1977

The John Shark Show

Radio Leeds

Sunday 29th May 1977

Chapter 1

Leeds.

Sunday 29 May 1977.

It’s happening again:

When the two sevens clash…

Burning unmarked rubber through another hot dawn to another ancient park with her secret dead, from Potter’s Field to Soldier’s Field, parks giving up their ghosts, it’s happening all over again.

Sunday morning, windows open, and it’s going to be another scorcher, red postbox sweating, dogs barking at a rising sun.

Radio on: alive with death.

Stereo: car and walkie-talkie both:

Proceeding to Soldier’s Field.

Noble’s voice from another car.

Ellis turns to me, a look like we should be going faster.

‘She’s dead,’ I say, but knowing what he should be thinking:

Sunday morning – giving HIM a day’s start, a day on us, another life on us. Nothing but the bloody Jubilee in every paper till tomorrow morning, no-one remembering another Saturday night in Chapeltown.

Chapeltown – my town for two years; leafy streets filled with grand old houses carved into shabby little flats filled full of single women selling sex to fill their bastard kids, their bastard men, and their bastard habits.

Chapeltown – my deal: MURDER SQUAD.

The deals we make, the lies they buy, the secrets we keep, the silence they get.

I switch on the siren, a sledgehammer through all their Sunday mornings, a clarion call for the dead.

And Ellis says, ‘That’ll wake the fucking nig-nogs up.’

But a mile up ahead I know she’ll not flinch upon her damp dew bed.

And Ellis smiles, like this is what it’s all about; like this was what he’d signed up for all along.

But he doesn’t know what’s lying on the grass at Soldier’s Field.

I do.

I know.

I’ve been here before.

And now, now it’s happening again.

‘Where the fuck’s Maurice?’

I’m walking towards her, across the grass, across Soldier’s Field. I say, ‘He’ll be here.’

Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Noble, George’s boy, out from behind his fat new Millgarth desk, between me and her.

I know what he’s hiding: there’ll be a raincoat over her, boots or shoes placed on her thighs, a pair of panties left on one leg, a bra pushed up, her stomach and breasts hollowed out with a screwdriver, her skull caved in with a hammer.

Noble looks at his watch and says, ‘Well, anyroad, I’m taking this one.’

There’s a bloke in a tracksuit by a tall oak, throwing up. I look at my watch. It’s seven and there’s a fine steam coming off the grass all across the park.

Eventually I say, ‘It him?’

Noble moves out of the way. ‘See for yourself.’

‘Fuck,’ says Ellis.

The man in the tracksuit looks up, spittle all down him, and I think about my son and my stomach knots.

Back on the road, more cars are arriving, people gathering.

Detective Chief Superintendent Noble says, ‘The fuck you put that sodding siren on for? World and his wife’ll be out here now.’

‘Possible witnesses,’ I smile and finally look at her:

There’s a tan raincoat draped over her, white feet and hands protruding. There are dark stains on the coat.

‘Have a bloody look,’ Noble says to Ellis.

‘Go on,’ I add.

Detective Constable Ellis slowly puts on two white plastic gloves and then squats down on the grass beside her.

He lifts up the coat, swallows and looks up at me. ‘It’s him,’ he says.

I just stand there, nodding, looking off at some crocuses or something.

Ellis lowers the coat.

Noble says, ‘He found her.’

I look back over at the man in the tracksuit, at the man with the sick on him, grateful. ‘Got a statement?’

‘If it’s not too much trouble,’ smiles Noble.

Ellis stands up. ‘What a fucking way to go,’ he says.

Detective Chief Superintendent Noble lights up and exhales. ‘Silly slag,’ he hisses.

‘I’m Detective Sergeant Fraser and this is Detective Constable Ellis. We’d like to take a statement and then you can get off home.’

‘Statement.’ He pales again. ‘You don’t think I had anything…’

‘No, sir. Just a statement detailing how you came to be here and report this.’

‘I see.’

‘Let’s sit in the car.’

We walk over to the road and get in the back. Ellis sits in the front and switches off the radio.

It’s hotter than I thought it would be. I take out my notebook and pen. He reeks. The car was a bad idea.

‘Let’s start with your name and address.’

‘Derek Poole, with an e. 4 Strickland Avenue, Shadwell.’

Ellis turns round. ‘Off Wetherby Road?’

Mr Poole says, ‘Yes.’

‘That’s quite a jog,’ I say.

‘No, no. I drove here. I just jog round the park.’

‘Every day?’

‘No. Just Sundays.’

‘What time did you get here?’

He pauses and then says, ‘About sixish.’

‘Where’d you park?’

‘About a hundred yards up there,’ he says, nodding up the Roundhay Road.

He’s got secrets has Derek Poole and I’m laying odds with myself:

2-1 affair.

3-1 prostitutes.

4-1 puff.

Sex, whatever.

He’s a lonely man is Derek Poole, often bored. But this isn’t what he had in mind for today.

He’s looking at me. Ellis turns round again.

I ask, ‘Are you married?’

‘Yes, I am,’ he replies, like he’s lying.

I write down married.

He says, ‘Why?’

‘What do you mean, why?’

He shifts in his tracksuit. ‘I mean, why do you ask?’

‘Same reason I’m going to ask how old you are.’

‘I see. Just routine?’

I don’t like Derek Poole, his infidelities and his arrogance, so I say, ‘Mr Poole, there’s nothing routine about a young woman having her stomach slashed open and her skull smashed in.’

Derek Poole looks at the floor of the car. He’s got sick on his trainers and I’m worried he’ll puke again and we’ll have the stink for a week.

‘Let’s just get this over with,’ I mutter, knowing I’ve gone too far.

DC Ellis opens the door for Mr Poole and we’re all back out in the sun.

There are so many fucking coppers now, and I’m looking at them thinking, too many chiefs:

There’s my gaffer Detective Inspector Rudkin, Detective Superintendent Prentice, DS Alderman, the old head of Leeds CID Detective Chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson, the new head Noble and, in the centre of the scrum, the man himself: Assistant Chief Constable George Oldman.

Over by the body Professor Farley, the Head of the Department of Forensic Medicine at Leeds University, and his assistants are preparing to take her away from all this.

Detective Superintendent Alderman has a handbag in his hands, he’s taking a WPC and a uniform off with him.

They’ve got a name, an address.

Prentice is marshalling the uniforms, going door to door, corralling the gawpers.

The cabal turns our way.

Detective Inspector Rudkin, as hungover as fuck, shouts, ‘Murder Room, thirty minutes.’

The Murder Room.

Millgarth Street, Leeds.

One hundred men stuffed into the second-floor room. No windows, only smoke, white lights, and the faces of the dead.

In comes George and the rest of his boys, back from the park. There are pats on the back, handshakes here, winks there, like some fucking reunion.

I stare across the desks and the phones, the sweating shirt backs and the stains, at the walls behind the Assistant Chief Constable, at the two faces I’ve seen so many, many times, every day, every night, when I wake, when I dream, when I fuck my wife, when I kiss my son:

Theresa Campbell.

Joan Richards.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

Noble speaks:

‘Gentlemen, he’s back.’

The dramatic pause, the knowing smiles.

‘The following memorandum has been sent to all Divisions and surrounding areas:

‘At 0650 this morning, the body of Mrs Marie Watts born 7.2.45, of 3 Francis Street, Leeds 7, was found on Soldier’s Field, Roundhay, near West Avenue, Leeds 8. The body was found to have extensive head injuries, a cut throat, and stab wounds to the abdomen.

‘This woman had been living in the Leeds area since October 1976, when she came up from London. It is believed she worked in hotels in London. She was reported missing by her husband from Blackpool in November 1975.

‘Enquiries are requested of all persons coming into police custody for bloodstains on their clothing and also enquiries at dry cleaners for any clothing with blood on it. Any replies to Murder Room, Millgarth Street Police Station.

‘Message ends.’

Detective Chief Superintendent Noble stands there with his piece of paper, waiting.

‘Add to that,’ he continues. ‘Boyfriend, one Stephen Barton, 28, black, also of 3 Francis Street. Some form for burglary, GBH. Probably pimped the late Mrs Watts. Works the door at the International over in Bradford, sometimes Cosmos. Didn’t show up at either place yesterday and hasn’t been seen since about six o’clock last night when he left the Corals on Skinner Lane, where he’d just chucked away best part of fifty quid.’

The room’s impressed. We’ve got a name, a history, and it’s not yet two hours.

A chance at last.

Noble lowers his eyes, his tongue on the edge of his lips. Quietly he says, ‘You lot, find him.’

The blood of one hundred men pumping hard and fast, hounds the lot of us, the stink of the hunt like bloody marks upon our brows.

Oldman stands up:

‘It’s going to break down like this:

‘As you all know, this is number 3 at best. Then there’s the other possible attacks. You’ve all worked one or more of them so, as of today, you’re all now officially Prostitute Murder Squad, out of this Station, under Detective Chief Superintendent Noble here.’

PROSTITUTE MURDER SQUAD.

The room is humming, buzzing, singing: everyone getting what they wanted. Me too-

Off post office robberies and Help the fucking Aged:

Sub-postmasters at gun-point, six-barrels in their faces, wives tied up with a smack and a punch in their nighties, only Scrooge won’t give it up, so it’s a cosh from the butt of the shotgun and welcome to heart attack city.

One dead.

‘Murder Squad’ll break down into four teams, headed up by Detective Superintendents Prentice and Alderman and Detective Inspectors Rudkin and Craven. DI Craven will also co-ordinate Admin, from here at Millgarth. Communications will be DS White, the Divisional Officer will be Detective Inspector Gaskins, and Community Affairs and Press will be DI Evans, all based in Wakefield.’

Oldman pauses. I scan the room for Craven, but he’s nowhere.

‘Myself and Detective Chief Superintendent Jobson will also be making ourselves available to the investigation.’

I swear there are sighs.

Oldman turns round and says, ‘Pete?’

Detective Chief Superintendent Noble steps forward again:

‘I want every wog under thirty who’s not married leant on. I want names. Some smartarse said our man hates women – hold the fucking front page.’

Laughter.

‘All right, so let’s have every fucking puff in your book in here too. Same goes for the usuals – slags and their lads. I want names and I want them names in here by five. SPG’ll round them up. Ladies can go to Queens, rest here.’

Silence.

‘And I want Stephen Barton. Tonight.’

I’m biting my nails. I want out of here.

‘So phone home, tell them you’ll be out all night. BECAUSE THIS ENDS HERE TONIGHT.’

One thought – JANICE.

Through the melee and out the door and down the corridor, Ellis trapped back down the hall, calling my name.

Outside the canteen there’s no answer and I slam down the phone just as Ellis catches up.

‘Fuck you going off to?’

‘Come on, we got to get started,’ and I’m off again, down the stairs and out the door.

‘I want to drive,’ he whines behind.

‘Fuck off.’

I’ve got my foot down, flying through the centre back to Chapeltown, police radio still crackling with the New Fire.

Ellis is rubbing his hands together, saying, ‘See he has his good points; big-time overtime.’

‘Unless they vote to continue ban,’ I mutter, thinking I’ve got to lose him.

‘More for them that wants it.’

I say, ‘When we get there, we should split up.’

‘Get where?’

‘Spencer Place,’ I say, like he’s as dumb as he looks.

‘Why?’

I want to throw on the fucking brakes and punch him but, instead, I smile and say, ‘Try and nip some of the usual bullshit in the bud. Stop them all yapping.’

I turn right, back on to Roundhay Road.

‘You’re boss,’ he says, like it’s only a matter of fucking time.

‘Yeah,’ I say and keep my foot down.

‘You take the right-hand side. Start with Yvonne and Jean in 5.’

We’ve parked up round the corner on Leopold Street.

‘Fuck. I have to?’

‘You heard Noble. Names, he wants fucking names.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll do Janice and Denise in 2.’

‘Bet you will.’ He’s looking at me sideways.

I let it go with a wink.

He reaches for the door. ‘Then what?’

‘Keep going. Meet you back here when you’re done.’

He tuts and scratches his knackers as he gets out the car, his mind made up.

I think my heart’s going to fucking burst.

I wait until Ellis is inside number 5, then I open the door and walk up the stairs.

The house is quiet and stinks of smoke and dope.

I tap on her door at the top of the stairs.

She comes to the door looking like a Red Indian, her dark hair and skin covered in a film of sweat, like she’s just been fucking and fucking for real.

The nights I’ve dreamt about her.

‘You can’t come in. I’m working.’

‘There’s been another.’

‘So?’

‘You can’t stay round here.’

‘So how about your place?’

‘Please,’ I whisper.

‘You going to make an honest woman of me, are you Mr Policeman?’ ‘I’m serious.’

‘So am I. I need money.’

I pull out notes, screwing them up in her face.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ I nod.

‘What about a ring, Prince Bobby?’

I sigh and start to speak.

‘One like you gave your wife.’

I look at the carpet, the stupid flowers and birds woven together under my feet.

I look up and Janice slaps me once.

‘Piss off, Bob.’

‘Fucking give him up!’

‘Piss off!’

Ellis pushes her head back, banging it against the wall. Tuck off!’

‘Come on, Karen,’ I say. ‘Just tell us where he is and we’re away.’

‘I don’t fucking know.’ She’s crying and I believe her.

We’ve been at this now for over six hours and DC Michael Ellis wouldn’t know the fucking truth if it walked up and smacked him in the gob, so he walks up to Karen Burns, white, twenty-three, convicted prostitute, drug addict, mother of two, and smacks her in the gob instead.

‘Easy Mike, easy,’ I hiss.

She falls away against her wallpaper, sobbing and angry.

Ellis tugs at his balls. He’s hot, fucked off, and bored and I know he wants to pull down her pants and give her one.

I say, ‘Half-time Mike?’

He sniffs and rolls his eyes and walks back down the hall.

The window’s open and the radio on. A hot Sunday in May and all you’d usually hear would be Bob fucking Marley, but not today. Just Jimmy Savile playing twenty-five years of Jubilee hits, as every cunt and his stash hide under their beds, waiting for the sirens to stop, the shit to end.

Karen lights a cig and looks up.

I say, ‘You do know Steve Barton?’

‘Yeah, unfortunately.’

‘But you’ve no idea where he is?’

‘If he’s any bloody sense, he’ll have legged it.’

‘Has he any bloody sense?’

‘Some.’

‘So where’d he leg it to?’

‘London. Bristol. I’ve no fucking idea.’

Karen’s flat stinks and I wonder where the kids are. Probably been taken off her again.

I say, ‘You reckon he did it?’

‘No.’

‘So give me a name and I’m out of here.’

‘Or what?’

‘Or I’ll go and get some fucking lunch and let my mate out there question you, and then I’ll come back and we’ll take you down Queens Street.’

She tuts, exhales, and says, ‘Who do you want?’

‘Anyone who likes a bit of strange. Anything odd.’

‘Anything odd?’ she laughs.

‘Anything.’

She stubs out the cigarette on a plastic tray of chips and curry sauce and gets up and takes an address book out of the knife drawer. The room now stinks of burning plastic.

‘Here,’ she says, tossing the little book over to me.

I scan the names, the numbers, the licence plates, the lies.

‘Give me someone.’

‘Under D. Dave. Drives a white Ford Cortina.’

‘What about him?’

‘No rubber, likes to stick it up your arse.’

‘So?’

