The Russian girl was waiting to cross the road, hovering on the edge of the pavement, looking for a gap in the cars like a greyhound impatient for the trap to open. The traffic slowed to a halt at the red light just as he caught up with her, and he made a grab for her arm to hold her back. He half-expected to be stabbed or bitten, but she just glared at him. The green man on the pedes-trian flashed and beeped behind them, people hurrying across. It turned back to red and she was still glaring at him. He wondered if he was going to turn to stone.

A sudden loud bang made Jackson jump. He had once watched his own house explode and tended to be wary of loud noises.

“It’s firework,” the girl said, “for Tattoo.” Sure enough, in the distance, a huge flower of glittering sparks bloomed above the Castle and fell slowly to earth. Then, without warning, she leaned toward him and put her lips close to his ear as if she were going to kiss him, but instead she said, “Real Homes for Real People,” then she laughed as if she had made an incredibly funny joke.

“What?” She turned to go, pulling her arm away, and he said, “Stop, don’t go, wait. How can I get in touch with you?”

She laughed again and said, “Ask for Jojo.”And then she crossed on the red man, holding up the cars with an imperious salute. She really did have perfect legs.

By the time he ducked into the Traverse, Julia and the rest of the company were long gone. He presumed Julia would be at home, but when he finally made it back to the flat, there was no sign of her, even though it was after midnight. He tried phoning, but her phone was turned off. He was so tired that he hardly noticed when she slipped into bed next to him.

“Where were you?” she said.

“Where were you?” he said. Question with a question. It felt like an old war, one he’d fought several times. His phone rang before hostilities escalated. Louise Monroe asking him what he was like when he was fourteen. She had a son, it turned out. He wouldn’t have figured her for a mother.

“Why are women phoning you in the middle of the night asking you about your teenage years?” Julia asked sleepily.

“Maybe they find me interesting.” Julia chuckled, deep and throaty, it set off a cough, and by the time she’d recovered, it was too late to ask her why she found that so funny.

33

Louise dialed his number from her car and, before he even had time to say anything, asked, “What were you like when you were fourteen?”

“Fourteen?”

“Yes, fourteen,”she repeated. The sound of his voice was a kick. He was just the right side of wrong.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I was no altar boy, certainly. A bit of a tearaway, I suppose, like a lot of lads at that age.”

“I know absolutely nothing about fourteen-year-old boys.”

“Well, why should you?”

“My son’s fourteen.”

“Your son?” He sounded astonished. “I didn’t realize you were…”

“A mother?” she supplied. “I know it’s hard to believe, but there you go, it’s the old story-sperm meets egg and bam. It can happen to the best of us.” She sighed. “Fourteen-year-olds are a nightmare.” She realized that she was clutching the steering wheel of the car as if she were in rigor mortis.

“What’s his name?”

“Archie.” What’s his name? That was a question a parent would ask, Louise thought. When Archie was born, the people who asked, “How much does he weigh?” all had babies themselves.

Guys who weren’t fathers hadn’t been interested in Archie’s weight or what she was going to call him. So, she deduced, Jackson Brodie had kids. She didn’t want to know about that, wasn’t interested in secondhand guys with baggage. Kids were baggage, stuff you lugged around. Luggage.

“You have kids?” she asked. Just couldn’t help herself.

“Just one, a girl,” Jackson said. “Marlee. She’s ten. I know nothing about ten-year-old girls if it’s any consolation.”

“Archie’s not a criminal,” Louise said as if Jackson had accused him of something. “He’s basically harmless.”

“I nearly landed in court for stealing when I was fifteen if it’s any help.”

“What happened?”

“I joined the army.”

Jeez. Archie in the army, there’s a thought.

“This is why you’re calling?” he asked. “For advice about parenting?”

“No. I’m calling to tell you that I’m on a housing estate in Bur-diehouse.”

“Great name for a housing estate.” He sounded weary.

“I’m outside a shop that’s been boarded up. I think it used to be a post office. There’s a fish-and-chip shop on one side, a Scot-mid on the other side. Single story, commercial properties, no flats above, nothing remotely residential.”

“Why are you telling me this and should you be there in the dark on your own?”

“That’s very gallant of you, but I’m a big girl. I’m telling you because I thought you’d like to know that this is the address that Terence Smith gave to the court this morning.”

“Honda Man gave a false address?”

“Which is an offense. As you know. I told you that you were an idiot to plead guilty. And by the way, no one else caught the reg-istration of the car involved in the road-rage incident, so you held up the investigation by withholding vital information.”

“So sue me,” Jackson said. “I’ve just seen him, actually, he was trying to kill someone else.”

“Terence Smith?” she said sharply. “Please tell me you didn’t have another go at him?”

“No, although the police were keen to question me.”

“Jesus, what is it with you?”

“Trouble is my friend.”

“He was trying to kill someone? Is that one of your fantasies?”

“I don’t have fantasies. Not about people killing each other, anyway. If I tell you what happened, you’ll think I’m even more paranoid and delusional than you do already.”

“Try me,” she said.

“I saw a girl who looked like my dead girl, she even had the earrings.”

“You’re even more paranoid and delusional than I thought.”

“Told you.”

“You see dead girls everywhere.”

“No, I see the same dead girl everywhere.”

He was officially a lunatic, she decided. Strangely, that didn’t make him less attractive. She sighed and said, “Anyway, cheers. I’m off home. Sleep well.”

There were rules. The rules said, you don’t fool around with wit-nesses, you don’t fool around with suspects, you don’t fool around with convicted felons. And Jackson Brodie managed to be all three at once. Yes, Louise, you surely know how to pick them. And, of course, you don’t fool around with a man who already has a woman.

At least that explained why he was in Edinburgh. “For the Festival,” he had said when she first interviewed him, but he hadn’t seemed like the Festival type. Still didn’t. But Julia was in a play.

“What’s Julia like?”The naming of her had provoked an unexpected, visceral spasm of jealousy in Louise. Hold your tongue, bite your lip.

“She’s an actress.”That had surprised her. He frowned when he said her name.

Be honest. Honest was hard sometimes, even with herself. She was a natural dissembler. Even the word “dissembling” was a way of dissembling, of not just saying liar. Be honest, Louise, you fancy Jackson. Such an inane, adolescent word, “fancy.” LOUISE MONROE FANCIES GRANT NIVEN written in the school toilets in fourth year. PC Louise Monroe and DI Michael Pirie in the back of an un-marked squad car in the wee small hours of his leaving “do.” “Christ, I’ve always fancied you rotten, Louise.” The dull gleam of his wedding ring in the dark, the push and shove of unbridled lechery that kick-started Archie. How odd that babies, the absolute inno-cents at the top of the moral heap, were created out of such vul-garity. The beast with two backs. Maybe it wasn’t that she fancied Jackson exactly, maybe she just saw in him someone who had weathered the world and still had something left to give. “You can’t have it both ways,” one of her girlfriends said. “Tough and tender, men are like steaks, it’s one or the other.”Tough and tender, a con-tradiction in terms, Hegelian synthesis. Dualism, the Edinburgh disease. It was possible, Louise was sure, but perhaps only in a far-flung corner of the galaxy. Or with Jackson Brodie. Maybe.