1977

The John Shark Show

Radio Leeds

Friday 3rd June 1977

Chapter 6

Jubela…

Twice. He hit me twice, right on the top.’

Mrs Jobson leant forward, parting her grey hair to reveal the indentations in her skull.

‘Go on, feel them,’ urged her husband.

I reached across the room to touch the top of her head, the roots of her hair oily beneath my fingertips, the dents huge and hollow craters.

Mr Jobson was watching my face. ‘Some hole isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

It was Friday, going up to eleven, and we were sitting in Mr and Mrs Jobson’s homely front room at the bottom end of Halifax, sipping coffee and passing round photos, talking about the time a man hit Mrs Jobson twice on the head with a hammer, lifted up her skirt and bra, scratched her stomach once with a screwdriver and masturbated across her breasts.

And in amongst the photos, in amongst the ornaments, between the postcards and the empty vases, beside the pictures of royalty, there were bottles and bottles of pills because Mrs Jobson hadn’t left the house since that night three years ago when she met the man with the hammer and the screwdriver coming back as she was from her weekly lasses’ night out, lasses who’ve also stopped going out, lasses who got beatings from their husbands when the police suggested that Mrs Jobson liked to make a bit of pin money by sucking black men’s willies down the bus station on her way back home from her weekly lasses’ night out, Mrs Jobson who hasn’t left the house since that last lasses’ night out in 1974, not even to scrub the graffiti off the front door, the graffiti that said she liked to suck black men’s willies down the bus station, graffiti that her husband, bad back or not, graffiti Mr Jobson painted over and had to paint over a second time, the same graffiti that made their Lesley never go to school because of all the things they were saying about her mum and the black men down the bus station, and it got to the point where Lesley came right out and asked her mum if she’d ever been down the bus station with a black man, standing there in her nightie at the bottom of these stairs having wet the bed for the third time that week and like Mrs Jobson said that night and many times since has said:

‘There’s times, times like that, when I wish he’d finished me off.’

Mr Jobson was nodding.

I put my cup down on the low coffee table next to the Philips Pocket Memo, the wheels turning.

‘And how are you now?’

‘Better. I mean, every time there’s another and every time it’s a prostitute, I know it starts folk talking again. I just wish they’d hurry up and catch the bastard.’

‘You met Anita yet?’ asked Mr Jobson.

‘This afternoon.’

‘Tell her Donald and Joyce said hello.’

‘Of course.’

At the door Mr Jobson said, ‘Sorry about the photographs, it’s just we…’

‘I know, don’t worry. You’ve been more than kind just letting me in.’

‘Well if it helps catch the…’ Mr Jobson looked off down the street, then said quietly, ‘Just ten minutes alone with the cunt, that’s all I ask. And I wouldn’t need no fucking hammer or screwdriver.’

I stood there on his front step, nodding.

We shook hands.

‘Thank you again,’ I said.

‘You’re welcome. Do call us if you hear owt.’

‘Of course.’

I got in the Rover and drove away.

Jubelo…

Anita Bird lived in Cleckheaton in exactly the same kind of terrace as the Jobsons, both houses at the top end of steep inclines.

I knocked on the door and waited.

A woman with bleached blonde hair and heavy make-up answered the door.

‘Jack Whitehead. We spoke on the telephone.’

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to excuse the mess.’

She cleared a pile of ironing off one end of the sofa and I sat down in her gloomy front room.

‘Cup of tea?’

‘I’ve just had one, thanks. Donald and Joyce Jobson said to say hello.’

‘Right, of course. How is she?’

‘I’d not met her before, so it’s hard for me to say. She doesn’t go out though.’

‘I was same, me. Then I just thought, fuck him. Excuse my French, but why should he do that to me and leave me sat at home like it’s me that’s in prison while he walks round free as a bloody bird. No thank you. So one day I just said to myself, Anita, you’re not staying locked up in here you silly cow or you might as well top yourself and have done with it, much use you are to anyone like this.’

I was nodding along, placing the tape recorder on the arm of the sofa.

‘Sometimes it seems like a lifetime ago, other times like it was just yesterday’

‘You weren’t living here, I understand?’

‘No, I was staying with Clive, the feller I was seeing back then. Over on Cumberland Avenue. That was half the problem, him being black and all.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well they all thought it must have been him, didn’t they.’

‘Because he was black?’

‘That and he’d battered me a couple of times and police had had to come down.’

‘Was he ever charged?’

‘No, he always talked me round, didn’t he. Smooth he is, Clive.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Clive? Armley, last I heard. GBH.’

‘GBH?’

‘Hit some bloke down International. Police hate him, always have. Daft bastard played straight into their hands.’

‘When’s he due out?’

‘Twelfth of bloody never as far as I’m concerned. You sure you don’t want that cup of tea?’

‘Go on then. Twist my arm.’

She laughed and went off into the kitchen.

In the corner the TV was on with the sound off, lunchtime news with pictures from Ulster, changing to Wedgwood-Benn.

‘Sugar?’ Anita Bird handed me a cup of tea.

‘Please.’

She brought a bag of sugar from the kitchen. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘Thanks.’

We sat and sipped our teas, watching silent cricket from Old Trafford.

The Second Test.

I said, ‘Do you mind telling me what happened again?’

She put down her cup and saucer. ‘No.’

‘It was August ’74?’

‘Yeah, the fifth. I’d gone down Bibby’s to look for Clive but…’

‘Bibby’s?’

‘It was a club. Shut down. And Clive wasn’t there. Typical. So I’d had a drink, well more than one actually and then I’d had to go because one of his mates, Joe, he was drunk and trying to get me to go home with him and I knew if Clive had come in there’d have been trouble so I just thought I’d go back to Cumberland Avenue and wait for him there. So I came back and sat there and felt a bit of a lemon like and decided to go back down Bibby’s again and that’s when it happened.’

The room was dark, the sun gone.

‘Did you see him?’

‘Well, they reckon I did. Couple of minutes before it happened, some bloke passed me and said something like, “Weather’s letting us down,” and just kept going. Police reckoned it could have been him because he never came forward like.’

‘Did you say anything back?’

‘No, just kept going.’

‘But you saw his face?’

‘Yeah, I saw his face.’

She had her eyes closed, her hands locked together between her knees.

I sat there in her front room, another wicket down, like he was there on the sofa next to me, a big smile, a hand on my knee, a last laugh amongst the furniture.

She opened her eyes wide, staring past me.

‘You OK?’

‘He was well-dressed and smelt of soap. Had a neat beard and moustache. Looked Italian or Greek you know, like one of them good-looking waiters.’

He was stroking his beard, grinning.

‘He have an accent?’

‘Local.’

‘Tall?’

‘Nowt special. Could have been wearing boots and all, them Cuban type.’

He was shaking his head.

‘And so he walked past you and…’

She closed her eyes again and said slowly, ‘And then couple of minutes later he hit me and that was that.’

He winked once and was gone again.

She leant forward and pulled her blonde hair flat across the top of her head.

‘Go on, feel it,’ she said.

I reached across another room to touch the top of another head, through another set of damaged black roots, another huge and hollow crater.

I traced around the edges of the indentation, the smoothness beneath the hair.

‘You want to see my scars?’

‘OK.’

She stood up and pulled up her thin sweater, revealing broad red strokes across a flabby pale stomach.

They looked like giant medieval leeches, bleeding her.

‘You can touch them if you want,’ she said, stepping closer and taking my hand.

She ran my finger across the deepest scar, my throat dry and cock hard.

She held my finger in the deepest point.

After a minute she said, ‘We can go upstairs if you want.’

I coughed and moved back. ‘I don’t think…’

‘Married?’

‘No. Not…’

She pulled down her sweater. ‘You just don’t fancy me, right?’

‘It’s not that.’

‘Don’t worry, love. There’s not many that do these days. Attacked by that fucking maniac and known all over cos of her black fellers, that’s me. Only fucks I get are from darkies and weirdos.’

‘That why you asked me?’

‘No,’ she smiled. ‘I like you, don’t I.’

Collapsed in my car, picking through the fish and the chips, the ones that got away.

I looked at my watch.

It was time to go.

Underneath the arches, those dark, dark arches: Swinegate.

We’d said we’d meet at five, five while the light was still with us.

I parked down the bottom end but I could already see him, at the other end, up by the Scarborough Hotel, still wearing that hat and coat, despite the weather, to spite the weather, still carrying that case, just like the last time:

Sunday 26 January 1975.

‘Reverend Laws,’ I said, my hand in my pocket.

‘Jack,’ he smiled. ‘It’s been too long,’

‘Not long enough.’

‘Jack, Jack. Always the same, always so sad.’

I was thinking, not here, not in the street.

I said, ‘Can we go somewhere. Somewhere quiet?’

He nodded at the big black building looming over the Scarborough, ‘The Griffin?’

‘Why not.’

The Reverend Martin Laws led the way, walking ahead in his stoop, a giant too big for this world or the next, his grey hair protruding from under his hat, licking the collar of his coat. He turned to hurry me along, through the passers-by, past the shops, between the cars, under the scaffolding and into the dim lobby of the Griffin.

He waved at some seats in the far corner, two high-backed chairs under an unlit lamp, and I nodded.

We sat down and he took off his hat, placing it on his lap, his case at his calves.

He smiled at me again, through his long grey stubble and his dirty yellow skin, an old newspaper, just like mine.

He smelt of fish.

A Turkish waiter approached.

‘Mehmet,’ said Reverend Laws. ‘How are you?’

‘Father, so good to have you back. We are fine, all of us. Thank you.’

‘And the school? The little one settled in?’

‘Yes, Father. Thank you. It was just as you said.’

‘Well, if there’s ever anything more I can do, please…’

‘You’ve been too kind, really.’

‘It was nothing. My pleasure.’

I coughed, fidgeting in my jacket.

‘Are you ready to order, Father?’

Reverend Laws smiled at me. ‘Yes, I believe we are. Jack?’

‘Brandy, please. And a pot of coffee.’

‘Very good, sir. Father?’

‘A pot of tea.’

‘Your usual?’

‘Thank you, Mehmet.’

He bowed quickly and was gone.

‘Lovely, lovely man. Not been here that long, just since the trouble.’

‘Good English.’

‘Yes, exceptional. You should tell him, be your friend for life.’

‘I wouldn’t wish it on him.’

Reverend Laws smiled again, that same quizzical smile of faint disbelief that either melted or froze you. ‘Come on now,’ he said. ‘You’re being too hard on yourself. I enjoy being your friend.’

‘It’s hardly mutual.’

‘Sticks and stones, Jack. Sticks and stones.’

I said, ‘She’s back.’

He looked down at the hat in his hands. ‘I know.’

‘How could you?’

‘Your call the other night. I could feel…’

‘Feel what? Feel my pain? Bollocks.’

‘Is that why you wanted to meet me? To abuse me? It’s OK, Jack.’

