When Will There Be Good News? (20 page)

It was exhausting being dead. He had more of a social life than when he was alive. It wasn't as ifthey had any conversation, the most he had got out
of the
m was a vague mumbling, although Amelia had, to his baillement, suddenly shouted, 'Stuffing!' to him, and a middleaged woman he had never seen before bent down to whisper in his ear to ask if he had seen her dog. His brother never visited and his sister never came back. She was the only person he really wanted to see.

He was woken by a small terrier barking at the foot of the bed. He knew he wasn't really awake, not by any previous definition of the word. The voice of Mr Spock (or Leonard Nimoy, depending how you looked at it) murmured in his ear, 'It's life,Jackson, but not as we know it.'

He'd had enough. He was getting out of this madhouse, even if it killed him. He opened his eyes. 'You're back with us then?' a woman's voice said. Someone loomed in and out of his vision. Fuzzy round the edges.

'Fuzzy,' he said. Maybe he only said it in his head. He was III hospital. The fuzzy person was a nurse. He was alive. Apparently. 'Hello, soldier,' the nurse said.

Outla
w
WHAT WERE THEY DOING UP AT THIS UNEARTHLY HOUR? ALL FOUR of them back at the dining table, breakfasting together this time. Patrick had made French toast, served it with creme fraiche, out-ofseason raspberries, the Wedgwood plates snowy with icing sugar as if they were in a restaurant. The raspberries had been flown all the way from Mexico.

Bridget and Tim had slept undisturbed but Louise had been up for hours at the train-crash site. She felt drained of her lifeblood, but Patrick, who had operated throughout the night as one accident victim after another was wheeled into theatre, was his usual chipper self. Mr Fix-it.

Louise poured a cup of coffee and contemplated the red raspberries on the white plate, drops of blood in the snow. A fairy tale. She felt sick with tiredness. She was trapped in a nightmare, it was like that Bufmel film where they all sit down to eat but never get any food, only in this case she was constantly being faced with food she couldn't stomach.

Bridget had once been a fashion buyer for a department store chain although you would never have guessed it to look at her. She was wearing an aggressive three-piece outfit that was probably very expensive but had the kind of pattern you would get if you cut up the flags of several obscure countries and then gave them to a blind pigeon to stick back together again.

Tim had been the head honcho in a big accountancy company and had taken 'the luxury of early retirement'. 'I'm a golf widow,' Bridget said with an expression ofmock bereavement. Bridget didn't say what she did with her time now and Louise didn't ask because she suspected that the answer would irritate her. Patrick was good Irish, Bridget was bad Irish.

'Mexican raspberries,' Louise said. 'How absurd is that? Talk about leaving a carbon footprint.' 'Oh, too early in the day, Louise,' Tim said, holding a hand to his forehead effetely. 'Let's leave the food miles off the breakfast table.' 'Where else do they belong?' Louise said. Guess who was the bolshy kid in this family?

'Louise didn't have a rebellious phase when she was a teenager,' Patrick said. 'She's making up for it now, apparently.' He laughed and Louise gave him a long look. Was he patronizing her? Of course i
t
was true, she hadn't had a mutinous youth because it was hard to kick against the traces when your own mother was corning in late (if at all) and puking her guts up like the best of badly behaved teenagers. Louise had been a grown-up for longer than most people her age. Making up for it now. Apparently. She'd never had a father to speak of -one night on Gran Canaria hardly counted -and she wondered if that was Patrick's appeal, had she subconsciously seen him as the father figure she had never had -was that how he had got past her defences and under her duvet? What did that make her -a comple
x
Electra?

'I don't think it's rebellious to want to talk about the politics o
f
consumption,' she said to Tim. 'Do you?'

While he was searching for an answer she turned to Patrick an
d
said, 'French toast. Or eggy bread as we in the lower classes used t
o
call it.'Why didn't she just poke him with a fork?

