perhaps counselling really wasn’t his forte.) ‘You know what they say’ (or what Kenny Rogers would say), ‘“You’ve got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them.”’ This was better, Jackson thought, all he had to do was utilize the lyrics from country songs, they contained better advice than anything he could conjure up himself. Best to avoid Hank, though – I’m so lonesome I could cry. I’ll never get out of this world alive. I don’t care if tomorrow never comes. Poor old Hank, not good mental fodder for a man who had just tried to jump off a cliff. Although had Vince known, Jackson wondered, about that life-saving shelf of rock? Was he aware, in a way that Jackson hadn’t been, that it was a less treacherous scenario than it appeared? A cry for help rather than full-on suicide? He hoped so.
‘Wendy – my wife – was walking away with everything, treating me as if I was nothing. Nobody.’
‘She caught it by the handle, Vince, you caught it by the blade.’ (Thank you, Ashley Monroe.)
‘And they made me redundant. After twenty-odd years. Nose to the grindstone, shoulder to the wheel, every cliché in the book – never complained.’
‘You’ll get another job, Vince.’ Could he? Jackson wondered. The guy was pushing fifty, nobody wanted you once you’d achieved a half-century on the pitch. (Jackson had started to watch cricket on TV. He kept that fact to himself, it felt like a secret vice.)
‘And they took the company car,’ Vince said.
‘Ah, well, yeah, that is bad,’ Jackson agreed. There weren’t any country songs that could deal with that catastrophe. A man couldn’t worship without a church.
It was only when Jackson had offered Vince Ives a lift home (insisted on it, in fact, in case he decided to wander off up the cliff again) and Vince was strapping on his seat belt that he said, ‘My wife died today.’
‘Today? The one who’s divorcing you?’
‘Yeah, that one.’
‘Jesus, I’m sorry, Vince.’ So perhaps they’d finally got to the real reason for the guy wanting to take the high jump. Cancer, Jackson thought, or an accident – but no, apparently not.
‘Murdered.’
‘Murdered?’ Jackson echoed, and felt the little grey cells snap to attention. He used to be a policeman, after all.
‘Yeah. Murdered. It sounds ridiculous just saying it.’
‘And you didn’t do it?’ (Just checking.)
‘No.’
‘How? Do you know?’
‘Beaten with a golf club, the police said.’
‘Jesus, that sounds violent,’ Jackson said. Not to mention personal. Although he had seen worse. (How many dead bodies have you seen? Like in the whole of your life?)
‘I’m a golfer,’ Vince said. ‘The police were very interested in that.’
Cricket was one thing, but golf was a quite different enigma as far as Jackson was concerned. He was prepared to bet the future of the universe on the fact that he would never play the game. He had never even set foot on a golf course, except for once when he’d been a detective in Cambridge and a dead body had been discovered in the rough at the Gog Magog golf course. (Was there a more bizarrely named golf course anywhere? he wondered.)
‘Plenty of people play golf,’ Jackson said to Vince. ‘That doesn’t make them killers. Not usually, anyway.’ Vince Ives played golf, his wife was killed with a golf club, therefore Vince Ives killed her. Wasn’t that called something – a logical fallacy? (Was he just making that up? His little grey cells put their thinking caps on, but – unsurprisingly – came up with nothing.)
‘And where are your golf clubs, Vince?’
‘Can we just drive? I’ve been answering questions all day.’
‘Okay.’
‘Christ, I’ve just remembered,’ Vince said. ‘I had a putter, a spare one, I kept it in the garage. Used it to practise on the lawn. Wendy hated me doing that. I’m surprised she didn’t put a “Keep Off the Grass” sign on the lawn.’ He sighed. ‘My fingerprints will be all over it, I suppose.’
‘I suppose they will.’
It was late by the time they hit the road. Jackson had been up and down the A171 so much lately that he was beginning to feel as though he knew every inch of the tarmac. It hardly seemed worth going home again as he had to be back here again first thing tomorrow to pick up Nathan and resume the burden of parental duties. He wondered about staying in the Crown Spa overnight – he could sleep on the floor of Julia’s hotel room. Perhaps she would even