Big Sky Read online

  It was indeed a nursing home of sorts. It had begun its life in the nineteenth century as a private mental hospital for the well-off, but in its latter days had been a home for the “confused and elderly.” It had belonged to Tony Bassani, in the days when he had run several nursing homes along the coast. It had closed years ago and been bought by a “shell corporation.” The shell corporation was registered to an empty tenement flat in Dundee, but there were other ghostly shells behind that. “Like the dance of the bloody seven veils,” Tommy said. Tommy and Andy had no idea what happened beyond the Dundee shell—the legal side of things was Steve’s domain. Tommy, always the happy-go-lucky sort, thought their ignorance might be protection, Andy doubted that ignorance had ever protected anyone.

  Jasmine and Maria peered doubtfully at the building. Most of the windows were boarded up. The peeling paint was a depressing shade of institutional magnolia. There were bars on most of the windows, although it reminded Andy not so much of a prison as a bonded warehouse—somewhere where you stashed goods until they were ready to be sent on. Which was kind of what it was.

  “This sillerburtches?” Jasmine asked, frowning.

  “It’s better inside,” Andy said. “You’ll see. Come on, now, out of the car.” He was a shepherd with two reluctant sheep. Lambs, really. To the slaughter. His conscience sprang up again and he hit it back down. It was like playing Whac-A-Mole.

  Someone tapped on his window, making him flinch. Vasily. He had Tommy’s Rottweiler on a short chain and the girls started making little twittering noises. They didn’t need to worry, the stupid mutt was just for show.

  “Don’t worry, Brutus is a pussycat,” Andy said, although they didn’t understand a word of what he said. “Come on, girls, let’s be having you. Chop, chop. Time to start your new life, eh? A home from home.”

  Wuthering Heights

  Morning in the prison dubbed Monster Mansion by the tabloids. The smell of institutional breakfast—a bouquet of egg and porridge—was still permeating the wretched halls of HM Prison Wakefield, making Reggie feel nauseous.

  They’d been expecting to find Prisoner JS 5896 in the hospital wing as he was supposedly at death’s door, but they were shown into an ordinary interview room. A warden brought them a coffee each and said, “He’s being fetched now, he’s a bit slow.” In this depressing, blank-walled room the smell of breakfast had been overlaid with the piney scent of commercial disinfectant as if someone had recently thrown up there. The coffee was gruesome, but at least it provided some kind of sensory antidote.

  The object of their attention eventually shambled in, heralded by a kind of clanking, metallic noise that for a moment made Reggie think that their interviewee must be in shackles. Wakefield was a high-security prison but it turned out that Michael Carmody was free of restraint, other than being tethered to a large oxygen cylinder on wheels.

  “Emphysema,” he wheezed, collapsing into one of the hard chairs at the table. A warden stood guard at the door but it seemed unlikely that Michael Carmody was about to make a bid for freedom. The only way he was getting out of this place was feetfirst.

  “Mr. Carmody,” Ronnie said. “We are here today because certain new information has been brought to the attention of the police in regard to your case. A number of individuals have been named who were not part of the original investigation into your crimes, for which you are now serving a prison sentence.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t noticed,” Carmody said sarcastically.

  Despite his scornful attitude he was a shadow of the man he must once have been, Reggie thought. She had seen photos of him when he was in his mayoral pomp, and even in the mugshot after his arrest—when, let’s face it, most people didn’t look their best—he had still looked hale and hearty, albeit florid and overfed. Now his cheeks were sunken and the whites of his eyes were a sickly yellow. He must be into his eighties by now, of course. A harmless old-age pensioner, you would have thought if you had encountered him in the street.

  “We believe that you may be able to provide us with some information about the individuals we are investigating and we would like to ask you some questions. Is that all right, Mr. Carmody?”

  Jeeso,” Reggie said.

  “I know. I thought he wanted to talk,” Ronnie puzzled when they climbed back in the car a mere twenty minutes later. (“Have you got any antibacterial hand wipes? I feel tainted.”)

  “He was supposed to be about to sing like ye olde proverbial canary, yet it seemed to be the last thing he wanted to do.”