‘Look at you, you hypocritical cunt, sat there all pompous and papal in your dirty old raincoat with your hat on your cock and your little bag of secrets, your cross and your prayers, your hammer and your nails, blessing the fucking wogs, turning the tea into wine. It’s me Martin, it’s Jack, not some lonely little old woman who hasn’t had a fuck in fifty years. I was there, remember? The night you fucked up.’

I’d stopped and he was just sat there.

The night Michael Williams cradled Carol in his arms one last time.

Just sat there, the hat revolving in his fingers.

The night Michael Williams…

He looked up and smiled.

The night…

I opened my mouth to start up again, but it was the waiter he was smiling at.

Mehmet put down the drinks and then took a small envelope from his pocket and pressed it into the Reverend’s hands.

‘Mehmet, I couldn’t. There’s no need.’

‘Father, I insist,’ he said and was gone.

I looked round at the Griffin’s lounge, watching the waiter scurry off back to his hole down below, an old woman with a walking stick trying to stand up from another high-backed chair, a child reading a comic, the dark yellow light at the front desk, the old brochures and paintings and lights almost gone, and it didn’t seem such a mystery why the Reverend Martin Laws was drawn to the Griffin Hotel, looking as it did for all the world like an old church in need of repair.

He leant forward, the hat still between his fingers, and said, ‘I can help you.’

‘Like you helped Michael Williams?’

‘I can make it go away’

‘Well you certainly got rid of Carol.’

‘Make it stop.’

I looked down at his hat, at the long fingers white at the tips. ‘Jack?’

I said, ‘I want it to stop. To end.’

‘I know you do. And it will, believe me.’

‘Is there only that way. The one way.’

‘I have a room. We can go upstairs right now and it’ll all be over.’

I was staring at the old woman with the walking stick, at the child in the corner, the brochures and the paintings, the light fading.

Jubela, Jubelo…

‘Not today,’ I said.

‘I’ll be waiting.’

‘I know’

I walked back through City Square, the moon almost full up in the blue night sky, back through the Friday night boys and girls and the start of the Jubilee Weekend, its threat of rain and promise of a fuck, through City Square and back to the office, knowing what could have been in an upstairs room, back to what would be waiting in another, there on my desk in amongst the rain and the fucks.

It was already starting to spit a bit.

I put down the toilet lid and took the letter from my pocket.

I was thinking about fingerprints and what the police would say but then how would they expect me to know and I knew there wouldn’t be any anyway.

I stared again at the postmark: Preston.

Posted yesterday.

First-class.

I used the end of my pen to slit the top of the envelope.

Still using the pen, I prised the paper out.

It was folded in two, the red ink leaking through the underside, a lump between the sheets.

I opened it up and tried to read what he’d written.

I was shaking, vinegar in my eyes, salt in my mouth.

It wasn’t going to end like this.

‘I’ll call George Oldman,’ said Hadden, still staring at the piece of heavy writing paper on his desk, not looking at the contents to the side.

‘Right.’

He swallowed, picked up the phone and dialled.

I waited, the moon gone, the rain here and the night out.

It was late in the evening, one hundred years too late in the evening.

A uniformed copper had come straight over to the Yorkshire Post Building, bagged the envelope and contents, and then driven Hadden and me straight here, to Millgarth, where we’d been ushered up to Detective Chief Superintendent Noble’s office, George Oldman’s old one, where they sat, Peter Noble and George, waiting for us.

‘Sit down,’ said Oldman.

The uniform put the clear plastic bags on the desk and made himself scarce.

Noble picked up a pair of tweezers and laid out the envelope and letter.

‘You’ve both handled it?’ he asked.

‘Just me.’

‘Don’t worry about that. We’ll take your prints later,’ said Oldman.

I smiled, ‘You’ve already got them.’

‘Preston,’ read Noble.

‘Posted?’

‘Looks like yesterday’

Both of them looked like they were off somewhere deep.

Hadden was on the edge of his seat.

Noble placed the letter back in the clear bag and pushed it over to George Oldman, followed by the envelope and smaller parcel.

He read:

From Hell.

Mr Whitehead,

Sir, I send you skin I took from one women, which I preserved for you. Other bits I fried and ate and it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that cut it off if you only wait a while longer.

You’d like that I know.

Catch me when you can.

Lewis.

No-one spoke.

After a while Noble said, ‘Lewis?’

‘It wouldn’t be his real name?’ asked Hadden.

Oldman looked up and stared across his desk at me. ‘What do you reckon, Jack? This genuine?’

‘It’s written as a pastiche of a letter sent to a man called George Lusk during the Ripper Murders in London.’

Noble shook his head. ‘It was you who wrote the Yorkshire Ripper article, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ I said quietly. ‘It was me.’

‘Marvellous. Bloody marvellous that was.’

Oldman: ‘Leave it, Pete.’

‘No, thank you.’

Hadden: ‘Jack…’

‘But we’re going to get every fucking nut-job from here to Timbukbloodytu writing in. For fuck’s sake.’

Oldman: ‘Pete…’

‘It’s no nut-job. It’s him.’

‘No nut-job? Look at it. How the fuck can you sit there and say that?’

I pointed to the small parcel at his elbow, at the thin slice of skin cut from Mrs Marie Watts:

‘How much proof do you want?’

On the steps outside, in the middle of the night, I lit up.

‘What’s with you and Noble?’ Hadden asked.

‘I don’t care for him.’

‘You don’t care for him?’

‘Nor him me.’

‘You seem pretty bloody certain that letter’s genuine.’

‘What? You don’t think so?’

‘I wouldn’t know, Jack. I mean, how the bloody hell do you know what a letter from a mass murderer looks like?’

I opened the door and there they were, standing with their six white backs to me.

I took off my jacket and poured myself a glass of Scotland, sat down and picked up Edwin Drood.

They kept their backs to me, looking up at the moon.

I smiled to myself and began to whistle:

‘The man I love is up in the gallery…’

Whirling, Carol flew across the room, teeth bared and nails out; out for my eyes, out for my ears, out for my tongue, wrenching me out from my chair to the floor.

Screaming: ‘You think it’s amusing? These things are amusing to you?’

‘No, no, no.’

Laughing: ‘Amusing?’

‘Rest, I just want to rest.’

Hissing: ‘Hell breaks loose and you want to rest. We should put you up against the wall.’

The others chanting: ‘Up against the wall. Up against the wall with him.’

‘Please, please. Let me be.’

Mocking: ‘Let me be, let me be? And who will let us be, Jack?’

‘I’m sorry, please…’

Taunting: ‘Well sorry’s just not good enough, is it?’

They’d opened the windows, the rain coming in, the curtains billowing.

Howling: ‘The man I love is up in the gallery…’

She took my hair and dragged my face out on to the ledge: ‘He’ll kill again and soon. See that moon?’

The rain in my face, a stomach full of night, the black moon in my eye: ‘I know, I know.’

‘You know but you won’t stop him.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You can.’

They had my tapes out of the drawers, spinning the reels, streamers in the wind, my books, my childhood crimes, tearing them to shreds -

Wailing: ‘The man I love is up in the gallery…’

‘You know who he is.’

‘I don’t. He could be anyone.’

‘No he couldn’t. You know he couldn’t.’

And then she put her mouth over mine, sucking out my breath, her tongue choking me.

‘Fuck me, Jack. Fuck me like you used to.’

I broke away, screaming over and over: ‘You’re dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.’

Whispering: ‘No, Jack. You are.’

They picked me up off the floor and carried me to my bed and laid me down, Carol stroking my face, Eddie gone and my Bible open, reading:

‘This will happen in the last days: I will pour out upon everyone a portion of my spirit; and your sons and daughters shall prophesy; your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.’.

‘We love you, Jack. We love you,’ they sang.

Don’t lose yourself, not now.

In the last days.

The John Shark Show

Radio Leeds

Saturday 4th June 1977

Chapter 7

I wake alone from an empty sleep, alone in Janice’s empty sheets, alone in her empty bed, in her empty room.

It’s Saturday morning, 4 June, and I’ve had two hours fitful kip, hot sun coming up.

I lean over and switch on the radio:

Three policemen shot dead in Ulster, man on Nairac murder charge, ITV still on strike, Scotland fans arriving in London, Keegan joins Hamburg for half a million, temperatures expected to reach seventy.

Or more.

I sit on the edge of the bed, head waking:

Red lights, shotgun blasts, cancer wards, death camps, bodies under tan raincoats, terrible rooms peopled by the dead.

I put on my boots and walk across the hall and bang on Karen Burns’ door.

Dragging the waters, drowning gulps from the black river:

Keith Lee, another Spencer Boy, bare-chested in jeans: ‘What the fuck you want?’

‘Seen Janice?’

Karen lying on her stomach on the bed, Keith glances round: ‘This business or personal?’

I push him back into the room, ‘That’s not an answer Keith. That’s a question.’

Karen raises her head, ‘Fuck.’

‘I know what you did to Kenny, man. Used up a lot of goodwill.’

I slap him and tell him: ‘Kenny was sticking it into Marie Watts behind Barton’s back. Fuck another man’s woman you get everything that’s coming to you.’

Karen pulls a dirty grey sheet over her head, white arse my way.

Keith rubs his face and points a finger: ‘Yeah well, I’ll remember that next time Eric Hall or Craven come knocking.’

I stare him down.

He looks round the room, nodding to himself.

Something’s up with our Keith, something more than Kenny getting a slapping.

But fuck him.

I pull the sheet off Karen Burns, white, twenty-three, convicted prostitute, drug addict, mother of two, and slap her across the arse:

‘Janice? Where the fuck is she?’

She rolls over, tits flat, one hand over her cunt, the other chasing the sheet: ‘Fuck off, Fraser. I haven’t seen her since Thursday night.’

‘She wasn’t working last night?’

‘Fuck knows. All I’m saying is I didn’t see her.’

I let the sheet drop over her and turn back to Keith: ‘What about Joe?’

‘What about him?’

‘He’s keeping a low profile.’

‘Man hasn’t left his room in a week.’

‘Cos of that shit with Kenny?’

‘Fuck that. Two sevens, man.’

‘You believe that bollocks?’

‘I believe what I see.’

‘And what do you see, Keith?’

‘A million little apocalypses and a lot of bloody reckonings.’

I laugh: ‘Get a flag, Keith. It’s the Jubilee.’

‘Fuck off.’

I say, ‘Very patriotic,’ and shut the door on the pieces of shit and their shitty little world.

A key turns in the lock, the handle next.

And there she is, tired and full; tired from fucking, full from fucking.

‘What you doing here?’

‘I told you, I’m leaving her.’

‘Not now, Bob. Not now,’ and she goes into the bathroom, slamming the door.

I follow her.

She’s sat on the toilet, lid down, crying.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Leave it, Bob.’

‘Tell me.’

She’s swallowing, trying to stop the sobs.

