julia said.)

  “Come on, eat up,” he said. “Time to go.”

  “In a minute.”

  “Now.”

  “In a minute. I’ve got to do this.” He was Instagramming his cereal. No, actually he was photographing himself, the cornflakes just happened to be in the shot. Teenage boys didn’t photograph the food in front of them, that wouldn’t have been cool—it was what the very uncool Garys and Kirstys of this world did, snapping every meal that passed in front of their faces. Lamb kandhari in the Bengal Brasserie on the Merrion Way. Chicken pad thai in Chaophraya. Kirsty and her favorite cocktail—lime daiquiri—in Harvey Nichols. The daiquiri photographed better than Kirsty. Jackson had been on holiday in South Africa a few years ago (long story) and the bar staff couldn’t understand the way the woman he was with (even longer story) pronounced her drink of choice—a daiquiri or, in her thick accent, a “dackerree.” She was unrepentantly from the wrong side of the Pennines, so the whole trip had been damned from the start. Her considerable thirst was finally quenched when she learned to communicate by pronouncing it “dikeeree,” courtesy of Jackson, channeling a non-PC version of himself. (“What do you call a nest of lesbians? A dyke eyrie.” The court of women gave no relief to him on this one.)

  Jackson himself would never have drunk anything so frivolous. A straight malt, a pint of Black Sheep, a Ricard or a Pernod on occasion.

  Kirsty put all her food and drink on her private Instagram account in the misplaced belief that Penny Trotter would never see it. “Fat Rascals in Bettys in Harlow Carr—yum!” (“Fat Bastards,” Julia called them.) “Nothing’s ever private,” Sam Tilling, Jackson’s helpmeet, said—because apart from covering the more tedious aspects of surveillance, the boy detective was also a boy wizard—not in the Potter sense (although unfortunately for his love life he was a bit Potterish), but he knew more about computing than Jackson ever wanted to.

  “He’ll kill himself,” Penny Trotter said, perusing the photographs with him the last time Jackson had visited the Treasure Trove. Gary’s wedding-ringed hand was in the picture as he reached for a vanilla slice. He was diabetic. Type 2, Jackson presumed—it was how the human race was going to end, on a tide of sugar and visceral fat—but no, his faithful wife said, type 1. “The full Monty, daily injections of insulin,” which she had to remind him about. “He’s the sort of man who needs mothering,” Penny said. Did Kirsty know? Jackson wondered. Would she be plying him with Fat Rascals if she did? Did she mother him? It seemed unlikely.

  “Come on,” Jackson said to Nathan.

  “In a minute.”

  “Because, like, photographing yourself’s important,” Jackson said sarcastically.

  “Yeah. It is.” (“You can’t impose your own values on him,” Julia said. I can damn well try, Jackson thought. It was his job to make a man out of the boy.)

  Jackson supposed he should be grateful that he didn’t have to wrangle his son to school every morning. Grateful, too, that Nathan wasn’t climbing into strangers’ cars and driving off into the night. Jackson had installed a GPS location tracker on his son’s phone, but he would have had a tracking chip inserted into his scruff if he could. He’d looked into it, but it turned out it wasn’t that simple, and he would need to implant a receiver and a bulky battery pack as well. He didn’t suppose Nathan would be too happy about that.

  He set about marshaling his troops, Nathan in the passenger seat, Dido in the back. He would feel better if the dog had a seat belt. She always sat up straight like an alert back-seat driver on the lookout for danger, but she would catapult like a boulder through the windscreen if he had to brake hard. He tossed the empty backpack into the trunk.

  Starting the engine, he said, “Some music?” to Nathan, but before you could even say “playlist” Nathan was yelling his protests. “Dad, please, not that miserable crap you listen to.” They compromised on Radio 2—quite a big compromise on Nathan’s part.

  When they arrived at the Crown Spa Hotel on the Esplanade, Jackson googled the whereabouts of the nearest police station while he was standing in the lobby waiting for Julia.

  “My two favorite people!” she exclaimed when she appeared. Jackson felt quite pleased until he realized that she was referring to Nathan and Dido. “Dogs aren’t people,” he said.

  “Of course they are,” she said. “Doing anything nice with your free day?”

  “Chasing unicorns.”

  “Great,” she said, so he knew she wasn’t listening. An increasing number of people, Jackson had noticed lately, were not listening to him.

  But surely you can tell me if any girls have gone missing in the last twenty-four hours?” he persisted with the desk sergeant.

  “No, sir, I can’t tell you that,” he said. He wasn’t even looking at Jackson, but was making a show of being busy with the paperwork on his desk.

  “‘No, there haven’t been any girls gone missing’ or ‘No, you won’t tell me even if they have’?”

  “Exactly.”

  “What—no girls missing?”

  “No girls missing,” the desk sergeant sighed. “Now will you go away and ‘investigate’ something else?”

  “No CCTV up on the Esplanade that might have captured a young girl getting into a car?”

