1974

Chapter 3

Just gone midnight, Sunday 15 December 1974.

The Hunslet and Beeston exit of the M1.

It came out of the dark at me like I’d been asleep my whole life:

Tall yellows and strange oranges, burning blues and real reds, lighting up the black night to the left of the motorway.

Hunslet Carr ablaze.

I pulled up fast on the hard shoulder, hazard lights on, thinking the whole of fucking Leeds must be able to see this.

I grabbed my notebook and bolted out of the car, scrambling up the embankment at the side of the motorway, crawling through the mud and bushes towards the fire and the noise; the noise, revving engines and the thunderous, continuous, monot onous banging of time itself being beaten out.

At the top of the motorway embankment I pulled myself up on my elbows and lay on my belly staring down into hell. There below me in the basin of Hunslet Carr, just 500 yards beneath me, was my England on the morning of Sunday 15 December, in the year of Our Lord 1974, looking a thousand years younger and none the better.

A gypsy camp on fire, each of the twenty or so caravans and trailers ablaze, each beyond relief; the Hunslet gypsy camp I’d seen out of the corner of my eye every single time I’d driven into work, now one big fat bowl of fire and hate.

Hate, for ringing the burning gypsy camp was a raging metal river of ten blue vans churning seventy miles an hour in one continuous circle, straight out of speedway night at Belle fucking Vue, trapping within the roaring wheels fifty men, women and children in one extended family hanging on to each other for dear life, the intense flames scolding and illuminating the sheer stark fucking terror upon their faces, the children’s cries and mothers’ howls piercing through the sheets and sheets of noise and heat.

Cowboys and fucking Indians, 1974.

I watched as fathers and sons, brothers and uncles, broke from their families and tried to charge between the vans, to punch, to kick, to beat on the metal river, screaming up at the night as they fell back into the mud and the tyres.

And then, as the flames rose higher still, I saw who the gypsy men were so desperately trying to reach, whose hearts they had their own so set upon.

Around the entire camp, in the shadows down below me, lay another outer circle beyond the vans, two men deep, beating out time with their truncheons upon their shields:

The new West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police putting in a spot of overtime.

And then the vans stopped.

The gypsy men froze in the firelight, slowly edging back towards their families in the middle, dragging the injured back through the dirt with them.

The banging of the shields intensified and the outer ring of police began to advance, one big fat black snake sliding in single file between the vans, until the outer circle became the inner, the snake facing the families and the flames.

Zulu, Yorkshire style.

And then the banging stopped.

The only sounds were the fire cracking and the children crying.

Nothing moved, ‘cept my heart at my ribs.

Then, out of the night and away to the left, I could see a van’s headlights approaching, bumping across the wasteground towards the camp. The van, maybe white, suddenly braked hard and three of four men tumbled out. There was some shouting and some police broke off from the circle.

The men tried to get back into the van and the van, definitely white, began to reverse.

The nearest police van jerked into life, churned mud and hit the van full on in the side, nought to seventy in half the metres.

The van stopped dead and the police descended on it, drag ging men out through broken windows, exposing flanks of white flesh.

Sticks and stones set about their bones.

Within the circle a man stepped forward, barechested. The man lowered his head and charged, screaming.

Instantaneously the police snake sprang, moving in and swal lowing up the families in a sea of black and sticks.

I stood up too quickly and toppled down the banking, back towards my car, the motorway, and out.

I reached the bottom of the banking, puking:

Eddie Dunford, North of England Crime Correspondent, with my hand upon the Viva’s door, saw the flames reflected in the glass.

I ran along the hard shoulder to the emergency phone, praying to Christ that it worked and, when it did, beseeching the operator to summon every available emergency service to the Hunslet and Beeston exit of the M1 where, I breathlessly assured her, a ten-car pile-up was fast becoming more, with a petrol tanker ablaze.

That done, I ran back along the motorway and back up the banking, looking down on a battle being lost and a victory that filled my whole body with a rage as impotent as it was engulfing.

The West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police had opened up the backs of their vans and were throwing the bloodied and beaten men inside.

Within the big wheel of fire, officers stripped gypsy women and children of their clothes, throwing the rags into the flames and randomly striking out with their clubs at the naked white skin of the women.

Sudden and deafening shotgun blasts punctuated the horror, as petrol tanks exploded and gypsy dogs were shot, as the police took their shotguns to anything that looked remotely salvageable.

I saw in the midst of this hell, naked and alone, a tiny gypsy girl, ten years old or less, short brown curls and bloody face, standing in that circle of hate, a finger in her mouth, silent and still.

Where the fuck were the fire engines, the ambulances?

My rage became tears; lying at the top of the banking I searched my pockets for my pen, as though writing something, anything, might make it all seem a bit better than it was or a little less real. Too cold to fucking grasp the pen properly, scraw-ling red biro across dirty paper, hiding there in those skinny bushes, it didn’t help at all.

And then he was right there, coming towards me.

Wiping the tears away with mud, I saw a red and black shining face tearing straight out of hell and up the banking towards me.

I half stood to greet it, but fell straight back down into the ground as three black-winged policemen grabbed the man by his feet and greedily took him back down into their boots and clubs.

And then I saw HIM, in the distance, behind it all.

Detective Chief Superintendent George Oldman, illuminated behind the sticks and the bones like some bloody cave painting against the side of a police van, smoking and drinking with some other coppers as the van rocked from side to side.

George Oldman and friends tilted back their heads to the night and laughed loud and long until George stopped dead and stared straight at where I lay 500 yards away.

I threw my face deep down into the mud until it filled my mouth and small stones cut into my face. Suddenly I was ripped free of the mud, pulled up by the roots of my hair, and all I could see was the dark night sky above me before the fat white face of a policeman rose like the moon into my own.

A learner fist went hard into my face, two fingers in my mouth, two blinding my eyes. “Close your fucking eyes and don’t you speak.”

