cover your tracks

If someone covers their tracks, they hide or destroy evidence of their identity or actions, because they want to keep them secret.

He was a very clever man, a very careful man who never took a chance, a man who totally covered his tracks.

The killer Norfolk schoolgirl Johanna Young may have returned to the scene of the crime to cover his tracks.

from the wrong side of the tracks

If you say that someone comes from the wrong side of the tracks, you mean that they come from a poor, unfashionable, and lower-class area of town.

I know kids back home who come from the wrong side of the tracks. go to school, haven't eaten and their clothes are all torn.

Black music, in the Western world, has always been considered to have emanated from the wrong side of the tracks.

make tracks

If you make tracks, you leave the place where you are, usually in a hurry.

Webb looked at the bar clock. `Ten past nine. We might as well be making tracks.'

Hawkins knew it was time to make tracks out of the country.

About 8pm, we decided it was time to start making tracks, but we all found it difficult to get going.

stop someone in their tracks¹ 

stop someone dead in their tracks

If something stops you in your tracks or stops you dead in your tracks, it makes you suddenly stop moving or doing something because you are very surprised, impressed, or frightened.

Seen across wide fields of corn magnificent cannot fail to stop you in your tracks.

They stopped in their tracks and stared at him in amazement.

They turned round. And then they stopped dead in their tracks, their hearts beating fast. Somebody was behind them.

stop something in its tracks²

stop something dead in its tracks

If someone or something stops a process or activity in its tracks or stops it dead in its tracks, they make it immediately stop continuing or developing.

If Chancellor pulls the plug on the ￡22 billion programme, the resulting job losses could stop Britain's economic revival dead in its tracks.

Francis felt he would like to stop this conversation in its tracks. He wished neither to confirm nor deny Cosmo's suspicions.