I’m on the toilet floor, holding up her chin, asking, ‘What happened?’

In the backs of expensive motors, leather gloves gripping the back of her neck, cocks up her arse, bottles up her cunt…

‘Tell me!’

She’s shaking.

I hold her, kissing her tears.

‘Please…’

She stands up, pushing me off, over to the mirror, wiping her face, ‘Fuck it.’

‘Janice, I need to know…’

She turns square, hands on her hips: ‘All right. They picked me up…’

‘Who?’

‘Who do you fucking think?’

‘Vice?’

‘Yeah, Vice.’

‘Who?’

‘Fuck knows.’

‘You saw their warrant cards?’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake Bob.’

‘You told them to call Eric?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And?’

‘And Eric told them to call you.’

There are ropes around my chest, thick heavy ropes, getting tighter with every second, every sentence.

‘What did they say?’

‘They laughed and called the station. Called your house.’

‘My house?’

‘Yes, your house.’

‘And then what?’

‘They couldn’t find you, Bob. You weren’t there.’

‘So what…’

‘You weren’t there, Bob?’

The ropes burning my chest, breaking my ribs.

‘Janice…’

‘You want to know what happened then? You want to know what they did next?’

‘Janice…’

‘They fucked me.’

Bile in my mouth, my eyes closed.

She’s screaming: ‘Look at me!’

I lift the lid and cough, her behind me.

‘Look at me!’

I turn around and there she is:

Naked and bitten, red streaks across her breasts, across her arse.

‘Who?’

‘Who what?’

‘Who was it?’

She slips down the wall and on to the bathroom floor, sobbing.

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know. Four of them.’

‘Uniforms?’

‘No.’

‘Where?’

‘A van.’

‘Where?’

‘Manningham.’

‘Fuck you doing in Bradford?’

‘You said it wasn’t safe round here.’

I’ve got her in my arms, cradling her, rocking her, kissing her.

‘You want a doctor?’

She shakes her head and then looks up. ‘They took photos.’

Fuck, Craven.

‘One of them have a beard, a limp?’

‘No.’

‘You sure?’

She looks away and swallows.

There’s bright sunlight on the window, creeping across the toilet mat, getting nearer.

‘They’re dead,’ I hiss. ‘All of them.’

And then suddenly there are car doors slamming outside, boots on the stairs, banging on the doors, banging on our door.

I’m out in the room, ‘Who is it?’

‘Fraser?’

I open the door and there’s Rudkin, Ellis behind him.

Rudkin: ‘Fuck you doing here? We’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

Visions of Bobby, broken eggs and red blood on white baby cheeks, cars braking too late.

Too late.

‘What’s wrong? What is it?’

But Rudkin’s staring past me into the bathroom, at Janice on the floor:

Naked and bitten, red streaks across her breasts, across her arse.

Ellis has his mouth open, tongue out.

‘What is it?’

‘There’s been another.’

I turn and close the door in their faces.

In the bathroom I say, ‘I’ve got to go.’

She says nothing.

‘Janice?’

Nothing.

‘Love, I’ve got to go.’

Nothing.

I take a blanket off the bed and bring it into the bathroom and put it over her.

I bend down and kiss her forehead.

And then I go back to the door and when I open it they’re still stood there, peering past me.

I close the door and push between them, down the stairs and into the car.

I sit in the back, heavy duty sunlight in my face.

Rudkin drives.

Ellis keeps turning round, grinning, desperate to start up but this is Rudkin’s car and he’s in the driving seat and he’s saying nowt.

So I look out at Chapeltown, the trees and the sky, the shops and the people, and feel dull.

If it’s him, it feels different.

Blank, my mind blank:

The trees are green, not black.

The sky blue, not blood.

The shops open, not gutted.

The people on the streets living, not dead.

Noon in a different world.

And then I think of Janice:

The trees black.

The sky blood.

The shops gone.

The people dead.

And we’re back:

Millgarth, Leeds.

Saturday 4 June 1977.

Noon.

The gang’s all here:

Oldman, Noble, Alderman, Prentice, Gaskins, Evans, and all their squads.

And Craven.

I catch his eye.

He smiles, then winks.

I could kill him now, here, in the briefing room, before lunch.

He leans over to Alderman and whispers something, patting his breast pocket, and they both laugh.

Three seconds later Alderman looks at me.

I stare back.

He looks away, a slight smile.

Fuck.

They’re all whispering, I’m losing it:

Wasteground, a long black velvet dress on wasteground.

Oldman starts up:

‘At a quarter to seven this morning a paper boy heard cries for help coming from wasteland beside the Sikh temple on Bowling Back Lane in the Bowling area of Bradford. He discovered Linda Clark, aged thirty-six, lying seriously injured with a fractured skull and stab wounds to her abdomen and back. A preliminary investigation suggests that her head injuries were caused by hammer blows. She was rushed to hospital and is now in Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield, under twenty-four-hour guard. Despite the seriousness of her injuries, Mrs Clark has been able to give us some information. Pete.’

She’s on her stomach on the wasteground, her bra up and her panties down, his trousers too.

Noble stands:

‘Mrs Clark spent Friday night at the Mecca in the centre of Bradford. Upon leaving the Mecca, Mrs Clark went to queue for a taxi to her home in Bierley. Because the queue was too long, Mrs Clark decided to start walking and flag down a taxi on the way. At some point later, a car pulled up and offered Mrs Clark a lift, which she accepted.’

Noble pauses, shades of George.

He comes in his hand and then he cuts her.

‘Gentlemen, we’re looking for a Ford Cortina Mark II saloon, white or yellow, with a black roof.’

We’re on our feet, practically out the door.

A triangle of skin, of flesh.

‘Driver is white, approximately thirty-five, large build, about six foot, with light brown shoulder-length hair, thick eyebrows and puffed cheeks. With very large hands.’

For later.

The whole room is on fire:

WE’VE GOT HIM, WE’VE FUCKING GOT HIM.

I look at Rudkin, on the edge, impassive, miles, years away.

But it’s not the same.

Alderman is saying, ‘SOCO are checking tyre-marks as we speak, Bradford going door-to-door.’

The knock on the door, the thousand knocks on a thousand doors, a thousand wives with sideways eyes at husbands white as sheets, a thousand sheets.

Noble again: ‘Forensics will be back within the hour, but Farley’s already saying this is our man. Our Ripper,’ he says, spitting the last words out.

Unending.

Oldman stands back up, pausing before his troops, his own private little army:

‘He’s fucked up lads. Let’s get the cunt.’

We’re all up, wired.

Noble’s shouting over the electricity:

‘Into your squads: DS Alderman and Prentice to Bradford, DI Rudkin upstairs, Vice and Admin here.’

I turn and see Detective Chief Superintendent Jobson at the door, the Owl, looking drained and old, eyes red under the thick frames.

I nod and he works upstream through the crowd in the doorway. ‘How’s Bill?’ he’s saying over the noise.

‘Not good,’ I say.

We’re standing off to one side.

Maurice Jobson’s got an arm on my elbow. ‘And Louise and the little one?’

‘OK, you know.’

‘I’ve been meaning to drop by, but with all this…’ he’s looking round the room, the squads heading out, Vice and Admin standing about, Craven watching us.

‘I know, I know.’

He looks at me. ‘Must be tough on you?’

‘Worse for Louise, with Bobby every day and having to go up to the hospital.’

‘Least she’s from a police family. Knows the score.’

‘Yeah,’ I say.

‘Give them my love, yeah? And I’ll try and get in to see Bill sometime this weekend. If I can,’ he adds.

‘Thanks.’

Then he looks at me again and says, ‘You need anything, you let me know, yeah?’

‘Thanks,’ and we’re gone; him over to George, me up the stairs thinking:

Uncle Maurice, the Owl, my guardian angel.

Rudkin and Ellis are sat in silence in Noble’s office, waiting.

Ellis starts up the minute I come in: ‘You think we’ll have to go back to Preston?’

‘Fuck knows,’ I say, sitting down.

He keeps going, ‘What you think Boss?’

Rudkin shrugs his shoulders and yawns.

Ellis: ‘I reckon we’ll have him by tomorrow.’

Rudkin and me say nothing.

Ellis keeps talking to himself: ‘Maybe they’ll send us down Mecca. That’d be all right, have a drink and chat up some birds…’

The door opens and in comes Noble with a file.

He sits down behind his desk and opens the file: ‘Right. Donny Fairclough, white, thirty-six, lives in Pudsey with his old mum. Taxi driver. Drives a white Ford Cortina with a black roof.’

‘Fuck,’ says Ellis.

Noble’s nodding, ‘Exactly. His name came up last year with Joan Richards.’

‘He likes to bite,’ I add, thinking, naked and bitten, red streaks across her breasts, across her arse.

‘Yeah, good,’ says Noble, looking pleased. ‘We’ve had him in a couple of times…’

Rudkin looks up. ‘Blood group?’

‘B.’

We pull up on Montreal Avenue, a hundred yards down from the rank.

There’s a tap on the glass.

Rudkin winds down the window.

One of Vice leans in, big fat grin.

I’ve got him fucking Janice on the floor of a van, taking photos, sucking her tits…

‘He’s just come on.’

I come up behind them, pull him back by his hair, and slit his throat with a broken bottle…

‘Owt else?’ asks Rudkin.

‘Fuck all.’

I drag him out the van, trousers round his ankles, and I get out my camera…

Ellis is saying, ‘We should just nick the cunt. Kick it out of him.’

‘You with us?’ says Rudkin, turning round to me.

The bloke from Vice glances at me and then tosses the keys on to the back seat. ‘It’s the brown Datsun round on Calgary.’

‘Least he’ll never make us,’ laughs Ellis.

‘Off you go then,’ grins Rudkin.

‘Me?’ says Ellis.

‘Give him the keys,’ Rudkin tells me.

I pass them forward, the Vice guy still staring in at me.

‘You fucking fancy me or something?’

He smiles, ‘You’re Bob Fraser aren’t you?’

I’ve got my hand on the handle, ‘Yeah, why?’

Rudkin is saying, ‘Leave it, Bob.’

The prick from Vice is backing away from the car, doing the usual, ‘What’s his problem?’ speech.

Rudkin is out talking to him, glancing back.

Ellis turns round, sighs, ‘Fuck,’ and gets out.

I sit there in the back of the Rover, watching them.

The Vice copper walks off with Ellis.

Rudkin gets back in.

‘What’s his name?’ I ask.

Rudkin’s looking at me in the rearview mirror.

‘Just tell me his name?’

‘Ask Craven,’ he says. Then, ‘Fuck, get in the front. He’s off.’

And I’m into the front, the car starting, and we’re off.

I pick up the radio, calling Ellis.

Nothing.

‘The cunt’s still yapping,’ spits Rudkin.

‘Should’ve let me go solo,’ I say.

‘Bollocks,’ he says, glancing at me. ‘You’ve done enough bloody solo.’

