One of the things that you definitely didn’t do with kids was to drive with them in the back of a car through red-light districts at night, looking for a prostitute. In the badlands, near the junction of Water Lane and Bridge Road, an unmarked squad car from vice prowling for kerb-crawlers cruised past them in the opposite direction. Did they recognize her? Tracy drove sedately on, wondering if they had noticed the kid in the back.

Kelly Cross wanted more money. No surprise there then. The puzzle was how she had got hold of Tracy’s mobile number. (Listen, you fat fucking cow, you had no right to take that kiddy. If you want to keep her you’re going to have to fork out a lot more.) Well, there you go, Tracy thought, wasn’t she paying the price of having bought the kid at a discount, as in her heart she’d always known she would have to? And how long would this kind of extortion go on for? Until Courtney was grown up and had kids of her own? Would Kelly last that long? She didn’t really belong to a demographic that boasted of longevity. It would be much better if Kelly Cross died – a bad batch of heroin, a psycho punter – who would miss her, after all? That kiddy, Kelly Cross said. Not my kiddy. Although mothers like Kelly were pretty uninterested in their kids. Weren’t they?

All the lovely places. Bridge End, Sweet Street West, Bath Road. A wasteland. Literally. No one to hear you scream. A couple of prostitutes on the swing shift, huddled up against a wall. Offhand, smoking fags like connoisseurs. One was raddled by life, the other one looked underage, shivering, glassy skin, coming down off something. Pretty Woman it ain’t, Tracy thought. Tracy wondered if they were mother and daughter. They were on the job, she wasn’t any more, she reminded herself.

As Tracy brought the car to a halt her phone rang. Barry. Oh, for God’s sake. The only way to stop him was to speak to him.

‘Where are you?’ he asked when she answered, sounding unnecessarily peeved, like a husband.

‘Bath Road,’ she said, watching as the younger of the two women began tottering towards her car. Thigh-high boots with hooker heels, short denim cut-offs, little strappy vest, nasty jacket.

‘What are you doing there?’ Barry puzzled.

‘Looking for someone. What do you want?’

‘Did you get my messages about this Jackson bloke?’

‘Yes, I’ve got no idea who he is,’ Tracy said.

‘Want me to do something about it?’ Barry asked. The echo of Harry Reynolds’s words to her earlier. She rolled down the car window and the young prostitute, more child than woman, looked confused at the sight of her. ‘You looking for business?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘Yeah,’ Tracy said. She produced a twenty-pound note like a lure and said, ‘Different kind of business.’

‘Tracy?’ Barry said. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I didn’t say but this Jackson bloke, whoever he is, asked about Carol Braithwaite.’

‘Carol Braithwaite? Look, I’ve got to go, Barry. I’ll phone you later.’ She snapped the phone shut and shouted, ‘Hang on,’ to the girl who had taken the money and was about to scarper. She returned reluctantly to the car and was joined by the older woman who, catching sight of Tracy, said, ‘Trace, ’ow yer doing?’

‘Bloody brilliant,’ Tracy said. ‘Quiet tonight, isn’t it?’

‘Recession. And we’re being undercut all the time by crackwhores. There’s girls offering full strip and sex for ten quid. It’s a different world, Tracy.’ It was what Barry had said, what Harry Reynolds had said. Tracy thought she must be missing something, it felt like the same world as ever to her. The rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, kids everywhere falling through the cracks. The Victorians would have recognized it. People just watched a lot more TV and found celebrities interesting, that was all that was different.

‘Yeah, terrible,’ Tracy said. ‘Everything discounted. I’m actually looking for Kelly Cross.’

‘Me mam?’ the younger one said.

Jesus, Tracy thought. Would the circle never be broken? She was acutely aware of Courtney in the back. Was this her half-sister? Was this the fate Courtney would have been destined for if Tracy hadn’t rescued her? The older woman – Liz, if Tracy’s memory served her – peered into the back of the car.

‘Yours?’ she asked Tracy, sucking thoughtfully on her cigarette.

‘Not exactly,’ Tracy said. Not much reason for dissembling with this pair, what were they going to do – stagger off to the nearest police officer and grass her up?

‘Nice outfit, pet,’ Liz said to Courtney, who in reply made a papal kind of gesture with her silver wand.

‘Do you recognize her?’Tracy asked. All three of them scrutinized the kid in the back seat. She was halfway through an apple and paused mid-bite. Rosy red, eaten by Snow White. The apple and the wand, the orb and sceptre of her sovereign regalia.

‘No, sorry,’ Liz said.

‘Nah,’ the younger one said, to Tracy’s relief.

‘Have you got a name?’ Tracy said to her.

‘Nah.’

Tracy looked at the girl. A fille de joie who was forty times more likely to die a violent death than the fellow members of her sex. What could you do? Nothing.

‘No, go on really,’ Tracy said, ‘what’s your name?’

‘Chevaunne. C-h-e-v-a-u-n-n-e, I have to spell it every time, it’s a fucking pain. It’s Irish.’ At least the girl could spell, even if it was only her own misspelled name. Kelly Cross was so thick she couldn’t even spell ‘Siobhan’. Kelly’s mother had been Irish. Fionnula. Tracy had been around so long that she’d seen three generations of prostitutes pass her by. ‘A right Gyppo,’ Barry used to say. Gypsies and Irish were interchangeable as far as Barry was concerned, both equally bad.

Tracy turned her attention to Liz. ‘Can you give me an address for Kelly?’

‘She was in Hunslet.’

‘Harehills,’ Chevaunne butted in. ‘But it’ll cost you.’

Tracy handed over another twenty-pound note in exchange for Kelly Cross’s address. ‘Now fuck off, the pair of you,’ she said.

A grey Avensis turned into Bath Road, pulled off the road in front of them and parked on the forecourt of an abandoned warehouse of some kind, a blighted piece of real estate. Seemed a mite coincidental. Tracy looked for the pink rabbit but the car was too far away for her to see.

‘Ey up,’ Liz said and the belles de jour teetered off again, towards the Avensis.

‘That’s a grey car,’ Courtney said helpfully.

‘Yeah, I see it, pet.’

Tracy parked in the alley that ran along the back of the street. Killed the engine, climbed out of the car and unstrapped Courtney. The last place she wanted to take the kid was Kelly Cross’s house but what choice did she have – she could hardly leave her alone in the back of a car in a seedy alley. From the first moment she saw Kelly Cross in the Merrion Centre yesterday it seemed Tracy had done nothing but make choices, an endless series of forks in the road. Sooner or later she was going to hit a dead end. If she hadn’t already.

Kelly was the only thing that linked Tracy to Courtney. Get rid of Kelly and you broke the chain of evidence leading back to Tracy. Then it would just be Imogen and her little girl Lucy. No need for Tracy to look over her shoulder for the rest of her life. Kill Kelly Cross. Even the alliteration was alluring. Her heart started to thud uncomfortably in her chest. Get rid of the link between Kelly and the kid, between Kelly and herself. Forge a new terrible bond but get rid of Kelly Cross’s claims on them. Who was better placed to commit a murder properly than the police?

The door to Kelly’s back yard was open. The yard was small and claustrophobically full of rubbish – an old washing machine, a filthy armchair, black bin bags containing God knows what. The windows of the house were filthy, cracked, full of powdery, fly-filled cobwebs. There was a piece of paper sellotaped on to the peeling paintwork of the back door that spelled out ‘Cross’ in a semi-literate hand. The door itself looked as if it had been kicked in a few times. Tracy sighed. She had spent a working lifetime knocking on doors like this.