‘He doesn’t say please.’

I take out my notebook, copy down the licence plate.

‘Heard he don’t always pay and all.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘There’s a taxi driver who likes to bite.’

‘We’ve heard.’

‘That’s your lot then.’

‘Thanks,’ I say and see myself out.

I drop the coins.

‘Joseph?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Fraser.’

‘Bobby the bobby. Just a matter of time I says, and see if it ain’t so.’

I am in the phone box two down from the Azad Rank, watching a couple of Paki kids bowling at each other. Ellis is sleeping off his Sunday lunch in the car: two cans of bitter and a fat cheese sandwich. There’s Sunday cricket on the radio, more heat forecast, birds singing, lilting bass and sax from a terrace.

It can’t last.

The man on the other end is Joseph Rose: Joe Rose, Jo Ro. Another Paki kid joins the game.

I say, ‘SPG are coming to take everyone away, and not to Zion.’

‘Fuck them.’

‘See you try,’ I laugh. ‘You got some names for me?’

Joseph Rose: part-time prophet, part-time petty thief, full-time Spencer Boy with draw to score and debts to pay, he says:

‘This be concerning Mrs Watts?’

‘In one.’

‘Your pirate won’t stay away, no?’

‘No. So?’

‘So people be spooked anyway’

‘By him?’

‘Nah, nah. The two sevens, man.’

Fuck, here we go. ‘Joseph, give me some fucking names.’

‘All I hear is the ladies say it’s Irish. Same as befores.’

The Irish.

‘Ken and Keith know anything?’

‘Same as I say’

As I hang up two black SPG transit vans fly down the street and I’m thinking, fuck the Spencer Boys:

HEAVY DUTY DISCIPLINE COMING DOWN.

It’s going up to eight and the car is getting smaller, light starting to fade. Across Leeds 7 bonfires are going up, and not fucking Jubilee Beacons. Me and Ellis are still sat off Spencer Place, doing fuck all but sweat and get on each other’s tits.

Nervous, like the whole fucking city:

Ellis stinks and we’ve got the windows down, smelling the wood and Rome burn, cat calls and yells upon the hot black air: the ones we’ve not pinched building barricades, putting out the milk bottles for later.

Edgy:

I’m thinking about giving Louise a ring, wondering if she’ll be back from the hospital, feeling bad about Little Bobby and yesterday, coming back to Janice and getting fucking stiff, and then it all comes down.

HARD:

Glass smashing, brakes slamming, a red car careering down the road, zig-zagging, its windscreen gone, hitting one kerb, flipping over at the foot of a lamppost.

‘Christ,’ shouts Ellis. ‘That’s Vice.’

We’re both out of the car, running across Spencer Place to the upturned motor.

I look up the street:

There’s a bonfire on a piece of wasteland at the top of the road illuminating a small gang of West Indians, black shadows dancing and whooping, thinking about finishing off what they’ve just started, sticking the boot in.

I stare into the black night, the barricades and bonfires, the high flames all loaded with pain:

A proud coon steps forward, all dreadlocks and Mau Mau attitude:

Come and have a go.

But I can already hear the sirens, the SPG, the Specials and Reserves, our sponsored fucking monsters let loose on the wind, and I turn back to the red car.

Ellis is bending down, talking to the two men upside-down inside.

‘They’re all right,’ he shouts to me.

‘Call an ambulance,’ I say. ‘I’ll stay with them until cavalry get here.’

‘Fucking niggers,’ says Ellis, running back to our car.

I get down on all fours and peer into the car.

It’s dark and at first I don’t recognise the men inside.

I say something like, ‘Don’t try and move. We’ll have you out in a minute.’

They nod and mumble.

I can hear more cars and brakes.

‘Fraser,’ moans one of the men.

I peer in and over at the man trapped in the passenger seat.

Fucking Craven, Detective Inspector Craven.

‘Fraser?’

I pretend I can’t hear him, saying, ‘Hang on, pal. Hang on, mate.’

I look back up the road again and see a transit van spewing out SPG, tearing off after the wogs through the bonfire.

Ellis is back. ‘Soon as the ambulance gets here, Rudkin wants us back at the Station. Says it’s a right madhouse.’

‘Like this isn’t? You wait with them,’ I say, standing up.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’ll be back in a bit.’

Ellis is muttering and cursing as I tear off back up towards number 2, back up towards Janice.

‘Fuck you want?’

‘Let us in. I just want to talk.’

‘There’s a surprise,’ she says but opens the door to let me in.

She’s barefoot in a long flower skirt and t-shirt.

I stand in the centre of the room, the window open, the smell of smoke and the start of a riot outside.

I say, ‘They threw a brick or something at a Vice car.’

‘Yeah?’ she says, like it doesn’t happen every other night of the fucking week.

I shut my mouth and put my arms round her.

‘So that’s what you want?’ she laughs.

‘No,’ I lie, fucked off and hard.

She squats down, pulling at my zip as I fall back and sink into the bed.

She starts sucking, my mind black sky with stars popping in and out, listening to the sirens and the screams, knowing the shit hasn’t even begun.

‘Fuck you been?’

‘Shut up, Ellis.’

‘It was fucking DI Craven in the car, you know?’

‘You’re joking?’

I get into the car, the street still full of blue lights and SPG.

The bonfires out, the wogs nicked, Craven and his mate in St James, and DC Ellis still not content.

I let him drive.

‘So where were you?’

‘Leave it,’ I say quietly.

‘Rudkin’s going to fucking murder us,’ he moans.

‘Is he fuck,’ I sigh.

I stare out the open window at Black Leeds, Sunday 29 May 1977.

‘You think no-one knows about you and that slag?’ says Ellis suddenly. ‘Everyone knows. Fucking embarrassing, it is.’

I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t care if he knows or not, don’t care who knows, but I don’t want Louise to know and now I can’t keep little Bobby’s face out of my mind.

I turn and say, ‘Tonight’s not the night. Save it for later.’

For once he takes my advice and I go back to the window, him to the road, steeling ourselves.

Millgarth Police Station.

Ten o’clock going on the Middle Ages.

Live from my own Dark Ages:

Down the stairs into the dungeons, keys and locks turning, chains and cuffs rattling, dogs and men barking.

Let the Witch Trials begin:

DI Rudkin’s in his shirtsleeves and crop at the end of the white heat/white light corridor.

‘Good of you to join us,’ he smirks.

Ellis, pinched face and itching palms, nods in apology.

‘Bob Craven all right, is he?’

‘Yeah, cuts and bruises,’ gabbles Ellis.

I say, ‘Got anything?’

‘Full house tonight.’

‘Anything concrete?’

‘Maybe,’ he winks. ‘And you?’

‘Same as before: the Irish, the taxi driver, and Mr Dave Cortina.’

‘Right then,’ says Rudkin. ‘In here.’

He opens a cell door and it’s, aw fuck.

‘One of yours yeah, Bob?’

‘Yeah,’ I mouth, stomach gone.

They’ve got Kenny D, Spencer Boy, in his cheap checked underpants bent back over the table in the Black Christ Hold: head and back pinned down against the wood, arms outstretched, feet splayed, cock’n’balls open to the world.

Rudkin shuts the door.

The whites of Kenny’s eyes are on their stalks, straining to see who’s come into his upside-down hell.

He sees me and takes it in: five white coppers and him: Rudkin, Ellis, and me, plus the two uniforms holding him down.

‘Spot of routine questioning was all it was,’ laughs Rudkin. ‘Only Sambo here, he’s got a bit of a guilty conscience and decides to be the black Roger fucking Bannister.’

Kenny is staring up at me, teeth locked in pain.

The door opens behind me, then closes. I glance round. Noble’s got his back against the door, watching.

Rudkin smiles at me and says, ‘Been asking for you, Bob.’

My mouth’s dry and cracks when I ask, ‘Has he said anything else?’

‘That’s just it, isn’t it lads,’ Rudkin laughs along with the two uniforms. ‘You want to tell DS Fraser here, why it was you wanted to have a word with Sambo in first place?’

One of the uniforms, champing for his leg up, gushes, ‘Found some of his gear round number 3 Francis Street.’

He pauses, letting it sink in:

Mrs Marie Watts of 3 Francis Street, Leeds 7.

‘And then he denies even knowing the late Mrs Marie Watts,’ crows Rudkin.

I’m standing in the cell, walls closing in, the heat and stink rising, thinking, aw fuck Kenny.

‘I’ve told him,’ says Rudkin, ‘I’m going to add some blue to that black skin of his if he doesn’t start giving us some answers.’

Down on the table, Kenny closes his eyes.

I bend down, my mouth to his ear. ‘Tell them,’ I hiss.

He keeps his eyes closed.

‘Kenny,’ I say, ‘these men will fuck you up and no-one will give a shit.’

He opens his eyes, straining to stare into mine.

‘Stand him up,’ I say.

I go over to the far wall opposite the door; there’s a newspaper cutting taped to the grey gloss paint.

‘Bring him closer.’

They bring him in, eyeball to the wall.

‘Read it, Kenny,’ I whisper.

There’s blood on his teeth as he reads aloud the headline: ‘No action against policemen over detainee’s death.’

‘You want be the next fucking Liddle Towers?’

He swallows.

‘Answer me.’

‘NO!’ he screams.

‘So sit down and start talking,’ I yell, pushing him down into the chair.

Noble and Rudkin are smiling, Ellis watching me closely.

I say, ‘Now Kenny, we know you knew Marie Watts. All we want to know first is how come your fucking stuff was at her place?’

His face is puffed up, his eyes red, and I hope he’s fucking smart enough to know I’m his only friend here tonight.

At last he says, ‘I’d lost me key, hadn’t I?’

‘Come on, Kenny. It’s not fucking Jackanory.’

‘I’m telling you. I’d taken some stuff from my cousins and I lost my key and Marie says it was all right to dump it at hers.’

I look up at Ellis and nod.

DC Ellis brings his fists down hard from behind into Kenny’s shoulder blades.

He screams, falling to the floor.

I’m down there with him, eyeball to eyeball.

‘Just fucking tell us, you lying piece of black shit.’

I nod again.

The uniforms haul him back up into the chair.

He’s got his fat pink mouth hanging open, tongue white, hands to his shoulders.

‘Oh, why are we waiting, joyful and triumphant,’ I start singing as the others join in.

The door opens and another bloke looks in, laughing, and then goes back out.

‘Oh why are we waiting, joyful and triumphant, oh why are we waiting…’

I give the sign and it stops.

‘You were fucking her, just say it.’

He nods.

‘I can’t hear you,’ I whisper.

He swallows, closes his eyes, and whispers, ‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah what?’

‘I was…’

‘Louder.’

‘Yeah. I was fucking her, right.’

‘Fucking who?’

‘Marie.’

‘Marie who?’

‘Marie Watts.’

‘What about her, Kenny?’

‘I was fucking her, Marie Watts.’

He’s crying; big fat fucking tears.

‘You dumb fucking monkey.’

I feel Rudkin’s hand on my back.

I turn away.

Noble winks.

Ellis stares.

It’s over.

For now.

I stand in the white corridor outside the canteen.

I call home.

No answer.

They’re still at the hospital or up in bed; either way she’ll be fucked off.

I see her father in the bed, her walking up and down the ward, Bobby in her arms, trying to get him to stop crying.

I hang up.

I call Janice.

She answers.

‘You again?’

‘You alone?’

‘For now.’

‘What about later?’

‘I hope not.’

‘I’ll try and get over.’

‘Bet you will.’

She hangs up.

I look at the bleached floor, at the bootmarks and the dirt, the shadows and the light.

I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know where to go.

The John Shark Show

Radio Leeds

Monday 30th May 1977

Chapter 2

Ancient English shitty city? How can this ancient English shitty city be here! The well-known massive grey chimney of its oldest mill? How can that be here! There is no spike of rusty iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real prospect. What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up? Maybe it is set up by the Queen’s orders for the impaling of a horde of Commonwealth robbers, one by one. It is so, for the cymbals clash, and the Queen goes by to her palace in long procession. Ten thousand swords flash in the sunlight, and thrice ten thousand dancing girls strew flowers. Then follow white elephants caparisoned in red, white and blue, infinite in number and attendants. Still, the chimney rises in the background, where it cannot be, and still no writhing figure is on the grim spike. Stay! Is the chimney so low a thing as the rusty spike on the top of a post of an old bedstead that has tumbled all awry. Stay! I am twenty-five years and more, the bells chime in jubilation. Stay.

The telephone was ringing.

I knew it was Bill. And I knew what he wanted from me.

I stretched across the other brown pillow, the old yellow novels, the strewn grey ashes, and I said:

‘Whitehead residence.’

‘There’s been another one. I need you here.’

I put down the telephone and lay back in the shallow ditch I’d dug myself among the sheets and the blankets.

I stared up at the ceiling, the ornate brocade around the light, the chipped paint and the cracked veins.

And I thought about her and I thought about him as St Anne pealed the dawn.

The telephone was ringing again, but I’d closed my eyes.

I woke in a rapist sweat from dreams I prayed were not my own. Outside trees hung in the heat, moping in willow pose, the river black as a lacquer box, the moon and stars cut from drapes up above, peeping down into my dark heart:

The World’s Forgotten Boy.

I hauled my tried bag from Dickens to the chest of drawers, across the threadbare flooring, pausing before the mirror and the lonely bones that filled the shabby suit in which I slept, in which I dreamt, in which I hid my hide.

Love you, love you, love you.

I sat before the chest of drawers upon a stool I made in college and took a sip of Scotland and pondered Dickens and his Edwin, me and mine, and all that’s thine:

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

I sang and hummed along:

One Day My Prince Will Come, or was it, If I’d Have Known You Were Coming I’d Have Baked A Cake?

The lies we speak and the ones we don’t:

Carol, Carol, Carol.

Such a wonderful person:

All wanked out on my bathroom floor, on my back, feeling for the toilet paper.

I wiped the come off my belly and squeezed the tissues into a ball, trying to shut them out.

The Temptations of St Jack.

Again the dream.

Again the dead woman.

Again the verdict and the sentence come.

Again, it was happening all over again.

I woke on my floor on my knees by my bed, hands together thanking Jesus Christ My Saviour that I was not the killer of my dreams, that he was alive and he forgave me, that I had not murdered her.

The letterbox rattled.

Children’s voices sang through the flap:

Junky Jack, Druggy Jack, Fuck You Jack Shitehead.

I couldn’t tell if it was morning or afternoon or whether they were just another gang of truants sent to stake my nerves out in the sun for the ants.

I rolled over and went back to Edwin Drood and waited for someone to come and take me a little bit away from all this.

The telephone was ringing again.

Someone to save my soul.

‘You OK? You know what time it is?’

Time? I didn’t even know what fucking year it was, but I nodded and said, ‘Couldn’t get out of bed.’

‘Right. Well, at least you’re here. Small mercies, etc’

You’d think I’d have missed it, the hustle/bustle/tussle etc of the office, the sounds and the smells, but I hated it, dreaded it. Hated and dreaded it like I’d hated and dreaded the corridors and classrooms of school, their sounds and their smells.

I was shaking.

‘Been drinking?’

‘About forty years.’

Bill Hadden smiled.

He knew I owed him, knew he was calling in his debts. Looking down at my hands, I couldn’t quite think why.

The prices we pay, the debts we incur.

And all on the never-never.

