Case Histories

In the last four weeks Nicola had also been to a DIY superstore, where she bought a screwdriver and a Stanley knife, to Habitat, where she bought a table lamp, to Top Shop for a white T-shirt, to Next for a white blouse, to Boots (twice for cosmetics and toiletries and once with a prescription for Ponstan), to Robert Sayle's for two blue hand towels, and to a fish stall on the market, where she bought (expensive) monkfish for a meal – for the aforesaid Vanessa and Mike – which Steve Spencer later reported to have been "a disaster." Nicola was apparently not a great cook. She also led a bloody boring life, unless something fantastically interesting happened to her when she was pushing a trolley up and down the economy aisles of her airline. Is that what had happened to Josie when she "took" David Lastingham? Was she just so bored with Jackson that she couldn't bear it anymore? She met him at a party, a party that Jackson hadn't gone to because he was working, and the pair of them had "tried to control their feelings" but they obviously hadn't tried hard enough because within six months they were taking each other at every available clandestine opportunity and now David Lastingham got to put his penis in Mummy's vagina whenever he felt like it.

Josie had filed for divorce as soon as it was possible. Irretrievable breakdown – as if it were all his fault and she wasn't shagging some poncy guy with a goatee. ("David," Marlee said, not as grudgingly as Jackson would have liked. "He's alright, he buys me chocolate, he makes nice pasta." It was a six-lane motorway from that girl's stomach to her heart. "I cook nice pasta," Jackson said and heard how childish that sounded and didn't care. Jackson had got someone he knew to look up David Lastingham on the pedophile register. Just in case.)

Jackson smoked the last cigarette. Nicola hadn't done anything the least suspicious on Jackson 's watch, so if she was having an affair then she must be literally playing away from home – all those stopovers in midrange hotels, warm evenings, and cheap alcohol provided the perfect conditions for fostering bad behavior. Jackson had tried to explain to Steve that he was going to have to pay for Jackson to fly with Nicola if he really wanted to find out if anything was going on, but Steve wasn't keen to fund what he seemed to think would be a free holiday abroad for Jackson. Jackson thought he might just go anyway and then do some creative accounting when it came to the bill, a return trip to almost anywhere in Europe could easily disappear into the catchall heading of "Sundries." Maybe he would wait until she was on a flight to France and tag along. Jackson didn't want a holiday, he wanted a new life. And he wanted to be finished with Nicola Spencer and her own dull life.

When Jackson set up as a private investigator two years ago he had no expectation of it being a glamorous profession. He'd already been a member of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary for twelve years and before that he was in the military police, so he had no illusions about the ways of the world. Investigating other people's tragedies and cock-ups and misfortunes was all he knew. He was used to being a voyeur, the outsider looking in, and nothing, but nothing, that anyone did surprised him anymore. Yet despite everything he'd seen and done, inside Jackson there remained a belief- a small, battered and bruised belief- that his job was to help people be good rather than punishing them for being bad.

He left the police and set up the investigation agency after his marriage disappeared in front of his eyes. "What about your pension?" Josie said to him. "What about it?" Jackson said, a cavalier attitude he was beginning to regret.

For the most part, the work he undertook now was either irksome or dull – process serving, background checking and bad debts, and hunting down the odd rogue tradesman that the police would never get round to ("I gave him Ј300 up front for materials and I never saw him again." Surprise, surprise). Not to forget missing cats.

On cue, Jackson 's mobile rang, a tinny rendition of "Carmen 3urana," a ring tone reserved exclusively for Binky Rain "Binky" – what kind of a name was that? Really?). Binky Rain was the first client Jackson had acquired when he set up as a private investigator and he supposed he would never be rid of her un-til he retired and even then he could imagine her following him to France, a string of stray cats behind her, pied piper-like. She was a catwoman, the mad, old-bat variety that kept an open door for every feline slacker in Cambridge.