LEN AND SHIRLEY were sitting in the living room on one of his rare nights off. There was so much that he wanted to say to her, even now, but he couldn’t find the words. As she flicked through Take a Break magazine, Len found the silence deafening. Although she had explained about her life away, Len wanted to know what Shirley felt about her life now. Now that she was back in Bradington and waking every day in her old house with her old husband.
‘How’s the job then? You’ve not said,’ Len ventured. Shirley had recently started work on a fruit stall in the market. The last time Len had seen Shirley get a job it had been the beginning of their life unravelling.
‘Good. I like it. It is what it is. Bagging up apples for little old ladies who don’t trust Tesco’s and have been coming there for years. Nothing earth-shattering to tell you. It’s a job, you know.’
‘I bet you get some right characters coming in the market.’
‘Yeah, I suppose you do,’ Shirley said, but she was more interested in the article she was reading about a woman who had a cyst cut out of her that weighed thirty pounds.
Len didn’t know what else to say. He’d have liked to have said, ‘Are you happy, Shirley, now you’re back? Do you want to stay? Will you ever be in love with me again?’ But he didn’t have the courage so instead said, ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’
‘Go on then,’ Shirley said, not seeming to be paying attention.
Len went through into the kitchen. As he fired the tea bags into the cups he felt Shirley standing behind him. ‘Len . . .’ she said tentatively. He turned around. ‘I’ll move out if you want. If I’m, you know, getting under your feet.’
‘You’re not getting under my feet at all.’
‘It’s just that we never talk and I really wish we did.’
‘I’ve just been sitting in there thinking the same thing,’ Len admitted. He felt utterly relieved that Shirley was feeling as he was.
‘I feel guilty about everything. Like I should apologise all the time.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Len said, filling the kettle, anything to distract from meeting Shirley’s eye. He felt shy around her sometimes.
‘I’m not being daft. So what do you want to talk about?’ she asked.
‘I just want to know . . .’ Len didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. There was a hammering at the door that made them both jump out of their skin. Shirley went to open it. Four police officers were standing there, and didn’t wait to be invited in. The one at the helm was holding a piece of paper. ‘We’ve a warrant to search the premises.’ Len watched as if everything was in slow motion as he was handcuffed by one of the officers. Another went over to Shirley and began to handcuff her too.
‘Len Metcalfe, we are arresting you on suspicion of murder . . .’
‘Shirley Metcalfe, we are arresting you for perverting the course of justice . . .’
Len stared at Shirley. She looked back at him in alarm. It looked like their conversation was going to have to wait.
*
Tracy and Tammy were on their much-talked-about night out. Talked about by Tracy, at any rate. Tammy had seemed to just worry about the prospect of having to spend the evening with her colleague and mother of the boss. Tracy had arranged for them to go to the Glasshouse and sit in the VIP area sipping lethal cocktails. Personally she’d never understood the attraction of champagne. Everyone banged on about it but it wasn’t much use for getting pissed as a newt. That’s why Tracy liked Long Island Iced Teas. Any cocktail with five different spirits in was a friend of Tracy’s.
So far the night had gone to plan. Tracy and Tammy were getting along famously and the girl wasn’t too bad when she had a few drinks down her neck and relaxed a little. ‘So, how long you been working for our Markie now?’ Tracy shouted to Tammy over some racket that the DJ seemed insistent on playing.
‘A year. Since Leanne left.’ Leanne Crompton had been Markie’s office manager for a time before she set up in business on her own.
‘How much is he paying you?’ Tammy looked shocked. Tracy looked at her as if this was a totally reasonable question.
‘Er, sixteen grand a year.’
‘If I was running the place I’d have you on more. Give you some incentive.’
‘Right,’ Tammy said slowly.
‘I mean, you need to know when you’ve got good staff and sometimes I think that our Markie hasn’t a clue. I think you should be on at least twenty grand.’
‘Do you?’ Tammy said cautiously.
‘Yeah, but what do I know?’
Tammy smiled nervously and sucked back a large strawful of her drink.
‘You any idea what level three means?’ Tracy asked innocently.
Tammy looked at Tracy, slightly taken aback. ‘In what context?’
Tracy was getting a little sick of the dancing round the handbags routine, but she persevered. ‘Well, if our Markie was to say to you, “We had to go to level three on that”, what would he mean?’
Tammy looked at Tracy as if this was a trick question. ‘It means apply force, doesn’t it?’
‘What sort of force?’ Tracy probed.