I did as I was told.

“Nod if you know the Redbeck Cafe on the Doncaster Road.” It was a vicious whisper, hot in my ear.

I nodded.

“You want a story, be there at five o’clock this morning.”

Then the glove was gone and I opened my eyes to the black fucking sky and the sound of a thousand screaming sirens.

Welcome home Eddie.

Four hours straight driving, trying to outrun my visions of children.

A four-hour tour of a local hell: Pudsey, Tingley, Hanging Heaton, Shaw Cross, Batley, Dewsbury, Chickenley, Earlsheaton, Gawthorpe, Horbury, Castleford, Pontefract, Normanton, Hem-sworth, Fitzwilliam, Sharlston, and Streethouse.

Hard towns for hard men.

Me, soft; too pussy to drive through Clare’s Morley or sneak a peak at Devil’s Ditch, too chicken to go back to the gypsy camp or even home to Ossett.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, sleep nailing shut my eyes, I’d drifted into some Cleckheaton lay-by and dreamt of Southern girls called Anna or Sophie and a life before, waking with a hard-on and my father’s final rattle:

“The South’11 turn you bloody soft, it will.”

Awake to the face of a brown-haired girl ringed in a wheel of fire and school photographs of little girls no longer here.

Fear turned the key as I rubbed my eyes free and drove off through the grey light, everywhere the browns and the greens waking up all damp and dirty, everywhere the hills and the fields, the houses and the factories, everywhere filling me with fear, covering me in clay.

Fear’s abroad, home and away.

Dawn on the Doncaster Road.

I pulled the Viva into the car park behind the Redbeck Cafe and Motel. I parked between two lorries and sat listening to Tom Jones sing I Can’t Break the News to Myself on Radio 2. It was ten to five when I walked across the rough ground to the toilets round the back.

The toilets reeked, the tiled floor covered in black piss. The mud and clay had dried hard on my skin, turning it a pale red beneath the dirt. I ran the hot tap and plunged my hands into the ice-cold water. I brought the water to my face, closing my eyes and running my wet hands through my hair. The brown water trickled down my face and on to my jacket and shirt. Again I brought the water up to my face and closed my eyes.

I heard the door open and felt a blast of colder air.

I started to open my eyes.

My legs went from beneath me, kicked out.

My head hit the edge of the sink, bile filled my mouth.

My knees found the floor, my chin the sink.

Someone grabbed my hair, forcing my face straight back into the sink’s dirty water.

“Don’t you fucking try to look at me.” That vicious whisper again, bringing me an inch out of the water and holding me there.

Thinking, Fuck You, Fuck You, Fuck You. Saying, “What do you want?”

“Don’t fucking speak.”

I waited, my windpipe crushed against the edge of the sink.

There was a splash and I squinted, making out what looked to be a thin manila envelope lying next to the sink.

The hand on my hair relaxed, then suddenly pulled back my head and casually banged it once into the front of the sink.

I reeled, thrashing out with my arms, and fell back on to my arse. Pain pounded through my forehead, water seeped through the seat of my pants.

I pulled myself up by the sink, stood and turned and fell through the door out into the car park.

Nothing.

Two lorry drivers leaving the cafe pointed at me and shouted, laughing.

I leant against the door to the toilets and fell back through, the two lorry drivers doubling up with laughter.

The A4 manila envelope lay in a pool of water by the sink. I picked it up and shook off brown drops of water, opening and closing my eyes to ease the pain in my head.

I opened the door to the cubicle and grabbed the metal chain, flushing away the long pale yellow shit in the bowl. I closed the cracked plastic lid on the roaring water and sat down and opened the envelope.

Fresh hell.

I pulled out two thin sheets of typed A4 paper and three enlarged photographs.

It was a copy of the post-mortem on Clare Kemplay.

Another horror show.

I couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t look at the photographs, I just read as the dread rose.

The post-mortem was conducted at 7.00 PM on 14 December 1974 at Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield by Dr Alan Courts, with Chief Superintendent Oldman and Superintendent Noble in attendance.

The body measured four feet three inches and weighed seventy-two pounds.

Facial abrasions, possibly bites, were noted on the right upper cheek, as well as on the chin and on the front and back of the neck. Ligature marks and burns upon the neck indicated strangulation as the cause of death.

Strangulation.

The tongue had been gouged by her own teeth as she died strangling. It was suggested that she was probably not uncon scious when the final force was applied.

Probably not unconscious.

The markings 4 LUV had been cut into the victim’s chest with a razor blade. Again, it was suggested this wound was not post-mortem.

4 LUV .

Ligature marks were also found on both the ankles and the wrists. Both sets of marks had drawn blood from deep cuts, suggesting that the victim had fought her attacker for a length of time. The palm of each hand had also been pierced through, possibly by a large nail or a similar metal instrument. A similar wound was found on the left foot and it appeared that an unsuccessful attempt had been made to inflict the same injury to the right foot, resulting in only a partial piercing.

The victim had fought her attacker for a length of time.

Further tests would be needed, however an initial examin ation of particles taken from the victim’s skin and nails revealed a strong presence of coal dust.

Coal dust.

I swallowed.

The vagina and anus showed tears and bruising, both internal and external. The internal tears to the vagina had been caused by the stem and thorns of a rose inserted into the vagina and left there. Again, the substantial majority of these wounds were not post-mortem.

The stems and thorns of a rose.

Horror on horror.

I fought hard for my breath.

They must have turned her over then, on to her chest.

Clare Kemplay’s back was a different world.

A different hell:

Two swan’s wings had been stitched into her back.

“TOOK THE WINGS CLEAN OFF AND LEFT THE POOR BASTARD JUST LYING THERE.”

The stitching was irregular and used a thin waxed rope. In places the skin and the muscle had been reduced to pulp and the stitching had broken free. The right wing had become com pletely detached, the skin and the muscle unable to support the weight of either the wing or the stitching, causing a large tear along the victim’s right shoulder blade.