'My father worked for Dublin Corporation all his life,' Patrick sai
d
genially. 'I hardly think that qualified us for belonging to the uppe
r
echelons of society.' He was an Irishman, his weapons were words
,
whereas Louise was by her nature a street-fighter and for a brief bu
t
satisfYing moment thought about throwing his precious French toast at his head. Patrick smiled at her. Positively beamish. She smiled back. Marriage -tough love.

'Oh, I don't know about that, Paddy,' Bridget -the other half of 'us' -piped up. 'It wasn't as if Dada was a dustman, he was a surveyor. The Brennans were never what you would call lower class.'

'Huzzah for the bourgeoisie,' Louise said. 'Oops, did I say that out loud? I didn't mean to.'

'Louise,' Patrick said gently, laying a hand on her arm.

'Louise what?' she said, shaking his arm off.

'There goes the diet,' Bridget said, gamely ignoring everyone and forking up her food. Louise wanted to say Looks to me like it went a long time ago, but managed to zip her lips.

'Eat something, Louise,' Patrick coaxed. There he went again, Dada knows best. Love is patient love is kind, she reminded herself. But should she really be taking marital advice from a misogynist firstcentury Roman? 'French bread, eggy toast, whatever you want to call it,' he said, 'you should eat.'

'Shame about last night,' Bridget said. 'That the train crash wrecked dinner?' Louise said. 'Yeah, big shame.' 'Thank goodness we decided to come up by car,' Tim said. Louise wondered about pouring coffee on his balding head.

'I am aware it was a terrible disaster,' Bridget said primly. 'Poor Paddy was operating all night.' Louise didn't count, of course. Patrick was a saint. He saved people, according to Bridget. 'He saves their hips, usually,' Louise said and Patrick barked a laugh.

Nice and clean in an operating theatre, only a bit ofblood, patients quiet and well-behaved. Not down and dirty on a rail track, soaked with rain, finding severed limbs and listening to people crying out, or worse, not crying out at all. She had held a man's hand while a doctor amputated his leg at the scene. She was still wearing her diamond ring, its facets glinting in the emergency arc lights. She hadn't needed to go, but she was police, that's what you did.

'Are the transport police handling the investigation?'Tim asked, all pomp and no circumstance, as if he knew something about accident procedure.

'They're providing the deputy SIO,' Louise said without elaboration. 'Senior Investigating Officer,' Patrick said helpfully when Tim looked blank. Or blanker than usual. 'But isn't there a -what's it called, Rail Accident Investigation Bureau now?'

'Branch.' Louise sighed. 'It's called the Rail Accident Investigation Branch
. T
he transport police aren't big enough in Scotland to handle this investigation.'

'And sudden loss of life immediately involves the Procurator Fiscal,' Patrick said. 'But why-' Christ on a bike. How boring could you get?

Louise didn't care what kind ofshit was thrown her way, it had to be better than the company of Bridget and Tim. Patrick was taking them to St Andrews today.

'I hope neither ofyou are thinking ofplaying golf?' Bridget asked fretfully.

'Oh, you never know, we might get a round in,' Patrick laughed. He was relentlessly good-humoured with his sister, downright twinkly, in fact. It seemed to mollifY her quite successfully and Louise wondered if she could manage twinkly. It felt like a stretch.

Patrick touched the back of Louise's hand with the back of hi
s
fingertips, gently, as if she were sick, possibly terminal. 'We wer
e
thinking of driving up to Glamis tomorrow. We'd like it if you cam
e
with us. I'd like it,' he added softly. 'I know you're not workin
g
tomorrow.'

'Actually something came up. And I am. Working.'

'Drive carefully,' Louise said as she finally escaped the breakfast table. 'I always drive carefully.' 'Other people don't.'

She could have walked round to the Hunters' but she didn't, she drove.

Ifyou had a good arm you could probably have stood on the roof of their block of flats and thrown a rock that would have landed in the Hunters' driveway. Yesterday Joanna Hunter, today Neil Hunter. Two completely different visits with two completely different goals, but it seemed a very strange coincidence that she should need to drop in on both husband and wife in the space of two days. A coincidence is just an explanation waiting to happen, Jackson Brodie had said to her once but no matter how you looked at it there was no relation between Andrew Decker's release and Neil Hunter's present troubles. And just because Jackson Brodie said something didn't make it true. He was hardly the oracle of crime-solving.

