Fire Damage (A Jessie Flynn Investigation, Book 1) (14 page)

Taking the cup from Mrs Jackson, she took a few sips, set it back on the worktop. ‘Is your daughter-in-law here, Mrs Jackson? I’d like to talk to her, just briefly, if possible.’

Mrs Jackson looked uncertain. ‘She’s putting the children to bed.’ A laden pause. ‘She’s very upset.’

Jessie nodded. ‘I won’t ask her anything that makes her uncomfortable, and talking to someone outside the family can be useful. I know the Army way of life well, but I’m not a soldier.’

Mrs Jackson rubbed a hand over her eyes; she looked as if she was about to cry.

‘Please sit down,’ she managed, indicating the kitchen table. ‘I’ll go and speak to her.’ Hurriedly, she left the kitchen.

Jessie waited, sipping her coffee, hearing Mrs Jackson’s footsteps receding down the hall, her soft tread on the carpeted stairs, cut through by Steve Jackson’s voice.

‘
He wouldn’t have been allowed to join the Army if he had any medical problems, would he?
’

Callan:
‘
Are you sure?
’

‘
Of course I’m bloody sure. He was my son. He didn’t have any medical problems.
’

Jessie sensed, rather than heard, someone join her in the room. She turned. The woman in the doorway, who was about her own age, looked exhausted, emotionally wrung out and then wrung a few turns tighter. Her blonde hair was lank and greasy, her eye make-up applied – perhaps for their visit – hastily, a large smudge of mascara under one eye. She looked as if she had been crying constantly for the past week: the whites of her brown eyes red veined, sunk deep within their sockets. She was wearing a shapeless yellow hooded sweatshirt and jeans. Jessie stood, but didn’t hold out her hand. She wanted to establish their relationship on an informal footing from the outset, if she could.

‘I’m Jessie Flynn. I’m a clinical psychologist.’

Rachel gave a dull nod.

‘I wanted to have a chat with you,’ Jessie continued. ‘Nothing formal. Just a … a chat. And you can, of course, ask me anything. Any questions you have. Anything that you think might help.’

Rachel sat down across the table from Jessie, but didn’t meet her eye.

‘I’m not sure if your mother-in-law told you, but I lost my brother a few years ago.’

Rachel’s gaze was fixed resolutely at an invisible spot in the middle of the kitchen table. She began to pick at the skin around her thumbnail. Jessie noticed that the skin on both hands around the edges of the nails was red raw, smudged with blood.

Jessie continued, ‘It was a long time ago, but I wanted you to know that I can understand a tiny bit of what you’re going through—’ She broke off as a memory surfaced violently. A memory of sitting helplessly at the kitchen table while her mother thumped her fists against the kitchen wall and sobbed her heart out for Jamie.

‘I saw a big black car coming down our cul-de-sac,’ Rachel said quietly, concentrating on her breathing, each word forced out between sucking breaths; ‘driven by a man in Army uniform, and my heart stopped. My first thought was that Andy had been hurt, but when they got out and the driver asked if I was Sergeant Jackson’s wife and I said, “Yes”, and he said, “Can you hand your baby to my colleague,” I knew. I
knew
that he was dead.’ She dug her nail deeper into the skin of her thumb. ‘I had to break the news to my five-year-old daughter the next morning. I sat her down and told her that she wasn’t going to school. She was so happy.’ Her face twisted with anguish. ‘And then I had to tell her why – that Daddy can’t ever come home from Afghanistan now because he’s gone to heaven. She didn’t say anything, didn’t ask any questions. It was only the next day, when we came here, that I heard her asking her grandpa what heaven was. Steve told her that it’s an amazing place up in the sky, way above the clouds, and that Daddy had gone up there on a rocket ship. She’s such a girly-girl. She hates rocket ships, space men, anything like that. But that night, before bed, I found her searching through Steve’s toolbox in the under-stairs cupboard. I asked her what she was doing and she said that she was looking for some tools to take to bed with her in case Daddy’s rocket ship needed fixing.’ Jessie heard the sob straining her vocal cords. ‘The baby will never remember him. He’ll look at photographs and know that the man in the photographs was his father, but he’ll never have any real sense of him. At least Roxy will have that.’ She wiped the streak of tears roughly from her cheeks. ‘I hope Bobby never wants to join the fucking Army.’ Blood dripped from her thumb where she had dug a raw hole with her nail. Reaching across the table, Jessie laid her hand on hers, grasped it tight.