“THEY’D HACKED THE WINGS OFF. FUCKING SWAN WAS STILL ALIVE.”

At the conclusion of the report, the pathologist had typed:

Cause of death: ASPHYXIA DUE TO STRANGULATION

Through the thin white paper I could see the outlines and shadows of a black and white hell.

I thrust it all back into the envelope, photographs unseen, dry heaving as I struggled with the toilet lock.

I wrenched open the cubicle door, slipping and falling into another fucking lorry driver, his hot piss hitting my leg.

“Fuck off you bloody puff!”

Out the door, sucking in the Yorkshire air, tears and bile across my face.

None of the injuries were post-mortem.

“I’m talking to you, puff.”

My mother was sat in her rocking chair in the back room, looking out at the garden in the light drizzle.

I brought her a cup of tea.

“Look at the state of you,” she said, not looking at me.

“Says you, not dressed at this time. Not like you,” I took a big mouthful of hot sweet tea.

“No, love. Not today,” she whispered.

Out in the kitchen the six o’clock news came on the radio:

Eighteen dead in an old people’s home in Nottingham, the second such fire in as many days. The Cambridge Rapist had claimed his fifth victim and England were trailing by 171 runs in the Second Test.

My mother sat staring out at the garden, letting her tea go cold.

I put the envelope on top of the chest of drawers and lay on my bed and tried to sleep, but couldn’t, and cigarettes didn’t help at all and only made things worse and likewise the mouth-fuls of whisky which just couldn’t or wouldn’t go or stay down, and soon I was seeing rats with little wings that looked more like squirrels with their furry faces and kind words but who would, suddenly, again become rats at my ear, whispering harsh words, calling me names, breaking my bones worse than any sticks or stones until I jumped up and put on the light, except it was day and the light was already on, and so off it would go and so on, sending out signals that no-one was receiving, least of all The Sandman.

“Hands off cocks!”

Shit.

“Anybody hurt in this wreck?”

I opened my eyes.

“Looks like you had quite a night.” Barry Cannon surveying the ruin of my room, a cup of tea in his hand.

“Fuck,” I mumbled, no escape at all.

“It lives.”

“Christ.”

“Thanks. And a good morning to you.”

Ten minutes later we were on the road.

Twenty minutes later, headache banging on an empty stomach, I had finished up my story.

“Well, that swan was found up in Bretton.” Barry was taking the scenic route.

“Bretton Park?”

“My father’s mates with Arnold Fowler and he told him.”

Blast from the past number ninety-nine; me sat cross-legged on a wooden school floor as Mr Fowler talked birds. The man had been a fanatic, starting a bird-watching club at every school in the West Riding, a colurruvin every local paper.

“He still alive?”

“And still writing for the Ossett Observer. Telling me you haven’t been reading it?”

Almost laughing, I said, “So how did Arnold find out?”

“You know Arnold. Owt goes down in the bird world, Arnold’s the first to hear.”

Two swan’s wings had been stitched into her back.

“Seriously?”

Barry looked bored. “Well Sherlock, I imagine the good people at Bretton Park’11 have told him. Spends every waking hour up there.”

I looked out of the window as another silent Sunday sped by. Barry had seemed neither shocked nor even that interested in either the gypsy camp or the post-mortem.

“Oldman’s got a thing about gypsies,” was all Barry had said, before adding, “and the Irish.”

The post-mortem had gotten even less of a reaction and had had me wishing I’d shown the photographs to Barry or, at the very least, had the bloody guts to have looked at them myself.

“They must be bad,” was all I’d said.

Barry Cannon had said nothing.

I said, “It must’ve been a copper at the Redbeck.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“But why?”

“Games, Eddie,” he said. “They’re playing fucking games with you. Watch yourself.”

“I’m a big boy.”

“So I’ve heard,” he smiled.

“Common knowledge round these parts.”

“Whose parts?”

“Not yours.”

He stopped laughing. “You still think there’s a connection to them other missing girls?”

“I don’t know. I mean, yeah. There could be.”

“Good.”

And then Barry began to rattle on about Johnny bloody Kelly again, the bad boy of Rugby League, and how he wouldn’t be playing today and no-one knew where the fuck he was.

I looked out of the window thinking, like who gives a shit?

Barry pulled over on the outskirts of Castleford.

“We here already?” I asked, imagining Dawson’s area would be much posher than this.

“You are.”

I didn’t follow, turning my head every which way.

“Brunt Street’s the first on the left back there.”

“Eh?” Lost, turning my head that way.

Barry Cannon was laughing. “Who the fuck lives at 11 Brunt Street, Castleford, Sherlock?”

I knew that address, raking through the pain in my brain until it slowly came to me. “The Garlands?”

Jeanette Garland, eight, missing Castleford, 12 July 1969.

“Give the boy a prize.”

“Fuck off.”

Barry looked at his watch. “I’ll meet you in a couple of hours at the Swan across the road. Swap horror stories.”

I got out of the car, pissed off.

Barry leant over to close the door. “I told you, you owe me one.”

“Yeah. Cheers.”

And laughing Barry was gone.

Brunt Street, Castleford.

One side pre-war terrace, the other more recent semi detached.

Number 11 was on the terrace side with a bright red door.

I walked up and down the street three times, wishing I had my notes, wishing I could phone first, wishing I didn’t stink of drink, and then rapped quietly and just once upon the red door.

I stood in the quiet street, waited, and then turned away.

The door flew open. “Look, I don’t know where the fuck he is. So will you just piss off!”

The woman paused, about to slam the red door shut. She dragged a hand through her dirty yellow hair and pulled a red cardigan tight around her gaunt frame. “Who are you?” she whispered.

“Edward Dunford.” My little red ape rattling the bars of his cage.

