Case Histories

"I promised Michelle I would look after Tanya," Shirley said, "and I would have done, of course I would have done, but I was only fifteen and social services decided our parents were unfit – which they were – and gave custody to Keith's parents. But they weren't much better. The last time I ever saw my sister was in the court the day she was sentenced. She refused to see us, knocked back all our visitor's orders, refused to read letters, there was nothing we could do about it. I could have understood if she didn't want to see Mum or Dad, they both died without seeing her again. But not to see me… I mean I didn't care that she'd killed Keith, she was still my sister, I still loved her." She shrugged and added, "Anyone's capable of killing, given the right circumstances." She was looking at that faraway world again, the one that existed on the other side of the office window, and Jackson supposed he could have said, "Yeah, I've killed people," but that didn't seem like the kind of dialogue he wanted to enter into at half past eleven on a Monday morning in these temperatures, so he said nothing at all.

"They told us when she was released," Shirley continued, "but she never got in touch. I don't know where she went or what she's doing now. In the end she got a new life and we were stuck with her old one. 'Murder' – it's such a stigma, isn't it? It's so… trashy. I wanted to go to medical school, be a doctor, but that was never going to happen, not after everything we went through." "And now you want me to look for your sister?" Shirley laughed as if he'd said something absurd, "God, no. Why would I want to look for Michelle when she's made it so obvious she doesn't want to be found? She doesn't care about me anymore. I don't want to find Michelle. I want to find Tanya."

It was teatime in Binky's garden. Everything was so wildly overgrown that a machete would have been a more fitting accompaniment at the tea table instead of the extensive array of tarnished butter knives and jam spoons that formed part of Binky's complex tea ceremony. " Darjeeling," Binky announced, but it was a gray washy brew that hadn't seen a tea plantation in years and which tasted like old socks. The cups didn't look as if they had been cleaned for a long time. "We are being joined today by a guest," she announced like a rather grand chat-show hostess, "my great-nephew. Quintus." What kind of a name was that to get stuck with for life, for God's sake?

"Really?" Jackson said. Binky had never mentioned having family. "I hardly know the boy," she added, with a dismissive wave of her hand. "My nephew and I weren't close, but the boy's the only family I have." Had Binky Rain ever been close to anyone? Strange to imagine that there had once been a Dr. Rain who had shared bed and board with her. She couldn't always have been old, but it was hard to believe she had ever been a young nubile wife, compliant to "Julian's" sexual needs – ah, Jesus, Jackson, shoot that idea right out of your head. He was so alarmed by the unpalatable image he'd conjured up that he knocked over his tea, not that one more stain could make any difference to a cloth that was a palimpsest of previous tea-related accidents. "Something wrong, Mr. Brodie?" Binky inquired, mopping up the tea with the hem of her skirt, but before he could reply a cry like a huntsman's tantivy from the top end of the garden announced the arrival of Quintus Rain.

Binky's use of the word "boy" had led Jackson to expect a teenager, so he was surprised when "Quintus" turned out to be a substantial forty-something with broad, bland features and floppy hair. He was built like a rugby forward but his muscle had turned to flab and he looked too soft to survive a scrum. He was wearing chinos and a blue-and-white-striped shirt with a white collar and a pink tie and had a navy blue blazer slung over his shoulder. Break him in two and you'd find "Tory" written right through him. Brought up in Herefordshire," Binky murmured to Jackson as if this somehow explained everything about Quintus. The really interesting thing about Quintus, interesting to Jackson anyway, was that Quintus was sporting a considerable plaster across a nose that looked damaged in just the way you would expect a nose to be damaged if you'd been nutted by someone who was trying to stop you from pistol-whipping them.

But why on earth would someone he'd never met before, with whom he had no relationship whatsoever, want to attack him like that? Quintus seemed particularly put out to see Jackson in his great-aunt's garden. Binky herself blithely ignored the fact that she was taking tea with two hostile, beat-up men and kept wittering on about Frisky.