  “Do you think someone got to him? Threatened him?”

  “Maybe,” Reggie said. “Prison’s full of criminals, after all. Do you want to drive or shall I?”

  “You can if you want,” Ronnie said—generously, given that she spent a lot of time pressing her foot on an imaginary accelerator when slow-hand Reggie was at the wheel. It was a two-hour drive here, two hours back. “For nothing,” Ronnie said.

  “Well, some good scenery,” Reggie said. The moors. The wiley, windy moors. Haworth was thirty miles in the opposite direction. Reggie knew because she had gone there on a day’s outing from uni with Sai, before he opted for a full five-day Indian wedding feast instead of beans on toast and a box set of Mad Men with Reggie. (“It’s you, not me,” he said.) There was no such word as “wiley” in the OED (Reggie had looked). You had to admire people who made words up. “Have you ever been to Haworth?”

  “No,” Ronnie said. “What is it?”

  “Haworth Parsonage. Where the Brontës lived.”

  “The Brontë sisters?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I suppose that’s who our Bronte’s named after. I’d never thought about it.”

  “I guess so,” Reggie said. “Although there’s a town in Sicily called Bronte, supposedly named after one of the Cyclopes, who were said to live beneath Mount Etna. Admiral Nelson was given the title Duke of Bronte by King Ferdinand for helping recover his throne during the Napoleonic period. Our Bronte doesn’t spell her name with a diaeresis, though.”

  “A what?”

  “Diaeresis—the two little dots above the ‘e,’ it’s not an umlaut. Actually it was an affectation applied to the name by their father.”

  “You don’t get out much, do you, Reggie?”

  “Honestly? No. Not anymore.”

  They had interviewed “their” Bronte—Bronte Finch—at her house in Ilkley, in a lovely lemony drawing room where Bronte had served them tea in nice mugs and individual strawberry tarts from Bettys, which they couldn’t resist despite an unspoken pact to eat or drink nothing while on the job. And she’d bought them specially, so it would have been rude not to have eaten them, they agreed afterward. She was their patient zero, the first piece in the jigsaw.

  There had been squashy sofas and real art on the walls and a lovely old rug (“Isfahan”) on the oak parquet. A big vase of dark-pink peonies stood in the fireplace. Everything tasteful, everything comfortable. It reminded Reggie of Dr. Hunter’s house. It was the kind of home that Reggie would like to have herself one day.

  The diaeresis-free Bronte was a small, pretty woman in her forties, mother of three (“Noah, Tilly, and Jacob”), dressed in Lululemon. Her hair was tied up in a messy topknot and she looked as if she’d just come from the gym. “Hot yoga,” she laughed apologetically as if the idea was faintly ridiculous. A big dark-gray cat was luxuriating on the sofa. “Ivan,” Bronte said. “As in the Terrible. Watch him, he’s a biter,” she added affectionately. She picked the cat up and carried him through to another room, “just in case. He doesn’t like strangers.”

  “Who does?” Reggie said.

  Bronte was a vet. “Small animals only. I don’t want to spend my time with an arm up a cow’s arse,” she laughed again. Her husband, Ben, was an A&E consultant at Leeds General. Between them they treated all creatures great and small. She had a wonderful smile, that was the thing Reggie remembered about her.

  Ilkley just made it over the border into West Yorkshire, w
hich was why they had picked up this case. They both liked Bronte immediately. You couldn’t help but like a woman who said “cow’s arse” in a posh accent and who bought you strawberry tarts from Bettys.

  The sun coming in at the windows flashed off the modest diamond engagement ring on her thin finger. It made little fragmented rainbows on those lemony walls as she poured the tea. Ronnie and Reggie drank the tea and ate the strawberry tarts and then they got out their notebooks and took dictation from Bronte Finch as she recited the litany of all the men who had abused her during her childhood, starting with her father, Mr. Lawson Finch, Crown Court judge.

  It’s a gloomy place.”

  “Wakefield Jail?”

  “Haworth. I think the Brontë sisters felt imprisoned by their lives there,” Reggie mused. “And yet in a funny way it made them free.”