“You here about Johnny?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“Jeanette.”

She put three thin fingers to her white lips and closed her blue eyes.

There at death’s door, with the sky above breaking into a December blue, I took out my pen and some scraps of paper and said, “I’m a journalist. From the Post.”

“Well then, you’d better come in.”

I closed the red door behind me.

“Sit down. I’ll put the kettle on.”

I sat down in an off-white leather armchair in a small but well-furnished front room. Most of the stuff was new and expensive, some of it still wrapped in plastic. A colour TV was on with the sound off. An adult literacy programme was just beginning, the title On the Move written on the side of a speeding white Ford Transit van.

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to lose my hangover.

When I opened my eyes, there she was.

On top of the TV was the photograph, the school portrait I’d dreaded.

Jeanette Garland, younger and fairer than Susan and Clare, was smiling at me with the happiest smile I’d ever seen.

Jeanette Garland was mongoloid.

Out in the kitchen the kettle began to scream and then abruptly went dead.

I looked away from the photograph, glancing at a cabinet stuffed with trophies and tankards.

“Here we are,” said Mrs Garland, putting down a tray on the coffee table in front of me. “Just let it stand a moment.”

“Quite the sportsman, Mr Garland,” I smiled, nodding back at the cabinet.

Mrs Garland pulled her red cardigan tight again around her and sat down on the off-white leather sofa. “They’re my brother’s.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to calculate the woman’s age: Jeanette had been eight years old in 1969, making her mother maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven then, early thirties now?

She looked like she hadn’t slept in days.

She caught me looking. “What can I do for you, Mr Dunford?”

“I’m doing an article on the parents of children who have gone missing.”

Mrs Garland picked at some flecks on her skirt.

I went on, “There’s always a lot of publicity at the time and then it dies down.”

“Dies down?”

“Yeah. The article is about how the parents have coped, after all the fuss has died down, and…”

“About how I’ve coped?”

“Yeah. For example, at the time, do you think the police could’ve done anything more to have helped you?”

“There was one thing.” Mrs Garland was staring straight at me, waiting.

I said, “And what was that?”

“They could have found my bloody daughter, you ignorant, heartless, fucking bastard!” She closed her eyes, her whole body shaking.

I stood up, my mouth dry. “I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

“Get out!”

“I’m sorry.”

Mrs Garland opened her eyes and looked up at me. “You’re not sorry. If you were capable of feeling sorry, you wouldn’t be here.”

I stood in the centre of her front room, my shins trapped between the coffee table and the armchair, suddenly thinking of my own mother and wanting to go over and hold the mother before me. Awkwardly I tried to stride over the coffee table and the pot of tea, unsure of what to say, saying only, “Please…”

Mrs Paula Garland rose to meet me, her pale blue eyes wide with tears and hate, pushing me back hard against the red door. “You fucking journalists. You come into my house talking to me about things you know nothing about, like you’re discussing the weather or some war in another fucking country.” She was crying huge tears now as she struggled to open the front door.

My face on fire, I stepped backwards into the street.

“This thing happened to me!” she screamed, slamming the door in my face.

I stood in the street, in front of the red door, and wished I were anywhere else in the world but Brunt Street, Castleford.

“How’d you get on then?”

“Fuck off.” I’d had an hour and three pints to brood over by the time Barry Gannon showed up. It was now almost last orders and most of the Swan had fucked off home for Sunday lunch.

He sat down with his pint and took a cigarette from my pack. “Didn’t find their Johnny hiding under the bed then?”

I was in no fucking mood. “What?”

Barry spoke slowly, “Johnny Kelly. Great White Hope?”

“What about him?” I was on the verge of cracking him.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Eddie.”

The tankards, the trophies, fuck. “He’s related to the Garlands?”

“Give the boy another fucking prize. Paula Garland’s bloody brother. Been living there since her husband died and that model left him.”

Face on fire again, blood boiling. “Husband’s dead?”

“Fuck, Dunford. You’ve got to know these things.”

“Shit.”

“Never got over Jeanette. Ate a shotgun two or three years ago.”

“And you knew this? Why the fuck didn’t you say?”

“Fuck off. Do your fucking job or ask.” Barry took a big bite out of his pint to hide his bloody grin.

“All right, I’m asking.”

“The husband topped himself about the same time their Johnny started making a name for himself, on and off the pitch.”

“Bit of a Jack the Lad?”

“Aye, right lad about town. Married Miss Weston-super-Mare 1971 or something. Didn’t last. So, when she upped and left him, it was back to his Big Sister’s.”

“The Georgie Best of Rugby League?”

“Don’t suppose you followed it much down South?”

Salvaging some pride, I said, “Wasn’t exactly Front Page stuff, no.”

“Well it was here and you should’ve fucking known.”

I lit another cigarette, hating him for rubbing it in and the smile on his cakehole that went with it.

But fuck pride and the fall. I said, “So Paul Kelly at work, he’s what?”

“Some cousin or something. Ask him.”

I swallowed, swearing this would be the last time ever, “And Kelly didn’t show up for the game today?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to find out, won’t you?”

“Yeah,” I muttered, thinking please God don’t let my eyes fill up.

A voice boomed, “Time gentlemen please.”

We both drained our glasses.

I said, “How’d you get on with Mrs Dawson?”

“She told me my life was in danger,” smiled Barry as he stood up.

“You’re joking? Why?”

“Why not? I know too much.”

We walked out through the double doors to the car park.

“You believe her?”

“They have something on everyone. The question’s just when they’ll use it.” Barry stubbed out his cigarette in the gravel.

“Who’s they?”

Barry was rummaging through his pockets, looking for his car keys. “They don’t have names.”

“Fuck off,” I laughed, the three pints and the fresh air giving me guts.

“There are Death Squads out there. Why not one for Barry Cannon?”

“Death Squads?”

