Eventually, the woman turned round to face the windscreen and stared straight ahead. She had bruises blooming on her face and dried blood on her hands.
‘Are you hurt?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘You’ve got blood on you.’
‘It’s not mine.’
‘That’s all right then,’ Jackson said drily. Both his new passengers had the same slightly stunned look that he had seen many times on survivors. They looked like refugees from a disaster – a fire or an earthquake – people who had abandoned their home in the clothes they stood up in. Domestic abuse, he supposed. War on the home front – what else would a woman and child be running from?
Minutes passed before the woman said to him, ‘My car broke down,’ as if that explained the state of the pair of them. Sighing wearily, she added, more to herself than to him, ‘It’s been a long day.’
‘It’s only half seven in the morning,’ Jackson puzzled.
‘Exactly.’
When he glanced in the mirror again he saw that the woman had strapped the child in. The seat-belt was much too big and looked as if it might strangle her if he braked too quickly. It was a long time since he’d had a child-seat in a car. If he ever drove Nathan he had to borrow one from Julia, something which annoyed her out of all proportion, in Jackson’s opinion anyway.
Although he might not have admitted it, he felt slightly unsettled – the fog, the woods, the Midwich Cuckoos kid, not to mention the sense of fear the woman had brought into the car with her – it was all more like an episode of The Twilight Zone than a comedy by Shakespeare.
She didn’t seem to care where they were heading, anywhere except where she had been seemed to be a good direction. Jackson was no longer sure it mattered which way you went, you never ended up where you expected. Every day a surprise, you caught the wrong train, the right bus. A girl opens a box and gets more than she bargained for.
‘Don’t you want to know where I’m going?’ he asked after what seemed like an eternity of silence.
‘Not particularly,’ she said.
‘Magical mystery tour then,’ Jackson said cheerfully.
‘I can’t help but worry about you, son. I’m your mother, it’s my job to worry.’
‘I know, Mum, and don’t get me wrong, I love you for it, but I’m OK, I really am.’
‘Oh, all right, on you go then, but just remember, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’ (They kiss.) ‘Bye, bye then, love. See you on Friday, and then we’ll—’
‘The line,Tilly, is actually “All work and no play makes Vince a dull boy.”’
‘Really?’
‘I think it’s supposed to be amusing in some way.’
‘Amusing? Is it?’ Tilly puzzled.
‘Blame the writer, darling, not me. We’re playing to a low common denominator here.’
Never underestimate the intelligence of an audience. That was what Douglas used to say and, as in so many things, he was right, of course.
‘Can we run it again, Tilly, please?’
She heard someone mutter, ‘Oh Christ, just leave it or she’ll come out with every Tom, Dick and Harry before she gets to “Vince”. If ever.’
The actor playing Vince gave Tilly a wink. She knew him quite well, knew him as a boy, he was with the Conti school, did a turn as Oliver in the West End – or was it the Artful Dodger? – but damned if she could remember his name. It was a shame that everyone thought names were so important. A rose would smell as sweet by any other. And so on.
‘Do you want to get a cup of tea? You’ve got some time, Miss Squires.’ The nice Indian girl had Tilly’s call sheet, Tilly just couldn’t keep her hands on it. ‘Thank you . . .’ Pima? Pilar? Pilau! ‘Thank you, Pilau.’
‘I’m sorry?’
Ooh dear, that inflection, Tilly thought. What had she said wrong now?
‘Pilau? Like pilau rice. I find that quite offensive, you know, Miss Squires. Like calling someone “Poppadom”. My name’s Padma. If I didn’t know how much trouble you had with names I would think you were being racist.’
‘Me?’ Tilly gasped. ‘Never, oh, never, dear.’
In her defence (a poor defence, it was true), Tilly wanted to say, ‘My baby was black’ (or at any rate, half-black) but no baby existed to prove that. No baby that had grown into a strapping man. Tilly always imagined him looking rather like Lenny Henry. Phoebe came to visit her in the hospital afterwards and said, ‘Well, it was for the best. Even you have to admit that, Tilly.’
‘Do I?’