Tammy looked like she’d said too much. ‘I don’t know if I’m right, it’s just what I’ve sort of . . . gathered.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I’d sort of gathered too.’ Tracy nodded. ‘Have the police contacted the office again?’
‘Again?’ Tammy asked, confused.
‘I just mean that they had Markie in for questioning and they were round my house. Thought they might have been in the office, that’s all.’
‘Not that I know of.’
Tracy nodded. She wasn’t sure why she was putting herself through tonight, but she knew that it was probably better to have Tammy on side than not and if that was all that came out of this evening then it was an evening well spent.
Tammy went to the toilet and Tracy checked her phone. She thought that Markie might have called to see if everything was to their satisfaction but he probably couldn’t care less whether his mum was having a nice night out. Sometimes she felt as if she bent over backwards for her kids and got nothing in return. She had four missed calls. There was a voicemail message. It was from Mac.
‘Hi Tracy. I’m just calling for a chat. Give me a call. Back on the old number now.’
Tracy dialled his number. What was going on? she wondered. Why hadn’t the police arrested him? Maybe they had and they’d let him go. They were a useless lot, she thought; she should’ve been a copper herself, she’d have got more done.
‘Hello, stranger,’ she said, walking over to the foyer of the club where she could just about hear herself think.
‘Tracy, fancy meeting up? I owe you a kiss and a cuddle and a sorry.’ She’d rather have poked her own eyes out than kiss and cuddle this sap after his disappearing act but she wanted to know what was going on.
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in the library.’
‘Renewing your books?’ Tracy joked.
‘Very funny. The hotel.’
The Library was Bradington’s new boutique hotel. Tracy didn’t rate its chances for longevity. The good people of Bradington were more your thirty-pound-a-night kettle-nailed-to-the-wall lot but it was nice to see that someone thought the city was worth sticking a few quid into.
‘I’ll be there in half an hour,’ she said, swigging her drink.
Tammy came back from the toilet. ‘Same again?’ she asked.
‘No, love, I’m going to hit the sack if you don’t mind.’ Tracy knew that this was an early exit for someone who had been bleating on about their night out for so long but she’d rather get to the bottom of things with Mac.
‘Oh, OK.’ Tammy actually sounded gutted.
‘Come on, love, when you’re my age you need your beauty sleep. Tell you what, give one of your mates a ring and get a couple of bottles of champagne in, my treat.’
‘Really?’ Tammy asked, genuinely grateful.
‘Course.’
Tracy walked behind the bar and whispered to the barman, ‘Two bottles of champagne, and tell our Markie I’ve stuck them on the work tab.’
‘There isn’t a “work tab”,’ he said rather haughtily.
‘There is now.’
*
The only way to describe the Library for Tracy was posh. The reception area was tastefully decorated with dark Edwardian colours that perfectly complemented the grand old building. The windows were swathed with purple velvet curtains and the huge mirror that hung at the back of the small reception area was an understated gold antique. It was the sort of taste that Tracy wished she had, but she knew that she couldn’t walk past an ornament of a cat playing cymbals without buying it and sticking it on her cluttered mantelpiece, so the chance of her house ever looking anything like this was remote.
She asked for directions to the room where Mac was staying and felt curiously nervous. She couldn’t quite place the reason for the nerves. She didn’t think that it was because she would soon be seeing Mac again. She didn’t think it was because she was in a hotel that she felt sure she was about to be thrown out of because she didn’t look like she should be anywhere near somewhere this classy, and she certainly didn’t think it was because she had betrayed Mac, because Tracy didn’t think for a minute that she had. He’d let himself down, if anything. Maybe it was a combination of all those things that was making her nervous. Or maybe it was none of the above and Tracy was sensing something that she didn’t even know about yet.
She knocked on the door of room five and waited for it to open. Mac was standing there looking slightly dishevelled but good for it. ‘Come in, sweetheart,’ he said, standing back to allow Tracy into the room. He didn’t grab her as she thought he might. He simply stood there looking at her. Tracy looked around the room. She was going to sit on the bed but then opted for the chair in the corner.
‘Nice gaff.’
‘Not bad for round here, is it?’
‘A lot of weather we’ve been having,’ Tracy said, half-smiling.
‘We’re not good at bullshit small talk, are we?’
‘No, so let’s cut it, shall we? Where the fuck have you been, if you’ll pardon my French,’ Tracy asked, trying to keep her voice as neutral as possible.
‘Look, Trace, I know we were messing around and you probably thought that I was a right tube for going off like that, but I swear I had good reason.’