We’re at the junction with Harehills.

Fairclough’s white Cortina with its black roof is turning left into Leeds.

I try Ellis again.

He picks up.

‘Get your fucking finger out,’ I’m shouting. ‘He’s heading into Leeds.’

I cut him off before he can piss off Rudkin any further.

Fairclough turns right on to Roundhay Road.

I’m writing:

4/6/77 16.18 Harehills Lane, right on to Roundhay Road.

Foot down, writing:

Bayswater Crescent.

Bayswater Terrace.

Bayswater Row.

Bayswater Grove.

Bayswater Mount.

Bayswater Place.

Bayswater Avenue.

Bayswater Road.

Then he’s right on to Barrack Road and we keep straight on.

‘Right on to Barrack Road,’ Rudkin’s shouting at me, me into the radio at Ellis.

I’ve got Ellis in the rearview, indicating right.

‘He’s on him,’ I say.

Ellis’s voice booms through the car: ‘He’s pulling up outside the clinic’

We go right and pull up past the junction on Chapeltown Road.

‘Just some fat Paki bitch with a ton of shopping,’ says Ellis. ‘Coming your way.’

We watch the Cortina pass us and turn back up the Roundhay Road.

‘Proceeding,’ I say into the radio and Rudkin pulls out.

‘Tell Ellis to pick him up again at the next lights,’ says Rudkin.

I do it.

And Rudkin pulls in.

We’re at the entrance to Spencer Place, to Janice.

I look at him.

‘You got some sorting out to do,’ he says and leans across me, opening my door.

‘What you going to say?’

‘Nowt. Be here at seven.’

‘What about Fairclough?’

‘We’ll manage.’

‘Thanks, Skip,’ I say and get out.

He pulls the door to and I watch him drive off up the Roundhay Road, radio in hand.

I check my watch.

Four-thirty.

Two and a half hours.

I knock on the door and wait.

Nothing.

I turn the handle.

It opens.

I step inside.

The window open, drawers out, bed stripped, radio on:

Hot Chocolate: So You Win Again…

The cupboards bare.

I pick a letter off the dresser.

To Bob.

I read it.

She’s gone.

The John Shark Show

Radio Leeds

Sunday 5th June 1977

Chapter 8

‘There’s been another,’ Hadden had said.

But I’d just lain there, waiting, watching tiny black and white Scottish men on their knees, tearing chunks of turf out of the ground with their bare hands, the phone slipping in my own hand, thinking, Carol, Carol, is this the way it will always be, forever and ever, oh Carol?

‘Press conference is tomorrow.’

‘Sunday?’

‘Monday’s a Bank Holiday.’

‘It’s going to play hell with your Jubilee coverage.’

‘She’s not dead.’

‘Really?’

‘She got lucky.’

‘You think so?’

‘Oldman reckons he was disturbed.’

‘Hats off to George.’

‘Oldman says you should get in touch the minute you receive anything.’

‘He took something then?’

‘Oldman’s not saying. And neither should you.’

Oh Carol, no wonders for the dead?

Jubelum…

There was another voice in the Bradford flat, there in the dark behind the heavy curtains.

Ka Su Peng looked up, lips moving, the words late:

‘In October last year I was a prostitute.’

She had travelled ten thousand miles to be here, sat across a dim divide of stained chipped furniture, her skin grey, hair blue, ten thousand miles to fuck Yorkshire men for dirty five pound notes squeezed into damp palms.

Ten thousand miles to end up thus:

‘I don’t know many of the others so I’m usually alone. I do the early time on Lumb Lane, before the pubs close. He picked me up outside the Perseverance. The Percy they call it. It was a dark car, clean. He was friendly, quiet but friendly. Said he hadn’t slept much, was tired. I said, me too. Tired eyes, he had such tired eyes. He drove us to the playing fields off White Abbey and he asked me how much and I said a fiver and he said he’d give it to me after but I said I wanted it first because he might not pay me after like happened before. He said OK but he wanted me to get into the back of the car. So I got out and so did he and that’s when he hit me on the head with the hammer. Three times he hit me and I fell down on to the grass and he tried to hit me again but I closed my eyes and put up my hand and he hit that and then he just stopped and I could hear him breathing near my ear and then the breathing stopped and he was gone and I lay there, everything black and white, cars passing, and then I got up and walked to a phone box and called the police and they came to the phone box and took me to hospital.’

She was wearing a cream blouse and matching trousers, feet together, bare toes touching.

‘Can you remember what he looked like?’

Ka Su Peng closed her eyes, biting her bottom lip.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘It’s OK. I don’t want to remember, I want to forget, but I can’t forget, only remember. That’s all I do, remember.’

‘If you don’t want to talk about it…’

‘No. He was white, about five feet six inches…’

I felt a hand on my knee and there he was again, as if by magic, smiling through the gloom, meat between his teeth.

‘Stocky build…’

He patted his paunch, burped.

‘With dark wavy hair and one of them Jason King moustaches.’

He primped at his hair, stroking his moustache, that grin.

‘Did he have a local accent?’

‘No, Liverpool perhaps.’

He arched an eyebrow.

‘He said his name was Dave or Don, I’m not sure.’

He frowned and shook his head.

‘He was wearing a yellow shirt and blue jeans.’

‘Anything else?’

She sighed, ‘That’s all I can remember.’

He winked once and was gone again, as if by magic.

She said, ‘Is that enough?’

‘It’s too much,’ I whispered.

After the horror, tomorrow and the day after.

Suddenly she asked, ‘You think he’ll ever come back?’

‘Has he ever gone away?’

‘Sometimes, sometimes I can hear his breathing on the pillow next to me,’ she said, her sad face hewn from violence with blunt tools, black and blue leaves of hair weeping across the damage.

I reached out across the dark, ‘May I?’

She leant forward, parting her hair.

In the back room she drew the curtains.

I placed a ten pound note under the clock on the bedside table and then we sat with our backs to each other on opposite sides of the same single bed, unbuttoning our clothes on a Sunday morning in Bradford.

I stood up and lowered my trousers.

When I turned round she was lying on the bed, naked.

I laid down on top of her, my penis limp.

She moved her hand between my legs until she stopped and pushed me on to my back and leant over to the bedside table and took out a johnny.

She placed it over my cock and then straddled me, me inside her.

She began to move up and down, her tits just nipples, up and down, her sallow body bones, up and down, eyes closed, up and down, mouth open, up and down, up and down, up, down, up, down, up.

I closed my eyes.

Down.

We dressed in silence.

At the door I said, ‘Can I come again?’

‘Now?’ she asked, and we both laughed, surprised.

Assistant Chief Superintendent George Oldman with a grave smile:

‘Gentlemen, as you are aware, at approximately three a.m. on Saturday morning, the 4th, Mrs Linda Clark, aged thirty-six, of Bierley, was subjected to a violent assault on wasteland behind the Sikh temple on Bowling Back Lane, Bradford. In the course of the attack, Mrs Clark sustained a fractured skull and stab wounds to her back and abdomen. On Saturday morning Mrs Clark underwent surgery and will have to undergo another operation later this week. However, despite the seriousness of her injuries, Mrs Clark has been able to provide us with a detailed account of the time leading up to her attack.’

He paused, sipped a glass of water and continued:

‘Mrs Clark spent Friday night at the Mecca ballroom in the centre of Bradford. She was wearing a long black velvet dress and a green cotton jacket. At approximately two o’clock Mrs Clark left the Mecca and made her way to Cheapside where she began to queue for a taxi. About fifteen minutes later she decided to start walking back towards Bierley. About thirty minutes later Mrs Clark accepted a lift from the driver of a white or yellow Ford Cortina Mark II with a black satin-look roof which pulled up on the Wakefield Road. Mrs Clark was then driven on to Bowling Back Lane where the assault took place. Mrs Clark has been able to provide a detailed description of the driver.’

He paused again.

‘The man we would like to speak to is white, approximately thirty-five years of age, about six feet and of a large build. He is described as having light brown shoulder-length hair with thick eyebrows and puffy cheeks. We would appeal for any member of the public who knows a man fitting this description and who drives a white or yellow Ford Cortina Mark II with a black roof, or who has access to such a vehicle, to please contact the Bradford Incident Room or their local police station as a matter of some urgency.’

Another sip of water, another pause.

‘I would like to add that forensic evidence gathered at the scene of the attack leads me to believe that the man responsible for the assault upon Mrs Clark is the same man who murdered Theresa Campbell, Clare Strachan, Joan Richards, and Marie Watts, the same man who we believe assaulted Joyce Jobson in Halifax in 1974, Anita Bird in Cleckheaton also in 1974, and Miss Ka Su Peng in Bradford last October.’

Pause.

The whole room:

The Yorkshire Ripper.

I wrote: Clare Strachan?

I circled her name.

Oldman was asking for questions:

‘Roger?’

‘Would the Assistant Chief Constable care to elaborate on the forensic evidence that points to this latest attack being the work of the, the work of the Yorkshire Ripper?’

‘At this point, no.’

He’s getting away…

‘Jack?’

‘The description given by Mrs Clark seems to contradict previous descriptions that have been issued. For example, both Anita Bird and Ka Su Peng said that their attacker had dark curly hair and a beard or moustache…’

George, his knife out:

‘Yes but Jack, the lady in Bradford, Miss Peng, she claimed her attacker also had a Scouse accent which contradicted Anita Bird and the description Miss Bird herself gave was based on the assumption that the man who passed her in the street was the same man who later attacked her.’

‘An assumption you previously supported.’

‘That was then, Jack. That was then.’

I walked back through the deserted Kirkgate Market, through the quiet Sunday city streets, through the bunting, all red, white, and blue, under the three o’clock sun.

I turned into a cobbled alley out of the heat, searching for the wall and a word written in red.

But the word was gone or the alley wrong and the only words were Hate and Leeds.

So I walked up Briggate and on to the Headrow, up to the Cathedral and went inside.

I sat down at the back, in the cold quiet black, sweating from the stroll, panting like a dog.

There was an old woman with a walking stick trying to stand up in the front pew, a child reading a prayer book, dark low lights at the altar, the statues and the paintings, their eyes on me.

I looked up, my sweat dry, my breathing slow.

And there I was before Him, before the cross, thinking about fucking and murders with hammers, seeing the nails in his hands, thinking about fucking and murders with screwdrivers, seeing the nails in his feet, the tears in their eyes, the tears in His, the tears in mine.

And then the child led the old woman by the hand down the aisle and when they reached my pew they paused under the statues and the paintings, the shadows against the altar, and the child held out his open prayer book and I took it from him and watched them walk away.

And I looked down and I read aloud the words I found:

Psalm 88

For my soul is full of troubles,

and my life draws near to Sheol.

I am counted among those who go down to the Pit;

I am like those who have no help,

like those forsaken among the dead,

like the slain that lie in the grave,

like those whom you remember no more,

for they are cut off from your hand.