“You think that shit is just for the Yellow Man or the Indian? There are Death Squads in every city, in every country.”

I turned and started to walk away. “You’ve fucking lost it.”

Barry caught my arm. “They train them in Northern Ireland. Give them a taste, then bring them back home hungry.”

“Fuck off,” I said, shaking him loose.

“What? You really think it’s gangs of Paddies in donkey jackets, lugging round big bags of fucking fertiliser, blowing up all these pubs?”

“Yeah,” I smiled.

Barry looked down at the ground, ran his hand through his hair, and said, “If a man comes up to you in the street and asks you for an address, is he lost or is he interrogating you?”

I smiled, “Big Brother?”

“He’s watching you.”

I glanced up at blue sky turning grey and said, “If you seriously believe her, you should tell someone.”

“Who am I going to tell? The Law? These people are the fucking Law. Every life is in danger.”

“So why go on? Why not top yourself like Garland?”

“Because I believe in right and wrong. I believe I will be judged and not by them. So fuck them all’s what I say.”

I looked at the gravel and wanted a slash.

“You coming or what, you pisshead?” said Barry, unlocking his car door.

“I’m going the other way,” I said.

Barry opened the door. “See you then.”

“Yeah, see you.” I turned and started to weave across the car park.

“Eddie!”

I turned round and squinted into the fading winter sun.

“You’ve never had that urge to go and deliver us all from evil then?”

“No,” I shouted across the empty car park.

“Liar,” laughed Barry, pulling shut his car door and starting the engine.

· PM Sunday afternoon, Castleford, waiting for the bus to Pontefract, glad to be out of the madness of Barry Gannon. Three and a half pints and almost glad to be going back to my rats.

The Ratcatcher: a story that had touched the hearts of York shire folk.

The bus was coming up the road. I stuck out my thumb.

The Ratcatcher: Graham Goldthorpe, the disgraced music teacher turned council Rat Man who had strangled his sister Mary with a stocking and hung her in the fireplace last Mischief Night.

I paid the driver and went to the back of the deserted single-decker to smoke.

The Ratcatcher Graham Goldthorpe, who had then taken a shotgun to his troubled mind and its visions of plague upon plague of dirty brown rats.

Mandy Sucks Paki Cocks, said the back of the seat in front of me.

The Ratcatcher: a story close to the heart of Edward Dunford, North of England Crime Correspondent, the former Fleet Street Hack turned Prodigal Son who had shaken and shocked a county with his troubled tale and its visions of plague upon plague of dirty brown rats.

Yorkshire Whites, said the next seat.

The Ratcatcher: my first story at the Post and a Godsend with my father and Jack fucking Whitehead both in hospital.

I rang the bell wishing Jack Whitehead dead.

I stepped off the bus into the end of a Pontefract afternoon. I hid another cigarette inside my father’s old coat and beat the whip of a winter wind on the third attempt.

Ratcatcher Country.

It took me the exact length of the JPS to reach Willman Close from the bus stop, nearly treading in some bloody dogshit as I stubbed it out.

Dogshit in Willman Close, that would have really pissed Graham Goldthorpe off.

It was already dark and most of the Close had the lights on their Christmas trees all lit up. Not Enid Sheard though, the miserable bitch.

Not the Goldthorpes either.

I cursed my life and knocked on the glass door of the bungalow, listening to the barking of the huge Alsatian, Hamlet.

I’d seen it a hundred times before during my all-too-brief stint on Fleet Street. The families, the friends, the colleagues, and the neighbours of the dead or the accused, the very people who would act so offended, so appalled, so insulted, and even so angry at the mere mention of cash for their story. The self same families, friends, colleagues, and neighbours of the dead or the accused, the very people who would telephone a month later, suddenly so eager, so keen, so helpful, and so fucking greedy to mention cash for their story.

“Who is it? Who is it?” The miserable bitch wouldn’t even switch on the hall light, let alone open the door.

I hollered through the door, “It’s Edward Dunford, Mrs Sheard. From the Post, you remember?”

“Of course I remember. Today’s Sunday, Mr Dunford,” she screamed back over the noise of Hamlet the Alsatian.

“My editor,- Mr Hadden, said you telephoned and wanted to speak with one of his reporters,” I shouted through the rippled glass.

“I telephoned last Monday, Mr Dunford. I do my business during the working week, not on the Lord’s Day. I’d thank you and your Boss to do the same, young man.”

“I’m sorry Mrs Sheard. We’ve been very busy. I’ve come a long way and I don’t usually work…” I was mumbling, won dering whether Hadden had lied to me or just mixed up the dates.

“All I can say is, you better have my money then, Mr Dunford,” said Mrs Enid Sheard as she opened the door.

Nigh on penniless, I stepped into the dark and narrow hall and the stink of Hamlet the Alsatian; a stink I had hoped I would never have to suffer again.

The Widow Sheard, seventy irritable years if she was a day, ushered me through into the front room and once again I found myself sitting in the gloom with Enid Sheard, her memories and her lies, as Hamlet scratched at the foot of the glass kitchen door.

I perched on the edge of the sofa and said, “Mr Hadden said you wanted to talk…”

“I’ve never spoken with this Mr Hadden of yours…”

“But you do have something you want to share with us about the events next door?” I was staring at the blank face of the TV, seeing the dead eyes of Jeanette Garland, Susan Ridyard, and Clare Kemplay.

“I’d thank you not to interrupt when I’m speaking, Mr Dunford.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, my stomach hollowed out at each thought of Mrs Garland.

“You smell of alcohol to me, Mr Dunford. I think I’d prefer to meet with that nice Mr Whitehead of yours. And not on a Sabbath, mind.”

“You spoke to Jack Whitehead?”

She smiled with thin lips. “I spoke to a Mr Whitehead. He never told me his Christian name and I never asked.”

I was suddenly hot inside her cold black hole of a room. “What did he say?”

