Big Sky Read online

  “You’re sure you haven’t been out on the boat?” Rhoda said. “You smell… odd.”

  I smell of death, Andy thought. And despair. He was feeling sorry for himself.

  They hadn’t just been trying to find one girl, they had been trying to lose another. “The other one got away,” Tommy had told him when he’d arrived last night at Silver Birches with the Polish girls and found that Maria had killed herself.

  “Jasmine?”

  “Whatever. We’ve been out looking for her for hours with no joy. You’re going to have to help. And we have to get rid of the dead one.”

  “Maria.”

  Andy kept a little boat down in the marina, nothing much, a skip with an outboard motor (the Lottie) that he took out fishing occasionally. Tommy came out sometimes, always wearing a life jacket because he couldn’t swim. Unmanned him a bit, in Andy’s opinion.

  Under cover of darkness they had put Maria in Tommy’s Navara and then transferred her to the Lottie and chugged out into the North Sea. When there was a decent distance between the boat and the shore they picked Maria up—Tommy by the shoulders, Andy by the feet—a sparrow weight—and swung her overboard. A shimmer of silver in the moonlight, slick as a fish, and she was gone.

  Shouldn’t they have weighted her down with something? “She’ll just float back up, won’t she?” Andy said.

  “Probably,” Tommy said, “but who’s going to give a shit? She’ll just be one more Thai druggie whore. Who’s going to care?”

  “She was from the Philippines, not Thailand.” And her name was Maria. A Catholic, too. Andy had taken the crucifix from around her small neck after he’d unwound what was left of the scarf that she’d hanged herself with. He put it in his pocket. The scarf was a flimsy thing, but it had done the job. Tommy had sawed through it with his Stanley knife, but he’d gotten to her too late. Andy recognized the scarf as the one she’d bought in Primark in Newcastle yesterday. Seemed like a lifetime ago—certainly was for Maria. He untied the remnant that remained knotted around the window bars, treating it with the tenderness befitting a relic, and reunited it with the other piece in his pocket.

  After they’d tipped her into the sea, Andy threw the crucifix in after her and said a silent prayer. For a brief moment he considered pushing Tommy out of the boat too, but the life jacket would save him. With his luck he would bob around until the lifeboat found him or a stray fishing vessel. Of course, Lottie would do that, that’s what Newfoundlands were built for, paddling their strong legs through the waves to drag things—people, boats—back to shore. Lottie wasn’t here, though, only Brutus, Tommy’s dog, asleep in the Navara.

  “Foxy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you turn this thing around now instead of daydreaming?”

  Tommy was mystified as to how the girls had gotten out of the plastic ties that attached their wrists to the bed. And why did one stay and one go? Andy wondered. Did Jasmine wake up and find that Maria had killed herself and then run, or did Maria kill herself because Jasmine had deserted her? He supposed he would never know.

  Jasmine was tougher than she looked, Andy reckoned. Where would she go? What would she do? He remembered the happy expression on the girls’ faces when they were watching Pointless, their squeals of delight in the supermarket. He felt suddenly, violently sick and had to hang on to the edge of the boat while he heaved his guts out into the North Sea.

  “Didn’t know you got seasick, Andy,” Tommy said.

  “Must be something I ate.”

  And Vince! “What the fuck, Tommy?” Andy had said when Tommy recounted what had happened at Silver Birches in his absence. One girl dead, one girl absconded, and Vince Ives suddenly being brought into the fold by Steve. The police suspected him of murdering his wife, for God’s sake. He was going to bring all kinds of unwanted attention their way.

  “Oh, come on, Foxy, Vince didn’t kill Wendy. He hasn’t got it in him.”

  “But he’s got this in him?” Andy asked as they’d heaved Maria over the side of the boat.

  “Well, I’m not particularly chuffed about three becoming four either, but if it keeps him quiet… And Steve vouches for him.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, then,” Andy said sarcastically, “if Steve vouches for him.”

  As soon as they were off the boat, Steve was on the phone.

  “Steve. How’s it going?”

