Kate Atkinson - Started Early, Took My Dog

A day like any other for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, until she makes a purchase she hadn't bargained for. One moment of madness is all it takes for Tracy's humdrum world to be turned upside down, the tedium of everyday life replaced by fear and danger at every turn.

Witnesses to Tracy's Faustian exchange in the Merrion Centre in Leeds are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie, who has returned to his home county in search of someone else's roots. All three characters learn that the past is never history and that no good deed goes unpunished.

Kate Atkinson dovetails and counterpoints her plots with Dickensian brilliance in a tale peopled with unlikely heroes and villains . Started Early, Took My Dog is freighted with wit, wisdom and a fierce moral intelligence. It confirms Kate Atkinsons position as one of the great writers of our time.

Kate Atkinson

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First published in Great Britain
in 2010 by Doubleday
an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Copyright Kate Atkinson 2010

Kate Atkinson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBNs 9780385608022 (cased) 9780385616997 (tpb)

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For my father

Also by Kate Atkinson

Behind the Scenes at the Museum
Human Croquet
Emotionally Weird
Not the End of the World (short stories)
Case Histories
One Good Turn
When Will There Be Good News?

All mistakes are mine, some deliberate. I have not necessarily kept to the truth.

My thanks are due to:

Russell Equi, as usual; Malcolm Graham, Detective Chief Superintendent, Lothian and Borders Police; Malcolm R. Dickson, former Assistant Inspector of Constabulary for Scotland; David Mattock and Maureen Lenehan, for revisiting Leeds and the seventies with me.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Traditional I was just cleaning up the place a bit.
Peter Sutcliffe

1975: 9 April
Leeds: Motorway City of the Seventies. A proud slogan. No irony intended. Gaslight still flickering on some streets. Life in a northern town.

The Bay City Rollers at number one. IRA bombs all over the country. Margaret Thatcher is the new leader of the Conservative Party. At the beginning of the month, in Albuquerque, Bill Gates founds what will become Microsoft. At the end of the month Saigon falls to the North Vietnamese army. The Black and White Minstrel Show is still on television, John Poulson is still in jail. Bye Bye Baby, Baby Goodbye . In the middle of it all, Tracy Waterhouse was only concerned with the hole in one of the toes of her tights. It was growing bigger with every step she took. They were new on this morning as well.

They had been told that it was on the fifteenth floor of the flats in Lovell Park and of course the lifts were broken. The two PCs huffed and puffed their way up the stairs. By the time they neared the top they were resting at every turn of the stair. WPC Tracy Waterhouse, a big, graceless girl only just off probation, and PC Ken Arkwright, a stout white Yorkshireman with a heart of lard. Climbing Everest.

They would both see the beginning of the Rippers killing spree but Arkwright would be retired long before the end of it. Donald Neilson, the Black Panther from Bradford, hadnt been captured yet and Harold Shipman had probably already started killing patients unlucky enough to be under his care in Pontefract General Infirmary. West Yorkshire in 1975, awash with serial killers.

Tracy Waterhouse was still wet behind the ears, although she wouldnt admit to it. Ken Arkwright had seen more than most but remained avuncular and sanguine, a good copper for a green girl to be beneath the wing of. There were bad apples in the barrel the dark cloud of David Oluwales death still cast a long shadow on police in the West Riding, but Arkwright wasnt under it. He could be violent when necessary, sometimes when not, but he didnt discriminate on the grounds of colour when it came to reward and punishment. And women were often slappers and scrubbers but hed helped out a few street girls with fags and cash, and he loved his wife and daughters.

Despite pleas from her teachers to stay on and make something of herself, Tracy had left school at fifteen to do a shorthand and typing course and went straight into Montague Burtons offices as a junior, eager to get on with her adult life. Youre a bright girl, the man in personnel said, offering her a cigarette. You could go far. You never know, PA to the MD one day. She didnt know what MD meant. Wasnt too sure about PA either. The mans eyes were all over her.

Sixteen, never been kissed by a boy, never drunk wine, not even Blue Nun. Never eaten an avocado or seen an aubergine, never been on an aeroplane. It was different in those days.

She bought a tweed maxi coat from Etam and a new umbrella. Ready for anything. Or as ready as she would ever be. Two years later she was in the police. Nothing could have prepared her for that. Bye Bye,Baby .

Tracy was worried that she might never leave home. She spent her nights in front of the television with her mother while her father drank modestly in the local Conservative club. Together, Tracy and her mother, Dorothy, watched The Dick Emery Show or Steptoe and Son or Mike Yarwood doing an impression of Steptoe and his son. Or Edward Heath, his shoulders heaving up and down. Must have been a sad day for Mike Yarwood when Margaret Thatcher took over the leadership. Sad day for everyone. Tracy had never understood the attraction of impressionists.

Her stomach rumbled like a train. Shed been on the cottage cheese and grapefruit diet for a week. Wondered if you could starve to death while you were still overweight.

Jesus H. Christ, Arkwright gasped, bending over and resting his hands on his knees when they finally achieved the fifteenth floor. I used to be a rugby wing forward, believe it or not.