“He said I should speak to you, Mr Dunford. That it wasn’t his story.”

“What else? What else did he say?” I was struggling for air.

“If you’d let me finish…”

I moved along the sofa towards the Widow’s chair. “What else?”

“Really Mr Dunford. He said I should let you have the key. But I said…”

“Key? What key?” I was almost off the sofa and in the Widow’s lap.

“The key to next door,” she proudly announced.

Suddenly the kitchen door flew open with a crash and a thunder of barking as Hamlet the Alsatian charged into the room and jumped between us, his tongue hot, loose, and wet on both our faces.

“Really Hamlet, that’s quite enough.”

It was night outside and Mrs Enid Sheard was fumbling with the back door key to the Goldthorpes’ bungalow. She turned the lock and in I went.

A month ago the police had point blank refused all requests to view the scene of the tragedy and Enid Sheard had not even so much as intimated that she might have had any means of access, but here I stood in the Goldthorpes’ kitchen, in the Lair of the Ratcatcher.

I tried the kitchen light.

“They’ll have disconnected them, won’t they?” whispered Mrs Sheard from the doorstep.

I gave the switch another flick. “Looks that way.”

“Wouldn’t fancy going in there without any light. Gives me the willies just standing here.”

I peered into the kitchen, wondering when Enid Sheard last had any willy. The place smelt stale, like we’d just got back from a week at the caravan.

“You’ll have to come back when it’s light, won’t you? I did tell you you shouldn’t work on a Sunday, didn’t I?”

“You did indeed,” I mumbled from under the kitchen sink, wondering if Enid Sheard had enjoyed her last willy and if she missed it and how that would explain quite a bit.

“What are you doing down there, Mr Dunford?”

“Hallelujah!” I shouted, coming up from under the sink with a candle, thinking thank fucking Christ for that and the Three Day Week.

Enid Sheard said, “Well if you will insist on looking around in the pitch dark, I’ll see if I can’t find you one of Mr Sheard’s old torches. He was always a great one for his torches and his candles was Mr Sheard. Be prepared, he always said. And what with all these strikes and what have you.” She was still chund-ering on as she walked back to her own bungalow.

I closed the back door and took a saucer from a cupboard. I lit the candle and dripped the melting wax on to the saucer, securing the candle to the base with a few drops.

Alone at last in the Lair of the Ratcatcher.

The blood in my feet had run cold.

The candle lit up the walls of the kitchen in reds and yellows, reds and yellows that plucked me up and dropped me back on a hill above a burning gypsy camp, the face of a young girl with brown curls crying out into the night while another little girl lay on a mortuary slab with wings in her back. I swallowed hard, wondered what the fuck I was doing here and pushed open the glass kitchen door.

The bungalow was laid out exactly the same as Mrs Sheard’s. A little light coming through the glass front door at the other end of the hall added to the candle, illuminating a thin hall with a couple of drab Scottish landscapes and an etching of a bird. The five other doors off the hall were all closed. I set the candle on the telephone table, rummaging through my pockets for scraps of paper.

In the Lair of the Ratcatcher…

I’d have no trouble selling it to the nationals. A few photo graphs and I’d be set. Maybe a quick paperback after all. Like Kathryn had said, it practically wrote itself:

6 Willman Close, home to Graham and Mary Goldthorpe, brother and sister, killer and prey.

Inside the hall of the Ratcatcher, I took out my pen and picked a door.

The back bedroom had been Mary’s. Enid Sheard had said before that Graham had been particular about this, insisting that his big sister have the big bedroom for privacy’s sake. The police had also confirmed that Graham had telephoned twice in the twelve months prior to the events of 4 November, complaining of a Peeping Tom at his sister’s window. The police had never been able to substantiate his claims, or had never tried. I felt the heavy dark curtains and wondered if they were new, if Graham had bought them for Mary, to keep out Tom and save her from the eyes he saw.

Whose were those eyes that moved across his sister’s body? The eyes of a stranger, or the same eyes that now stared back at him in the mirror.

The curtains and all the other furniture seemed too heavy for the room, but the same was true of Enid Sheard’s next door and my mother’s. There was a single bed, a wardrobe, and a chest of drawers with a mirror on top, all of them big and wooden. I set the candle down by the mirror beside two hair brushes, a clothes brush, a comb, and a photograph of the Goldthorpes’ mother.

Did Graham come into this room while she slept, taking strands of yellow hair from her brush, hair like their mother’s, to treasure and to keep?

In the top left-hand drawer was some make-up and some skin creams. In the top right-hand drawer I found Mary Gold-thorpe’s underwear. It was silk and had been disturbed by the police. I touched a white pair of knickers, remembering the photographs we’d published of a plain but not unattractive woman. She had been forty when she died and neither the police or myself had turned up any boyfriends. It was expensive underwear for a woman with no lover. And a waste.

Graham watched her as she slept, her hair upon the pillow. Quietly he slipped open the top right-hand drawer, burying his hands deep in the silk contents of her most private drawer. Suddenly Mary sat up in bed.

The bathroom and the toilet were together in the one room and smelt of cold pine. I stood on a pink mat and took a quick piss in Graham Goldthorpe’s toilet, still thinking of his sister. The sound of the flush filled the bungalow.

“Graham? What are you doing?” she whispered.

Graham’s bedroom was next to the bathroom at the front of the house, small and filled with more heavy inherited furniture. On the wall above the head of his single bed were three framed pictures. I rested a knee on Graham’s bed and brought the candle up close to three more etchings of birds, similar to the one in the hall. Graham’s pyjamas were still under his pillow.

Graham froze, his pyjamas stuck to his body with sweat.

Beside the bed were stacks of magazines and files. I put the candle down on a bedside table and picked up a bunch of magazines. They were all transport magazines, about either trains or buses. I left them on the bedspread and went over to the desk, on top of which was a large reel-to-reel tape recorder. There was a space on the bookcase where the police had removed the spools.

