the man had helped them, possibly even saved them. ‘He knew my name,’ Harry added.
‘What do you mean?’ Crystal said, frowning.
‘He said, “Hop in, Harry.” I know that was weird and I’m sure you want to discuss it endlessly, but I really do have to go to bed now. Sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry, Harry,’ Crystal said, kissing him on the forehead. ‘You’re a hero. Night night.’
‘Night. Who are you, by the way?’ he said to Jackson.
‘Just a concerned bystander,’ Jackson said. ‘I helped your stepmother look for you.’
‘You didn’t find him though, did you?’ Crystal said. ‘He found himself. Claims he’s a detective,’ she said to Harry, ‘but he’s shit at detecting.’
‘What do you make of that?’ Jackson had asked Crystal once Harry had dragged himself up the stairs. ‘That the guy knew who he was?’ (Was it a good thing or a bad thing? Tide in or tide out?)
‘I don’t make anything of it,’ Crystal said. ‘I don’t intend to make anything of anything, and no, you can’t look at the footage from our CCTV, because your work here is done. They’ve made their point. My mouth is shut.’ She made an exaggerated zipping motion on those perfect lips and said, ‘I’ll handle this on my own, thanks, so bugger off, Jackson Brodie.’
After their failure to find Harry and Candy at Flamborough Head, Jackson had driven a defeated Crystal back to High Haven. ‘They might call on the house phone,’ she said hopefully. ‘Or they might bring them back. If they’re trying to teach me a lesson they’ve succeeded, because, believe me, I don’t want anything happening to my kids.’
It had been growing dark by the time they arrived at High Haven. Bats were flitting overhead like an aerial escort as they turned into the driveway. A fanfare of lights along the drive came on automatically as the Toyota approached the house. It was an impressive place. Holroyd Haulage must be pretty successful, Jackson reckoned.
He was just reiterating to Crystal that the only course open to her now was to go to the police, and she was just reiterating that he should fuck off, when a security light above the front door snapped on.
Crystal gasped and Jackson said, ‘Oh, shit,’ because they both saw that something had been deposited on the front doorstep. It looked like a bundle of clothing, but as they drew nearer it took on a human shape. Jackson’s heart dropped several floors and he thought, Oh, please, God, not a body. But then the figure stirred and resolved itself into two figures, one larger than the other. The larger figure stood up, blinking in the bright lights. Harry.
Crystal was out of the car before Jackson had hit the brakes, running towards Harry and flinging her arms round him before scooping up Candy from the step.
Jackson climbed stiffly out of the car. It had been a long day.
He took the funicular up to the Esplanade to save Dido’s legs, although his knees were grateful as well. When they came out of the cabin at the top Jackson found the Collier film unit swarming everywhere. No sign of Julia though, so he made his way to the unit base. He was keen to know when he was going to get his son back. Jackson had texted Nathan several times since he last saw him, asking him how he was. (How’s it going?) The incident with Harry had made him think about Nathan, and how he would feel if a malevolent stranger drove away with him. He had received just the one curt response to his query. Good. How come his son could spend hours chatting about nothing with his friends, but had no conversation whatsoever for his father? Where was Nathan, exactly? Still with his friend, presumably, although, infuriatingly, he had turned off the location services on his phone so that Jackson couldn’t track him. He was going to have to give him a lecture about how important it was.
No sign of Julia at the unit base either. He finally tracked down a second AD, a woman Jackson had never come across before, who told him Julia wasn’t on set today. Really? Jackson thought. She had said she had no time off at all. ‘I expect she’s with Nathan,’ he said and the AD said, ‘Who? No, I think she went off for the day. Rievaulx Abbey, I think she said. With Callum.’
Callum?
Jackson ate a welcome bacon roll in the dining bus. No sign of buckwheat porridge here.