‘Did you kill Joel Baldy?’ Tracy asked outright.
Mac didn’t flinch. ‘Now, Tracy, you know me and I’m not going to start going into the arse of things with anyone. Even you.’
‘Especially me.’
‘Why d’you say that?’
‘That’s what it sounded like you were driving at.’
‘I don’t drive at anything, I come straight out and say it. Anyway, Len Metcalfe’s been arrested for killing the Baldy lad, so I think it’s fair to say the police have got their man and I’m free to come back.’
‘Len?’
‘Thought you’d be pleased.’
It wasn’t exactly what Tracy had been planning but it was good news. She thought that the police had exonerated Len since the prodigal wife had returned.
‘How do you know?’
‘I’ve got someone on the inside at the cop shop.’
Tracy felt the colour drain from her. Maybe this was why there had been no mention of the file she had sent to the police. She wracked her brain, trying to think if anything she had sent directly implicated her. She could always pin it on Tammy if she had to. ‘Really?’
‘Really.’ Mac was eyeing Tracy closely. She shifted uncomfortably in the chair. ‘Poor old Len, eh? They found some fingerprints at the hotel, apparently. Waiting for the forensics to come back. Three people who were staying at the hotel that night picked him out in photos they were shown and he had the best reason in the world to want him dead.’
‘Do you think he did it?’
Mac laughed loudly for a few moments and stopped abruptly, looking at Tracy with what she knew to take as serious hatred burning in his eyes. ‘Do I think that fat little Len Metcalfe murdered a strapping lad like Joel Baldy in his hotel room?’ Mac asked, looking around the room that he was staying in as if he’d just realised that this too was a hotel room and what an amazing coincidence that was. ‘I think it’ll have taken someone far stronger than Len to pull that off, don’t you, Tracy?’
Tracy got up from her seat and headed towards the door. Mac got up and pressed his hand hard against the door. ‘Sit down,’ he ordered. ‘Me and you have got some talking to do.’
Tracy did as she was told. She had no choice. She was terrified.
*
Len was sitting in the interview room staring blankly at the wall. He was going to have to come clean with the police this time, tell them everything. He’d thought that by trying to keep himself out of the frame initially he’d be doing not only himself a favour but more importantly, Charly. Now he knew what it must look like to the police and he was wishing that he could turn back time and hold his hands up to what he had really done on the night that his son-in-law was murdered.
Two police officers came into the room. One sat down and without saying anything looked at Len witheringly. The other one threw his files on the desk and said, ‘Could have saved us and yourself a bit of time, Mr Metcalfe, telling us from the start what happened.’
‘I’m saying nowt till that thing’s turned on.’ Len nodded at the tape recorder on the table.
The officer looked at his colleague and raised an eyebrow. ‘10.48pm . . .’ he said, pressing record and going on to state the date, Len’s name and what he was being arrested for.
The officer sat back in his chair and eyeballed Len, obviously thinking that he and his colleague were here for the long haul and were going to have to drag the truth out of Len. Len didn’t envy these men. The one doing the talking, his eyes were grey and sunken, his skin pallid from spending too many days in interview rooms with little light. Len sat forward and placed his hands flat on the table as if he needed all the ballast he could get to support what he was about to say.
‘You don’t need to do all that probing questions and whatever else it is they teach you at training college. I’ll tell you everything.’
The police officers leaned forward. This was obviously a turn-up for the books.
*
Markie was at Pandora’s, a massage parlour that he owned in Manchester. He was sitting in the foyer drinking a beer while the girl on reception nervously counted out the week’s takings. He didn’t visit this place often. There was a time when he utilised the services of the girls here, simply because they were on offer, but now he was bored by the idea. He didn’t like the look of Sharn in her tacky silver hot pants and barely-there top. He knew she was nervously eyeing him up. A lot of the girls here did that, as if Markie was somehow going to take them away from all this. Fat chance of that; he had enough on keeping his head above water without worrying about an ex-hooker for a girlfriend.
‘I think it’s all here, Markie,’ she said, putting the money in an envelope. A door at the other end of the corridor opened and a busty woman in her late thirties wearing a trouser suit and sky-high heels walked out.
‘Bloody hell, stranger,’ she said.
‘Now then, Trish, how’s it going?’
‘Alright. Had some nob-head do a runner the other night but Swing caught up with him and gave him a kicking.’
Markie’s jaw clenched at the mention of Swing.