I looked up and said, ‘When did they find her?’

‘Yesterday morning.’

‘I’ve missed the press conference then?’

Bill smiled again. ‘You wish.’

I sighed.

‘They issued a statement last night, but they’ve held the meet over until eleven this morning.’

I looked at my watch.

It had stopped.

‘What time is it?’

‘Ten,’ he grinned.

I took a taxi from the Yorkshire Post building over to the Kirkgate Market and sat in a gutter in the low morning sun with all the other dumb angels, trying to get it together. But the crotch of the trousers of my suit stank and there was dandruff all over my collar and I couldn’t get the tune of The Little Drummer Boy out of my mind and I was surrounded by pubs, all closed for another hour, and there were tears in my eyes, terrible tears that didn’t stop for quarter of an hour.

‘Well look what the bloody cat dragged in.’

Sergeant Wilson was still on the desk, taking me back.

‘Samuel,’ I nodded.

‘How long’s it been?’ he whistled.

‘Not long enough.’

He was laughing, ‘You here for the press conference?’

‘Not for the bloody good of my health, am I?’

‘Jack Whitehead? Good health? Never.’ He pointed upstairs. ‘You know the way’

‘Unfortunately’

It was not as busy as I thought it would be and I didn’t recognise anyone.

I lit a cigarette and sat at the back.

There were a lot of chairs down at the front and a WPC was putting out about ten glasses of water and I wondered if she’d let me have one, but I knew she wouldn’t.

The room started to fill with men who looked like footballers and a couple of women and for a moment I thought one of them was Kathryn, but when she turned round she wasn’t.

I lit another cigarette.

A door opened down the front and out came the police, damp suits and ties, red necks and faces, no sleep.

The room was suddenly full, the air gone.

It was Monday 30 May 1977.

I was back.

Thanks, Jack.

George Oldman, in the middle of the table, began:

‘Thank you. As I’m sure you are aware,’ he was smiling, ‘the body of a woman was found on Soldier’s Field, Roundhay, early yesterday morning. The body has been identified as that of Mrs Marie Watts, formerly Marie Owens, aged thirty-two, of Francis Street, Leeds.

‘Mrs Watts was the victim of a particularly brutal attack, the details of which we are unable to reveal at this stage of our inquiry. However, a preliminary post-mortem by Professor Farley of the Department of Forensic Medicine at Leeds University, has determined that Mrs Watts was killed by a substantial blow to the head from a heavy blunt object.’

A substantial blow and I knew I shouldn’t be here, letting him take me there:

Soldier’s Field: under a cheap raincoat, another rollneck sweater and pink bra pushed up over flat white tits, snakes pouring from her stomach wounds.

Oldman was saying, ‘Mrs Watts had been living in the city since October last year, after moving up from the London area where it is believed she worked in a number of hotels. We are particularly interested in talking to anyone who can give us more information about Mrs Watts and her life in London.

‘We would also appeal to any member of the public who was in the vicinity of Soldier’s Field on Saturday night, Sunday morning, to come forward for purposes of elimination only. We are particularly interested in speaking to the drivers of the following cars:

‘A white Ford Capri, a red or maroon Ford Corsair, and a dark-coloured Landrover.

‘Again, I would stress that we are trying to trace these vehicles and their drivers for elimination purposes only and that any information received will be treated in the strictest confidence.’

Oldman took a sip of water, before continuing:

‘Furthermore, we would like to appeal for a Mr Stephen Barton of Francis Street, Leeds, to come forward. It is believed that Mr Barton was a friend of the deceased and could have valuable information about the last few hours of Mrs Watts’ life.’

Oldman paused, then smiled: ‘Again, this is for elimination purposes only and we would like to emphasise that Mr Barton is not a suspect.’

There was another pause as Oldman went into a whispered huddle with the two men next to him. I tried to put names to the faces: Noble and Jobson I knew, the other four were familiar.

Oldman said, ‘As some of you are no doubt aware, there are some similarities between this murder and those of Theresa Campbell in June 1975 and Joan Richards in February 1976, both of whom were prostitutes working in the Chapeltown area of the city.’

The room erupted and I sat there shocked that Oldman had said this so openly, given all his previous form.

George moved his hands up and down, trying to calm everyone: ‘Gentlemen, if you’ll let me finish.’

But he couldn’t stop it, and neither could I:

It was worse than I thought it would be, more than I thought it would be: white panties off one leg, sandals placed on the flab of her thighs.

Oldman had paused, his best Headmaster stare on show until the room went quiet. ‘As I say,’ he continued, ‘there are some similarities that cannot be ignored. At the same time, we cannot categorically say that all three murders are the work of the same individual. However, a possible link is one avenue of inquiry we are pursuing.

‘And, to that end, I’m announcing the formation of a task force under Detective Chief Superintendent Noble, here.’

That was it, chaos; the room couldn’t contain these men and their questions. All around me, men were on their feet, shouting and screaming at Oldman and his boys.

George Oldman was smiling, staring straight back at the pack. He pointed at one reporter, cupping his ear to the question, then feigning indignation and exasperation that he couldn’t hear the man. He put up his hands, as if to say, no more.

The noise subsided, people sat back down on the edge of their seats, poised to pounce.

Oldman pointed at the man still standing.

‘Yes, Roger?’ he said.

‘Was this latest victim, Marie Watts, was she a prostitute then?’

Oldman turned to Noble, and Noble leant into Oldman’s microphone and said, ‘At this point in our investigation, we can neither confirm nor deny such reports. However, we have received information that Mrs Watts was known in the city as something of what we would describe as a good-time girl.’

Good-time girl.

The whole room thinking, slag.

Oldman pointed to another man.

The man stood and asked, ‘What specific similarities have led you to investigate a possible connection?’

Oldman smiled, ‘As I say, there are some details of these crimes that we are unable to make public. However, there are some obvious similarities in the location of the murders, the age and lifestyles of the victims, and the way in which they were killed.’

I was drowning:

Blood, thick, black, sticky blood, matting her hair with pieces of bone and lumps of grey brain, slowly dripping into the grass on Soldier’s Field, slowly dripping over me.

At the back, I raised a hand above the water.

Oldman looked over the heads at me, frowned for a moment, and then smiled. ‘Jack?’ he said.

I nodded.

A couple of people down the front turned round.

‘Yes, Jack?’ he said again.

I stood up slowly and asked, ‘Are these the only three murders under consideration at the moment?’

‘At the moment, yes.’

Oldman nodded and pointed at another man.

I sat back in my chair, drained, relieved, the questions and answers still flying around me.

I closed my eyes, just for a bit, and let myself go under.

The dream is strong, black and blinding at first, then slowly settling, hovering quietly behind my lids.

Open my eyes and she’ll still be there:

A white Marks & Spencer’s nightie, soaked black with blood from the holes he’s left.

It’s January 1975, just a month after Eddie.

The fires behind my eyes, I can feel the fires behind my eyes and I know she’s back there, playing with matches behind my eyes, lighting her own beacons.

Full of holes, for all these heads so full of holes. Full of holes, all these people so full of holes. Full of holes, Carol so full of holes.

‘Jack?’

There was a hand on my shoulder and I was back.

1977.

It was George, a copper holding the door for him, the room now empty.

‘Lost you for a minute back there?’

I stood up, my mouth dirty with old air and spit.

‘George,’ I said, reaching for his hand.

‘Good to see you again,’ he smiled. ‘How’ve you been keeping?’

‘You know.’

‘Aye,’ he nodded, because he knew exactly how I’d been keeping. ‘Hope you’re taking it easy?’

‘You know me, George.’

‘Well, you tell Bill from me that he better be taking good care of you.’

‘I will.’

‘Good to see you again,’ he said again, walking over to the door.

‘Thanks.’

‘Give us a call if you need anything,’ he shouted over from the door, saying to the younger officer, ‘Finest journalist I ever met, that man.’

I sat back down, the finest journalist Assistant Chief Constable George Oldman ever met, alone in the empty room.

I walked back through the heart of Leeds, a tour of a baked, bone-dry hell.

My watch had stopped again and I strained to hear the Cathedral bells beneath the noise; the deafening music from each shop I passed, the car horns punched in anger, hot angry words on every corner.

I looked for the spire in the sky, but there was only fire up there; the midday sun high and black across my brow.

I put my hand to my eyes just as someone walked straight into me, banging right through me, hard; I turned and watched a black shadow disappear down an alley.

I chased into the alley after it but heard horse’s hooves fast upon the cobbles behind me but then, when I turned, there was only a lorryload of beer trying to edge up the narrow street.

I pressed my face into the wall to let it pass and came away with red paint down the front of my suit, all over my hands.

I stepped back and stared at the ancient wall and the word written in red:

Tophet.

I stood in the alley in the shadows of the sun, watching the word dry, knowing I’d been here before, knowing I’d seen that shadow before, somewhere before.

‘It’s not a right good day to be walking around covered in blood,’ laughed Gaz Williams, the Sports Editor.

Stephanie, one of the typists, wasn’t laughing; she looked at me sadly and said, ‘What happened?’

‘Wet bloody paint,’ I smiled.

‘So you say,’ said Gaz.

The banter was light, same as it always was. George Greaves, the only one who’d been here longer than me or Bill, he’d got his head down on his desk, snoring his lunch off. There was local radio on somewhere, typewriters and telephones ringing, and a hundred ghosts waiting for me at my desk.

I sat down and took the cover off the typewriter and got a blank sheet and brought it up ready for business, back at my roots.

I typed:

POLICE HUNT FOR SADISTIC KILLER OF WOMAN

Detectives are hunting a killer who murdered Mrs Marie Watts, aged thirty-two, and dumped her body on playing fields not far from Leeds city centre. The body of Mrs Watts, of Francis Street, Leeds, was discovered by a jogger early yesterday morning.

It was lying on Soldier’s Field, Roundhay, near Roundhay High School and the Roundhay Hall Hospital. Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Noble, head of Leeds CID, said she had severe head injuries and other injuries, on which he did not wish to elaborate. The killer was sadistic and possibly a sexual pervert.

Sensationally, Assistant Chief Constable George Oldman confirmed that police are investigating possible links to two other unsolved murders of Leeds women:

It is believed that the latest victim, Mrs Watts, had moved to Leeds from London in October last year. The police would like to speak to anyone who has any information about Marie Watts, who was also known as Marie Owens. The police would also like to speak to Mr Stephen Barton of Francis Street, Leeds, a friend of Mrs Watts. It is believed that Mr Barton could have vital information about the last few hours of Mrs Watts’ life. It was stressed, however, that Mr Barton is not a suspect.

Assistant Chief Constable Oldman also appealed for any member of the public who was in the vicinity of Soldier’s Field last Saturday night to come forward. The police are particularly interested in the drivers of a white Ford Capri, a dark red Ford Corsair, and a Landrover. Mr Oldman stressed that they were attempting to trace these drivers for elimination purposes only and any information would be treated in the strictest confidence.

Anyone with information should contact their nearest police station or the Murder Room direct on Leeds 461212.

I pulled the paper and read it back.

Just a pile of rusty little words, all linked up to make a chain of horror.

I wanted a drink and a cig and not here.

‘You finished already?’ said Bill Hadden over my shoulder.

I nodded and handed him the sheet, like it was something I’d found. ‘What do you think?’

Out of the window there were clouds coming, turning the afternoon grey, spreading a sudden sort of quiet over the city and the office, and I sat there, waiting for Bill to finish reading, feeling as lonely as I’d ever felt.

‘Excellent,’ grinned Bill, his wager paying out.

‘Thanks,’ I said, expecting the orchestra to start up, the credits and the tears to roll.

But then the moment was gone, lost. ‘What are you going to do now?’

I leant back in my chair and smiled. ‘I quite fancy a drink. And yourself?’

This big man, with his red face and grey beard, sighed and shook his head. ‘Bit early for me,’ he said.

‘It’s never too early, only too late.’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow then?’ he said, hopefully.

I got up from my chair, giving him a tired wink and grin. ‘Undoubtedly.’

‘OK.’

‘George,’ I shouted.

George Greaves looked up from his desk. ‘Jack?’ he said, pinching himself.

‘Coming down the Press Club?’

‘Go on then, just a quick one,’ he replied, smiling sheepishly at Bill.

At the lift George gave the office a wave and I bowed, thinking, there are many ways a man can serve his time.

The Press Club, as dark as home.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in, but George was helping me.

‘Fuck, that was funny that was.’

I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.

Behind the bar, Bet gave me a look that was too, too knowing. ‘Been a while, Jack?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How are you, love?’

‘OK. Yourself?’

‘My legs aren’t getting any younger.’

‘You don’t need them,’ laughed George. ‘Just get legless with us, eh Jack?’

And we all laughed and I remembered Bet and her legs and a couple of times back when I thought I could live forever, back when I wanted to, back before I knew what a curse it really was.

Bet said, ‘Scotch?’

‘And keep them coming,’ I smiled.

‘I always try.’

And we all laughed again, me with an erection and a Scotch.

Outside, I was pissed outside, leaning against a wall which said HATE in running white paint. No subject, no object, just HATE.

And it blurred and whirled and I was lost between the lines, between the things I should’ve written and the things I had.

Stories, I’d been telling stories in the bar again:

Yorkshire Gangsters and Yorkshire Coppers and, later, Cannock Chase and the Black Panther.

Stories, just stories. Stopping short of the real stories, of the true stories, the ones that put me here, up against this wall that said HATE.

Clare Kemplay and Michael Myshkin, the Strafford Shootings and The Exorcist killing.

Every dog had his day, every cat her cream, but every camel had his straw, every Napoleon his Waterloo.

True stories.

Black and white against a wall that spelt HATE.

I ran my fingers over the raised paint.

And there I was, wondering just where have all the Bootboys gone?

And then there they were, all around me:

Shaved heads and beer breath.

‘Aye-up Grandad,’ said one.

‘Piss off, puff,’ I said.

He stepped back among his mates. ‘What you fucking have to say that for, you silly old git?’ he said. ‘Cos you know I’m going have to fucking have you now, don’t you?’

‘You can try,’ I said, just before he hit me and stopped me remembering, stopped the memories for a bit.

Just for a bit.

I’m holding her there in the street in my arms, blood on my hands, blood on her face, blood on my lips, blood in her mouth, blood in my eyes, blood in her hair, blood in my tears, blood in hers.

But even the old magic can’t save us now, and I turn away and try and stand and Carol says, ‘Stay!’ But it’s been twenty-five years or more, and I have to get away, have to leave her here alone in this street, in this river of blood.

And I look up and there’s just Laws, just the Reverend Laws, the moon, and him.

Carol gone.

I was standing in my room, the windows open, black and blue as the night.

I’d got a glass of Scotland in my hand, to rinse the blood from my teeth, a Philips Pocket Memo to my lips:

‘It’s 30th May 1977, Year Zero, Leeds, and I’m back at work…’

And I wanted to say more, not much more, but the words wouldn’t obey me so I pressed stop and went over to the chest of drawers, opened my bottom drawer and stared at all the little tapes in all their little cases with all their neat little dates and places, like all those books of my youth, all my Jack the Rippers and Dr Crippens, the Seddons and Buck Ruxton, and I took one out at random (or so I told myself), and I lay back, feet up on the dirty sheets, staring at the old, old ceiling as her screams filled the room.