The Hunters' house was dead-eyed and quiet. Louise parked next to Mr Hunter's showy beast of a black-badged Range Rover, a bigger threat to the planet than Mexican raspberries.

Louise rang the front-door bell and when Neil Hunter answered she showed him her warrant card and with her best rise-and-shine smile said, 'Good morning, Mr Hunter.'

Neil Hunter looked rough, although still on the good side of haggard. Louise could see why someone like Joanna Hunter would be attracted to him. He was everything she wasn't.

He was wearing Levi's and an old Red Sox T-shirt, a wolfin wolf's clothing. She could smell last night's whisky still breathing out from his pores. He looked rumpled enough in both face and clothes to have just got out of bed except that Louise could smell coffee and see that there were plastic files and papers scattered across the kitchen table as if he had been up all night doing his accounts. Perhaps he'd been working out if the insurance payout from the arcade fire would cover his tax.

The table was a big old-fashioned thing that you half expected to see a Victorian cook kneading dough on. Bridget and Tim's wedding present to them, hauled out
of the
boot
of the
car yesterday, had been a breadmaker. 'A good one,' Bridget said, 'not one
of the
cheap ones.' Louise wondered how long she would have to wait before she could drop it into a charity shop. There were not many things in life that Louise was sure of but she would bet the house on the fact that sh
e
was going to go to her grave without ever having made a loaf of bread.

Neil Hunter glanced at the warrant card and said, 'Detective Chief Inspector,' with a sardonic lift of the eyebrow, as if there was something amusing about her rank. His voice was a gravelly Glaswegian that sounded as ifhe'd breakfasted on cigarettes. Twenty years ago she too would have found his moodiness attractive. Now she just wanted to punch him. But then she seemed to want to punch everyone at the moment.

'Mind if I come in for a minute?' she said, no slippage in her jaunty persona. She was over the threshold before he could protest. Police weren't like vampires, they didn't wait to be invited in.

'I'd like to have a word, about the arcade fire.' 'The fire investigation report's come back?' he said. He looked relieved, as if he'd expected her to tell him something else.

'Yes. I'm afraid the fire was started deliberately.' He didn't exactly throw up his hands in shock and horror. Resignation, if anything. Or maybe indifference. The house was surprisingly quiet. No sign of Dr Hunter or her baby. Or the girl. The one good thing about the train crash, ifyou could say that, which you couldn't really, was that it had got in the way of any lurid stories about Andrew Decker's release or the current whereabouts ofJoanna Mason. The dog pattered into the kitchen, sniffed her shoes and then flopped down on the floor.

'Do you mind if I ask where Dr Hunter is?' Louise asked Neil Hunter.

'Do you mind if I ask why?' The question seemed to fluster him. He hadn't looked nervous when she talked about the fire but he looked downright jittery at the mention ofhis wife. Interesting
. W
ith an impatient sigh he said, 'She's gone down to Yorkshire, an aunt of hers was taken ill. What's Jo got to do with any of this?'

'Nothing. I was here yesterday, didn't she tell you? I came to tel
l
her about Andrew Decker's release.'

'That,' he said with a grimace. 'He's out?'

'Yes, that, I'm afraid. She didn't tell you?'Wasn't that what marriag
e
was for? The sharing ofyour deepest, darkest secrets? Perhaps she ha
d
more in common with Joanna Hunter than she had first thought.

'The news of his release has been leaked to the press, I wanted to warn Dr Hunter that the past was about to be dredged up again. She really didn't say anything?'

'She was in a hurry to get away. Happy coincidence, I suppose, if she's in Yorkshire she might be able to avoid the stushie.'

'I don't think Yorkshire's a no-go area for the press,' Louise said. 'But I suppose it might throw them off the scent.' Unless they came looking for the aunt, of course. 'An aunt by marriage or by blood?' she asked. 'On the mother's side or the father's?'