‘Please don’t hurt yourself like that.’

Another memory. Her mother thumping her head against the kitchen table, trying to blunt the emotional hurt with physical pain.

‘He was … he was making a difference in Afghanistan, wasn’t he? My Andrew.’ His name dragged a little jerk out of her, as if the effort hurt her.

Jessie hesitated. She had no idea what Andy Jackson was working on in Afghanistan. And a cynic would say that none of them were making a difference. That it was a pointless war driven by dishonest politicians who would never put their own sons or daughters in the firing line.

‘Yes, he was. He was making a big difference.’ What else could she say?

‘He was so proud. Said he had some important contacts, Afghans. Right in with them, he was …’

‘Did he say who they were?’ Jessie asked softly.

Rachel shook her head. ‘No, he never did. He never told me much. Said it was all top secret.’ She gave a sad smile. ‘We only had one call a week from Afghanistan and he wanted to hear me talk mainly, wanted to know how the kids were doing—’

‘Mummy.’

A tiny voice behind Jessie. Twisting around in the chair, she saw a little girl, dressed in pink Hello Kitty pyjamas, standing in the doorway. She was clutching a sheaf of A4 papers to her chest with one arm, a fistful of felt-tip pens in the other hand.

Rachel scrubbed her sleeve quickly across her eyes, stretched out her arms. ‘Roxy, sweetheart. I just put you into bed.’

‘I could hear Granddaddy shouting.’ Her face creased into a frown. ‘It’s too loud.’

Rachel forced a smile. ‘He’s shouting at the television, sweetheart, like you do when Dora’s on.’

Roxy looked confused. ‘Who’s the other man?’

Rachel smoothed her hair. ‘The television. Just the telly, sweetheart, voices on the telly.’

Rachel wiped her sleeve across her eyes again: she looked as if she was about to burst into tears. Jessie met her gaze and a look passed between them.

Jessie put her hand out and touched the little girl’s arm.

‘I love your drawings, Roxy. They’re so colourful. Can you tell me what they’re about?’

Roxy looked at Jessie for a moment, her brow creased into a tight frown. Appraisal concluded, she shuffled sideways, laid the drawings on the tabletop in front of Jessie.

The first picture was of a family of four walking in the park, father, mother, daughter and a baby in a pram. The sun was out and the grass was studded with huge, brightly coloured flowers.

‘This was when we went to Wandsworth Common, with Daddy.’

‘It’s beautiful. I love your flowers.’ Jessie pointed. ‘And what’s this?’

Roxy smiled hesitantly. ‘A squirrel. There were lots of squirrels. I wanted to feed them, but Daddy wouldn’t let me. He said they’re dirty.’

The next picture showed Roxy, Rachel and the baby standing, a male figure in camouflage clothing lying, prone, in front of them. The figure was holding a box in one hand, the box almost as big as his whole body. Roxy had written the letters PAN on the box.

‘This one is Daddy. He’s hurt. His leg hurts.’

‘What’s this?’ Jessie indicated the box.

‘It’s medicine to take his hurtie leg away.’

The last picture was similar, but in this one Andy Jackson’s eyes were closed and he wasn’t holding a box. Tears ran down the faces of Rachel, Roxy and her baby brother. Huge, bright blue tears that had formed puddles around their feet. In the sky, which she had coloured black, Roxy had drawn a space ship, its fiery tail trailing up to the sky, as if it was coming down to land.

‘I asked him to leave the Army,’ Rachel murmured.

Jessie looked from the child to her mother. Rachel’s dull gaze was fixed on the last picture.

