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?’
The next day Eastman invited Len for a game of golf. ‘You’re not a bad man, Len,’ he said, practising his swing. ‘A bad thing happened to you, that doesn’t mean that your life should be destroyed, not on account of one dead whore. And that kiddy of yours has gone to a wonderful home, think of everything she’ll have.’ Len still didn’t mention the boy.
He expected Carol to be found. That’s what happened, people died, other people found them. Then time went on and nothing happened. It began to seem unreal, it began to seem as if it had never happened at all. He’d had a cousin, Janet, still had her but nobody in the family talked about her much any more. Aged fourteen she gave birth in her bedroom at home. Nobody even knew she was pregnant, everybody just thought she was getting a bit fat. When her mother asked her why she hadn’t said anything, Janet said she’d hoped that if she ignored it, it would all just go away. That was how Len felt. He never thought about whether the boy was alive or dead, never really thought about the boy at all.
‘What are you brooding on?’ Alma asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said, gave her some flim-flam about stress at work.
When they got the call it was a shock, like a body blow, like some bugger running into him on the rugby field. ‘Woman’s body discovered in the Lovell Park flats, uniforms in attendance.’ Still no one mentioned the boy. Len wondered if he really had disappeared. Melted into thin air.
‘Jesus,’ Strickland said. ‘This is going to be difficult. Her body’s been there for weeks.’
Eastman caught them before they got in the car. ‘Now then, steady, lads, steady,’ he said. ‘Keep your heads.’
Len finally mentioned the boy.
‘You daft bastard,’ Eastman said. ‘You should have said something, I could have helped you clear up the mess a lot sooner.’
It never struck him that the boy might still be alive. He’d expected they would have two bodies on their hands. Couldn’t believe it when he saw the boy in that WPC’s arms.
The boy was a witness, of course. Eastman ‘had a word’ with the social worker. Neither Len nor Ray knew what he said. Threatened her with losing her own kiddy probably. He was a good man to have on your side but a very bad one to have against you. Ray followed up for him, caught her coming from the hospital and took her for a drink in the Cemetery Tavern. ‘She’s sound,’ he reported back to Len. ‘She’s terrified. Eastman said the Drug Squad would “find” hard drugs in her place.’
Eastman got a gagging order ‘to protect the boy’, his name was changed and he was put into a Catholic orphanage. Len never heard anything more about him. The Winfields got new papers for Nicola, that bad bastard Harry Reynolds organized it, and then they buggered off to New Zealand. New Zealand might as well have been Jupiter or Mars as far as Len was concerned. It had all been a nightmare, he told himself, a terrible nightmare. A hole that opened up in front of his feet and then closed over again.
Eastman phoned him, gave him his instructions. Pick up the girl from the Lovell Park flats, lock up behind you. Eastman gave him a set of keys. ‘Forget about what you see inside.’ He told Ray to take the girl to the Winfields. ‘We’re doing the right thing here, Ray,’ Eastman said. ‘It might not be the letter of the law, but it’s a moral imperative. Giving the kiddy a good home instead of her ending up who knows where. I phoned Ian Winfield, he knows what to expect but he’ll pretend to be surprised. For the wife’s sake, you know, she can get a bit overwrought.’
When they arrived at the Lovell Park flats three weeks later, Ray said to Len, ‘I can’t go in there again, Len. I can’t face what we’re going to find in there.’ They had argued before they had gone up in the lift. ‘Band of brothers,’ Len said, thumping him on the shoulder, more aggression than affection. ‘All for one, one for all.’ Eastman’s motto.
Len had known. He had known about that kiddy in the flat and left him there.
‘I thought he’d be found,’ Len said. ‘And then, I don’t know, it just became unreal.’ Attempted murder as far as Ray was concerned. He threw up his breakfast when he saw the state of the kid. If he had known he would never in a million years have left that kiddy behind in that place.
Ray had paid a visit to Carol Braithwaite at New Year. He’d been drunk, missing sex with Anthea, unwilling to go back to Margaret, sober and schoolmarmish in her cotton nightdresses. So he had gone to see Lomax’s whore. Never done that before, never been with a prostitute. ‘An uncomplicated fuck,’ he imagined Len saying.
Carol Braithwaite opened the door to him and said flatly, ‘I’m not doing business tonight, go and look somewhere else.’ She looked tired, old before her time. She was holding a little girl in her arms. It seemed wrong that women like her got to be mothers just by opening their legs to any man and his own wife couldn’t get a baby to save her life. He didn’t know at the time that the kiddy was Len’s. No sign of the boy.
‘Fuck off, why don’t you?’ Carol said.
He’d sent Barry Crawford home by then, of course. No hope of getting a taxi in the early hours of 1975. He’d walked all the way home, tail between his legs, and slipped into bed next to Margaret. Told her he loved her.
The worst thing wasn’t what happened to the boy, nor was it the fact that Len murdered Carol Braithwaite or that Eastman helped cover it up. The worst thing was that when Ray whisked the little girl away – stole her, really – and he was sitting in the back of Crawford’s Cortina he realized they were driving past his own house. There was a light on downstairs, Margaret waiting up for him probably, sitting there knitting, listening to the radio. She preferred the radio to the TV. He could have pulled into his own driveway, rung his own doorbell and given the best gift possible to his own wife. But he hadn’t done that, he’d given that little girl to Kitty Winfield instead. And the boy. He could have saved that little boy, brought him up as his own. Two chances, both lost.
Barry thought he would puke when he went into that flat. He hadn’t thought of anyone actually being dead in there, he just thought Strickland had taken the kid. But when he saw the little boy, he realized that he had been left behind that night. Imagined what his own mother would have to say about that. She loved kiddies, couldn’t wait for Barry to get wed and become a father. Eastman had c
alled him. Told him to help clean up the mess. Didn’t say who had made the mess but it was pretty obvious to Barry that it was Ray Strickland.
She was sleeping peacefully. He watched the rise and fall of her chest. She was never going to wake up, never going to be Amy again. She would have hated to be here like this, would have begged Barry to put an end to it. The last thing you would ever wish for your child turned out to be the one thing you had to do. He took the pillow from beneath her head and held it over her face. ‘I love you, pet,’ Barry said. He tried to think of something else to say, something bigger and more important but there wasn’t anything, he’d said the only thing that mattered. He thought that she might struggle but she didn’t. The only difference when he took the pillow away was that her chest no longer rose and fell.
He felt empty of everything now. It was a good feeling. He checked his watch. Twelve o’clock. Ivan was getting out of Armley Jail at one. He’d better get a move on. Barry felt the heft of the gun in his pocket. He liked the feel of it, it put him in control. A Baikal. Gangland gun of choice. Modified in Lithuania, here you pay twenty times what you would for them there, apparently. He’d never actually seen one before. This one was courtesy of Harry Reynolds. All these old blokes who wouldn’t give up their thrones. Strickland, Lomax, Harry Reynolds.
He’d picked it up on his way over. Found Harry Reynolds fumbling with a black tie. ‘Arthritis in the thumbs,’ he said. ‘What do they say – old age doesn’t come by itself.’The house smelled of apple pie. Harry gave him the Baikal and Barry gave him an envelope. ‘Get that to Tracy, will you?’ he said.
‘You could have given it to her yourself if you’d been here earlier. She’s in the wind now.’
‘Good. How much do I owe you for the gun?’