Case Histories

When Amelia had touched old Mrs. Rain's dead body she had felt as fragile and bony as the cat in her arms. The police had put a little marquee over her body and had erected arc lights and you wouldn't do that for an old woman that died of natural causes, which meant that Amelia had not just discovered a dead body, she had discovered a murdered body. A shiver spasmed her body and woke the cat. It jumped out of her arms and Julia went into full Kitty, kitty, kitty mode, picking it up and holding it against her obvious breasts, and Amelia said, "For God's sake, Julia, put some clothes on," and Julia made a face at her and sauntered out of the kitchen, the cat still in her arms, while all the policemen watched her bottom. Thank God she wasn't wearing a thong – which was surely the most ridiculous piece of underwear ever invented, apart from crotchless knickers, of course, because it was all about sex – "Amelia, do you want more tea?" Jackson was regarding her with concern, as if she were a mental patient.

It was almost morning and they had only just gone to bed. She could still hear the police, cars departing and arriving, the sound of their radios. At least Sylvia's room was at the front of the house, away from the arc lights. She didn't even have the cat now because it had followed Julia to her room. She was never going to sleep, not unless she took something. Julia kept her sleeping tablets in the bathroom. Julia always had prescription drugs of one kind or another, it was part of the drama of her life. Amelia couldn't read the bottle without her glasses, but then what did it matter? Did two send you to sleep, four into a deeper sleep? How about ten, where would they send you? They were so tiny! Like children's pills.

Rosemary used to give them a junior aspirin every day, even when there was nothing wrong with them. That must be where Julia got it from. Rosemary had always had a medicine chest of drugs, even before she was dying. How about twenty? That would be a long sleep. Nothing had saved Rosemary, of course, but then nothing would save any of them, would it? Thirty? What if they just made you groggy? Jackson thought she was ridiculous and she was never going to find Olivia and now Julia had a cat and nothing was fair.

No one wanted her, even her own father didn't find her attractive enough to want her. Not fair. Not one little bit. Not fair, not fair, not fair. The whole bottle? Because it wasn't fair. Not fair, not fair, not fair. Can you help me? No.

Notfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnot fairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfair -

"Milly, are you alright? Milly? Milly?"

Chapter 19. Jackson

You forgot it was colder up north. Britain was such a small country you wouldn't think you'd notice a climate change over a couple hundred miles. It was still warm enough to sit in the beer garden though, warm enough for northerners anyway. Jackson got the drinks in. They were at an old coaching inn, in the middle of nowhere in Northumberland. There was a lot of nowhere in Northumberland. Jackson wondered about buying a cottage there. It would be cheaper than Cambridge, where he no longer had a home. His house was still standing but he had lost more or less everything in it – clothes and CDs and books, all of Theo's files on Laura – if not to the explosion then to the water in the fire hoses. Well, it was one way of getting a fresh start, a new life: just blow up the old one.

"Gas?" he'd said hopefully to the fire investigation officer.

"Dynamite," the fire officer said. (A short, manly kind of ex-change.) Who had access to dynamite? People who worked in mines, obviously. Jackson fished in his wallet for DC Lowther's card and phoned him. "The plot thickens," he said, and wished he hadn't said that because it sounded like something from a bad de-tective novel. "I think we have a suspect." That didn't sound much better. "My house has just exploded, by the way." At least that was novel.

("Quintus Rain," DC Lowther ruminated, "what kind of a name is that?" "A bloody stupid one," Jackson said.)