I woke up once, dark heart of the night, thinking, what if he’s not dead?

The John Shark Show

Radio Leeds

Tuesday 31st May 1977

Chapter 3

The Murder Room, Millgarth.

Rudkin, Ellis, and me.

Just gone six, the morning of Tuesday 31 May 1977.

Sat around the big table, the phones dead, tapping the top.

In through the double doors, Assistant Chief Constable Oldman and Detective Chief Superintendent Noble, dumping two big manila folders on the table.

Detective Inspector Rudkin squints at the cover of the top one and gives it a, ‘Ah for fuck’s sake, not again.’

I read Preston, November 1975.

Fuck.

I know what this means:

Two steps forward, six steps back-

November 1975: The Strafford Shootings still in everyone’s face, internal inquiries coming out our ears, Peter Hunter and his dogs still sniffing round our arses. The West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police with our backs to the wall and our mouths shut, if you knew what was good for you, which side your bread was buttered on etc, Michael Myshkin going down, the judge throwing away the key.

‘Clare Strachan,’ I murmur.

November 1975: COMING DOWN AGAIN.

Ellis puzzled.

Rudkin about to fill him in, but George shuts him up: ‘As you know, Clare Strachan, a convicted prostitute, was found raped and battered to death in Preston almost two years ago now, in November 1975. The Lancashire lads immediately came over to review the Theresa Campbell file, and John here and Bob Craven went over there last year after we got Joan Richards.’

Me thinking, they’re cutting Rudkin out, why?

I glance across at him, he’s nodding, eager to butt in.

But Oldman’s keeping him out: ‘Now whatever you think, whether you count Clare Strachan in or not, we’re going to go back over to Preston and review that bloody file again.’

‘Waste of fucking time,’ spits Rudkin, at last.

Oldman’s going red, Noble’s face thunder.

‘I’m sorry sir, but me and Bob spent two days – was it? – over there last time and, I’m telling you, it’s not the same bloke. Wish it was, but it’s not.’

Ellis chiming in, ‘What do you mean you wish it was?’

‘Because he left so much fucking stuff behind him, it’s a wonder they haven’t nabbed the daft cunt already’

Noble snorts, like, that’s Lancashire for you.

‘What makes you so sure it isn’t?’ asks Ellis.

‘Well, he’d raped her for a start and then he stuck it up her arse. Come both times, though I don’t know how he fucking did it. State of her.’

‘Ugly?’

‘Doesn’t begin to describe it.’

Ellis half-smiling, telling everyone what they already know: ‘Not like our boy. Not like him at all.’

Rudkin nods: ‘Just lets it fly in the grass.’

‘Anything else?’ I say.

‘Yeah then, when he’d had his fun, he jumped up and down on her until her fucking chest give in. Size ten wellies.’

I look at Oldman.

Oldman smiles and says, ‘Everyone finished?’

‘Yeah,’ shrugs Rudkin.

‘Good, because you don’t want to be late, do you?’

‘Aw, for fuck’s sake.’

‘Alf doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’

Detective Chief Superintendent Alfred Hill Head of Lancashire CID.

‘Me again?’ Rudkin asks, looking round the room.

Noble points at Rudkin, Ellis, and me. ‘You three.’

‘What about Steve Barton and the Irish?’

‘Later, John. Later,’ says Oldman, standing up.

In the car park, Rudkin tosses the keys to Ellis. ‘You drive.’

Ellis looks like he’s going to come in his pants. ‘Sure,’ he says.

‘I’m going to get some kip,’ says Rudkin, getting into the back of the Rover.

The sun is shining and I switch on the radio:

Two hundred dead in a Kentucky Nightclub fire, five charged in the Captain Nairac murder, twenty-one coloured youths arrested in connection with a spate of street robberies in South-East London, twenty-three million watch the Royal Windsor Show.

‘Daft cunts,’ laughs Ellis.

I wind down the window and lean my head into the breeze as we pick up speed and head out on to the M62.

‘You know the fucking way?’ shouts Detective Inspector Rudkin from the back.

I close my eyes; 10CC and ELO all the way.

Somewhere over the Moors, I wake with a start.

The radio’s off.

Silence.

I stare at the cars and lorries on either side of us, the Moors beyond, and it’s difficult to think of anything else.

‘You should’ve seen it last February when I drove over with Bob Craven.’ Rudkin’s stuck his head between the front seats. ‘Got caught in a fucking blizzard. Couldn’t see owt but two foot in front. Fucking frightening it was. I swear you could hear them. We were shitting bloody bricks.’

Ellis glances from the road to Rudkin.

I say, ‘Alf Hill was one of the top men, wasn’t he?’

‘Aye. He was first to interview her. It was his men found the tapes and all.’

‘Fuck,’ whistles Ellis.

‘Hates her more than Brady.’

We’re all staring out across the Moors, at the sunshine shining silver, the dark patches of sudden cloud, the unmarked graves.

‘Never ends,’ says Rudkin, sitting back. ‘Never fucking ends.’

Half-nine and we’re pulling into the car park of the Lancashire HQ in Preston.

Detective Inspector Rudkin sighs and puts on his jacket. Trepare to be bored shitless.’

Inside, Rudkin does the talking at the desk as we shake hands, mention mutual friends, and walk up the stairs to Alf Hill’s office.

The uniformed Sergeant knocks on the door and we enter.

Detective Chief Superintendent Hill is a small man who looks like Old Man Steptoe after a rough night. He’s coughing into a dirty handkerchief.

‘Sit down,’ he spits into the cloth.

No-one shakes hands.

‘Back again,’ he grins at Rudkin.

‘Like a bad bloody penny, aren’t I?’

‘Wouldn’t say that John, wouldn’t say that. Always a pleasure, never a chore.’

Rudkin edges forward in his chair. ‘Anything new?’

‘On Clare Strachan? Not that springs to mind, no.’

He starts coughing again, pulls out the handkerchief, and eventually says, ‘You’re busy men I know, busy men. So let’s get on with it.’

We all stand up and head down the corridor to what I presume is their Murder Room, doors closing on either side of us as we go.

It’s a big room with big windows and a view of the hills above them and I’m pretty sure they had some of the Birmingham Pub Bombers here.

Alfred Hill pulls open a cabinet drawer. ‘Just where you left her,’ he smiles.

Rudkin is nodding.

There are other detectives in the room, sitting in their shirtsleeves smoking, the pictures of their dead watching, turning yellow.

Their lot, they eye us like we’d eye them.

Hill turns to one fat man with a moustache and tells him, ‘These lads are over from Leeds, reviewing Clare Strachan. If they need anything, give it to them. Anything at all.’

The man nods and goes back to the end of his cigarette.

‘Be sure to look in yeah, look in before you go,’ says Alf Hill as he heads off back down the corridor.

‘Thanks,’ we all say.

When he’s gone, Rudkin turns to the fat man and says, ‘You heard him Frankie, so go get us some pop or something cold. And leave your fags behind.’

‘Fuck off, Rudkin,’ laughs Frankie, tossing his JPS over to him.

Rudkin sits down, turns to me and Ellis and says, ‘Best get to work, lads.’

Clare Strachan: twenty-six going on sixty-two.

Bloated and fucked before he even got to her.

Married twice, two kids up in Glasgow.

Previous convictions for soliciting:

A complete wreck of a human being, said the judge.

Wound up in St Mary’s hostel, Preston, living with fellow prostitutes, drug addicts, and alcoholics.

On Thursday 20 November 1975, Clare had had sex with three different men, only one of whom had ever been traced.

And eliminated.

The morning of Friday 21 November 1975, Clare was dead. Eliminated.

A boot up her cunt, a coat over her head.

I look up at Rudkin and say, ‘I want to go to the hostel, then the garages.’

Ellis has stopped writing.

‘What for?’ sighs Rudkin.

‘Can’t picture it.’

‘You don’t want to,’ he says, putting out his cig.

We tell the Sergeant on the desk where we’re going and walk back out into the car park.

Frankie comes tearing out after us. ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ he pants.

‘You’re all right,’ says Rudkin.

‘Boss says I better. Show some hospitality.’

‘Going to spring for lunch are you?’

‘Think we could manage something, aye.’

‘Magic,’ grins Rudkin.

Ellis is nodding along like, this is the fucking fast lane.

Me, I feel sick.

St Mary’s hostel is one hundred years old or more, up the road from Preston Station.

Blood and Fire, tattooed into the wall above the door.

‘Any of the same staff still working here?’ I ask Frankie.

‘Doubt it.’

‘What about residents?’

‘You’re joking? Couldn’t find anyone a week later.’

We walk through a dim stinking corridor and peer into the reception cubicle.

A man with lank greasy hair to his shoulders is writing with a radio on.

He looks up, pushes his black NHS frames back up his nose, and sniffs. ‘Help you?’

‘Police,’ says Frankie.

‘Yeah,’ he nods, like, what the fuck they done now?

‘Ask you a few questions?’

‘Yeah, sure. What about?’

‘Clare Strachan. Where can we talk?’

He stands up. ‘Lounge through there,’ he points.

Rudkin leads the way into another shitty room, draughty windows and rotting sofas covered in cig burns and dried food.

Frankie keeps going, ‘And you are?’

‘Colin Minton.’

‘You the warden?’

‘Deputy. Tony Hollis is the senior warden.’

‘Is Tony about?’

‘He’s on holiday’

Softly-softly: ‘Anywhere nice?’

‘Blackpool.’

‘Close.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sit down,’ says Frankie.

‘I wasn’t here when that happened,’ says Colin suddenly, like he’s had enough of this already.

Rudkin takes over: ‘Who was here?’

‘Dave Roberts and Roger Kennedy, and Gillian someone or other I think.’

‘They still about?’

‘Not here, no.’

‘They still work for Council?’

‘No idea, sorry.’

‘Did you ever work with them?’

‘Just Dave.’

‘He talk about Clare Strachan and what happened?’

‘A bit, yeah.’

‘Can you remember anything he said?’

‘Like what?’

It’s Frankie’s town so we don’t say anything when he starts up again, saying, ‘Anything. About Clare Strachan, the murder, anything at all?’

‘Well, said she was mad like.’

‘What way?’

‘Crazy. Should have been in hospital, what Dave said.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Used to stare out the window and bark at the trains.’

Ellis says, ‘Bark?’

‘Aye, bark like a dog.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Yeah, that’s what he said.’

Rudkin catches my eye and I take over with, ‘Dave say anything about boyfriends, stuff like that?’

‘Well I mean, she was on game like.’

‘Right,’ I nod.

‘And he said she was always pissed and she’d let all the blokes here have it off with her and there’d sometimes be fighting and stuff because of her.’

‘How was that?’

‘I don’t know, you’d have to ask them that were here, but like there was some that’d get jealous.’

‘And she wasn’t right choosey, yeah?’

‘No. Not very.’

‘She was fucking the staff and all,’ says Rudkin.

‘I don’t know about that.’

‘I do,’ he says. ‘Afternoon she was murdered she’d had a session with your man Kennedy, Roger Kennedy’

Colin doesn’t say anything.

Rudkin leans forward and smiles, ‘Still go on, that kind of thing?’

‘No,’ says Colin.

‘You’ve gone red,’ laughs Rudkin, standing up.

I say, ‘Which was her room?’

‘I don’t know. But I can show you upstairs.’

‘Please.’

Just me and Colin go upstairs.

At the top I say, ‘None of the same residents still here?’

‘No,’ he says but then, ‘Actually, hang on.’

He goes to the end of the long narrow corridor and bangs on a door, then opens it. He talks to someone inside and then beckons me over.

The room is bare and bright, sunlight across an empty chair and table, across a man lying on a little bed, his face to the wall, his back to me and the door.

Colin gestures at the seat, saying, ‘This is Walter. Walter Kendall. He knew Clare Strachan.’

‘I’m Detective Sergeant Fraser, Mr Kendall. I’m with Leeds CID and we’re looking into a possible link between the murder of Clare Strachan and a recent crime in Leeds.’

Colin Minton is nodding, staring at Walter Kendall’s back.

‘Colin here, he says you knew Clare Strachan,’ I continue. ‘I’d be very grateful for anything you can tell me about Miss Strachan or the time of her murder.’

Walter Kendall doesn’t move.

I look at Colin Minton and say, ‘Mr Kendall?’

Slowly and clearly, his face still to the wall, Walter says, ‘I remember the Wednesday night, Thursday morning, I woke to terrible screams coming from Clare’s room. Real bellowing cries. I got out of bed and ran down the corridor. She was in the room at the top of the stairs. The door was locked and I banged on it for a good five minutes before it opened. She was alone in the room, drenched in sweat and tears. I asked her what had happened, was she all right. She said it was just a dream. A dream, I said. What kind of dream? She said she’d dreamt there was a tremendous weight upon her chest, forcing the air from her lungs, pushing the very life from her, and all she could think was she’d never see her daughters again. I said it must have been something she’d eaten, nonsense I didn’t even mean, but what can you say? Clare just smiled and said she’d had the same dream every night for almost a year.’

Outside a train rattles past, shaking the room.

‘She asked me to stay the night with her and I lay on top of the covers, stroking her hair and asking her to marry me like I often had before, but she just laughed and said she’d only bring me trouble. I said, what did I care about trouble, but she didn’t want me. Not like that.’

My mouth’s dry, the room baking.

‘She knew she was going to die, Sergeant Fraser. Knew they’d find her one day. Find her and kill her.’

‘Who? What do you mean, kill her?’

‘First day I met her, she was drunk and I didn’t think much of it. I mean, you hear so many tall stories in a place like this. But she was persistent, insistent: They’re going to find me and when they do, they’ll kill me. And she was right.’

‘I’m sorry Mr Kendall, but I’m not clear. She say who exactly was going to kill her or why?’

‘The police.’

‘The police? She said the police were going to kill her?’

‘The Special Police. That’s what she said.’

‘The Special Police? Why?’

‘Because of something she’d seen, something she knew, or something they thought she’d seen or knew.’

‘Did she elaborate?’

‘No. Wouldn’t. Said it just meant others would be in the same boat as her.’

‘Don’t suppose you told this to the investigating officers at the time, did you?’

‘As if they’d listen. They didn’t take any notice of me anyway, especially after what happened to me.’

I say, ‘Why? What happened to you Mr Kendall?’

Walter Kendall rolls over in his bed and smiles: his eyes white, the colour gone, the man blind.

‘How did it happen?’ I ask.

‘Friday 21 November 1975. I woke up and I was blind.’

I look over at Colin Minton, who shrugs his shoulders.

‘I could see, but now I’m blind,’ laughs Kendall.

I stand up. ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Kendall. If you think of anything else, please…’

Kendall suddenly reaches out, grabbing the sleeve of my jacket. ‘Anything else? I think of nothing else.’

I pull away. ‘Call us.’

‘Be careful, Sergeant. It can strike anyone, anytime.’

I walk away, down the narrow corridor, pausing by the door to the room at the top of the stairs.

It’s cold here, out of the sun.

Colin Minton raises his eyes and starts to say how sorry he is.

‘Special Police? What fucking bollocks next?’ laughs Detective Inspector Rudkin.

We’re walking up Church Street, towards the garages.

‘These fucking people. They just never accept that the fucking mess they’re in is because they’re junkies and alcoholics. Has to be someone else or something else.’

Frankie’s laughing along. ‘Cunt went blind because he drank industrial-strength paint-stripper.’

