Kate Atkinson - Started Early, Took My Dog

‘Results aren’t back yet.’

He went to his office, sat at his desk, turned his computer on and began to write his last testament.

Just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s when there was a knock on the door. It opened before he had time to say, ‘Come in.’

‘You,’ Barry said. ‘I’d like to know what your game is. What do you want exactly?’

‘The truth?’ Jackson Brodie said.

‘Superintendent. Come in.’

Harry Reynolds held the door open, a tea towel in his hand, the picture of contented domesticity.

The greenhouse heat of his house hit you as you walked through the door. And the aroma of coffee, overlaid by the smell of apples and sugar. ‘Making an apple pie for Sunday lunch tomorrow,’ Harry Reynolds said. ‘What happened to your face?’ he asked Tracy.

‘Got into a fight with an airbag.’

Glancing down at Courtney, a tattered and torn fairy, he said, ‘Hello, poppet, you look a bit the worse for wear as well. Magic not working too well? Your “mummy” will have to buy you a new wand, won’t you, Mummy?’ he said, raising a sarcastic eyebrow at Tracy. Then in a different tone of voice he said to her, ‘You can’t travel looking the way you do, “hedge” and “backwards” come to mind. You and the ugly duckling need some decent clothes. You don’t want to attract attention.’ She could imagine, only too easily, what it would be like to get on the wrong side of Harry Reynolds. Frightening. Tracy was way beyond being frightened.

Ugly duckling , how dare he. Should have decked him, right there in his overstuffed, overheated living room. Stuck him in his expensive koi pond, let Harry Reynolds swim with the fishes. Instead she said, ‘Yeah, thanks for the advice, Harry. Unfortunately I had to leave my Louis Vuitton luggage behind and all my Gucci gowns were in it.’

‘Are you in trouble, Superintendent? More than before? If that’s humanly possible. I don’t want trouble at my door, make sure you keep it away from me.’

‘Is that a threat?’

‘Just friendly advice.’ He looked at the ugly sunburst clock on the wall and said, ‘Susan’ll be here soon with Brett and Ashley. They’re popping in on their way to Alton Towers.’ Stated as a fact, meant as a warning. No offer of scones this time. Strictly business. ‘And I’ve got a funeral to go to,’ he added.

He took a large, stout manila envelope from his sixties G Plan sideboard. ‘Everything’s here. New passports, birth certificates. An address in Ilkley – no point in pretending you’re not from Yorkshire, open your mouth and you’ll betray yourself – utility bills to that address, you’ll be able to set up a new bank account wherever it is you’re going. France is it? You should go somewhere that doesn’t extradite. New national insurance number as well, and as a little extra, you’ve got a profile on Facebook and you’ll be pleased to hear that you have seventeen friends already. Welcome to the brave new world, Imogen Brown.’

Tracy handed over an envelope bursting with notes. ‘Expensive business,’ she said. Second envelope this week, this one containing a lot more money than the first. She had definitely joined the cash economy.

‘You’re not in a position to bargain, Superintendent.’

‘Just saying.’

‘Did you instruct your solicitor to get a move on with the sale of your house?’

‘Yes.’

He sighed the sigh of a put-upon entrepreneur. ‘It takes bloody weeks to buy or sell a house, all those searches and surveys. Ridiculous amount of bureaucracy. A man’s money and his word should be enough. And don’t get me started on the money laundering regulations. Gone are the good old days when you could just go out and buy a nice little piece of real estate with the cash in your pocket.’

‘Yeah, those good old days,’ Tracy said. ‘Everybody misses them. Especially the criminals.’

‘You’re in no position to throw stones, Superintendent. Anyway, don’t worry, I can get it pushed through. Expedited is the word, I believe. Nice word. Stay in touch with your solicitor. Solicitor sells the house to me, I’ll take my finder’s fee, as it were, and put the rest into the new bank account you’re going to set up.’

‘I threw my phone away.’

‘Wise move. They can find you anywhere these days if you’ve got a phone. Hang on,’ he said and disappeared out of the room. Tracy could hear him moving about upstairs. Courtney had her face glued to the patio doors, watching the fish pond. Tracy caught sight of a big blue-and-white-marbled fish gliding by like a cruising submarine.

Harry Reynolds came back in the room with a carrier bag of clothes. ‘Some stuff in here of Ashley’s and my wife’s. She was a big woman, they should fit. I should have cleared her things out before now, given them to charity or whatever. Susan’s always on to me. Doesn’t like seeing her mum’s things around the house when she comes.’ He drooped, suddenly an old man without a wife. He noticed Courtney’s grubby face-print on the glass of the patio doors and absent-mindedly took out a handkerchief and polished the imprint away.

‘Here,’ he said, putting his hand into the bag of clothes and coming out with a couple of mobile phones that he handed over to Tracy, saying, ‘Throw them away when you’ve used them once. They’re pre-paid.’

‘Of course they are,’ Tracy said. An old age pensioner with a wardrobe full of burner phones, what was there to be surprised at in that?

The doorbell rang and Harry Reynolds hurried off to answer it.

‘That’ll be Brett and Ashley then,’Tracy said, raising an eyebrow at Courtney. She raised an eyebrow back, an enigmatic response.

Harry Reynolds’s grandchildren rushed into the house and were brought up short by the sight of Courtney, a scruffy cuckoo usurping their place in the nest. They were dressed in mufti, Brett in a Leeds United football strip, Ashley in jeans and a pink velour High School Musical hoodie. Courtney stared open-mouthed at this unattainable vision of pre-pubescent chic.

Their mother blustered into the room behind them and said, ‘What’s all this then?’

‘Nothing, Susan,’ Harry Reynolds said, placatory, slightly cowed. ‘An old friend, passing by. Dropped in.’

Tracy wondered if Harry Reynolds’s daughter knew what kind of ‘old friends’ her father used to have, or did she think all this – the roast beef, the school fees, the koi – was the just rewards for clean living and hard work? ‘Don’t worry, we’re just going,’ Tracy said.

‘I’ll escort you to the door, shall I?’ Harry said, sounding like a policeman.

The Avensis was parked outside. Brian Jackson was leaning against the bonnet, smoking. He raised a cigarette in mute greeting when he saw them.

‘Who’s this?’ Harry Reynolds muttered to Tracy when he saw him.

‘Nobody,’ Tracy said.

‘Well, have a nice life, Superintendent,’ Harry Reynolds said.

‘Try my best,’ Tracy said.

1975: 21 March

A toddler! Darling little thing, in her pyjamas, fast asleep, wrapped in a dirty old blanket. Had there been an accident of some kind? Ray Strickland was white, he looked as if he’d just witnessed something dreadful.

‘Come in, it’s freezing out there,’ Ian said. He led Ray into the living room, sat him down, poured him a huge tumbler of whisky. Ray’s hand was shaking so much that he couldn’t get it to his lips.

‘What happened, Strickland?’ Ian asked. He was kneeling beside him, checking the girl to see if she was injured in some way. Kitty felt a rush of pride in her husband’s expertise. ‘Who is she, Ray?’ Ian asked but Ray just shook his head.