Part 1. Miss the girl

‘History does not repeat itself, only man.’

– Voltaire


Chapter 1

‘No more dead dogs and slashed swans for us,’ whispered Dick Alderman, like this was good news -

It wasn’t. It was Day 2:

9.30 a.m. -

Friday 13 May 1983:

Millgarth Police Station, Leeds -

Yorkshire:

Waiting in the wings -

I pushed open the side door, the Conference Room silent as I led this damned parade out:

Detective Superintendent Alderman and the father, a policewoman and the mother, Evans from Community Affairs and me -

The Owl:

Maurice Jobson; Detective Chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson.

We sat down behind the Formica tables, behind the microphones and the cups of water.

I took off my glasses. I rubbed my eyes -

No bed, no sleep, only this:

The Press Conference -

This same, familiar place again:

Hell.

I put my glasses back on, thick lenses and black frames. I sat and stared out at my audience -

This same, familiar audience:

These hundred hungry hounds, sweating under their TV lights and deadlines, under the cigarette smoke and last night’s ale, their muscles taut and arses clean, tongues out and mouths watering, wanting bones -

Fresh bones.

I switched on the microphone. I reeled back from the inevitable wail.

I coughed once to clear my throat then said: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, at approximately 4 p.m. yesterday evening, Hazel Atkins disappeared on her way home from Morley Grange Junior and Infants. Hazel was last seen walking up Rooms Lane towards her home in Bradstock Gardens.’

I took a sip from the warm, still water.

‘When Hazel did not return from school, Mr and Mrs Atkins contacted Morley Police and a search was launched early yesterday evening. As some of you are aware, the police were joined in this search by more than one hundred local people. Unfortunately last night’s freak weather hampered the search, although it did resume at six o’clock this morning. Given the inclement and unseasonable weather and the fact that Hazel has never gone missing before, we are obviously concerned for her safety and whereabouts.’

Another sip from the warm, still water.

‘Hazel is ten years old. She has medium-length dark brown hair and brown eyes. Last night she was wearing light blue corduroy trousers, a dark blue sweater embroidered with the letter H, and a red quilted sleeveless jacket. She was carrying a black drawstring gym bag, also embroidered with the letter H.’

I held up an enlarged colour print of a smiling brown-haired girl. I said: ‘Copies of this recent school photograph are being distributed as I speak.’

Again a sip from the warm, still water.

I glanced down the table at Dick Alderman. He touched the father’s arm. The father looked up then turned to me.

I nodded.

The father blinked.

I said: ‘Mr Atkins would now like to read a short statement in the hope that any member of the public who may have seen Hazel after four o’clock yesterday evening, or who may have any information whatsoever regarding Hazel’s whereabouts or her disappearance, will come forward and share this information with Mr and Mrs Atkins and ourselves.’

I slid the microphone down the table to Mr Atkins as the hounds edged in closer, panting and slavering, smelling bones -

His daughter’s bones -

The scent strong here, near.

Mr Atkins looked at his wife, his four eyes red from tears and lack of sleep, a night’s guilty stubble in clothes damp and crushed, and from out of this mess he stared at the hounds that waited and watched, waited and watched -

His bones.

Mr Atkins said, said with strength: ‘I would like to appeal to anybody who knows where our Hazel is or who saw her after four o’clock yesterday to please telephone the police. Please, if you know anything, anything at all, please telephone the police. Please -’

Stop -

‘Let her come home.’

Stop.

Silence.

Mrs Atkins in tears, shoulders shaking, WPC Martin holding her -

Her husband, Hazel’s father, his fingers in his mouth -

He said: ‘We miss her. I -’

Stop.

Silence -

Long, long silence.

I nodded at Dick. He passed the microphone back along the table.

I said: ‘That is all the information we have at the moment but, if you would excuse Mr and Mrs Atkins, I will then try and answer any questions you might have.’

I stood up as WPC Martin and Dick took the mother and the father out through the side door, the dogs watching them go, still hungry -

Hungry for bones -

Mine.

Alone with Evans at the front, I said: ‘Gentlemen?’

The stark forest of hands, from their whispers a two-word scream:

‘Clare Kemplay…’

More bones -

‘Coincidence,’ I was saying, seeing -

Old bones.

‘Coincidence,’ I said again, knowing -

There is salvation in no-one else.


Upstairs, a cup of cold tea in one hand: ‘Where are the parents?’

Dick Alderman: ‘Jim’s taken them back to Morley.’

‘We should get back over there.’

Dick: ‘Take my car?’

I nodded.

Dick put out his cigarette. He reached for his coat.

‘Dick?’

He turned back round: ‘Yeah?’

‘Where is all the Kemplay stuff?’

‘What?’

‘The Clare Kemplay files.’

‘It’s a coincidence,’ he sighed. ‘You said it yourself. What else could it be?’

‘Where’s the fucking stuff, Dick?’

He shrugged: ‘Wood Street, probably.’

‘Thank you.’

The Dewsbury Road through Beeston and along the Elland Road until it became Victoria Road and Morley -

Dick driving, me with my eyes closed -

Just the sleet, the windscreen wipers, and the radio:

Parliament dissolves amidst excitement and relief ahead of 9 June poll; search continues for missing Morley 10-year-old; body of a boy aged three found on Northampton tip; 18-year-old found hanged in police cell; Nilsen to be charged with more murders…’

‘How many you think he did?’ asked Dick -

‘Not a clue,’ I said, eyes still shut. ‘Not a bloody one.’

It was snowing in the middle of May and Hazel Atkins had been missing nineteen hours – Lost.

Morley Police Station -

Four o’clock -

The Incident Room:

Maps and a blackboard, markers and chalk, grids and times -

One photograph.

Lists of officers and their territories, lists of houses and their occupants -

Gaskins out in the fields, Ellis on the knocker -

Evans in and out with the press -

Dick Alderman and Jim Prentice sat waiting.

The chalk in my hand, the smudges on my suit -

The egg sandwiches covered in silver foil, uneaten.

I took off my glasses. I wiped them on my handkerchief.

There was nothing more to say:

Outside it was still snowing and Hazel Atkins was still missing -

Twenty-four hours.

Her parents back on a sofa in the cold front room of their dark home -

The curtains not drawn -

All of us lost.

There was a knock at the door -

I looked up.

Dick Alderman: ‘Nightcap, boss?’

I shook my head. I closed the file, glasses off and on the desk.

‘Clare Kemplay?’ Dick said, looking at her file.

‘Yep.’

Evening Post mentioned it,’ he mumbled.

‘Kathryn Williams?’

He nodded.

‘What did she say?’

‘Nine years ago, same school,’ he shrugged. ‘Bit about Myshkin.’

‘What about him?’

‘The usual bollocks.’

I picked up my glasses. I put them back on, the thick lenses and the black frames. I sat and stared up into his eyes, thinking -

I am the Owl:

I am the Owl and I see from behind these lenses thick and frames black, see through everything -

Unblinking -

The usual bollocks -

Everything.


Chapter 2

New Hope for Britain:

Saturday 14 May 1983 -


D-26 .


Fog and sleet from Wakefield to here:

Park Lane Special Hospital, Merseyside -

A rotten, un-fresh place.

You switch off the radio and the election debate and wind down your window.

‘I’m here to see Michael Myshkin,’ you say to the guard at the gate.

‘And you are?’

‘John Piggott.’

The guard looks down at the clipboard in his hands, tilting it towards him to keep the rain off: ‘John Winston Piggott?’

You nod.

‘His solicitor?’

You nod again, even less sure.

He hands you a plastic visitor’s tag: ‘Follow the road round to the main building and the car park. Report to reception inside. They’ll take you from there.’

‘Thank you.’

You drive up the black wet road to a low grey building, modern and barred. You park and get out into the dismal cold light, the sleet and the rain. You push a buzzer and wait outside the metal door to the main building. There is a loud click then the sound of an alarm. You pull open the door and step inside a steel cage. You show the plastic visitor’s tag to the guard on the other side of the bars and tell him your name. He bangs twice on one of the bars with a black and shining truncheon. Another set of locks moves back. Another alarm sounds and you are through to the reception area. Another guard gives you a slip of paper with a number. He nods at a bench. You walk over and sit down between a couple of old people and a woman with a crying child.

You sit and you wait in the grey and damp room, grey and damp with the smell of people who have travelled hundreds of miles along grey and damp motorways to be told by overweight men in grey and damp uniforms with black and shining truncheons to wait on grey and damp government seats for nothing but more bad news, grey and damp, as the bolts and the locks slide back and forth and the alarms sound and the numbers are called and the old people stand up and sit back down and the child cries and cries until a voice from a desk by the door shrieks: ‘Twenty-seven’.

The child has stopped crying and its mother is looking at you.

‘Twenty-seven!’

You stand up.

‘Number twenty-seven!’

At the desk you say: ‘John Piggott to see Michael Myshkin.’

A woman in a grey uniform runs her wet, bitten finger down a biro list, sniffs and says: ‘Purpose of visit?’

‘His mother asked me to come and see him.’

She sniffs again and looks up at you: ‘Family?’

‘No,’ you say. ‘I’m a solicitor.’

‘Legal then?’ she spits at you with sudden English hate, crisp and vicious.

You nod, vaguely afraid.

She hands you back your visitor’s pass: ‘First time?’

You nod again, her breath old and close.

‘The patient will be brought to the visitors’ room and a member of staff will be present throughout the visit. Visits are limited to forty-five minutes. You will both be seated at a table and are to remain seated throughout the course of the visit. You are to refrain from any physical contact and are not to pass anything directly to the patient. Anything you wish to give the patient must be done so through this office and can only be one of the items on this approved list,’ she says and hands you a photocopied piece of A4.

‘Thank you,’ you smile.

‘Return to your seat and wait for a member of staff to escort you to the visiting area.’

‘Thank you,’ you say again and do as you are told.

Thirty minutes and a paper swan later, a lanky guard with spots of blood upon his collar says: ‘John Winston Piggott?’

You stand up.

‘This way.’

You follow him to another door and another lock, another alarm and a ringing bell, through the door and up an overheated and overlit grey corridor.

At another set of double doors, he pauses and says: ‘Know the drill?’

You nod.

‘Keep seated, no physical contact, no passing of goods, ciggies, whatever,’ he says anyway.

You nod again.

‘I’ll tell you when your time’s up,’ he says. ‘If you’ve had enough, just say so.’

‘Thank you.’

The guard then punches a code into a panel on the wall.

An alarm sounds and he pulls open the door: ‘Ladies first.’

You step into a small room with a grey carpet and grey walls, two plastic tables each with two plastic chairs.

There are no windows, just one other door opposite -

No tea and biscuits here.

‘Sit down,’ says the guard.

You sit down in the grey plastic chair with your back to the grey door through which you’ve just come. You lean forward, arms on the marked plastic surface of the grey plastic table, eyes on the door opposite.

The guard takes a chair from the other table and sits down behind you.

You turn to ask him: ‘What’s he like then, Myshkin?’

The man looks over at the door then back at you and winks: ‘Pervert, same as rest of them.’

‘He violent, is he?’

‘Only with his right hand,’ he mimes.

You laugh and turn back round and there he is, right on cue -

As if by magick -

In a pair of grey overalls and grey shirt, enormous with a head twice as large:

Michael John Myshkin, murderer of children.

You’ve stopped laughing.

Michael Myshkin in the doorway, spittle on his chin.

‘Hello,’ you say.

‘Hello,’ Myshkin smiles, blinking.

His guard pushes him forwards into the grey plastic chair opposite you, then closes the door and takes the last chair to sit behind Myshkin.

Michael Myshkin looks up at you.

You stop staring.

Myshkin looks back down at the grey plastic table.

‘My name is John Piggott,’ you say. ‘I used to live in Fitzwilliam, near you. I’m a solicitor now and your mother asked me to come and talk to you about an appeal.’

You pause.

Michael Myshkin is patting down his dirty yellow hair with his fat right hand, the hair thin and black with oil.

‘An appeal is a very lengthy and costly procedure, involving a lot of time and different people,’ you continue. ‘So before any firm embarks upon such a course on behalf of a client, we have to be very sure that there are sufficient grounds for an appeal and that there is a great likelihood of success. And even this costs a lot of money.’

You pause again.

Myshkin looks up at you.

You ask him: ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’

He wipes his right hand on his overalls and smiles at you, his pale blue eyes blinking in the warm grey room.

‘You do understand what I’m saying?’

Michael Myshkin nods once, still smiling, still blinking.

You turn to the guard sat behind you: ‘Is it OK if I take some notes?’

He shrugs and you take a spiral notebook and biro from out of your carrier bag.

You flick open the pad and ask Myshkin: ‘How old are you, Michael?’

He glances round at the guard sat behind him then back at you and whispers: ‘Twenty-two.’

‘Really?’

He blinks, smiles, and nods again.

‘Your mother told me you were thirty.’

‘Outside,’ he whispers, the index finger of his left hand to his wet lips.

‘How about inside?’ you ask him. ‘How long have you been in here?’

Michael Myshkin looks at you, not smiling, not blinking, and very slowly says: ‘Seven years, four months, and twenty-six days.’

You sit back in your plastic chair, tapping your plastic pen on the plastic table.

You look across at him.

Myshkin is patting down his hair again.

‘Michael,’ you say.

He looks up at you.

‘You know why you’re in here?’ you ask. ‘In this place?’

He nods.

‘Tell me,’ you say. ‘Tell me why you’re in here?’

‘Because of Clare,’ he says.

‘Clare who?’

‘Clare Kemplay.’

‘What about her?’

‘They say I killed her.’

‘And is that right?’ you say, quietly. ‘Did you kill her?’

Michael John Myshkin shakes his head: ‘No.’

‘No what?’ you say, writing down his words verbatim.

‘I didn’t kill her.’

‘But you said you did.’

‘They said I did.’

‘Who did?’

‘The police, the papers, the judge, the jury,’ he says. ‘Everyone.’

‘And you,’ you tell him. ‘You said so too.’

‘But I didn’t,’ says Michael Myshkin.

‘You didn’t say it or you didn’t do it?’

‘I didn’t do it.’

‘So why did you say you did if you didn’t?’

Myshkin is patting down his hair again.

‘Michael,’ you say. ‘This is very, very important.’

He looks up.

You say again: ‘Why did you say you killed her?’

‘They said I had to.’

‘Who?’

‘Everyone.’

‘Who’s everyone?’

‘My father, my mother, the neighbours, work, the lawyers, the police,’ he says. ‘Everyone.’

‘Which police?’ you say. ‘Can you remember their names?’

Michael Myshkin stops patting down his hair and shakes his head.

‘Can you remember what they looked like?’

Head still down, he nods once -

But you stop writing, looking into the uniformed eyes of the man behind Michael Myshkin, another set of uniformed eyes behind you -

You say: ‘Why did they tell you to do that? To say you killed her?’

