Started Early, Took My Dog (42 page)

If they were to stay here for the full week they would be rattling around like two peas in an enormous pod. As it was, they were camping out for one night in the living room. Tracy didn’t want to get stuck up in the bedrooms, didn’t want to be batting blokes down staircases with her Maglite. Ground floor, quick escape out the back. The Saab was tucked away safely out of sight behind the house. No one would be looking for it here.

When they first arrived, earlier this afternoon, they had walked down a hill from the house to the man-made lake. There was a café overlooking the water and they sat outside and ate ice creams. They saved the ends of the cornets and fed them to a greedy goose. Tracy had had a Ladybird book called
The Greedy Goose
when she was a kid herself. Anyone looking at them would think that they were normal people on a day out. Mother and daughter. Imogen and Lucy.

When they finished their ice creams they walked through the water gardens, all the way to Fountains Abbey. Eighteenth-century landscaping, cascades and lakes and follies, nothing wrong with improving on nature in Tracy’s opinion. Gangs of tadpoles congregated at the edges of ponds, here and there the flicker of a little fish. Tracy thought about Harry Reynolds’s koi. Big expensive fish. Tracy couldn’t imagine buying a fish if you weren’t going to eat it.

Kid was a good walker, one foot in front of the other kind of walker. Utilitarian. When they got to Fountains itself there was some kind of medieval fair taking place. Or ‘fayre’ probably. Re-enactors in costume – cooking over an open fire, showing people how to weave with flax, shoot an arrow into a target. A whole hog roasting.

They left before the dancing started. ‘Always know when to make an exit,’ Tracy said.

They ate a makeshift supper of beans and cheese on toast and then they went walkabout again, wandering around in the balmy evening air. Kind of place made you want to use words like ‘balmy’. Twilight, the witching hour. May, the magic month. All the visitors had gone home for the day and they had the whole place to themselves, just Tracy and the kid, the deer and the trees. None of the usual bestial sounds of the country, the lowing and bleating and crowing that ultimately signified the abattoir and slaughter. Here it was just birdsong, grass growing and being eaten, trees inching towards the clouds.

There were hundreds of deer in the park. Lots of baby deer. ‘Bambis,’ Courtney said. Alive, thank God, all of them. Tracy wondered if they could tell that she had recently slaughtered one of their own. She was seriously considering becoming a vegetarian.

These deer were almost tame. If you got too close they just raised their noses, gave a little twitch of the tail, moved off a few yards and went back to hoovering up the grass. Kid looked astonished, other than a rabid dog she’d probably never seen an animal close up. Tracy would have to add farms and zoos to the list of things that she needed to be introduced to.

And then, miraculously, as the day finally headed towards the dusk, a white stag, a young one, appeared out of the twilight, out of some medieval past. Not a re-enactor but the real thing. A white hart. It stood stock still and stared at Tracy. You would never get a man who looked as handsome. It knew it owned the place, it was her superior in every way. A prince among men.

Bloody hell, she thought, this was special. It had to be a good sign. Didn’t it?

The place was full of ancient trees, oaks that must have been alive in Shakespeare’s time. Three hundred years growing, three hundred years living, three hundred years dying. That’s what it said in another book from the cottage bookshelf. She was reading her way through the night. Coal on the fire, Courtney asleep, wrapped in a blanket on one of the enormous sofas. Tracy had her feet up on the other one. She was keeping a vigil, Maglite to hand, learning all about oak forests, deer parks, medieval abbeys. It was one way to get an education – stay awake all night in case any mad bastards happened to stop by to say hello.

First the Avensis driver, then the leather-jackets, Tracy had never had so many men after her in her life. Shame their intentions were all so dishonourable. Not to mention the ‘private detective’ looking for her to ask about Carol Braithwaite. Who the hell were they all? Had they been sent to retrieve the kid or exact vengeance on Tracy for taking her? Both, probably. Was one of them responsible for Kelly Cross’s death? Probably. Could Courtney be so valuable that someone would go to so much effort?

