Case Histories

"Theo? Sort of." Was he a friend of Theo's? Maybe he was. Was he a friend of Amelia and Julia? God forbid. (Was he?) And he wasn't a friend of Shirley Morrison no matter what they'd done under the cloak of darkness the other night. "Yes," he said finally, "I'm a friend of Theo's. My name's Jackson."

" Jackson," she repeated as if she were trying to lodge it in her memory. He took a handful of his cards out of his pocket – Jackson brodie: private investigator – and gave one to her.

"This is the bit when you tell me your name," he said, and she said, "Lily-Rose." Close-up, she didn't look so much like a druggie, more a victim of neglect and malnutrition. She seemed insubstantial enough to blow away on the wind, and Jackson wanted to take her to the nearest PizzaExpress and watch her eat. She had a little bowl of a belly like the starving African children you saw on television. Jackson wondered if she was pregnant.

"I found him," she said, "in the park. Christ's whatever."

"Pieces."

"Stupid name."

"Very stupid," Jackson agreed.

"He was having an attack."

"He said someone gave him an inhaler."

"That wasn't me," Lily-Rose said. "It was some woman. He's going to be alright?" she persisted.

"Absolutely fine," Jackson said and then realized he was talking to her as if she were Marlee's age. He couldn't believe she was twenty-five. "No, he's not really alright," Jackson said. "His daugh-ter was murdered ten years ago and he can't get over it."

"Why should he?"

Stan Jessop taught at a different school now but lived in the same small thirties semi-detached that he had ten years ago. "Stan" made him sound like an old allotment guy, but he was only thirty-six. When Laura died Stan Jessop was only twenty-six. Twenty-six sounded incredibly young to Jackson -just a year older than Lily-Rose, two years younger than Emma Drake (he had to stop doing this). There was a well-worn Vauxhall Vectra in the driveway with a baby seat in the back, the floor littered with toys and sweet wrappers and general domestic grunge. Stan Jessop had one child, Nina, ten years ago, according to Emma Drake. Now he seemed to have a zoo of them – the front garden looked like a battleground for a war being fought with the contents of Toys "R" Us. "Kids." Stan Jessop shrugged. "What can you do?" And Jackson thought, Well, tidy up for a start, but he shrugged in return and accepted the mug of weak instant coffee that Stan made him and took a seat in the living room. The mug had drip marks down the side as if it hadn't been washed properly. Jackson put it down on the coffee table and didn't drink from it.

Emma Drake said Stan Jessop was "really cute" ten years ago. and he still had a handsome, boyish air about him. "I'm looking into some aspects of the Laura Wyre case," Jackson said, and Stan said, "Oh, yeah?" in an offhand way that didn't convince Jackson somehow.

From upstairs came the thunderous noise of small children resisting bedtime and the increasingly frustrated voice of a woman. It sounded like an old routine. "Three boys," Stan said, as if that explained everything. "It's like trying to put the barbarian hordes to bed. I should help really," he added and slumped down on the sofa. He looked like the barbarian hordes had defeated him long ago. "What about her?" he asked irritably.

"Who?"

"Laura – what about her? Is the case being reopened?"

"It was never closed, Mr. Jessop. I've been speaking to some of her friends. They think you had a crush on her."

"A crush?" Jackson thought he saw a shadow cross Stan Jessop's face. "Is that why you're here, because I had a 'crush' on Laura Wyre?"

"Did you?"

"You know" – he sighed, as if whatever it was he was about to explain wasn't really worth the effort – "when you're a young guy and you're put in that position, sometimes things can get out of hand." He grew sullen. "All those girls, intelligent, pretty girls, their hormones are off the scale, they come on to you all the time."

"You're supposed to be the grown-up."

"They're all little prick teasers, they're screwing all the time, they open their legs for anyone at that age. Don't tell me you'd act differently. If it was offered to you on a plate, what would you do?"

"I'd refuse."

"Oh, don't give me that holier-than-thou crap. At the end of the day you're just a man." (What had Shirley said, What are you, Jackson, the last good man standing? Was he? He hoped not.) "Put any man in that position and they'd be tempted. You would."

"I would refuse," Jackson said, "because I've got a daughter. As you do."

Stan Jessop got up from the sofa as if he were about to punch Jackson (Why not? Everyone else did), but his wife came into the room at that moment and glared at both of them suspiciously. She didn't conform to Emma Drake's description of "blond and tarty"