‘See?’ says Rudkin.

‘Yeah,’ laughs Ellis. ‘Unlike Bob’s mate.’

‘If wit were shit,’ says Rudkin, shaking his head.

We turn the corner into Frenchwood Street.

On the left are the lock-ups, the garages.

Preston seems suddenly quiet.

That silence again.

‘It was that one,’ whispers Frankie, pointing to the one furthest from us, the one closest to the multi-storey car park at the end of the road.

‘Locked?’ asks Ellis.

‘Doubt it.’

We keep walking towards it.

My chest starts to constrict, ache.

Rudkin’s saying nowt.

Three Pakistani women in black cross in front of us.

The sun goes behind a cloud and I can feel the night, the endless fucking night I’ve always felt.

‘Take notes,’ I tell Ellis.

‘Like what?’

‘Feelings, man. Impressions.’

‘Bollocks. It’s been two years,’ he whines.

‘Do it,’ says Rudkin.

I can’t stop it:

I’m coming up the hill, swaying, bags in my hand. Plastic bags, carrier bags, Tesco bags.

We get to the garage and Frankie tries the door.

It opens.

I’m freezing.

Frankie lights a cig and stands out in the road.

I step inside.

Black, bloody, bleak.

Full of flies, fat fucking flies.

Ellis and Rudkin follow.

The room has the air of the sea bed, the weight of an evil ocean hanging over our heads.

Rudkin is swallowing hard.

I struggle.

Used to stare out the window and bark at the trains.

I’ve felt this before, but not often: Wakefield, December ’74.

Theresa Campbell, Joan Richards, and Marie Watts.

Today on the Moors.

Too often.

The sweet smell of perfumed soap, of cider, of Durex.

The headache is intense, blinding.

There’s a bench, table, wooden crates, bottles, thousands of bottles, newspapers, scraps of this and that, blankets, odd bits of clothing.

‘They did go through this, yeah?’ says Ellis.

‘Mmm,’ mumbles Rudkin.

Trains pass, dogs bark.

I can taste blood.

I’ve slipped on to my knees and he’s come out of me. Now he’s angry. I try to turn but he’s got me by my hair, punching me casually, once, twice, and I’m telling him there’s no need for that, scrambling to give him his money back, and then he’s got it up my arse, but I’m thinking at least it’ll be over then, and he’s back kissing my shoulders, pulling my black bra off, smiling at this fat cow’s flabby arms, and taking a big, big bite out of the underside of my left tit, and I can’t not scream and I know I shouldn’t have because now he’s going to have to shut me up and I’m crying because I know it’s over, that they’ve found me, that this is how it ends, that I’ll never see my daughters again, not now, not ever.

I look up. Ellis is staring at me.

This is how it ends.

Rudkin has a pair of plastic gloves on, pulling a dirt-caked carrier bag out from under the bench.

Tesco’s.

He looks at me.

I squat down beside him.

He opens it up.

Porn mags, old and used.

He closes the bag and slings it back under the bench.

‘Enough?’ he says.

Not now, not ever.

I nod and we go back out into the light.

Frankie lights another cig and says, ‘Lunch?’

Staring into dark pints, thinking worse thoughts, fucked if there’s anything I can do about it.

Frankie brings over the Ploughmans, all withered and bleached.

‘Fuck’s that?’ says Rudkin, getting up off his stool and going back to the bar.

Ellis raises his glass. ‘Cheers.’

Rudkin comes back and tips a whisky into the top of his pint and sits back down. He smiles at Ellis, ‘Impressions?’

Ellis grins back, reading Rudkin wrong, ‘Do I look like Dick fucking Emery?’

‘Yeah, and you’re about as much fucking use.’ Detective Inspector Rudkin’s stopped smiling. He turns to me. ‘Teach him something, Bob?’

‘I’m with you. Different bloke.’

‘Why?’

‘She was attacked indoors. Raped. Sodomised. She did receive substantial head injuries from a blunt instrument, however none were fatal or immobilising.’

Frankie’s got his head to one side. ‘Meaning?’

‘The killer or killers of Theresa Campbell and Joan Richards attacked them out in the open with one blow to the back of their heads. They were either dead or comatose before they hit the ground. Early indications are that the same is true of the latest one, Marie Watts.’

‘And it couldn’t be the same bloke over here using a different m.o.?’

‘It doesn’t really add up. If anything, the resistance, the struggle, was what kept him going.’

‘Turned him on?’ asks Ellis.

‘Yeah. He’ll have raped before, probably since.’

‘So why kill her?’

I’ve only one answer:

‘Because he could.’

Rudkin wipes ale from his face. ‘What about the placing of the boot and the coat?’

‘Similar.’

‘Similar how?’ repeats Frankie.

Ellis is about to chime up, but Rudkin cuts him off dead, ‘Similar.’

Frankie smiles and looks at his watch, ‘Best be getting back.’

‘No offence, mate,’ says Rudkin, patting Frank’s back.

‘None taken.’

We sup up and pile into the car.

It’s almost three and I’m fucking tired, half-pissed.

We’re going to drop Frankie back at the station, say our goodbyes, and head home.

I’m thinking of Janice, half dozing.

Ellis is telling Frankie about Kenny D.

‘Dumb fucking monkey,’ he laughs.

I can see Kenny’s splayed legs, his cheap underpants and shrivelled dick, the pleas in his eyes.

Rudkin’s going on about how we’ll hold him until they bring Barton in.

I picture Kenny in his cell, sweating and shitting it.

They’re all laughing as we swing into the car park.

Detective Chief Superintendent Hill is waiting for us as we come through the front door.

‘Got a minute?’ he says to DI Rudkin.

‘What is it?’

‘Not here.’

Me and Ellis stand around at the desk as Alf Hill takes Rudkin upstairs.

We wait, Frankie hanging around, talking up Lancs/Yorks rivalry.

‘Fraser, up here now,’ yells Rudkin from the top of the stairs.

I start up the stairs, stomach hollow.

Ellis starts to follow.

‘Wait there,’ I snap.

Rudkin and Hill up in the Lancashire Murder Room.

No-one else.

Hill’s putting down the phone.

‘Get that fucking file,’ shouts Rudkin.

I pull it out from the cabinet.

‘The Inquest in there?’

‘Yeah,’ I say.

‘What was the blood group they got off her?’

‘B,’ I say from memory, flicking through for the report.

‘Check it.’

I do and nod.

‘Read it to me.’

I read: ‘Blood grouping from the semen taken from victim’s vagina and rectum, blood group B.’

‘Pass it here.’

I do it.

Rudkin stares at it, flat on his palms:

‘Fuck.’

Hill too:

‘Shit.’

Rudkin holds it up to the light, turns it over, and hands it to Detective Chief Superintendent Hill.

Rudkin picks up the phone and dials.

Hill has sucked his lower lip in, waiting.

‘B,’ says Rudkin into the phone.

There’s a long silence.

Eventually Rudkin repeats, ’9 per cent of the population.’

Another silence.

‘Right,’ says Rudkin and passes the phone to Alf Hill.

Hill listens, says, ‘Will do,’ and puts down the phone.

I stand there.

They sit there.

No-one speaks for about two whole minutes.

Rudkin looks up at me and shakes his head like, this can’t be fucking happening.

I say, ‘What is it?’

‘Farley pulled some semen stains off the back of Marie Watts’s coat.’

‘And?’

‘Blood group B.’

9 per cent of the population.

It’s somewhere around eight or nine in the evening, the light still with us.

My eyes, my shoulders, my fingers ache from the writing.

The phone from here to Leeds hasn’t stopped:

Panic Stations.

Rudkin keeps looking up at me like, this is fucked, and I swear sometimes there’s bloody blame there.

We keep at it:

Transcribing, copying, checking, re-checking, like a gang of fucking monks hunched over some holy books.

Me, I keep thinking, didn’t Rudkin fucking know this? What the fuck were him and Craven doing over here?

Ellis is just sat there scribbling away, totally blown away, head spinning like the fucking Exorcist.

I sketch the scene, the boot and the coat, and I look up and say, ‘I’m going to go back up there.’

‘Now?’ says Ellis.

‘We’re missing something.’

‘We going to stay night?’ asks Rudkin.

We all look at our watches and shrug.

Rudkin picks up the phone.

‘I’ll sort you out,’ says Frankie.

‘Somewhere nice, yeah?’ calls Rudkin, a hand over the receiver.

Up Church Street, the light almost gone, a train snaking out the station.

Yellow lights, dead faces at the glass.

Searching, looking for the lost, trying to find a Thursday night two years ago:

Thursday 20 November 1975.

It had rained during the day, helping keep Clare in the pub, the one at the bottom of the hill, St Mary’s, same name as the hostel.

To the left the multi-storey and Frenchwood Street.

I cross the road.

A car slows behind me, then passes.

A tramp on the corner, asleep on a bed of cans and newspapers.

He reeks.

I light up and stand over him, looking down.

He opens his eyes and jumps:

‘Don’t eat my fingers please, just my teeth. Take them, they’re no use to me now. But I need salt, have you got any salt, any at all?’

I walk past him, down Frenchwood Street.

‘SALT!’ he screams after me. ‘To preserve the meat.’

Shit

The street is dark now.

Estimates put the time of death between eleven and one. About the time she was thrown out of the pub.

The street would have been darker, after the rain, before the wind got going.

The bricks beside the garage have practically given up, wet even now with damp in May.

And then I feel it again, waiting.

I pull open the door.

It’s there, laughing:

You just can’t keep away, can you?

I’ve got a torch in my hand and I switch it on.

She’s pulling up her skirt, taking down her tan tights, letting the flab of her thighs fall loose.

I sweep the room, the weight pressing down.

I’m not going to be able do this.

There’s music, loud, fast, dense, from a car outside.

She’s smiling, trying to make it hard.

The music stops.

I’ll make it hard.

Silence.

I turn her round, pull down the black shiny briefs with their white streaks, and I’m getting bigger now, better, and she’s backing on to me.

There’s rats in here.

But I don’t want that, I want this: her arse, but she reaches round and moves me towards her huge fucking cunt.

Big fucking rats at my feet.

And I’m in her and then I’m out again and she’s slipped on to her knees…

Outside, I puke, fingers in the wall, bleeding.

I look up the street, no-one.

I wipe away the spit and shit, sucking the blood from my fingers.

‘SALT!’ comes the scream.

I jump.

Fuck.

‘To preserve the meat.’

The tramp’s standing there, laughing.

Cunt.

I push him back into the wall and he stumbles, falls over, staring up at me, into me, through me.

I swing my fist down into the side of his face.

He goes into a ball, whimpering.

I punch him again, a disconnected blow that bounces my fist off the back of his head and into the wall.

Frustrated I kick him and kick him and kick him again until there are arms around me, holding me tight, and Rudkin is whispering, ‘Easy Bob, easy’

In a corner of the Post House, I’m begging, pleading into a phone:

‘I’m sorry, we thought it’d be just a day trip and back but they want us to…’

She’s not listening and I can hear Bobby crying and she’s telling me I’ve woken him up.

‘How was your Dad?’

But it’s how the fuck do I think he is and apparently I don’t fucking care so I needn’t even waste my breath.

She hangs up.

I stand there, the smell of fried food from the restaurant, listening to everyone in the bar: Rudkin, Ellis, Frankie, and about five other Preston coppers.

I look down at my fingers, my knuckles, the scuffs on my shoes.

I pick up the phone and try Janice again, but there’s still no answer.

I look at my watch: gone one.

She’s working.

Fucking.

‘They’re bloody closing up, can you fucking believe it?’ says Rudkin on his way to the bogs.

I go back into the bar and drink up.

Everyone’s pissed, really pissed.

‘You got any fucking decent clubs round here?’ says Rudkin coming back, still doing up his fly.

‘Think we could manage something,’ slurs Frankie.

Everyone tries to stand, talking about taxis, and this place and that, telling stories about this bloke and that lass.

I break away and say, ‘I’m going to hit the hay’

Everyone calls me a fucking puff and an arse bandit and I agree and feign drunkenness as I stumble off down the low-lit corridor.

Suddenly Rudkin’s got his arms round me again. ‘You all right?’ he asks.

‘I’ll be right,’ I say. ‘Just knackered.’

‘Don’t forget, I’m always here.’

‘I know’

He tightens his grip: ‘Don’t be afraid, Bob.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of this,’ he says, waving at everything and nothing, pointing at me.

‘I’m not.’

‘Piss off then, you puff,’ he laughs, walking off.

‘Have a good time,’ I say.

‘It’ll make you blind,’ he shouts down the corridor. ‘Like Old Walter.’

A door opens and a man peers out at me.

‘What you fucking want?’

He closes the door.

I hear the lock turn, him check it.

I knock on his door hard, wait, and then walk off to my room, digging the key into my arm.

Sat on the edge of the hotel bed in the middle of the night, the lamp on, Janice’s phone ringing and ringing, the receiver beside me on the sheet.

I go over to Rudkin’s bed and pick up the file.

Turn the pages, the copies we’re to take back.

I come to the Inquest.

I stare at that single, lonely, bloody letter.

Wrong, the B looks wrong.

I hold the paper over the lamp.

It’s the original.

Shit -

Rudkin’s left them with the copy.

I put the paper back and close the file.

Pick the receiver up from the bed.

Janice’s phone’s still ringing.

I put it down.

I pick up the paper again.

Put it down again.

I switch off the lamp and lie there in the dark of the Preston Post House, the room unbearably fucking hot, everything heavy.

Scared, afraid.

Missing something, someone.

At last I close my eyes.

Thinking, don’t be afraid.

The John Shark Show

Radio Leeds

Wednesday 1st June 1977

Chapter 4

The court is a narrow yard of six houses, whitewashed up to the first storey, the windowframes showing the remnants of green paint. Entrance to the court is obtained through an arched, tunnel-like passage which runs between numbers 26 and 27 Dosset Street, both of which are owned by a Mr John McCarthy, a 37-year-old naturalised British subject born in France. Number 27, to the left of the passage, is McCarthy’s chandler’s shop, but the building doubles above and behind as a lodging house. Number 26 is also a lodging house and the rear ground floor has been partitioned, so that a second room has been created. This is her room, number 13.

It’s small, about twelve feet square, and is entered through a door at the right-hand side of the passage at the furthest end from the street. Apart from the bed, there are two tables, another smaller table and two dining-type chairs, one of which has a broken back. A fierce fire has been burning in the grate and the ashes disclose the remains of clothing. Above the fireplace opposite the door hangs a print entitled The Fisherman’s Widow. In a small wall cupboard next to the print there’s some crockery, some empty ginger beer bottles, and a piece of stale bread. A man’s pilot coat doubles as a curtain over the window, one of two looking out into the courtyard at right angles to the door of the room.

I woke before the light, the rain clattering against the window, ladies’ heels down a dark alley.

I sat up in the sheets to see them perched upon the furniture, six white angels, holes in their feet, holes in their hands, holes in their heads, stroking their hair and wings.

‘You’re late,’ said the tallest one, coming over to my bed.

She lay down beside me and took my hand, pressing it against the walls of her stomach, hard beneath the white cotton cloth of her gown.

‘You’re bleeding,’ I said.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘It’s you.’

I put my fingers to my face and they came away bloody.

I pinched my nose in a dirty old handkerchief and asked, ‘Carol?’