Fuck.

The Ratcatcher Tapes, gone and not for good.

“Tonight she caught me in her room as I watched over her,” whis pered Graham underneath the bedcovers as the spools span silently round. “Tomorrow is Mischief Night and tomorrow they will come.”

I pulled a thick book of old railway timetables from the bookcase, marvelling at the uselessness of the thing. On the inside title page Graham Goldthorpe had stuck a drawing of an owl wearing glasses and written:

THIS BOOK BELONGS TO GRAHAM AND MARY GOLDTHORPE. DO NOT STEAL IT OR YOU WILL BE HUNTED DOWN AND KILLED.

Fuck.

I took another book from the shelf and found the same message and in another, and another, and another. Bloody weirdo. I began to put the books back, stopping when I came to a hardback copy of A Guide to the Canals of the North which wouldn’t shut properly.

I opened up A Guide to the Canals of the North and went straight back smack into Hell.

Stuck between the photographs of various canals of the North were the photographs of ten or twelve young girls.

School photographs.

Eyes and smiles shining up in my face.

My mouth dry, heart pounding, I slammed the book shut.

A second later I had it open again, closer to the candle, flying through the photographs.

No Jeanette.

No Susan.

No Clare.

Just ten or so school portraits, six by four inches, of young girls aged ten to twelve.

No names.

No addresses.

No dates.

Just ten pairs of blue eyes and ten white smiles against the same sky-blue background.

Mind and pulse racing, I took another book from the shelf, and another, and another.

Nothing.

Five minutes later I had turned every book and every maga zine inside out.

Nothing.

I stood in the middle of Graham Goldthorpe’s bedroom clutching A Guide to the Canals of the North, the rest of his room at my feet.

“I don’t know what’s so important that you couldn’t come back another day. Oh my! What a mess.” Enid Sheard shone the torch from corner to corner, shaking her head. “Mr Goldthorpe would have a fit if he saw his room like this.”

“You don’t know what the police took away do you?”

She shone the torch in my eyes. “I mind my own business, Mr Dunford. You know that.”

“I know that.”

“They swore to me mind, swore to me they’d left everything just as they’d found it. Will you look at this mess. Are the other rooms the same?”

“No. Only this one,” I said.

“Well, I suppose this’d be the one that interested them,” said Enid Sheard, using her torch as a Colditz searchlight to sweep the room from corner to corner.

“Can you tell what’s missing?”

“Mr Dunford! I never set foot in Mr Goldthorpe’s bedroom before tonight. You journalists. Minds like sewers, the lot of you.”

“I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.”

“They took away all his drawings and his tapes, I do know that.” The beam of white light fixed upon the reel-to-reel. “Saw them carrying the stuff off myself.”

“Mr Goldthorpe never said what was on the tapes?”

“A couple of years ago Mary did tell me he kept a diary. And I remember I said, he likes writing then Mr Goldthorpe does he? And Mary said, he doesn’t write a diary, he tells it to his tape-recorder.”

“Did she say what kind of things he…”

The bright beam hit me square in the eyes. “Mr Dunford, how many times? She didn’t say and I didn’t ask. I…”

“You mind your own business, I know.” With A Guide to the Canals of the North half under my shirt, half down my trousers, I awkwardly picked up the candle. “Thank you, Mrs Sheard.”

Out in the hall Enid Sheard paused by the door to the front room. “You went in there then?”

I stared at the door. “No.”

“But that’s where…”

“I know,” I whispered, picturing Mary Goldthorpe hanging by her stocking in the fireplace, her brother’s brains across three walls. I saw Paula Garland’s husband in the same room.

“Bit of a wasted journey, if you ask me,” muttered Enid Sheard.

In the kitchen I opened the back door and blew out the candle, leaving the saucer on the draining board.

“Better come back inside for a cup of tea,” said Enid Sheard as she locked the back door and dropped the key in her apron pocket.

“No thank you. I’ve taken up quite enough of your Sunday.” The large book was digging into my stomach.

“Mr Dunford, you may conduct your business out in the street for all to see, but I do not.”

I smiled. “I’m sorry. I don’t quite follow you.”

“My money, Mr Dunford.”

“Oh, of course. I’m sorry. I’ll have to come back tomorrow with a photographer. I’ll have a cheque for you then.”

“Cash, Mr Dunford. Mr Sheard never trusted banks and neither do I. So I’ll have one hundred pounds cash.”

I started to walk down the garden path. “One hundred pounds cash it is then, Mrs Sheard.”

“And I trust this time you’ll have the good manners to tele phone and see it’s convenient,” shouted Enid Sheard.

“Really Mrs Sheard. How could you think otherwise,” I shouted, breaking into a run, A Guide to the Canals of the North into my ribs, a bus at the top of the main road.

“One hundred pounds cash, Mr Dunford.”

“Having a nice time?”

· PM The Press Club, in the sights of the two stone lions, Leeds City Centre.

Kathryn was ordering a half, I was nursing a pint.

“How long have you been here?” she said.

“Since they opened.”

The barmaid smiled at Kathryn, mouthing six as she passed her the cider.

“How many you had?”

“Not enough.”

The barmaid held up four fingers.

I scowled at the barmaid and said, “Let’s get a fucking table.”

Kathryn ordered two more drinks and followed me to the darkest corner of the Press Club.

“You don’t look so good, love. What you been doing?”

I sighed and took a cigarette from her pack. “I don’t know where to begin.”

Life on Mars came on the jukebox. “Take your time. I’m in no rush,” said Kathryn, putting her hand on mine.

I pulled my hand out from under hers. “Did you go into the office today?”

“Just for a couple of hours.”

“Who was in?”

“Hadden, Jack, Gaz…”

Jack fucking Whitehead. My neck and shoulders ached with tiredness. “What was he doing in on a Sunday?”

