Author: Kate Atkinson
Category: Literature
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/kate-atkinson/page,20,471439-big_sky.html
The front door crashed open. Tommy. He’d never learned how to enter a house quietly. He’d come in late last night and left before six this morning, slipping out of bed without waking her. It wasn’t like Tommy to go without his breakfast, nor did he usually let her sleep on undisturbed. She was used to being prodded awake by him with a request for a cup of tea. It was part of her job description, apparently. On Mother’s Day, Harry and Candy had brought her breakfast in bed—a tray with a flower picked from the garden in a little vase, a pot of coffee, croissants, jam, a perfect peach. (That was Candy—a perfect peach. Not yet bruised by life.) And a card that Harry had helped Candy to make. A crayon drawing of a stick family—mum, dad, two kids. “To the best Mummy in the world,” it said. Harry patted her awkwardly on the shoulder and said, “Sorry, didn’t mean to make you cry.” “Tears of happiness, Harry,” she said. How often did you get those? Not often, that’s how often. It was good to know her eyes hadn’t completely dried up.
“Crystal?” Tommy yelled. “Where the fuck are you hiding yourself?”
Crystal sighed. You only have to look, she thought. She stubbed out her cigarette and tossed a mint in her mouth. “In here!”
Slapping on her best happy smile when Tommy came into the kitchen, she said, “Well, look at you, babe—home in the middle of the day. Here’s a turnup for the books.”
“Have you been out?”
“Out?”
“Yeah, out. I came back earlier and you weren’t here.”
“I popped down to Whitby to run a few errands.”
“Dressed like that?”
“I changed. Did you hear about Wendy?”
“Wendy?” Tommy looked blank.
“Wendy Ives—Vince’s wife. She’s dead. Someone killed her.”
“Fucking hell. How?”
“Dunno.”
“Vince, do you think? I wouldn’t blame him, she was a tight-arsed cow. How about something to eat? A sandwich?”
Was that it? Was Wendy’s murder less important than Tommy’s lunch? It was alarming how easily he could dispel the thought of a dead wife. Perhaps a living one, too. “No problem,” Crystal said. “Pork and pickle or roast chicken?”
“Whatever. Chicken. I’ll have it in the office.”
He seemed out of sorts, not the usual happy-go-lucky Tommy.
“Problems at work?” she commiserated. Sympathy was also part of her job description.
“You could say that. I’ve got to get on,” he said, muttering something about paperwork. But then he had the grace to grunt an apology. “Bad morning,” he said and gave her a peck on the cheek. “Sorry.”
“S’okay, babe.” He wasn’t himself at all. Who was he, then?
He shut the study door.
She took a pack of cooked chicken slices from the fridge. She peeled back the plastic and wrinkled her nose at the smell of the meat. Dead animal. Was that how Wendy would smell now? The way of all flesh. That was from something, wasn’t it? The Bible or Shakespeare, probably. Harry would know. Harry knew everything. Sometimes Crystal worried that he knew too much. Keep your mouth shut. The words kept ricocheting around her brain.
She put the sandwich on a plate and garnished it with a sprig of parsley, not that Tommy would appreciate this touch. The nearest she had ever come to a garnish when she was younger was a sachet of tomato ketchup on her fries. It was depressing to think that she had reached an age when she could say “when I was young.” Although not as depressing as remembering what it had been like to be young. She hoped that when Candy was older she would look back on her childhood and remember nothing but happiness. Keep your mouth shut.
In the office she found Tommy staring at his blank computer screen. Crystal did sometimes wonder if he knew how to turn it on—he did everything on his iPhone. Or iPhones in the plural, because he had two—the one she was supposed to know about and the one she wasn’t supposed to know about, or at least the one she’d never been told about. She had found the second one when she had taken his jacket into the cleaner’s a few weeks ago and her heart had dropped at the sight of it. Her first thought, obviously, had been that he was having an affair, which to be honest, as she’d said to Jackson Brodie, would have surprised her because, despite his macho bluster, he wasn’t really the type. Tommy liked being married, it made his life easy, infidelity made life complicated. “Dad’s uxorious,” Harry said. (Guess where he got that word.) “Uxor,” Harry said. “It’s the Latin for wife.” Sounded like something to do with cattle or pigs to Crystal’s ears.
