Kate Atkinson - Started Early, Took My Dog

‘Did you know her?’ Tracy asked. Lomax looked at her as if she’d just grown another head. ‘Of course I didn’t fucking know her,’ he said.

Tracy glanced at Ray Strickland. He looked shaky and green as if he was about to throw up again. He hadn’t even gone through to look at the body yet. When they first entered the flat Tracy heard them all talking in the hallway, heard Lomax say to Linda Pallister, ‘That’s the bedroom on the left, where the body is.’

‘How did he know that?’ she asked Arkwright in the pub when they came off shift.

‘Psychic,’ Arkwright said. ‘He does table-knocking and spirit readings in the Horse and Trumpet’s snug on Thursday evenings.’ Arkwright had a way of saying things so dead-pan that Tracy took him seriously for a second.

‘Think the next round’s yours, lass,’ he laughed.

Neither Lomax nor Strickland bothered with a statement from Tracy.

‘What could you have to say that he hasn’t said?’ Lomax said, jabbing a finger in Arkwright’s direction.

Barry, of all people, pitched up, said, ‘Sir?’ to Strickland.

‘Getting to be Ray’s bum-boy, isn’t he?’ Arkwright murmured to Tracy. Strickland said something inaudible to Barry and then Barry looked as sick as Strickland. They disappeared into the small, cold kitchen, where empty packets of cereal and anything else the kiddy had been able to find were strewn across the floor. It was a miracle that the kiddy hadn’t died of hypothermia, let alone starvation.

Lomax said, ‘Bugger off,’ to Arkwright, ‘and get knocking on a few doors. And take her with you,’ he said, nodding his head in Tracy’s direction. Arkwright retained an admirable poker face. ‘Let’s get going, lass,’ he said.

Carol Braithwaite, the neighbours said. Blankly. Nobody seemed to know her. ‘Only moved in at Christmas,’ one of them said. ‘Bit raucous, heard a few fights.’ Hear anything else? ‘Kid crying.’ ‘She brought men back,’ another one said. The classic ‘Kept herself to herself,’ from another one. Nobody knew her. Never would now.

Of course, everything was subjective. No true fixed point in the world. Tracy was beginning to understand that.

Tracy and Arkwright, knocking on door after door in Lovell Park. Thin walls, Tracy said, you would think someone would have heard something.

Carol Braithwaite. Three ‘O’ Levels and two convictions for soliciting.

‘A good-time girl,’ Arkwright said. A good-time girl . Police-speak. It didn’t help an investigation if you said the word ‘prostitute’. They got what they deserved, deserved what they got.

‘Doesn’t look like she had much of a good time to me,’Tracy said.

One of those three ‘O’ Levels had been in needlework, another in cookery, the third in typing. Information courtesy of flower-child Linda Pallister. Carol would have made a good wife but somehow that wasn’t the path she’d taken. At school Tracy had always been wary of the domestic science crowd – methodical girls with neat handwriting and neither flaws nor eccentricities. For some reason they were usually good at netball as well, as if the gene that enabled them to jump for the hoop contained the information necessary for turning out a cheese and onion flan or creaming a Victoria spongesandwich mix. Their career paths didn’t usually lead to prostitution. Of course, if you said ‘gene’ in the seventies people thought Levi’s or Wranglers. They weren’t the hot topic they were now. Tracy wondered if Carol Braithwaite had ever played netball.

Even at school Tracy had already suspected that she would make no one a good wife. Couldn’t sew a straight seam, couldn’t even cook a simple macaroni cheese or do hospital corners. She had a knock-out right jab though. Something that she’d discovered one hectic Saturday night of catfights and drunken brawls when a leery pair of young blokes nearly had her cornered on Boar Lane. Did her reputation as a copper a bit of good but hadn’t exactly enhanced her status as a woman. (‘Built like a brick shit-house, that Tracy Waterhouse.’)

When they eventually returned after knocking on doors everyone had gone and been replaced by Barry, a lone uniform, guarding the broken door of the flat.

‘I was told not to let anyone in,’ he said officiously. ‘Sorry.’

‘Fuck off, you big nit,’ Arkwright said, pushing past him. ‘I left my cigarettes in there.’ Tracy laughed.

‘Can you tell me what happened here?’

‘Eh?’ Arkwright said.

‘Marilyn Nettles, Yorkshire Post crime reporter.’ She flashed a card with her credentials on it. They were standing outside the entrance to the Lovell Park flats, in the cold, freezing their socks off, while Arkwright lit up. ‘Colder than a witch’s tit,’ Arkwright said. Tracy caught sight of Linda Pallister’s bike, leaning against a fence. She had travelled in the ambulance with the kiddy. It seemed unlikely that the bike would still be here when she returned for it. There was a kiddy seat on the back of it.

Tracy remembered Marilyn Nettles from somewhere but couldn’t place her until Arkwright said later, ‘She infiltrated Dick Hardwick’s leaving do.’

‘Infiltrated?’ Tracy said. ‘You mean she was in the same pub at the same time?’

‘As I said, infiltrated. She’s a nosy cow.’

‘Aren’t we all?’

Skinny, mid-thirties, dyed black hair left over from the previous decade, cut in a bob so sharp that it looked as if it would cut you if you got too close to her. She had a beaky nose that gave her a hungry look. She was the kind who would trample over the bodies of the fallen to get to the story.

‘’Fraid I can’t comment on what happened here,’ Arkwright said to her. ‘Ongoing investigation. I expect there’ll be a press conference, pet.’

Marilyn Nettles shrank from the word ‘pet’. Tracy could see her wanting to say, ‘Don’t use condescending sexist language with me, you great big ignorant police oaf,’ and having to bite down on it and say instead, ‘Neighbours are saying it was a woman called Carol Braithwaite?’

‘Couldn’t comment on that.’

‘I believe she was a known prostitute.’

‘Wouldn’t know about that either, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh come on, Constable, can’t you give me a little something?’

Marilyn Nettles did something funny with her mouth, followed up by something funny with her eyes. It took Tracy a second or two to realize that she was trying to flirt with Arkwright. She was deluded. It was like trying to flirt with a wardrobe.

‘Have you got something in your eye?’Tracy asked her innocently.

Marilyn Nettles ignored Tracy, strangely fixated on Arkwright. ‘Help a poor girl out,’ she said. She pinched her thumb and forefinger together. ‘Feed me just a little titbit? Give me something?’

With laboured slowness Arkwright delved into a pocket in his uniform and retrieved a ten-pence piece. It was over four years since Britain had gone decimal but Arkwright still referred to ‘the new money’.

‘Here, lass,’ he said to Marilyn Nettles, handing over the coin. ‘Go buy yourself a bag of chips. You need fattening up.’

She turned on her heel and stalked off in disgust towards a red Vauxhall Victor.

‘Wouldn’t like to have to get into bed with her,’ Arkwright said. ‘It would be like cuddling up to a skeleton.’ He looked at the rejected coin and spun it high in the air. He caught it on the way down and slapped it on the back of his hand.

‘Heads or tails?’ he said to Tracy.

‘You all right, lass?’ Arkwright said, draining his bitter and looking around as if he was expecting another one to materialize from nowhere.

‘Yeah,’ Tracy said.

‘Another one?’