You have put me in the depths of the Pit,

in the regions dark and deep.

Your wrath lies heavy upon me,

and you overwhelm with all your waves.

You have caused my companions to shun me;

you have made me a thing of horror to them.

I am shut in so that I cannot escape;

my eyes grow dim through sorrow.

Every day I call on you, O Lord;

I spread out my hands to you.

Do you work wonders for the dead?

Do the shades rise up to praise you?

Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,

or your faithfulness in Abaddon?

Are your wonders known in the darkness,

Or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness?

But I, O Lord, cry out to you;

in the morning my prayer comes before you.

O Lord, why do you cast me off?

Why do you hide your face from me?

Wretched and close to death from my youth up,

I suffer your terrors; I am desperate.

Your wrath has swept over me;

your dread assaults destroy me.

They surround me like a flood all day long;

from all sides they close in on me.

You have caused friend and neighbour to shun me;

my companions are in darkness.

Fucking and murders with hammers, the nails in His hand, fucking and murders with screwdrivers, the nails in His feet, fucking and murders, the tears in their eyes, fucking, the tears in His, murders, tears in mine.

‘We can go upstairs right now and it’ll all be over.’

And I ran from the Cathedral, through the double wooden doors, running from the hammer, through the hot black streets, running from Him, through the red bunting, the white and blue all gone, running from them all, through 5 June 1977, running.

Oh Carol.

And then finally I stood before the Griffin, my clothes in flames, hands and eyes to the sky, shouting:

‘Carol, Carol there’s got to be another way.’

The office was dead.

I sat down at my desk and I typed:

RIPPER STRIKES AGAIN

Police yesterday stepped up the hunt for the so-called Yorkshire Kipper, the man police believe could be responsible for the murders of four prostitutes and assaults upon three other women, following a fourth attack on Saturday morning.

Mrs Linda Clark, aged thirty-six of Bierley, Bradford, was attacked on wasteland off Bowling Back Lane, Bradford, following a night out at the city’s Mecca Ballroom.

Mrs Clark suffered a fractured skull and stab wounds to her stomach and back, after accepting a lift from a driver on the Wakefield Road. Mrs Clark will undergo a second operation later this week.

The police issued the following description of the vehicle and the driver they would like to question in relation to the attack upon Mrs Clark:

The man is white, approximately thirty-five years old, about six feet tall and of a large build. He has light brown shoulder-length hair and thick eyebrows. He was driving a white or light-coloured Ford Cortina Mark II with a black roof. Police urged any member of the public with information to contact the Bradford Incident Room direct on 476532 or 476533 or their local police station as a matter of some urgency.

I stopped typing and opened my eyes.

I walked upstairs and placed the sheet of paper in Bill’s tray.

I started to walk away but then I turned back, took out my pen and in red ink I wrote across the top:

It’s not him.

I walked down the steps and out of the dark and into yet more. The Press Club, Sunday-night busy.

George Greaves, head down on the table, the laces of his boots tied together, Tom and Bernard struggling to light their own fags.

‘Busy day?’ said Bet.

‘Yep.’

‘He’s keeping you on your toes, this Ripper of yours.’

I nodded and tipped the Scotch down my throat.

Steph squeezed my elbow. ‘Another?’

‘Just to be sociable.’

‘Not like you, Jack,’ she laughed.

Bet filled the glass again. ‘Don’t know, he had a visitor earlier.’

‘Me?’

‘Young guy, skinhead.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. I’ve seen him before, but for life of me I can’t remember his name.’

‘Did he say what he wanted?’

‘No. Another?’

‘Only sociable, I suppose.’

‘That’s the spirit.’

‘I’ll say,’ I said and downed the next one.

I paused upon the stair and then opened the door.

The room was empty, the windows open, my dirty curtains booming like grey sails on a big old Bride Ship bound for a New World, the warm night air fingering through me.

I sat down and poured myself another taste of Scotland, drank it, and picked up my book but began to drowse.

And that was when she came to me, there in the foothills I thought so fucking high, like I’d come so very, very far.

She put her hands over my eyes, cold as two dead stones:

‘Did you miss me?’

I tried to look round but I was so weak.

‘Did you miss me, Jackie boy?’

I nodded.

‘Good,’ and she put her mouth on mine.

I fled her tongue, her hard long tongue.

She stopped, her hand on my cock.

‘Fuck me, Jack. Fuck me like you fucked that whore before.’

The road consists of six narrow garages, each splattered with white graffiti, the doors showing remnants of green paint. They lie off Church Street, the garages forming a passage to the multi-storey car park at the other end. All six garages are owned by a Mr Thomas Morrison who died intestate and the garages have thus fallen into disrepair and disuse. Number 6 has become a home of sorts for the homeless, destitute, alcoholics, drug-addicted and prostitutes of the area.

It’s small, about twelve feet square, and entered through either of the double doors at the front. There are packing cases for tables, piles of wood and other rubbish. A fierce fire has been burning in a makeshift grate and the ashes disclose the remains of clothing. On the wall opposite the door is written The Fisherman’s Widow in wet red paint. In every other space are bottles, sherry bottles, bottles of spirits, beer bottles, bottles of chemicals, all empty. A man’s pilot coat doubles as a curtain over the window, the only one, looking out on nothing.

I woke, his breath still warm and rank upon my pillow.

They had my books off my shelves, strewn across the room, all my little Jack the Ripper books, the whole bloody lot of them, and my tapes too, they had them out of my bottom drawer, all of my little tapes in all of their little cases with all of their neat little dates and places, all of them strewn across the room, my cuttings too.

She flew across the room, a scrap of paper between her teeth:

Preston, November 1975.

I was on my feet on my bed then on the floor on my knees:

I suffer your terrors; I am

desperate.

A diary.

I suffer your terrors; I am

desperate.

There had been a diary.

I pulled the room apart, the six of them whirling and wailing in murderous cacophony, books in the air, tapes on the floor, cuttings to the wind, fingers in my ears, their hands across my eyes, their lies, my books, his lies, my tapes, her lies, my cuttings, her fucking diary:

I suffer your terrors; I am

desperate.

The telephone was ringing.

The John Shark Show

Radio Leeds

Monday 6th June 1977

Chapter 9

Fuck Oldman.

Fuck Noble.

Fuck Rudkin.

Fuck Ellis.

Fuck Donny Fairclough.

Fuck the fucking Ripper.

Fuck Louise.

Fuck them all.

She’s gone:

I’m gone

In a hell.

Battering down doors, battering down people, kicking in doors, kicking in people, searching for her, searching for me.

In a hell of fireworks.

I’m out of her room and back across the hall, through the door, Keith gone, Karen looking up from the bed with a ‘not again, the fuck…’ and I pull her from the bed, across the floor, just a pair of pink knickers, tits out, shouting into her face, ‘She’s gone, taken her stuff, where she go?’ and she’s under me, hands across her face because I’m slapping the shit out of her because if anyone knows where Janice is it’s Karen Burns, white, twenty-three, convicted prostitute, drug addict, mother of two, and I slap her again and then I look down at her bleeding lips and nose, the bloody smears on her chin and neck, her tits and arms, and I pull off her pink knickers and drag her back to the bed and pull open my trousers and push it into her and she’s not even struggling, just shifting my weight on the bed so I come out and now she’s looking up at me and I slap her again and turn her over and she starts struggling, saying we don’t need to do it like this but I just push her face down into the dirty sheet and bring my cock up and stick it in her arse and she’s screaming and it’s hurting me but I keep going until I come and fall back on to the floor and she’s lying there on the bed, semen and blood running down her thighs, her arse in my face, and I get up and do it again and this time it doesn’t hurt and she’s quiet and then I come and go.

In a hell of fireworks, she’s gone.

I’m lying on the floor of the phone box, it’s dark outside except for the bonfires and street lights, the fireworks and the headlights, the big Chapeltown trees bending over me, the owls in the trees with their wide, wide fucking round eyes, and I’m cursing Maurice fucking Jobson, Uncle Maurice, the Owl, my guardian angel, with his least she’s from a police family. Knows the score speech and all that you need anything, you let me know bollocks: well come down here to this fucking box and get me out of here and bring her back to me, come on cunt before I take a knife to those wings, those stinking black wings, those stinking black fucking wings of death, come on and bring her back to me, here in my little red box, here in my dark age, my stone age, the dead age, cradling the receiver, bring her back to see me crying, see me weeping, see me sobbing in a ball on a phone box floor, the hair in my hands, the bloody hair in my hands, the bloody clumps of hair in my hands.

In a hell of fireworks, she’s gone and I’m alone.

‘The fuck…’

I’ve got Joe fucking Rose by his throat, heavy smoke across the room, mattress against the window, two sevens painted on every surface, the dumb stoned fucking chimpanzee shitting his pants.

‘I’ll kill you.’

‘I know, I know.’

‘So tell me…’

He’s shaking, white-ball-eyes to the ceiling, stuttering: ‘Janice?’

‘Tell me.’

‘I don’t know where she is, man. I swear.’

I’ve got my fingers up his nose, my keys to those big brown eyes of his.

‘Please man, I swear.’

‘I will kill you.’

‘I know it man, I know it.’

‘So tell me.’

‘Tell you what? I don’t know where she is.’

‘You know she’s gone?’

‘Every fucker does.’

‘So tell me something no fucker knows.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like who was pimping her?’

‘Who was pimping her? You’re joking right?’

‘Do I look like I’m fucking joking?’

‘Eric, man.’

‘Eric Hall?’

‘You didn’t know?’

‘She was his grass.’

‘Fuck that. He was pimping her.’

‘You’re lying to me Joe.’

‘You didn’t fucking know?’

I grip his throat.

‘I swear it, man. Eric Hall was pimping her. Ask anyone.’

I stare into those big brown eyes, those big brown blind eyes of his and wonder.

‘Look, she’ll be back,’ he’s saying. ‘Like a boomerang, like the lot of them.’

I let go and he drops to the floor.

I walk towards what’s left of the door, all shattered wood and splattered sevens.

‘Cept the ones your Captain Jack gets,’ he’s still saying. ‘Cept the ones that pirate takes.’

‘You call me, Joe. The second you hear the slightest thing, you call me.’

He’s nodding, rubbing his throat.

‘Or I’ll come back and I will fucking kill you.’

In a hell of fireworks, she’s gone and I’m alone on the street.

I dial again, no Louise.

I dial again and again, no Louise.

I dial the hospital but they won’t put me through.

I dial York and ten minutes later the Sister tells me Mr Ronald Prendergast died this morning of the haemorrhage caused by the injuries sustained during the robbery.

I look up and see the sky through the trees.

See more rain.

I dial again, no Louise.

I dial again and again, no Louise.

I dial the hospital but they hang up.

Fuck Karen Burns.

Fuck Joe Rose.

Fuck Ronald Prendergast.

Fuck the fucking Ripper.