The nurses were all horrible to her, starchy and unforgiving, because the baby they had sluiced away without even showing her hadn’t been as white as the lilies, as white as the snow. ‘It would have been a coloured child,Tilly,’ Phoebe said in a (theatrical) whisper at her bedside. It took Tilly a second to work out what she meant. Her first thought was, like a rainbow?
‘You would have had such a difficult time,’ Phoebe said. ‘You would have been ostracized. And the work would all have dried up. It’s for the best this way.’
Of course, that was 1963, the sixties had only just got started. Tilly hadn’t cared, the baby could have been purple and yellow with polka-dots and stripes and she would have loved it.
It was just chance (but then isn’t everything?). Phoebe had been invited to some kind of diplomatic party and twisted Tilly’s arm to come along with her. For cover, of course. Phoebe was having an affair with a Cabinet minister – married, naturally, all very hushhush. It was anybody’s guess who else she was sleeping with, she could easily have been the Christine Keeler of her day but she was too lucky to be found out. Always lucky. In life and love. And so there they were at this party and Phoebe dumped her the minute they walked in the door.
All sorts of people at the party, a famous elderly actor, camp as coffee, and a lot of beautiful young things, boys and girls. That model Phoebe knew, Kitty Gillespie, and a film star, a man, who would soon drop out of this bright, shiny world to go to India and find himself. They were all mixed in with guests from various embassies, a photographer from Vanity Fair was there, Phoebe, in a diamond necklace borrowed from her mother and never given back, conspicuously avoiding being photographed with her politician.
‘Good evening,’ a deep voice said and Tilly turned round and saw this lovely young man smiling at her. Black as the ace of spades. (Would the girl – Padma, Padma, Padma, surely if she said it enough she could remember – Padma think that was a racist way of describing him?)
‘I don’t know anyone here,’ he said. ‘Well, now you know me,’Tilly said. He was from Nigeria, he said, a secretary to an attaché or some such, Tilly never quite understood, but he knew how to have a proper conversation – he had been to Oxford and Sandhurst, sounded more English than Prince Philip, and he was so intrigued by everything that Tilly had to say, unlike some of Phoebe’s friends who were forever looking over your shoulder to see if someone more interesting had entered the room.
Anyway one thing led to another – conversationally – and Tilly invited him round to the little Soho flat the following night, said she would cook him a meal, she had no idea how to cook anything, of course. He seemed quite lonely, homesick, well, Tilly understood that, she had felt homesick all her life, not for her own home, just the idea of a home.
Her flatmate – the ballet dancer – was on tour so they had the place to themselves. She made a spag bol, it was a difficult dish to burn but Tilly managed it. But there was some nice bread and a decent piece of Stilton and afterwards tinned peaches and ice cream and he brought a lovely bottle of French wine, so the evening wasn’t an unmitigated disaster and afterwards one thing led to another – not so much conversation this time – and there she was the next morning lying naked in bed next to an equally naked black man and her first thought when she opened her eyes was What would Mother think? A thought that made her laugh. He was called John but he had only said his surname once, when he introduced himself, and it was something African and st
range with lots of vowels (was that a racist thing to say?).
She made coffee, proper percolator coffee, and ran down to Maison Bertaux and bought pastries and they ate them in bed. Felt like a tremendous adventure, felt like a romance.
She had a rehearsal to go to and he had work, of course, mysterious diplomatic work, and they walked together to Leicester Square tube station. It was a beautiful spring morning, everything felt clean and fresh and full of promise. Tilly had stood on tiptoe and kissed him goodbye right there in the station, a white girl kissing a black man in public. Desdemona to his Othello, except he wasn’t going to be twisted by jealousy and end up murdering her. No opportunity – never saw him again.
She was so tired. Usually enjoyed an egg roll at this time of the morning but didn’t feel like it today. A nice reviving cup of tea, just what the doctor ordered. No sign of Padma anywhere, probably just as well.
She hobbled off to the catering truck. A bit wobbly this morning. Her hip was hurting. Ladies who lurch. The doctors had started talking about a replacement. She didn’t want an op. All alone, being shipped off into the darkness. An anaesthetic like death.
He was so lost in thought as he clumped along the corridor that Barry nearly collided with a woman from the lab. Chinese, no hope of getting that name right, always referred to her as ‘that Chinese woman from the lab’. Lucky he didn’t call her a Chink, he supposed. She was waving a bit of paper around, asking him, ‘Have you seen DI Holroyd? We’ve got a fingerprint back from the house in Harehills.’
