Robertson Bennet hasn’t seen his parents since 1986, but he’s never reported them missing… until now. As DI Birch soon realises, there’s far more to their disappearance than meets the eye. This is only the beginning of Cover Your Tracks, my third novel and the third outing for my fictional Edinburgh detective Helen Birch. As the book goes on we come across trainspotters, prison gangs, forgotten diaries and long-ago cold cases. And I return to some of the themes I’m most interested in exploring through my writing: family, “good” vs “evil”, and whether or not it’s possible to truly disappear.
I’m often asked in literary Q&As: “what one idea started you writing this novel?” I don’t think anyone is ever ready for the sheer length potential waffle of the answer. Because in truth, there’s never one idea: every novel starts out as a kind of dot-to-dot puzzle. Each dot is the tiny kernel of an idea – often they’re flung wide, the connections between them neither obvious nor easy. Writing the first draft is the act of joining each dot to the next, so that slowly, a picture begins to form. By the time I submit the final novel, the whole image has become clear.
With Cover Your Tracks, the first ‘dot’ appeared out of a conversation with my mum about our family tree. My mum is very into genealogy: she’s traced both lines of my family as far back as she’s been able, which means I have a very comprehensive record of exactly where (and who!) I come from. She has whole shelves of photocopied birth certificates, marriage records, photographs and obituaries – not that she needs them. The whole thing is also committed to memory, so I can ask her literally any question about our family’s history and she can answer it instantly.
One day, my mum was complaining about a distant ancestor she’d struggled to track through census records. He was counted in some years, but not others, she said. It took her a great deal of searching and re-searching and re-re-searching before she realised what had happened. This man went by two different names. Some years, his birth name was given. Other years, he appeared under a nickname – presumably the name his close family used. By doing this, he’d almost succeeded in disappearing forever: if it weren’t for my mum’s perseverance, our family line would have stopped with him. Obviously, this got me thinking: how powerful can a second identity be? Is it still possible to become officially invisible, by doing nothing more than changing one’s name?
Another crucial ‘dot’ was added to the picture one hot day in autumn 2018, when I found myself stranded on Peterborough Station by a broken down train. I had a long wait for the next service and it was sunny, so I decided to walk out to the end of the platform where the overhead coverings ran out, and there was direct sunlight to sit in. I didn’t realise I was walking into gricer territory. Gricers are perhaps better known as train-spotters, though they generally don’t like that term. A dwindling breed, they’re people – usually men – who visit stations across the UK to study timetables, track arrivals and departures and generally study the comings and goings of trains.
Sitting in the sunshine on Peterborough Station, I watched one particular gricer go about his business. Every train that stopped or passed through was logged in his notebook. The ones that stopped at our shared platform, he also photographed. His camera was pretty snazzy, and its accompanying kit included at least one long lens. I started wondering what this man’s photos must look like. Okay, they’d obviously contain a lot of trains… but what else? What might be visible in the distance, what details unwittingly captured? A face in a window, perhaps, caught in the long reach of that lens. Someone standing or walking where they shouldn’t be. Someone disposing of something. An anomaly, that might also be a clue.
Cover Your Tracks is the result of many months spent finding a way to join these two seemingly un-connectable dots together, via a whole series of other, smaller idea-dots. How cold does a cold case have to be before it becomes unsolvable, for example? In policework, how far can a hunch really take you? And perhaps the most important question: can you ever completely cover your tracks, or can you – as my grandmother would say – be sure your sins will find you out?
Cover Your Tracks by Claire Askew (Published by Hodder & Stoughton)
Robertson Bennet returns to Edinburgh after a 25-year absence in search of his parents and his inheritance. But both have disappeared. A quick, routine police check should be enough - and Detective Inspector Helen Birch has enough on her plate trying to help her brother, Charlie, after an assault in prison. But all her instincts tell her not to let this case go. And so she digs. George and Phamie Bennet were together for a long time. No one can ever really know the secrets kept between husband and wife. But as Birch slowly begins to unravel the truth, terrible crimes start to rise to the surface.
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