To her relief, the phone seemed to be entirely work-related and consisted mostly of text messages—Fresh stock due to dock at 4:00 a.m. Or Consignment on its way to Huddersfield. There were no names in the address book and messages went to and from people with initials only—A, V, J, T, and several others so that almost the entire alphabet was covered. Drivers, mainly, she supposed. Unloaded cargo in Sheffield, boss. No problems. None of his workers ever turned up at the house. “Work and pleasure,” Tommy said. “Never mix the two.” She supposed the same rule applied to his phones.
Tommy’s “office” was a small room near the front of the house that must have served as some kind of reception room for visitors in the old days. (The house was Edwardian, according to Harry. “About 1905,” he added, because he knew she had no idea about dates.) The office was quite different from Tommy’s expansive den in the basement. The den was full of men’s toys—a snooker table, massive TV, fully stocked bar. The office, on the other hand, was all dark wood and green leather and brass desk lamps. A heavy metal filing cabinet, a serious computer, and a box of expensive cigars on display. It felt like the idea of an office rather than the real thing. The idea of an office dreamt up by someone who had started life in the boxing ring. And it was hard to say just what Tommy did in there, because they both knew that the real office was the Portakabin he kept in the Holroyd Haulage yard. No dark wood and green leather there, instead there was a beer fridge, a Pirelli calendar, and a litter of tachograph printouts and bills and invoices covered in cup stains that Tommy’s accountant came by for every month and transformed into something respectable. Or as near as respectable as he could get.
She had dropped in there once—early on in their relationship when she thought she would surprise him on Valentine’s Day. She had arrived with a cake—heart-shaped—from Marks and Sparks food hall (in the old days of dirty eating), but he had hustled her out of the Portakabin as quickly as he could. “No place for a lady,” he said. “The guys’ll enjoy that, though,” he said, taking the cake from her, and she hadn’t the heart (ha!) to point out that it was a romantic gesture aimed at him and not the couple of overweight blokes smoking and playing cards whom she had glimpsed inside the Portakabin.
Thanks,” he said, taking the sandwich off the plate and biting into it without even looking at it. Crystal spared another thought for the chickens. God only knows what they had gone through in order to keep Tommy Holroyd fed. Best not to think about it. Keep your mouth shut.
“Anything else, babe?” she asked.
“Nah. Close the door again on the way out, will you?”
The entry phone buzzed while she was still in the hallway and Tommy shouted through the door, “Get that, will you?”
When Crystal peered at the monitor next to the front door she could see a girl standing in front of the camera. She was so short that only the top half of her head showed. Crystal pressed the button on the microphone and said, “Hello?” The girl held up something, a wallet or a card, Crystal couldn’t make it out. “I’m DC Reggie Chase,” she said. “I’m here with my colleague DC Ronnie Dibicki.” She indicated someone else, out of sight of the camera. “We’d like to have a chat with Mr. Holroyd. Mr. Thomas Holroyd.”
Detectives? “It’s a routine inquiry,” the detective said. “Nothing to be alarmed by.” Keep your mouth shut, Christina. But they weren’t here for her, they were here for Tommy. Crystal hesitated, more from a natural aversion to the police than
any anxiety about Tommy’s wrongdoing.
“Mrs. Holroyd?”
Crystal let them in, she didn’t have a choice, really, did she? She knocked on the door of the office and said, “Tommy? There are two detectives here. They’d like a word with you.”
“A chat,” one of the detectives amended sweetly. “Just a chat.”
Crystal led them into the living room. It was a room that had several huge windows with fantastic views of the sea—the wow factor, Tommy called it. Neither of the detectives seemed to notice the wow.
Tommy appeared, looking more bulky than usual beside the two girls. He could have picked one up in each hand.
“Make us a coffee, will you, love?” he said to Crystal. “And for the ladies here too?”
The ladies smiled and said no, thank you.