That lot, he really needed to haul them all in and make sure he was keeping track of them. Trish walked towards him, and helped herself to some water from the cooler next to Markie. ‘Business is good at the minute. Load of new Polish builders in town for them flats they’re slinging up up the road.’
‘Poles, eh? Anything specific?’ Markie always found it funny when people had certain fetishes. Trish had often said that priests were the worst; they always wanted punishing. And often their idea of punishment knew no bounds.
‘Not really. Men are men, aren’t they? Whatever country they’re from they just want to get their end away.’
Markie smiled at Trish. To the punters she was Pandora, although her own name was far more suited to her hard-faced reality than Pandora was.
Markie’s phone began to ring. It was Charly. He answered it, but didn’t want Sharn or Trish to hear his conversation with her. ‘I’ll call you back in a minute, yeah?’
Charly said yes, but Markie could hear that she was crying. He took the money from Sharn as he pocketed his phone. ‘Nice seeing you, ladies,’ he said and headed out of the door, passing a shady-looking man in the stairwell who couldn’t have looked more like a first-time punter if he tried.
‘They’re bloody good,’ Markie said to him, amusing himself. The man nearly jumped out of his skin at being spoken to.
Once outside, Markie grabbed his phone and called Charly. ‘Everything alright?’
‘No. Dad’s been arrested.’
Markie checked the time. It was midnight. ‘Where is he?’
‘Bradington. They’re questioning him there but they might move him to Manchester. I don’t know how these things work.’
‘I’m in Manchester now. You at the house?’
‘Where else would I be?’
Markie knew it was a stupid question; she barely left the house. ‘I’ll come and get you and then we can go to the police station together. What about your mum?’
‘She’s there too; she’s being done for providing a false alibi.’
Brilliant, Markie thought as he hung up the phone. He was sure that Len hadn’t done this, and he had a good idea who had.
*
Mac rummaged in a bag next to him. ‘What do you call this, Tracy?’ He produced photocopies of the original documents that Tracy had given to Mac. They must be the ones she had sent to the police. Her jaw fell open; she quickly shut it again.
‘I don’t know,’ she lied. ‘Them papers I got from the office for you?’
Mac slammed them on the bed and pushed his face up to Tracy’s. ‘Don’t give me your shit, Tracy. You know what these are because you sent them to the coppers.’
‘I didn’t do anything of the sort. I don’t even know how to work the photocopier. Tammy does all that.’
Mac sneered. ‘Fuck off, Tracy, don’t play dumb. You wouldn’t let a silly little thing like a photocopier stand in the way of stitching me up.’
‘Why would I want to stitch you up?’ Tracy asked, alarmed. She was looking around the room for a way that she might be able to get out and get to Markie so that Mac couldn’t harm her.
‘No point in thinking you’re going to do a bunk. You’re staying put.’ Mac walked over to the door and made sure it was locked. ‘Why would you want to stitch me up?’ he pondered. ‘Because you’re ruthless and you’re fucked off with me? I don’t know, you tell me.’
‘I didn’t send anything to the police,’ Tracy reiterated. She was just about to blame Tammy again but Mac interrupted her.
‘So why are your fingerprints all over it?’
Shit, Tracy thought. If he had someone on the inside then they would have access to her fingerprints. She’d been done for shoplifting a few years ago. If she’d known a Curtis Steigers CD was going to lead to all this she wouldn’t have bothered nicking it.
‘I didn’t do it!’ Tracy said again desperately. She quickly thought of something that might save her. ‘I stuck some paper in the copier the other week. I don’t know; my fingerprints will be all over the office, won’t they? I work there now.’ She wanted to kick herself; she should have put gloves on. But then again she didn’t think that she’d be faced with Mac accusing her of shopping him to the police.
‘Bollocks, Tracy. You had the hump because I’d gone underground. Do you know the shit this could have got me in if someone hadn’t got to them first? What am I saying? Course you did – why else go to the trouble of trying to hang me out to dry?’
Tracy threw her head back and stared at Mac. She wasn’t getting out of this so she dropped the damsel-in-distress façade and spoke in the slow measured voice of the bitch that she was. ‘So, you do it then? You knife the poor little bastard? And for what? Twenty-five grand? Aren’t you the big man, Mac?’
‘You think that if I had anything to do with Joel Baldy being stabbed I’d be sitting here chewing the fat with you about it?’
‘Get over yourself, Mac, you nob,’ Tracy said disparagingly.
He turned around, gathering all of his strength before lunging at Tracy, grabbing her by the throat. ‘You’re out of your depth, Tracy. Markie gave you a job because we needed a bit of help. Then you have to go biting the hand that feeds you.’
