When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

Edinburgh.'
    'I don't trust you, Billy.'
    'Whatever.'
    'Quidquid.' Ha.
    'What?'
    When the bus came, Billy made a performance of helping her on to it as if he was a footman helping a princess into a carriage, doffing an imaginary hat and saying, 'See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya,' before strolling off up the street.
    Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark, the beggars are coming to town.
    To Brig OJ Dread Thou Com 5t At Las t JACKSON EVENTUALLY FOUND HIMSELF CRAMMED INTO A LATErunning and over-subscribed cattle truck of a train that buzzed and hummed with exhaustion. The buffet couldn't make hot drinks and the heating had failed so some people looked as if they might soon be dying from hypothermia. Bags and suitcases blocked the aisles and anyone wanting to move about the carriage had to perform a slowmotion hurdle race. This obstacle course didn't prevent several small children, feral with sugar and boredom, from screaming up and down the aisle. It felt like a train returning from a war, one that had been lost not won. There were, in fact, a couple of burned-out squaddies in desert camouflage fatigues squatting on their rucksacks between the carriages. That had been Jackson once, in another lifetime.
    When Jackson left the army he swore he would not do what so many had done before and go into security. Half the squaddies who had served under him could be found at the grunt end of the business -in black overcoats shivering outside the doors ofpubs and clubs. So he joined the Cambridgeshire Constabulary, he'd been a Class One Warrant Officer in the military police and it felt like a natural move. When he left the police he swore he wouldn't do what so many had done before and go into security -Marks and Spencer security guards, Tesco store detectives -half of them were guys he'd served with in the force. He left the police with the rank of detective inspector which seemed a good basis for setting himself up in a one-man private agency and he didn't need to swear anything when he gave that up, thanks to an elderly client who left him a legacy in her will.
    Now, ironically, ifpeople asked him what he did, he said, 'Security,' in a cryptic, don't-ask-me-anything-else tone of voice that he'd learned in the army and perfected in the police. In Jackson's long experience 'security' covered a multitude of sins but actually it was pretty straightforward, he had a card in his wallet that said 'Jackson Brodie -Security Consultant' ('consultant', now there was a word that covered an even greater multitude of sins). He didn't need the money, he needed the self-respect. A man couldn't lie idle. Working for Bernie nught not be a righteous cause (in his heart Jackson was a crusader, not a pilgrim) but it was better than kicking his heels at home all day long.
    And being in security was better than saying, 'I live off an old woman's money,' because, ofcourse, the money that his client had left him in her will had in no way been deserved and it hung as heavily on him as if he carried it in a sack on his back. He owned a money tree, it seemed, having invested most of the two million his returns grew incrementally all the time. (It was true what they said, money made money.)
    What's more he'd managed, more or less, to keep to the ethical side of the street. Jackson reckoned there was enough misery in the world without it being funded by him, although he had such a big spread of alternative energy portfolios that when the oil ran out he was going to profit from the end of the-world-as-we-knowit. 'Like Midas,' Julia said. 'Everything you touch turns to gold:
    In his previous life, when bad luck dogged his heels like a faithful hound and when everything he touched turned to shit, he had barely made the mortgage each month and the occasional lottery ticket was the only investment he made. And you could be sure that if he had put money into stocks and shares (laughably unlikely) the global market would have collapsed the next day. Now he couldn't give the stuff away.