‘You remembered,’ she replied.

‘Thank you for seeing me at such notice.’

‘Not a problem,’ said Assistant Chief Constable George Oldman.

We were sat in his brand new Wakefield office, modern to the bone.

It was Wednesday 1 June 1977.

Eleven in the morning, the rain gone.

‘Listen to that,’ said George Oldman, nodding to the open window and the shouts and stomps of cadets drifting up from the Police College. ‘We’ll lose almost fifty per cent within five years.’

‘That many?’

He looked down at the papers on his desk and sighed, ‘Probably more.’

I looked round the room, wondering what he wanted me to say, wondering why I’d asked Hadden to set this up.

‘Looks like you been in the wars too, Jack?’

‘You know me,’ I said, touching the bruise beneath my eye.

‘How’ve you been, seriously now?’

Taken aback by the real concern in his voice, I smiled, ‘Fine, really. Thanks.’

‘It’s been a long time.’

‘Not really. Three years.’

He looked down at his desk again. ‘Is that all?’

He was right: 100 years.

I wanted to sigh, to lie face down on his floor, to be taken back to my bed.

George waved his hand across the desk and asked sadly, ‘But you’ve kept up with all this?’

‘Yeah,’ I lied.

‘And Bill wants you on it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you?’

Thinking about choices and promises, debts and guilt, nodding and keeping on lying, saying, ‘Yeah.’

‘Well, in a way, it’s good because we could use all the publicity we can get.’

‘Not like you.’

‘No. But neither’s this and…’

‘And it can only get worse.’

George handed me a thick white bound dossier and said, ‘Yeah.’

I read:

Murders and Assaults Upon Women in the North of England.

I opened up the first page and the bloody contents:

Joyce Jobson, assaulted Halifax, July 1974.

Anita Bird, assaulted Cleckheaton, August 1974.

Theresa Campbell, murdered Leeds, June 1975.

Clare Strachan, murdered Preston, November 1975.

Joan Richards, murdered Leeds, February 1976.

Ka Su Peng, assaulted Bradford, October 1976.

Marie Watts, murdered Leeds, May 1977.

‘It’s top secret.’

I nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘We’ve circulated it to all the other forces across the country.’

‘And you think each of these women was attacked by the same man?’

‘The three we’ve publicly linked, definitely. The others we can’t discount simply because we’ve no evidence either way’

‘Fuck.’

‘Clare Strachan looks more and more likely and, if she’s in with the others, that’ll be a big help.’

‘Evidence?’

‘More than we got over here.’

I flicked through the pages, skimming words:

Philips screwdriver, abdomen, heavy Wellington boots, vagina, ballpein hammer, skull.

Black and white photos leaping out:

Alleys, terrace backs, wasteland, rubbish tips, garages, playing fields.

‘What do you want me to do with it?’

‘Read it.’

‘I’d like to interview the survivors.’

‘Be my guest.’

‘Thanks.’

He looked at his watch and stood up. ‘Early lunch?’

‘That’d be nice,’ I lied again, another angel dying.

At the door, George Oldman stopped. ‘There’s me doing all the bloody talking and it was you who asked for the interview’

‘Just like old times,’ I smiled.

‘What was on your mind?’

‘We covered it. I wondered if you’d connected any other attacks or murders.’

‘And?’

We were standing in his doorway, half in and half out, women in blue overalls polishing the floors and the walls.

‘And if he’d made contact?’

Oldman looked back at his desk. ‘None.’

George brought the pints over.

‘Food’ll be five minutes.’

The College was quiet, a couple of other coppers drank up when they saw us, everyone else was either a lawyer or a businessman.

George knew them all.

‘How’s Wakefield?’ I asked.

‘Good, you know.’

‘You miss Leeds?’

‘Oh aye, but I’m over there every other bloody day. Especially now.’

‘Lillian and the girls, they keeping well?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

The wall was still there, as high as ever:

A car crash, four maybe five years ago. His only son dead, one daughter paralysed, all kinds of rumours.

‘Here we are,’ said George, two big plates of liver in front of us.

We ate in silence, stealing glances, forming questions, abandoning them under the weight of a thousand bad tangents, worse memories, mires and traps. And then for a moment, just one moment, between the liver and the onions, the dartboard and the bar, I felt sorry for the big man before me, sorry like he didn’t deserve the things he’d been through, the lessons he’d got coming, like none of us deserved our cruel cities and faithless priests, our barren women and unjust laws. But then I remembered all we’d done, the cuts we’d taken, the lives stolen and lost, and knew I was right when I said it could only get worse, so much more worse, the lessons we’d all got coming.

He dropped his knife and fork on to his empty plate and said, ‘Why did you ask if we’d had any contact?’

‘Just a hunch, a feeling.’

‘Yeah?’

I swallowed the last of my lunch, the first in a long time. ‘If it’s the same fellow, he’ll want you to know.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

I drove back to Leeds, the long way, stopping for a third pint at the Halfway House.

‘Not at all. Secrets should stay secret.’

And another.

Radio on:

Princess Anne greeted by noisy protesters as she opens the Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall, police urged not to cooperate on new complaints procedure, Asian man given three years for killing white man.

Three years, that’s all it had been.

It was Wednesday 1 June 1977.

The office Derby-crazy.

Gaz was shouting, ‘What you got, Jack?’

‘Haven’t looked.’

‘Haven’t bloody looked? Come on, Jack. It’s the Derby. Jubilee Derby at that.’

‘Your common people’s race,’ echoed George Greaves. ‘None of your Royal Ascot here.’

‘They reckon there’ll be over a quarter of a million there,’ said Steph. ‘Be great.’

I opened up the paper, hiding the file.

Bill Hadden looked over my shoulder and whistled, ‘Minstrel five to one.’

‘It’ll be Lester’s eighth Derby if he does it,’ said Gaz.

I wanted to fold up the paper, but I didn’t want to see the file again. ‘Can’t see him not, can you?’

‘Go on, Jack. Back Baudelaire,’ smiled Bill.

I made an effort. ‘What you fancy George?’

‘A large one.’

‘Slap him Steph,’ shouted Gaz. ‘Can’t let him talk about you, like that.’

‘You hit him, Jack,’ laughed Steph.

‘Royal Plume,’ said George.

‘Who’s on it?’

‘Joe Mercer,’ said Gaz.

George Greaves was talking to himself. ‘Royal Plume in Jubilee year, it’s fate.’

‘Come on, Jack. I want to get down there before they’re in the stalls.’

‘Hang on, Gaz. Hang on.’

‘Milliondollarman?’ laughed Steph.

‘Can’t fucking rebuild Jack, can they,’ said Gaz.

I said, ‘Hot Grove.’

‘Carson and Hot Grove it is,’ said Gaz, out the door.

An hour later, Piggott had won his eighth Derby and we’d all lost.

We were down the Press Club, drowning our sorrows.

George was saying, ‘Trouble with racing is it’s like sex, great build-up but it’s all over in two minutes thirty six point four four seconds.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said Gaz.

‘Unless you’re French,’ winked Steph.

‘Yeah, they don’t even have a great build-up.’

‘What would you know George Greaves,’ screamed Steph. ‘You haven’t had it in ten years and bet then you never took your socks off.’

‘You told me not to, said they turned you on.’

I picked up the file and left them to it.

‘Should’ve backed it for a place, Jack,’ shouted Gaz.

Grey evening sky, still hot with the rain to come, leaves green and stinking, tapping on my window like I LOVE YOU.

The moon down, the file open.

Murders and Assaults Upon Women in the North of England.

Sugar spilt, milk spoilt.

Mind blank, eyes hollow.

Unlucky stars fallen to the earth, they mocked me with their idiot lines, taunted me with their playground rhymes:

Jack Sprat who ate no fat.

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick.

Little Jack Horner, sat in his corner.

Jack and Jill went up the hill.

No Jill, the Jills all gone, just Jacks.

Jack in a box, Jack the lad.

Jack, Jack, Jack.

Yeah, I’m Jack.

Union Jack.

The same room, always the same room:

The ginger beer, the stale bread, the ashes in the grate.

She’s in white, turning black right down to her nails, hauling a marble-topped washstand to block the door, falling about, too tired to stand, collapsed in the broken-backed chair, spinning, she makes no sense, the words in her mouth, the pictures in her head, they make no sense, lost in her own room, like she’s had a big fall, broken, and no-one can put her together again, messages: no-one receiving, decoding, translating.

‘What shall we do for the rent?’ she sings.

Just messages from her room, trapped between the living and the dead, the marble-topped washstand before her door.

But not for long, not now.

Just a room and a girl in white turning black right down to her nails and the holes in her head, just a girl, hearing footsteps on the cobbles outside.

Just a girl.

I woke panting, burning, sure they’d be waiting.

They smiled and took my hands and feet.

I closed my eyes and let them rip me right back into that room, the same room, always the same room -

Different times, different places, different towns, different houses, always the same room.

Always that same bloody room.

The body is lying naked in the middle of the bed, the shoulders flat, the axis of the body inclined to the left side of the bed. The left arm is close to the body with the forearm flexed at a right angle, lying across the abdomen. The right arm is slightly abducted from the body and resting on the mattress, the elbow bent and the forearm supine with fingers clenched. The legs are wide apart, the left thigh at right angles to the trunk, the right forming an obtuse angle with the pubes.

The whole of the surface of the abdomen and thighs has been removed and the abdominal cavity emptied of its viscera. The breasts cut off, the arms mutilated by several jagged wounds and the face hacked beyond recognition of the features. The tissues of the neck have been severed all round, down to the bone.

The viscera are in various parts viz: the uterus and kidneys with one breast under the bed, the other breast by the right foot, the liver between the feet, the intestines by the right side, and the spleen by the left side of the body. The flaps removed from the abdomen and thighs are on the table.

The bed clothing at the right side is saturated with blood and on the floor beneath is a pool of blood covering about two feet square. The wall by the right side of the bed and in line with the neck is marked by blood which has struck it in a number of separate splashes.

The face has been gashed in all directions, the nose, the cheeks, eyebrows and ears being partly removed. The lips have been blanched and cut by several incisions running obliquely down to the chin. There are also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all the features.

The neck has been cut through the skin and other tissues right down to the vertebrae, the fifth and sixth being deeply notched. The skin cuts in the front of the neck show distinct eccymosis.

The air passage has been cut at the lower part of the larynx through the cricoid cartilage.

Both breasts have been removed by more or less circular incisions, the muscles down to the ribs being attached to the breasts. The intercostals between the fourth, fifth, and sixth ribs have been cut through and the contents of the thorax are visible through the openings.

The skin and tissues of the abdomen from the costal arch to the pubes have been removed in three large flaps. The right thigh is denuded in front to the bone, the flap of skin, including the external organs of generation and part of the right buttock. The left thigh has been stripped of skin, fascia, and muscles as far as the knee.

The left calf shows a long gash through skin and tissues to the deep muscles, reaching from the knee to five inches above the ankle.

Both arms and forearms have extensive and jagged wounds.

The right thumb shows a small superficial incision about one inch long, with extravasation of blood in the skin and there are several abrasions on the back of the hand showing the same condition.

On opening the thorax it appears that the right lung is minimally adherent by old firm adhesions. The lower part of the lung is broken and torn away.

The left lung is intact: adherent at the apex and there are a few adhesions over the side. In the substance of the lung are several nodules of consolidation.

The pericardium is open below.

In the abdominal cavity is some partly digested food and fish and potatoes and similar food was found in the remains of the stomach attached to the intestines.

Spitalfields, 1888.

The heart is absent and the door locked from the inside.

I woke to find them still perched across the sofa.

I flew from the bed and, casting them aside, I flung open Oldman’s dossier:

Murders and Assaults Upon Women in the North of England.

I read and read till my eyes were blood-red and bleeding from all that I’d read.

And then I began to type, type as they chattered among themselves, wheeling around the room in dreadful disharmony, Carol taunting me, scolding me:

‘You’re late. You’re late. You’re always so late.’

One bitten finger in my ear, I kept typing, texts rewritten in a matching, fetching, fresh blood-red.

In the darkest part of the night, before the dawn and the light, I’d finished, just one last thing to do:

I picked up the telephone and pulled the numbers round the dial, my stomach turning with each digit.

‘It’s me, Jack.’

‘I thought you’d never call.’

‘It’s not been easy’

‘It never is.’

‘I need to see you.’

‘Better late than never.’

With the dawn and more soft rain, I woke again. They were sleeping, wilted across my furniture.

I lay alone, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling, the chips in the paint, thinking about her, thinking about him, waiting for St Anne.

I rose and tiptoed past them to the table.

I pulled the paper from the typewriter.

I held the words in my hand and felt my belly bleeding:

Yorkshire, 1977.

The heart absent, the door still locked from the inside.

She came up behind me, leaning over my shoulder, warm against my ear, staring at the words I’d written:

Yesterday’s news, tomorrow’s headline:

The Yorkshire Ripper.

The John Shark Show

Radio Leeds

Thursday 2nd June 1977

Chapter 5

Spade work:

Twenty-four hours’ solid digging.

No sleep since we left Preston -

The drive back over Wednesday morning, Rudkin and Ellis as hung-over as fuck, passed out in the back.

Home, Millgarth still chaos and bodies, tips coming in one a bloody minute, no fucker free to follow them through. Me thinking, his name could be right here now in this room, right here now written in ink, right here now waiting for me.

Me, flying through slips, chasing up calls.

3.30 p.m. and I get the last call I want: another post office, another sub-postmaster.

Rudkin giving Noble shit: ‘Fuck’s it got to do with bloody Bob?’

‘We haven’t got anyone else.’

‘Neither have I.’

OT ban kicking in, Uniforms having voted to continue the ban while we were over the hills in Preston, Rudkin with his, ‘Who can fucking blame them?’ speech.

‘You’re getting to be a right whining bastard, John. It’s just for a couple of days.’

‘This is bollocks. We haven’t got a couple of days. He’s supposed to be Prostitute Murder Squad.’

But Noble’s gone and I’m back on the fucking post office jobs:

Hanging Heaton, Skipton, Doncaster, and now Selby.

Fuck-ups from start to finish.

Would be Robbery Squad and five years maximum if the dumb bastards had kept their fucking fingers off their bloody triggers in Skipton and didn’t insist on battering each of the old gits half to death.

Murder: life for a life.

Well done, boys:

Suspects believed to be four, gloved and masked with local accents.

Could be gypsies: surprise, surprise.

Could be black: no surprises.

Level of violence suggested white, late teens/early twenties, previous form and too much Clockwork Orange.

I speak to Selby on the phone:

Mr Ronald Prendergast, sixty-eight, closing up his corner shop sub-post office on the New Park Road when he’s confronted by three masked intruders, armed.

A struggle ensues, during which Mr Prendergast is clubbed repeatedly by a blunt instrument, rendering him unconscious with severe head injuries.

There by half-five and spend the evening between the crime scene and the hospital, waiting for Grandad Prendergast to come round.

Wife had been doing the flowers at Church, the lucky bitch. Eight o’clock on, I stalk the hospital corridors, phoning and phoning:

Calling Janice.

Zero -

Knowing she’ll be working, me desperate to crawl the streets, desperate to see her, desperate to stop her.

Calling home:

Zero -

Louise and Bobby in one hospital, me in another, the wrong one.

