Kate Atkinson - Started Early, Took My Dog

‘Tracy?’A little voice interrupted her thoughts. It was the first time Courtney had addressed her as anything. It made her want to cry. Could she get her to call her ‘Mum’? What would that feel like? Like flying. Wendy in Peter Pan , Tinker Bell at her heels. Lost girls together.

‘Come on,’ Tracy said. ‘There’s a Toys “R” Us in Batley. We’ll have a bit of a drive.’ Because going back to her house in Headingley was disturbing. Alone with a kid in her house. Like a proper parent. How did you do that? Tracy had no idea. She suddenly remembered Janek. No, of course she couldn’t go home while he was there. Looking at Courtney with his sad Polish eyes, questioning who she was, where she had come from.

Next on his list of tasks was the purchase of a sizeable stock of plastic nappy sacks for the onslaught of dog shit that was inevitably coming his way. Jackson felt more of an upstanding citizen once he was fully equipped. He supposed he should have looked to see if the plastic sacks were biodegradable before planning to weigh the planet down with even more debris, but some days there was only so much a man could do.

This was followed by a visit to an old-fashioned barber’s that he had spotted earlier, near the Best Western, in order to effect a transformation, courtesy of a number one haircut and hot shave with a straight-bladed razor, from which Jackson emerged half an hour later feeling as shorn as a new-born lamb (or a convict). A boule à zero , the Foreign Legion boys would have called it. He just hoped that no one thought it was anything to do with male pattern baldness. Jackson was relieved to see that the reflection that looked back at him in the mirror looked more like himself than previously.

The dog had been allowed to accompany him into the barber’s shop and sat watching the proceedings intently, as if storing up an experience that it might need to explain later. The barber turned out to be a dog lover, said he ‘showed pugs’, a statement which Jackson took a little time deciphering.

He also demonstrated that the dog knew how to shake hands, ‘or shake paws, I should say’, he laughed.

‘Right,’ Jackson said.

‘We share eighty-five per cent of our genes with dogs,’ the barber said.

‘Well, we share fifty per cent of our DNA with bananas,’ Jackson said, ‘so I don’t think that really means anything.’

Smuggling a dog in and out of places was proving easier than Jackson would have imagined, not that it was a topic he had ever given much attention to before now. He couldn’t believe the number of places that dogs weren’t allowed. Kids – not that he had anything against kids obviously – kids were allowed everywhere and dogs were much better behaved on the whole.

Next on his list was the Central Library, where he combed the archives of the Yorkshire Post for April 1975. In the paper for the 10th, he finally found what he was looking for, tucked away on an inside page. ‘Police were called to a flat in Lovell Park yesterday afternoon where they discovered the body of a woman, identified as Carol Braithwaite. Miss Braithwaite had been the subject of a brutal attack. Her body had been lying in the flat for some time, a police spokesman said.’ A byline, ‘Marilyn Nettles’. And that was it, no update on a murder investigation in subsequent weeks, no report of an inquest that he could find. Just one more woman thrown away like rubbish. A woman killed, the murderer never brought to justice, the very echo of Jackson’s own life.

His rucksack, currently resting on the floor, started wriggling as if it was about to produce an alien life form. A small, muffled bark came from inside and a snout struggled through the opening in the zip. Probably time to go, Jackson thought.

Even with an updated code the phone number for Tracy Waterhouse had proved a dud when Jackson tried it, long fallen into disuse. Was Tracy Waterhouse a warhorse, still on the force after all this time? Extremely doubtful.

It seemed to Jackson that if Tracy Waterhouse had been a member of the West Yorkshire Police Force in 1975 then there would be records. And if not records then someone who might recall her, although the chances of someone remembering a humble WPC from the seventies seemed remote. Policewomen in the seventies were still regarded as tea-makers and hand-holders. Life on Mars was only the tip of a sexist iceberg. That world had gone, never to return. ( How many men does it take to wallpaper a room? Marlee asked. Jackson waited for the scornful punchline. Four if you slice them thinly. LOL .)

The dog was restless, despite sharing a ham sandwich with Jackson and having lifted its leg against several walls and the odd scrubby urban tree. It had spent a lot of the day so far confined to prison and Jackson supposed it wanted a good walk. There were very few places for dogs and men to exercise in Leeds, the town centre seemed to be almost devoid of green spaces.

He decided it might be best not to take it into the police station, so he tethered it to a hitching-post outside Millgarth Police HQ, positioning the dog in the line of fire of a CCTV camera at the entrance. That way if someone stole the dog at least there would be a record of it. ‘Call me paranoid,’ he said to the dog, ‘but you can’t trust anyone these days.’ Millgarth was possibly one of the ugliest buildings he had ever seen, built like a Crusader fortress, some time in the seventies, to keep the enemy at bay.

Jackson explained to the sergeant on the duty desk that he was a private detective working for a solicitor. An aunt of Tracy Waterhouse had left a small legacy in a will but the family had lost touch (‘You know how it is with families’), all they knew was that she had been a constable with the West Yorkshire Police in 1975. Lies were best kept simple ( It wasn’t me ) and this one was complicated so he was half expecting to be found wanting, but the desk sergeant simply said, ‘1975? God, you’re going back a long way.’

A man who looked like a washed-up boxer came out of a room at the back and, dropping a file on the desk, said, ‘What’s that?’

The desk sergeant said, ‘This bloke’s looking for a WPC Tracy – what was it?’ he said, turning to Jackson.

‘Waterhouse.’

‘Waterhouse,’ the desk sergeant repeated to the beat-up boxer, as if he was translating from a foreign language. ‘Uniformed constable with us in…?’

‘1975,’ Jackson supplied.

‘1975.’

‘Tracy Waterhouse?’ the beat-up boxer said and laughed. ‘Trace? You know Big Tracy, Bill,’ he said. ‘Detective Superintendent Waterhouse, recently of this parish.’

‘Does that mean she’s dead?’ Jackson puzzled.

‘God, no, Tracy’s indestructible. Detective Inspector Craig Peters, by the way,’ he said, holding out his hand to Jackson.

‘Jackson Brodie,’ Jackson said, returning the handshake. He didn’t recollect the West Yorkshire Police Force being so affable during his misspent teenage years.

‘Tracy retired at the back end of last year,’ the inspector said. ‘Went to the Merrion Centre as head of security.’

‘Oh, Tracy Waterhouse ,’ the desk sergeant said as if he’d finally managed to interpret the language.

A door further down the corridor burst open and a grizzled old copper came barrelling out. They didn’t make them like that any more, which was probably a good thing. He glared around the reception area and Peters said to Jackson, ‘DS Crawford and Tracy go way back.’To Crawford himself, stomping towards them, he raised his voice and said, ‘Barry – this bloke’s asking after Tracy.’