‘Once the government sent troops to Afghanistan. It’s a stupid bloody war … stupid and needless …’ Her voice rose, as if the effort to get the words out was affecting her ability to control the volume. ‘I asked him to leave so many times, but he wouldn’t.
Couldn’t.
He had been dreaming of being a Spook since he was eight years old. It was his life – the Intelligence Corps was my Andy’s life. It would have killed him to—’ She slammed a hand over her mouth, realizing what she had said. ‘I just want him back.’ A sob erupted from under her hand.

Jessie pulled Roxy on to her knee, hugged her tight. Roxy tucked her face into Jessie’s neck; Jessie could feel her little body trembling. She cursed herself for not keeping a better eye on Rachel, for not realizing how the pictures were affecting her.

‘What the hell have you said to her?’ Steve Jackson was in the doorway.

‘I’m sorry, we were talking about—’ Jessie gestured helplessly to Roxy’s pictures. ‘About your son.’

Crossing the room in two steps, he wrapped his arm around his granddaughter, pulled her off Jessie’s knee. The muscles along his jaw bulged.

‘I think it’s time that you left,’ he snarled. ‘Now. Both of you. Get out of my bloody house
now
.’

A heavy blackness swept over Jessie as she and Callan walked, in silence, back to the car. He held the passenger door open for her. She met his gaze across its top.

‘I can’t stand seeing pain like that. It’s such a fucking waste.’

Callan didn’t reply. Jessie got in and he shut the door, went around to the driver’s side and climbed in. Starting the car, he flicked the radio on – Magic FM, easy listening music – turned up the volume. Jessie reached over and switched it off.

‘Sorry to be a miserable shit but I’m not in the mood for cheery music.’

‘I don’t have any James Blunt, though if you rummage in the glovebox you might find some “slit your wrists music” from the Manic Street Preachers to cheer us up,’ he said.

Leaning forward, she reached for the glovebox, paused, her hand on the catch.

‘Seeing the photographs of Jackson as that smiling blond boy, looking at him back then and knowing what was coming to him, what his future was going to be – that’s what hit me the hardest. Because that’s the memory his mum has of him, isn’t it? A little boy with skinny legs and that gap-toothed smile. Her little son. Not a grown man with his own children.’

Pulling out the stack of CDs, she flicked through them half-heartedly, holding each one to the window so that the orange glow from the sodium streetlamps lit the titles.

‘I never believed in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan,’ she continued, slumping back in the seat, the CDs in her hand, none chosen. ‘It’s easy to be a politician, to put your hand up for a vote and send thousands of young men and women to a country you’ve never visited, into a political situation that you don’t understand, and a war that can’t be won. They don’t get it. The number of lives that have been torn apart by those wars. Children like Roxy and her baby brother who are fatherless, mums and dads like the Jacksons who have lost their children.’

They joined West Hill, taking them from Wandsworth back up to the A3, heading southwest out of London, the late rush-hour stream of tail-lights a red fog ahead of them.

‘It’s all been for nothing, was for nothing,’ she finished.

‘Is that what you believe?’ Callan asked quietly.

As she looked across, her gaze caught the scar from the bullet wound on his temple and she faltered. She had never aired her view to another soldier, only to Ahmose, ranting over their weekly teas. It felt like the ultimate betrayal, telling patients of hers who had lost limbs and worse in Afghanistan that she believed it was all for nothing. It was easier to pretend that the war had been worth the lost lives, even though she knew that many of them – most of them, probably – felt as she did.

‘I support the soldiers, of course I do, but no, I never believed that we were right to interfere in the Middle East. It’s a multi-headed monster. Chop one head off and another grows, worse than the first. Look at the Islamic State now – the butchers that they’ve brought with them, the hatred. And the warlords in Afghanistan. Are they really better than the Taliban? Are people’s lives – normal people’s lives, women’s lives – any better? When I treat the young men and women who’ve been so badly scarred – mentally and physically – I’m furious at the Army and at the politicians for sending them out there in the first place, to fight an unwinnable war.’ She paused. ‘So yes, it is what I believe. And I also believe that in a couple of years’ time, not even that long, Afghanistan will be the same as it was before, or worse. The Taliban are resurging. About the only sensible thing Starkey said in our interview was that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. He’s right, and he’ll soon be proved right again …’ she tailed off. ‘Sorry for the rant. You’ve probably had enough ranting from Steve Jackson to last you a lifetime and then you get an hour locked in a small space with me.’