‘Kelly Cross? Quick work.’
‘It was on file, one of our own. Ex-Superintendent Tracy Waterhouse. It’s probably old. It’s unlikely it’s connected to the murder.’
‘Yeah,’ Barry agreed. ‘Very unlikely. Their paths must have crossed at some point.’
Like last night maybe. Kelly Cross, tart with no heart, bashed in the head, stabbed in the chest and the abdomen. Body discovered by a fellow waste-of-space crack whore who lived on the same street. What had Tracy said the other night? Just wondered if you’d run into Kelly Cross recently, Barry? And now Kelly Cross was dead and Tracy’s fingerprint was at the scene. And when he phoned last night she had been in the heartland of Kelly’s killing fields. Looking for someone. Who? Kelly Cross?
He hadn’t been to Tracy’s new house before, hadn’t been invited. She’d had a Polish builder working in there for ever and anyway she wasn’t exactly the kind to throw a housewarming. The front door was locked but the back door was wide open and Barry knocked and stepped inside, saying loudly, ‘Tracy? Trace? Are you at home?’
The Marie Celeste. The dregs of wine in a glass, an empty packet of crisps. He climbed the stairs, feeling more like an intruder than either a policeman or a friend. Bathroom was clean and tidy. Tracy’s bedroom a bit less tidy, hideous wallpaper. Something a bit too intimate about being in here for Barry. Didn’t like to think of Tracy getting undressed, climbing into bed, sleeping. He’d never had any of those kinds of feelings towards her. Second bedroom was full of boxes. Third bedroom was a mean-spirited one but someone had slept in the single bed. Who? Goldilocks?
There were some kiddy’s toys lying on the floor. Barry picked up a little blue plastic teapot from the carpet. Amy used to have a doll’s teaset. Why did Tracy have kids’ things in her house? Had something bad happened to her? Tracy could look after herself. Thirty years on the force, a heifer of a woman, anyone with any sense would think twice before messing with her but something felt wrong.
He drove to the Merrion Centre to make sure she had left for her holiday. He showed his warrant to a spotty youth, he liked to cow spotty youths with his credentials. ‘Looking for Tracy,’ he said to the cowed spotty youth.
‘Has she done something? There was a private detective here looking for her the other day.’ That bloody Jackson bloke, Barry thought, poking his nose in. ‘I thought maybe you’d come to pick up the tapes?’ the spotty youth said.
‘Tapes,’ Barry said vaguely. He had learned a long time ago to avoid words like ‘yes’ and ‘no’. They backed you into corners you couldn’t get out of.
‘Yeah, security tapes. You were sending someone over. That woman who was murdered last night—’
‘Kelly Cross?’
‘Yeah, well known to us, and you. Apparently a policeman remembered seeing her in here on Wednesday. You wanted to see the tapes, see if she was with anyone. Thought they’d send a grunt to pick them up,’ he added, ‘not a superintendent.’
‘I am a grunt,’ Barry said. ‘I grunt all the time.’
There were three tapes, grainy black-and-white. He watched them back at Millgarth, took hours. Tracy flitted in and out of view occasionally, on patrol on her new beat. He’d almost dropped off to sleep when Kelly Cross finally came into view, dragging a kid behind her. Seconds later, there was Tracy again, on her heels. Tracy was yomping along as if she was about to storm a fort.
There were another two cameras outside, trained along the street in both directions. Barry picked up Kelly again on one of them. She was at a bus stop with the little kiddy standing next to her. Then Tracy hove into view again and she and Kelly Cross had a brief exchange of words. A bus arrived and Kelly suddenly disappeared inside it. Tracy was left on the pavement, holding the little girl’s hand. After a few seconds the pair of them walked off, out of reach of the camera.
Kids who disappeared after their mothers were murdered. Yeah, Barry could see why Tracy would have got herself involved in something like that. But kiddies who disappeared before their mothers were murdered, that was a more puzzling matter. Something Barbara said to him this morning, something about meeting Tracy in the supermarket, Tracy having a kid with her. This kid?
