Case Histories

"The brakes failed," Jackson said for the umpteenth time. The accident had unnerved him. He'd been in accidents before, skids and shunts, but he'd never been the one doing the shunting. He could still see himself gliding helplessly into the back of the Gal-axie, magnetically drawn on by the child on board sign. "I think the brake fluid must have leaked," he said to the mechanic.

"It leaked alright," the mechanic said, "leaked through the bloody great hole that was drilled in the reservoir. I think there's someone out there who doesn't like you."

"Christ," one of the traffic policeman said cheerfully, "that'll make it hard to narrow down."

''Thanks." Perhaps he should mention Quintus Rain's name to the eager young DC Lowther who had taken his statement in the hospital.

A police car dropped him off outside his front door. He sensed he was beginning to lower the tone of the neighborhood. It was nine o'clock and the smell of barbecue was everywhere on the air. He knew without looking at his mobile that it was full of messages from Steve Spencer wondering what had happened to him. He avoided thinking that the day couldn't get any worse and was rewarded with a sight that suddenly made everything better. Shirley Morrison was sitting on his doorstep, two bottles of cold beer in her hand. "I thought maybe you could do with some nursing," she said.

Later, much later, when there was already light in the sky and the dawn chorus had struck up and it was Thursday (which was blue according to Julia and orange according to Amelia), Jackson turned and looked at Shirley's sleeping face and tried to remember why he wasn't supposed to sleep with her? Oh yes, because she was a client. Ethics. Nice one, Jackson. He wondered if he had crossed a line he was going to regret. It wasn't so much that she was a client, or that he thought there was going to be anything between them, they'd swerved out of their orbits and collided, that was all.

(Although it was nice to think there might be more.) It had been cataclysmic, extraordinary, but he didn't see a future in it. It wasn't that that was worrying Jackson, it was the fact that when Shirley was telling her awful story to him yesterday, she had spent most of her time looking up to the right.

Chapter 15. Theo

It was very hot in the churchyard. His face was dripping with sweat, he imagined all the fat on his body was melting. Even though Little St. Mary's on Mill Lane was in the middle of everywhere, Theo had never encountered another soul, living or dead, among its gravestones and wildflowers. Laura told him that she used to come here and revise, sitting on the grass with her books scattered around her, and so he had placed a bench here with a plaque: for laura, who loved this place, and he felt closer to her – in some indefinable way – when he sat here. It was one of the stations of the cross for Theo, one of the places that was connected with Laura. Her bones rested in the City Cemetery on Newmarket Road, but the whole of Cambridge acted as a reliquary for her memory.

People scattered the ashes of their cremated relatives in the churchyard, and a chamomile lawn had been planted on the gray, gritty soil of the dead. On Laura's grave, in the characterless municipal cemetery, Theo had planted snowdrops, her favorite flower. There were trees in the cemetery and Theo wondered if their roots had found Laura yet, whether they had twined their way through her rib cage, curled around her ankles, and braceleted her wrists. Jackson had been to London to see Emma. Theo's memories of Emma were indistinct, he seemed to remember that she had been involved with a man and the whole thing had turned out badly in some way. Emma was working for the BBC, Jackson said. Theo never speculated about what Laura would be doing if she had lived. There was no future to imagine, her life was self-contained. February 15, 1976, to July 19, 1994. Her A Level results had arrived three weeks after she died, like an odd postscript. Theo had opened the big brown envelope addressed to "Laura Wyre" and seen that she had four "A" grades. He'd never thought to cancel her university place and a week into the autumn term someone rang up from the university administration office in Aberdeen and said, "Can I speak to Laura Wyre, please?" and Theo said, "No, I'm sorry, you can't," and then burst into tears.

Theo was too hot, Laura's bench stood in a sun trap against the wall of the church. He could feel the sweat pooling in the fatty concave of his lower back. It wasn't a good day to be here. Theo was allergic to almost every living thing that grew in the churchyard, but he had prearmed himself with sunglasses and Zyrtec and had hoped to battle it out a little longer with the abundant flora of Little St. Mary's, but his eyes and nose had begun to stream with water and he knew he was going to have to make a move. He struggled to his feet. "Bye, bye, sweetheart," he said, because she was everywhere. And nowhere.