Started Early, Took My Dog

by Kate Atkinson

  ‘Are we going home now?’ Courtney asked when they were back in the car. Kid was used to being moved around like a billiard ball. Kids had no power over where they went, who they went with.

  ‘Soon. First we’re going to see a man.’ In the rear-view mirror she caught the frown pinching Courtney’s face and added, ‘A nice man.’

  Nice-ish, anyway, if her memory served her. On the surface. He was also a conman, a thief and a fixer but Tracy didn’t mention that to the kid. He lived in an impressive house in Alwoodley, bought, no doubt, with the proceeds of a life in crime, and was commendably pokerfaced when he opened his front door to find Tracy and a small pink fairy standing in front of him.

  ‘Superintendent,’ he said genially, ‘and a friend. What a pleasant surprise.’

  ‘I’m retired,’ Tracy said.

  ‘Me too,’ Harry Reynolds murmured. ‘Do come in.’

  He was a dapper little bloke – cravat, crease in his beige twill trousers, the kind of smart slippers that could pass for shoes – and had picked up his bus pass quite some time ago, although Tracy doubted somehow that Harry Reynolds travelled on public transport, especially as there was a Bentley parked on his driveway.

  He led them into a knocked-through living room – high-quality patio doors and a koi carp pond almost directly outside, as if Harry Reynolds wanted to view the expensive fish without having to leave the airlock of his house.

  Inside, the walls were covered with framed school photographs of two children, a boy and a girl. Tracy recognized the uniform of a feepaying prep school with a name she never knew how to pronounce.

  ‘The grandkids,’ Harry Reynolds said proudly. ‘Brett’s ten, Ashley’s eight.’Tracy presumed that Brett was the boy and Ashley the girl but you could never be sure any more. The rest of the décor was hideous, big glass vases that might have been regarded as ‘art’ in the seventies, sentimental china ornaments of clowns with balloons or sad-faced children with dogs. A big brass sunburst clock adorned one wall and on another a football match was being played out on the biggest TV screen that Tracy had ever seen. Crime pays. There was a surprising smell of baking wafting through the house.

  ‘Don’t want to interrupt the game,’ Tracy said politely, although years in uniform policing dirty Leeds United home matches meant that she would have happily put a sledgehammer into the screen.

  ‘No, no,’ Harry Reynolds said. ‘It’s a shit game, excuse my French, pet,’ he added in Courtney’s direction. ‘Anyway, it’s on Sky Plus, not live, I can catch up later.’ He had the kind of Yorkshire accent that Tracy thought of as ‘aspirational’. Dorothy Waterhouse’s accent.

  Harry Reynolds switched the TV off and settled the pair of them on puffy sofas, as big as barges, that were upholstered in an outmoded mauve leather. It seemed an undignified end for a cow. He excused himself and went to fetch ‘refreshments’. The sun was shining hotly on the garden but the windows and doors were all closed, the whole house hermetically sealed against the outside world. Tracy felt her blouse sticking to her back. The waistband of her big pants was cutting her in half. She always swelled during the course of the day. How did that happen? she wondered.

  Courtney sat silently, staring out of the window. Maybe Kelly had drugged her. Nothing new there, think of the gallons of laudanum mothers used to ply their kids with to keep them quiet. These days more kids were being slipped tranquillizers and sleeping pills than people realized. If it had been up to Tracy she would have sterilized a lot of parents. You couldn’t say that, of course, made you sound like a Nazi. Didn’t take away from the truth of it though.

  Tracy’s phone rang. Für Elise. She raked it out of her bag, expecting it to be her silent caller. She frowned at the screen. ‘Barry’, it said. Fear washed through her, had he found out something about Courtney? She let it go to voicemail.

  Harry Reynolds came back into the room, carrying a tea-tray. Für Elise again. Barry again. Voicemail again.

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘Nuisance call,’ Tracy said dismissively.

  Für Elise yet again. For God’s sake, she thought, go away, Barry.

  ‘Want me to do something about it?’

  Tracy wondered what ‘doing something’ would be for someone like Harry Reynolds.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s probably one of those computer-generated calls. From India or Argentina or somewhere.’

