They went at it anywhere and everywhere, cars, woods, back alleys, the thin-walled bedroom in the flat she shared with a friend. It had nothing in common with what he and Margaret did in bed, where he always felt he was imposing an indignity on her and she was trying to pretend he wasn’t. Anthea did things that Ray had never even heard of. It was certainly an education. Len Lomax covered for him all the time. Lying came to Len as easily as breathing. The education was over now, Anthea said she didn’t believe in long-term relationships, was worried that he would ‘become emotionally dependent’ on her. Part of him was relieved beyond measure, he’d lived in terror that Margaret would find out, but another part of him ached for the simplicity of it all. ‘Ah, the uncomplicated fuck,’ Len said appreciatively. ‘Right,’ Ray said, although he hated the crudity of such a word being applied to his own life. ‘You’re an old woman, really, Ray,’ Len laughed.

Ray thought maybe he’d passed out on his feet because the next moment the kitchen staff were all fighting, yelling God knows what at each other. One of them threw a huge cooking pot across the kitchen that made a terrific clatter when it landed.

Staggered out, back into the bar. Bumped into Rex Marshall. ‘Fucking hell, Strickland,’ Marshall said, ‘you look far gone. Have a drink.’

If he put a match to himself he would catch fire. Burn with a blue flame. He put his head down on the bar. He wondered where Len Lomax was.

‘Have to go home,’ he whispered when Walter Eastman came over to him. ‘Before I die. Get me a taxi, will you?’ Eastman said, ‘Don’t waste money on a fucking taxi. Call the police!’ Raucous laughter from the bar. Eastman used the phone on the bar top to make a call and some time later – it could have been ten minutes, it could have been ten years, Ray had no relationship to the normal world any more – a young constable entered the bar and said, ‘Sir?’ to Eastman.

Those were the days.

‘What are you doing here?’ Tracy said.

‘Chauffeur for the night,’ Barry Crawford said. ‘Eastman asked me to pick up a legless DC, take him home.’

‘You’re a real brown-nose.’

‘Yeah, well, beats staying in with me mam and watching New Year crap on TV.’ He was leaning casually on the car, smoking. It was freezing out here. She should have put a thermal vest on. Every time someone came out of the Metropole they brought a wash of noise and light out with them. ‘It’s like a Roman orgy in there,’ Barry said.

‘You think?’ Tracy wondered what Barry knew about either Romans or orgies. Precious little, she suspected. They’d been through police training college together and from that she’d gathered that he was both ambitious and lazy so he would probably do well. He ‘fancied’ a girl called Barbara, a nippy girl who teased her hair into a big old-fashioned beehive and worked on a cosmetics counter in Schofields, but he was too scared to ask her out.

‘What about you?’ Barry said to Tracy.

‘On shift. Obviously,’ she said, indicating her uniform. ‘Been called to a disturbance. Some kind of brawl in the kitchen. I think they just found out they weren’t getting overtime for working after midnight or something.’ How had Barry got his hands on a panda car? Tracy had applied to do the driver’s course and heard nothing.

‘You on your own?’ he asked her.

‘I’m with Ken Arkwright. He’s off to the toilets. Who’s this DC you’re driving then?’

‘Strickland.’

‘Speak of the devil, Barry, here comes your fare for the night. Jesus, look at the state of him. You’re going to be spending the first day of 1975 cleaning up vomit.’ Ray Strickland was being manhandled out of the Metropole, supported by a couple of burly CID blokes.

‘Fuck off,’ Barry said amiably to Tracy, dropping his cigarette and grinding it out with his foot.

Ken Arkwright shambled up. ‘Ey up,’ he said to Tracy, ‘Third World War’s breaking out in there. These Mediterranean types, they don’t half know how to get worked up. We’d better get in there and call a truce before they kill each other.’

‘Well,’Tracy said to Barry, ‘you carry on being a taxi service, Barry, and we’ll get on with some real policing.’

‘Sod off.’

‘Same to you,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Happy New Year.’

‘Yes, Happy New Year, lad,’ Arkwright said.

When Tracy looked back over her shoulder she saw DCS Eastman lean in to the driver’s window and heard him give Strickland’s address to Barry. Then he slipped him something else, Tracy couldn’t see what, money or drink probably.

‘What a twat,’ Arkwright said.

‘Barry Crawford?’

‘No. Ray Strickland.’

‘Home then, boss?’ Barry said.

‘No,’ Ray said.

‘No?’

‘No.’ Strickland leaned forward and slurred an address in Lovell Park and Barry said, ‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m fucking sure.’ Strickland fell back against the seat and closed his eyes.

When they arrived in Lovell Park he almost fell out of the car. Barry watched him weave his way unsteadily towards the front doors. You had to hope for the poor bastard’s sake that the lifts were working.

Halfway there, Strickland turned and held a half-bottle of Scotch aloft as if in triumph. ‘Happy New Year!’ he shouted. He stumbled on another few yards and then turned again and shouted, louder this time, ‘What was your name?’

‘Crawford,’ Barry shouted back. ‘PC Barry Crawford. Happy New Year, sir.’

Jeopardy

Thursday

Tracy was woken by a cry, an inchoate sound in the dark. Half comatose, she thought it was the foxes who visited the garden most nights and who made mating sound like murder. She heard the cry again and it took several seconds before she remembered that she was not alone in the house.

Courtney!

Clambering out of bed, she stumbled drowsily to the spare bedroom where she found the kid sound asleep on her back, breathing heavily, her mouth slack. As Tracy turned to go Courtney cried out again, a cawing noise that seemed to indicate distress. She flailed an arm suddenly as if she was trying to ward off an attack but the next second she was so deeply asleep that she could have been a corpse. Tracy felt compelled to give her a little poke and was relieved when she twitched, making a whimpering noise, like a dog dreaming.

Tracy sat on the bed, waiting to see if the kid was going to wake again. No wonder Courtney’s sleep was disturbed – she didn’t know where she was, who she was with. Tracy felt a pang of guilt at having subtracted her from her natural habitat, but then she recalled the murderous expression on Kelly Cross’s face as she dragged Courtney through the Merrion Centre. Tracy had seen enough bashed-up, beat-up kids that social workers had kept in families you wouldn’t give a dog to. Families weren’t always such great places to be, especially for kids.

*

She must have fallen asleep because the next time she woke up Tracy found herself sprawled uncomfortably across the foot of the narrow bed while daylight washed the ugly woodchip. Of Courtney, there was no sign and Tracy experienced an unexpected moment of panic as if a giant hand had clutched at her heart. Perhaps the kid’s rightful mother had appeared under the cloak of night and stolen her back. Or perhaps a stranger had climbed in through the window and spirited her away. Although what were the odds against a kid being abducted twice in twenty-four hours? Probably not as long as you imagined.

When a bleary-eyed Tracy blundered into the kitchen, however, she found the kid sitting at the table spooning her way stoically through a bowl of dry cereal.