Barry ejected the tape, fitted it into the inside pocket of the coat that was hanging on the back of his chair. He found a clerical assistant in the corridor and said, ‘Tell DI Holroyd that the tapes from the Merrion Centre have come, will you. Two of them.’
Perhaps this Jackson bloke had managed to find Tracy. Seemed unlikely that a so-called private detective could find her when Barry had failed. Still, worth a shot, he thought. Said he was staying at the Best Western, didn’t he? Shrugged himself into his coat. ‘Barry Crawford is leaving the building,’ he said to the desk sergeant.
Outside the Slug and Lettuce on Park Row there was a big builder’s skip. Barry tossed the third tape from the Merrion Centre into it.
What was it they said – discretion was the better part of valour?
1975: 12 April
‘What do you think, Barry?’
‘What?’
‘What do you think, Barry?’
They’d come from Elland Road, where a good-natured match had got bumpy at the end. They’d brought the horses in. Tracy didn’t think horses should be used for crowd control, it was like sending them into battle. Barry was with them, trying to avoid buying a round.
It wasn’t that Tracy valued Barry’s opinion particularly but no one seemed to want to talk about it. Carol Braithwaite was being swept under the carpet like a bit of rubbish. ‘She was somebody’s mother, somebody’s daughter. We don’t even know the cause of death.’
‘Strangled,’ Barry said.
‘How come you know?’ Tracy asked. Barry shrugged. ‘No one seems to be doing much, case just seems to be disappearing,’ Tracy said. Three days since Arkwright had put in that door in Lovell Park but it was as if it had never happened. Tiny piece in the paper by that Marilyn Nettles woman and that was it. ‘It doesn’t even feel as if anyone’s looking,’Tracy said. ‘And you,’ she added, turning accusingly to Barry, ‘what were you doing there anyway?’
‘What are you getting at?’
Tracy thought of Lomax and Strickland in Lovell Park, both looking shifty, behaving like Special Branch, knowing more than they were saying.
‘Have they spoken to you at all?’ she asked Barry. He shrugged. ‘You’re doing a lot of shrugging, Barry.’
‘Ah, the mysteries of CID,’ Arkwrig
ht said. ‘Ours not to reason why. It seems pretty straightforward to me. The poor lass picked up a punter, took him back to her flat and he turned out to be a wrong ’un. It happens.’
‘The oldest profession,’ Barry said, as if he was a man of the world. ‘Ever since there’ve been whores there’s been people killing them. They’re not going to stop now.’
‘And that makes it OK, does it, Barry? The whole door-locked from-the-outside thing, what about that?’
‘What’s your point?’ Barry said. ‘You think a couple of CID blokes knocked off a prozzie and then covered it up? That’s nuts.’
Sounded almost reasonable to Tracy’s ears.
‘You’re talking through your hat, Tracy,’ Barry said. ‘You’d better not spread rumours like that, you’ll be out on your arse quicker than you can say “Eastman”.’
‘They had a witness,’ Tracy said. ‘He was four – so what? He said to me, he told me, his father killed his mother. Shouldn’t they at least be trying to find out who his father is?’
‘I’m sure they are,’ Barry said. ‘But it’s nothing to do with you.’
‘Barry’s right,’ Arkwright said. ‘It’s an ongoing investigation. They’re not going to come running to you every time they get a bit of information, lass.’
‘Thought I’d go and see Linda Pallister, that social worker,’Tracy said to Arkwright once Barry had left.
‘That hippy bird?’ Arkwright said.
‘She lives in a commune.’
‘Filthy nutters,’ Arkwright said. ‘Do yourself a favour, Trace. Call off the attack poodles, eh?’
An ‘urban commune’, according to Linda. Fancy term for what was really just a squat, a dilapidated old house in Headingley that was due for demolition. The residents kept chickens in the back garden. Muddy parsnips and leeks grew stunted and misshapen where once there had been a small parterre.
Tracy had just come off shift and was still in uniform. ‘Pig,’ she heard one of the blokes who lived in the house mutter as she passed him in the hallway. Someone else made a grunting noise. Tracy felt like arresting them, marching them out of there in handcuffs. Wouldn’t have needed much of an excuse, the sweet sickly stink of marijuana drifted from the living room.
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