One Good Turn

“Okay. Do you want another one?” he asked.

“No thanks, I’m driving. I shouldn’t be drinking at all.”

“And yet you are.” Their conversation had been restricted to an almost masculine neutrality, although Jackson admitted to a di-vorce and she shrugged and said, “Never married, never saw the point.” He had learned that she liked Saabs, she had fast-tracked to inspector, “climbing over the bodies on the way up,” she wore contacts (“You should try them”). But then she suddenly said, “Do you have someone?” and he said, “Julia. She’s an actress.” He could hear himself sounding apologetic, as if an actress were something to be embarrassed by (which it frequently was). If Louise hadn’t asked, would Jackson have owned up to Julia? The sad male answer was no. “She’s in a play at the Festival.”

“What’s Julia like?”

“She’s an actress.”

“You said that already.”

“I know, but it does kind of explain her. I don’t know, she’s short, she’s an optimist. Usually,” he added.

“You described a dead body to me better than that,” Louise said.

“Julia’s hard to explain,” he said, gazing at the dregs of his whiskey as if they held the key. Julia was impossible to describe, you had to know her to understand her. “She’s like… herself.”

“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Louise said.

“Yes, I suppose it is,”he said. And yet it didn’t feel like that. That was the trouble, of course. You started off liking someone because of who she was and you ended up wanting her to be different.

He liked Louise because she was bolshie and cynical and sure of her-self, but give them a few months and those would be the things that would drive him crazy. Give them a few months-what was he thinking?

“Well, thanks for the drink,” Louise Monroe said abruptly, standing up and putting on her jacket. “I should go.”

He would have offered to help her with the jacket, but he didn’t know if she would like that. He did hold the door open for her, though. His mother had instilled manners into him, mostly by cuffing him about the head. “Always hold open a door, always offer your seat. No gentleman would let a lady walk on the outside of the pavement.” She had been brought up in a backward part of Ireland where they didn’t even have pavements, but she didn’t want her sons to grow up like their father. He’d never really understood about the outside of the pavement. (“So you can die first if a horse and carriage swerves out of control, of course,” Julia explained.)

He walked up the high street with Louise, the farther up the street they got, the more revelers they encountered, plus all the usual sus-pects-fire-eaters, jugglers, unicyclists, or any combination of the three. A guy on a unicycle juggling with flaming torches, really pushing the envelope. There was a woman pretending to be some kind of living statue of Marie Antoinette. Was that really a suitable job for a woman? For anyone, come to that? How would he feel if Marlee grew up and announced she wanted to do that for a living?

“Oh, I don’t know,” Louise Monroe said, “doing absolutely nothing all day, I could do with some of that.”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, trust me.”

They hesitated awkwardly on the pavement at a crossroad for a few seconds as if they were both unsure of the correct form of farewell address. For a delusional second Jackson thought she was going to kiss him on the cheek, one half of him hoped she would, the other half was terrified she would, good and bad Jacksons having a little tussle. But she just said, “Right. I’ll let you know if anything turns up.”

“Anything?”

“Your girl.”

“His” dead girl, he ruminated. She was his girl, for better or worse, no one else wanted to own her or claim her or even acknowledge her existence.

“Well, good night,” she said.

“I don’t suppose you want to go to the circus, do you?”

31

Martin was in a different room at the Four Clans. He was lying on the bed, trying to have a nap. His body was exhausted, but his brain had apparently discovered a secret amphetamine factory and was popping pills at will. The picture on the wall oppo-site his bed was a print of Burke and Hare caught in the act of gleefully digging up a dead body, almost, but not quite, trumping the flaming witch of the previous room. He sat up and twisted round in order to see what was hanging above the bed. The Battle of Flodden Field, the slaughter of the Scots in full swing. Twenty-four hours ago he didn’t even know that the Four Clans existed, now his entire life seemed contained within its tartan walls. He was being brainwashed by plaid.

He turned the television on and caught an evening Scottish news bulletin. “The comic Richard Mott… battered to death… home of crime writer Alex Blake… earlier in an extraordinary mix-up… reclusive writer Alex Blake, whose real name was… a spokesman for Lothian and Borders Police said that they are appealing for witnesses to the murder… the Merchiston area of Edinburgh.” He turned the television off.

He didn’t have any books with him, nor his laptop, of course, so he could neither read nor write. Martin hadn’t realized how much of his life was taken up by these two activities. How would he manage if he became blind or deaf? Or both? At least if he was blind he could get a guide dog-there was an upside to every-thing, a silver lining of helpful Labs and noble German shepherds eager to be his eyes. They had dogs for the deaf too, but Martin wasn’t sure what they did. Tugged at your sleeve a lot, probably, while looking meaningfully at things.

His phone chirruped, and he listened to the rich Dublin tones of his agent. “Are you dead, Martin,” she asked, “or not dead? Only I wish you’d make up your mind, because I’m fielding a lot of questions here.”

“Not dead,” Martin said. “It said on the television news that I’m a recluse. Why would they say that? I’m not reclusive, I’m not a recluse.”

“Well, you don’t have a lot of friends, Martin.” Melanie dropped her voice as if there were other people in the room with her and said, “Did you kill him, Martin? Did you kill Richard Mott? I know we always say that no publicity is bad publicity, but murder’s a line you can’t really cross. You know what I’m saying?”

“Why on earth would I kill Richard Mott? What would make you think that?”

“Where were you when he died?” Melanie asked.

“In a hotel,” Martin said.

“With a woman?” she said, sounding surprised.

“No, with a man.”Whichever way he said it, it wasn’t going to sound right. He couldn’t imagine what she would say if he told her about the gun. The gun had become a guilty secret he was carrying around with him. He should have just told the police, brazened out their incredulity, but spending the night with an armed assassin didn’t seem like a very good alibi.

“Jesus,” Melanie said. “Do you have a lawyer, Martin?” She let pass what she obviously thought was a decent interval and then said, “How’s the book going, anyway?”

Did she honestly think he was writing while all this was going on? Someone, someone he knew, had been murdered in his house. There were lumps of brain matter on his coffee table.

“An antidote,” she said, “art can be an antidote to life.”

Nina Riley was hardly art. “This is pretty spiffing, Bertie, we should think about taking a cruise more often. Now all we have to do is prove that our cat burglar is Maud Elphinstone and that the name on her birth certifi-cate is Malcolm Elphinstone.” It was, let’s face it, crap. “Are you still there, Martin? You know you’ve got the Book Festival tomorrow, so you have. Do you want me to come up and give you moral support?”

“No, I don’t. I’m going to cancel.”

“There’ll be a lot of interest.”

“That’s why I’m canceling.” He put the phone down and returned to staring at the ceiling.

Martin was running on empty, he had eaten nothing since yesterday, apart from the packet