There was a phone in the house and she decided to give Barry a call, see if he knew anything about who killed Kelly Cross, see if he knew anything about anything. He sounded even more morose than usual. He must have been drinking.

‘Barry? You know this private detective that’s been asking questions? Is he driving a grey Avensis?’

‘Dunno.’

‘And he was asking about Carol Braithwaite?’

‘Asking all sorts of questions about all sorts of people apparently. You, Linda, the Winfields. He’s like some bloody virus that’s got in the system.’

‘Back up,’Tracy said. ‘The Winfields? The bloke who was a doctor, married to that model?’

‘They adopted a kiddy not long after Carol Braithwaite’s murder, then they emigrated sharpish to New Zealand.’

‘Oh my God,’ Tracy murmured. That was why Michael disappeared, the Winfields took him. She remembered Ian Winfield from her visit to the hospital, how protective he’d been of Michael.

‘I’ve said too much,’ Barry said.

‘You haven’t said enough.’

‘It’s all going to come out eventually.’

‘What’s going to come out, Barry? What’s going on?’

Barry sighed heavily. The sigh was followed by a long silence.

‘Still there, Barry?’

‘Haven’t gone anywhere. Tracy? I’ve seen you on tape with Kelly Cross, at the Merrion Centre.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah, shit. Exactly. And they found your fingerprint in Kelly’s house. What’s going on?’

‘I didn’t kill her.’

‘I never thought you did,’ Barry said.

‘I bought the kid off her,’ Tracy said.

‘Shit.’

Dark outside. The darkest dark she’d ever known. If she went outside and walked down the short path to the gate, which she did every hour or so to make a perimeter check, Tracy could sense the vastness of the black sky, a scattering of stars, disappearing as the mist fell again. Tracy imagined that out there somewhere in the darkness she could hear the deer breathing.

1975: July
Tracy had finally managed to dispense with the awkward burden of her virginity. She’d started to take driving lessons, fed up with waiting to get on the police driving course. Her instructor was a one-man business, Dennis, separated from his wife, in his forties.

After the first lesson he suggested to Tracy that they go for a drink and he took her to a place off the Harrogate Road and bought her a brandy and Babycham without asking her what she would like. It was ‘a lady’s tipple’ apparently. Wondered what Arkwright would say if she told him that, next time he plonked a pint glass of Theakston’s in front of her. Same thing after the next lesson (‘You’ve got a good sense of where you are on the road, Tracy’). After the third lesson (‘You’ve got to watch that speedometer, Tracy’), they drove up beyond Heptonstall and they did it in the back of his car on a forestry trail somewhere. He wasn’t what you’d call a catch, but then Tracy wasn’t looking to keep him.

‘Where’ve you been?’ her mother said when Tracy came back from her tryst. Her antennae were twitching, they could have used Dorothy Waterhouse in the war. Wouldn’t have needed to bother with Bletchley Park. ‘You look different,’ she said accusingly.

‘I am different,’ Tracy said boldly. ‘I’m a woman.’

She was grateful to Dennis for the matter-of-fact nature of the act but he was more grateful to her for being twenty and ‘well upholstered’ so it was a reasonably well-balanced exchange. She cancelled her next lesson, told him she was emigrating. Signed up with BSM and passed her test after eight lessons. It seemed an unfriendly thing to do but it was no more than he expected. He phoned the house once afterwards and, Sod’s Law, her mother answered. ‘Someone by the name of Dennis called for you,’ she reported when Tracy came in from work. ‘He wanted to know where your disembarkation port was. I told him not to be filthy.’

Things continued to look up for Tracy. Not long after she passed her driving test she signed the rental lease on a place of her own.
She’s Leaving Home
. She had left behind the single bed in her parents’ house where, apart from their annual evacuation to Bridlington, she had slept every night since coming home from the private maternity hospital that her parents thought would give their baby (hopefully a boy) a better start in life than an NHS ward. The maternity hospital was so underheated that Dorothy Waterhouse came home with chilblains and the infant Tracy with croup. Still, they had mixed with a better class of mother and baby and that was the important thing.