Michael John Myshkin looks up at you. He is not smiling. He is not blinking. He is not patting down his hair -

He says: ‘Because I know who did.’

‘You know who killed her?’

He looks at the table, patting down his hair again.

You start writing: ‘Who?’

He is patting down his hair, blinking at the plastic table.

‘Michael, if it wasn’t you, who was it?’

He is patting down his hair. He is blinking. Smiling.

‘Who?’

Smiling and blinking and patting down his hair and -

‘Who?’

Michael Myshkin looks up at you.

He says: ‘The Wolf.’

You put down your pen: ‘The Wolf?’

Myshkin, in his grey overalls and his grey shirt with his enormous body and oversized head, is nodding -

Nodding and laughing -

Really, really laughing -

The guards too.

Laughing and nodding and blinking and patting down his hair, the spittle on his chin -

Michael John Myshkin, murderer of children, is laughing -

Spittle on his chin, tears on his cheeks.

Outside in your car, you switch on the engine and the radio news and light a cigarette:

‘Thatcher names defence as nation’s priority; ten Greenham women arrested as council bailiffs move in; boy aged fifteen to appear before Northampton magistrates charged with murdering three-year-old boy; Hazel day three, the search continues; Nilsen charged with four more murders: Kenneth Ockendon in December 1979, Martyn Duffey in May 1980, William Sutherland in September 1980, Malcolm Barlow in…’

You switch the radio off and light another cigarette and listen to the rain fall on the roof of the car, eyes closed:

Fitzwilliam, three days ago. You waited in the same piss for your Pete to show. He didn’t so you went inside and cremated your mother. Stood alone at the front and bit the inside of your cheek until the blood wouldn’t stop and the tears finally came.

Mrs Myshkin was there, Mrs Ashworth and a couple of the others -

But not your Pete.

Ma Myshkin had caught you back at the house, cheap yellow margarine from a stale ham sandwich on your cheap black suit. She sponged it off with a thin flowered handkerchief and said: ‘You’ll see him then?’

You open your eyes.

You feel sick and your fingers are burning.

You put out the cigarette and press the buttons in and out on the radio until you find some music:

The Police.

‘Mrs Myshkin?’

You are in a working telephone box on Merseyside, listening to Mrs Myshkin and the relentless sound of a hard rain on the roof -

‘Yes, he’s fine,’ you say.

The rain pouring down, car lights in the middle of a wet Saturday afternoon in May -

‘I will need to see you again.’

The kind of wet Saturday afternoon you used to spend round your Uncle Ronnie and Aunty Winnie’s over Thornhill way, eating lemon curd tarts and custard pies in their kitchen with his old British motorcycle in pieces on the cracked linoleum, afraid -

‘Can I pop round sometime early in the week?’

Sitting in the sidecar in the garage with Pete, listening to the rain fall on the corrugated roof, the shells in the wall outside so sharp and full of pain, listening to the relentless sound of the hard rain on the roof and not wanting to go home, not wanting to go to school on Monday, dreading it -

‘Tuesday, if that’s OK with you?’

That vague fear even then -

‘Goodbye, Mrs Myshkin.’

That fear again now, less and less vague -

She hangs up and you stand there, in a working telephone box on Merseyside, listening to the dial tone -

The dial tone and the relentless sound of the hard rain on the roof, not wanting to go home, not wanting to go to work, dreading it -

That fear now:

Saturday 14 May 1983 -


D-26 .


That fear here -

Dogs barking -

Getting near.

Wolves.


Chapter 3

Rock ’n’ Roll -

Record on jukebox is stuck. BJ not dancing.

Eddie Dunford is pointing shotgun at BJ’s chest.

Eddie asks: ‘Why me?’

BJ say: ‘You came so highly recommended.’

He drops shotgun and turns and walks down Strafford stairs and Eddie’s gone -

Eddie’s gone but BJ still here -

Here:

Strafford, Wakefield -

Now:

Tuesday 24 December 1974.

Think, think, think -

Heart racing and gasping for breath, eyes wide and looking about:

Grace behind bar screaming and shaking, Old Cunt over by window in fucking shock not moving or anything, hands still up in air -

Craven stood there in centre of room, shit running out of his ear, his mate Dougie crawling towards bog in his own blood -

Paul on his back, eyes opening and closing, dying -

Boss man Derek Box already there -

Dead.

‘Fuck,’ BJ say, thinking -

Think, think fucking fast:

Over to Derek and open his jacket and take out his wallet, have his watch and rings for good measure -

Paul still whistling air, BJ take his money and his watch -

‘Cunt,’ he hisses.

‘Shoosh,’ BJ spit back -

Then sirens, BJ can hear sirens -

Fuck -

BJ leave him pennies and BJ say to Grace: ‘We got to get out of here, love.’

But she’s still all shock and screams, blood on her blouse and blood in hair -

‘Come on!’ BJ yell. ‘They’re going to be here any fucking second.’

She doesn’t move.

‘You don’t want to be here.’

Behind bar to give her a shake but it’s no fucking use so BJ grab night’s takings from till, shouting in her face: ‘They’ll kill us all!’

Nothing -

BJ slap her -

Tyres and brakes and car doors outside -

Fuck, fuck -

BJ jump bar -

Fuck, fuck, fuck -

BJ can’t go out front, BJ have to take back -

‘Grace!’ BJ shout for last fucking time. ‘Come on!’

But she doesn’t fucking move -

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck -

Fuck her.

BJ head down passage and push open back door, hit night and stone steps running when BJ hear:


BANG!


Sound of another shotgun -

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck -

Down stone steps, bottom of stone steps when BJ hear another:


BANG!


Another gun -

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck -

Across empty car park, crouching and running through puddles of rain water and oil, out back way then flat in a doorway as police car circles past, ducking over road and down side of bus station, thinking what the -

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck -

Fuck BJ going to do now?

Through shadows of deserted bus station, into coach station when thank -

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck -

BJ see it -

See it standing there, all lit up in silver and lit up in gold:

A coach.

Panting, BJ ask driver: ‘You running?’

‘About six bloody hours behind.’

‘Where you going?’

‘Preston via Bradford and Manchester.’

‘When you leaving?’

‘Now.’

‘How much?’

‘Ticket office is closed,’ he winks.

BJ smile: ‘So how much you want?’

‘Tenner?’

‘Done,’ BJ say and hand him a stolen bloody note.

‘A Merry Christmas to you too,’ he says.

BJ get on and head for back seat.

Two other folk; one sleeping and other pissed off.

BJ take back seat and get BJ’s head down.

Coach pulls out of station but heads back into Bullring -

Towards Strafford.

BJ want to look but BJ dare not.

Coach slows -

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck -

Driver opens door -

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck -

‘What’s going on?’

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck -

‘Been a shooting,’ comes copper’s voice.

‘Shooting?’

‘Strafford Arms.’

‘You’re joking?’

‘Looks like a robbery.’

‘Robbery?’ repeats driver with his stolen tenner burning a hole in his unwashed pocket and his jelly heart -

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck -

‘You’ll have to go down Springs,’ says copper.

‘Will do,’ says driver.

‘Some bloody Christmas,’ says copper.

‘Aye,’ says driver. ‘Hope you catch the bastard.’

‘We will,’ says copper. ‘We always do.’

Driver closes door and coach turns left and heads down Springs and out of Wakefield, snaking its way through Dewsbury and Batley into Bradford -

Sat on back seat, BJ suddenly shaking and crying and BJ can’t stop shaking and crying because of all things BJ seen and all things BJ done, things they’ve made BJ see and things they’ve made BJ do, all those fucking things they’ve made BJ do and BJ thinking of Grace and BJ shaking and crying because BJ know what they’ll have done to her and what they’re going to do to BJ, all people they’ve killed and all people they’re going to have to fucking kill, and BJ know BJ should have done it right, should have done bloody lot of them because now BJ be truly -

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck -

Fucked forever.

When he pulls into Bradford Bus Station, driver comes up to back.

BJ close BJ’s eyes -

‘Get off,’ he whispers.

BJ open BJ’s eyes: ‘I want to go to Manchester.’

‘Don’t give a fuck where you want to go,’ he spits. ‘It’s all over bloody radio and all over your fucking face.’

‘I…’

‘I don’t want to know,’ he says and chucks Derek Box’s tenner at BJ.

BJ pick it up. BJ walk past him down aisle.

BJ get off. BJ stand on freezing platform.

BJ watch coach pull out and away.

It’s three in morning:

Christmas Eve, 1974 -

Three in morning, Christmas Eve 1974 when BJ remember Clare -

Scotch Clare.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck -

Holy fuck, no.


Chapter 4

Wakefield Metropolitan Police Headquarters -

Day 5:

Monday 16 May 1983 -

Five thousand buildings searched, thirty thousand folk interviewed -

Widening search radius to twenty-five square miles, frogmen dragging rivers, sewers;

Family flattened, relatives leant on -

Dawn raids on the perverted and recently paroled.

‘Go straight in,’ said the Chief Constable’s secretary. ‘He’s expecting you.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, adjusting my glasses.

I knocked once. I opened the door.

Chief Constable Angus was sat behind a big desk with his back to the window and another grey sky. He was writing. He glanced up. He nodded at the seat across from him.

I sat down.

‘Any news?’ he asked, knowing the answer.

I shook my head.

He stopped writing. He put down his pen. ‘What about the Press?’

‘Reconstruction would keep them quiet.’

‘Bit premature that, don’t you think?’

‘Anniversary Check.’

‘You want to do it Thursday?’

‘Long as we can let them know today or tomorrow.’

‘The Press?’

‘And the family.’

He nodded: ‘Fine.’

‘Could go National?’

‘Thought you reckoned it was local?’

‘Still do.’

He shrugged.

I opened the file on my knee. I handed him a black and white photograph: ‘Remember her?’

‘Very funny, Maurice,’ he said, not laughing.

‘Seems like a lot of folk do.’

‘What?’

‘Remember her.’

‘Heard you were sniffing around.’

‘You blame me?’

‘It’s a coincidence.’

‘There’s no such thing.’

‘He’s behind lock and key,’ said Angus. ‘Where he belongs and where you helped put him.’

‘What if he had help?’

‘He’d have said.’

‘He says he didn’t do it.’

‘He never did before.’

‘We never let him.’

‘Maurice, listen to me,’ he pleaded. ‘Michael Myshkin might have been soft in the head, but his heart was hard, rock hard. He did those things, killed them girls. Sure as I’m sitting here and you’re sitting there.’

I said nothing.

‘You know it in your heart,’ he said. ‘You know it in your heart.’

In my heart -

I shook my head: ‘So it’s just a bleeding coincidence then?’

‘Like I say.’

‘Well, like I say, there’s no such fucking thing.’

Ronald Angus sighed. He slapped his hands down hard on the top of his big desk. He stood up. He walked over to the window. He looked up at another grey sky over Wakefield.

It was starting to rain again.

His back to me, he said: ‘That’s not to say he might not have a fan or someone, way these animals are.’

‘I want to go and see him,’ I said.

He was nodding at the grey sky.

I asked: ‘That a yes, is it?’

He turned back from the grey sky. ‘Just keep it out of the bloody papers, that’s all.’

I stood up, adjusting my glasses.

It was raining heavily against the window.

I picked up the black and white photograph from his desk -

Clare Kemplay smiling up at me, out of my hands -

In my heart.

I took the motorway back into Leeds, odd and sudden patches of sunlight falling from the dirty grey sea up above, childhood memories of sunshine and cut grass drowned by voices; terrifying, hysterical, and screeching voices of approaching doom, disaster and death -

‘A young girl doesn’t simply vanish into thin air.’

The odd and sudden patches of sunlight gone, I came off the motorway at the Hunslet and Beeston exit, past the terrifying lorries, the hysterical diggers and the screeching cranes. I took the Hunslet Road then Black Bull Street into the centre and Millgarth, my hands shaking, knees weak and stomach hollow with approaching doom, disaster and death -

‘Someone somewhere must have seen something.’

It was Day 5 -


1983.


‘Now?’ said Dick. ‘This very minute?’

‘And not a word, not even to Jim.’

‘Can I get my coat?’ he asked, standing.

‘Meet you downstairs in five minutes.’

‘Right,’ he said, opening the door.

‘And Dick,’ I said.

He stopped.

‘Not a word, yeah?’

He nodded like, this is me Maurice, this is me.

‘I mean it,’ I said.

‘I know you do,’ he said and I hoped he did -

Hoped he fucking did.

He drove.

I drifted, dreaming -

Underground kingdoms, forgotten kingdoms of badgers and angels, worms and insect cities; mute swans upon black lakes while dragons soared overhead in painted skies of silver stars and then swept down through lamp-lit caverns wherein an owl guarded three sleeping little princesses in tiny feathered wings, guarded them from -

Waking afraid of the news:

‘Police today continued their search for missing Morley schoolgirl Hazel Atkins, as Chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson, the detective leading the search, admitted that so far the response from the public had been disappointing…

Afraid of the news:

‘A young girl doesn’t simply vanish into thin air. Someone somewhere must have seen something.’

I took off my glasses. I rubbed my eyes, that taste in my mouth -

Meat -

Afraid.


*

We waited on plastic chairs, listening to the doors and the locks, the shuffling footsteps and the occasional scream from another wing. We waited on plastic chairs, staring at the different shades of grey paint, the grey fittings and the grey furniture.

We waited on plastic chairs for Michael Myshkin.

Five minutes later the door opened and there he was -

In a pair of grey overalls, fat from institutional living and sweaty from institutional heating -

Michael John Myshkin.

He sat down across from us, eyes down in front of a full house.

‘Michael,’ I said. ‘Do you remember us?’

Nothing.

‘My name is Mr Jobson and this is Mr Alderman. We’re policemen from West Yorkshire,’ I continued. ‘Near where your mum lives.’

He looked up now, a quick eyeball at Dick then back down at the chubby hands in his tubby lap.

‘How are you, Michael?’ asked Alderman and I wished he hadn’t because now Myshkin was fair wringing those chubby hands of his.

‘Michael,’ I said. ‘We’re here to ask you some questions that’s all. Be gone before you know it, you tell us what we want.’

He looked up again, my way this time -

I smiled. He didn’t smile back.

‘Been a while,’ I said. ‘In here a while now, yeah?’

He nodded.

‘Must miss home?’

He nodded.

‘Know I would; my family, my mates?’

He nodded.

‘Fitzwilliam, yeah?’

He nodded.

‘Just you, your mam and dad, wasn’t it?’

He nodded.

‘Dad was a miner?’

He nodded.

‘Passed away, yeah?’

Another nod.

‘Sorry to hear that,’ I said. ‘Been sick a while, had he?’

Two quick nods.

‘Where’s your mam now?’