  “Andy, how are you?” (He never waited for an answer.) “I think it’s best, given the circumstances, that we move all the girls out first thing, transport them to the place in Middlesbrough. Close down the op at Silver Birches.” You would think he’d been in the military, the way he spoke. And he was the captain and they were the lowly foot soldiers.

  Andy imagined freeing the girls, opening the door, throwing off their chains of slavery, and watching them run across a wildflower meadow like wild horses.

  “Andy, are you listening to me?”

  “Yeah, sorry, Steve. We’ll start getting them loaded up first thing.”

  Cranford World

  “Are you all right?” Bunny said. “You missed last night’s performance.”

  “Was Barclay cross with me?” Harry asked.

  “No, not cross, pet. He can’t be cross, he can’t be anything, he’s dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “As a dodo.”

  “Right,” Harry said, trying to absorb this unexpected news.

  “Sorry to be blunt. It was a massive heart attack. He was dead before he got to the hospital.”

  Harry was shocked by the news of Barclay’s death, but he wasn’t entirely surprised by it. After all, Barclay hadn’t exactly been the picture of health, but still… “Shall I tidy up his dressing room a bit?” he said, at a loss as to how to proceed. That’s what people did after a death, didn’t they? Tidied up a bit. After his mother died he remembered her sister, who was someone they hardly ever saw, arriving to go through her things. Harry had tried to help his aunt, but it had been too overwhelming to see his mother’s clothes being piled up on the bed and her jewelry box being sorted through in a rather callous manner. (“Look at these bracelets. She never had great taste, did she?”)

  It was presumed that Harry would want none of his mother’s things. Perhaps that was why he had so few memories of her. It was objects, wasn’t it, that bound you to someone’s history? A hair clip or a shoe. Kind of like a talisman. (A post-Dangerfield word he had learned recently.) When he thought about it now, he realized that was the last time he had seen his mother’s sister. “They weren’t close,” his father said. Perhaps they would say that about him and Candace when they grew up. He hoped not. There were so few people in Harry’s world that he intended to keep them all as close as possible. Harry’s World, he thought. What kind of an attraction would that be? No vampires, for sure, or pirates, for that matter, just lots of books, pizza, TV. What else? Crystal and Candace. And what about his mother? He felt duty-bound to bring her back to life in his World. What if that meant she was a zombie, though? And would she get on with Crystal? He realized he had forgotten to include his father. How would he manage with two wives? And then there was Tipsy, of course, he would probably have to choose between her and Brutus. Et tu, Brute, he thought. Harry had played Portia, Brutus’s wife, in Miss Dangerfield’s “gender-blind” production of Julius Caesar. Emily had relished being Caesar. She had the soul of a dictator. She would push her way into his fantasy World too, if he wasn’t careful. Harry was not unaware that his mind was quietly unraveling.

  “Knock yourself out,” Bunny said, interrupting Harry’s thoughts.

  Knock himself out doing what? Harry wondered.

  “His dressing room’s a complete tip.”

  Harry realized, rather shamefacedly, that he’d already forgotten that Barclay was dead.

  “Yeah, it is,” he agreed. “It won’t be very nice for whoever’s going to take over from Mr. Jack to find it like that. Have they got someone yet?”

  “There was tal
k of trying to get Jim Davidson. But not in time for the matinée. Yours truly’s going to step in. Top of the bill, eh, pet?”

  Hadn’t Bunny ever been top of the bill before?

  “Oh, yeah, but you know, shit cabaret, shit gay clubs, shit hen nights. And now—ta-daa!—the shit Palace.”

  “Better than being dead, I suppose,” Harry said.

  “Not necessarily, pet. Not necessarily.”

  The dressing room smelled of cigarettes, even though smoking was strictly forbidden in the theater, and Harry did indeed find an overflowing ashtray stashed in one of the drawers of the dressing table, which seemed like the worst kind of fire hazard. A half-empty bottle of Lidl’s own-brand gin didn’t even bother to try and hide itself. Harry took a swig from the bottle in the hope that it might perk him up a bit or settle him down—one or the other, he didn’t really know how he was feeling. He’d never taken drugs, just the odd drag on someone else’s joint at a party (it made him feel sick), but he was beginning to see why so many of the kids in his school took stuff—not the Hermiones, they were as puritanical in their attitude to “substance abuse” as they were toward everything else. Now he found himself craving something to blur the memories of the last twenty-four hours.