  “I’ve never read their books.”

  “Not Wuthering Heights for school?”

  “Nah. I just know the Kate Bush song.”

  DC Ronnie Dibicki and DC Reggie Chase. We’re looking for Mr. Stephen Mellors.”

  “I’m sorry,” the receptionist at Stephen Mellors’s law firm in Leeds said, “Mr. Mellors isn’t in today. I think he’s working from home.” It was a new building, all steel and chrome and weird artwork. A church to money.

  “Thanks. If you could tell him we were here.”

  “Can I tell him what it’s about?”

  “Just some questions about clients of his. Old clients. I’ll leave my card.”

  They retrieved their car from the multistory car park. “There’s a lot of money in Leeds,” Ronnie observed.

  “Sure is.” For a moment Reggie had considered inviting Ronnie to her flat “for a quick coffee,” but then she realized how unprofessional that might seem. She worried that Ronnie would think it was an invitation to some kind of intimacy and Reggie would have to do the whole embarrassing “I’m not gay, if I was I would” spiel. But it was absurd to think that just because Ronnie was gay she would make a pass at her, and anyway why would Ronnie find her attractive when no one else on the planet did? (What if she was gay and she was just suppressing it in some weird Scottish Presbyterian way?) It wasn’t something she ever denied, anyway, whenever people presumed she was gay (they often did, she wasn’t sure why), because denial implied that there was something wrong with it. And why was she tying herself in a Knoxian knot like this?

  “Are we going to sit in this car park all day, looking at concrete?”

  “Sorry. Where’s next? You can drive if you like.”

  Felicity Yardley. Known to the local police—prostitution, drugs.” There was an ancient entry-phone system, it looked filthy.

  “She’s in,” Reggie said. “I saw a curtain move upstairs.”

  Ronnie pressed the doorbell. There was no answer. They weren’t sure that the entry-phone system was working but Ronnie spoke into it anyway. “Miss Yardley? My name’s DC Ronnie Dibicki and I’m here with DC Reggie Chase. We’re conducting an investigation into a historic case. This is just a routine interview, you’re not in trouble in any way. We’re looking into several individuals connected to the case because new accusations have surfaced.”

  Nothing. Ronnie rang the bell again. Still nothing. “Well, we can’t make her talk to us. Let’s come back later. Can I have another hand wipe? God knows who’s been pressing that buzzer. I’m starving, by the way. We are going to get chips, aren’t we?”

  “You betcha,” Reggie said.

  Who’s next?”

  Reggie consulted her notebook. “Kathleen Carmody, Carmody’s daughter. She was never interviewed, but Bronte said she attended some of the parties. They’re about the same age, so I think we can guess what that might mean. I don’t like calling them parties,” she added.

  “Because parties are something that you should enjoy.”

  “Well, not me personally,” Reggie said, “but yeah.”

  Kathleen Carmody was sitting in the middle of the amusement arcade, like a spider in a web. Occasionally someone came up to her booth and changed notes for coins. There were machines that did the same thing, so it seemed like a redundant role for Carmody’s daughter. She had the unhealthy complexion of someone who never saw daylight.

  The arcade was a mess of noise and strident color. It could have been designed as one of those CIA secret operations to drive people mad.

  “Miss Carmody? Kathleen Carmody?” Reggie said, raising her voice so she could be heard above the din. “My name’s DC Reggie Chase and this is DC Ronnie Dibicki. We’re conducting an investigation into a historic case that involved your father—Michael Carmody. This is just a routine interview, you’re not in trouble in any way. We’re looking into several individuals connected to the case because new accusations have surfaced and we would like to ask you a few questions, if that’s all right? We’re trying to build a picture, fill in some background details. A bit like doing a jigsaw. Is there somewhere a bit more private that we can go?”

  “Fuck off. And if you show your faces here again I’ll rip them off. Okay?”

  “Do you get the feeling that she didn’t want to talk to us?” Reggie said when they were back in the car.

  DC Reggie Chase and DC Ronnie Dibicki, Mrs. Bragg. Remember us? Is Mr. Bragg home?”

  “You just missed him.”

  “Any idea when he’ll be back?”