‘Fitzwilliam,’ he whispered.

‘Same house?’

He nodded.

‘Bet she’s keeping your old room for you,’ I smiled. ‘Keeping it just the way it was.’

He nodded again, twice.

‘Comes here often, does she, your mum?’

‘Yes,’ he said, a whisper again.

‘How about mates, they come and all, do they?’

He shook his head.

‘Hear from them much, do you?’

He shook his head again.

‘What about Johnny thingy,’ I said. ‘Never hear from him?’

He looked up: ‘Johnny?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, tapping the table. ‘Johnny, hell-was-his-last-name?’

‘Jimmy?’ he said. ‘Jimmy Ashworth?’

‘That’s it,’ I nodded. ‘Jimmy Ashworth. How’s he doing?’

He shrugged.

‘Never comes? Never writes?’

‘No.’

‘Christmas card?’

‘No.’

‘But you two were best mates, I heard?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thick as thieves, weren’t you?’ smiled Dick.

He nodded.

‘Not very nice that,’ I said. ‘Some bloody friend he turned out to be, eh?’

Nothing.

I asked him: ‘What about the others?’

He looked up.

‘Your other mates?’

He shook his head.

‘Who was there, remind me?’

He shook his head. He said: ‘Just Jimmy in end.’

‘No girlfriends? Penpals?’

He shook his head.

‘What about work?’

Nothing.

‘You had mates at work, yeah?’

He nodded.

‘Castleford, wasn’t it? Photo studio?’

He nodded again.

‘Who was your mate there then?’

‘Mary.’

‘Mary who?’

‘Mary Goldthorpe,’ he said. ‘But she’s dead.’

‘Anyone else?’

He shook his head. Then he said: ‘Sharon, the new girl.’

‘What was her last name?’

‘Douglas,’ he said.

‘Sharon Douglas?’ I said.

He nodded.

I turned to Dick Alderman.

Dick Alderman nodded.

I took off my glasses. I rubbed my eyes. I put them back on: ‘Anyone else?’

‘Just Mr Jenkins,’ he said and this time I nodded -

‘Ted Jenkins,’ I said. ‘That’d be right.’

The cage door open to the wet Scouse night, a voice shouted after us: ‘Mr Jobson?’

We both turned round, a tall prison officer coming after us.

‘Just thought you ought to know,’ he panted. ‘Myshkin had a meeting with his solicitor on Saturday.’

‘Thanks,’ said Dick. ‘We saw his name on the visitors’ list.’

‘But I was there, yeah?’ the prison officer said. ‘In the room with them when Myshkin told this solicitor feller he didn’t do it.’

‘Is that right?’ Dick said. ‘Going to appeal, is he?’

‘Myshkin said a policeman told him to say he did it,’ the prison officer nodded. ‘Made him confess.’

‘Say which policeman, did he?’ asked Dick.

‘He couldn’t remember the name,’ said the prison officer. ‘But solicitor cut him off before he could say much else.’

‘Smart man,’ I said.

Dick asked him: ‘Myshkin say anything else?’

The officer tapped his temple with two fingers. ‘He said a wolf did it.’

‘Did what?’ said Dick.

‘Killed the little girl.’

‘A wolf?’ snorted Dick.

‘Yeah,’ the officer nodded, still tapping his temple. ‘That’s what he said.’

‘He get many other visitors, does he?’ I asked.

‘Just his mad mam and the God Squad,’ laughed the officer. ‘Poor sod.’

‘The poor sod,’ I repeated.

In the visitors’ car park of the Park Lane Special Hospital, we sat in the dark in silence until I asked Dick: ‘What do you know about John Winston Piggott?’

‘Father was one of us.’

‘Jesus.’ I shook my head. ‘That was his father?’

Dick nodded.

‘What’s he look like, the son?’

‘Right fat bastard,’ he laughed. ‘Office on Wood Street.’

‘Like father, like son?’

‘Who knows?’ Dick shrugged. ‘But he was Bob Fraser’s solicitor, wasn’t he?’

‘Christ almighty,’ I said.

‘Dйjа bloody vu,’ said Dick.

‘What’s he know, Piggott?’

‘Fuck knows.’

‘Well, you’d better fucking well find out,’ I said, the taste in my mouth again. ‘And fucking fast.’


Chapter 5

You wake about eight and lie in bed eating cold Findus Crispy Pancakes -

Raw, uncooked in the middle, watching the TV-AM news on the portable:

Police are to hold an inquiry into the death of a prisoner at Rotherhite Police Station. Mr Nicholas Ofuso, thirty-two, became unconscious and died of asphyxiation due to inhalation of vomit after nine policemen had gone to his flat in answer to a domestic dispute. Mr Ofuso struggled during the journey to Rotherhite Police Station and just before arrival he vomited. As his handcuffs were removed he went limp. He was given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation accompanied by a cardiac massage.’

It is Tuesday 17 May 1983 -


D-23 .


After half an hour you make a cup of tea, then you get washed and dressed. You fancy a curry for lunch, a hot one with big fat prawns, but it is pissing down as you open the door and remember you have to see Mrs Myshkin today -

The newspaper lying on the mat, face up; Hazel Atkins:

Missing.

You go back upstairs and puke up all the pancakes and the tea, a flabby man on his knees before his bog, a flabby man who does not love his country or his god, a flabby man who has no country, has no god -

You don’t want to go to work, you don’t want to stay in the flat:

A flabby man on your knees.

You drive over one bridge and under another, past the boarded-up pubs and closed-down shops, the burnt-out bus stops and the graffiti that hates everything, everywhere, and everyone but especially the IRA, Man United, and the Pakis -

This is Fitzwilliam:

Back for the second time in a week, in a year.

Least it has stopped raining -

Turning out rite nice for once.

The off-licence is the only thing open so you park the car and go inside and slide the money through a slot to an Asian man and his little lad standing in a cage in their best pyjamas among the bottles of unlabelled alcohol and the single cigarettes. The father slides your change back, the son your twenty Rothman.

Two girls are sat outside on the remains of a bench. They are drinking Gold Label Merrydown cider and Benilyn cough syrup. A dog is barking at a frightened child in a pushchair, an empty bottle of Thunderbird rolling around on the concrete. The girls have dyed short rats’ tails and fat mottled legs in turquoise clothes and suede pointed boots.

The dog turns from the screaming baby to growl at you.

One of the girls says: ‘You fancy a fuck, fatty? Tenner back at hers.’

‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ you say at the front door. ‘I got lost.’

‘You’re here now,’ smiles Mrs Myshkin. ‘Come in.’

‘Car be all right there?’ you ask her, looking back at the only one in the street.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘You’ll be gone before the kids get out.’

You glance at your watch and step inside 54 Newstead View, Fitzwilliam.

‘Go through,’ she gestures.

You go into the front room to the left of the staircase; patterned carpet well vacuumed, assorted furniture well polished, the taste of air-freshener and the fire on full.

You have a headache.

Mrs Myshkin waves you towards the settee and you sit on it.

‘Cup of tea?’

‘Thank you,’ you nod.

‘I’ll just be a minute,’ she says and goes back out.

The room is filled with photographs and paintings, photographs and paintings of men, photographs and paintings of men not here -

Her husband, her son, Jesus Christ.

The fire is warm against your legs.

She comes back in with a plastic tray and sets it down on the table in front of you: ‘Milk and sugar?’

‘Please.’

‘How many?’

‘Three.’

‘Help yourself to biscuits,’ she says.

‘Thank you,’ you say and reach over for a chocolate digestive.

She hands you your tea and there’s a knock at the door.

‘My sister,’ she says. ‘You don’t mind?’

‘No,’ you say.

She goes out to the door and you wash down the biscuit and take another and think about turning down the bloody fire. You have chocolate on your fingers and your shirt again.

Mrs Myshkin comes back in with another little grey-haired woman with the same metal-framed glasses.

‘This is my sister,’ she says. ‘Mrs Novashelska, from Leeds.’

You stand up, wipe your fingers upon your trouser leg, then shake the woman’s tiny hand. ‘Nice to meet you.’

Mrs Myshkin pours a cup of tea for her sister and they both sit down in the chairs either side of you.

Mrs Myshkin says to her sister: ‘He saw Michael on Saturday.’

The other woman smiles: ‘You will help him then?’

You put down your cup and saucer and turn to Mrs Myshkin: ‘I’m not sure I can.’

Both the little women are staring at you.

‘As I told you last week,’ you begin. ‘I don’t have any experience with appeals.’

Both little women staring at you, the fat man sweating on the small settee.

‘Not this kind of appeal. You see, what should happen, should have happened in Michael’s case, is that his original solicitor and his counsel, they should have lodged an appeal after his trial. Within fourteen days.’

The little women staring, the fat man roasting.

‘But they didn’t, did they?’ you ask.

Mrs Myshkin and Mrs Novashelska put down their cups on the table.

You wipe your face with your handkerchief.

Mrs Novashelska says: ‘They couldn’t very well appeal, could they? Not when they’d all told him to plead guilty.’

You wipe your face with your handkerchief again and ask: ‘But he did confess, didn’t he?’

Two little women in a little front room with its little photographs and pictures of men gone, men gone missing -

Men not here -

Only you:

Fat, wet with sweat, and covered in chocolate and biscuit crumbs.

The two little women, their four eyes behind their metal frames, cold and accusing -

Silent.

‘It’s difficult to appeal against a confession and a guilty plea,’ you say, softly.

‘Mr Piggott,’ says Mrs Myshkin. ‘He didn’t do it.’

‘Look,’ you say. ‘I’m very sorry and I would really like to help but I just don’t think I’m the man for the job and I would hate to waste your time or money. You need to find someone better qualified and a lot more experienced than I am in these matters.’

Their four eyes behind their metal frames, cold and accusing -

Silent, betrayed.

‘Look,’ you say again. ‘Can I just outline what it would involve, why you really need to get someone else?’

Silent.

‘Firstly you need to apply for leave to appeal. This is usually before what we call the single judge who has to be persuaded by the material prepared that we can demonstrate that there are grounds to appeal against conviction or sentence. That involves the presentation, even in very skeletal form, of legal reasons or new evidence that clearly demonstrate a reasonable degree of uncertainty as to the safety of the conviction. This is unlikely in the case of a confession, a deal with the prosecution, and the consent of the trial judge, plus the Crown and the judge and the jury’s then acceptance of a guilty plea to lesser charges. But for the sake of argument, let’s say such grounds for appeal against conviction can be found, if then these grounds are accepted by the single judge, and that is a very big if, leave to appeal would be granted and then the real business begins. You would need to be represented by counsel and also need to apply for legal aid for the solicitor and counsel to prepare for a full appeal. Should that aid be granted then a date would be set and eventually the case would come before the Court of Appeal. This consists of three judges who would go through the material; the evidence, arguments, what-have-you, and decide whether or not the conviction was safe, after which a ruling would be handed down detailing their decision and the reasoning behind it. In other words, it takes forever and one mistake and you’re back to square bloody one. So you really need to find someone who knows what they’re doing, what they’re talking about.’

Four eyes, warm and welcoming -

Hands clapping.

‘Mr Piggott,’ beams Mrs Novashelska. ‘You seem to know exactly what you’re talking about.’

‘No, no, no,’ you say, shaking your head. ‘It really isn’t as simple as it sounds, plus I’ve never actually drawn up an application for leave to appeal and, to be frank, I don’t see what grounds there would be anyway, other than Michael’s changed his mind.’

Mrs Myshkin says again: ‘He didn’t do it.’

‘So you keep saying,’ you sigh. ‘But that doesn’t alter the fact that he did confess and he did plead guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, as opposed to murder, and this was accepted by the prosecution and by the judge who did instruct the jury to do likewise which all in all, appeal-wise, is something of an own goal because you’re basically appealing against yourself.’

‘He had bad advice,’ says Mrs Novashelska.

‘So he doesn’t need any more,’ you say and stand up.

The two little women in the little front room with its little photographs and pictures of men gone, men gone missing -

Men not here -

Only you:

A fat man on fire and on his feet -

Melting -

A pool of piss on a patterned carpet.

You say: ‘I’m sorry.’

Their four eyes behind their metal frames -

Silent.

You push your way along between the settee and the table, edging towards the door, your shirt wringing, sticking to your stomach and back.

‘Mr Piggott,’ says Mrs Myshkin again. ‘He did not do it.’

Men not here.

You stop just to say again: ‘And I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t be of any use.’

The two little women in the little front room with its little photographs and pictures of men gone, men gone missing -

Not here -

The two little women watching another man go.

In the doorway, you turn to say goodbye but Mrs Myshkin is on her feet:

‘Mr Piggott,’ she says. ‘I knew your father.’

You stand in the doorway with your back to her now, your mouth dry and your clothes wet.

‘He was a good man,’ she says. ‘I can remember him with you and your brother, playing football on that field over there.’

Men not here.

‘It’s not enough,’ you tell her. ‘Not enough.’

‘No,’ she says, a hand upon your arm (upon your heart). ‘It’s too much.’

You walk out into the hall.

There is an evening paper sticking through the letterbox. You pull it out and open it up.

There’s that photograph of Hazel Atkins, that word:


MISSING -


You turn back to hand the paper to Mrs Myshkin.

‘It’s happening again,’ whispers her sister behind her.

‘Never stops,’ says Mrs Myshkin. ‘Not round here.’

Not here -

‘You know that,’ she says, her hand squeezing your hand (your heart) -

Here.


Chapter 6

Phone is ringing and ringing and ringing -

Come on, come on, come on -

Hopping from foot to foot in a Bradford Bus Station phonebox -

Please, please, please -

And Clare picks up and BJ know she knows -

Knows her sister is dead, slurring: ‘What now?’

‘It’s BJ.’

‘BJ love,’ she’s sobbing. ‘Gracie’s dead.’

‘I know,’ BJ say. ‘I was there.’

‘Bastards,’ she’s howling. ‘Bastards!’

‘Clare, listen to me,’ BJ whisper. ‘You’ve got to get a cab and come and meet me.’

‘Fucking filth are sending a car over, aren’t they?’ she’s crying. ‘Got to go and fucking identify -’

‘You got to run -’

‘I’m too fucking tired -’

‘Clare, listen to me -’

‘Paula and now Gracie -’

‘And it’ll be you next,’ BJ shout. ‘Come on.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Bradford Bus Station,’ BJ say. ‘Cafй opens in an hour.’

‘But they’re coming -’

‘Well, fucking run -’

‘…’

‘Hello? Hello?’

Line dead, BJ hang up and dial again but it’s engaged, again but it’s engaged.

BJ stand in phonebox freezing BJ’s tits off, staring at season’s greetings:

Derek Shags Convicts Wives.

BJ dial one last time.

BJ hang up and turn and open door.

A man is sat on bench next to phonebox.

BJ look at BJ’s watch:

Four in morning.

