When Will There Be Good News? (24 page)

The baby's comforter, his square of moss-green blanket. It looked as ifit had been trampled in the mud and when Reggie picked it up and examined it she could see a stain on it, a stain that wasn't tomato sauce or red wine, a stain that was blood. Reggie knew blood now. She had seen more in the last twenty-four hours than she had seen in a previous lifetime.

Dr Hunter's surgery was in Liberton and Reggie started walking because she wasn't sure how Sadie, who had never been on a bus, would fare with all those trampling feet and shoving bodies. Reggie never fared well herself. She ate her Mars bar and would have given a heel of it to Sadie but Dr Hunter said chocolate was bad for dogs. She would have to buy dog treats, nothing with sugar, Dr Hunter didn't like Sadie to have sugar (,Got to look after the old girl's teeth.'). Reggie had bought a couple of tins of dog food from the Avenue Stores on Blackford Avenue but they were already weighing her bag down. She had to keep swapping it with the Topshop bag on her other shoulder. She felt extremely burdened. Mum used to carry loads ofheavy bags around with her -they'd never been able to afford a car -she used to say her genes had been spliced with those of a donkey. No she didn't say that, Mum wouldn't have used the word 'spliced', she might not even have used 'genes'. What had she said? She was fading, retreating into a darkness where Reggie couldn't follow. 'Bred from a donkey' -that was it. Wasn't it? The darkness deepens.

Eventually Reggie felt too tired to walk any further and caught a bus the rest of the way. Sadie did pretty well for a first-time bus user.

The surgery was a big, modern, single-storey building with no obvious place to leave a dog so Reggie said 'Sit' and 'Stay' to Sadie in her most authoritative voice, the one she used on the baby ('No!') when he was making an accelerated move on a deathly grape or coin. When Sadie was a puppy Dr Hunter had taken her to obedience classes from which Sadie had graduated top of her class. ('Dog school', Dr Hunter called it. Which was a lovely idea.) She even had a red rosette, tattered now with age, to prove it, which Dr Hunter kept pinned to the cork noticeboard in the kitchen. She was pretty smart for a dog, she could do all the usual sit-and-stay stuff as well as walking tightly to heel like a dog at Crufts, 'My Best in Show,' Dr Hunter said fondly. Sadie had what Dr Hunter called her 'party pieces' as well, she could roll over, and play dead, and shake your hand -her big paw softer and heavier in your hand than you expected.

Sadie hunkered down obligingly on the ground outside the big glass doors to the surgery and Reggie went inside and found the reception desk where a woman was having a silent stand-off with her computer. Without even glancing in Reggie's direction she put her hand up and made a kind of 'halt' sign to her. Reggie wondered if she was going to say 'sit' and 'stay'. Eventually the receptionist tore her eyes away from the screen and, giving Reggie a starchy look, said, 'Yes?' It pained Reggie to think that Dr Hunter worked in a place that contained such unfriendly people.

'I know Dr Hunter's away,' Reggie said. 'I just wondered when she would be back?'

'I'm afraid I can't tell you that.'

'Because it's confidential information?'

'Because I don't know. Are you looking for an appointment with her?' 'No.' 'Because I can make one with another doctor.' 'No, no thank you
. Y
ou don't know why she's gone away, do you?'

Reggie asked hopefully.

'No, I can't tell you that.'

'Because it's confidential information?'

'Yes.'

'Just one last thing,' Reggie said. 'Did she phone in herself, or was it Mr Hunter?' 'Who are you?' Little Miss Nobody. Sister of the lesser Billy. Orphan of the storm.

Little Polly Flinders sitting amongst the cinders. Reggie didn't sav any of that, of course, she just said, 'Well, seeya,' and hoped she wouldn't.

On the way out of the surgery, passing a seemingly endless display of posters urging her to brush her teeth twice a day and eat five pieces of fruit and watch out for chlamydia, Reggie bumped into one of the midwives attached to the practice. Dr Hunter's friend, Sheila.

One afternoon in late summer Dr Hunter came home with her and said, 'Sheila, this is the famous Reggie, she's my life-support system,' then Sheila and Dr Hunter sat in the garden with the baby crawling around on the grass ('I can't believe how he's grown, Jo!') and drank Pimm's, even though Dr Hunter said, 'God, Sheila, I'm breastfeeding, this is shameful,' but they were laughing about it and Sheila said, 'It's fine, Jo. Trust me, I'm a midwife,' and they laughed even more.