Fuck Maurice.

Fuck Bill.

Fuck Louise.

Fuck them all.

She’s gone:

I’m gone

In hell.

Battering down doors, battering down people, kicking in doors, kicking in people, searching for her, searching for me.

In hell in a stolen car.

Eric Hall, Detective Inspector Eric Hall, out of the Bradford HQ at Jacob’s Well, and that’s where I am, Jacob’s Well, waiting in a stolen car, his car, Eric’s car, the one I took from his drive out in Denholme:

No-one home, the taxi gone, my money with it.

Round the back of Eric’s little castle, through the rain on the panes, the nets and the gaps in the curtains, kicking in his back door, through the stink of the family pets, the family photos, into his study with the big windows and views of the golf course, through his boxes of medals, his old coins, looking for anything, any piece of Janice, any little piece of her, finding nothing, taking the housekeeping and the keys to his brand new Granada 2000 in Miami fucking blue.

Cunt.

Down the Halifax Road, on to Thornton Road, through Allerton and into Bradford, one road straight to Jacob’s Well.

Radio on:

‘Mr Clive Peterson, the sub-postmaster at Heywood Road, Rochdale, was found unconscious early this morning after challenging intruders on his premises. Police on both sides of the Pennines were examining the possibility of a link to a similar series of crimes in the Yorkshire area.

‘Mr Ronald Prendergast of New Park Road, Selby, died this morning having failed to regain consciousness after he disturbed intruders at his sub-post office on 4 June. Mr Prendergast is the second sub-postmaster to have been killed in as many months. A spokesman for the Post Office said…’

Cunts.

Foot down.

One road straight to him, to Eric Hall, Detective Inspector Eric Hall.

Cunt.

In an empty Bank Holiday car park, trying to think straight, trying to get some quiet in my brain, the rain drumming on the roof, the radio droning on:

‘The RAC described conditions as the worst in years

Bitter winds and rain forecast.

‘Weather is the only enemy to the biggest party in twenty-five years…’

Wanting a party of my own, getting out of Eric’s car to find a phone box.

In hell in a stolen car, the lights all red.

I’m sat on the bonnet of his brand new Miami-blue Granada 2000, waiting for him.

He comes across the deserted car park, a sheepskin coat in summer, rain flattening his thin fair hair and crap ‘tache, and he sees me, clocks the car, his car, and starts running, about to go fucking mental like I knew he would, and it hits me then how far I’ve come and it can’t be more than 5 p.m. on Monday 6 June 1977, but it hits me then there’s no way back from here.

This is where I am:

‘You fucking cunt,’ he’s screaming. ‘That’s my fucking car. How you, what the…’ and he pushes me off the bonnet on to the ground, jumping on top of me, the pair of us rolling about in the puddles, him punching me once in the side of the head.

But that’s all he’s getting.

I hit back, once, twice, getting him down, the side of his face flat on the car park tarmac:

‘Fuck is she, Eric?’

He struggles, but when he speaks his lips bleed into the floor.

I pull him up by the thin bits of shit he calls hair:

‘Fuck is she?’

‘How the fuck I know, you cunt. She’s your fucking tart…’

I smash his skull down into the ground and pull it back and his eyes are rolling about and I’m thinking stop it, stop it, stop it, you can’t do that again, you can’t do that again, you cannot do that again or you’ll kill him, you’ll kill him, you will kill him, and there’s blood pouring from his scalp and I’m fucked here and I grip his face between my hands until he focuses and I say:

‘Eric, don’t make me do that again.’

And he’s nodding but I don’t know what that means.

‘Eric, I know you were pimping her.’

And he’s still nodding but it could mean fucking anything.

‘Eric, come on.’

And I slap him across his pink fat cheeks with the bits of car park stuck there between the broken blood vessels and fucked-up blood pressure.

‘Eric…’

He’s coming back, the nodding slowing.

‘Eric, I know what you were doing, so just tell me where she is?’

He looks at me, the whites of his eyes red-streaked nicotine, the blacks wide in the blue, and through the spit he says:

‘I pimped her before. She asked me…’

My fists clench, he flinches, but I stop:

‘Eric, the truth…’

There are tears running down him.

‘It’s the truth.’

I pick him up, the pair of us falling about like a couple of ballroom drunks.

I lean him against the bonnet of his Miami-blue Granada 2000:

‘So where is she?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen her in over six months.’

I dust down his coat, knocking the gravel and scraps of paper off him:

‘You’re a liar, Eric. And not a very good one.’

He’s breathing heavily, sweating worse in that sheepskin coat of his.

I tell him:

‘She got picked up on Friday night.’

He swallows, shaking.

‘Here. In Manningham.’

‘I know.’

‘I know you know, cunt. Because she called you, didn’t she Eric? Wanted to meet you.’

He’s shaking his head.

‘What did she want, Eric?’

I pick a piece of shit off his collar and wait.

He closes his eyes, nodding:

‘Money, she wanted money’

‘And?’

‘Said she had some stuff, information.’

‘What kind?’

‘She didn’t say?’

‘Eric…’

‘Robberies, she didn’t say anything else. She was on the phone.’

I stroke his cheek:

‘And you arranged to meet her, didn’t you?’

He’s shaking his head.

‘But you sent the Van, didn’t you?’

He’s shaking that head, faster.

‘And they picked her up, didn’t they?’

Faster.

‘Thought you’d teach her a lesson, didn’t you?’

Side to side, faster.

‘And she told them to call you, didn’t she?’

Faster.

‘So they called you, didn’t they?’

And faster.

‘You could have made them go away, couldn’t you?’

He’s shaking.

‘Could have made them stop it, couldn’t you?’

And I grip that fat fucking face and an inch away I scream:

‘So why the fuck didn’t you, you piece of fucking fucking fucking shit!’

His eyes, his weak watery eyes, they frost over:

‘She’s yours, you took her.’

I have him now, in my hands, I have him, and I could kill him, batter his skull into the tarmac until it shattered, tip him into the boot of his brand new Miami-blue Granada 2000 and drive him up on to the Moors, or down into a quarry, or off into a lake, or over the edge and into the sea.

But I don’t.

I push the fat fucking cunt off the bonnet of his car and I get inside.

And he just stands there, in front of his Miami-blue Granada 2000, staring through the windscreen at me sat behind the wheel, his wheel.

I start the car, his car, thinking, move or I will kill you with your own car.

He steps to the side, his mouth moving, a black slow-motion hole of threats and promises, treats and curses.

I put my foot down.

And I’m gone

In hell in a stolen car, the lights all red, the world lost.

Straight out of Bradford, the A650 Wakefield Road into Tong Street, Bradford Road, King Street, under the M62, under the Ml and into Wakefield, out on to the Doncaster Road, out to the one place left, the last place left:

The Redbeck Cafe and Motel.

I sit there, in another lonely car park, Heath Common before me, three big black unlit bonfires against the clearing evening, waiting for their witches.

I reach into my pocket and take out my keys.

And there it is, Room 27.

In hell in a stolen car, the lights all red, the world lost like us.

In my dream I was sitting on a sofa in a room. A nice sofa, three seats. A nice room, pink.

But I’m not asleep, I’m awake

In hell.

The John Shark Show

Radio Leeds

Tuesday 7th June 1977

Chapter 10

It was pissing it down.

Real fucking sheets of the stuff, across six lanes of empty Jubilee motorway.

Over the Moors, across the Moors, under the Moors:

Fuck you then you sleep.

Kiss you then you wake.

No-one; no cars, no lorries, nothing:

Deserted spaces, these overground places.

The world gone in the flash of a bomb.

But if there’s no-one here, no-one left, how is it I wake so bruised from sleep?

I switched off Twenty-five Years of Jubilee Hits and put my foot down, just the tapes in my head playing full blast:

DIARY MAY BE CLUE TO KILLER

A diary thought to be in her missing bag could hold the clue to a woman’s killer.

Twenty-six-year-old Clare Strachan was found battered to death in a disused garage a quarter of a mile from Preston town centre, and last night police toured public houses in a bid to trace her killer.

Miss Strachan was last seen at 10.25 p.m. on Thursday when she left a friend’s house.

A woman noticed her body as she passed the open doors of the garage in Frenchwood Street, Preston.

At a press conference today Detective Superintendent Alfred Hill said robbery was the likely motive behind the killing. He said a diary thought to be in her lost bag would hold a vital clue.

He said: ‘I am anxious to hear about anyone who has been missing from Preston since Thursday.’

Det. Supt. Hill, second in command of Lancashire CID, is leading a team of eighty detectives hunting the killer.

Miss Strachan, originally from Scotland, lived in the Avenham area of Preston and also used the surname Morrison.

Hard bloody crime reporting from the wrong side of the hills, from the wrong year:

1975:

Eddie gone, Carol dead, hell round every corner, every dawn.

Dead elm trees, thousands of them.

Culled from clippings, torn from tape.

Two years going on two hundred.

The History Man.

Bye Bye Baby.

Start at the finish.

Begin at the end:

I slowed on Church Street, crawling up the road, looking for Frenchwood Street, looking for the garages, her garage.

I stopped by a multi-storey car park.

The car stank, my breath rank from no sleep, no breakfast, just a bellyful of bad dreams.

The clock on the dashboard said nine.

Rain, buckets of it drenching the windows.

I pulled the jacket of my suit over my head and got out and ran across the road to an open door swinging in the piss.

But I stopped before it, dead in my tracks, my jacket down, the rain in my face, flattening my hair, sick with the stench of dread and doom.

I stepped inside, out of the rain, into her pain.

Under my feet, under my feet I felt old clothing, a blanket of rags and paper, bottles brown and green, a sea of glass with islands of wood, crates and boxes, a workman’s bench he surely used for that piece of work, his job.

I stood there, the door banging, everything before me, behind me, under me, over me, listening to the mice and the rats, the wind and the rain, a terrible soul music playing, but seeing nothing, blind:

‘Your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.’

I was an old man.

An old man lost in a room.

‘You look like a drowned rat. How long you been out here?’

‘Not long,’ I lied and followed the barmaid inside St Mary’s, in out of the rain.

‘What can I get you?’ she asked, putting the lights on.

‘A pint and a whisky’

She went back behind the bar and started pulling my pint.

I took a stool at the cold early bar.

‘There you go. Sixty-five, please.’

I handed her a pound note. ‘Odd name for a pub.’

‘That’s what they all say, but place’s more like a church anyway. I mean, just look at it.’

‘Same name as that place down the road?’

‘The hostel? Yeah, don’t remind me.’

‘Get a lot of them in, do you?’

‘All we get,’ she said, handing me my change. ‘What line you in?’

‘I work for Yorkshire Post.’

‘Knew it. You’re here about that woman who got done in a couple of years ago? What was her name?’

‘Clare Strachan.’

She frowns. ‘You sure?’

‘Yeah. Knew her did you?’