“Jack? The post-mortem. Apparently it was really appalling. Really…” Her words’fell away.

“I know.”

“You spoke to Jack?”

“No.” I took another cigarette from her pack, lighting it tip to tip.

Bowie gave way to Elton.

Kathryn stood up and went to the bar again.

George Greaves raised a cigarette my way from another table. I nodded back. The place was beginning to fill up.

I leant back and stared up at the tinsel and the fairy lights.

“Mr Gannon been in?”

I leant forward too quickly, my stomach and head spinning. “What?”

“Barry been in?”

“No,” I said.

A skinny boy in a maroon suit turned and left.

“Who was that?” said Kathryn, setting down the glasses.

“Fuck knows. Mate of Barry’s. The post-mortem’s the lead then?”

She put her hand on mine again. “Yeah.”

I moved my hand. “Fuck. Is it good?”

“Yeah.” Kathryn reached for her cigarettes but her pack was empty.

I took a pack of cigarettes from my pocket. “Anything else big?”

“Fire at an old folks home killed eighteen.”

“That’s not the lead?”

“No. Clare is.”

“Fuck. Anything else?”

“Cambridge Rapist. Cup draw. Leeds have got Cardiff.”

“Nowt about that gypsy camp on the way in, one just off the M1?”

“No. Not that I’ve heard. Why?”

“Nothing. Heard there’d been a fire or something, that’s all.”

I lit another cigarette and sipped at my pint.

Kathryn took another cigarette from my pack.

“What about the white van? Did you turn anything up?” I asked, putting my cigarettes back in my pocket, trying to remember what kind of car Graham Goldthorpe had driven.

“I’m sorry love. I haven’t had the time. I don’t think there’s anything to it though. The police would have mentioned it and I’m sure it’s not in any of the reports.”

“Mr Ridyard was pretty fucking sure.”

“Well maybe they were just humouring them.”

“They should fucking burn in hell if they were.”

Kathryn’s eyes were shining through the low light, on the verge of tears.

I said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK. Did you meet Barry?” Her voice was shaking.

“Mm. The post-mortem, how much detail did he put in?”

Kathryn downed her drink. “None. How much do you bloody think?”

“Do you know if Johnny Kelly was playing for Trinity today?”

“No, he wasn’t.”

“Gaz say what happened?”

“Nobody knows.”

“Gaz didn’t say why?”

“Nobody knows.” Kathryn picked up her empty glass and put it back down again.

“The press conference is tomorrow?”

Kathryn picked up her empty pack of cigarettes. “Of course.”

“What time?”

“I think they said ten. But I’m not sure.” She pulled out the silver foil from inside the packet.

“What did Hadden say about the post-mortem?”

“I don’t know Eddie. I don’t bloody know.” Her eyes were full again, her face red. “Edward, can I please have a cigarette?”

I took out my pack. “There’s only one.”

Kathryn sniffed hard. “Forget it. I’ll get some more.”

“Don’t be daft. Take it.”

“Did you go to Castleford?” She was rooting around in her bag.

“Yeah.”

“You saw Marjorie Dawson then? What’s she like?”

I lit my last cigarette. “I didn’t see her.”

“Eh?” Kathryn was counting out change for the cigarette machine.

“I saw Paula Garland.”

“Jesus, you never. Fucking hell.”

Her mother was sleeping, her father was snoring, and I was on my knees on her bedroom floor.

Kathryn pulled me up, bringing my mouth up to hers as we toppled back on to her bed.

I was thinking of Southern girls called Sophie or Anna.

Her tongue pushed down harder on mine, the taste of her own cunt in her mouth pushing her harder. I used my left foot to free her legs of her knickers.

I was thinking of Mary Goldthorpe.

She took my cock in her right hand and guided it in. I pulled back, using my own right hand to move my cock clockwise around the lips of her cunt.

I was thinking of Paula Garland.

She dug her nails into my arse, wanting me in deep. I went in hard, my stomach suddenly hollow and sick.

I was thinking of Clare Kemplay.

“Eddie,” she whispered.

I kissed her hard, moving from her mouth to her chin and on to her neck.

“Eddie?” There was a change in her voice.

I kissed her hard, moving from her neck to her chin and back to her mouth.

“Eddie!” A change not for the better.

I stopped kissing her.

“I’m pregnant.”

“What do you mean?” I said, knowing exactly what she fucking meant.

“I’m pregnant.”

I slipped out of her cunt and on to my back. “What are we going to do?” she whispered, putting her ear to my chest. “Get rid of it.”

Fuck, I still felt drunk.

It was almost 2 AM when the taxi dropped me off.

Fuck, I thought as I turned the key in the back door. There was a light still on in the back room.

Fuck, I needed a cup of tea and a sandwich.

I switched on the kitchen light and began to root through the fridge for some ham.

Fuck, I ought to at least say hello.

My mother was sat in her rocking chair, staring at the black TV.

“Do you want a cup of tea, Mum?”

“Your friend Barry…”

“What about him?”

“He’s dead, love.”

“Fuck,” I said automatically. “You’re joking.”

“No, I’m not joking.”

“How? What happened?”

“Car crash.”

“Where?”

“Morley.”

“Morley?”

“Police just said Morley.”

“The police?”

“They rang a couple of hours ago.”

“Why’d they ring here?”

“They found your name and address in the car.”

“My name and address?”

She was shaking. “I’ve been worried sick, Eddie.” She pulled her dressing gown tight, rubbing her elbow over and over again.

“I’m sorry.”

“Where’ve you been all this time?” She was shouting. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard her raise her voice.

“I’m sorry.” I went to put my arms around her just as the kettle in the kitchen began to whistle.

I went out into the kitchen and switched off the electric ring. I came back with two mugs of tea. “This’ll make you feel better.”

“He’s the one who was here this morning isn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“He seemed ever so nice.”

“Yeah.”