Man on bench says: ‘Excuse me?’

BJ look at him: ‘Yes?’

‘Do you have the time?’ he asks.

‘You’ve got a watch.’ BJ nod at edge of sleeve of man’s coat.

‘So I have,’ he smiles. ‘Silly me.’

BJ smile back: ‘Silly you.’

He is middle-class and middle-aged and most likely married or recently divorced, dressed in corduroy trousers and an anorak. He says: ‘I’m Jim. What’s your name?’

‘BJ.’

‘That’s a nice name.’

‘BJ’s name, BJ’s game.’

‘I like games,’ says Jim.

‘Me too,’ BJ say. ‘But they’re not cheap.’

‘I didn’t think they would be,’ he sighs.

‘Ten pounds.’

He nods.

BJ look around bus station -

It’s empty.

‘I’ve got my car,’ says Jim.

BJ shake head: ‘Follow me.’

BJ and Jim walk across deserted platforms and into toilets and into far cubicle -

BJ put bog lid down and tell him to sit down.

He sits down.

‘Give us tenner.’

Jim reaches inside his anorak and takes out a brown wallet and hands BJ two five pound notes.

BJ put them in trouser pocket and kneel down in front of him pushing his legs open.

‘Just a minute,’ says Jim and unzips his anorak.

‘And trousers,’ BJ say.

‘They never check this place, do they?’ he asks.

‘Who?’

‘The police? The bus company?’

‘Shoosh,’ BJ smile and reach into Jim’s fly and his underpants.

‘What if -’

BJ glance at BJ’s watch: ‘Do you want to stop?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘No.’

‘Well, shut up and relax,’ BJ hiss and pull Jim’s limp cock out of his vest and pants, sweet and sour smell of old talc and dry piss in BJ’s face -

BJ stroke him until he is hard and then BJ start to suck -

And Jim closes his eyes and dreams he is fucking BJ up arse as BJ beg him to never stop, his muscular left forearm tight around BJ’s thin little neck, his right fist around BJ’s pale cock as his own slides in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out, in and -

Out:

Jim comes and BJ spit.

Jim does himself up and asks: ‘You usually here, are you?’

BJ shake BJ’s head: ‘Your first time?’

Jim blushes and then nods.

‘I’m just passing through,’ BJ say.

‘That’s a shame.’

BJ nod.

‘Where are you from?’

‘I’m a space invader,’ BJ wink and open door and step out of cubicle.

Jim stays there, smiling.

‘You should go first,’ BJ tell Jim.

‘Thank you,’ he says.

‘Mention it.’

Jim looks confused like he wants to shake BJ’s hand, but BJ look away into mirror and Jim hurries off home for a safer and more leisurely wank on his bathroom mat.

BJ run tap into dirty sink and splash icy water on BJ’s face and rinse some round mouth and get dry with bottom of star shirt and then BJ count money and walk out across empty platforms through grey light to cafй and sign that promises all-day Christmas dinners today -

Christmas Eve.

BJ look at BJ’s watch:

It’s almost five.

BJ open door and step into cafй -

It’s empty but warm and radio is on.

A big woman with a red face comes out of back.

‘You open?’ BJ ask.

‘Just about,’ she smiles.

‘Ta,’ BJ say.

‘What can I get you?’

‘Tea please.’

‘Be five or ten minutes? I’ve just stuck it on.’

BJ nod and sit down opposite door.

There’s a paper on one of chairs, yesterday’s -

Two headlines:

RL STAR’S SISTER MURDERED.


COUNCILLOR RESIGNS .


By Jack Whitehead and George Greaves -

Two headlines and two faces:

Paula Garland and William Shaw -

Bill.

‘Hello?’

BJ look up into another face -

Clare’s face:

Streaked black with mascara rivers she’s cried, smudged black where she’s tried not to, her hair now blonde again -

‘Hello,’ BJ say and stand up and go towards her and take her in BJ’s arms and hold her as BJ and Clare shake with tears and shock of it all until woman comes out of kitchen with tea and asks if Clare wants one as well and BJ nod and say she does and BJ and Clare sit back down across table from each other, Clare’s hands in BJ’s hands, and woman brings another cup and asks if everything is OK and BJ tell her everything is OK but when she’s gone, Clare asks: ‘What are we going to do?’

‘Get out of here,’ BJ say.

‘Where?’

‘Scotland?’

‘It’s where the kids are,’ she says and hangs her head. ‘Be first place they’ll look.’

‘London?’

‘Second place.’

‘Preston?’

Clare looks up: ‘Why?’

‘There’s a coach at five-thirty.’

‘Aye,’ she nods and then she looks at BJ with her huge black eyes and asks: ‘Why Gracie?’

‘Loose ends,’ BJ say.

‘So what are we?’


Chapter 7

I woke again after less than an hour and lay in the shadows and dead of the night, the house quiet and dark, listening for something, anything: animal or bird’s feet from below or above, a car in the street, a bottle on the step, the thud of a paper on the mat, but there was nothing; only the silence, the shadows and the dead, remembering when it wasn’t always so, wasn’t always this way, when there were human feet upon the stairs, children’s feet, the slam of a ball against a bat or a wall, the pop of a cap gun and a burst balloon, bicycle bells and front doorbells, laughter and telephones ringing through the rooms, the smells, sounds and tastes of meals being cooked, served and eaten, of drinks poured, glasses raised and toasts drunk by men with cigars in black velvet jackets, their women with their sherries in their long evening dresses, the spare room for the light summer nights when no-one could drive, when no-one could leave, no-one wanted to leave, before that last time; that last time when the telephone rang and brought the silence that never left, that was here with me now, lying here with me now in the shadows and dead of a house, quiet and dark, empty -

Thursday morning.

I reached for my glasses and got out of bed and went down the stairs to the kitchen and put on the light and filled the kettle and lit the gas and took a teapot from the cupboard and a cup and saucer and unlocked the back door to see if the milk had been delivered yet but it hadn’t though there was still enough milk in the fridge (there was always enough milk) and I poured it into the cup and put two teabags in the teapot and took the kettle off the ring and poured the water on to the teabags and let it stand while I washed the milk pan from last night and the Ovaltine mug and then dried them both up, staring out into the garden and the field behind, the kitchen reflected back in the glass, a man fully dressed in dark brown trousers, a light blue shirt and a green V-necked pullover, wearing his thick lenses with their heavy black frames, a man old and fully dressed at four o’clock in the morning -

Thursday 19 May 1983.

I put the teapot and cup and saucer on a plastic blue tray and took it into the dining room and set it down on the table and poured the tea on to the milk and took a plain digestive from the biscuit barrel and then put on the gas fire and switched on the radio and sat in the chair opposite the fire to wait for the news on Radio 2:

‘Peter Williams, the Yorkshire Ripper, will again appear at Newport Magistrates’ Court on the Isle of Wight to give evidence against James Abbott, a fellow prisoner who is accused of wounding Williams with a piece of glass at Parkhurst Prison on January 10 this year; an attack that left Williams badly scarred and requiring surgery.

‘Williams, dressed in a grey suit, open-necked shirt with gold cross and chain, was booed upon his appearance in court. The defence first asked him if he was not a rather unpopular person, to which Williams replied that this was an opinion based upon ignorance. Williams was also asked whether he realised that his story was worth a lot of money to the press. Williams said that this was the trouble with society today, that people were motivated by greed and that there were no moral values at all.

‘Earlier Williams admitted that he continues to receive advice from the voices in his head. The trial of Mr Abbott continues.’

I switched off the radio. I took off my glasses.

I was sat in the chair in tears again;

In tears -

Knowing there was salvation in no-one else -

No other name here under heaven.

In tears -

Thursday 19 May 1983:

Day 8.

I drove out of Wakefield and into Castleford, black light becoming grey mist over Heath Common, the ponies standing chained and still, the roads empty but for lorries and their lights.

I parked behind a pub called the Swan. I walked into the centre of Castleford.

On the high street a bald newsagent was fetching in two bundles of papers from the pavement.

‘Morning,’ I said.

‘Morning,’ he said, his face red.

‘You know where Ted Jenkins had his studio?’ I asked. ‘Photographers?’

He stood upright: ‘Bit early, aren’t you?’

I showed him my warrant card.

He shrugged: ‘Was up road on right, not there now though.’

‘Since when was that then?’

Another shrug: ‘Since it burned down – seven, maybe even ten years ago now.’

‘So I’m actually a bit late then, aren’t I?’

He smiled.

‘Can I have one of them?’ I said, pointing down at a Yorkshire Post and Hazel.

He nodded and took out a small pocket-knife. He cut the string that bound the papers together.

I handed him the money but he refused it: ‘Go on, you’re all right.’

‘Which one was it then?’ I asked him. ‘His studio?’

He peered up the road: ‘Where that Chinkie is.’

‘Knew Ted well, did you?’

He shook his head: ‘Just to say how do, like.’

‘Never turned up, did he?’ I said, looking up the road.

He sighed: ‘Long time ago now.’

‘After fire?’ I said. ‘No-one ever heard of him after that?’

Another shake of the head: ‘Thought your mob reckoned he did a bloody Lord Lucan on us?’

I nodded: ‘Long time ago.’

‘Here,’ he winked. ‘I’ll tell you who else worked there -’

‘Thanks for the paper,’ I nodded again and started walking away -

‘Michael bloody Myshkin,’ he shouted after me. ‘Pervert who did all them little lasses.’

I kept walking, walking away, crossing by a shoe shop -

‘Should have hung him, evil little bastard…’

Long time ago.

I came to the Lotus Chinese Restaurant & Take Away. I peered in over the menu in the window, white tablecloths and red napkins, the chairs and the tables, all stood there in silence and shadow -

A long time ago.

Across the road was another empty shop, just a name and a big weatherbeaten sign declaring that the property was to be redeveloped by Foster’s Construction, builders of the new Ridings Shopping Centre, Wakefield:

Shopping centres -

Such a long time ago -

Fucking shopping centres -

Such a long, long time ago -

But the lies survived, those accepted little fictions we called history -

History and lies -

They survived us all.

Morley Police Station -

The Incident Room:

Alderman, Prentice, Gaskins, and Evans.

We were looking at a photograph and a poster -

One big word in red:


MISSING -


Above a picture of a ten-year-old girl with medium-length dark brown hair and brown eyes, wearing light blue corduroy trousers, a dark blue sweater embroidered with the letter H, and a red quilted sleeveless jacket, carrying a black drawstring gym bag.

I said: ‘What happened to the H embroidered on the bag?’

‘It was difficult -’ began Evans with the excuses.

I put up my hand to stop him. I held up the poster. ‘Just tell me these’ll be back from the printers by this afternoon?’

Evans was nodding: ‘They’ll be here for two.’

‘Good,’ I sighed. ‘What about the school? You spoke with the Head, they know what they’re doing?’

Evans still nodding: ‘I said we’d be there from three.’

Calendar and Look North?’

‘Yep, but Calendar can only go with the photos at six; say they’ll use the film after the News at Ten. Timing’s not good.’

‘Not going to be National then?’

Evans shook his head: ‘Not at this stage, no.’

I turned to Gaskins: ‘How many uniforms we got?’

‘Hundred and fifty with roadblocks set up at both ends of Victoria Road and one at the top of Rooms Lane, another on Church Street.’

I looked up at the map of Morley pinned to the board beside her photograph: ‘Where are the ones on Victoria Road?’

Gaskins stood and pointed at the map: ‘One here at the junction with Springfield Road, other up here before King George Avenue.’

‘They know what to do?’

‘Drivers’ licences and registrations,’ he nodded. ‘Show them the picture, spot of where were you last Thursday, and let them on their way.’

I turned to Prentice: ‘Jim, you got me the unmarked cars?’

‘Where you want them, Boss?’

My turn to stand and point and say: ‘Junction with Asquith Avenue, here. Another up by this farm, here. Get one for centre as well, here by Chapel Hill.’

‘Right,’ he said.

‘I want numbers,’ I told him. ‘Any vehicle stopping or reversing or changing direction when they see the roadblocks, take down their plate and call it through.’

Dick: ‘You think he’ll show.’

I nodded.

‘Who?’ asked Evans.

I picked up a piece of chalk. I turned to the board. I wrote up two names:

Jenkins and Ashworth.

Jim pointed at the first name: ‘I thought he were dead?’

‘Either of these names show,’ I said. ‘You detain them and call me. Immediately.’

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, all good children go to heaven -

‘Fuck is this?’ I said to Dick Alderman as we parked outside Morley Grange Junior and Infants, the playground full of children and parents, TV camera crews and journalists, their vans and their cars -

Reconstruction time.

‘Evans,’ I was shouting as I crossed the road, adjusting my glasses and looking at my watch. ‘Evans!’

He was coming towards me, arms full of papers and files: ‘Sir?’

‘Get these fucking vans and cars out of here!’ I yelled. ‘Fucking circus.’

He was apologising but I wasn’t listening -

‘And get everyone in the fucking hall.’

‘Mr Jobson?’ asked the plump grey-haired woman coming towards us with the disgusted expression.

‘Who are you?’ I said.

‘Marjorie Roberts,’ she replied. ‘The HT.’

‘The HT?’

‘The Head Teacher,’ mumbled Evans.

I stuck out my hand: ‘Maurice Jobson. Detective Chief Superintendent.’

‘What would you like us to do, Mr Jobson?’ she sighed.

‘If you could ask all the children and their parents to step into the hall, that would be a big, big help.’

‘Fine,’ she said and walked off.

‘Miserable bitch,’ hissed Dick at my shoulder. ‘Been up here practically every bloody day and not even a cup of tea. Just when can she expect things to get back to normal, upsetting the kids and their routine etc etc. Stupid fucking cow.’

I nodded: ‘Where’s Hazel?’

‘In the old cow’s office,’ said Evans.

‘And where is the old cow’s office?’

‘This way,’ said Dick and we followed him across the playground, through the children and their parents, to the black stone building. He opened a double set of green doors and we stepped into the school and that familiar smell, that familiar smell of children and detergent.

We walked down a corridor, plastic supermarket bags hanging from the low pegs, the walls still decorated with pictures of Easter eggs. At the end of the corridor, Dick tapped on a door and opened it.

Inside a middle-aged woman was sitting with a ten-year-old girl; a ten-year-old girl with medium-length dark brown hair and brown eyes, wearing light blue corduroy trousers, a dark blue sweater embroidered with the letter H, and a red quilted sleeveless jacket, clutching a black drawstring gym bag.

‘I’m Maurice Jobson,’ I said. ‘I’m the detective in charge.’

The woman stood up: ‘I’m Nichola’s mother. Karen Barstow.’

‘Thank you very much for helping us,’ I said.

‘Anything to help find the poor little-’

‘Hello,’ I said to the ten-year-old girl with medium-length dark brown hair and brown eyes, wearing light blue corduroy trousers, a dark blue sweater embroidered with the letter H, and a red quilted sleeveless jacket, holding a black drawstring gym bag.

