Kate Atkinson - Started Early, Took My Dog

Real murder was disgusting. And smelly and messy and usually heartbreaking, invariably meaningless, occasionally tedious, but not this neat sanitized narrative. And the victims were often prostitutes, dispensable as tissues, both in reality and in fiction.

‘Art, my arse,’ Jackson muttered to the dog.

He waited for Vince Collier’s mother’s name to come up on the credits. Marjorie Collier, played by Matilda Squires. ‘See, I was right,’ he said to the dog. Ten-take Tilly . The dog sneezed suddenly, three times in a row, little chew-chew-chew sounds that Jackson found oddly (and inexplicably) touching.

He turned the television off and went back to his old friend Google, typing the name ‘Marilyn Nettles’ into the phone. All he ever did was search for women. He was about to give up when he found something on a site ‘dedicated to Yorkshire writers’. Marilyn Nettles writes under the pen name of Stephanie Dawson. Nettles is a former crime reporter with the Yorkshire Post a nd lives in the historic town of Whitby . Jackson celebrated with a cup of tea from the hospitality tray. Since this morning everything had been replenished by the chambermaid and he broke open another packet of biscuits and rationed them out between himself and the dog.

‘We’re in luck,’ he said to the dog, tossing it a custard cream. ‘Marilyn Nettles, here I come.’

He was just thinking about taking the dog out for his last walk of the day and then turning in early when there was a knock at the door. The dog’s ears went on to high alert. ‘Room service,’ a voice said loudly from the other side of the door.

‘I haven’t ordered anything on room service,’ Jackson said to the dog. He might perhaps have recalled several scenes in films he had watched over the years where a waiter pushes a trolley, cloaked in white linen, into the room, a trolley which turns out to be hiding in its innards anything from a machine-gun to a voluptuous blonde. But Jackson didn’t recall any of this, so he opened the door.

‘Jesus,’ he said when he saw what was on the trolley.

‘For me? You shouldn’t have.’

The trolley was laden with a silver ice-bucket containing a bottle of Bollinger that was sweating attractively with cold. It all seemed very upmarket for a Best Western. The trolley was in the room before Jackson had the chance to point out the unlikelihood of it being for him. Perhaps a woman was trying to woo him. Not any of the women he’d encountered recently, that was for sure. The waiter – thinning grey hair, crumpled grey skin – looked more like an old fashioned, mild-mannered serial killer than your usual room-service staff. He spotted the dog on the bed and began to make a tremendous fuss of it. ‘Had one of these myself when I was a lad,’ he grinned at Jackson. ‘Border terrier. Brilliant little dogs. Cheeky little chappies.’

The guy was scratching and tickling the dog to within an inch of its life. The dog looked surprised. It seemed to have a wide range of facial expressions. Its repertoire was probably greater than Jackson’s own. He waited to see if the waiter would point out that dogs weren’t allowed in the hotel but he didn’t, eventually tearing himself away from the dog, saying, ‘Would you like me to open this for you, Mr King?’

‘Ah,’ Jackson said. ‘I’m not Mr King, think you’ve got the wrong room. Nearly got away with that,’ he said and laughed. Ha, ha.

‘I wouldn’t have said anything,’ the waiter said. He grinned and tapped the side of his nose, a gesture that Jackson didn’t think he had ever seen outside of an Ealing comedy. ‘What you don’t know can’t hurt you.’

‘I would be inclined to say the opposite was true,’ Jackson said.

‘What you don’t know can hurt you.’ They both laughed. Hardly enough space in the room for so much affability. LOL.

‘Get you anything else, squire?’ the waiter asked, backing the trolley out of the room.

‘No. Thank you,’ Jackson said. When he had gone Jackson looked at the dog. The dog looked at Jackson. Jackson sighed and sat on the bed next to it. The dog wagged its tail but Jackson said, ‘Keep still, there’s a good boy,’ and ran his finger round the inside of the dog’s collar until he found the tracking device. He showed it to the dog. ‘Amateurs,’ he explained.

One of the things that you definitely didn’t do with kids was to drive with them in the back of a car through red-light districts at night, looking for a prostitute. In the badlands, near the junction of Water Lane and Bridge Road, an unmarked squad car from vice prowling for kerb-crawlers cruised past them in the opposite direction. Did they recognize her? Tracy drove sedately on, wondering if they had noticed the kid in the back.

Kelly Cross wanted more money. No surprise there then. The puzzle was how she had got hold of Tracy’s mobile number. ( Listen, you fat fucking cow, you had no right to take that kiddy. If you want to keep her you’re going to have to fork out a lot more .) Well, there you go, Tracy thought, wasn’t she paying the price of having bought the kid at a discount, as in her heart she’d always known she would have to? And how long would this kind of extortion go on for? Until Courtney was grown up and had kids of her own? Would Kelly last that long? She didn’t really belong to a demographic that boasted of longevity. It would be much better if Kelly Cross died – a bad batch of heroin, a psycho punter – who would miss her, after all? That kiddy , Kelly Cross said. Not my kiddy . Although mothers like Kelly were pretty uninterested in their kids. Weren’t they?

All the lovely places. Bridge End, Sweet Street West, Bath Road. A wasteland. Literally. No one to hear you scream. A couple of prostitutes on the swing shift, huddled up against a wall. Offhand, smoking fags like connoisseurs. One was raddled by life, the other one looked underage, shivering, glassy skin, coming down off something. Pretty Woman it ain’t, Tracy thought. Tracy wondered if they were mother and daughter. They were on the job, she wasn’t any more, she reminded herself.

As Tracy brought the car to a halt her phone rang. Barry. Oh, for God’s sake. The only way to stop him was to speak to him.

‘Where are you?’ he asked when she answered, sounding unnecessarily peeved, like a husband.

‘Bath Road,’ she said, watching as the younger of the two women began tottering towards her car. Thigh-high boots with hooker heels, short denim cut-offs, little strappy vest, nasty jacket.

‘What are you doing there?’ Barry puzzled.

‘Looking for someone. What do you want?’

‘Did you get my messages about this Jackson bloke?’

‘Yes, I’ve got no idea who he is,’ Tracy said.

‘Want me to do something about it?’ Barry asked. The echo of Harry Reynolds’s words to her earlier. She rolled down the car window and the young prostitute, more child than woman, looked confused at the sight of her. ‘You looking for business?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘Yeah,’ Tracy said. She produced a twenty-pound note like a lure and said, ‘Different kind of business.’

‘Tracy?’ Barry said. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I didn’t say but this Jackson bloke, whoever he is, asked about Carol Braithwaite.’

‘Carol Braithwaite? Look, I’ve got to go, Barry. I’ll phone you later.’ She snapped the phone shut and shouted, ‘Hang on,’ to the girl who had taken the money and was about to scarper. She returned reluctantly to the car and was joined by the older woman who, catching sight of Tracy, said, ‘Trace, ’ow yer doing?’