  ‘Bloody blacks,’ Harry Reynolds said. ‘Taking over everywhere. It’s a different world these days.’ He set the tray down. Teapot, cups and saucers – nice china – orange juice and a plate of scones. Butter, a little dash of jam. He pushed the plate of scones towards Tracy. ‘Fresh batch from the oven, made them myself,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to keep yourself busy, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tracy said. ‘Busy, busy.’ She was going to pass on the scones but she couldn’t resist. She’d been motoring all day on nothing more than two Weetabix and half a stale doughnut. Oh yeah, and two Jaffa cakes. And a tuna roll from the picnic. A packet of salt and vinegar crisps. A handful of carrot sticks, although they hardly counted. It was surprising how it all added up. She joined Slimming World last year and had to keep a ‘food diary’. After a while she started making the diary up. Ryvita, cottage cheese, celery sticks, two apples, a banana, tuna salad at lunchtime, grilled chicken, green beans for dinner. She couldn’t own up to the crap she grazed on all day. Put on weight the first week, didn’t go back.

  ‘Made the raspberry jam as well,’ Harry Reynolds said. ‘There’s a pick-your-own place off the A65, just past Guiseley. Do you know it?’

  ‘No, don’t think I do.’ As if. Tracy had never picked anything in her life apart from scabs and daisies and the latter was more of an assumption than an actual memory. She nibbled on a scone. It was warm and buttery in her mouth and the jam was both sweet and tart at the same time. She ate the rest of it, trying not to look greedy.

  ‘Naughty but nice,’ Harry Reynolds laughed, biting into one of the scones.

  The scones made Tracy aware of a lot of things she might have missed out on in life. Like taking a turn off the A65 to a pick-yourown-fruit place. She’d been called out to a murder there once, just south of Otley. A prostitute who’d been taken for her last ride and dumped in a ditch. She’d heard rumours that Harry Reynolds had had his fingers in that particular pie, running girls and porn in the sixties, but he didn’t seem the type to Tracy. Naughty but nice. She thought of the madam in her house in Cookridge handing out sherry and shelled nuts. That was the seventies, of course. Nothing innocent. Norah, that was her name. Norah Kendall.

  ‘Did you know Norah Kendall?’ she asked Harry Reynolds.

  ‘Oh, Norah,’ he laughed. ‘She was some woman. Good business head,’ he added admiringly. ‘It used to be a different world, didn’t it, Superintendent? Mucky books round the back and men in macs flashing the occasional schoolgirl. Innocence.’ He sighed nostalgically.

  Tracy bit down on her response. She didn’t remember the innocence.

  ‘You can’t tell a good girl from a prostitute these days,’ Harry Reynolds said. ‘They all dress like they’re on the game, act like it too.’

  ‘I know,’ Tracy said, surprised to find herself agreeing with someone like Harry Reynolds. But it was true, you looked at young girls, crippled in heels, dressed like hookers, stumbling around pissed out of their brains on a Saturday night in Leeds town centre and you thought, did we throw ourselves under horses for this, gag on forced feeding tubes, suffer ridicule, humiliation and punishment, just so that women could behave worse than men?

  ‘They’re worse than the blokes these days,’ Harry Reynolds said.

  ‘It’s biological,’ Tracy said, ‘they can’t help it, they’ve got to attract a mate and breed and die. They’re like mayfly.’

  ‘O tempora o mores,’ he said.

  ‘Didn’t think of you as a classicist, Harry.’

  ‘I’m like an iceberg, Superintendent. I go deep.’ He bit into a scone with his shiny
false teeth and ruminated. ‘Too many people on the planet,’ he said. ‘You cull deer, but you’re not allowed to cull people.’ It was an unfortunate echo of what Tracy had been thinking a moment ago. It sounded more fascist coming from his mouth than it had in her mind.

  Had Harry Reynolds had people murdered? Tracy wondered. Possibly. Did that bother her? Not as much as it should have done.

  ‘I see our friend Rex Marshall finally found the eighteenth hole,’ Harry Reynolds said.

  ‘Not my friend,’ Tracy muttered, her mouth full of carbohydrate. ‘Not yours either, I wouldn’t have thought.’

  ‘Members of the same golf club,’ he said. ‘It’s like being in the Masons. Lomax, Strickland, Marshall, they all enjoyed having a round with yours truly. Even Walter Eastman in his day.’