‘When our Markie finds out about this he’ll fuck you off and then where will you be?’ she hissed.
‘Are you serious? Do you think any of your kids give a flying shit about you? How long would it take, Tracy, before anyone noticed you missing?’
Tracy looked at the lamp on the bedside table. It was just within her reach. Maybe Mac should have chosen a less salubrious hotel after all, one that glued its lamps down. Tracy leaned across and, before Mac realised what she was doing, grabbed the lamp, pulling it quickly in one sweeping motion towards him, smashing it into his face, sending him reeling backwards. Tracy knew she had little time to stand around and watch Mac come back for more. She ran to the door, twisted the lock and ran out of the room. She could hear Mac following her but she didn’t look back. Seeing the fire exit ahead she ran for it, not knowing if she was going to get out of this alive. But right now, she didn’t have a choice but to keep running.
*
‘I was at the hotel the night that Joel Baldy died,’ Len said, looking directly at the interviewing officer for his reaction.
‘Which hotel?’
‘Heartbreak Hotel. Which bloody hotel do you think? The Hilton, the one he was found dead in,’ Len snapped.
‘Alright, Len, no need to lose your rag,’ the accompanying officer, who had been sitting silently at his colleague’s side until now, piped up.
‘I’m not . . . I was there about the time you lot say he was killed.’
‘Murdered,’ the interviewing officer corrected.
‘Murdered . . . And my car was in Manchester at the time that it was spotted and Shirley was just trying to help when she said she’d been with me all night but she hadn’t. I wanted to find Joel and make him pay for what he’d done to my Charly, but I didn’t kill him.’
‘We know you were there that night, though, Len.’
Len hung his head. If he kept denying it, hoping to call their bluff and see exactly how they knew what they said they knew, then it could backfire on him. Anyway, he was tired of pretending. He nodded slowly, not being able to raise his head to meet the copper’s eye. ‘I know. I followed him back to her room. I hammered on the door but he didn’t answer. He knew it was me, so I just left.’
‘Just left?’
‘I wasn’t going to kick up a stink, was I? There were people asleep – it was a hotel. I’d had enough of being in the papers the weeks before he was done in; I didn’t need the press camped on my doorstep for causing a ruck in some swanky hotel.’ The irony wasn’t lost on Len that the press were camped on his doorstep regardless of whether he did or didn’t do anything wrong.
‘Mr Metcalfe, do you expect me to believe that on the night that Joel Baldy was killed in cold blood, you were there, but after you had followed him to the room where he was awaiting a young model coming back to spend the rest of the evening with him, not only didn’t he answer the door, but you just walked away?’
‘That is exactly what happened. I knew that I needed to calm down and I wasn’t going to get anywhere banging on the door so I came home.’
‘Yet until tonight you never thought to tell us any of this? Thought that a shonky alibi from your ex-wife would see you through?’
‘It’s not like that – you’re painting me in a bad light.’
‘I don’t need to paint you in a bad light, do I? You’ve done that yourself well enough in the past. Two years inside for GBH?’
‘You can’t be seriously suggesting that an isolated incident decades ago is the mark of who I am now,’ Len said, but really he was surprised that it had taken the police this long to bring it up. ‘I served my time. Never put a foot wrong after that.’
‘Maybe you did before it, though.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Len asked, glaring at the copper. The police officer brought out some notes that he had at his side. ‘I’m now showing Mr Metcalfe notes taken in this police station on December 10th 1974. You were accused of rape, weren’t you, Len?’
Len sat bolt upright in his chair. ‘No, I was not,’ he said, horrified.
‘Sorry,’ the copper said, sounding like he really wasn’t, ‘actually the allegation was dropped. The alleged victim didn’t want to go through with pressing charges.’
‘What alleged victim?’
‘I couldn’t say. It’s just that your name isn’t as clean as you like to pretend it is.’
Len was racking his brains. Who would have said something like this about him? And why had he never known about it? ‘You lot’d have hauled me in for that. You’re winding me up, aren’t you?’
‘Why would we?’ The police officer leant back and looked at his colleague as if to say, We’ve got a right one here.
Len could feel his blood beginning to boil. He wanted to grab this smarmy sod by the throat but he didn’t think that would exactly help his case.
‘Who’s this person, then, who made this claim all those years ago? Come on.’
‘Like I said, Len, I can’t say. Anyway, getting back to the job in hand . . .’