  His adventures with Pinky and Perky yesterday had left Harry feeling disoriented. And now Barclay’s sudden death, coming hard on the heels of his own kidnapping, made everything seem uncertain and slippery, as if the world had tilted slightly. Every so often he got a flashback to the horror of yesterday. I know what your fucking name is. He was sure he could still taste the Irn-Bru, sickly in his mouth. The next time he heard “Let It Go” there was a chance his head would explode. He probably had PTSD or something. And nobody had even tried to give a satisfactory explanation of what had happened, of why two extremely unpleasant men had plucked him and his sister out of their lives and held them captive in an old trailer. For what reason? Money? Had they asked Crystal or his dad for a ransom? And if so, how much were they worth? he wondered. Or, to be more specific, how much was Candace worth? (“Priceless, both of you,” Crystal said.) Why had no one called the police? And who was the man who was hanging around with Crystal?

  Just a concerned bystander, he’d said. I helped your stepmother look for you.

  You found yourself, Crystal had said. Technically speaking, the man in the silver BMW had found him (Hop in, Harry), but Harry knew what she meant. Would they try to snatch them again? And what would Candace do if they took her on her own, with no one to make it seem as if it was just a harmless game? No one to tell her the story of Cinderella and Red Riding Hood and all the other fairy tales that Harry had entertained his sister with yesterday. No one to provide a happy ending for her.

  He sat on the stool at Barclay’s dressing table and stared in the mirror. It was weird to think that Barclay had been here yesterday, sitting at this very dressing table, looking in this very mirror, daubing himself with foundation, and now the mirror was empty, which sounded like the title of an Agatha Christie novel. Harry had read them all last summer while at his post in Transylvania World.

  Harry didn’t think he looked like himself at all. At least, he consoled himself, he had a reflection. He hadn’t joined the undead like Barclay.

  Jackson Brodie had a dog, an old Labrador with soft ears. Harry didn’t know why that dog suddenly came into his mind—thinking about Brutus and Tipsy, he supposed—and even more mystifying was the fact that the thought of the old Labrador caused him, without any warning, to burst into tears.

  The magician chose that moment to put his head around the door. “Christ, Harry,” he said, “I didn’t know you liked that bastard Barclay so much. Are you all right?” he added gruffly. “Shall I get one of the chorus girls?”

  “No. Thanks,” Harry sniveled. “I’m fine. I just had a bad day yesterday.”

  “Welcome to my world.”

  The magician must have gone off and fetched Bunny to come and console him, because he appeared a couple of moments later looking concerned and bearing a mug of tea and a Blue Riband biscuit. “You can hang around with me if you want, pet. I could do with a hand with my costumes. I’ve got a lot of sequins need replacing. They’re always falling off. Some days it looks as if I sweat glitter. That’s show business for you.”

  Tonto

  There was no sign of Snow White and her ninja mother at High Haven. The place was lifeless, or certainly appeared lifeless. No sign of the Evoque, of course. Given her avoidance of the police, Jackson wondered if Crystal had reported it stolen. It was probably lying burnt out in a field somewhere. The Holroyds would have more than one car to their name, he presumed. There were two big garages on the property—converted from stables, by the look of them—and both were closed and impenetrable.

  There was a dilapidated building that had resisted conversion, some kind of outhouse, or a wash house, perhaps, as there was still an old copper boiler in the corner, unused for decades. The place was full of cobwebs and on a wall inside someone had chalked The Batcave and drawn a cartoon of a vampire bat dressed in a Dracula cloak holding a protest sign that read Leave the fucking bats in peace. It was signed “HH” so Jackson presumed it was Harry who had drawn it. It was quite good, the boy had talent.