  ‘I don’t know why I’m surprised.’ Tracy swallowed the last of the scone and said, ‘Harry?’

  ‘Superintendent?’

  ‘Remember 1975?’

  ‘Cricket World Cup came to Headingley in the June. Australians against us. England all out for ninety-three. West Indies beat them in the final. Say what you like about the blacks, they can play cricket.’

  ‘Yeah, well, apart from that. Do you remember the murder of a woman called Carol Braithwaite?’

  ‘No,’ he said, gazing out at his fish. ‘I’m afraid I don’t. Why?’

  ‘Nothing. Just wondering.’

  The kid had already hoovered up her juice and two scones and was looking slightly more animated. Her silver tiara had tilted and her mouth was smeared with raspberry jam. The wand was resting on the sofa next to her. She made fists with her hands and then opened them up into stars. This seemed to be the ultimate sign of approval. She picked up the wand again, returned to duty.

  ‘Careful with that,’ Harry Reynolds said, smiling indulgently. ‘Don’t want you casting any spells.’

  Courtney stared at him.

  ‘She’s a right chatterbox, isn’t she?’ Harry Reynolds said. ‘She’s all there, is she?’

  ‘Of course she is,’ Tracy said crossly. She dabbed at the raspberry jam on Courtney’s face with a tissue, to no effect. There were also archaeological remnants of tuna roll, doughnut and chocolate. Tracy realized that when she was in the supermarket again she would have to take it to the next level. Wet Wipes.

  ‘So . . . long time no see, Superintendent,’ Harry Reynolds said. ‘Both civilians now, eh? Another scone?’

  ‘No, thanks. Well, maybe. Go on then. Are you really out of the game, Harry?’

  ‘I’m over seventy,’ Harry Reynolds said. ‘My wife died since I last saw you. Cancer. I nursed her to the end, died in my arms. But I can’t complain, I’ve got a wonderful daughter, Susan, and the grandkids stay over all the time. I spoil them rotten, but why not? Used to be different in my day, a clip round the ear and bread and dripping for your tea if you were lucky . . .’

  Tracy could feel herself nodding off. Wondered if Harry Reynolds would mind – wondered if he’d even notice – if she were to lie down on his bigger-than-a-cow sofa and have a little snooze.

  ‘. . . and, of course, they come every Sunday for a big roast, all the trimmings. I like to make a proper pudding – fruit pie, steamed sponge, jam roly-poly. Hardly anyone does that any more, do they? Yorkshire puddings – who makes them any more?’

  Tracy could almost smell the scent of fatty roasting meat and overcooked vegetables. For a second she was back in the bungalow in Bramley, the dead air of Sunday mornings, her mother ‘partaking’ of a small schooner of sherry.

  ‘You used to think of Sunday lunch as an immovable feast,’ Harry carried on. ‘Time immemorial, you didn’t think it would be replaced by a pizza or takeaway from the Chinky. No wonder this country’s going to the dogs.’

  Tracy bit into another scone to keep herself awake. She felt as if she’d accidentally wandered into the middle of a Werther’s Original advert. Did all criminals turn soft if they survived to old age? (Did police detectives? Probably not.) Maybe they could just move in with Harry Reynolds now that he’d transformed from career criminal into twinkly – albeit fascist and racist – granddad. How many bedrooms in this house? Four at least. Plenty. They could make themselves scarce at the weekends, or Courtney could stay and play with Brett and Ashley.

  ‘Is this your kiddy?’ Harry Reynolds asked. The tone was off-hand, pleasant, but suddenly there was less of the whole twinkling thing going on.

  ‘I’m here on business,’ Tracy said.

  ‘I thought you said you were retired, Superintendent.’

  ‘Different kind of business,’ Tracy said.

  The shopping they had bought this morning in the supermarket was still in the boot of the Audi. Tracy imagined anything fresh in there slowly rotting, turning to mush in the plastic bags. It was mostly stuff to take with them to the holiday cottage. Self-catering – you always bought five times what you needed. No way was she cooking tonight.

  ‘Let’s go out for our tea,’ she said to Courtney once they were both strapped in the Audi. Courtney nodded, kept on nodding. A nodding dog. ‘You can stop now,’ Tracy advised her. The nodding slowed down. Stopped.

