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. Well, no, that wasn't strictly true, but Jackson wasn't quite ready to go all Zen and divest himself of his worldly assets. ('Then quit whining,' his ex-wife said.)

Jackson had managed to get an uncomfortable seat at a table for four, near the end of the carriage. Next to him, at the window, was a man in a tired suit, intent on his laptop. Jackson expected the screen to be full of tables and statistics but instead there were screeds of words. Jackson looked away, numbers were impersonal things to cast an eye over but another man's words had an intimacy about them. The man's tie was loosened and he gave off a faint smell of beer and perspiration as if he'd been away from home too long. There were two women seated on the other side of the table: one was old and armed with a Catherine Cookson novel, the other, leafing indifferently through a celebrity magazine, was a fortyish blonde, buxom as an overstuffed turkey. She was wearing siren-red lipstick and a top to match that was half a size too tight and which burned like a signal fire in front ofJackson's eyes. Jackson was surprised she didn't have 'Up for It' tattooed on her forehead. The old woman looked blue with cold despite wearing a hat, gloves and scarf and a heavy winter coat. Jackson was glad of the North Face jacket that he'd donned as part of his disguise and then felt guilty and offered it to the old woman. She SHuled and shook her head as ifsomeone long ago had warned her not to speak to strangers on trains.

The suit next to him coughed, an unhealthy, phlegmy noise, and Jackson wondered if he should offer up his jacket to him as well. Strangers on a train. If there was an emergency would they help each other? (Never overestimate people.) Or would it be every woman for herself? That was the way to survive in a plane or a train, you had to ignore everyone and everything, get out at any cost, gnaw off a limb -someone else's if necessary -climb over seats, climb over people, forget anything your mother ever taught you about manners because the people who got to the exit were the people who, literally, lived to tell the tale.

The aftermath of a bad train crash was like a battlefield. Jackson knew, he'd attended one at the beginning of his career in the civilian police and it had been worse than anything he'd seen in the army.

There'd been a small child trapped in the wreckage, they could hear it calling for its mother but they couldn't even begin to get to it beneath the tons of train.

After a while the crying stopped but it continued in Jackson's dreams for months afterwards. The child -a boy -was eventually rescued, but strangely that didn't mollifY the horror of recalling its sobs (Mummy, Mummy). Of course, this was not long after Jackson himself had become a parent to Marlee, a condition that had left him torn and raw and completely at odds with his pre-natal preoccupations which had mainly revolved around choosing a pram with the kind ofmasculine attention to specs that he would normally have afforded a car (Lockable front swivel wheels? Adjustable handle height? Multi-position seat?). The mechanics of fatherhood turned out to be infinitely more primitive. He fingered the plastic bag in his pocket. A different pregnancy, a different child. His. He remembered the surge of emotion he had felt earlier in the day when he had touched Nathan's small head. Love. Love wasn't sweet and light, it was visceral and overpowering. Love wasn't patient, love wasn't kind. Love was ferocious, love knew how to play dirty.

He hadn't seen Julia in her later stages. Short and sexy, he imagined that in pregnancy she would be ripely voluptuous, although she told him that she had piles and varicose veins and was 'almost spherical'. They had maintained a low-grade kind of communication with each other, he phoned her and she told him to sod off, but sometimes they spoke as though nothing had ever come between them. Yet still she maintained the baby wasn't his.

He had visited her in the hospital afterwards. Walking into the sixberth maternity ward he had taken a blow to the heart when he caught sight of her with the baby cradled in her arms. She was propped up on pillows with her wild hair loose about her shoulders, looking for all the world like a madonna -this vision spoiled only by the interloper, Mr Arty-Farty photographer, lying next to her on the bed gazing adoringly at the baby.

'Well, look at this -the unholy family,' Jackson said (because he couldn't help himself -the story of his life where shooting off his mouth to his women was concerned).

'Go away, Jackson,' Julia said placidly. 'You know this isn't a good idea.' Mr Arty-Farty, a little more pro-active, said, 'Get out of here or I'll deck you.'

'Fat chance of that, you big pansy,' Jackson said (because he couldn't help himself). The guy was pampered and unfit, Jackson liked to think that he could have taken him out with one punch.

'The better part of valour is discretion, Jackson,' Julia said, a warning note creeping into her voice. Trust Julia to be quoting at a time like this. She put her little finger in the baby's mouth and smiled down at him. A world apart. Jackson had never seen her so happy and he might have turned on his heel and left, out of deference to Julia's new-found redemption, but Mr Arty-Farty (his name was actually Jonathan Carr) said, 'There's nothing for you here, Brodie,' as if he owned this nativity scene and Jackson felt himself go so beyond reason that he would have beaten the guy up right there on the floor of the ward, with nursing mothers and newborn babies for an audience, ifJulia's baby (his baby) hadn't started crying and shamed him into retreat. Jackson had the grace to be mortified by this memory.