Case Histories

The first thing he found was a clavicle and then what looked like an ulna. He stopped his excavating and moved the Maglite around until it caught the small, pale moon of the skull. Jackson took out his phone and called the station at Parkside.

He sat back on his heels and examined the clavicle, brushing the soil off it with the tenderness of an archaeologist finding something rare, something unique, which it was, of course. The clavicle was tiny and fragile, like an animal's, a rabbit or a hare, the broken wishbone of a bird. Jackson kissed it reverently because he knew it was the holiest relic he would ever find. It started to rain, Jackson couldn't remember when it had last rained. Aqua lateris Christi, lava me. Jackson wept. Not for Niamh, or Laura Wyre or Kerry-Anne Brockley or any of the other lost girls – he wept for the little girl with gingham ribbons in her hair, the little girl who had once held Blue Mouse in her arms and told him to smile for the camera.

Jackson settled into his economy seat, row twenty, a window seat. He could have afforded to fly business class, but he wasn't going to start throwing the money around. He was still his father's son, it seemed.

He was rich. Unexpectedly, absurdly rich. Binky had made him the sole beneficiary of her estate – two million pounds, in bonds and stocks, all of which had been sitting in a safe-deposit box all these years while she hadn't spent a bean on anything but her cats. "To my friend, Mr. Jackson Brodie, for being kind." He had cried when her solicitor had read that out to him. Cried, because he hadn't been particularly kind to her, cried because she didn't have a better friend, that she had died alone, without a hand to hold. Cried because he was turning into a woman.

Two million on condition that the cats were looked after. Did that mean their offspring as well? Would he have to look after Binky's cats forever and ever, until he died, and then would Mar-lee and her descendants have to look after them? The first thing he would do would be to have them all neutered. He knew he didn't deserve it, of course he didn't deserve it, it was like winning the lottery without buying a ticket. But then, who did deserve it? Not Quintus, her only blood relative, that was for sure. Quintus, who had found his aunt's will made out in favor of Jackson and then had tried to kill Jackson to stop him from inheriting. Quintus, who would probably have killed his aunt if she hadn't preempted him by dying quietly of old age.

At first Jackson had worried that the money was tainted, that it had originated in the diamond mines, made out of the blood and sweat and slave labor of "bleck" miners. Filthy lucre. He had wondered about just handing it all over to Howell. "Because I'm black?" Howell said, looking at him as if he'd just grown an extra head. "You stupid fucker." Jackson supposed it was a bit much to make Howell the token representative of the whole sordid history of imperial exploitation. Howell and Julia were playing cribbage, sitting at Victor's dining-room table, drinking gin, Julia slamming her empty glass down, saying, "Hit me again," to Howell. Jackson would never have taken either of them on in a drinking competition.

Howell and Jackson were staying in the Garden House Hotel now that Jackson no longer had a home in Cambridge. Julia had offered to put them up but Jackson couldn't bear the idea of staying in Victor's old, cold house, sleeping in a room last occupied by one of the lost Land girls.

He was the one who had told Julia. He had taken her to see the delicate leveret bones laid out in the police mortuary ("Against the rules, Jackson," the forensic pathologist rebuked him mildly). Julia was strong, he knew that, she could look at what was left of Olivia's tiny skeleton without growing hysterical. She reached out a hand to her sister, and the pathologist said, "Don't touch, dear. Later, later you can touch her," and Julia had retracted her hand and held it over her heart as if her heart hurt and said, "Oh," very softly and Jackson hadn't realized that such a small word could be so unbearably sad.

Jackson's story went like this – he had been out walking a dog when the dog had nosed its way into Binky's garden, where it had rooted around in the undergrowth, barking its head off until Jackson had come and investigated, at which point he had discovered Olivia's body. "And where's the dog now, Inspector?" the first detective on the scene asked. "Ran off." Jackson shrugged and didn't bother to add, "It's plain Mr. Brodie now." He didn't mention his visit to the convent, neither to the police nor to Julia. He felt, rightly or wrongly, that if Sylvia wanted to tell the truth then it was up to her. He had offered her the shelter of the confessional, he had given his word. "Looks like a tragic accident," he said to the investigating DS. "Poor police procedure. Thirty-four years ago, what can you do?"