Kate Atkinson - One Good Turn

“His phone, we think.”

“Nothing else?”

“Not that we know of.”

She could hardly be blatant and say, “No computer disks or any-thing like that?” Would they notice if a CD was missing? Probably not, but Martin Canning would know, wouldn’t he?

“Where is he? Canning?”

“In a hotel, the Four Clans, I believe.”

She wanted to say, “So you’re not thinking two fourteen-year-old boys might have broken in and beaten the victim to death?” She gazed at a photograph of Richard Mott, he’d made a very messy corpse. Could her son be responsible for that? No, definitely not. Hamish maybe, but not her baby.

“You’re very interested in this case, Louise. Do you want me to find room for you on the team? We’ve lost a couple of people to the ‘flu.’We could bring you over from Corstorphine if you’re not busy over there.” He moved a step closer to her, and she moved a step back. Perfect rhythm, they’d be doing the fox-trot next.

“No, no, just idle curiosity, boss.” Lies came easier than the truth. She pulled out a name from the past. “Actually I was looking for Bob Carstairs.”

“Went upstairs a few months ago, Louise. Didn’t you hear?”

“Upstairs?”

“To meet the big boss.” The man was like a walking riddle. “Dead. Heart attack,” Sutherland said with a huge grin. “One minute here, the next minute gone.” He snapped his fingers like a magician. “Just like that.”

Back at Corstorphine she went looking for Jeff Lennon and found him hiding away in a corner of the open-plan office, sitting at his desk, eating a bar of chocolate. Louise imagined him in retirement, lardy and bored. Or, more likely, on his way upstairs to meet the “big boss.”

“Did you check the owner for that Honda, Jeff?”

Jeff took in a deep nose-breath as if he were in a yoga class. Louise had tried yoga, but she found herself wanting to yell at the teacher to get a move on. Now she wanted to yell at Jeff Lennon. “Certainly did,” he said eventually. “I was just coming to find you.”

He didn’t look like a man who was planning on finding any-thing in a hurry.

“It’s a business called Providence Holdings.”

“Not Terence Smith, then?”What did that mean, that Jackson Brodie had been wrong (or lying) when he said that Honda Man had been involved in the road rage? Or was Honda Man driving someone else’s car, someone he worked for? Providence Holdings. “Never heard of it,” she said. “Does it mean anything to you?”

“No, but I did you a favor and looked it up in Companies House .”

“And?”

“The director is one Graham Hatter.”

“ The Graham Hatter?”

“One and the same,” Jeff said.

“So Honda Man-I mean Terence Smith-works for Graham Hatter?” And Jackson had been asking about “Real Homes for Real People” this morning. Making his bloody “connections” everywhere. What did he know that he wasn’t telling her? With-holding evidence, that was an offense , for God’s sake. What was wrong with the man?

“I handed the info on to the team investigating the road rage,” Jeff Lennon said.

“It’s a team? ”

“Well, no, a couple of wee lassies.”Ah, sexism, thy name is Jeff Lennon.

“You’re a star, Jeff. I owe you one.”

“Aye, you do,” he said cheerfully. “How’s that son of yours? Andy?”

“Archie. He’s fine, thanks.”

Jackson worked hard at suppressing a yawn. The Spiegeltent was thick with overheated air. “Deconstructed romantic irony,” said the ca-daverous woman who had introduced the writers on the platform, her words seemingly addressed to no one in particular. Jackson had no idea what she meant. She was wearing a low-cut top that revealed a bony sternum and breasts that hung like flaps. Someone give that woman a good meal , Jackson thought. Retaining an impassive expression on his face, he conjured up a picture of Julia’s breasts, breasts he hadn’t seen enough of recently. Louise Monroe had much smaller breasts, you didn’t have to see her naked to know that. But she had them, there was no doubt about that. He mustn’t think about Louise Monroe naked. He felt a stab of cuckold’s guilt. Very, very bad dog.

And, he noticed, here were yet more people who didn’t seem to have jobs to go to, how did the economy of the country not collapse? Who was actually working? The foreign and the dispossessed-girls named Marijut and Sophia. And computer geeks, thousands of spotty boys who never saw daylight, the suits in the financial district, a few orange sellers, and that was it. And the emergency services, of course, they never rested. He wondered how Julia’s day was going. He checked his watch discreetly. Per-haps she was having lunch with someone. Acting wasn’t real work, not by anyone’s definition of the word.

Martin, who clearly should be lying down in a darkened room listening to soothing music, seemed hysterically insistent that he appear at the Book Festival today even though it seemed an un-necessary kind of engagement to Jackson. He already had to have a quiet word with a journalist who wanted to interview Martin. “Sub judice,” Jackson said to the man, rather more menacingly than he’d intended. He really wasn’t in the mood today to be messed around with.

A lot seemed to have happened to Martin since Tuesday. A lot had happened to Jackson as well, of course, but Martin was winning hands down in the having-a-bad-day stakes.

“My laptop disappeared after I threw it at the Honda driver,” he said breathlessly when Jackson caught up with him at the Book Festival in Charlotte Square. He seemed slightly deranged. Of course, there was deranged and then there was deranged, Jackson wasn’t sure he was up to the second kind, but Martin seemed lucid and articulate. Perhaps a little too articulate for Jackson’s liking.

“I spent the night in a hotel with the Peugeot driver because the hospital was worried that he might be concussed. His name was Paul Bradley, only it turns out that it wasn’t, because there’s no such person . He doesn’t exist . But of course he exists, you saw him, didn’t you? He had a gun. It was a Welrod. But then I passed out because I think he drugged me and then he stole my wallet. I wouldn’t mind, but I saved his life .”

“A Welrod?” Jackson queried. How did Martin know about guns? About Welrods , for heaven’s sake.

“And someone broke into my office, well not broke in, there was no sign of a break-in, but there was a sweet wrapper on the floor-”

“A sweet wrapper?”

“ I don’t eat sweets! And now it turns out that Paul Bradley doesn’t even exist! And he was my alibi.”

“Alibi?”

“For murder.”

“Murder?” Jackson revised his opinion, maybe this was the second kind of deranged.

“A man was murdered in my house! Richard Mott, the come-dian, and then he phoned me.”

“Whoa. Richard Mott was murdered in your house?”

“Yes. And then he phoned me.”

“Yes, you said that.” Could Martin tell the difference between fact and fiction? He was a writer, after all.

“Not him, I know it wasn’t him. The murderer must have taken his phone-his phone was missing-and then he phoned me on it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know!”

“Okay, okay, stay calm.” Jackson sighed. You said five little words to someone- How can I help you? -and it was as if you’d mort-gaged your soul out to them.

Despite the fact that everything Martin said sounded out-landish, there were little anchors of truth in his story. And who was Jackson to criticize, after all? He had tried to save a dead girl from drowning, he had killed a dog with the power of his thoughts. Jackson wondered if Martin still lived with his mother. Not that there was anything wrong with that, Jackson would quite like to be living with his own mother, his time with her having been cut so short. No, Martin didn’t live with his mother, he lived with Richard Mott, didn’t he?