‘Sorry about this,’ Jackson apologized to Dido as he gave her a leg-up into the back seat. She fell fast asleep immediately.
Crystal seemed to be going to Scarborough, which was good because that was where Jackson was also bound. If Crystal noticed him, he reasoned, he could claim a perfectly innocent alibi, even though he was following her like a hunter stalking prey, behaving, in fact, exactly like the silver BMW that he was supposed to be investigating. He checked the time again – still an hour before Ewan and Jackson’s pubescent alter ego, Chloe, were due to meet.
When they reached their destination, more nifty parking ensued. More walking along streets – Crystal was going at a trot, she’d be cantering soon. Why was she in such a hurry? So she could get back and rescue Snow White from the vampires’ clutches?
They had reached the mean streets by now. Crystal stopped short outside a tattoo parlour and checked the name on the bell on the door next to it. A flat was above, Jackson presumed. After a couple of minutes the door was opened and a woman peered out cautiously. It was hard to judge her age as she had the scrawny morbidity of a meth addict. Not really the type you’d expect a self-styled ‘wife and mother’ to keep company with. She was hugging a man’s cardigan around her body as though she was freezing. On her feet was a pair of old-fashioned furry slippers, the kind that Jackson imagined his grandmother would have worn if he had ever had a grandmother – there wasn’t much in the way of longevity in his ancestral line. The two women exchanged a few intense words on the doorstep before the cardigan-wrapped woman stepped aside and let Crystal inside.
More loitering ensued on his part, this time in a coffee shop on the other side of the street. Not a coffee shop, more of an apology for a greasy spoon, a run-down place in which Jackson was the only customer, so it was easy to secure a seat near the window from where he could keep a lookout for his client’s reappearance. He ordered a coffee (rank) and pretended to look busy with his iPhone until Crystal suddenly flew out of the door. She was halfway up the street before he’d thrown down a five-pound note (a ludicrous overpayment) and cajoled Dido into getting to her feet.
Jackson changed his mind about keeping up the chase. He thought it might quite possibly kill the dog and that was the last thing he wanted on his slate of shortcomings with either Julia or Nathan. Instead he crossed the street to find out the name of Crystal’s haggard friend. A piece of paper had been stuck with Sellotape above the doorbell and, handwritten in felt-tip, it said, F. Yardley. He wondered what the F stood for. Fiona? Fifi? Flora? She didn’t look like a Flora. Jackson’s own mother was a Fidelma, a name she had to spell for every English person she ever met. She was from Mayo, which didn’t help. The accent was dense. ‘Potato speak,’ Jackson’s brother, Francis – another F – had called it, dismissive of his Celtic heritage. Francis was older than Jackson and had embraced the freedom of the Sixties with relish. He was a welder with the Coal Board and owned a sharp suit and a motorbike and had a Beatles pudding-bowl haircut. He also seemed to have a different girl every week. He was a role model to aspire to. And then he killed himself.
It was guilt that drove him to suicide. Francis had felt responsible for their sister’s death. If Jackson could speak to Francis now he would give him the usual police spiel about how the only person responsible for Niamh’s death was the man who killed her, but the truth was that if his brother had met Niamh at the bus-stop like he was supposed to, then a stranger wouldn’t have raped and murdered her and thrown her in the canal, and for that Jackson had never forgiven his brother. He was okay with grudges. They served a purpose. They kept you sane.
Jackson rang F. Yardley’s doorbell and after a considerable wait, and a lot of shuffling and rattling of door keys and chains, the door was finally opened.
‘What?’ the cardigan woman asked. No preamble there, then, Jackson thought. Close up he could see the look of sunken