  “No.”

  “No CCTV footage or no CCTV?” There was CCTV everywhere. You couldn’t move in Britain without being filmed. Jackson loved that.

  “Neither.”

  “You’re not going to look up that car registration number on the DVLA?”

  “No, sir, but I am considering arresting you for wasting police time.”

  “No, you’re not,” Jackson said. “Too much paperwork.”

  Despite his protests the desk sergeant had taken the backpack, saying he was going to log it into Lost Property.

  “No one’s going to claim it,” Jackson said.

  “Well, then, leave your name and address, sir, and if no one does then in six months it’s all yours.”

  Jackson had taken a photograph of the backpack before leaving the cottage—he photographed everything these days, you never knew when you would need evidence. Nonetheless he resented having to give the backpack up, it was the one tan
gible link to the elusive girl and now it was disappearing into the dark of a storage room somewhere.

  He retrieved the Toyota and set off back up the coast. Back to the ranch to make some phone calls, he thought, call in a few favors. Free of Nathan’s musical prejudices he searched through his music and put on Lori McKenna. He always imagined that Lori was someone who would understand his melancholy streak. Wreck you, she sang. That’s what people did all the time, wasn’t it? One way or another.

  He sighed. The day was still relatively young, but it felt as if it contained less promise now. There was no sign for that in Penny Trotter’s shop.

  Lady with Lapdog

  To their surprise Control called them, asking if they were still on the A165.

  “Yeah,” Ronnie said. “Just coming off the Burniston Road.”

  “Well, turn the car around and head west, will you? There’s been a report of a murder. Everyone’s tied up with something that’s kicked off in town—day-tripping bikers or rioting youth, it’s not clear. You’re the closest we’ve got.”

  Ronnie and Reggie looked at each other, features all over the place, eyes popping out of their heads. Sometimes it was like they were telepathic. Ronnie eagerly tapped the address into their GPS.

  “Serious Crimes’ll be on your heels, but can you hold the fort until they get there?” They were to secure the scene, nothing else. This wasn’t their backyard, after all.

  “No problem, we’re on our way.”

  They grinned at each other and hit their blues and twos. Reggie pushed her sunglasses further up her nose, checked for other traffic, and accelerated. She was a careful driver. Understatement. “Jeeso,” she said, and in her best imitation of Taggart, “There’s been a murrrder.”

  “Eh?” Ronnie said.

  If they were being honest, which they nearly always were, Ronnie and Reggie would have admitted that they were a tad nervous. They’d both attended at plenty of deaths—drugs, drink, fires, drownings, suicides—but not much in the way of proper murders.

  The 999 call had come in from a Leo Parker, a tree surgeon, who had arrived at the premises “to take down a tree” (which sounded like a mob hit to Reggie). Instead he had found a body—a woman lying on the lawn. Felled, Reggie thought.

  “That’s all we know,” Control had said. “Ambulances are snarled up in this big incident but the caller’s adamant she’s dead.”

  In the driveway of the bungalow there was a van with the name Friendly Forestry written on the side, and parked in front of it was a huge machine that Reggie guessed was a wood chipper of some sort. It looked like you could feed a tree into it whole. Or a body, for that matter.

  A man was sitting in the passenger seat of the van, smoking and looking a bit green around the gills (Reggie loved that expression). “Mr. Parker?” Reggie asked but he signaled toward another man, less green about the gills, who was standing next to the side gate to the garden. He had a man bun, pseudo-Viking style, and was wearing a tool belt and a harness. “Doesn’t he love himself?” Ronnie murmured. He looked doubtful when they approached, holding up their warrants. They were often told by members of the public, or even criminals (sometimes the two overlapped, of course—quite often, in fact), that they were “very small” or “very young” or both. And Ronnie would answer, “I know, aren’t we lucky?” and Reggie thought, Hi-yah!

  “Mr. Parker? I’m DC Reggie Chase and this is DC Ronnie Dibicki.”

  “I thought I’d better stand guard here, you know,” Man Bun said. “Secure the scene.”

  Was he the one who had phoned the emergency services?

  He was.

  And did he know if there was anyone in the house?

  He didn’t.

  Ronnie went around the front, rang the doorbell, and knocked hard on the door. All the lights were on, but no one was home.

  And who was Mr. Parker due to meet here?

  “The lady of the house. I haven’t met her, only spoken to her on the phone. A Ms. Easton.”

  “As in Sheena?” Reggie said, writing the name down in her notebook. “Do you know her first name?”

  He didn’t. All he knew was that she had asked him to cut down a tree, Man Bun said. “A sycamore,” he added, as if that might be relevant. He took a mangled roll-up from behind his ear and lit it. “In there,” he said, gesturing with the cigarette toward the garden. Through the open gate Reggie could see the immobile body of a woman lying on the lawn.

  “Did you go in, Mr. Parker?” Reggie asked.

  “Yes, of course, I thought she might be injured or ill.”