The officer folded the notes away. ‘Come on now, Len. After you tried the door and Joel refused to answer . . . what happened next?’
‘Tracy Crompton,’ he said again, shaking his head. Is that what she’d thought of him all these years, that he was a rapist? He felt sick.
‘Len!’ the copper barked. He’d obviously asked him a question that Len hadn’t heard. Len looked up and tried to think what had happened after he had left the hotel room.
‘Nothing happened. I went home.’
‘Right. Let’s go over this again, shall we?’
Len wasn’t getting out of there any time soon – he could tell that much – but when he did there was one person he needed to get something straight with and that was Tracy.
*
Tracy ran down the concrete stairs of the fire escape, taking them three at a time. One thing she had on Mac was that she was as wiry as a whippet. She reached the fire door that was the only thing standing between her and freedom and kicked it. It didn’t budge. She could hear Mac closing in on her. She looked at the handle – above it was a bolt encased in glass, she smashed it with her bare hands, drew it back to open the door and ran out into the street. Tracy didn’t have a clue where she was running to, just that she needed to get to where Mac couldn’t harm her. She ran towards the main drag, knowing that the bars would be busy, but as she ran she panicked – maybe the bars were a bad idea. Mac would know the bouncers on every door and she hardly had the time to start explaining that she was Markie’s mum and that Mac was a psychopath who wanted to silence her. As she headed down the main hill into the city centre, she could see the police station next to the town hall. She quickly changed her trajectory. Never would Tracy Crompton have thought that she would voluntarily run into a cop shop. But there was a first time for everything. The heels she was wearing were beginning to hurt but she didn’t have time to bend down and take them off to run in her bare feet.
She charged across the road and made the mistake of turning round. She could see Mac, flagging slightly but still hot on her heels. ‘Come here now!’ he shouted. Tracy didn’t even waste any of her precious energy telling him where to go, she just kept running. She heard a sudden thud, then a skid and a crash and looked round to see Mac in the middle of the road on his back and a Transit van with a concertinaed front end against a pedestrian island in the middle of the road. Mac was struggling to sit up. The driver of the van got out, rubbing the back of his neck, and shouted, ‘Where the fuck did you come from?’
Tracy didn’t wait to hear Mac’s answer; she could see him getting to his feet. She began running again. Away from the road where Mac was and around the back of the town hall, bringing her out onto the main road that ran through Bradington. She ran across the city square and saw a car come round the corner that she was sure she recognised. The driver didn’t see her but the lights at the crossing changed and the car slowed to a standstill. Tracy couldn’t believe her luck. It was Markie with some girl at his side. As Tracy ran towards the car and banged on the passenger window, she saw that the girl accompanying him was none other than Charly Metcalfe.
*
Charly looked up to see Tracy hammering on the car window. She nearly jumped out of her skin.
‘What the fuck?’ Markie said, pulling the car over to the kerb. ‘Where the bloody hell have you come from?’
‘Let me in,’ Tracy demanded, wild-eyed.
Markie popped the central locking and Tracy scrambled into the back. ‘Drive!’ she demanded like a woman possessed.
‘No. We’re off there,’ Markie said, pointing at the police station. ‘I’ll take you home in a bit.’
‘I don’t want to go home!’ Tracy shouted. ‘Alright, don’t drive. Just get me in there without Mac seeing me.’
‘Mac?’
‘Will you stop fucking around?’ Tracy said, slapping the seat in exasperation. The lights had turned green. Markie put his foot down. ‘Not that way, that way!’ Tracy said, pointing behind her.
‘Alright, Miss fucking Daisy, give me a minute.’ Markie put the car into reverse and turned around to go the long way to the police station. Tracy leaned back in her seat. Charly peered around at the woman who’d never so much as given her the time of day. She looked exhausted.
‘You alright, Tracy?’ Charly asked.
‘Do I fucking look alright?’ Tracy panted.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Charly mumbled, folding her arms and facing forward. She didn’t need this.
‘What’s she doing with you?’ Tracy asked as she tried to catch her breath.
‘She’s got a name,’ Charly said.
‘I wasn’t asking you.’
‘Well, she’s telling you,’ Markie said, indicating that Tracy would be better off buttoning it.
‘What is Charly doing here?’ Tracy asked, drawing sarcastically on Charly’s name.
‘My dad’s been arrested.’
Markie pulled the car into an empty parking space and turned around to look at his mum. ‘When she says her dad she means our dad.’
Charly looked around to see Tracy’s reaction. Her face had drained of colour and she was speechless.