Started Early, Took My Dog (48 page)

Poor old Tilly with her shaky knees and her dicky hip dancing her last waltz in the arms of a man. A brief encounter on a railway platform.
Nothing lasts really. Neither happiness nor despair. Not even life lasts very long
. She’d played Laura Jesson once, a pretty dreadful repertory production – the Wolsey in Ipswich, or maybe it was the Theatre Royal in Windsor. It didn’t matter now. At the time she was too young to understand the notion of sacrifice, of what love demanded of a person.

A bad man who wanted to hurt the ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ child. For a second she thought she saw her father in his face.

And then she was rolling, rolling through the air and she thought it will be all right, it’s not far to fall to the tracks, but then the train got in the way. Silly Tilly.

Our little life is rounded with a sleep. She thought her wig might have fallen off. You didn’t want to be undignified at the end.
If only it was somebody else’s story and not mine
. Coiling down into the cold water, the big silver fish shoaling around her, escorting her, protecting her, as she sank slowly down on to the seabed. Be not afeard. Her bones already coral. Her eyes as blind as pearls. The rest is silence.

A Wounded Deer – leaps highest
. Crossing on the glassed-in bridge over the tracks, he saw the whole drama play out. He recognized the bizarre cast of players – Vince Collier’s mother, the woman who had stolen his Saab, the little girl, Tweedledum and Tweedledee – in this strange impromptu performance. The only new actor was the old man who fell beneath the train with Vince Collier’s mother. From up here it looked as if she might have pushed him. What was the title of that Mary Gauthier song? ‘Mercy Now’?

Jackson really didn’t like trains. He really didn’t.

He should go down, take charge, do something, help someone. He scooped up the dog, it was only too easy to imagine it being trampled underfoot in this mêlée, and scooted down the escalator and got stuck in the clamour jamming up the platform. He caught sight of his thieving hitchhiker, little girl in tow. She was getting on to another train, leaving more chaos in her wake. He ran towards them but the train was already leaving the platform. He caught sight of the little girl, waving goodbye to him, making hands like stars, until she was out of sight.

An arresting hand on his shoulder made him jump. Brian Jackson. The false Jackson, as he had begun to think of him. Somehow Jackson – the real Jackson – wasn’t surprised.

‘She’s a slippery fish, that Tracy Waterhouse.’

‘Say again?’ Jackson said, wheels spinning in his brain. ‘That was Tracy Waterhouse?’

‘Call yourself a detective.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Jackson said. He didn’t know why he didn’t just get that sentence tattooed on his forehead.

‘I think we’re both after the same thing,’ Brian Jackson said. ‘It’s just that we’ve been coming at it from different starting points.’ Police and paramedics had begun to arrive on the scene now. ‘What a mess,’ Brian Jackson said. ‘Let’s go.’

Jackson hesitated. Shouldn’t he be helping, at the very least giving a statement about what he’d seen?

‘Innocent bystanders,’ Brian Jackson said, encouraging him in the direction of the escalator, like a sheepdog rounding up an obstinate ewe. ‘Come on, I’ve got someone you’d like to meet. Someone who’d like to meet you.’

‘Who?’

‘My client. A man called Michael Braithwaite. We’d both like to know who it is that
you’re
working for.’

‘You’re phoning me,’ she said.

‘I am,’ Jackson agreed.

‘You’re not emailing or texting,’ Hope McMaster said. ‘You’re speaking. You’ve got news. What’s happened?’ All exclamation marks suppressed beneath the breathless weight of expectation. Hope in the balance.

‘Well,’ Jackson said cautiously, ‘it goes like this. Good, bad, good. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘First of all, the good news is that I’ve found out who your real mother is. The bad news is that she was a prostitute who was murdered by your father.’

‘OK,’ Hope said. ‘I’ll digest that later. And the other good news?’

‘You have a brother.’

Hope McMaster. Michael Braithwaite. The two sides of a jigsaw. A perfect fit.

Hope McMaster was Nicola Braithwaite, Michael’s sister.

(‘Why didn’t you say that?’ Jackson had asked Marilyn Nettles this morning.

‘You didn’t ask,’ she said.)

Nicola Braithwaite, two years old. There had been no gagging orders about her, no injunctions, no need to ‘protect’ her because she didn’t exist. She didn’t go to school, she’d never been to the doctor’s, Carol Braithwaite had avoided health visitors and district nurses. She moved house all the time. Neighbours hadn’t even noticed her.

‘Disappeared,’ according to Marilyn Nettles. ‘She wasn’t in the flat when they broke down the door, so they didn’t know about her. Well, of course, some people knew about her . . . I had to dig deep to find out, but I never told anyone. Did she have a good life?’

‘Yes,’ Jackson said. ‘I suppose she did.’

‘Oh, it’s such a lovely story,’ Julia said, tears in her eyes.

‘Well, only the ending’s lovely,’ Jackson said, ‘not the story itself.’

‘A child who is found,’ Julia said. ‘Isn’t that the best thing in the world?’

‘What was left in the box,’ Jackson said.