‘Hello,’ she said back.

‘You must be Nichola,’ I said.

‘No,’ said the ten-year-old girl with medium-length dark brown hair and brown eyes, wearing light blue corduroy trousers, a dark blue sweater embroidered with the letter H, and a red quilted sleeveless jacket, carrying a black drawstring gym bag -

‘Today I’m Hazel.’

No other name.

I walked out on to the stage, the children sat crosslegged at the front, the teachers and journalists standing at the sides, parents mouthing messages to their kids from the back.

Mrs Roberts introduced me: ‘Everybody, this is Mr Jobson. He’s the policeman who’s going to find Hazel. Now I know a lot of you have talked to the other nice policemen about Hazel, but today we’re going to pretend it’s last Thursday again. We’re going to all try very hard to remember exactly what we did last Thursday and then we’re all going to do the same thing again. Maybe some clever person will remember something very important and that will help Mr Jobson find Hazel.’

I stood there, nodding -

The children staring at me, silently.

Mrs Roberts had stopped speaking and was looking at me.

In a low voice she whispered: ‘What about Hazel? Shall we introduce her.’

I nodded. I turned to the side. I gestured for Nichola’s mother to lead her daughter out on to the stage -

There was a wave of noise across the hall, all the teachers with their fingers to their lips as all the parents strained to see their own kids who were standing up and sitting down, confused and excited.

‘Children, sit down please,’ barked Mrs Roberts.

I looked out at the rows and rows of children in front of me. I said: ‘This is Nichola, but today she is going to be Hazel.’

‘Will everybody please sit down!’ shouted Mrs Roberts again. ‘That means you too Stephen Tams.’

‘Now,’ I said, wishing WPC Martin was here and I wasn’t. ‘Who was with Clare last Thursday?’

Silence -

The kids were all looking at each other, then looking at their teachers and their parents, their teachers and their parents looking at me, all of them looking confused.

I turned to Mrs Roberts: ‘What?’

Mrs Roberts was staring at me. She was frowning.

‘What?’ I said again.

Mrs Roberts, eyes wide, whispered: ‘Hazel? You mean Hazel?’

I nodded. I mumbled: ‘I’m sorry. Hazel. Who was with Hazel last Thursday at home time?’

Now there were hands going up, lots of hands, and the teachers and the parents were shaking their heads and then suddenly above the tiny hands, at the back of the room, I could see Mr and Mrs Atkins -

Mr and Mrs Atkins staring at me and the little girl beside me.

I turned to the girl -

The ten-year-old girl with long straight fair hair and blue eyes, wearing an orange waterproof kagool, a dark blue turtleneck sweater, pale blue denim trousers with a distinctive eagle motif on the back left pocket and red Wellington boots, carrying a plastic Co-op carrier bag containing a pair of black gym shoes.

She was holding my hand, her hand squeezing mine.

Outside it had started to rain again, the parents and journalists under their umbrellas, the kids with their hoods up, the three of us getting pissed on from up above -

And it hadn’t even started yet.

‘Whose fucking idea was it to have them here?’ I was shouting.

‘They wanted to be here,’ Evans was saying. ‘The press want to speak to them. Gives us more exposure.’

‘You should have fucking checked.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he was saying for the thousandth bloody time today.

‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘It’s done.’

Dick looked at his watch: ‘Home time?’

I looked at mine. I nodded at Evans: ‘Let’s get started.’

Evans walked back across the playground to the TV crews and the journalists at the gates; the teachers, the parents and their kids impatiently waiting for the signal to begin. The TV crews and journalists were all over Evans with their questions and demands. Finally he ducked out from under their umbrellas and curses and gave the signal and, out of this pantomime and pandemonium, in the middle of the rain at the school gates, there she was again -

Hazel Atkins:

Coming through the gates, the other kids behind her, waving and stopping and waving and stopping, hands up and hands down and hands up and hands down, waving bye-bye to the ten-year-old girl with the medium-length dark brown hair and brown eyes, wearing light blue corduroy trousers, a dark blue sweater embroidered with the letter H, and a red quilted sleeveless jacket, carrying a black drawstring gym bag -

Hazel:

Walking up Rooms Lane towards her home in Bradstock Gardens, behind her the TV crews and the journalists with their lenses and their pens, the kids and their parents with their whispers and suspicions, the teachers and police with their hopes and their fears, all of us walking up the road in silent procession through the rain, the rain falling down through the dark, quiet trees and into her hair, into her medium-length dark brown hair and her quiet brown eyes, staining her light blue corduroy trousers, her dark blue sweater embroidered with the letter H, on to her red quilted sleeveless jacket, soaking her black drawstring gym bag -

Hazel:

Watching her turn towards her house in Bradstock Gardens, the occasional car and lorry slowing, the Atkins in pieces in the rain, their tears in the road because she’d never walk up Rooms Lane again, never turn towards her home in Bradstock Gardens, never open that door and never come in from the rain, never be -

Hazel:

This was all they’d ever get -

A ten-year-old girl with medium-length dark brown hair and brown eyes, wearing light blue corduroy trousers, a dark blue sweater embroidered with the letter H, and a red quilted sleeveless jacket, carrying a black drawstring gym bag, a ten-year-old girl who was not their daughter, a reconstruction -

Not Hazel:

I stood in the road in tears again, a hand squeezing mine -

The hand of a ten-year-old girl with long straight fair hair and blue eyes, wearing an orange waterproof kagool, a dark blue turtleneck sweater, pale blue denim trousers with a distinctive eagle motif on the back left pocket and red Wellington boots, carrying a plastic Co-op carrier bag containing a pair of black gym shoes -

Clare:

Waving bye-bye to the ten-year-old girl with the medium-length dark brown hair and brown eyes, wearing the light blue corduroy trousers, the dark blue sweater embroidered with the letter H, and the red quilted sleeveless jacket, carrying the black drawstring gym bag, the ten-year-old girl who was walking away -

Hazel:

Walking away as the rain fell down through the dark, quiet trees and into her dark brown hair and her quiet brown eyes as her mother screamed and screamed, her nails in the road in the rain, screaming and screaming -

This is what you’ve done, this is what you’ve done, this is what you’ve done.

Then there were feet behind me, not children’s feet -

But boots, police boots through the puddles -

Dick shouting: ‘We got him, Boss.’

The rain falling through the dark, quiet trees -

‘Up Church Street.’

The little girls gone -

‘We’ve fucking got him.’

Just the history and the lies -

Resurrected.


Chapter 8

You have dreams -

D-20, here comes retreat; Friday lunchtime you meet Gareth in Billy Walton’s and give yourself the afternoon off, it being his birthday, tea and fishcakes in teacakes with chips and peas sorting you out for the first pint of the weekend, racing pages open, Gareth still going on about Grittar losing the fucking National and how it’s not right, women trainers, be women football managers next, and you’re nodding along, the old woman on the table opposite you with her mouth full of lipstick, potato and fish, her eyes wrapped in bandages, she points at you with her fork.

And in your dreams -

Your bellies slopping with tea and fishcakes in teacakes, chips and peas, you cross the Springs to the indoor market and the secondhand book stall, Gareth getting his weekly additions to his porn stash, you helping him choose, the woman behind the stall pointing out a few he’s missed, you treating him, it being his birthday, the rain streaming in through the roof, you wonder what the fuck will happen to this place when they finish the Ridings, Gareth with his secondhand porn in a brown paper bag, the readers’ wives with their plastic carrier bags, their umbrellas and their meat, kids under their feet.

In your dreams, you have wings -

Back out in the puddles of blood, past the fish stalls, the tripe and offal shop, up the side of the Fleece, behind the back of the Bullring, out opposite the bus station and into Tickles, just in time for the afternoon stripper and that first pint of the weekend, Gareth moaning about the plastic glasses, standing room only as Disco Ken cues up Billie Jean and out traipses Tina, all tassels and tits, telling half the room to fuck off and forking anyone she’s missed, no wink today for John Piggott, solicitor to the strippers and the deejays, the bar men and the bouncers, the spots on Tina’s back catching in the lights.

But all these wings in all your dreams -

Three pints later you’re next door in Hills between turns, waiting for the two-thirty from fuck-knows-where, out of cigs and hungry again, busting for another slash, an old bloke holding open an Evening Post and a photo of Hazel Atkins with the words Hazel: Police Arrest Local Man in Morley, big-black-bloody-type and doesn’t-look-so-bloody-good says Gareth and hanging-is-too-good-for-him agrees the old boy, your brain, your bladder and your belly contorted, screaming and howling, the old man smiling, nodding and blinking, his teeth yellow, stained and loose in his gums bloody, black, and sore.

Are huge and rotting things -

Fifth pint and two packets of beef and onion, Gareth wants a decent pint across the Bullring in the Strafford, you telling him to piss off cos he only wants to go in Ladbrokes and why doesn’t he anyway because you’re quite happy here watching the little stage, the mirror ball shining and Phil Collins playing over the empty dancefloor, waiting for Disco Ken to give it a bit of Too Shy which is Blonde Debbie’s song, quite looking forward to Debbie coming on, fit despite two kids and the plasters the brewery make her put over her tattoos.

The room red.

Back out in the rain again, ducking next door for the night’s cigs, forty of them to be going on with, telling Gaz you’ll see him at six down the Waterloo, half-past at the latest, but he’ll be in Clothiers opening time if you change your mind, and you wander over the Bullring to Greggs and buy a bag of pasties for your tea, corned beef and Cornish, then you walk back up to St John’s, past the Grammar School and on to Blenheim Road, the tarmac coated with thousands of pieces of broken glass from a shattered windscreen, some of them a deep, dark and bloody red.

You have dreams -

Quarter-past five and you’re soaking in Matey, a big Gordon’s on the edge of the bath, slice and ice, careful not to bloody nod off again, out and dressed, fingers full of green super-strength Boots hair gel, washing down the last of the pasties with another gin and tonic, out of slice and ice, feeling better already, putting on Rod and wondering if you shouldn’t wear kegs instead of jeans, fucking the money and calling Azads for a taxi down the Waterloo and the start of the Westgate Run, smelling your breath on the phone and cleaning your teeth again and again and again.

And in your dreams -

Gareth’s at the bar already, half-drunk Tetley’s in his hand, everyone else piling in right behind you: Sarn, Kelly, Daz, Hally, Foz, Dickie, and Mark the Fireman, across the room a group of lasses starting the run themselves, hen night, everyone laughing and joking and Gareth doing the honours: a spirit for everyone in first pub then the birthday boy doesn’t buy another drink all night, yours a Southern Comfort, but he knows that and there’s an old man at the bar in a white coat with a tray of whelks and you quietly check your shoes for dog-shit, your ears burning.

In your dreams, you have fears -

You are in the White Hart before the hen party, Gareth and Sarn playing arrows, Kelly telling jokes and taking piss out of Hally and Foz, same old stories getting funnier and dirtier as the weeks turn into months and the months into years, Daz dissecting Leeds’ season starting with Harvey back in Waterloo, now on to Thomas, Dickie stoned and half asleep and Mark the Fireman putting shit on the jukebox and getting the same in return, beer in the ashtray, beer on the table, beer on the seat, beer on the floor, Kelly reminding everyone of the time Foz shat in a girl’s handbag upstairs in Raffles.

But all your fears in all your dreams -

Waggon and Horses is dead and Kelly reckons you should slow down and wait for the hen party, saying that now because he has to meet Ange in the Elephant, but a bloke at the bar reckons there’s been a fight in Smith’s Arms and you think you should skip it and go straight to the Old Globe, but you end up supping up even faster which pisses off Mark the Fireman because he’s just put a load more bollocks on the jukebox, Whiter Shade of Pale for fucking starters, and someone drops a Tampax from fuck-knows-where in his pint to hurry him along, not that it’s used or stops him downing the pint in one.

Are islands lost in tears -

Landlord in Smith’s Arms says there was a few broken glasses was all, nothing he couldn’t handle, group of lads from Stanley on a Run, heard that Streethouse were coming into town looking for them, these lads fancying their chances but getting a bit edgy, few broken glasses was all, the hen party coming in, but your seal’s just gone and you’re stood staring at the bloody bogies wiped on the wall above the bog where someone’s written the Paunchy Cowboys and stuck up bits of bog roll everywhere with their own shit.

The room white.

Stopper and Norm are in the Old Globe and it’s half-seven already, the big old map of the world and pictures of ships which traditionally dictates a Captain Morgan’s followed by a Barley Wine and cider, Stopper shouting Ahoy! as his shipmates board, going on stoned about Captain Pugwash, the Black Pig and Master Bates, and you start on about The Flying Dutchman when you swear you hear Procul bloody Harem come on the sodding jukebox again but Hally says there isn’t a fucking jukebox you pissed fat legal cunt, never has been, not here.

You have dreams -

In Swan with Two you find the hen party again, better looking by the pint, specially one with the short brown hair who’s bound to be the bleeding fucking bride, not that she’d look at a fat cunt like you anyway, not that there’s a wedding ring in sight on any of them says Kelly, not that a ring means any-bloody-thing thinks Dickie, and she smiles as she goes to the bogs and tells Kelly to fuck off when he does his been-for-a-shit-darling routine as she comes out, her hair smelling of shampoo and smoke and you wonder if she did have a shit or just a piss, perched over the seat, not wanting to touch it.

And in your dreams -

Daz catches up with you in Henry Boons and he’s up to Hird now, the various crimes he should be shot or hung for, way he’s played this season, all Eddie Gray’s fault anyway, he picks the fucking team doesn’t he, fat bastard, no offence John, but everyone sups up quick, except Kel because Ange and her mates will be in Elephant which you think is good news because she’s got some nice mates has Ange, but you do have time for a swift one in Mid before Elephant, so you head up the back way past the Prison, everyone breaking into a chorus of Born Free as you go, everyone except you.

In your dreams, you see things -

The Mid stinks of damp, full of punks and students from the Tech, a couple of blokes from Labour Club who want to talk politics until it’s obvious state you’re in you can’t, not that it stops you taking piss out of Thatcher in this morning’s Post with her vision of a return to the eternal values of the Victorian era, ruling Britain into the 1990s, until she gets another bomb from the Yorkshire Republican Army that is, and that’s you that is, the YRA, but then you think you’re going to puke and you run for the bogs, the Barley Wine coming back up then straight back down your bloody nose.

But all these things in all your dreams -

Ange isn’t even in Elephant and now Kel’s pissed off and the pool room is packed and someone reckons Streethouse are on their way and with Stanley about it seems a bit of a bad night and then a glass smashes and everyone jumps and Sarn says it’s just the speed, just the speed, but in the bogs you wonder what you ought to do and Hally says he’s up for a club but none of you have ties and most of you are in jeans and none of you can be arsed to go home and change, so it’ll have to be Raffles or somewhere shit like that because you’ll not get in Casanovas, not dressed like this, not now.