They invited Reggie to join them but Reggie thought someone should keep a sober eye on things in case they became drunk in charge of a baby but, of course, Dr Hunter wasn't like that and she made one drink last until the afternoon had begun to lengthen into twilight when Mr Hunter arrived home and said, 'Still here, Reggie?'

Both women had looked disconcerted at the sight of Mr Hunter, striding across the lawn with a can of beer in his hand like someone who'd crash-landed from another world but then he said, 'Can anyone join this session then?' and Dr Hunter said, 'You've come late to the party, we're as tight as ticks here,' which wasn't true and Mr Hunter said, 'Aye, a right pair ofjakies,' and they all three laughed and Reggie went out and scooped the baby up from the lawn and put him to bed with a bottle -Dr Hunter kept a stash of expressed milk in the freezer. Reggie had once seen Mr Hunter take out the bottle of Stoli he kept in the freezer and frown at the sight of the little containers of frozen breast milk. 'The difference between men and women,' he laughed when he saw Reggie watching. 'By the contents of their freezer shall you know them.'

'It's Reggie, isn't it?' Sheila said. She pointed at her chest and said, 'I'm Sheila,Jo's friend. Sheila Hayes.'

'Yes, I know, I remember. Hi.'

'How are you? Are you looking for Jo? I don't think she's in today, I haven't seen her anyway.' 'She's gone away to see a sick aunt in Yorkshire.' 'Really? She never said anything. That would explain it. We wer
e
supposed to be going to Jenners last night, for their Christmas shopping evening, and she didn't turn up and that's just not Jo.' 'And when you tried to phone her -no answer?' Reggie hazarded.

'Yes, strange, isn't it. Her phone's her-'

'Lifeline?' Reggie supplied.

'Still,' Sheila said, 'an illness in the family, that explains it. An aunt?'

'Yes.'

'She's never mentioned an aunt. Is everything OK with you, Reggie?' 'Totally. Thank you.'

Lucy Locket lost her pocket, Kitty Fisherfound it. From the pocket of her new jacket Reggie took out the scrap ofgreen blanket that Sadie had retrieved from Dr Hunter's front garden. A pocket was where prostitutes kept their money, Dr Hunter said. 'Nursery rhymes are never what they seem.' That could be said about a lot of things in Reggie's opinion. When Sadie laid the baby's muddy bit of blanket at her feet she had been horrified. It belonged with the baby. The baby belonged with Dr Hunter. The dog belonged with Dr Hunter. Reggie belonged with Dr Hunter. It was all wrong. The whole world was wrong. Hard times.

Pilgrim5 Progres
s
HE WAS DREAMING. HE WAS WALKING ALONG A DESOLATE COUNTRY road, following a woman. It was the strolling woman from the Dales. Still strolling. He shouted to her, 'Hey!' and she turned round to look at him. She had no face, just a blank oval like a plate where her features should have been. She was terrifYing. He woke up.

'Nice cup of tea?' a nurse said to him. A nurse (with a face) was putting a cup and saucer on a bed-tray in front of him. And he remembered everything. Not the train crash, not being on the train at all, the last thing he remembered was finding the lost highway, waiting on the slip road to the Ai, looking for a gap in the traffic.

But he knew who he was, his name, his history, everything.

'My name's Jackson Brodie,' he said to the nurse. 'I remembe
r ,
now. 'Jackson Brodie?You're sure?' 'Sure.'

'Where am I?' Jackson asked a nurse.

'In the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh,' she said.

'Edinburgh? Edinburgh, Scotland?' Listen to him, he sounded like an American tourist.

'Yes, Edinburgh, Scotland,' she affirmed.

What on earth was he doing in Edinburgh? The scene of some of his greatest defeats in life and love. Why was he in Edinburgh? 'I was on my way to London,' he said.

'You must have gone the wrong way,' she laughed. 'Bad luck.'