1975: 21 March
She’d been in one of her moods when he arrived at the flat in Lovell Park. You never knew which way it would go, sometimes she was as high as a kite, other times she was sunk in self-pity and low spirits. It was so quick that sometimes you could see it happening, see her face changing. It didn’t help that tonight she’d been drinking – she was a mean drunk – and waved a bottle of cheap wine in his face as a greeting when he came in the door.

‘Kiddies are asleep,’ she said.

Only Michael was in bed – presumably, because there was no sign of him. Nicola was on the couch where she must have fallen asleep. Her face and hands were grubby, her pyjamas unwashed. What hope did the kid have?

‘I brought the money round.’ He handed her a five-pound note. Like a punter. He hadn’t slept with her for two years but some mistakes you paid for all your life. She didn’t know who the boy’s father was. No doubt about the girl though, she said. The girl could have been fathered by anyone, he said, but he knew in his heart she was his. And if he denied it she’d go to his wife. She was always threatening.

‘We have to talk,’ she said, lighting up a cigarette.

‘Do we?’ he said.

The photographs were fanned out on her cheap glass coffee table. ‘Look at that,’ she said, pointing at a photograph of all four of them together, ‘like a real family.’

‘Not really,’ he said. She’d hauled a youth working in a chip shop outside and asked him to take the picture ‘of us all together’.

She had been nagging since Christmas about wanting a day out and they’d ended up in Scarborough in a gale force wind. The place was deserted. At least it meant that the chances of him seeing anyone he knew would be nil.

She’d run down to the sea and taken her shoes and tights off and left them lying on the sand. Her tights looked as if a snake had shed its skin. She ran into the water and danced around in the waves. ‘Jesus Christ, it’s fucking freezing!’ she yelled at him. ‘Come on in, the water’s lovely.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said.

‘Coward! Your daddy’s a cowardy custard!’ she said to the boy when she ran back on to the beach.

‘Don’t call me that,’ he said irritably, ‘I’m not his father.’ He had taken the boy to one side and said, ‘Don’t call me Daddy. Or Dad. Don’t. OK? I’m not your father. I don’t know who your father is. If your mother doesn’t then why the fuck should I?’

She had been unpredictable, embarrassing to be out with in public, he had realized. ‘Larger than life, me,’ she said, but it was more than that. He thought that perhaps she had some kind of mental illness.

She’d brought a camera with her, a cheap second-hand thing, and insisted on taking photographs all the time. He’d tried to avoid her snapping him but had finally agreed to one to shut her up.

‘Let’s see if we can find somewhere that’s open for ice creams.’ It was early March, out of season and freezing, nobody ate ice cream by the sea in winter. ‘Or chips!’ she said, getting excited. ‘Let’s all have chips!’

He was holding the girl in his arms, trying to protect her from the wind. ‘Come on, I’ll race you!’ she shouted at the boy but he was intent on digging a sandcastle in the wet, muddy sand. Carol ran off towards the pier. The wind seemed to bowl her along. He wished it would take her away altogether.

*

‘Like a real family,’ she said, running her hands over the photos, squinting at them through her cigarette smoke. She had begun to talk about them being ‘a proper family’, hinting that he could leave his wife. She was completely deluded.

It seemed to go on from there. She said she would go round and see his wife and take the kids with her and shame him on his own doorstep. He said, ‘Be quiet, you’ll wake the whole neighbourhood.’ She began to hit him, flailing at him with her fists. He hit her back hard, an open-handed slap to the face, he thought that would be enough to stop her but instead she became hysterical, screaming her head off. She had her claws out and the next thing he knew he was chasing her into the bedroom and had his hands round her throat. And if he was honest it felt good. Just to shut her up for once. To stop her.

It was over in seconds. She was such a force of nature that he hadn’t expected she would suddenly go limp like that. He knelt down and felt for a pulse and didn’t believe it when he couldn’t find one. He hadn’t meant to
kill
her. He glanced up and saw the boy standing in the hallway, staring at him, but all he could think of was getting out of that place. He ran down the stairs, couldn’t wait for the lift, got into his car, drove into town and sat in a pub where he downed a double malt. His hands were shaking. His whole life in ruins before him. He would lose his job, his marriage, his reputation.

He stayed there drinking. It took a lot to get him drunk. He lost count of the time.

‘One more for the road, detective?’ the barman said and he said, ‘No,’ and went to the Gents and threw up.

There was a phone box round the corner and he found refuge in its cold white light. He phoned the only person he could think of who might get him out of this mess, he phoned Eastman. ‘Sir?’ he said. ‘It’s Len Lomax here. I’ve got myself into a spot of bother.’ He didn’t mention the boy.

Ray handed him the photos the next day and said, ‘We’re even. Don’t ask for another favour ever, OK, Len?’

‘She was definitely dead, was she?’ Len asked. He had spent the rest of the night tossing and turning next to Alma, imagining Carol Braithwaite coming to, pointing an accusing finger at him.

‘Yes,’ Ray said. ‘She was dead.’ He looked disgusted. ‘I took the girl to the Winfields. They’re not going to question anything, trust me.’ Ray didn’t mention the boy because he didn’t know about him.

The Winfields had been Eastman’s idea. ‘I’ll get Strickland to take the kiddy round,’ he said. ‘You’re in no shape to do anything. Get yourself home to Alma. Do you have keys? To her flat?’