Kate Atkinson - Case Histories

"Not that long," Jackson said. Although Olivia's case had never been officially closed, there was hardly anyone left alive who had worked it. Before the days of sophisticated DNA testing and police profiling, before computers for God's sake. If she were abducted now there would be a better chance of finding her. Maybe. All the senior detectives who had worked the case were dead and the only person Jackson could find any trace of was a female PC called Marian Foster who seemed to have done most of the interviews with the Land girls. She had just retired as a superintendent from a northern force that was too close to Jackson's old home for him to reel excited about the prospect of a visit. Of course, nowadays the parents would be the first people you thought about, especially the father. How aggressively had the police gone after Victor when they interviewed him? If it had been Jackson's case, Victor Land would have been his prime suspect.

Out of earshot of Marlee, Jackson asked Binky, "Do you remember the disappearance of Olivia Land? Little girl abducted from around here thirty-four years ago?"

"Frisky," Binky said, sticking to her own agenda. "She's hardly more than a kitten."

"The Land family," Jackson persisted. "Did you know them? He was a maths lecturer at St. John's. They had four little girls." You didn't forget the disappearance of a child in a neighboring street, did you?

"Oh, those girls," Binky said. "They were wild children, completely undisciplined. In my opinion, children should be neither seen nor heard. Really, families like that deserve what happens to them." Jackson thought of several responses to this remark, but in the end he kept them all to himself. "And, of course," Binky continued, "he was the son of Oswald Land, the so-called polar hero, and I can assure you that he was a complete charlatan."

"Do you remember seeing anyone who didn't belong, a stranger?"

"No. The police were such a nuisance, going from house to house, asking questions. They even searched my garden, can you believe. I gave them short shrift, I can tell you. She was very strange."

"Who was strange? Mrs. Land?"

"No, that eldest one, long white streak of a thing."

"Strange how?"

"Very sly. And you know, they used to break into my garden, shout things, and steal from my lovely apple trees. This was such a lovely orchard." Jackson looked around at the "epple" trees, now as gnarled and ancient as Binky Rain.

"Sylvia?"

"Yes, that was her name."

Jackson left Binky's by way of the back garden gate. He'd never exited that way before and was surprised to find himself in the lane that ran along behind the back of Victor's garden. He hadn't realized how close the two actually were to each other – he was standing only a few yards from where the fateful tent was pitched. Had someone climbed over the wall here, plucked Olivia from sleep? And then left the same way? How easy would it be to climb a wall with a three-year-old slung over your shoulder? Jackson could have managed it with no bother. The wall was smothered in ivy, providing plenty of hand- and footholds. But that mode of entry implied an intruder and that wouldn't explain why the dog didn't bark in the night. Rascal. And it was the kind of dog that would have barked, according to Amelia and Julia, so it must have known Olivia's captor. How many people would the dog not bark at?

He tugged at the ivy and discovered a gate in the wall, the spit of Binky's. He thought of The Secret Garden, a film he had watched on video with Marlee and that had enraptured her. No one would have had to climb anything – he or she could have just walked into the garden. Or perhaps no one walked in and then out with Olivia – perhaps someone walked out with her and then walked back in again. Victor? Rosemary Land?

Marlee was almost asleep by the time they reached David Lastingham's house. Would he ever call it David and Josie's house? (No.) The sugar high Marlee had been riding had long since turned into irritability. She was covered in grass seeds and cat fur, which would undoubtedly cause a row with Josie. Jackson suggested that she sleep at his house tonight, at least that way he could get her cleaned up, but she declined because "We're going berry picking in the morning."

" Berry picking?" Jackson said as he rang David Lastingham's doorbell. He thought of hunter-gatherers and peasants.

"So Mummy can make jam."

"Jam? Your mother?" The born-again wife, the jam-making peasant mother, came out of the kitchen, licking something off her fingers. The woman who was previously too busy to cook – the queen of Iceland – who now spent her evenings making cozy casseroles and carelessly tossing together salads for her new, reconstituted family. It was hard to believe that this was the same woman who used to give him blow jobs while he was driving, who would pin him up against any available surface and groan, "Now, Jackson. Hurry," who fitted her body against his in sleep, who used to wake up every morning and turn sleepily to him and say, "I still love you," as if relieved that the night hadn't stolen her feelings for him. Until one morning, three years after Marlee was born, she woke up and didn't say anything.

"You're late," she said to him now, "Where have you been?"

"We went to see a witch," Marlee said.

Le chat noir. Les chats noirs. Did chats have a gender? Was there a chatte?

"Bonsoir,Jackson." Joan Dodds greeted him with the stress on the soir rather than the bon. She despised tardiness in people.

" Bonsoir, Jackson," the whole class chorused as Jackson made his sheepishly late entrance.

"Vous etes en retard, comme toutes les semaines," Joan Dodds said. She was a retired schoolteacher who had the kind of character that would have made her an excellent dominatrix. Jackson remembered a time when the women in his life actually seemed to want to make him happy. Now they all just seemed to be angry all the time. Jackson felt rather like a small, rather naughty, boy. "Je suis desole," he said. You had to wonder about the French, how they could make a simple "sorry" sound so extreme and forlorn.

In Bliss, Jackson had shown Milanda his license and asked if he could see the place where Laura Wyre was killed. "Morbid" was her only comment. The boardroom, as Theo had reported, was now used as a storeroom. The nail-varnish trolley had been moved and was no longer acting as her cenotaph. Laura's blood was in plain sight, a washed-out (but not washed-out enough) stain on the bare floorboards. "Christ," Milanda said, finally roused out of her torpor, "I thought that was paint or something. That's disgusting."

When he was on his way out the door, Milanda said, "She's not haunting the place. I'd know if she were here. I've got second sight, I'd feel her if she were here."

"Really?" Jackson said – Milanda seemed like an unlikely recipient of second sight – and she said, "Oh, yes, seventh daughter of a seventh daughter," and Jackson thought, Inbred, rural, and Milanda fixed him with her baby blue eyes – an unnatural, startling color that he realized must be contacts – and said, "You, for example," and Jackson said, "Yes?"

"Yeah," Milanda said. "Black cats are very lucky for you." And Jackson felt an unexpected disappointment because for one weird, unnerving moment he thought she was actually going to say something portentous.

"Don't be a cross-patch, Mr. Brodie," Amelia mimicked. "What are you like, Julia?" (And she had kissed him! She had actually kissed him!) "Why not just take your clothes off in the street?"

"Oh, I do believe you're jealous, Milly!" Julia laughed with (cruel) delight. "What would Henry say if he found out?"