Calling Millgarth:

Less than zero -

Craven picking up, no sign of Noble or Rudkin, all them slips full of tips and no-one to work through them. Craven hanging up, seeing him limping back to Vice, thinking they must have invented it just for him and that fucking sneer.

Nine and it doesn’t look like Mr Ronald Prendergast will be saying much, just drooling and looking like warmed-over-death-in-waiting, me praying and praying that he hangs on so it won’t turn into a double-murder and knowing now, knowing now how much I want this:

Prostitute Murder Squad.

And knowing now, knowing now why:

Janice.

Two hours later all my prayers pay off, answered:

‘Sergeant Fraser, would Sergeant Fraser please come to reception.’

Down the corridor, out of Intensive Care, back into Intensive Hell – Rudkin in Leeds, calling me home: ‘We found Barton.’

Foot down into town, the whole of Millgarth humming, buzzing, burning. The Midnight Briefing:

BRING HIM IN.

The radio spits into life: ‘Right, now,’ cackles Noble’s voice across the night: Thursday 2 June 1977.

Ellis is howling, ‘Thank fucking Christ for that.’

And we’re out the car and walking across Marigold Street, Chapeltown, Leeds.

Rudkin, Ellis, and me:

A shotgun, a sledgehammer, and an axe.

Up the top end of the terrace I can see Craven’s boys coming down the street, the rest of them round the back.

We’ve got the front door.

Ellis raises the sledgehammer.

Rudkin looks at his watch.

We wait.

4 a.m.

Big John gives Ellis the nod.

Tick-tock, no need to knock:

He heaves it up over his head and yells, ‘Rise and fucking shine you black bastard,’ and brings it crashing down into the green door and there’s splinters everywhere, and he pulls it out and does it again and then Rudkin sticks the boot in and in we go, me shitting it in case the fucking shotgun goes off, but half cracking up when we see one of Prentice’s lads with his fat arse stuck in the fucking kitchen window, neither in nor out and us with the jump up the stairs where Steve Barton, Mr Sleepyhead himself, is standing in his blackest birthday suit, rubbing his gollylocks and scratching his knackers and shitting them, all in the five seconds it takes him to clock me and my fucking axe as I hit the stairs screaming at the dumb cunt, Rudkin and Ellis and the two barrels of the shotgun right behind me, giving full fucking voice to the four hours we’ve been sat in that car, sat in that unmarked pitch of hell, no phone, no Janice, no nothing, sat waiting for the bloody word, and I wind Barton straight off so he doubles over and topples down the stairs straight into Rudkin and Ellis who help him on his way with a kick and a punch and then they’re back down there after him cos they don’t want Prentice or Craven to beat them to it, and I’d be right behind them but Barton’s cousin or his aunty or his mother or whatever part of his huge extended fucking tribe’s been sheltering him, they go and put their head out the door of one of the bedrooms and I give her a quick squeeze on the tit and grab a feel of her cunt and push her back inside the bedroom where a baby’s started crying and the woman’s too scared to go to it cos she’s too busy flunking about hiding, thinking she’s going to get raped, which is what I want her to think so she’ll stay in the room and leave us be, but I want her to shut that bloody baby up, to stop it sounding like Bobby and making me hate it and hate her and hate Bobby and hate Louise and hate everyone in this whole fucking world except Janice, but mainly because it’s making me hate me.

I slam the door.

Back down the stairs they’ve got Barton outside, naked in the road, lights going on up and down the street, doors opening and then there’s Noble, Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Noble standing there, bold as the fucking brass he is, standing in the middle of the street like he owns the place, hands on his hips like he don’t give a fuck who sees this and he walks right up to Barton who’s trying to curl up into the tiniest little ball he can, whimpering like the tiny little dog he is, and Noble looks up just to make sure everyone is watching and just to make sure everyone knows he knows everyone is watching and he bends down and whispers something into Barton’s ear and then he picks him off the road by his dreadlocks, twisting them tight around his fist, pulling him on to the tips of his toes, the man’s cock and balls nothing in the dawn and Noble looks up at the windows and the twitching curtains of Marigold Street and he says calmly, ‘What is it with you fucking people? A woman gets to wear her guts for bloody earrings and you don’t lift a fucking finger. Didn’t we ask you nicely to tell us where this piece of shit was? Yeah? Did we come and turn all your shitty little houses upside down? Did we have you all down the Nick? No we fucking didn’t. But all the time you’re hiding him under the fucking bed, right under our bloody noses.’

A maria comes down the street and stops.

Uniforms open the back.

Noble spins Barton into the side of the van, bringing him round all bloody and reeling, and then he tips him into the back.

Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Noble turns and looks again at Marigold Street, at the empty windows, the still curtains.

‘Go on hide,’ he says. ‘Next time we don’t ask,’ and with a spit he jumps inside the van and is gone.

We head for the cars.

By the time we get to Millgarth, they’ve got Barton down in the Belly – the huge fucking hole of a cell right down in the gut, all strip lights and wash-down floors.

There’s about twelve or fifteen blokes standing around.

Steve Barton’s on the floor, still stark-bollock naked, shivering, shaking, shitting it.

We stand there, smoking, flicking ash here and there, Craven showing off his cuts and bruises, all black hate, the rest of us looking bored, waiting for the show.

And just as I’m thinking about Kenny D and wondering if I can sit through another nigger beating, Noble shoulders through the crowd and everyone breaks into a circle, leaving Barton and Noble in the centre, the Christian and the Lion.

Noble is holding a white plastic cup, the kind you get from the coffee machine upstairs.

He looks into it, looks at Barton, then tosses it on to the floor in front of him and says, ‘Come into that.’

Barton looks up, eyes all wide red streaks.

‘You heard,’ says Chief Superintendent Peter Noble. ‘Put your fucking jungle juice in that.’

Barton is here and there, searching the room for a friendly face, some kind of help, and for a brief second his eyes light on mine but finding nothing there they keep on going till they end up back on the white plastic cup in the centre of the room.

‘Fuck,’ he whispers, the fucked-up horror of his situation sinking into them dense black bones.

‘Get it hard,’ hisses Noble.

And then the slow handclap starts up and I’m right there, beating out the rhythm, banging out the time, as Barton slithers around in the smallest circle his body’ll let him, this way and that, twisting and turning, this way and that, no escape at all, that way or this, no escape.

Noble nods and the claps stop.

He bends down and cups Barton’s head in his hand:

‘Let me help you out, boy. Let’s imagine that dead woman of yours isn’t dead any more and it was all just some ugly dream. Yeah? Let’s get her all naked and hot, get her wet, yeah. Bet you could make her wet Steve, yeah? Bet you can get a right big cock on you when you want, can’t you Steve? Go on, show us what a big black cock you got. Show us how big you got it for Marie. Come on boy, don’t be shy. Among friends here, all lads together. Don’t want to have to put you in with some big fat babber-stabber from Armley, now do we? No need for that. Let’s just picture dear old Marie, hot and naked and waiting for that big old cock o’yours, stroking that big old bush of hers, getting it all big and pink and hanging out like a little fat juicy cherry, just waiting for you. Ooh. Ooh. What’s that? A drop of the good stuff slipping out, sneaking off. Come on Steve, she’s not dead, you didn’t kill her, she’s here and she’s hot and she’s waiting for you to stick that big old cock of yours inside and give her a good seeing to, a right good time. Come on, get it hard. Come on, she’s all wet and waiting, begging for it, flipping on to her belly, her fat little fingers right up her juicy chute, wondering where the fuck you are when she needs you. Where’s Stevie, she’s thinking, and then the door opens and in comes a big black dick, but it isn’t you is it Stevie? It isn’t your big black dick, is it? Well, well, if it isn’t your old mucker Kenny D and he’s looking at her all wet and naked and lying there with her fingers up her cos you’re nowhere to be seen and so he whips it out and puts it in and out, in and out, in and out, till she’s got it running down her legs and then here you come and you clock him and her, your woman and your mate making the old beast with two backs and you’re pissed off aren’t you Steve? Pissed off and who wouldn’t be? Him with his big black cock up your white woman, your white woman who should be out earning your cash not fucking around with your mate giving it away for nowt. Makes you sick, just fucking sick eh? Your mate and your woman. Hard to take, eh? That’s what happened, isn’t it Steve? And you had to get her back, pay her back big time didn’t you Stevie, didn’t you?’

‘No, no, no,’ he’s whimpering.

Noble stands up, Barton sobbing between his legs.

‘So you come, then you go.’

Steve Barton reaches for the cup and puts it over his shrivelled dick.

Fifteen white faces stare at the black man on the floor before us, a white plastic cup on his dick, his other hand shaking it, stopping it shrinking anymore.

There’s a shove in my back and there’s Oldman.

He looks at the scene before him, at the black man on the floor before him, a white plastic cup on his dick, his other hand shaking it.

Oldman looks at Noble.

Noble raises his eyes.

Oldman looks pissed off.

‘Get the black cunt some porn and get his fucking spunk down the lab,’ he says.

‘You heard him,’ shouts Noble at the man nearest the door, me.

Craven makes a move, but Noble points at me.

I’m down the corridor, up three flights of stairs and into Vice, Craven’s lair.

Dead, half of them back down in the Belly.

I pull open a cabinet: envelopes.

Next drawer the same.

And the next.

Thinking, this is fucking Vice, there ought to be some.

And then it hits me and I look back at the door, the thought right in front of me: JANICE.

Back into the cabinets, eyes every second second at the door, ears bleeding for the slightest footfall.

Ryan, Ryan, Ryan…

Nothing.

Nowt.

Nil.

I’m almost out the door before I remember the fucking porn.

I reach across the desks and pull open a drawer: two magazines, cheap and nasty, a fat blonde woman with a sun visor and her cunt wide open.

Spunk.

I grab them and go.

Back down into the Belly, the crowd parting, Barton still lying on the floor in a ball, still fucking crying, a blanket beside him.

I chuck the magazines down on the ground next to him.

He turns his head and pulls the grey blanket slowly across the concrete towards him.

‘Had an Aunty Margaret,’ Rudkin is saying. ‘Went by the name Mags. We all called her Nuddy for short.’

Titters and giggles.

‘Should get one of the women to do it for him,’ says someone else.

‘Do rest of us while she were down here.’

‘Long as she does me before Sambo.’

Noble kicks the magazine closer. ‘Get on with it.’

Barton lies on his side beneath the blanket, the magazine before him.

Ellis bends down and opens it.

Everyone laughs.

‘Go on, Mike,’ shouts Rudkin. ‘Give him a hand.’

Belly laughs in the Belly.

Barton’s started moving beneath the blanket.

More laughter.

‘Here, don’t forget the fucking cup,’ says Oldman. ‘Don’t want it all over the blanket.’

Steve Barton keeps moving, eyes closed, tears open, teeth clenched, the curses burning into his brain.

The clapping starts and I’m right there again but I’m thinking about Bobby and how Steve Barton must have been someone’s little boy not so long ago, with his trains and his cars and his hopes and his dreams and the food he liked and the food he didn’t but here he is now, a bouncer, a pimp, and a drug user, wanking into a white plastic cup from a coffee machine in front of fifteen white coppers.

And then, just as he picks up speed, Rudkin reaches down and pulls away the blanket, just as Barton’s dick spits up its come, just as Craven snaps a Polaroid and the claps break into a round of applause.

‘Detective Constable Ellis,’ says Oldman. ‘Take Mr Barton’s semen up to Professor Farley’

Everyone’s laughing.

‘And don’t be having a fucking sip,’ I add, everyone clapping, Ellis giving me his best hard-as-nails fuck-you-later face.

And Barton, Barton’s still in a ball, shaking and shaking, dry heaving big gulping sobs, the party over.

And just as it’s breaking up, I reach down, pick up the magazines and hand them to Craven.

‘I think these are yours,’ I say.

Craven takes them, eyes cold and dark and far away until he glances down at the covers and stops: ‘Fuck you get these?’

‘Your wife, why?’

The room’s all silent smiles, everyone hanging back to see what comes next.

‘Funny man, Fraser. Funny man.’ And Craven limps off, back to Vice.

I’m sat up in the canteen, wiped out.

Rudkin’s getting the coffees.

We’ve been told to wait while Prentice and Alderman question Barton, wait while the tests come back, which is a load of bollocks when we all know it isn’t him, wish it was, but know it’s not.

‘Could’ve taken a fucking blood test,’ says Rudkin, pissed off he’s not in on the questioning, staring to get the big fucking picture, those two words:

SPADE WORK.

‘What, going to scrape under your nails?’

‘You really are a funny man,’ he laughs as we heap sugar into our coffees, and lots of it.

I want to sleep but, if they let me loose, I’ve got so many fucking fences to mend.

‘What time is it?’ asks Rudkin, too tired to look at his own watch.

‘What am I? The speaking fucking clock?’

‘Speaking cock, more like.’

And we keep this up for about two minutes till we fade back into another one of them fucked-up knackered silences in which we hide.

‘We’re letting him go.’

Out of silence and back into the bright, bright lights of the police canteen, the world of Chief Superintendent Peter Noble.

‘Quel surprise,’ mutters Rudkin.

‘Not a B?’ I say.

‘O,’ says Noble.

I ask, ‘Get anything else from him?’

‘Not much. He was pimping her. Hadn’t seen her since the afternoon.’

‘Should’ve let us at him,’ spits Rudkin.

‘Well, now’s your chance. He’s waiting for you downstairs with DC Ellis.’

‘You don’t need us. Ellis can take him home.’

Noble takes a wad of fivers from his jacket and leans over and stuffs them inside Rudkin’s top pocket. ‘The Assistant Chief Constable wants you to take Mr Barton out and get him pissed, give him a good time. No hard feelings etc.’

‘Fuck,’ says Rudkin. ‘We’re up to our fucking eyes in work, Pete. We got all the stuff from Preston, then you put Bob on these fucking robberies. Now this. We haven’t got the time.’

I’m looking at the table top, the lights reflecting in the Formica.

Noble bends over and pats Rudkin’s top pocket. ‘Stop whining John and just do it.’

Rudkin waits till Noble’s out the door and then gives it, ‘Cunt. Fucking cunt.’

We stand up, stiff as a pair of wooden puppets.

Ellis is in the Rover, sat behind the wheel waiting.

Barton’s in the back in oversize trousers and a tiny jacket, dreadlocks against the window.

Rudkin gets in next to him. ‘Where to?’

I get in the front.

Barton’s just staring out the glass.

‘Come on, Steve. Where to?’

‘Home,’ he mumbles.

‘Home? You can’t go home now. It’s only three o’clock. Let’s all have a drink.’

Barton knows he’s no fucking choice.

Ellis starts the car and asks: ‘Where to then?’

‘Bradford. Manningham,’ says Rudkin.

‘Bradford it is,’ smiles Ellis as we pull out of Millgarth.

I close my eyes as he sticks the radio on.

I wake up as we get into Manningham, Wings on the radio, Barton silent as some black ghost in the back.

Ellis pulls up outside the New Adelphi.

Rudkin says, ‘What do you reckon, Steve?’

Steve says nowt.

‘Heard it’s all right,’ says Ellis and out we get.

There’s day-old puke on the steps and inside the New Adelphi is a big old ballroom, high ceilings and flock wallpaper, the crowd mixed, stirred, and well fucking shaken and it’s not even four o’clock in the afternoon.

