Kate Atkinson - One Good Turn

He made an odd choking noise and shook his head, but when he spoke it was to ask after the whereabouts of Graham, his puppet master.

“He’s in Thurso,” she said. It was funny, but the more she said that, the more it seemed true, in a metaphysical sense at any rate, as if Thurso were a kind of purgatory to which people were ban-ished. Gloria had been to Thurso once and found that to be pretty much the case.

“Thurso?” he repeated doubtfully.

“Yes,” Gloria said. “It’s up north.” She doubted that Scottish geography was high on Terry’s list of specialist subjects. She frowned at him. His face, always ugly, had acquired a new and disturbing florescence. “Terry-what happened to your nose?” He put his hand over his face, as if he’d grown suddenly bashful.

The phone rang again, and they both listened in silence to Emily’s bleating. “Mother-Mother-Mother.”

“That’s your daughter,” Terry said eventually, as if Gloria had failed to recognize Emily.

Gloria sighed and said, “Tell me about it,” and, against her better judgment, went and picked up the receiver.

“I’ve been ringing forever,” Emily said, “but all I get is the answering machine.”

“I’ve been out a lot,”Gloria said. “You should have left a message.”

“I didn’t want to leave a message,” Emily said crossly. Gloria watched as Terry lumbered down the path. He reminded her a little of King Kong, but less friendly.

“Mother?”

“Mm?”

“Is something going on?” Emily asked sharply.

“Going on?” Gloria echoed.

“Yes, going on. Is Dad okay? Can I speak to him?”

“He can’t come to the phone just now.”

“I have some news for you,” Emily’s less-than-dulcet tones announced. “Good news.”

“Good news?” Gloria queried. She wondered if Emily was pregnant again (was that good news?), so she was taken aback when Emily said, “I’ve found Jesus.”

“Oh,” Gloria said. “Where was he?”

Louise stared through the windshield at the rain. This could be a godforsaken country when it rained. Godforsaken when it didn’t.

The car was parked down by the harbor at Cramond, looking out toward the island. There were three of them in the car, her-self, DS Sandy Mathieson, and eager-beaver Jessica Drummond. They had steamed up the inside of the car like lovers or conspir-ators, although they were doing nothing more exciting than talking about house prices. “Where two or more people are gathered together in Edinburgh,” Louise said.

“Supply and demand, boss,” Sandy Mathieson said. “It’s a town with more demand than supply.” Louise would have preferred “ma’am” to “boss,” “ma’am” made her sound like a woman (somewhere between an aristocrat and a headmistress, both ideas quite appealing), whereas “boss” made her one of the boys. But then, didn’t you have to be one of the boys to cut it? “I read in the Evening News ,” Sandy Mathieson continued, “that there aren’t enough expensive houses in Edinburgh. There are millionaires fighting over the high-end stuff.”

“The Russians are moving in, apparently,” Jessica said.

“The Russians?” Louise asked. “What Russians?”

“Rich ones.”

“The Russians are the new Americans, apparently,” Sandy Mathieson said.

“Someone paid a hundred thousand for a garage last week,” Jessica complained. “How insane is that? I can’t even afford a starter home in Gorgie.”

“It was a double garage,” Sandy Mathieson said. Louise laughed and cracked a window to let out some of the hot air. The tide was dropping, and she caught a faint smell of sewage in the damp air. She never knew whether or not Sandy Mathieson was being funny. “Not” seemed more likely, he never seemed sharp enough to be witty. He was true to his name, from his gingery hair to his little beard to his giraffe-colored freckles. He made Louise think of a biscuit, shortbread or gingerbread, perhaps a digestive. He was a straight-down-the-middle type, married, two children, docile dog, season ticket to Hearts, barbecues with the in-laws on the weekends. He had told her once that he had everything he had ever wanted and would die protecting any of it, even the season ticket to Hearts.

“That must be nice,” Louise had said, not really meaning it. She wasn’t the sacrificing kind. Archie was the only thing she would die for.

“Where do you live, boss?” Jessica asked.

“Glencrest,” Louise said reluctantly, she had no desire to start chatting about her private life with Jessica. She knew the type from her school days, winkling out intimacies and then using them against her. “Louise Monroe’s mother’s an alkie, Louise Monroe gets free school meals, Louise Monroe is a liar.”

“That Hatter Homes development out by the Braids?” Sandy Mathieson said. “We looked at that. Too pricey, we decided.”The “we” sounded emphasized, Louise noticed, underlining his little world. “Me and my wife and my two children and my docile dog.” Not a woman on her own with a kid whose paternity had always been a matter for speculation. Sandy was a plodder, too unimaginative to be unfaithful to his wife, too stolid to rise above the rank he was at now. But he would always do the right thing by his kids, and he didn’t dodge and weave with the truth, didn’t seed favors- a blind eye here, a deaf ear there. Wouldn’t screw a DI in the back of a police car, too drunk to remember that sex was a biological imperative with only one goal. ( “I’m pulling rank on you, Louise.” Hilarious, how they’d laughed. Jesus.)

“It’s a very small house,” Louise said defensively.

“Still…” Sandy said, as if he’d proved some point about Louise’s untold riches.

“Didn’t there turn out to be some problems with Glencrest?” Jessica asked.

“Problems?” Louise said.

“Subsidence or something.”

“What?”

“Real Homes for Real People,” Jessica said. “Word on the pave-ment is that Graham Hatter’s going down.”

“‘Going down’? You sound like an extra off The Bill .”Yes, that would be Jessica, Louise could just see her going home at night, putting her clumpy feet up, eating a takeaway in front of The Bill . “ ‘Going down’ for what?”

“Well, a little bird says they’re after him for money laundering, among other things. But apparently it’s huge, corruption in high places and all that.”

“A little bird?” Louise said.

“I have a friend in fraud.”

“Really? You have a friend?”

“Name me a famous woman who drowned,” Louise said. Jessica gave her a worried look, as if she suspected this were part of some kind of intellectual hazing, some arcane knowledge that you needed in order to be in plain clothes. Her pudgy brow puckered with the effort of remembering something she didn’t know in the first place.

“You see?” Louise said when no answer was forthcoming. “Women aren’t known for drowning.”

“I think I prefer I-Spy,” Sandy Mathieson said.

All morning while Louise had been in court, her small “flu-diminished” team had been busy, mostly on door-to-door inquiries. Had anyone seen anything unusual, had anyone seen a woman go into the water, had anyone seen a woman onshore, had anyone seen a woman, had anyone seen anything? A negative on all counts. The divers had come up with nothing. Louise had watched them emerging from the water-“frogmen,” they used to be called, you didn’t hear that word used much anymore.They reminded her of The Man from Atlantis .

They were chasing a wild goose, a trick of light on water.

“I see dead people,” Jessica intoned.