Are big black raven things -

Fuck knows who said there are always a load of good-looking lasses in Evergreens, all you can see are a gang of Siouxsie fucking Siouxs giving you daggers until Wilf the punk dwarf who you represented when he was done for pissing against Balne Lane library after he lost one of his brothel creepers and he couldn’t hop and hold it all the way home to Flanshaw, until Wilf the punk dwarf says Streethouse have been nicked at top of Westgate after a fight with some lads from Stanley, and he used to call you Petrocelli and ended up with a fifty quid fine while you and his old man got done for contempt.

The room blue.

Kelly was in Friars and says same about Streethouse when you meet him and Dickie and Ange with one of her mates back in Graziers for last, Daz and Foz still in Elephant talking to two lasses from the hen party, which is bloody fucking typical, but now it’s you and Sarn talking ten to dozen, feeling top of the world, and Mark says Gareth’s puking in bogs but that’s only because that wasn’t really a Glenfiddich in Evergreens, thinks he’ll be all right for Raffles or Dolly Grays or wherever you’re off but he wishes you’d make up your fucking minds, Hally suddenly silent, his eyes red.

You have dreams -

Outside Kel and them are going back to theirs or Norm’s and you ought to do too he says because Raffles is going to be shit and full of fucking freaks and he’s a ton of fucking draw back at his, but you always go back to his or Norm’s every Friday and Saturday and it’s Gareth’s fucking birthday so why don’t they all come up to Raffles too, but Ange is working tomorrow on an early shift so that isn’t going to happen, so you tell Kel you’ll see him in Billy Walton’s tomorrow about two and you walk up the hill to Westgate, pissing behind back of somewhere, a light going on and then off again.

And in your dreams -

Top of Westgate’s heaving, everyone stumbling around trying to get out of the pubs and into the clubs, taxis and last buses swerving and braking to miss people fighting and falling in the road with their kebabs and swamp burgers, pizzas and Indians, dropping them or puking them up, the police just sitting about in their vans with their dogs on their leads until some bloke in a crash helmet sticks his head through a window and some silly slag pushes a shopping trolley out into the road, the 127 braking and did-you-see-that, what-did-you-say, yeah-fucking-hell-you-fucking-bet-you-fucking-saw-that.

In your dreams, you cry tears -

Two quid and up the stairs into Raffles, bouncer a bloke you know giving you a slap on the back but no fucking discount because the cow on the door’s screwing the boss, but it’s nice to know Graham still works here because you never know what’s going to happen, which is exactly what you’re saying to this lass at the bar and she’s all right she is and you have a bit of a dance to David Bowie and a smooch to Bonnie Tyler and you remember Gareth passing out and Sarn calling you Doctor Love and you thinking thank-fucking-Christ you didn’t have any more speed.

But all your tears in all your dreams -

Her parents and brother are at the caravan for the weekend so you are queuing among the chicken bones for a taxi on Cheapside, having a bit of a snog every now and again, her legs nice and brown, fine fair hairs a little bit sweaty, and you touch her cunt in the back of the taxi, the smell of pine, puke and perspiration, and you get out in the centre of Ossett and buy a curry to take back to hers, though she’ll have to open all the fucking windows because they’ll be back Sunday lunchtime and he hates that bloody Paki smell in the house does her dad.

Are islands lost in fears -

But after the curry she’s sober and off the idea of a shag and you knew you should have done it before you had the curry or even back behind Raffles, but she’s getting a bit funny and telling you to get off her, it’s her time of the month, and you’re thinking there’s always trap two, but that’s not going to happen, not now, and the curtains are beginning to spin, the patterns in the carpet, the gold in the rug, but you can have her brother’s room if you promise not to puke or shit in his sheets, that’s if you’re not going to go home which you’re not, not now.

The room red, white and blue (just like you).

You wake afraid about five under a poster of Kenny Dalglish and you go into her room and into her bed and take off her knickers and have a good squeeze of her tits while she pretends to still be asleep as you lick her out and shag her, she never opens her eyes so you put a finger up her arse and have a last shag, meat and bone, fat and muscle, blood and come, then you go downstairs and steal their paper and an umbrella and let yourself out, standing in their drive under their umbrella, staring at that photo on the front of their paper when you realise this is Towngate -

Towngate, Ossett, where Michael Williams murdered his wife with a hammer and a twelve-inch nail back in 1974 or 75, the Exorcist killing -

About the same time they must have nicked Michael Myshkin -

About the same time Hazel Atkins was having her first birthday -

And you stand in their drive under their umbrella and you stare at her photo on the front of their paper and wish you were not you -

For there is no retreat, no escape -

Not now.


Chapter 9

On back seat again -

Another empty coach:

Tuesday 24 December 1974 -

Longest Christmas Eve.

Clare slumped against window, dirty blonde hair against dirty grey glass, her best friend and her sister dead, a small suitcase in rack above her head.

BJ look across aisle and out other window at rain and moors, bleak weather and land it makes, no suitcase above BJ’s head -

Just a pocket full of blood ‘n’ cum money, two stolen watches and some rings.

BJ look at rings on BJ’s fingers -

BJ look at ring Bill put on BJ’s finger -

Bill:

William Shaw.

BJ pull yesterday’s newspaper out of Clare’s carrier bag and look at photo -

Look at photo of his face and read that front page again:


COUNCILLOR RESIGNS


William Shaw, the Labour leader and Chairman of the new Wakefield Metropolitan District Council, resigned on Sunday in a move that shocked the city.

In a brief statement, Shaw, 58, cited increasing ill-health as the reason behind his decision.

Shaw, the older brother of the Home Office Minister of State Robert Shaw, entered Labour politics through the Transport and General Workers’ Union. He rose to be a regional organiser and represented the T.G.W.U. on the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party.

A former Alderman and active for many years in West Riding politics, Shaw was, however, a leading advocate of Local Government reform and had been a member of the Redcliffe-Maud Committee.

Shaw’s election as Chairman of the first Wakefield Metropolitan District Council had been widely welcomed as ensuring a smooth transition during the changeover from the old West Riding.

Local government sources last night expressed consternation and dismay at the timing of Mr Shaw’s resignation.

Mr Shaw is also Acting Chairman of the West Yorkshire Police Authority and it is unclear as to whether he will continue.

Home Office Minister of State Robert Shaw was unavailable for comment on his brother’s resignation. Mr Shaw himself is believed to be staying with friends in France.

Read that front page, stare at photo of his face:

Face not smiling -

Remembering when it was always smiling, smiling and laughing, laughing and joking -

That trip to Spain, mornings on beach and siestas in his arms, evenings full of fine wines and dodgy bellies, nights of -

Nights of love:

His grey hair and gentle words, his firm kisses and soft caresses before -

Before BJ fucked it all, fucked it all:

All because of what and who BJ be.

Coach slows -

BJ lean into aisle -

Blue lights up ahead in grey:

Fuck.

Single-lane traffic, red sticks waving in dawn:

Fuck.

Driver has his window down, shouting: ‘What is it?’

‘IRA,’ comes a copper’s voice.

‘Not again?’

‘Irish bastards,’ says copper, but he waves coach through and coach picks up speed again.

Clare is staring at BJ, heavy rain against windows of coach.

‘We there?’ she asks, rubbing her black eyes.

‘Roadblock,’ BJ say.

‘Jesus,’ she says. ‘Where are we?’

‘Heading down into Manchester.’

She wipes window, but it doesn’t help.

BJ say: ‘Not very Christmassy, is it?’

‘Used to have good ones, did you?’

BJ sigh: ‘Not really. And you?’

She shakes her head: ‘I’d love to see the girls though.’

‘I bet,’ BJ say, thinking -

Poor, poor fucking cow.

‘Said I’d be back by Christmas, you know.’

‘Give them a ring,’ BJ say.

She sucks in her lower lip and nods.

BJ put newspaper back in bag as coach pulls into Chorlton Street Bus Station.

‘Be half an hour,’ shouts driver. ‘You getting off?’

‘Aye,’ shouts Clare and walks down aisle with BJ and jumps off.

It’s going up to eight and fucking freezing is Manchester.

BJ and Clare cross Portland Street into Piccadilly Gardens and go into first cafй BJ and Clare find:

Piccadilly Grill.

Clare has a breakfast and BJ have her toast, stomachs full of hot sweet tea.

At eight o’clock radio turns them stomachs, turns them inside out:

‘West Yorkshire Police today launched a massive manhunt following an armed robbery on a Wakefield pub last night which left four people dead and two policemen seriously injured.

‘The incident took place at approximately one a.m. last night at the Strafford Arms public house in the centre of Wakefield when a masked gang of armed men broke into a first-floor private party. Officers responding to initial reports of shots fired interrupted the robbery and were themselves attacked.

‘The gang are believed to have escaped with the contents of the till and some cash and jewellery stolen from customers.

‘Roadblocks were immediately set up across the county and on the M62 and M1 and initial reports that the attack might be linked to armed Irish Republican terrorists have yet to be discounted.

‘Detective Chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson, the man leading the hunt for the gang, asked members of the public with any information whatsoever to contact the police as a matter of some urgency, but he also cautioned the public not to approach these men as they are armed and extremely dangerous.

‘Mr Jobson admitted that the police were also taking very seriously suggestions that the attack upon the Strafford may be linked to a recent escalation in Yorkshire gangland violence which may also be behind the death early yesterday morning of local Wakefield businessman Donald Foster at his Sandal home.

‘Mr Jobson further confirmed that the two policemen injured in the attack were Sergeant Robert Craven and PC Robert Douglas, the two policemen who recently made headlines following their arrest of Michael Myshkin, the Fitzwilliam man charged with the murder of Morley schoolgirl Clare Kemplay. Mr Jobson described the condition of the officers as “serious but stable,” but he refused to release the names of the dead as police were still trying to contact a number of relatives.

‘Mr Jobson also added that he believed that some relatives may even have gone into hiding for fear of reprisals and he appealed for them to…’

Two steaming teas, two empty seats.


Chapter 10

Gotcha -

Dark night -

Day 11:

One in the morning -

Sunday 22 May 1983:

Yorkshire -

Leeds -

Millgarth Police Station:

The Belly -

Room 4:

James Ashworth, twenty-two, in police issue grey shirt and trousers, long, lank hair everywhere, slouched akimbo in his chair at our table, a cigarette burning down to a stub between the dirty black nails of his dirty yellow fingers -

Jimmy James Ashworth, former friend and neighbour of Michael Myshkin, child killer -

Jimmy Ashworth, the boy who found Clare Kemplay.

I asked him: ‘For the thousandth fucking time Jimmy, what were you doing in Morley on Thursday?’

And for the thousandth fucking time he told me: ‘Nothing.’

We’d had him here since five on Thursday night, got him riding his motorbike into Morley, head to toe in denim and leather, the words Saxon and Angelwitch stitched into his back between a pair of swan’s wings, had him here since Thursday night but hadn’t technically started the questioning until Friday morning at seven which gave us another six hours with the little twat, but he’d given us nothing, nothing except the clothes off his back, his boots and his motorbike, the dirt from under his nails, the blood from his arms and the come from his cock, so we’d been over to Fitzwilliam and we’d ripped up their house, their garage and their garden, had the washing from their basket and from in off their line, the dust and hairs from their floors, the sheets and stains off their beds, the rubbish out their bins, sent it all up to forensics, then taken his mam and his dad, his whole gyppo family in, the garage where he worked and the blokes he called mates, the lass he was shagging, had them all in but had got fuck all out of them, nothing – Yet.


*

Gotcha -

Long dark night -

Day 11:

Three in the morning -

Sunday 22 May 1983:

Yorkshire -

Leeds -

Millgarth Police Station:

The Belly -

Room 4:

We opened the door. We stepped inside:

Dick Alderman and Jim Prentice -

One with a greying moustache, the other one bald but for tufts of fine sandy hair:

Moustache and Sandy.

And me:

Maurice Jobson; Detective Chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson -

Thick lenses and black frames -

The Owl.

And him:

James Ashworth, twenty-two, police issue grey shirt and trousers, long, lank hair everywhere, slouched in his chair at our table, dirty black nails, dirty yellow fingers -

Jimmy James Ashworth, former friend and neighbour of Michael Myshkin, child killer -

Jimmy Ashworth, the boy who found Clare Kemplay.

‘Sit up straight and put your palms flat upon the desk,’ said Jim Prentice.

Ashworth sat up straight and put his palms flat upon the desk.

Jim Prentice sat down at an angle to Ashworth. He took a pair of handcuffs from the pocket of his sports jacket. He passed them to Dick Alderman.

Dick walked around the room. Dick played with the handcuffs. Dick sat down opposite Ashworth.

I closed the door to Room 4.

Dick put the handcuffs over the knuckles of his right fist.

I leant against the door arms folded, watching Ashworth’s face -

In the silence:

Room 4 quiet, the Belly quiet -

The Station silent, the Market silent -

Leeds sleeping, Yorkshire sleeping.

Dick jumped up. Dick brought his handcuffed fist down on to the top of Ashworth’s right hand -

Ashworth screamed -

Screamed -

Through the room, through the Belly -

Up through the Station, up through the Market -

Across Leeds, across Yorkshire -

He screamed.

‘Put your hands back,’ said Jim.

Ashworth put them back on the table.

‘Flat,’ said Jim.

He tried to lie them down flat.

‘Nasty,’ said Dick.

‘You should get that seen to,’ said Jim.

They were both smiling at him.

Jim stood up. He walked over to me.

I opened the door. I stepped out into the corridor.

I came back in. I gave Jim a blanket.

Jim placed the blanket over Ashworth’s shoulders: ‘There you go, lad.’

Jim sat back down. He took out a packet of JPS from the pocket of his sports jacket. He offered one to Dick.

Dick took out a lighter. He lit both their cigarettes.

They blew smoke across Ashworth.

Ashworth’s hands were flat upon the desk, shaking.

Dick leant forward. Dick dangled the cigarette over Ashworth’s right hand. Dick rolled it between two fingers, back and forth, back and forth.

Ashworth’s right hand was twitching -

Twitching in the silence:

Room 4 quiet, the Belly quiet -

The Station silent, the Market silent.

Dick reached forward. Dick grabbed Ashworth’s right wrist. Dick held down Ashworth’s right hand. Dick stubbed his cigarette out into the bruise on the back of Ashworth’s hand.

Ashworth screamed -

Screamed -

Through the room, through the Belly -

Up through the Station, up through the Market -

He screamed.

Dick let go of his wrist. Dick sat back.

‘Put your hands flat,’ said Jim Prentice.

Ashworth put them flat on the table.

The room stank of burnt skin:

His burnt skin.

‘Another?’ said Jim.