  He was a funny kid, Jackson reflected, older than Nathan and yet in some ways he seemed more of a child. (A bit young for his age, Crystal had said. Also old for his age.) Nathan regarded himself as cool, Harry definitely didn’t come into that category.

  It took a while for Jackson to register that the drawing might be referring to actual bats. Gazing up at the rafters, he realized that he was looking at a roosting cluster of tiny gray bodies hanging like dusty washing on a line. They didn’t seem as if they were planning to suck his blood so he left them in peace.

  Was Harry with Crystal? he wondered. The sight of the bats jogged his memory—the Dracula place on the front. He had wondered at the time why she had abandoned Candy there, entering with her, exiting without her, but then later she had told him that Harry worked there.

  Transylvania World, that was what it was called. ARE YOU PREPARED TO BE SCARED? As taglines went, it was rubbish. It was where he had followed Crystal to yesterday.

  Was Harry safe? (Was anyone?) Was there someone keeping an eye on him? Leaving him in peace?

  There was a girl manning the attraction—if that wasn’t a contradiction in terms. She was a rather superior sort of girl who looked as though she might object to that assignation of gender to a verb. She had her nose in a copy of Ulysses. (The Girl with Her Nose in a Book—another Scandinavian crime novel Jackson never wanted to read.) Jackson had opened a copy of Ulysses once and looked inside, which is a different thing from reading. Harry always had his head in a book, Crystal had told him yesterday when he’d asked, “What’s Harry like, then?” in an attempt to assess the boy’s survival instincts. No chance of Nathan being swallowed by books like Harry and his friends. He wouldn’t even go near one without shuddering. His translated, simplified copy of the Odyssey that he was supposed to be reading had barely been opened. Odysseus and Ulysses were the same person, weren’t they? Just a man trying to get home.

  Did the girl reading Ulysses know where Harry Holroyd was?

  “Harry?” she said, removing her nose (also rather superior) from the book and giving him a suspicious once-over.

  “Yes, Harry,” Jackson said, standing his ground.

  “Who’s asking?”

  So much for manners, Jackson thought. “A friend of his stepmother’s. Crystal.”

  The girl made a funny little moue that seemed to indicate she wasn’t impressed by this information, but, reluctantly, she gave up Harry’s whereabouts. “He’s got a matinée at the Palace.”

  Harry had a stage act? Jackson puzzled to himself. But of course, it was the Palace Theatre that he had been coming out of yesterday with his sister and his mother before the all-hell-let-loose scenario kicked in.

  “Thanks.”

  “Sure I ca
n’t sell you a ticket to Transylvania?” the girl said. “Are you prepared to be scared?” she deadpanned.

  “This world’s scary enough, thanks,” Jackson said.

  “Yeah, I know, it’s like the Wild West out there,” the girl muttered, her nose already back in the book.

  The Tree of Knowledge

  It had been so late by the time they had unraveled the events of the day that Crystal had suggested to Jackson Brodie that he should stay the night at High Haven. Tommy’s expensive malt whisky had been a factor too, of course. Neither of them was a serious drinker and the whisky swiftly did its job of temporarily numbing the trauma of the kidnapping, and the pair of them—plus Brodie’s dog—had shuffled up the stairs afterward like zombies to their respective beds.

  Tommy had come home in the early hours. The unmistakable sound of the Navara pulling into the driveway had woken Crystal and she had listened to the garage door opening and closing, followed by Tommy banging about downstairs, doing God knows what. All went quiet for a while and then he appeared suddenly at the side of the bed—she could tell he was making a futile effort to be quiet—and gave her a kiss on the forehead. He smelled the way he did when he’d been out in Andy Bragg’s boat—diesel oil and something brackish like seaweed. She had murmured a greeting, feigning sleepiness, and he’d whispered, “I’ve got a few things on today. I’ll see you later, love.”

  She wondered how he would have felt if he had known there was a strange man and a dog tucked away out of sight in one of the spare bedrooms. Despite her conclusions about Jackson Brodie’s general incompetence, Crystal felt safer with his presence in the house, although she would never have admitted that to him.