Crystal went out of the room, but left the door ajar and lingered on the other side of it. Was Tommy in trouble? She was expecting it to be something about the trucks, or the drivers. An accident of some kind, a traffic misdemeanor. It wasn’t the first time the police had turned up at the house with questions about the trucks, but any problems usually quietly disappeared. As far as Crystal was aware, Tommy was pretty law-abiding. So he maintained, anyway. “Not in my interests as a businessman to be on the wrong side of the law,” he said. “Plenty of money to be made keeping to the right side of it.”
Or perhaps it was something about Wendy. They would be interviewing everyone who knew her, wouldn’t they? Wendy had been to High Haven a few times—the pool party for her birthday, Christmas drinks, that kind of thing. She was always snooty, as if she was better than them. Better than Crystal, anyway. (“Oh, I wish I was brave enough to wear such a tiny bikini!” “Just as well she’s not,” Tommy said. “It would frighten the horses.”)
She could hear some kind of preamble on Tommy’s part—dropping the names of a couple of senior policemen he “knocked out a round of golf with” at the Belvedere. The detectives sounded unimpressed.
“Has this got something to do with Wendy Ives?” he asked.
Has this got something to do with Wendy Ives? Reggie exchanged a look with Ronnie. Ronnie silently mouthed the word “golf” and raised not one but two eyebrows. Vince had said that Tommy Holroyd was a “golfing friend.” Could he also have been a “special friend” of Wendy Easton’s? A lot hinged on the ownership of that golf club. Had it been tested for prints yet? Was there some weird, as yet unfathomable link between Wendy Easton’s murder and their own Operation Villette? So many questions. Someone had once told Reggie that there were always more questions than answers. The same someone she had seen running up the cliff last night. The same someone whose life she had once saved. What was Jackson Brodie doing here? He was a man who brought confusion in his wake. And he owed her money.
“Wendy Ives?” Ronnie said. “No, that’s a major crime investigation. This is nothing to worry about, sir. Just an old case that we’re looking into. Your name came up in connection with one of several individuals we’re investigating and so we would like to ask you some routine questions, if that’s all right? We’re trying to build a picture of these individuals, fill in some background details.”
“Of course, anything to help,” Tommy said amiably. “Who are these ‘individuals,’ if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Holroyd, I’m not able to tell you that. Mr. Holroyd—have you ever heard of something called the magic circle?”
All three of them heard the sound of a car making its fast and furious escape.
“Did you hear that?” Ronnie puzzled to Reggie.
“What?” Reggie said, mirroring her frown. “The unmistakable sound of a car being driven away at speed?”
“Was that Mrs. Holroyd leaving?” Ronnie asked Tommy Holroyd, smiling pleasantly. “It looks like you won’t be getting that coffee.”
He frowned at her as if he was trying to translate what she was saying.
Reggie stood up and walked over to one of High Haven’s big picture windows. It was at the back of the house. No driveway, no cars, only sea and sky as far as the eye could see.
“Wow,” she said.
Christina and Felicity. Running. Running away.
Christina, Tina to her friends, although she only had the one, Felicity—Fee. Tina and Fee running down the street, helter-skelter, screaming with laughter, like hostages who had freed themselves, although it wasn’t as if the doors of their care home were locked, or even as if anyone was bothered whether they were inside it or not. The Elms, it was called, and there was precious little care on offer.
The Elms was a place for “difficult girls” and Tina had never understood why she had ended up there because she didn’t consider herself to be in the least bit difficult. She’d been taken into care after her mother abandoned her and her father was deemed unfit to look after her, after he had tried to pimp her out to his drinking pals in the pub. The Elms seemed like a punishment for something her parents had done, not her.
Fee had been in foster care since she was five and she was difficult. She was a rebel, bold and mouthy—“a wicked girl,” Giddy said. Mrs. Gidding—Giddy she was called, of course. She was short and fat—round almost, like an egg. Tina liked to imagine her rolling down the big staircase at the Elms and breaking into bits at the bottom. Giddy had fluffy hair and was always shouting at the girls in her high squeaky voice, but none of them took any notice of her. There was an assistant manager who was a different kettle of fish. Davy—a big burly bloke who always looked as if he wanted to belt the living daylights out of the girls, although he bought cigarettes for them and even cans of lager sometimes. Fee was always wheedling stuff out of him. The Flea, he called her. Tina was Teeny—you wouldn’t think it but she’d been a small kid. Sometimes Tina had seen Fee stumbling out of Davy’s airless nicotine-stained office looking pale and sick, but when Tina asked her if she was okay she just shrugged and said, “Top of the Pops,” which was one of her sayings (along with “Ah, Bisto” and “Can I have a P, Bob?”).