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said Dick. He took a JPS from the packet. He lit the cigarette. He stared at Ashworth. He leant forward. He began to dangle the cigarette over Ashworth’s hand.

Ashworth stood up, clutching his right hand in his left: ‘What do you want?’

‘Sit down,’ said Jim.

‘Tell me what you want!’

‘Sit down.’

Ashworth sat back down.

Dick Alderman and Jim Prentice stood up.

‘Stand up,’ said Jim.

Ashworth stood up.

‘Eyes front.’

Ashworth stared straight ahead.

‘Don’t move.’

Dick and Jim lifted the three chairs and the table to one side. I opened the door. We stepped out into the corridor. I closed the door. I looked through the spy-hole at Ashworth. He was stood in the centre of the room, eyes front and not moving.

‘Pity the Badger and Rudkin can’t be with us,’ said Jim. ‘Be like old times.’

Old times.

I ignored him. I asked Dick: ‘Where’s Ellis?’

‘Upstairs.’

‘He got it?’

Dick nodded.

‘Best get him then, hadn’t you?’

Dick walked off down the corridor.

‘Shame they can’t be here,’ said Jim again.

‘Shame a lot of people can’t be,’ I said.

Jim shut up.

Dick came back down the corridor with Mike Ellis. Ellis was carrying a box under a blanket.

‘Morning,’ he slurred. His breath reeked of whiskey.

I said: ‘You up for this Michael, are you?’

He nodded.

I leant in closer to his mouth: ‘Bit of Dutch courage for breakfast, eh?’

He tried to pull his head back.

I had him by the scruff: ‘Don’t fuck it up, Michael.’

He nodded. I patted him on his face. He smiled. I smiled back.

‘Ready?’ said Jim.

Everyone nodded. Ellis put down the box. He left it in the corridor for now. I handed him a package wrapped in brown paper. I opened the door.

We stepped inside -

Room 4:

James Ashworth, twenty-two, police issue shirt and trousers, lank hair everywhere, a cigarette burn and a bloody bruise to match the dirty black nails of his dirty yellow fingers -

Jimmy James Ashworth, former friend and neighbour of Michael Myshkin, child killer -

Jimmy Ashworth, the boy who found Clare Kemplay.

Jim Prentice and I stood by the door. Dick and Ellis brought the chairs and the table back into the centre of the room.

Dick put a chair behind Ashworth. He said: ‘Sit down.’

Ashworth sat down opposite Ellis.

Dick picked up the blanket from the floor. He put it over Ashworth’s shoulders.

Ellis lit a cigarette. He said: ‘Put your palms flat on the desk.’

‘Will you just tell me what you want?’ said Ashworth.

‘Just put your palms flat, Jimmy.’

Ashworth put his palms flat on the desk.

Dick paced about the room behind him.

Ellis put the brown paper package on the table. He opened it. He took out a pistol. He placed it on the table between him and Ashworth.

Ellis smiled at Ashworth.

Dick stopped pacing about the room. He stood behind Ashworth.

‘Eyes front,’ said Ellis.

Ashworth stared straight ahead in silence:

Room 4 quiet, the Belly quiet.

Ellis jumped up. Ellis pinned down Ashworth’s wrists.

Dick grabbed the blanket. Dick twisted it around Ashworth’s face.

Ashworth fell forward off his chair -

Coughing and choking, unable to breathe.

Ellis held down his wrists.

Dick twisted the blanket around his face.

Ashworth was on his knees on the floor -

Coughing and choking, unable to breathe.

Ellis let go of Ashworth’s wrists.

Ashworth span round in the blanket and into the wall:


CRACK -


Through the room, through the Belly.

Dick pulled off the blanket. He picked Ashworth up by his hair. He stood him up against the wall.

‘Turn around, eyes front.’

Ashworth turned around.

Ellis had the pistol in his right hand.

Dick had some bullets. He was throwing them up into the air. He was catching them.

Ellis asked me: ‘It’s all right to shoot him then, Boss?’

I nodded: ‘Shoot him.’

Ellis held the pistol at arm’s length in both hands. Ellis pointed the barrel at Ashworth’s head.

Ashworth closed his eyes. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

Ellis pulled the trigger -


CLICK -


Nothing happened.

‘Fuck,’ said Ellis.

He turned away. He fiddled with the pistol.

Ashworth had pissed himself.

‘I’ve fixed it,’ said Ellis. ‘It’ll be all right this time.’

He pointed the pistol again.

Ashworth still had his eyes closed.

Ellis pulled the trigger -


BANG!


James Ashworth, twenty-two, thought he was dead:

He opened his eyes. He saw the pistol. He saw the shreds of black material coming out of the barrel. He saw them floating down to the floor -

He saw us all laughing.

‘What do you want?’ shouted Ashworth. ‘What do you fucking want?’

Dick stepped forward. Dick kicked him in the balls.

Ashworth fell to the floor: ‘What do you want?’

‘Stand up.’

He stood up.

‘On your toes,’ said Dick.

‘Please tell me?’

Dick stepped forward. Dick kicked him in the balls again.

He fell to the floor again.

Ellis walked over to him. Ellis kicked him in the chest. Ellis kicked him in the stomach. Ellis handcuffed his hands behind his back. Ellis pushed his face down into the floor. Into his own piss.

‘Do you like rats, Jimmy?’

‘What do you want?’

‘Do you like rats?’

Dick stepped out into the corridor. He came back into the room. He had the box under the blanket.

Ashworth was still lying on the floor. Still lying in his own piss.

Dick walked over to Ashworth. Dick placed the box down on the ground next to Ashworth’s face.

Ellis pulled Ashworth’s head up by his hair.

Dick ripped off the blanket -

The rat was fat. The rat was dirty. The rat was staring through the wire of the cage. The rat was staring at Ashworth.

Dick tipped up the cage.

The rat slid closer to the wire. The rat slid closer to Ashworth.

‘Get him! Get him!’ laughed Dick.

The rat was frightened. The rat was hissing. The rat was clawing at the wire. The rat was clawing at Ashworth’s face.

‘He’s starving,’ said Dick.

Ellis pushed Ashworth’s face into the wire.

‘Careful,’ said Ellis.

The rat backed away.

Dick kicked the cage. Dick tipped the rat up into the wire -

It’s tail and fur against Ashworth’s face.

Jim Prentice was shouting: ‘Turn it round, turn it round.’

‘Open it,’ I said.

Dick tipped the cage on its backside. The wire door of the cage was facing up. Dick opened the wire door.

The rat was at the bottom of the cage. The rat was looking up at the open door.

Ellis brought Ashworth’s face down to the open door -

Ashworth, eyes wide -

Screaming and crying -

Ashworth, eyes wide -

Struggling and trying to get loose -

The rat was growling. The rat was shitting itself. The rat was looking up at Ashworth.

Ellis pressed Ashworth’s face down further into the open cage.

Ashworth was about to lose consciousness. Ashworth was crying out: ‘What have I done?’

I nodded.

Ellis pulled him back up by his hair: ‘What did you say?’

Ashworth was shaking. Ashworth was crying.

I shook my head.

Ellis pushed his face back down into the cage.

Ashworth screamed out again: ‘What have I done? Please just tell me what I’ve done?’

I nodded again.

Ellis pulled him back up again: ‘What?’

‘Tell me what I’ve done?’

‘Again?’

‘Please tell me what I’ve done?’

‘Again?’

‘Please -’

But Dick had his hand down in the cage. Dick lifted the rat out by its tail. Dick swung the rat into the wall -


SMASH!


Blood splattered across Ashworth and Ellis.

‘Fucking hell,’ shouted Ellis. ‘You fucking do that for?’

Dick dropped the dying rat on to the floor of Room 4. Dick walked over to James Ashworth, twenty-two, slumped in Ellis’s arms. Dick bent down. Dick brushed Ashworth’s long, lank hair out of his face. Dick wiped his hands down Ashworth’s cheeks, down his police issue shirt, down his trousers.

‘Good boy, Jimmy,’ smiled Dick. ‘Good boy.’

I turned to Jim Prentice: ‘Clean this up.’

I stepped out into the corridor. I looked at my watch:

It was almost ten o’clock -

Day 11.

I could hear footsteps coming down the steps, down the corridor, into the Belly.

I looked up:

John Murphy was coming towards me -

Detective Chief Superintendent John Murphy, Manchester CID.

‘John?’ I said. ‘The fuck you doing here?’

Murphy looked over my shoulder into Room 4. He said: ‘We’ve got a problem, Maurice.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘A big fucking problem, Maurice.’

Rochdale -

Lancashire.

Noon -

Sunday 22 May 1983:

The eleventh day -

The four thousand and eleventh day:

The gaunt, middle-aged woman was sitting alone in the gloom of her semi-detached home, sitting alone in the gloom shaking with tears, tears of sadness and tears of rage, tears of pain and tears of -

Horror -

Horror and pain, rage and sadness, raining down between her bone-white fingers, raining down between her bone-white fingers on to her broken knees, her broken knees on which was balanced -

The shoebox -

The shoebox she clutched between her bone-white fingers upon her broken knees, the shoebox damp with the tears of sadness and tears of rage, the tears of pain and tears of horror, the shoebox on which was written:

Susan Ridyard.

I looked away to the two photographs on top of the television, the one photograph of a little girl alone and smiling next to another photograph of that same little girl with her older brother and sister, the three children sat together in school uniforms -

Two girls and one boy -

That photograph of two girls and one boy which became just one girl and one boy in the photographs on the sideboard, the photographs in the hall, the photographs on the wall, the one girl and one boy growing -

Always growing but never smiling -

Never smiling because of the little girl they left behind on top of the TV, the little girl alone and smiling -

Never growing but always smiling -

Susan Ridyard -

The one they left behind:

Susan Louise Ridyard, ten, missing -

Last seen Monday 20 March 1972, 3.55 p.m.

Holy Trinity Junior & Infants, Rochdale.

I looked out of the window at the houses across the road, the neighbours at their curtains, the police cars and the ambulance, the rain hard against the double-glazing.

Beside me at the window, the doctor was fiddling with a bottle of pills, the pills that would sedate Mrs Ridyard, the pills that he desperately wanted to sedate her with so he could get away from this house, this horror -

This horror and that shoebox she clutched between her bone-white fingers, balanced upon her broken knees, that damp shoebox on which was written, written in a childish scrawl:

Susan Ridyard.

‘Anyone for a cup of tea?’ asked Mr Ridyard, bringing in a tray.

‘Thank you,’ I said, hate filling his wife’s eyes as she watched her husband pouring the milk and then the tea into their four best cups.

Derek Ridyard handed me a cup, then one to the doctor.

‘Love?’ he said, turning to his wife -

But before I could stand to stop her, before either the doctor or I could reach her, she had knocked the tea out of his hands with the shoebox, screaming -

‘How can you?’

Holding out the shoebox, crying -

‘This is your daughter! This is Susan!’

The doctor and I wrestling her back down on to the sofa, the husband dripping in hot scalding tea, the doctor forcing pills down her and calling for water, uniforms coming, police and ambulance, the shoebox out of her hands -

Out of her hands and into mine -

Mine holding the shoebox, the shoebox with its childish scrawl, its childish scrawl that through my fingers and into my face screamed, screamed up through a decade or more, screamed -

Screamed and cried with her mother:

Susan Ridyard.

In their bathroom, the cold tap was running and I was washing my hands -

‘I think about you all the time -

The people I had loved and those I had not; scattered or dead, unknown to me as to where or how they were -

‘Under the spreading chestnut tree -

The cold tap still running, still washing my hands -

‘In the tree, in her branches -

Washing and washing and washing my hands -

‘Where I sold you and you sold me -

The Owl -

‘I’ll see you in the tree -

Outside the bathroom I could still hear the woman’s muffled and terrible sobs, the shoebox here beside me on their pink and furry toilet mat, here amongst the smell of pine, piss and excrement -

‘In her branches.’


*

In their doorway, Mr Ridyard and I were looking up at the black clouds.

‘Do wonders for my allotment all that,’ he said.

‘Imagine so,’ I nodded as I held in my hands -

In my dirty hands -

His daughter’s little bones.

In their driveway, Mr Ridyard and I staring at the houses across the road.

‘Wonders,’ he shouted.

‘Yes,’ I whispered as I fell into the past -

Into the dark past -

The shadow of the Horns.


Chapter 11

Monday 23 May 1983 -

D-17:

‘If you put your money in a sock, Labour will nationalise socks, Mrs Thatcher tells Cardiff; Britain will have the most right-wing government in the Western World if the Conservatives are returned to power, says Mr Roy Jenkins…’

You switch off the radio and check the telephone and the door again.

Nothing.

You sit back down at your desk, the rain coming down your office window in grey walls of piss.

Not even ten o’clock.

Sally, the woman who works part-time Mondays and Thursdays, she’s off sick again because her youngest has the flu. That or she’s screwing Kevin or Carl or whoever it is this week. Doesn’t matter -

Four, five months later she’ll lose her job and you’ll lose the firm:

Divorce, Child Custody, Maintenance; the case-files going down as fast as the letters going out begging your clients to please, please settle their bills.

Fuck them -

Them and the depressing music and the grating jingles on the radio, the constant rain and the tepid wind, the mongrel dogs that bark all night and shit all day, the half-cooked food and the lukewarm teas, the shops full of things you don’t want on terms you can’t meet, the houses that are prisons and the prisons that are houses, the smell of paint to mask the smell of fear, the trains that never run on time to places that are all the same, the buses you are scared to catch and your car they always nick, the rubbish that blows in circles up and down the streets, the films in the dark and the walks in the park for a fumble and a fuck, a finger or a dick, the taste of beer to numb the fear, the television and the government, Sue Lawley and Maggie Thatcher, the Argies and the Falklands, the UDA and LUFC sprayed on your mother’s walls, the swastika and noose they hung above her door, the shit through her letterbox and the brick through her window, the anonymous calls and the dirty calls, the heavy breathing and the dial tone, the taunts of the children and the curses of their parents, the eyes filled with tears that sting not from the cold but the hurt, the lies they tell and the pain they bring, the loneliness and the ugliness, the stupidity and brutality, the endless and basal unkindness of every single person every single minute of every single hour of every single day of every single month of every single year of every single life -

You get up and switch the radio back on:

‘South Humberside Police are hoping that the ten-year anniversary of the disappearance of Christine Markham will jog someone’s memory to provide a clue in the search for the missing Scunthorpe girl who vanished on the day after her ninth birthday in May 1973. West Yorkshire Police meanwhile are continuing to question a local man about the disappearance of Morley schoolgirl Hazel Atkins twelve days…’

You turn the dial until you find a song:

The Best Years of Our Lives.

Just before twelve, you lock the office and go downstairs. You wave to the pretty girl called Jenny who works downstairs in Prontoprint.