He might not know where he had come from but he knew where he was going. He was going home. Edinburgh. Louise was in Edinburgh. A sudden spasm of panic gripped Jackson. No one had looked for him. Did that mean he had not been alone on the train, that perhaps Tessa had joined him at N orthallerton and he couldn't remember? And now she was lying in the hospital somewhere? Or worse? Jackson sat bolt upright and grabbed the nurse's arm. 'My wife,' he said. 'Where's my wife?'

(An Elderly Aunt'

LOUISE HAD NOT JOINED NEIL HUNTER IN HIS BREAKFAST WHISKY even though, more than most, she appreciated the medicinal taste of a Laphroaig. She could drink most guys under the table if she had to (sometimes you had to) but she had her rules. She never drank and drove any more and she never drank on duty -she would have been mortified if anyone at work had smelt whisky on her breath. Only alcoholics smelt of alcohol at nine in the morning. (Her mother. Always.) Instead she picked up a double espresso from a street stall and returned to her office where she sat in solitary confinement and reviewed, for the hundredth time, all the reported sightings ofDavid Needler.

The heat had gone out of the case, Louise could feel it growing colder by the day, feel it slipping away. It had been big news for a while and now it was almost as if it had never happened and it was beginning to feel that it might turn into a never-ending limbo for everyone concerned, one ofthose cases that detectives brood over for decades. Louise took this extremely negative thought and held it under waves until it went limp and then forced open her rusted seachest on the seabed and threw it in.

There had been no sightings ofDavid Needler at all until they got the case on to Crimewatch, after which they had been deluged by callers claiming to have seen him everywhere from Bangor to Bognor, but not one of them had checked out. The man had disappeared off the radar. He hadn't used a credit card, hadn't used his passport. His car was found parked near Flamborough Head but Louise thought that was the work of someone who thought they were cleverer than the police. She was surprised he hadn't painted 'Clue' on the side of the car in big black letters. She was disinclined to think that he had killed himself, he wasn't the type, his sense o
f
self-importance was too great. 'Hitler killed himself,' Karen Warner said. 'He was what you might call self-important.' She was standing in front ofLouise's desk, eating a prawn sandwich from Marks and Spencer that was making Louis
e
feel nauseous. 'Napoleon didn't,' Louise said. 'Stalin didn't, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Genghis Khan, Alexander, Caesar. Let's face it, Hitler was th
e
exception to the rule.'

'My, you're in a mood,' Karen said.

'No, I'm not.'

'Yes you are.' Karen's stomach was huge. Louise didn't remembe
r
being that big with Archie, he had been tiny, almost premature.

Louise blamed herself, she had smoked through the first thre
e
months because she had no idea she was pregnant. Louise was sur
e
that buried deep inside her, lurking in the murky labyrinth of he
r
heart, there was an incredibly well-behaved person wondering whe
n
she would ever be let out. Patrick probably wondered the sam
e
thing. Patient Patrick, waiting for her to come good. Long wait, baby.

Karen was right, she was especially cranky today, all the coffee ha
d
taken the edge off for a while but now she could feel a headach
e
rolling in like haar up the Forth.

'Just came to report back on the woman who said she saw Davi
d
Needler sitting on the harbour wall in Arbroath "eating a fis
h
supper" , she said.'

'And?'

'Tayside police seem doubtful,' she said, through a mouthful o
f
food. 'No one else remembered him and when she looked at th
e
photograph again she wasn't so sure.' 'He's gone underground,' Louise said. 'He's not the kind to b
e
hanging out eating chips in Arbroath.' David Needler was the clever , cunning sort, plus he was English, so he had probably run for the border. And he still had lots of blokey mates down south who might have helped him, they all denied it blind, ofcourse, but a few
of the
m were flash with money so it wouldn't have been impossible for him to get abroad. But Louise thought he was still in the UK somewhere, the ordinary guy living next door to someone. Maybe he was already courting another woman.

She picked up the file photograph of him and studied the bland face that gazed back at her. Alison Needler hadn't been able to find a photograph taken of him on his own in the last few years (photographs were memories, perhaps no one had wanted to remember him), so they had lifted this image and blown it up. The original photograph was of the whole family, taken at Disneyland Paris three children and a wife gathered round, grinning as if they were in some kind of happiness competition ('It was a terrible day,' Alison said grimly. 'He was in one of his moods.'). Louise thought ofJoanna Hunter's black-and-white photograph of thirty years ago, people held in a moment that could never come again.