They’d “escaped” before, lots of times, of course. They’d caught the bus into the town center a few times and nicked stuff from Woolworths—a New Kids on the Block CD (there was a machine in the rec room), a bottle of nail varnish, a strawberry-flavored lip gloss, and loads of sweets. They’d gone to the cinema as well, sneaking in the fire exit to see Candyman and then having nightmares for weeks. They’d hitched to Grimsby (horrid, rightly named) and to Beverley (boring), but now they were on a bigger adventure. And not only were they getting away, they were getting away for good. No going back. Not ever. Running.
It was Fee who suggested they go to Bridlington because that was where the two pervy blokes lived. “Do-gooders,” Giddy sneered, as if people who did good were actually bad (which, of course, they were in this instance). Davy was a pal of the do-gooding blokes—Tony and Mick—and it was Davy who had first invited them to visit the Elms. Tony was the Bassani’s ice-cream guy and when he came to visit he brought big unlabeled tubs of ice cream with him. They were usually half melted by the time he arrived but that was still okay. He’d dish it out himself, getting the girls to line up for it and then saying something to each one of them in turn—“There you go, sweetheart, get that down your throat,” or “Have a lick of that, love,” and everyone giggled, even Giddy.
Tony and Mick were local businessmen, according to Davy. Local celebrities too, always in the papers for one thing or another. Not that either Fee or Tina read the papers, but Davy showed them. Tony had a big car, a Bentley, that he took the girls for rides in. Tina had never been in the car but Fee said she’d gotten all kinds of stuff for going for rides—sweets, cigarettes, even cash. She didn’t say what she’d had to do to earn these rewards, but you could guess. Mick owned amusement arcades and seaside attractions and Fee said that if they got to Brid, Tony and Mick would give them jobs, and then they could get somewhere to live and they would be free to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted.
The Flea
and Teeny. Running away. They were twelve years old.
They got their first lift on a garage forecourt on the outskirts of town from a quiet truck driver who bought them crisps and cans of Pepsi. They told him they were sixteen and he laughed because he didn’t believe them and when he dropped them off at a roundabout he said, “Have a good time at the seaside, girls,” and gave them a couple of quid to spend. “Buy yourselves a stick of rock candy,” he said, “and don’t let the boys kiss you.”
The next lift was from a bloke who was driving a big beige station wagon and who said after a few miles, “I’m not a taxi service, girls, I don’t give rides for free,” and Fee said, “Neither do taxis,” and he said, “You’re a cheeky little bitch, aren’t you?” He stopped at a lay-by and Fee told Tina to get out of the car for five minutes, and when she got back in the driver didn’t say anything more about being a taxi service and he took them all the way to Bridlington and dropped them off right on South Marine Drive. “Dirty bugger,” Fee said after they’d clambered out and he’d driven off. When they arrived in Brid they bought chips and fags with the money the first truck driver had given them.
“This is the life,” Fee said as they leaned against the railings on the Prom and smoked their cigarettes while they watched the waves coming in.
Not much of a life, it turned out. Mick gave them a trailer to stay in, it was on the edge of a site he owned and it was one step away from the knacker’s yard. And he did give them jobs, of a sort. Sometimes they worked on the funfair or on reception at the trailer site, but mostly they were needed to go to Tony and Mick’s “parties.” Before she went to the first one Tina had imagined balloons and ice cream and games, the kind of party she’d never had, but she couldn’t have been more wrong. There wasn’t even any ice cream, which you might have thought there would be, given who Bassani was. There were games, though. Definitely not the kind of games you got at kids’ parties, although there were a couple of other girls there about their age. There were always loads of kids, they came and went all the time. Not just girls, boys too. “Just think about something else,” one of the girls advised her. “Something nice. Unicorns or rainbows,” she added cynically.