Birdman

'Schloss-Lawson & Walker,' Caffery said. 'Family solicitors. They're drawing up a list of his other properties and I'm with Quinn: we find anything else, we search it.'

'Yes,' Quinn murmured. 'And when we find it, I think we'll find Jackson.'

No-one spoke for a moment. Essex's first task tomorrow was to call Clover Jackson — ask her to come in tomorrow and look at Polaroids of the articles recovered from Harteveld's bathroom. See if the lime-green skirt was the same one her daughter had been wearing the night she disappeared.

'OK,' Maddox sighed. 'Marilyn, actions to be generated in the morning re Harteveld's other residences. I want Jackson before this weather gets working on her.'

* * *

After the meeting Caffery, exhausted, took his tie off and called Rebecca.

'I was on my way to the park,' she said. 'I want to paint the naval college.'

'Can I meet you there?'

'Oh, sure. Half an hour? Hey — are you OK?'

'Yes. Why?'

'Oh.' She was quiet for a moment. 'You don't sound OK.'

'Well I am. I'm fine. Honestly.'

When Essex heard this he started jumping. 'You randy little fucker, you. You kept that quiet. Get her to put a word in with Joni for us, eh? Tell her how sensitive I am or some shit.'

Caffery locked his tie in the desk drawer, splashed water on his face in the washroom, put the mobile in his pocket and drove to Greenwich. The late sun was turning the Royal Observatory's ancient windows gold when he arrived at the park. With Harteveld dead he should feel relief. Instead he was uneasy, his nerves pared and ready as if his body was preparing itself for more hurdles. You're just tired, Jack, he told himself. Get a night's sleep, the world'll look better tomorrow.

She was sitting on the grass in front of Flamsteed's onion dome, a block of watercolour paper on her raised knees, one paintbrush between her teeth as she mixed paint with another. Caffery stopped, enjoying the luxury of watching her unseen. The sun lit the curve of her cheek, he almost believed he could see each fine hair gold on her skin. In the short tartan skirt she seemed shockingly vulnerable. Like an encouragement on this spread of emerald grass.

She put the brush down, wiped her hands on a small piece of rag, and, as if she had known he was there all along, looked up, squinting slightly, a slim brown hand shading her eyes from the low sun.

'Hello.' She had no make-up on, and he could see the beginnings of a laugh line on the right of her mouth. 'Hello, Jack.'

'You know my name.'

'Yes.' She looked down, hair dropping to hide her expression. 'Look, I've got Burgundy.' Opening a rucksack she held a bottle and a corkscrew out to him. 'And this. A whole bag of fresh nectarines. I hope you weren't looking forward to a McDonald's.'

'This means we're having a drink together.'

'So?'

He shrugged, pulled his jacket off, sat on the grass and took the bottle from her. 'I'm not the one who's worried.'

'Anyway, it was you who wanted to see me.'

'True.'

'Why, then? What do you want?'

The truth? I'd like to—

He stopped himself. Began pulling the foil from the bottle. 'We've got him. It was Toby Harteveld. We released it to the press an hour ago.'

'Oh.' Rebecca dropped the rucksack and looked at him. 'Toby.'

'Something else.'

'What?'

'He's dead. You'll see it on the TV, I wanted you to know now. He jumped from London Bridge this morning at ten o'clock.'

'I see.' She let her breath out slowly and stared out at the ocean floor of London spread out below them: upstream, London Bridge put its shipwrecked elbows up out of the blue mist and downstream, shimmering near the smog-streaked horizon, the Millennium Dome, like a cleaned bone against the blue. Beyond that the aggregate yard… 'It's over, then.'

'I suppose so.'

Rebecca was silent for a long time. Eventually, as if she had decided to shake it off, she took two glasses from the rucksack and placed them next to him on the grass. She looked at him and smiled. 'We've got something in common. You and me.'

'Good.' Caffery lifted the arms of the corkscrew. 'What?'

'Fingernails.' She looked at her hands. 'Ever since this thing began I haven't been able to touch anything without my nails crumbling. It's as if that's where the stress comes out.' She paused. 'What's your excuse?'

He smiled, holding up his bruised thumb. 'This?'

'Yes?'

'Oh — you really want to know?'

'Of course.'

'Well, let's see. We had a tree house. That's the first thing.'

'A tree house?'

'Almost all gone now. Maybe one day I'll show you where it was.'

'I'd like that.'

'My brother, Ewan, pushed me. I was eight. The black should have grown out, but it hasn't. Doctors are baffled. I'm a medical marvel.'

'I hope you killed him for it.'

'Who?'

'Your brother.'

'No — I—' He paused. 'No. I forgave him. I suppose.'

He fell silent and Rebecca frowned. 'What've I said—'

'Nothing, nothing.' He uncorked the bottle and poured wine into her glass.

'I'm sorry, I didn't mean — I'm sort of tactless sometimes.'

'Don't!' He held his hand up. 'Really, don't, Rebecca. Just — don't — worry.'

They stared at each other, Rebecca puzzled, Caffery stuck with a confident, lying smile stitched on his face. In his jacket pocket the mobile found the embarrassed gap in their conversation and rang loudly, making them both jump.

'God.' He put the bottle down, reached over, caught the sleeve between his middle and forefinger and dragged the jacket bumping across the grass. 'Talk about timing. I'm sorry.'

'Don't be.' She sank back on her haunches, half grateful to be off the hook. He answered the phone.

'I've done it.' She sounded very faint.

'Veronica?'

'I've done it.'

Caffery glanced at Rebecca and turned away, cupping his hand around the mouthpiece. 'Veronica, where are you?'

'I've done it. I've finally done it.'

'Don't talk in riddles.'

Silence.

'Veronica?'

'You bastard.' She caught her breath as if she was crying. 'You deserved it.'

'Look—'

But she had hung up.

Caffery sighed, placed the phone between his feet and looked up at Rebecca. She was drawing lines in the grass with the butt of a brush, not looking at him.

'Who was that?' she asked eventually.

'A woman.'

'Oh. Veronica? Is that her name?'

'Yes.'

'What did she want?'

'Attention.'

'Well' — she dropped her chin into her hand and looked up at him — 'are you going to give it to her?'

'No.'

Rebecca nodded. 'I see.'

She doesn't believe you, Jack.

He fumbled for a cigarette, and suddenly, from behind the red roofs of the observatory, a flock of squabbling starlings rose into the air. Caffery paused and stared at them, inexplicably shocked.

'Birds.'

Rebecca tipped her head back to look and the late sunlight slipped across her face. 'Ah.' She smiled. 'Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down.' The starlings pivoted on the air, paused for a shivering moment, then plunged towards the ground, filling the air with wings. Rebecca drew her shoulders up. 'Oh.'

The birds swivelled again and were gone as suddenly as they had appeared, deep into the air over the hill. A feather see-sawed through the air and landed at Jack's feet.