Tracy’s new home was a boxy little bedsit with an Ascot water heater and filthy carpets. A two-bar electric heater that smelled dangerous and a hot-water bottle to embrace at night as she huddled in her sofa-bed. The bedsit was unfurnished and Tracy had bought everything second-hand, keeping stuff in her father’s shed until she’d accumulated enough goods and chattels for the bachelorette life. When she got the key Arkwright and Barry helped her move it all in. When they finished they had tea and biscuits, sitting on the sofabed. ‘You won’t be here long, love,’ Arkwright said. ‘Some bloke’ll come along soon and snap you up.’ He patted the sofa-bed as if this would be the location of a future marriage proposal.

Barry smirked and choked on his Blue Riband.

‘Something, lad?’ Arkwright said.

‘Nothing,’ Barry said.

Having a place of her own raised many questions for Tracy that she never really grappled with successfully. For example, should she buy four dinner plates or two? There was a stall on the market that sold Wedgwood seconds. It was a stupid question, she only needed one plate, she dined alone every night. Findus Crispy Frozen Pancakes, Vesta curries, Smash potato. The nearest she got to cooking was frying up a batch of potato scallops.

She had imagined a future of domesticity, of inviting people from work round for ‘a bite to eat’ and turning out a fish pie or a plate of spaghetti, bottle of cheap plonk and a block of Wall’s Cornish ice cream afterwards and everyone saying,
Tracy’s OK, you know
. Never happened, of course. It wasn’t that kind of life. Not those kind of people.

Coming out of the station, not long after the move, Tracy nearly jumped out of her skin when Marilyn Nettles stepped out of nowhere in front of her. There was definitely something of the night about the woman.

‘Can we have a word?’ she said. If she was looking for a story she’d come to the wrong person. ‘Maybe we can grab a coffee somewhere? I’m not looking for information,’ she added. ‘The opposite, in fact.
I
wanted to tell
you
something.’

They drank sickly, milky coffees in a steamy café. It was drizzling outside, miserable summer rain. Not for the first time and certainly not for the last, Tracy wondered what it would be like to live somewhere different. Marilyn Nettles took a pack of cigarettes from her handbag and said to Tracy, ‘Do you want a cancer stick?’

‘No thanks. No – wait, go on then.

‘So?’ Tracy said, drawing on the fag. She might lose some weight if she took up smoking. She stirred the foam on her coffee round and round. ‘What is it you want to tell me?’

‘The boy,’ Marilyn Nettles said.

Tracy stopped stirring. ‘What boy?’

‘The Braithwaite boy. Michael. Do you know where he is?’

‘He’s in foster care. Unless you know something different.’

‘I do. He was sent to an orphanage. Nuns.’ Marilyn Nettles shivered. ‘I hate nuns.’

‘An orphanage?’Tracy said. She had imagined Michael Braithwaite with experienced foster parents, the solid church-going type who’d seen hundreds of distressed kids pass through their hands, people who knew how to heal and comfort. But an orphanage? The very word sounded melancholic. Abandoned.

‘His name has been changed. There’s a restraining order in place,’ Marilyn Nettles said. ‘All kind of legalese. To protect him, supposedly. I’ve been warned off. From on high.’

Tracy heard Linda Pallister’s voice in her head,
No visitors. It’s a directive from above
.

‘He witnessed a murder,’ Marilyn Nettles said, dropping her voice to a whisper. ‘And then he disappears. Pouf ! Just like that. I would call that suspicious. I would say that perhaps someone
made
him disappear.’

Barry had told Tracy that Len Lomax had told him ‘in confidence’ that ‘someone’, someone who claimed to be Michael’s father, had confessed to the murder and had promptly died in custody. It wasn’t something she could tell Marilyn Nettles, she’d be all over it like a rash and before she knew it Tracy would be reading about it in the papers. ‘Why are you telling me this?’ she asked.

Marilyn Nettles shook her head as if trying to dislodge an insect from her hair. ‘I’ve said too much already.’ She glanced nervously round the café. ‘I just wanted to tell someone. It’s not that I’m big on little kids but you have to feel sorry for that one. What chance does he have?’