I’m shattered, shoulders down, head killing, the stripper not on again until six and they’re playing some reggae bollocks:

‘Your mother is wondering where you are…’

Rudkin turns to Steve and says, ‘See, right up your street.’

Steve just nods and we plonk him down in the corner under the stairs up to the balcony, me on one side, Rudkin on the other, Ellis at the bar.

The three of us sit there, saying nothing, scanning the ballroom, the black faces and the white.

‘Know anyone?’ asks Rudkin.

Barton shakes his head.

‘Good. Don’t want folk thinking you’re a bloody grass now do we?’

Ellis gets back with a tray of pints and shorts.

He hands Barton a large rum and coke. ‘Get that down you.’

‘Here Steve,’ laughs Rudkin. ‘You come here often?’

And we’re laughing, but not Steve.

It’s going to be a long time before he starts laughing again.

Ellis goes back to the bar and brings over more drinks, more rum and cokes, and we drink them and then back he goes.

And we sit there, the four of us, talking here and there, the endless reggae, the Paki cab drivers coming in and out, the slags falling about on the dancefloor, the old blokes with their dominoes, the rat-faced whites with their v-necked sweaters and no shirts, the fat-faced blacks nodding their heads to the music:

‘What do you see at night when you’re under the stars

Rudkin and Ellis have got their heads together, laughing at one of the women at the bar, the one sticking two fingers up at them.

‘Stay at home sister, stay at home

And Barton suddenly leans across to me, his hand on my arm, his eyes yellow, breath rank, and he says: ‘That shit about Kenny and Marie, that true?’

I look at him, his tight jacket and baggy trousers, seeing him back down in the Belly under that grey blanket, his hands moving, the magazines beside him.

‘You got to tell me. I know you’re tight with Kenny and Joe Ro. I ain’t going to do nothing, but I got to know.’

I take his hand off my arm and push it away, spitting in his face: ‘Fuck I care about your shit. You got bad information, boy’

And he sits back in his chair and Rudkin throws another cigarette at him and Ellis goes back to the bar and brings more drinks, more rum and cokes, and the reggae keeps on going:

‘Baby keep on running but you won’t get far

And when I next look at my watch it’s almost six and I want to be gone, gone like Steve who’s pissed now, head down on the table, dreadlocks in the ashtray.

The music stops, the microphone wails across the room, and a spotlight hits the heavy red curtains at the back of the stage.

Dancing Queen starts up, the curtains go back, and there’s a flabby brunette in a sequined bikini standing there, eyes glazed, limbs slack.

‘Dumb fucking monkey’s going to miss the show,’ lisps Ellis, nodding at Barton as the woman jerks into some kind of life.

‘Mike, you’re fucking boring,’ hisses Rudkin and gets up and wanders off up the stairs to the balcony.

‘Fuck’s got into him?’

I say, ‘You got to learn to bloody read people.’

Mike starts up again, moaning, whining, injured.

‘Keep an eye on Sleeping Beauty,’ I say, following Rudkin upstairs.

He’s leaning over the balcony, staring down at the bleached stripper.

‘Good view,’ I say, elbows next to his.

All the blokes downstairs are facing the stage, women lolling about between them, one woman tossing peanuts in the air and catching them between her tits.

Rudkin swirls the whisky about in the bottom of his glass and says, ‘You know what it’s going to be like from now on, don’t you?’

Thinking, here we fucking go, saying, ‘No. What’s it going to be like?’

Rudkin keeps staring into the bottom of his glass. ‘He’ll keep killing them and we’ll keep finding them. Always behind, never in front.’

‘We’ll catch him,’ I say.

‘Yeah? How?’

‘Hard bloody work, patience, and he’ll fuck up. The usual way.’

‘The usual way? There’s no usual way here.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘No, I don’t. You seen this kind of thing before?’

I think of little girls and lost years and I say, ‘Similar.’

‘I don’t think you have.’

I can’t be arsed: ‘We’ll catch him.’

‘You’re a good man, Bob,’ he says and I wish he hadn’t because it’s been said before and it wasn’t true then and it’s even less true now, just fucking patronising.

So I say, ‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means what I say: you’re a good bloke, but all the fucking good blokes and all the hard work in the world isn’t going to catch this cunt.’

‘And what makes you so fucking certain?’

‘You read that Murders and Assaults Upon Women in the North of England shit?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And?’

‘We’ll catch him, John.’

‘The fuck we will. We haven’t got a clue, not a bloody one. This cunt, he looks back out the mirror at us and he’s laughing. He’s watching us and he’s pissing himself.’

‘Fuck off. You got a point to make, make it.’

Rudkin looks up from his glass, shadows heavy across his face, big black tears in pitch black eyes, a man who keeps a cricket bat by his front door, just in case, and this man he takes hold of my arm and he says, ‘That shit in Preston, that bollocks is nothing to do with what we got here.’

My heart’s beating fast, stomach twisted tight, the man still staring into me, still holding me, still scaring me.

‘The blood groups,’ I say. ‘They’re the same.’

‘It’s bollocks, Bob. Something’s going on and I don’t know what the fuck it is and I don’t want to know what the fuck it is but we’re right in the fucking middle of it and I’ll tell you this: it’s going to fuck up your life if you let it.’

What’s to fuck up, I’m thinking but I let him go on.

‘You don’t know them, Bob,’ he’s saying. ‘I know them. I know the kind of shit they’ll try and pull. Specially for their own.’

I stare down at the stage, at the tops of the stripper’s flaccid white titties, the men at the bar bored already.

I say, ‘One minute you’re telling me not to be afraid, the next minute we might as well jack it in. Which is it, John?’

Rudkin looks at me and shakes his head, half smiling, then walks off back down the stairs, leaving me wanting to punch the arrogant twat.

I stare back down at the stripper’s tits, look at my watch, and decide to get the fuck out of here.

Downstairs Rudkin’s thinking the same, kicking Barton awake, ignoring Ellis and all his apologies.

Barton staggers to his feet and Rudkin takes what’s left of the fivers and stuffs them inside Barton’s tight little jacket.

I look at the stripper gathering up her bikini from the floor of the stage, her arse fat with spots and I look at the bar and the faces of the dead, wondering if he’s here, here with us now, and then I’m back at the table, nowhere left to look.

And Barton’s standing there, coming round, still filled full of rum, and he takes the notes out of his jacket and tosses them on to the table.

‘Keep them,’ he says. ‘Keep them for the next one.’ And he turns and walks out.

‘Thought we were supposed to let him get his dick sucked,’ laughs Ellis.

I pick up one of the rums and drain it.

Ellis, suddenly scared his whole evening’ll fall about his ears and we’ll leave him, sighs, ‘Fuck we going to do now?’

‘Do what you fucking want,’ says Rudkin, going over to the bar, walking into people, looking for a fight to make him feel better.

‘Where you going?’ shouts Ellis as I head for the door.

‘Home,’ I say.

‘Yeah, right,’ he’s saying as I push through the double doors and escape.

I’m in the back of a cab, crawling out of Bradford with the windows down, my eyes dropping, heart heavy, brain in flames:

Got to see Janice, got to see Bobby, got to see Louise, and I’ve got to see her Dad.

Four murdered whores, maybe more.

Shotguns in Hanging Heaton, shotguns in Skipton, shotguns in Doncaster, shotguns up Selby way.

Four murdered whores, maybe more.

My son and my wife, her father’s days numbered.

Janice, my lover, tormentor, my own private whore in my own numbered days.

‘Here OK?’

‘Cheers,’ and I pay him.

I walk up the stairs, suddenly thinking, help me, I’m dying here.

On her landing thinking, you don’t answer the door, I’m dead.

I knock once thinking, help me, I don’t want to die here on your stair.

She comes to the door and smiles, hair damp, her skin browner than before.

The radio’s on inside.

‘Can I come in?’

Her smile broadens, ‘You’re a policeman. You can do what you want.’

‘I hope so,’ I say and we kiss hard; hard kisses to forgive and forget all that went before and is yet to come.

We hit the bed, my hands all over her, trying to get deeper inside her, her nails in my back, getting deeper inside me.

I pull off her jeans, kick off her shoes, death all gone.

And we fuck, then we fuck again, and she kisses me and sucks me until I fuck her one last time and we fall asleep to Rod on the radio.

I wake as she’s coming out of the bathroom, just a t-shirt and knickers.

‘You going out?’ I ask.

‘Got to,’ she says.

‘Don’t.’

‘Told you, I got to.’

I get out of bed and start to dress.

She starts putting on her make-up in front of the mirror.

I ask her: ‘It doesn’t worry you at all?’

‘What?’

‘These fucking murders?’

‘What? You mean because I’m a prostitute?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Like your wife, she’s no need to worry?’

‘She doesn’t walk the streets of bloody Chapeltown at two in the morning, does she?’

‘Lucky bitch. Probably got herself a nice husband to keep her off the streets with his big fat salary…’

I’ve got my wallet open. ‘You want money, I’ll give you fucking money’

‘It’s not the money, Bob. It’s not the fucking money. How many more times?’

She’s standing in the middle of the room, under the paper lampshade, her hairbrush in her hand.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

She goes to the drawer and puts on some kind of black PVC top and a short denim skirt, the kind that buttons up the front.

My eyes are stinging, filling.

She looks so fucking beautiful and I don’t know how any of this happened, where we came in.

I say, ‘You don’t need to do this.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Why?’

‘Please. Don’t start.’

‘Don’t start? It never stops.’

‘It can stop any time you want.’

‘No, it can’t.’

‘Just don’t come around any more.’

‘I’ll leave her.’

‘You’ll leave your wife and baby for a Chapeltown scrubber, a whore? I don’t think so.’

‘You’re not a whore.’

‘Yes, I am. I’m a dirty little fucking whore, a woman who fucks men for money, who sucks for money on her knees in parks and cars, who’ll have at least ten blokes tonight if I’m lucky, so don’t pretend I’m not.’

‘I’ll leave her.’

‘Shut up, Bob. Shut up,’ and she’s gone, the sound of the door ringing through the room.

And I sit down on the edge of the bed and I cry.

I walk the streets down to St James.

Visiting time is almost up, people filing out, their duty done.

I take the lift up to the ward and walk down the corridor, past the overlit rooms of the nearly dead with their shaven heads and sunken faces, their sallow skin and cold, cold hands.

No air, only heat.

No dark, only light.

Another night in Dachau.

And I’m thinking, never sleep, never sleep.

Louise is gone and her father almost, eyes closed and alone.

A nurse comes by and smiles and I smile back.

‘Just missed them,’ she says.

‘Thanks,’ I nod.

‘Hasn’t half got your eyes, your lad,’ she laughs.

I nod and turn back to her father.

I sit down beside his bed, beside the packets of drugs, the drips and the tubes, and I’m thinking of Janice, there beside the half-dead body of my wife’s father, hard at the thought of another woman, of a Chapeltown whore, and while he’s on his back dying, she’s on her knees sucking, bleeding me.

I look up.

Bill’s looking at me, bloodshot and watery, trying to place me, seeking answers and truth.

A hand reaches through the bars on the side of the bed and he opens his mouth, cracked and dry, and I lean closer.

‘I don’t want to die,’ he whispers. ‘I don’t want to die.’

I pull away, away from his striped pyjamas and terrible breath, away from his coming threats and ramblings.

He tries to sit up but the restraints work and he can only raise his head. ‘Robert! Robert! Don’t leave me here, take me home!’

I’m on my feet, looking for the nurse.

‘I’ll tell her! I’ll tell her,’ he’s screaming.

But there’s no-one, only me.

I open the door, the house dark.

I pick the evening paper up off the mat.

Bobby’s little blue anorak is hanging from a peg.

I switch on the kitchen light and sit down at the table.

I want to go upstairs and see him but I’m afraid she’ll be awake, waiting.

So there I sit under the kitchen light, alone, just thinking.

Under the kitchen light, late into the night, pacing cancer wards, cradling Bobby, parked in a car; these are the places where I do my thinking, beside the dirty dishes and my father-in-law, looking at my son’s scribbles on the fridge door and the crumbs under the toaster, thinking.

I look at my watch, almost midnight.

I sit there, my head in my hands as they sleep upstairs, a broken Jubilee mug on the draining board, in the middle of my family, thinking about HER.

Thinking, this is where I came in:

I’d heard of her, heard the others talk about her, knew she used to tip some Bradford copper called Hall the odd word for a blind eye, but I’d never seen her, never seen her until 4 November last year.

Mischief Night.

I’d picked her up for soliciting near the Gaiety, drunk and weaving, trying to flag down lorries, dragged her down to Millgarth only to be driving her home five minutes later, the laughter loud and long in my ears, thinking fuck ’em.

I’d been married five years and I had one son, almost a year then, and wanted another.

But what I got was the fuck of my life in the back of an unmarked police car and my first taste of her, licked off her lips, off her nipples, out of her cunt, out of her arse, off the lids of her eyes, off the tips of her hair.

And that night I went home to Louise and Bobby and watched them sleeping, the cot squeezed in beside our bed.

I’d had a bath to wash her off but ended up drinking down the water just to taste her again.

And later that night I’d woken up screaming that Bobby was dead, rushing to the cot, checking he was still breathing, the sweat stinking the room out, then lying in the bath again, hard, wanking.

And it never stopped:

From that night on I thought about her every second, flying through arrest sheets, asking questions I shouldn’t, combing the streets, pulling files, knowing one wrong word and the whole thing’d come tumbling down.

So I learnt to keep secrets, to lead two lives, to kiss my son with the same lips I kissed her with, learnt to cry alone in overlit rooms while all three of them slept, learnt to control myself, to ration, knowing there’d be famine and drought, worse plagues than this, learnt to kiss three sets of lips.

Under the kitchen light, between the fridge and the washer, thinking:

She’s twenty-two, I’m thirty-two.

She’s a half-caste prostitute and I’m a white Detective Sergeant, married to the daughter of one of the finest Yorkshire coppers there ever was.

I have an eighteen-month-old baby boy called Bobby.

After me.

And then, when I can think no more I go upstairs.

She’s lying on her side, wishing I was dead.

Bobby’s in the cot, and later he’ll wish I were dead too.

She swears in her sleep and rolls over.

Bobby opens his eyes and looks up at me.

I stroke his hair and bend down into the cot to kiss him.

He goes back to sleep and, later, I go back downstairs.

I walk through the dark house, remembering the day we moved in, the first Christmas, the day Bobby was born, the day he came home, the times the house was all lit up.

I stand in the front room and watch the cars drive past, their empty seats and their yellow headlights, their drivers and their boots, until each one becomes just another punter back from the red lights, back from Janice, their motors just another way to transport the killer from A to B, just another way to carry the dead back and forth, just another way to take her away.

And I swallow.

I walk back into the kitchen, legs weak, stomach empty.

I sit back down, tears on the evening paper and tears on Bobby’s book and I open up his little book and I stare at the picture of the frog in galoshes but it doesn’t help a bit because I don’t live in a little damp house among the buttercups at the edge of the pond, I live here:

Yorkshire, 1977.

And I wipe my eyes but they won’t dry because the tears won’t stop and I know they’ll never stop until I catch him.

Until I catch him.

Before he catches her.

Until I see his face.

Before he sees hers.

Until I say his name.

Before he says hers.

And I turn over the Evening Post and there he is, one step ahead, waiting for us both:

The Yorkshire Ripper.