They had reached Tibbet’s Corner, the roundabout where West Hill segued into the A3. A mile to the left, down Parkside, was her childhood home, where her mother lived.

‘I grew up near here.’

‘In Wandsworth?’

‘Wimbledon. My mum still lives there, in the house I grew up in.’

‘Do you see her much?’

‘No.’ The familiar feeling of guilt rising with her answer.

‘Tell me about your brother,’ he asked softly. ‘The one in the photograph.’

The noise of the Golf’s V8 engine roared in the silence that followed his question. She was tempted to tell him that her story was none of his business, but that response felt unnecessarily aggressive, pointless, particularly after what they had gone through together this evening. And she had seen him at his lowest.

‘There’s not much to tell. He died when he was seven. I was fourteen.’

‘What did he die of?’

She hesitated, glanced out of the window. Wimbledon Common was spinning past, the black silhouettes of trees framed by the starlit sky beyond. Trees that hemmed in a thousand acres of wild grass and woodland, ponds and streams where she would take Jamie sledging in winter, tadpoling in the spring, sit him down and make daisy chains in summer, cycle and kick footballs.

‘He got run over by a car.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It was a long time ago. Sounds harsh, but I don’t think about him much any more.’

She glanced across at the same moment he did and their gazes met for a fraction of a second. Jessie’s eyes slid away. The car sped on, the false ring of her words hanging in the air.

‘How did your mother take it?’

‘How do you think she took it?’

‘Badly?’

Looking out of the window, she felt tears welling. Truth and lies. By acknowledging how Jamie had died, saying it out loud, she would have to acknowledge her role in his death. Her culpability. Bring that culpability into her new life – the one she had manufactured away from her mother, the living reminder of her past.

‘Jamie was the sweet one. He was lovely,’ she murmured. ‘A truly lovely little boy.’

Callan braked sharply to avoid hitting a van that had just swung wildly in front of him, the sudden deceleration jerking Jessie forward in her seat, sending the CDs clattering from her lap. Bending forward, she scooped them from the footwell, stacked them up, put them back neatly in the glovebox, had a quick tidy of the other contents before closing it.

‘Happy?’ Callan asked.

‘Huh?’

‘With the arrangement of my glovebox.’

‘Oh … I …’ She sat back and sighed. ‘After he died, I used to sneak out of school during my lunch hour, run home and clean the house. Make it nice for my mum when she got back from work. It was the only thing that seemed to make her happy. The only thing
I
could do to make her happy.’

She had never told anyone that, not even Ahmose.

‘Is that where it came from?’

‘Where what came from?’

‘The OCD.’

‘I don’t have—’ She broke off. She was sick of saying it, sick of the mantra. Who was she convincing? Not even herself any more. ‘Yes, that is where it came from. I’ve had it for years now.’

He flicked the indicator, swung the Golf across three lanes and on to the exit slip road. Left at the roundabout and they joined a country road, a couple of miles later another, narrower, high hedges on either side more densely black than the night sky above them.

‘What about you, Callan?’

He seemed unsurprised that she would turn the question around on him, but he didn’t respond.

‘What’s your story? What are you hiding?’

‘You know my story and you’ve seen all there is to see of me.’ A brief half-smile. ‘Of my brain at least.’

They had reached Bradley Court. Pulling up in the car park next to her Mini, he switched off the engine and turned to face her. Now that they had stopped, and the darkness had closed around them, he seemed claustrophobically close, his proximity suddenly uncomfortably intimate in the small car. Shifting sideways until her left arm was pressed against the passenger door, she looked across. Her heart rate was slightly raised and she knew that her cheeks were flushed, hoped that he couldn’t tell in the darkness of the car.

‘The truth, soldier,’ she said. ‘Tell me the truth.’

‘The truth will set you free, Dr Flynn,’ he murmured, with another brief smile. ‘When you tell me the truth – the whole truth – I’ll tell you the truth.’ Leaning over, he gave her a quick, soft kiss on the cheek. ‘Thank you for coming with me. Goodnight. Sweet dreams.’