  Ronnie returned. “No answer from the house,” she said.

  “Ms. Easton,” Reggie told Ronnie. “That’s the name of the lady who lives here, apparently. Carry on, Mr. Parker.”

  “Well, then I came straight out again. I didn’t want to disturb anything. You know, for the forensic team.” Everyone an expert, thanks to TV. Collier and its ilk had a lot to answer for, Reggie thought. Still, it meant he’d done the right thing.

  “Good,” Reggie said. “You stay here, Mr. Parker.” They put on gloves and blue shoes and had a good look around before entering the garden. If someone was murdered then there had to be a murderer, and if there was a murderer he might still be lurking in the garden, although it wasn’t the kind of garden that encouraged lurking. No trees, apart from one that stood out from the neat, bland borders like the proverbial sore thumb. The unloved sycamore, Reggie presumed. There was a big patio with lots of paving that only served to make the planet’s job harder.

  Why was Mr. Parker so sure that it was a murder and not an accident?

  “You’ll see,” Man Bun said.

  She was wearing an almost transparent nightdress and negligée, the kind of garments you wore to have sex in, not get a good night’s sleep. Both Ronnie and Reggie wore practical nightwear for their solitary bedtimes. Ronnie wore hiking socks and pajamas, Reggie went to bed in a tracksuit. Ready to run. Dr. Hunter had taught her that.

  There was a garage, which they approached carefully. Just enough room for a small Honda and a Flymo lawnmower. No killer hiding in there. They turned their attention to the woman.

  She was lying on her side and looked as if she might have simply fallen asleep on the grass because she lacked the energy to get herself into bed. That was until you drew closer and saw that the back of her skull was smashed in. The blood had drained onto the grass, where it made an unattractive muddied color that you wouldn’t find in a paintbox.

  And a dog. Not dead, thank goodness, Reggie thought, but lying Sphinx-like, as if guarding the body. “Fido,” she said.

  “What?” Ronnie asked.

  “The Greyfriars Bobby of Italy. Faithful unto death. Dogs, you know, stay by their master’s side after they’ve died.” Fido, Hachiko, Ruswarp, Old Shep, Squeak, Spot. There was a list on Wikipedia. Reggie read it sometimes when she needed a good cry and didn’t want to dip into her own personal well of sorrow.

  Sadie, that was the name of Dr. Hunter’s German shepherd. Long dead now, but if Dr. Hunter had died Sadie would have stayed by her side, no matter what. Dr. Hunter said that apart from a few exceptions (Reggie was on the list, thank goodness) she preferred dogs to people. And that one of the great tragedies about dogs was that they didn’t live as long as humans. Dr. Hunter had had a dog when she was a child. Scout. “Such a good dog,” she said. Scout had been murdered along with Dr. Hunter’s mother and sister and baby brother one hot summer’s day long ago now. This scene was so vivid to Reggie that sometimes she thought she had been there that day.

  “Reggie?”

  “Yeah, sorry. Good boy,” she said to the dog. The dog gave her a slightly shamefaced look as if it knew it didn’t deserve such a beneficent adjective. That was when Reggie noticed that the dog’s muzzle was covered in blood. It had been lapping at the lady of the house. Perhaps the dog wouldn’t make the cut for the Wikipedia list after all.

  Neither Ronnie nor Reggie quailed at the sight. They had surprisi
ngly strong stomachs for this kind of thing. No green gills. Despite the extreme deadness of the woman, Ronnie crouched down and checked for a pulse in her neck. “To be absolutely sure. In case anyone asks. Any sign of a weapon?” she asked Reggie.

  Reggie scanned the lawn and then walked over to one of the neat, bland borders. Ronnie joined her and said, “Wow,” when she saw the bloodied golf club lying among the uninspiring bedding plants. A fragment of skull still adhered to it and a bit of gray mince-like brain.

  And then, before they had a chance to say “smoking gun,” the cavalry came rushing in. Uniforms, paramedics, Serious Crimes, a pathologist, CSU, Uncle Tom Cobley, and all. There were some people Reggie recognized—a couple of uniforms and a DI called Marriot whom they had encountered before and who said she was the SIO in charge. “Oh, Gawd,” they heard her say as she advanced like a tank toward them, “it’s the Kray twins.”

  “Uh-uh, the Fat Controller,” Reggie murmured to Ronnie.

  The DI was a woman who liked to throw her weight around and she had quite a lot of it to throw. You could have fitted both Ronnie and Reggie inside her and there would probably still have been room for Ronnie’s kid sister, Dominika.

  “You’d better not have gone all Prime Suspect on this,” DI Marriot said. “And you can bugger off now, the grown-ups are here.”

  They both felt a little deflated. To have been so near to a murder investigation. And yet so far. DI Marriot wanted a written report from them of everything they had done before she arrived, so they drove off and parked on the Esplanade and wrote it up on Ronnie’s iPad.

  “You know, Jimmy Savile used to have a flat up here,” Reggie said.