Kate Atkinson - Case Histories

The sister appeared, disappeared, and then reappeared, holding in her hand what looked like an old doll. You would never have taken them for relatives, one tall and heavy, her hair graying and falling out of a kind of topknot, the other short and curvy and – Jackson knew this type too – flirting with anything male and still breathing. The sister wore bright red lipstick and was dressed in what looked like secondhand clothes, layers of mismatched eccentric garments, her wild hair piled haphazardly on her head and fixed with a pencil. They were both dressed for cold weather rather than the sweltering day outside. Jackson could see why – he had shivered as he crossed the threshold, leaving the sunshine behind for the wintry gloom of the interior.

"Our father died two days ago," Julia said, as if it were an everyday nuisance. Jackson looked at the doll on the table. It was made of some kind of grubby toweling material and had long thin legs and arms and the head of a mouse. And it was blue. Understanding finally dawned. He nodded at it. "A blue mouse," he said to Amelia.

"No, the Blue Mouse," she said, as if that distinction were vital. Amelia Land might as well have had "unloved" tattooed on her forehead. She was dressed in a way that suggested she'd stopped shopping for new clothes twenty years ago and that when she had shopped for clothes it had been exclusively in Laura Ashley. The way she was dressed reminded him of old photographs of fishwives – clumpy shoes and woolen tights and a cord dirndl skirt and around her shoulders some kind of shawl that she was hugging to herself as if she were freezing, which wasn't a surprise because this place was Baltic, Jackson thought. It was as if the house had its own climate.

"Our father died," Amelia said brusquely, "two days ago."

"Yes," Jackson said carefully. "Your sister just said that. I'm sorry for your loss," he added, rather perfunctorily because he could see that neither of them seemed particularly sorry.

Amelia frowned and said, "What I mean is…" She looked at her sister for help. That was the trouble with academic types, Jackson thought, never able to say what they mean and half the time never meaning what they say.

"Let me hazard a guess," he said helpfully. "Your father died – " They both nodded vigorously as if relieved that Jackson had grasped this point. "Your father died," he continued, "and you started clearing out the old family home – " he hesitated because they looked less sure of this, "This is the old family home?" he checked.

"Well, yes," Julia said. "It's just" – she shrugged – "that sounds so warm, you know. 'Old family home.'"

"Well," Jackson said, "how about we remove any emotional significance from those three words and just treat them as two adjectives and a noun. Old. Family. Home. True or false?"

"True," Julia admitted reluctantly.

"Of course, strictly speaking," Amelia said, staring out the kitchen window as if she were talking to someone in the garden, "'family' isn't an adjective. 'Familial' would be the adjective."

"No, it wouldn't," Julia said.

Jackson decided the best thing would be to carry on as if neither of them had spoken. "Not close to the old guy then?" he said to Julia.

"No, we weren't," Amelia said, turning round and giving him her full attention. "And we found this in a locked drawer in his study." The blue mouse again. The Blue Mouse.

"And the significance of the 'Blue Mouse'?" Jackson prompted. He hoped they hadn't just discovered their old man was some kind of soft-toy fetishist.

"Did you ever hear of Olivia Land?" Julia asked.

"Rings a bell," Jackson said. A very small bell. "A relative?"

"She was our sister," Amelia said. "She disappeared thirty-four years ago. She was taken."

Taken? Oh, not alien abduction, that would really make his day. Julia took out a packet of cigarettes and offered him one. She made offering a cigarette seem like an invitation to sex. He could feel the sister's disapproval from where he sat but whether it was of the nicotine or the sex, he wasn't sure. Both probably. He declined the cigarette, he would never have smoked in front of a client anyway, but he inhaled deeply when Julia lit up.

"She was kidnapped," Julia said, "from a tent in the garden."

"A tent?"

"It was summer," Amelia said sharply. "Children sleep outside in tents in the summer."

"So they do," Jackson said mildly. Somehow he had the feeling that Amelia Land had been the one in the tent with the sister.

"She was only three," Julia said. "She was never found."

"You really don't know the case?" Amelia said. "It was very big."

"I'm not from this area," Jackson said and thought of all the girls who must have disappeared over the last thirty-four years. But, of course, as far as the Land sisters were concerned, there was only one. He felt suddenly too sad and too old.

"It was very hot," Amelia said. "A heat wave."

"Like now?"

"Yes. Aren't you going to take notes?"

"Would it make you happier if I did?" he asked.

"No," Amelia snapped.

They had obviously reached some kind of conversational impasse. Jackson looked at the Blue Mouse. It had "clue" written all over it. Jackson attempted to join the dots. "So, let's see," he ventured. "This is Olivia's and she had it with her when she was abducted? And the first time it's been seen since is when it turns up after your father's death? And you didn't call the police?"

They both frowned. It was funny because although they looked quite different they shared exactly the same facial expressions. Jackson supposed that was what was meant by "fleeting resemblance."

"What wonderful powers of deduction you have, Mr. Brodie," Julia said, and it was hard to tell whether she was being ironic or trying to flatter him. She had one of those husky voices that sounded as if she were permanently coming down with a cold. Men seemed to find that sexy in a woman, which Jackson thought was odd because it made women sound less like women and more like men. Maybe it was a gay thing.

"The police didn't find her then," Amelia said, ignoring Julia, "and they're not going to be interested now. And, anyway, maybe it's not a matter for the police."

"But it's a matter for me?"

"Mr. Brodie," Julia said, very sweetly, too sweetly. They were like good cop, bad cop. "Mr. Brodie, we just want to know why Victor had Olivia's Blue Mouse."

"Victor?"

"Daddy. It just seems…"

"Wrong?" Jackson supplied.

Jackson rented a house now, a long way from the Cambourne ghetto. It was a cottage really, in a row of similar small cottages, on a road that must once have been in the countryside, farm cottages, probably. Whatever farm they had been a part of had long since been built over by streets of Victorian working-class terraces. Nowadays even houses that were back-to-backs with their front doors opening straight onto the street went for a fortune in the area. The poor moved out to the likes of Milton and Cherry Hinton, but now even the council estates there had been colonized by middle-class university types (and the Nicola Spencers of the world), which must really piss the poor people off. The poor might always be with us, but Jackson was puzzled as to where they actually lived these days.

When Josie left for nonconnubial bliss with David Lastingham, Jackson considered staying on and living in the marital Lego house. This thought had occupied him for roughly ten minutes before he rang the estate agent and put it on the market. After they had split the proceeds of the sale, there wasn't enough money left for Jackson to buy a new place, so he had chosen to rent this house instead. It was the last in the terrace, on the run-down side, and the walls between it and the house next door were so thin that you could hear every fart and cat mewl from the neighbor's. The furnishings that came with it were cheap and it had an impersonal atmosphere, like a disappointing holiday home, that Jackson found strangely restful.