‘Oh yes. They reckon now it could have been this Yorkshire Ripper, don’t they? Imagine if it was, I mean bloody hell, he was probably in here.’

‘She came in a fair bit then, Clare?’

‘Yeah, yeah. Gives you the creeps, doesn’t it. Get you another?’

‘Go on then. What was she like?’

‘Loud and pissed. Same as rest of them.’

‘Was she on game?’

She started wiping the top of the bar. ‘Yeah. I mean, they all are from that place.’

‘St Mary’s?’

‘Yeah. She was so out of it, I mean she probably gave it away.’

‘Police talk to you about her?’

‘Yeah. Talked to everyone.’

‘What did you tell them?’

‘Like I say, just that she came in here a lot, got pissed, didn’t have a lot of brass and what she had she probably got from selling it up on French.’

‘What did they say?’

‘Police? Nothing, I mean like what would they say?’

‘I don’t know. Sometimes they tell you what they’re thinking.’

She stopped wiping. ‘Here, you’re not going to put any of this in paper are you?’

‘No, why?’

‘I don’t want that bloody Ripper reading my name, do I? Thinking I know more than I do, thinking he better silence me or something.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to say anything.’

‘Bet you always say that though, you lot, don’t you?’

‘As God is my witness.’

‘Yeah, right. Another?’

‘I’m sorry, I’m looking for a Roger Kennedy?’

The young man in the dim corridor, in the black glasses, he was shaking, sniffing, shitting himself.

I asked him again: ‘Roger Kennedy?’

‘He doesn’t work here any more.’

‘Do you know where I could find him?’

‘No. You’ll have to come back when the boss is here.’

‘Who’s that then?’

‘Mr Hollis. He’s the Senior Warden.’

‘And what time will he be in?’

‘He won’t.’

‘Right.’

‘He’s on holiday. Blackpool.’

‘Nice. When does he get back?’

‘Next Monday, I think.’

‘Right. I’m sorry, my name’s Jack Whitehead.’

‘You’re not a copper, are you?’

‘No, why?’

‘They were here a couple of days ago, that’s all. So who are you?’

‘I’m a journalist. For Yorkshire Post.’

That didn’t seem to make him feel any better. ‘This about Clare Strachan then? The woman who used to live here?’

‘Yeah. Is that what the police wanted?’

‘Yes.’

‘You speak to them did you?’

‘Yes. I wish Mr Hollis was here.’

‘What did they say?’

‘I think you better come back when Mr Hollis is here.’

‘Well, actually you could save him some bother. I only want to ask a couple of questions. Nothing for the paper.’

‘What kind of questions?’

‘Just background. Is there anywhere we could sit down? Just for a couple of minutes?’

He pushed his glasses up his nose again and pointed to the white light at the end of the corridor.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name?’ I said as I followed him into a dreary lounge, the rain in pools at the bottom of the old spoiled windowframe.

‘Colin Minton.’

I shook his hand and said again, ‘Jack Whitehead.’

‘Colin Minton,’ he repeated.

‘Polo?’ I offered and took a seat.

‘No thanks.’

‘So Colin, you worked here long?’

‘About six months.’

‘So you weren’t here when it all happened?’

‘No.’

‘Is there anyone about who was? This Mr Hollis?’

‘No. Just Walter.’

‘Walter?’

‘Walter Kendall, the blind bloke. He lives here.’

‘He was here two years ago?’

‘Yeah. He was one of her friends.’

‘Would it be possible to have a word?’

‘If he’s in.’

I stood up. ‘Get out much does he?’

‘No.’

I followed Colin Minton out of the lounge and up two flights of dark stairs to a narrow corridor. We walked down the linoleum passageway to the room at the very end.

Colin Minton knocked on the door, ‘Walter, it’s Colin. I’ve got someone here to see you.’

‘Bring him in,’ came back a voice.

Inside the tiny room a man sat at a table before a window of running rain, his back to us.

Colin’s face had gone red. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name. Jack?’

‘Jack Whitehead,’ I said to the back of the man’s head. ‘From the Yorkshire Post.’

‘I know,’ said the man.

‘You’re Walter Kendall?’

‘Yes, I am.’

Colin shifted from foot to foot, trying to smile.

‘It’s all right, Colin,’ said Walter. ‘You can leave us.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank you,’ I said as Colin Minton made his exit, closing the door behind him.

I sat down on the small bed, Walter Kendall still facing the other way.

A train went past outside, shaking the window.

‘Must be two o’clock,’ said Walter.

I looked down at my watch. ‘Unless it’s late.’

‘Be like you then,’ said Walter, turning.

And for a moment that face, Walter Kendall’s face, it was the face of Martin Laws, of Michael Williams, the face of the living, the face of the dead.

‘What?’

‘You’re late, Mr Whitehead.’

That face, those eyes:

That grey unshaven face, those white unseeing eyes.

‘I don’t understand what you mean?’

‘She’s been dead almost two years.’

That tongue, that breath.

That white tongue, that black breath.

‘I’m here following a remark made by the Assistant Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, when he recently suggested that Clare Strachan could have been murdered by the same man who has been murdering prostitutes in the West Yorkshire area.’

Mr Kendall said nothing, waiting.

So I said again, ‘So I’m here to look into any connection there might be and any information you can give would be greatly appreciated.’

Another train, another shake.

And then he said: ‘In the August we went into Blackpool, me and Clare. She’d heard her kids were coming down with her Aunty or someone. Scottish Week it was. So we got the first coach in and she could hardly sit still could Clare. Said she was going to wet herself, she was that excited. And it was a lovely day, wide blue sky, first thing, all clean as a new pin. And we met her daughters and her Aunty under the Tower and they were such lovely little things, all red hair and new teeth. About four and two I think they must have been. And there were a lot of tears because it had been a year or more and Clare, she had their Christmas presents from the year before and their smiles, Clare said it was almost worth the wait. And we went down on to the sands and it was still quiet, the tide just gone, the beach all engraved ridges and ripples and she took them down to the foam, the surf, and they took off their shoes and socks and kicked through the little waves the three of them, and me and the Aunty we just sat on the wall watching them, the Aunty crying and me too. Then we all five of us went to get ice-cream at some back-street place Clare knew and it was lovely stuff, Italian, and Clare had a Cappuccino with bits of chocolate flake on the top and because I liked look of it so much she bought me one as well as my ice-cream, then we went round some of the arcades and put the little ones on the donkeys even though Clare she thought that it was cruel, keeping the donkeys like they do but it was such a laugh because one of them donkeys he had a mind of his own he did and he sets off with the eldest one on board, sets off at a right pace, and she’s loving it the little girl is, laughing her head off, but there’s the donkey man and the rest of us chasing them up the beach, caught them in the end but it took some doing and I don’t think donkey man thought it was so funny but we were in stitches we were. Then we had a lunch up in the Lobster Pot, bloody big fishes they do there, Moby Dicks Clare called them. Nice cup of tea too, strong as Scotch they say. Then we took a tram up to the Pleasure Beach and you should have seen them, Mr Whitehead, spinning around in them giant tea-cups, riding in flowers, wearing daft hats and sucking on huge pink sticks of rock, but I found Clare, outside the Gold Mine she was, big tears down her cheeks because they had to get the five o’clock train or something and the Aunty was saying that they’d maybe come down again for the Illuminations, get a special coach, but Clare was shaking her head, the little ones hanging off her neck, knowing that this was it and I couldn’t watch at the station, it was too much, them all saying their goodbyes, the youngest not knowing what it was all about but the other one just sucking in her lips like her Mummy and not letting go of her hand, terrible it was, the heart’s not built for that stuff and after, after we went to the Yates’ and she got so pissed, so fucking pissed, but who can blame her Mr Whitehead, a day like that, living like she did, knowing what she did, eight weeks later fucked up the arse, her chest crushed by size ten boots, never to see those little girls again, their beautiful red hair, their new teeth, can you blame her?’

‘No.’

‘But they do, don’t they?’

I stared past him, the rain on the window, an underwater cave, a chamber of tears.

‘Are you going to print that?’

I stared at him, the tears on his cheeks, trapped in this underwater cave, this chamber of tears.

I swallowed, caught my breath at last and said: ‘The night she died, who knew who she was going to meet?’

‘Everybody did.’

‘Who?’

‘Mr Whitehead, I think you know who it was.’

‘Tell me.’

Walter Kendall held his fingers up to the rain:

‘Where you seek one there’s two, two three, three four. Where you seek four there’s three, three two, two one and so on. But you know this anyway.’

I was on my feet, shouting at the blind man with the white eyes and the grey face, shouting into those eyes, that face:

‘Tell me!’

He spoke quickly, one finger in the air:

‘Clare left the pub up the road, St Mary’s, at ten-thirty. We told her not to go, told her she shouldn’t, but she was tired Mr Whitehead, so fucking tired of running. They said, your taxi’s here but she just walked up the street, up to French, up through the rain, rain worse than this, up to a car parked in the dark at the top, and we just watched her go.’

‘Go to who?’

‘A policeman.’

‘A policeman? Who?’

Lancashire Police Headquarters, Preston.

A big plainclothes with a moustache showed me up to the second-floor offices of Detective Chief Superintendent Alfred Hill.

The big man knocked on the door, and I popped in another polo.

‘You can go in,’ said the plainclothes.

‘Jack Whitehead,’ I said, hand out.

The small man behind the desk put away his handkerchief and took my hand.

‘Have a seat, Mr Whitehead. Have a seat.’

‘Jack,’ I said.

‘Well Jack, can I get you anything to drink: tea, coffee, something stronger. Toast the Queen?’

‘I’d better not. Got a long drive back.’

‘Right, so what is it brings you over our way then?’

‘Like I said on the telephone, it’s the Clare Strachan murder and what George Oldman said a couple of days ago, about the possibility of there being a link…’

‘With the Ripper?’

‘Yes.’

‘George was saying how it was you who coined that one.’

‘Unfortunately.’

‘Unfortunately?’

‘Well…’

‘I wouldn’t say that, you should be proud. Good piece of journalistic licence like that, should be proud.’

‘Thank you.’

‘George thinks publicity will help him. You’ve done him a favour.’

‘You don’t agree?’

‘Wouldn’t say that, wouldn’t say that at all. Case like this, you can’t do anything without the public’

‘You got quite a bit with Clare Strachan at first.’

He’d taken out his handkerchief again, examining the contents, about to add some more, ‘Not really’

‘Did you get anywhere with the diary?’

‘The diary?’

‘You seemed to think at the time that there was a diary in her missing bag.’

He was coughing hard, a hand on his chest.

‘Did anything ever come of that?’

His face was bright red, panting into his hankie, whispering, ‘No.’

‘What made you think there was a diary?’

Detective Chief Superintendent Alfred Hill had his hand up:

‘Mr Whitehead…’

‘Jack, please.’

‘Jack, I’m not quite sure what we’re doing here. Is this an interview, is that what we’re doing here?’