  Before setting off Tracy listened to her voicemail, dreading bad news from Barry. Message one. It’s Barry,Tracy. There’s been a bloke down the station looking for you. Says you’ve been left money in a will by an aunt in Salford. I know you don’t have an aunt in Salford or anywhere else so I don’t know what his game is. Message two. Barry again. Says his name’s Jackson something or other. Mean anything to you? Give us a call. Message three. Claims he’s a private detective. Think he’s lying. He’s staying at the Best Western, the one next to the Merrion Centre. He gave me his card but I’ve lost it.

  Nobody could invest the words ‘private detective’ with as much scorn as Barry. Jackson? Name meant nothing at all to her. Was he after the kid? Had he been sent to get her back? She was going to give him a wide berth whoever he was.

  There was a grey Avensis flitting in and out of the rear-view mirror. Tracy was sure it was the same car that had been parked near them in the supermarket. She’d noticed it because of the pink rabbit hanging from the rear-view mirror. ‘Air-freshener bunny’. Bloody stupid thing, she’d been given one by her ‘secret Santa’ last year. Secret Santas and vice didn’t go together somehow. The Avensis disappeared from view. Could it be the Jackson bloke?

  ‘Keep an eye out for a grey car,’ she said to Courtney. Did kids her age know all the colours? Could the kid sing the whole rainbow?

  ‘Do you know what colour grey is?’

  ‘It’s the colour of the sky,’ Courtney offered.

  Tracy sighed. Therapist would have a field day with this kid.

  They ate supper in the local Chinese. The kid peered closely at the menu and Tracy said, ‘Can you read, Courtney?’

  ‘No.’ Courtney shook her head and continued to examine the menu.

  She proceeded to dig her way through a plate of Singapore noodles. ‘I think there’s a fat kid inside you trying to get out,’ Tracy said. Courtney paused between mouthfuls and stared at Tracy. A few stray noodles hung out of her mouth, like a walrus’s moustache. ‘Not literally,’Tracy said. She sighed and dished out more steamed jasmine rice. ‘My fat kid escaped a long time ago.’

  When they finished, not before Courtney had packed a plate of banana fritters with ice cream into her hollow legs, Tracy paid the bill with two twenties peeled off her roll of thirty thousand but raking in vain through her purse for some change, said to Courtney, ‘I haven’t got enough for a tip.’

  Courtney stared at her, doing her imitation of a sphinx, and then delved into the depths of her pink backpack and retrieved the purse with the monkey’s face on it and took out four one-pence pieces that she placed carefully on the saucer, muttering, ‘One, two, three, four,’ under her breath.

  ‘How high can you count, Courtney?’

  ‘A million,’ Courtney said promptly.

  ‘Really?’

&nb
sp; Courtney held up her left hand and slowly counted off four fingers and a thumb, ‘One–two–three–four–a million.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  Courtney stared steadfastly at her. Tracy could see a noodle lodged between her front teeth. Eventually she held up the index finger on her right hand and said, ‘A million and one.’ She hadn’t finished with her generous tip. She was peering in the backpack, finally coming up with the nutmeg, which she placed with the coins. The waiter removed the saucer with waiter-like inscrutability and like a magician produced a fortune cookie and handed it ceremoniously to Courtney. She placed it carefully in her backpack without cracking it open.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ Tracy said.

  Before they got anywhere near the house in Headingley, Tracy’s phone rang. Her heart sank the moment she heard the strident rant at the other end. Kelly Cross wanting a pound of flesh that Tracy didn’t even realize she was owing. She could take it. She could take whatever she wanted. Sometimes you just had to step up. Sleep, eat, protect. Especially the protect bit.

  1975: 9 April

  The stench inside was unbelievable. Decomposition. Tracy wouldn’t be able to get it out of her nostrils for days. It was on her skin, her uniform, her hair. Years later she just had to think about the flat in Lovell Park and she could smell it. Kiddy was just standing there in the hallway when they broke in. Filthy, nothing but skin and bone, looked like a famine victim.

  Still knackered from climbing fifteen flights and putting in an unexpectedly resistant door, Ken Arkwright moved his beefy body with surprising speed along the hallway and snatched the kiddy up, passed the emaciated little thing to Tracy and started searching in the other rooms.