  “No.”

  “Will you tell him we called? Again.”

  A pair of disgruntled-looking hikers, women, were adjusting each other’s huge rucksacks in the reception of the Seashell. They made Reggie think of the giant snails she’d seen in a zoo one time.

  “You should arrest her,” one of the women said to Ronnie, nodding in the direction of Rhoda Bragg. “The prices here are criminal and then they try to poison you.”

  “Piss off,” Rhoda said cheerfully as the women pushed their encumbered bodies awkwardly out the front door. “Bloody lesbians,” she said to Ronnie and Reggie. “Well, you pair would know all about that.”

  “Yes,” Ronnie said, to annoy. “The police force is the UK’s biggest LGBT employer.”

  “And I bet you voted against Brexit as well. You’re all the same.”

  “Remainers and lesbians?”

  “Yes.”

  She’s probably right about that,” Reggie said when they were back in the car.

  “Probably.” Ronnie held a Leninesque fist in the air and said sardonically, “Make Britain great again. You’ve got to laugh.”

  “That’s one of Barclay Jack’s catchphrases.”

  “‘You’ve got to laugh’? And do they?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  The Unicorn in the Room

  There was a café in town that Jackson had suggested might be a good place to meet. He knew they allowed dogs, although that was true of just about everywhere, no one would have had any trade in this town if they didn’t embrace the canine customer, but this particular place also managed a decent pot of coffee. He had arrived early and had already drained the cup sitting in front of him while Dido, at his feet beneath the table, was still chewing her way industriously through the cooked sausage he had ordered for her. (“Losing her teeth,” Julia said sadly.)

  He had bought a copy of the Yorkshire Post from a nearby newsagent and was perusing it idly, wondering if Vince Ives’s wife’s murder had made it into its pages. He eventually found it inside, a small piece about “Wendy Easton, also known as Ives.” A police spokesman said it was “a particularly brutal murder. We are asking anyone who may have information to come forward.” Nothing about the golf club that she was attacked with, they must be keeping that detail back. Jackson’s inner policeman was still interested in the golf club. Was it Vince’s spare putter—a weapon of opportunity—or did the killer bring it with him in a premeditated act? If—

  “Mr. Brodie?”

  “Mrs. Holroyd?”

  “You’ll recognize me,” Jackson had told the new client over the phone, “because I
’ll be the man with the yellow Labrador.” He should probably have been wearing a red carnation in his buttonhole or carrying a copy of the Guardian, both of which, around here, would have been less likely than a man in the company of a yellow Lab.

  She was called Mrs. Holroyd and she hadn’t reciprocated with a means of identifying herself to him. It had struck him when she said her name that fewer and fewer women these days prefaced themselves with the epithet “Mrs.” It was a title that made him think of his mother. Head scarf and shopping bag and a washerwoman’s hands.

  Crystal Holroyd did not look like his mother. Not at all. Not one bit.

  Tall, blond, and apparently enhanced in many different ways, Crystal Holroyd was accessorized not with a dog but a child, a girl called Candy, masquerading, if Jackson wasn’t mistaken, as Snow White. Or rather, Disney’s idea of Snow White—the familiar red and blue bodice and yellow skirt, the iconic red headband with the little bow. Jackson had once been the father of a small girl. He knew these things.

  He felt a little spasm of pain at the memory of the last time he had seen Marlee, no longer little, no longer a girl but a grown-up woman now. They’d had a furious row that seemed to erupt out of nothing. (“You’re such a Luddite, Dad. Why don’t you just go and find a picket line to stand on somewhere or join a demonstration and shout ‘Maggie Thatcher—milk snatcher!’” Yes, it had been a complex and rather long-winded insult. He had been too surprised by his daughter’s historico-political analysis—her term—of his character to put up much in the way of a defense.) He should phone her, he thought. Make peace with her before he saw her at the weekend. They were about to undertake (or perhaps endure) one of life’s great rites of passage together. They had exchanged only a few chilly texts since this argument a month ago. It was up to him, Jackson knew, to make things better. You could hardly walk your daughter up the aisle if you were at loggerheads with her.