There is no rain and there is no sun.

You cross Wood Street and cut through Tammy Hall Street, past Cateralls and your old office. You walk on to King Street and into the Inns of Court.

You sit and drink three pints of snakebite and eat a plate of gammon and chips. Tomorrow you’ll go up the College instead, sick to death of legal folk and all their legal talk:

‘Charged him, I heard,’ Steve from Clays is saying.

‘Charged him with what?’ laughs Derek from Cateralls. ‘Can’t charge him without a bloody body.’

‘Who says she’s fucking dead,’ says Tony from Gumersalls.

‘Me,’ grins Derek.

‘Motoring offences and asked the magistrate for an extension,’ says Steve.

‘Who’s his solicitor?’ asks Tony.

‘McGuinness,’ says Steve. ‘Who do you bloody think?’

You put down your knife and fork: ‘Who you talking about?’

‘Aye-up,’ shouts Derek. ‘It speaks.’

‘Who?’

‘Bloke they’re holding over that missing Morley lass,’ says Steve.

‘Hazel Atkins?’

They nod, food in their mouths, drinks in their hands.

You say: ‘Well, guess who I went to see last week?’

They shrug.

‘Michael Myshkin.’

They open their mouths.

‘The fuck for?’ says Steve.

‘His mother wants him to appeal.’

‘His mother? What about him?’

‘He says he didn’t do it.’

‘So he came to you?’ laughs Derek. ‘Pervert must love it in there.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘You’re never going to take it, are you?’ asks Tony.

You shake your head: ‘But I did recommend Derek.’

‘You better fucking not have done, you fat bastard.’

You wink as you stand up: ‘Told her, King of Hearts that Derek Smith.’

‘Fat cunt.’

‘King of Hearts.’

The telephone is ringing but by the time you’ve got the door open and had a piss and washed your face and hands and dried them, it’s stopped. You put the three office chairs together and lie down to sleep off the gammon and chips and three pints of snakebite.

Lord, I’ve pierced my skin again.

You are praying for a sleep without dreams when the phone starts up again.

Undone, you pick it up.

‘Have a seat,’ you say with a mouthful of Polo mints.

The grey-haired woman has bucked teeth. She sits down, clutching her best handbag. She is squinting into the rare sunlight she’s brought in with her.

‘It was nice of Mrs Myshkin to recommend me but, to be honest with you Mrs Ashworth, I…’

‘Least she could do,’ she says, the tears already coming.

‘Can I offer you a cup of tea?’

She shakes her head and opens her handbag. She takes out a handkerchief: ‘He didn’t do it, John. Not our Jimmy.’

You are suddenly struggling -

‘The man they give him,’ she says. ‘This man from Bradford, he’s telling Jimmy to confess. But he’s done nothing.’

Suddenly struggling with your own tears -

‘He’s a good boy, John.’

You put your hand up to stop her, to stop yourself, to ask: ‘McGuinness told him to confess?’

She nods.

‘Clive McGuinness?’

She nods again.

The desk is covered in letters and files:

Divorce, Child Custody, Maintenance -

The case-files and letters bathed in sunlight, the radio and the dogs silent, the constant rain and tepid wind gone -

For now.

The grey-haired woman with the bucked teeth and her best handbag is shaking her head and dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. It is the same handbag and handkerchief she had at the funeral, the same grey-haired woman who had shaken her head and dabbed her eyes as they’d burned your mother -

Through the holes the light shines.

‘Where is he?’

She looks up: ‘Jimmy?’

You nod.

‘Millgarth.’

You turn your phone towards her: ‘Better call Mr McGuinness, hadn’t you?’

‘What shall I say?’

‘Tell him your Jimmy’s got a new solicitor.’

Down the motorway -

The scales falling, the Pig rising:

Lord, I’ve pierced my skin again.

But there will be no retreat, there will be no surrender -

There will be justice and there will be vengeance:

For through the holes the light shines.

Down the motorway, the up-rising Pig -

Hear them calling you, calling:

A holy light for a holy war.

You park between the market and the bus station, a dark and steady drizzle blanketing Leeds.

It is not night and it is not day.

You cut through the market traders packing all their gear away and go up the steps into Millgarth Police Station.

‘I’m here to see James Ashworth,’ you say to the policeman on the front desk.

‘And you are?’

‘John Piggott, Mr Ashworth’s solicitor.’

The policeman looks up from his paper: ‘Is that right?’

You nod.

The policeman opens a large leather-bound book on the desk. He takes out a pair of reading glasses. He puts them on. He licks a finger. He begins to slowly turn the pages of the book.

After a few minutes he stops. He closes the book. He takes off his glasses. He looks up.

You smile.

He smiles back: ‘It appears that Mr Ashworth already has a solicitor and it’s not you.’

‘That would be Mr McGuinness, who I believe was appointed as the duty solicitor. Mr Ashworth has since dispensed with his services and now has his own representation.’

‘And that would be you?’

You nod.

The policeman looks over your shoulder: ‘Have a seat, Mr Piggott.’

‘Is this going to take long?’

He nods at the plastic chairs behind you: ‘Who can tell.’

You walk over to the other side of the room and sit down on a tiny plastic chair under dull and yellow strip lights that blink on and off, on and off, a faded poster on the wall above you warning against the perils of drinking and driving at Christmas -

It’s not Christmas.

The policeman on the front desk is speaking into a telephone in a low voice.

You look down at the linoleum floor, at the white squares and the grey squares, the marks made by boots and the marks made by chairs. The whole place stinks of dirty dogs and overcooked vegetables.

‘Mr Piggott?’

You stand up and go back over to the desk.

‘Just spoke with Mr McGuinness, the duty solicitor, and he says he did hear from Mr Ashworth’s mother this afternoon that she wished you to represent her son but, as yet, he’s not heard this from Mr Ashworth himself, nor has he received anything written or signed by Mr Ashworth to say he’s released from his role.’

You take a letter from your carrier bag: ‘That’s why I’m here.’

‘That’s the letter?’

You hand it across the desk.

‘But it’s not signed, is it?’

‘Course it’s not bloody signed,’ you sigh. ‘That’s why I’m asking to see him. So he can sign it.’

‘I don’t think you’re bloody listening, Mr Piggott,’ the policeman says slowly. ‘You are not his solicitor, so you can’t see him. Only Mr McGuinness can.’

Fuck -

‘Can I use that phone?’

‘No,’ he smiles. ‘You can’t.’

Outside, the dark and steady drizzle has turned to black and heavy rain.

You walk through the market, looking for a phone that works.

It’s half-six.

You go through the double doors and into the Duck and Drake.

Order a pint and go to the phone.

You take out your little red book and dial.

The phone on the other end starts ringing.

‘McGuinness and Craig,’ says a woman’s voice.

One finger in your ear you say: ‘Could I speak to Mr McGuinness please?’

‘Whom shall I say is calling?’

‘John Piggott.’

‘Just one moment, Mr Piggott.’

There is a pause before she’s back: ‘I’m sorry, Mr Piggott, I’m afraid Mr McGuinness has left for the day.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Really.’

‘What’s your name, love?’

‘Karen Barstow.’

‘Karen, it’s very, very important that I speak with Mr McGuinness as soon as possible. So could you please tell me where I can reach him?’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know where Mr McGuinness is.’

‘Do you have his home phone number?’

‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t possibly give that number out -’

‘What about if I came round and fucking beat it out of you, you stupid fucking bitch. Would that possibly help?’

‘Mr Piggott -’

But you’ve hung up.

‘That’s unfortunate, that is,’ smiles the policeman on the desk.

You smile back: ‘Would you let his mother see him?’

‘Long as she was here before eight.’

You look at your watch:

Just gone seven -

Fuck.

‘Before eight?’

‘Best get your skates on,’ he nods.


*

M1 out of Leeds, windscreen wipers and the radio on:

‘Ken, Deirdre and Mike named Personalities of the Year.’

Off the motorway, through Wakefield -

‘Bonn says Hitler diaries are forged.’

Out and on the road to Fitzwilliam -

‘Foot launches bitter attack on Thatcher-Tebbit Toryism as a philosophy from which all compassion and generosity of spirit has been squeezed.’

On to Newstead View, past 54, braking hard outside 69 -

‘A local man arrested in Morley last week is to appear before Leeds Magistrates tomorrow morning in connection with the disappearance of Morley schoolgirl, Hazel…’

Up the path and banging on the door -

Mrs Ashworth, a tea-towel in her hand, the telly on -

Crossroads.

‘Get your coat,’ you say. ‘You’re coming to see Jimmy.’

‘What?’

‘Come on, there isn’t much time.’

She shouts something into the room, grabs her coat from the hook and runs down the path behind you -

You lean across her and slam the passenger door shut -

‘Clunk-click,’ she says, putting on the seat belt.

You start the car, looking at the clock:

Half-seven.

Out of Fitzwilliam and into Wakefield -

Through Wakey and on to the motorway -

Down the M1 and into Leeds -

Park bang outside Millgarth and up the steps -

Through the double doors -

The stink of dirty dogs and overcooked vegetables -

The policeman on the desk on the telephone, his face white -

‘She’s here to see her son, James Ashworth,’ you say, looking up at the clock on the wall:

Almost eight.

He’s putting down the telephone, the policeman on the desk, shaking his head: ‘I’m sorry, but -’

‘No buts,’ you’re shouting. ‘She’s entitled to -’

But the room is suddenly full of policemen, policemen in uniform and policemen in suits, two of the policemen in suits leading Mrs Ashworth over to the tiny plastic chairs under the dull yellow strip lights that blink on and off, on and off, sitting her down beneath the faded poster warning against the perils of drinking and driving at Christmas, you turning back to see how really bloody white the policeman on the desk has gone, his head and hands shaking, looking back round at Mrs Ashworth, her mouth open as she slips off the tiny plastic chair to lie prostrate upon the linoleum floor, upon the white squares and the grey squares, the marks made by boots and the marks made by chairs, the policeman on the desk, his mouth dry and voice cracking as he says:

‘He’s dead.’


Chapter 12

Preston:

Lunchtime -

Tuesday 24 December 1974 -

Never-ending.

Sitting in corner of a pub in centre of concrete city, office workers in their party hats already drunk and puking in bogs -

Never-ending.

Shouting along to Slade and Sweet, people snogging and glasses smashing and punches flying and coppers wading in -

Never-ending.

Walking up hill away from station, streets empty and buildings black, trains lit and cars dark -

Never-ending.

Weaving arm-in-arm through cold and dirty rain that falls from cold and dirty sky -

Never-ending.

Stepping out of one shadow and into another -

Another kind of pub, BJ and Clare’s kind of pub, St Mary’s -

Never-ending.

Roger Kennedy drops bloody key three or four fucking times before he finally opens door, not that Clare notices.

‘Here we are,’ he says, his fat face as red as stupid Santa hat he’s wearing.

BJ and Clare follow him inside:

St Mary’s Hostel -

Fifty yards back down road from pub of same name -

Blood and Fire etched in stone above door.

Roger Kennedy finds light switch and ducks into a small office.

BJ and Clare stand in corridor, Clare leaning against green and cream wall with her small suitcase in her hand.

Kennedy comes back out with two keys and smiles: ‘Take care of the paperwork later.’

BJ and Clare follow him up steep stairs to a narrow corridor of bedrooms.

‘There’s only Old Walter in the end one at the moment,’ says Kennedy. ‘But no doubt some of the other bad pennies will turn up again after New Year.’

He opens one door at top of stairs and winks at Clare: ‘You take this one, love.’

‘Ta very much,’ she smiles.

He hands BJ a key: ‘You take the second one on the right.’

BJ walk down corridor until BJ come to second one down on right. BJ unlock door and BJ step inside:

A bed and a wardrobe that doesn’t close, a chair and a window that doesn’t open, stink of damp that will never leave -

Home sweet bloody home.

BJ sit down on edge of bed and BJ think about little room over in Leeds with Ziggy and Karen, records and posters, clothes and memorabilia.

BJ get up off bed and walk down corridor about to go into Clare’s room when BJ hear Roger Kennedy fucking her inside. BJ go back to room and BJ sit on edge of bed and BJ count stars on BJ’s shirt.

It’s cold and dark and BJ lie in bed watching rain and lights on cracks in ceiling when she knocks on door and comes in with two plastic bags -

‘Room for a wee one?’ she asks.

‘Be my guest.’

‘Got some wine and some cider and some Twiglets,’ she smiles. ‘Thought we’d have our own Christmas party.’

‘What about lover?’

‘Passed out.’

‘He pay?’

‘No rent he said.’

‘No rent?’

‘Aye,’ she laughs and lies down on bed next to BJ. ‘No rent.’

‘Maybe our luck’s beginning to change?’

‘Be about fucking time,’ she says and pulls thin eiderdown over BJ and Clare.

‘Said they were going to make me famous,’ she laughs suddenly, leaning across BJ for last of wine.

‘How?’ BJ say, room hot and spinning.

‘Here,’ she says, jumping out of bed. ‘I’ll show you if you promise not to laugh.’

She squats down beside bed, searching through her plastic bags until she finds what she’s looking for: ‘Promise?’

‘Cross my heart.’

She hands BJ a photograph.

BJ take it from her and sit up in bed:

Clare with her eyes and legs open, her fingers touching her own cunt.

‘What do you think?’

‘Doesn’t look like you,’ BJ say, thinking about photos they took of BJ -

Photos they took of BJ and Bill.

‘Don’t say that,’ she’s saying. ‘Don’t say that.’

It’s night before Christmas and I’m coming up hill, swaying, bags in my hand. Plastic bags, carrier bags, Tesco bags. A train passes and I bark, stand in middle of road and bark at train. I am a complete wreck of a human being wearing a light green three-quarter length coat with an imitation fur collar, a turquoise blue jumper with a bright yellow tank top over it and dark brown trousers and brown suede calf-length boots. I turn left and see a row of six deserted narrow garages up ahead, each splattered with white graffiti and their doors showing remnants of green paint, last door banging in wind, in rain. I hold open door and I step inside. It is small, about twelve feet square, and there is sweet smell of perfumed soap, of cider, of Durex. There are packing cases for tables, piles of wood and other rubbish. In every other space there are bottles; sherry bottles, bottles of spirits, beer bottles, bottles of chemicals, all empty. A man’s pilot coat doubles as a curtain over window, only one, looking out on nothing. A fierce fire has been burning in grate and ashes disclose remains of clothing. On wall opposite door is written Fisherman’s Widow in wet red paint. I hear door open behind me and I turn around and I’m -

Screaming, Clare is screaming and screaming -

Horrible, terrible, miserable screams.

‘Wake up! Wake up!’ BJ shouting, shouting and shouting -

Horrible, terrible, miserable shouts.

Her eyes white and wide in dark, she tears open her blouse and pulls up her bra, three words there written in blood on her chest:


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