Kate Atkinson - Started Early, Took My Dog

‘Won’t be long,’ he said to the dog, tying it to a railing in Marilyn Nettles’s yard.

There was no sign of life in her cottage. He was surprised, she hardly seemed the type to be an early riser. The house had the same abandoned feeling as Linda Pallister’s. Where on earth were all these women disappearing to? Was there a black hole somewhere that was sucking in middle-aged women – Tracy Waterhouse, Linda Pallister and now Marilyn Nettles. And all somehow connected to Hope McMaster.

Or was it some kind of conspiracy – Brian Jackson, Tracy Waterhouse, Marilyn Nettles, Linda Pallister – the whole lot of them involved in it. Jackson didn’t know what ‘it’ was, but that was the point, wasn’t it? That was what solving something was about, it was hunting the ‘it’ down, pinning its arms above its head and making it spill the beans. It was like being in a game, a game where you didn’t know the rules or the identity of the other players and where you were unsure of the goal. Was he a pawn or a player? Was he becoming paranoid? ( Becoming? he heard Julia say.)

He got down on his hands and knees and peered through the cat flap. Dead air. ‘You’ll never fit through there,’ a voice said.

Marilyn Nettles shuffled into the yard, laden with Somerfield plastic bags. Jackson heard the clink of glass on glass. Not a black hole then, nor a woman in jeopardy, just a raddled old alcoholic out doing her daily shop.

‘What is it now?’ she asked.

‘How many children did Carol Braithwaite have?’

They left Whitby. On a bus.

Jackson sat on the top deck and admired the scenery. The dog lay at his feet. They were going back to Leeds. The place it all started. The place it would all end, if Jackson had anything to do with it. In Scarborough they exchanged the bus for a train. Jackson didn’t like trains. He still had flashbacks to the crash, unpleasant sensory hallucinations – the smell of burning oil and electrical fires, the screech of metal on metal. He hadn’t been back on a train since.

A woman had lost control of her car, the car had gone over the bridge, fallen on the track, derailed the train. Fifteen people dead. The woman had a brain tumour that had caused a seizure. One small cluster of rogue cells personal to the owner, that was all it took to kill and maim en masse . For want of a nail.

Jackson really didn’t like trains.

He had eaten breakfast at home. Barry hadn’t done that for a while, usually downed a quick cup of coffee and left for Millgarth. Barbara used to fret when he did that, you need a breakfast inside you, everyone knows it’s the most important meal , yackety-yak. Not any more.

‘I fancy bacon and eggs,’ he said.

When she set it down in front of him he said, ‘Aren’t you going to have any?’ and she said, ‘Not hungry,’ but she sat opposite him and had her usual breakfast of Valium and tea. She was dressed in a smart two-piece, her hair teased and backcombed.

‘Thanks, love,’ he said when he’d wiped the plate clean with a piece of bread. He stood up and drained his coffee down and then said, ‘Well, I’ll be off then.’

‘He gets out today,’ she said in an emotionless voice.

‘I know,’ he said. He attempted to kiss Barbara goodbye, something else he hadn’t done for a long time, but she successfully feinted the move and instead he ended up patting her on the shoulder. ‘Bye then,’ he said.

It was two years since Barbara had invited Amy and Ivan to dinner, spent all day making complicated Delia recipes and then Barry had spent all evening telling Ivan what a waster he was. He was losing his business, going to be declared a bankrupt, the man who had promised to protect and support his daughter.

‘Barry? How’s it going?’ he said when Barry opened the front door to them. He hated the way Ivan called him ‘Barry’, as if they were mates down the pub, as if they were equals. ‘You can’t expect him to call you Mr Crawford,’ Barbara said. ‘He’s your son-in-law, for heaven’s sake.’ In fact, Barry thought, he would have preferred it if Ivan called him Superintendent.

‘A little aperitif?’ Barbara said when she’d taken their coats and they’d parked Sam in the cot upstairs. Barbara had bought duplicates of everything – cot, car seat, high chair, buggy – for their own house, imagining a lifetime of babysitting.

‘Lovely, Barbara,’ Ivan said, rubbing his hands, ‘I’ll have a white wine.’ Barry knew he made him nervous but he didn’t care. Before Barbara had even got as far as taking the Chardonnay out of the fridge Barry had started muttering sarcastic comments under his breath. ‘Dad. Don’t,’ Amy said, touching his arm.

Ivan looked apprehensively at Amy over Delia’s chocolate ricotta cheesecake. He had the look of a man about to jump off a cliff. Cleared his throat, said, ‘We were wondering, Barry – Amy and I – about a loan, ten thousand pounds, to help get us back on our feet?’

Barry wanted to belt him one right there at the table. ‘I’ve worked hard all my life,’ he said, all patriarchal bluster, ‘and you want me to hand over my money to you because you’re a useless tosser. Why not just cut out the middle man and piss it straight down the drain?’

Amy jumping up from the table, ‘I’m not staying to hear my husband insulted, Dad,’ running up the stairs to get Sam out of his cot.

Before Barry knew it she was outside, strapping his grandson into his car seat. ‘Honestly, Dad, sometimes you are such a shit.’

Barbara standing on the doorstep, face set in concrete, staring after the car. ‘He’s over the limit,’ she said. ‘He shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a car. This is all your fault, Barry. As usual.’

He would have given his daughter anything and he had baulked at a measly ten-thousand-quid loan. He could have said yes, they could have opened a bottle of something fizzy to celebrate and eaten the chocolate ricotta cheesecake. Barbara could have said, ‘Oh, you can’t drive like that, the beds are all made up, you’d better stay over,’ and Barry could have gone upstairs and kissed his sleeping grandson goodnight. Didn’t happen like that, did it?

When he walked into Millgarth he nearly fell over Chloe Pallister, as agitated as a disturbed anthill. ‘My mum’s gone missing,’ she said.

‘Missing?’ Barry said.

‘Since Wednesday night. I went round to her house, no sign of her, she hasn’t been into work, no one’s seen her.’

Barry remembered how Amy had tossed her bouquet, aimed it directly at her best friend, but Chloe managed to fall over her own orange-satin feet and a more competitive girl caught the flowers.

‘Did you notice if anything was missing?’ he asked.

‘Her passport.’

‘Her passport,’ he said. ‘Well, if her passport’s missing she’s most likely run away.’

‘Run away? My mother?’

It did sound unlikely, Linda wasn’t the kind to run away, still he persisted with this easy explanation. ‘Given up this crap life and gone to live on a beach in Greece,’ he said. ‘At this moment she’s probably sitting in a taverna somewhere, making eyes at a waiter, hoping for a bit of Shirley Valentine.’

‘Not my mum,’ Chloe said stoutly.

‘Well, we can all surprise ourselves sometimes, pet,’ he said. His head felt woolly. Didn’t have the energy for this. Had things to do. Take no prisoners, leave no bodies. Led Chloe Pallister into an interview room and said someone would come and take a statement. Left her there and forgot to tell anyone.

Gemma Holroyd put her head round the door to his office and said, ‘Fyi, boss, the lab matched the DNA at Kelly Cross’s murder scene to what they found on the Mabgate whore.’ Fyi , Barry thought, how he hated words like that. Not even a word. ‘What about this third one?’ he asked. ‘The Cottage Road Cinema one.’