‘No.’

‘So you’re not going to print any of this?’

‘No.’

‘So like, what exactly are we going through all this for? I mean, if you’re not going to print anything?’

‘Well, background. Given the possibility that it’s the same man.’

He took a sip of water, disappointed.

I said, ‘I don’t mean to waste your time.’

‘That wasn’t what I meant, Jack. Not what I meant at all.’

‘Can I ask you then, sir, do you think this murder, that it is the same man?’

‘Off the record?’

‘Off the record.’

‘No.’

‘And on the record?’

‘There are certainly similarities,’ he said, nodding at the window, ‘similarities, as my erstwhile colleague across those hills has said.’

‘So off the record, what makes you think it’s not the same man?’

‘We had over fifty men on her, you know.’

‘I thought it was eighty?’

He smiled. ‘All I’m saying is we did a thorough job on her, very thorough. It’s been said that because of who she was, her history, what she was, that we didn’t give it priority but I can tell you we worked flat out while we could. It’s a lie, a complete lie to say that we don’t take things like what happened to her seriously. Of course something like the murder of a kiddie, course it gets the headlines, gets the attention and keeps it, but I was one of first in that garage and I’ve seen some stuff, stuff like Brady and his, but what they’d done to her, slag or not, well no-one deserves that. No-one.’

He was away, far away, back in that garage, back with his own tapes.

And we sat there, in our silences, until I said:

‘But it wasn’t him.’

‘No. From what George has shown us, what we’ve heard from the lads they sent over, no.’

‘Can you be specific?’

‘Look, George wants them linked. I’m not going to touch that.’

‘OK. So how’s George linked them?’

‘Off the record?’

‘Off the record.’

‘Blood group, life-style of the victim, head injuries, and some positioning of the body, some arrangement that we’re not publicising.’

‘Blood group?’

‘Same.’

‘Which group?’

‘B.’

‘B. That’s rare.’

‘Ish. Nine per cent.’

‘I’d call that rare.’

‘I’d call it inconclusive.’

‘So what makes you so conclusively against it?’

‘Clare Strachan was penetrated, sodomised twice, once postmortem, hit on the head with a blunt instrument, but not fatally, throttled, but not fatally, and after all that she was finally killed, finally killed by a punctured lung which was caused by someone jumping up and down on her chest until one of her ribs snapped off and speared her lung, flooding it with blood so she choked, drowned.’

Again we sat in our silences, our desperate little silences, our nails down the window panes, our faces to the glass, wanting out out out.

‘Can I ask you one more question then?’

He folded up the handkerchief again and nodded.

‘You interviewed the people from the hostel?’

‘St Mary’s? Yes. Had them all in.’

I paused, my lips dry, a terrible vision on the hills out the window, above the room, a vision of the drunk and the mental, the drunk and the mental howling at a moon glimpsed through cell bars, bars high on a dark cell wall.

Eventually I said, ‘And what did they tell you? What did they say?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Did you speak to a Walter Kendall?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘The blind man? Repeatedly’

‘And what did he say?’

Alfred Hill, Detective Chief Superintendent Alfred Hill, he looked me dead for the first time and he said:

‘Mr Whitehead, you have an extremely high reputation among the men of the West Yorkshire force, a high reputation as a diligent crime reporter who assists investigations and I’m prepared to give a lot of rope on that account, a lot of rope, but I must say I object to the insinuation.’

‘What insinuation?’

‘I am well, well aware of the things Mr Kendall has said, has said repeatedly, and I’m surprised that a journalist, a man of your reputation, surprised you would even credit such nonsense with a question.’

I smiled. ‘So I’ll take it that it’s not a line of inquiry you are presently pursuing, shall I?’

Alfred Hill said nothing.

‘One last question?’

He sighed.

‘You said that Clare Strachan was a prostitute?’ He nodded.

‘Did she have convictions?’

He was tired, wanted me gone and said, ‘See for yourself,’ and pushed an open file towards me.

I leant forward.

On a typed sheet, two dates:

23/08/74 .

22/12/74 .

Next to each date, letters and numbers:

See WKFD/MORRISON-C/CTNSOL1A.

See WKFD/MORRISON-C/MGRD-P/WSMT27C.

‘What do they refer to?’

‘One’s a caution for soliciting, one a statement.’

‘WKFD?’

‘Wakefield.’

In the car, on the Moors, in tears, on my cheeks.

Laughing:

Big fucking howling gales of laughter, foot down through another bucket of Jubilee piss.

Laughing:

Thinking, dumb, dumb, dumb.

Looking in the rearview, asking myself:

‘Do I look like a violin?’

Laughing:

Hell’s teeth he was thick, thicker than I could have ever dreamt.

Laughing:

Because he was thick and he was mine.

Laughing:

Foot down, window open, head out in the rain, shouting:

‘So fucking play me.’

Laughing:

‘Go on cunt, play me!’

I pulled up just past a red box, put my jacket up over my ears and ran for it.

I dialled.

‘I want to come over.’

‘I’ll look forward to it,’ she half-laughed.

It had stopped raining just as it started to get dark, just to give them their street parties, just to let them light their stupid beacons.

Ka Su Peng was waiting at the corner of Manningham and Queens, short black hair and dirty skin, in a black dress and tights, a bag and a jacket over her arm.

I pulled up and she got in.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘How are you?’

‘I’m OK.’

‘You don’t want to use the flat?’

‘No, not if you don’t mind.’

‘It’s your money,’ she said and I wished she hadn’t, really wished she hadn’t said that.

So I turned left and left again until we were going down Whetley Hill and she said, ‘Where are we going?’

‘I want to do it here,’ I said, turning on to the playing fields off White Abbey Road.

‘But this is…’

I could feel her heart beating inside the car, feel her fear, but said, ‘I know and I want you to show me where.’

‘No,’ she was twisting in her seat.

‘You’ll feel better after, much better.’

‘The fuck you know.’

‘It’ll be over, finished.’

She was taking the money out of her bag, saying, ‘Let me out, let me out right now’

I pulled up on the grass before a line of trees and turned off the engine.

She darted for the door.

I held on to her arm.

‘Ka Su Peng, please. I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘Then let me go. You’re scaring me.’

‘Please, I can help.’

She had the door open, one foot on the grass.

‘Please.’

She turned and stared at me, black eyes in a ghost’s face, a death mask made flesh, and said: ‘What then?’

‘Get in the back.’

We got out and stood in the night, looking across the roof of the car at each other, two white ghosts, death-made, black eyes on pale faces, masks flesh, and she went to open the back door but it was locked.

‘Here,’ I said, and I walked round the back of the car, a hand in my pocket, her face on mine, mine on hers, the moon in the trees, the trees in the sky, the sky in that black hell up, up above, looking down, down on the playing field, the field where the children played their games and their fathers murdered their mothers.

And I came up behind her and I unlocked the back door.

‘Get in.’

She sat down on the edge of the back seat.

‘Lie down.’

And she lay back on the black leather.

I stood by the door and undid my belt and buckle.

She watched me and raised up her arse to take down her black tights and white knickers.

I put one knee on the edge of the seat, the door still open.

She pulled up the black dress and reached up for me.

And then I fucked her on the back seat and came on her belly and wiped the come off the inside of her dress with my sleeve and held her there, held her in my arms while she cried, there on the back seat of my car with her tights and her pants hanging off one foot, there in the field, there in the night, under the Jubilee moon, watching the fireworks and the beacons light up the maroon sky, and as another silent firework span towards the earth, she asked:

‘What does Jubilee mean?’

‘It’s Jewish. Every fifty years there was a year of emancipation, a time of remission and forgiveness from sin, an end to penance, so it was a time of celebration.’

‘Jubilation?’

‘Yeah.’

I drove her back to the flat where she lived and we parked outside in the dark, and I asked:

‘Am I forgiven?’

‘Yes,’ she said and got out.

She had left the ten quid on the dashboard.

I drove back to Leeds with a warm stomach, a stomach like that time I’d dropped my fiancйe back home and driven away with her waving, her parents too, that time twenty-five years ago, with a warm stomach.

A glow.

I took my time on the stairs, dreading them.

I turned the key in the lock and listened, knowing I could never bring her here.

The telephone was ringing on the other side.

I opened the door and answered it.

‘Jack?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s Martin.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I was worried about you.’

‘Well, don’t be.’

From sleep I awoke into the darkest half of a silent night, the fireworks spent, drowning in sweat.

Kiss you then you wake.

Awoke to feel the softness of her kiss upon my brow, to see her sat upon the edge of my bed, legs apart, to hear her lullaby.

Fuck you then you sleep.

Awoke to fall back into sleep.

Dark panting streets, the leering terrace backs, surrounded by the silent stones, buried by the black briete, through courtyards and alleyways where no trees grow, or grass too, foot upon brick, brick upon head, these are the houses that Jack built.

An adventure playground.

Ring-a-ring of roses, a pocket full of posies.

Mary-Ann, Annie, Liz, Catherine and Mary, hands together round the mulberry bush, singing:

‘Where you seek one there’s two, two three, three four.’

A shocking place, an evil plexus of slums that hide the human creeping things, where men and women live on penn’orths of gin, where collars and clean shirts are decencies unknown, where every citizen wears a black eye, and none ever combs his hair.

An adventure playground.

Ring-a-ring of roses, a pocket full of posies.

Theresa, Joan, and Marie, hands together round the mulberry bush, singing:

‘Where you seek four there’s three, three two, two one and so on.’

Within a short distance of the heart, a narrow court, a quiet thoroughfare, with two large gates, in one of which is a small wicket for use when the gates are closed, though at every hour these gates are open, indeed, according to the testimony of those living near, the entrance to the court is seldom closed.

An adventure playground.

Ring-a-ring of roses, a pocket full of posies.

Joyce, Anita, and Ka Su Peng, hands together under the mulberry bush, whispering in my ear:

‘But you know this anyway.’

For a distance of 18ft or 20ft from the street there is a deadwall on each side of the place, the effect of which is to enshroud the intervening space in absolute darkness after sunset. Further back some light is thrown into the court from the window of a Working Men’s club, which occupies the whole length of the court on the right, and from a number of terraces, all of which have been extinguished by this time.

An adventure playground.

Ring-a-ring of roses, a pocket full of posies.

I have my hand on the cold metal of the gate, staring dead ahead into the gloom, Carol beckoning me in.

An adventure playground.

Dead ahead.

Ripped from that hell into this:

Shrieking: HE’S COMING, HE’S COMING, HE’S COMING.

Howling: Fuck you then you sleep.

Shrieking: HE’S COMING, HE’S COMING, HE’S COMING.

Howling: Kiss you then you wake.

Shrieking: HE’S COMING, HE’S COMING, HE’S COMING.

Ripped from that into this, this into that, and back to this:

The dawn, the rattle of the flap, the letter on the mat.

HE WAS HERE.

Back.