Kate Atkinson - Started Early, Took My Dog

There he found one ‘Linda Pallister’ and four ‘T. Waterhouse’s, one of those a ‘Tracy’. He had plenty of credits with 192.com and was able to get addresses for both women. They knew enough to go exdirectory but weren’t savvy enough to remove themselves from the electoral register, which was how 192.com had got hold of their details. It shouldn’t be allowed, but it was, thank goodness.

Jackson retrieved the Saab from the multi-storey car park at the Merrion Centre where it had been corralled since he arrived in Leeds yesterday. He wasn’t sure of the protocol of dogs in cars. You saw them all the time staring out of the back or hanging out of the passenger window, their ears fluttering in the slipstream, but an unsecured dog was an accident waiting to happen. When he was in the force there had been a woman killed in a traffic accident. She braked suddenly at a red light, and her Dalmatian in the seat behind her carried on travelling. Broke her neck. Stupid way to die.

The dog had hopped on to the back seat as if this were its accustomed place but Alpha Dog, Jackson, said, ‘No,’ sternly. The dog was unsure but eager to please, studying Jackson’s face for a clue. ‘There,’ Jackson said, pointing at the front seat passenger footwell, and the dog jumped in and settled down. ‘OK,’ he said when he was finally satisfied that the dog wasn’t going to be hurled through the car like a missile. ‘Let’s go and find us some women.’ He put Kendel Carson’s ‘Cowboy Boots’ on the car stereo, a song that wasn’t as redneck as the title suggested.

He started the engine and adjusted the rear-view mirror. Catching sight of himself in it he was surprised anew by his military buzz-cut.

Linda Pallister lived in a traditional semi near Roundhay Park. The curtains were drawn even though it was the afternoon. It had the air of a house in mourning. Jackson rang the bell and knocked hard but there was no answer. He tried the back door with the same result. The mysteriously absent Linda Pallister remained just that, mysteriously absent.

Jackson knocked on the door of the neighbouring house. He struck lucky with the woman (‘Mrs Potter’) who answered the door. He knew the type – they were usually watching reruns of Midsomer Murders or Poirot behind the net curtains in the middle of the afternoon, pot of tea and a plate of chocolate digestives to hand. They made invaluable witnesses because they were always on watch.

‘She had a visitor last night,’ Mrs Potter duly reported. ‘A man,’ she added with relish.

‘Have you seen her today?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t spend all my time watching the neighbourhood goings-on, I don’t know why people would think that.’

‘Of course not, Mrs Potter,’ Jackson said, feigning empathy. It was never a tactic that worked well for him (especially with women) but that didn’t stop him trying. ‘Look,’ he took one of his cards out of his wallet and handed it to the woman, ‘if she comes back, could you give her this and ask her to give me a ring.’

‘Private detective?’ she said, reading the card. He needn’t have bothered with empathy, the idea of a private detective was intriguing enough for her to say, ‘Call me Janice.’ She dropped her voice as if Linda Pallister might be eavesdropping on them. ‘Can you tell me why you’re interested in Linda?’

‘I could but then I’d have to kill you,’ Jackson said. For a moment, the woman looked as if she believed him. Jackson smiled. Yep, willing to give a woman a cheap thrill at the drop of a hat these days.

There was more life inside Tracy Waterhouse’s house down the road in Headingley, although unfortunately not coming from Tracy herself. The front door was open and a man was packing tools away in a van. Tracy, he informed Jackson in an East European accent (your classic Polish builder, Jackson supposed), had gone out this morning and he didn’t know when she would be back. ‘But I hope she will be,’ he said and laughed. ‘She owes me money.’

Despite Jackson’s claim to be Tracy’s long-lost cousin the workman wouldn’t give him Tracy’s mobile number. ‘She’s a very private person,’ he said.

Instead of collecting Cistercian abbeys, now it seemed Jackson was collecting women who were missing in action.

He sat in his car in the car park and dialled Tracy’s mobile. It went to voicemail and he left a message. Barry’s car smelled of freesias, Amy’s favourite flower. Why hadn’t she had them in her wedding bouquet instead of those stupid orange daisy things? There was no flower that meant anything to her now. All Ivan’s fault. Blame him for everything. He was coming out on Saturday, a pal of Barry’s in the prison service had given him the date and time. Barry would be there to greet him.

He was taking the freesias to Sam’s small grave. He went more often than he ever told Barbara. They visited the grave separately. Barbara left things that turned his stomach – teddy bears and toy trucks. He always left freesias.

Barry raked through his pocket for the card that the Jackson bloke had given him but couldn’t find it anywhere. He phoned Tracy’s number in the Merrion Centre and a prize pillock answered and said she was off sick. He phoned her home number and there was just a generic answer-machine message. Finally he phoned her mobile and left a message. Phoned again and left a second message. Remembered something else, left a third message.

Something was up, but what exactly? Tracy didn’t have any cousins. Didn’t have any family at all, she was the only child of only children. She had nobody in Salford, that was for sure. He had to warn her if someone dodgy was after her. Linda Pallister had mentioned a private detective named ‘Jackson’ snooping around and now here was this clot turning up at Millgarth looking for Tracy. Does the name Carol Braithwaite ring any bells? he said. One bloody great bell tolling for the dead, waking the living. Ring out the bells, bring out the dead.

Before Amy’s accident he used to feel sorry for Tracy, one of those women who’d sacrificed motherhood to the job. They reached the menopause and realized that they hadn’t had kids, that their DNA was going to die with them and nobody was ever going to love them the way a kid would. Sad, really. But after Amy’s accident Barry envied Tracy. She didn’t have to feel unbearable pain every living second of every living day.

He started the engine and drove to the cemetery, breathing in the scent of freesias all the way.

‘Are we going home?’ Courtney asked when Tracy strapped her back in the car seat outside Toys ‘R’ Us. The boot was full of stuff, most of it plastic. All those tiny ancient marine life forms falling to the ocean floor to come back to life one day as a Disney Fairies Tea Set.

At Courtney’s request Tracy had also bought a dressing-up costume, a pink fairy outfit, complete with wings, wand and tiara. Courtney had insisted on getting changed into it in the car and she was now sitting stiffly in the back of the car in a pose that reminded Tracy of the Queen at her coronation.

‘Are we going home?’Tracy repeated thoughtfully as if it wasn’t so much a question as a philosophical conundrum. What did Courtney mean by ‘home’? Tracy wondered. Where was it? Kelly’s undoubtedly squalid pad, or somewhere else?

There was stuff you did with kids and stuff you didn’t. For all of her working life Tracy had witnessed the stuff you weren’t supposed to do with them. Building sandcastles on a beach, feeding bread to ducks, eating a picnic sitting on a plaid blanket in the park – these were things you did with kids. Stealing them was one of the things you didn’t do. Bottom line. She had taken a child that wasn’t hers.