“What’s with the crucifixes?” he asked.

“She bought them in jewelers, in St. James Center. Pair for her, pair for me-gift. She’s religious. Good person. Meets bad peo-ple.” She lit a cigarette and stared into the distance, as if she were looking at something that wasn’t quite visible. “Very good person.”

At the sight of the cigarette, a boy in a Book Festival T-shirt came running toward her. She stopped him at twenty paces with a look.

“I found her,” Jackson said. “I found your friend Lena and then I lost her.”

“I know.” She took the photograph back from him.

“You told me last night to mind my own business,” Jackson pointed out to her. “But now here you are.”

“A girl can’t change mind?”

“I take it that Terence Smith is trying to kill you because you know what happened to your friend Lena? Did he kill her?”

Tatiana threw the cigarette on the grass. The boy in the Book Festival T-shirt, still hovering just beyond the range of her petrifying gaze, darted forward and picked up the burning stub. He looked like the kind of boy who would throw himself on a grenade to stop it from killing other people.

“How did Terence Smith know my name?” Jackson asked.

“He works for bad people, bad people have ways. They have connections.”

That sounded pretty vague to Jackson’s ears. “How do I find him?”

“I tell you already,” she said crossly. “Real Homes for Real Peo-ple.” She leaned closer to him in that rather alarming way that she had, and fixed him with her green eyes. “You’re very stupid, Mr. Brodie.”

“Tell me about it. Did Terence Smith kill Lena?”

“Bye, bye,” she said and waved her hand at him. He hadn’t realized until then that it was possible to wave sarcastically. And then she was gone, slipping away into the eager book-loving crowd.

Jackson managed to wrestle Martin away from E. M. Heller’s ambiguous clutches. “She prefers Betty-May,” Martin confided in a whisper.

“Does she?” Jackson said. He was struck by a thought. “You don’t have a car, do you, Martin?”

Martin’s car was parked on the street outside his house where he had abandoned it the previous morning. Crime-scene tape was strung across the end of his driveway, and an assortment of police, uniform and plainclothes, could be glimpsed coming in and out of the house. Jackson wondered if he had been identified last night on the Meadows, it was unlikely but it still might be best to avoid the long arm of the law. Martin certainly seemed to feel the same, shielding his face like a common criminal with the property news-paper that Jackson had just picked up. If Martin really had been phoned by Richard Mott’s killer, then he was withholding evi-dence, and by extension Jackson was now party to that. He sighed at the thought of how many charges he was stacking up.

He thought of Marijut in her pink uniform. “A maid, a friend, found a man who was murdered in a house we go to.” And this was the house. Favors again. They seemed to spread their tentacles every-where that Jackson went. You say connection, I say connection. What did Martin know about them?

“Nice women,” Martin said, “good cleaners. Wear pink.”

“How did you pay them?”

“Cash in hand to the Housekeeper. I always leave them a tip.”

“None of them…how shall I put this, Martin? None of them ever offered extras?”

“Not really. But there was a nice girl named Anna who offered to defrost the ‘fridge.’ ”

“Right. Shall I drive?” Jackson said, feeling suddenly perky at the idea. Martin’s car was an uninspiring Vectra, but nonetheless it was four wheels and an engine.

“No, no, it’s okay,” Martin said politely, as if he were doing Jackson a favor, for God’s sake, sliding into the driver’s seat and turning on the engine. They set off in a series of kangaroo hops.

“Easy on the clutch there, Martin,” Jackson murmured. He hadn’t actually meant to say that out loud, nobody liked a back-seat (or, in this case, front seat) driver, or so his ex-wife had con-stantly informed him. Men had no purpose on earth whereas women were gods walking unrecognized among them.

“Sorry,” Martin said, nearly skinning a bicycle courier. Jackson considered wrestling the helm off Martin, but it was probably good for the guy to feel he was in control of something, however badly.

“Where are we going, by the way?” Martin asked.

“We’re going to buy a house.”

43

“We’re going to buy a house?”

“Well, we’re going to look at houses,” Jackson said, rifling through the property newspaper. “We’re going to look at new de-velopments. Hatter Homes, you know them?”

“Real Homes for Real People. I looked at one but it was a bit shoddy. I don’t really like new housing estates.” He worried that Jackson might live in a new house on an estate and would be offended, but Jackson said, “Me neither. We’re not really looking to buy,” he added. Martin wondered if Jackson thought he was sim-ple. “We’re just going to pretend. I’m looking for someone. Watch out for that bus, Martin, I think it’s going to sideswipe you.”

“Sorry.”

“This is a lovely room, a real family room.”The woman showing them round the “Braecroft” show home hesitated. Martin supposed that he and Jackson didn’t look like a real family. The woman had a name badge that said MAGGIE and was dressed like a holiday rep in sky blue suit and multicolored cravat. Martin won-dered if he could get a name badge made-“William” or “Simon” or anything that wasn’t Martin. It could be a very easy way to change your identity.

“Lovely,” Jackson said in a deadpan kind of way. It was a north-facing room, all the light seemed to be funneled away from it. Martin felt an ache for his own home. Was he going to move back in when the police finished with it and spend the rest of his life living with the ghost of Richard Mott? Would he be able to sell it? Perhaps he could employ “Maggie,” he imagined her showing prospective buyers around, saying brightly, “This is the living room, a lovely room, a real family room, and this is the spot where Richard Mott had his brains splattered.”

“Of course, all sorts of people enjoy living in Hatter Homes,” “Maggie” said, “not just families. And what is a family anyway?” She frowned as if she were giving serious thought to this question. She seemed tense and overwound.

They traipsed after her up the stairs. “Are you on a tight budget?” she inquired over her shoulder. “Because the ‘Waverley’ is more roomy and has a bigger garden, not that there’s anything wrong with the ‘Braecroft,’ of course, it’s an ingenious use of space.”

“Deceptively small,” Jackson muttered.

“And this is the master bedroom,” “Maggie” announced proudly, “en suite, of course.”

Martin sat down on the bed. He wanted to lie down and go to sleep, but he supposed that wasn’t allowed.

“Well, thank you, Maggie,” Jackson said, making his way back down the stairs, “you’ve certainly given us a lot to think about.” She seemed to droop with disappointment, sensing a lost sale.

“Come into the Portakabin and I’ll just take a note of your name,” she said.

Outside the light seemed harsher. The estate was in a dip between two hills and had strange acoustics, you could hear the con-stant rumble of a motorway even though you could see no cars. A pot of dusty red geraniums sat next to the door of the Portakabin, the only sign of organic life. A JCB trundled past. The estate was still a building site even though half the houses were already occupied. There were some hard chairs in the Portakabin, and Martin took a seat on one of them. He was so tired.

“And you are?” “Maggie” said to Jackson.

“David Lastingham,” Jackson said promptly.

“And your partner?” she asked, looking at Martin.

“Alex Blake,” Martin said wearily. It was his name, it belonged to him in a way that he suspected David Lastingham didn’t belong to Jackson.