A Dreadful Past (15 page)

‘We're not here to judge, Veronica.' Yellich spoke softly. He had accepted Veronica Blackman's invitation to sit, had instantly regretted it and wished, like Reginald Webster, that he had elected to stand. ‘We're here to talk about the occasion you got attacked.'

‘Which particular occasion do you want to talk about, pet?' Veronica Blackman laughed. ‘I'm a working girl; I've been attacked a few times. It's an occupational hazard, pet. It comes with the territory.'

‘The time you were attacked by a gang,' Webster clarified. ‘The attack which took place twenty years ago. It put you in hospital for a while.'

‘Yes …' Veronica Blackman inhaled deeply and exhaled strongly through her nose. ‘I thought that that was the attack you meant. It's the one I most remember. That was the first time I was rolled – the worst time as well. That's why I mentioned my daughter. In those days I did it for her. These days I do it for myself because there's nothing else I can do and she does it for herself, even though she's young enough to do something else. I gave her a slap once but it didn't do any good.'

‘What happened, about the attack, I mean?' Yellich asked. ‘All you can remember, especially something, anything you didn't remember at the time.'

‘I told the law everything.' Veronica Blackman shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don't remember nothing else other than what I told the boys in blue at the time. I put it away as far as I could, right to the back of the old brain box. I don't think about it any more. What's the use of thinking about it all the time?'

‘Tell us anyway,' Yellich encouraged. ‘We're new. We were not here in those days. So … please, if you don't mind … just for our edification.'

‘Well …' Veronica Blackman flicked ash from her cigarette into the huge ashtray which rested precariously on the arm of the chair in which she sat. ‘I was working on Micklegate one night … you're from Micklegate Bar Police Station, you said?'

‘Yes,' Yellich confirmed, ‘that's where we work.'

‘OK, well, I was standing doing business about halfway down Micklegate on the right as you're walking down from the Bar … It was one evening, like I said, after dark, and this young bloke came up to me, real nervous like, and asked for something quick and sordid, can't remember exactly what, and asked if we could go into the alley … you know, down St Martin's Lane. It goes towards Fetter Lane.'

‘Yes.' Yellich looked round the room. He thought it all very cheap and spartan with little comfort about it. ‘I know where you are. I know exactly where you are.'

‘So I did. I was working,' Veronica Blackman continued. ‘It had been a slow night. I remember I hadn't got a lot to show by that time and I needed it badly – I needed money. This pathetic guy, on his aluminium crutches … he couldn't ever attract a girl so he buys it … There are a lot like that. You know, I still see him. It was twenty years ago now but I still see him now and again. Same sad guy hobbling about on two aluminium sticks.'

‘You do?' Yellich exclaimed as he sat forward in the chair which made him feel uneasy with its uncleanliness. ‘Do you know his name?'

‘Simon.' Veronica Blackman helped herself to another cigarette. ‘I remember that was what he told me his name was. Funny, all the punters I've had over the years and I only remember the names of my regulars, except one and he's the one … Simon on two sticks. So anyway, off we go down the alley, me and Simon on his sticks, down St Martin's Lane, and we're about halfway down that dark old passageway when these guys jump me, don't they? Two, I think. Could have been more. They really went to town. They seemed to come out of nowhere, right out of the shadows, and did they go to town … I mean, did they! They worked me over, they really worked me over.'

‘Yes, we know.' Yellich nodded sympathetically as he held eye contact with Veronica Blackman. ‘We read the file: three broken ribs, both legs broken, both arms broken … teeth kicked out. As you say, they went to town on you.'

‘They knocked me out, but before I blacked out I heard one of them say, “OK, you've got your money – clear off or you'll get some of the same. Go! Go!” Or words like that, but that was the gist of what was said, and I heard Simon, if that was his name, tap, tap, tapping away as fast he could go on his little tin sticks. As fast as they could carry him. Then … well, then I woke up in the York District Hospital with both my arms and legs in plaster. My little girl, our Denise, was only three years old at the time. She was taken from me for a while by the child welfare people and put into foster care. I got her back when I was discharged, though, and I never got her taken from me again.'

‘I'm pleased about that.' Somerled Yellich smiled. ‘So you were able to bring her up?'

‘Yes, I was, but bring her up to what?' Veronica Blackman glanced down and to her left, then to her right. ‘I never talked to her in the horrible way my mother talked to me but she'll be out on the streets tonight anyway. I did that to her … some mother I was, some example for her to follow.'

‘Did you tell the police about the disabled man who called himself Simon?' Yellich shifted uncomfortably in the armchair.

‘Yes, I did, of course I did. I told them everything I remembered but I don't think they ever found him.' Veronica Blackman lit the cigarette with a blue disposable lighter. ‘I mean, there never was a court case. Mind you, I saw nothing of the men who attacked me, just heard their voices, so what evidence was there?'

‘Anything unique about the voices?' Webster asked. ‘Any distinct accent, for example?'

‘Not that I could detect.' Veronica Blackman inhaled deeply and then exhaled through her nostrils. ‘Just local men … I seem to remember one might have had a different accent, but in the main I only heard the voice of the man who told Simon to clear off, and he was definitely a local man.'

‘So, tell us,' Yellich asked, ‘where is it that you see Simon? Is it somewhere local?'

‘At the clinic just round the corner.' Veronica Blackman glanced to her left. ‘He seems to live here in Chapel Fields where all the hard-luck cases come to live. I see him at the Rylat Place Clinic, here on the estate, over there.' She pointed to her left.

‘Frequently?' Yellich probed. ‘Do you see him about here very often?'

‘No … only about twice a year.' Once again Veronica Blackman drew heavily on the cigarette and once again exhaled through her nostrils. ‘I saw him the first time about four – no, five years ago, and once every six months is all I want to see him, frankly. Even that's too much; I still have a great urge to attack him. But he's so sad, and now he's overweight, hobbling about on his sticks, and I never see him in the street going to and fro so it's like he's a real stay-at-home, going out only when he has to. It's possible that he didn't know what was going to happen to me. I mean, fair play to him, he may not have known why he was asked to bring me into St Martin's Lane that night. You've got to think that that might have been the case. You've got to be a Christian about these things.'

‘Well,' Yellich stood gratefully, ‘we'll be able to find him easily enough; we can ask him. We'll see what he can tell us.'

‘Excuse me, I don't like to ask …' Veronica Blackman looked up appealingly at Yellich, ‘… but I'm not young any more … I have bills to pay.'

‘Of course.' Yellich took a pristine twenty-pound note out of his leather wallet and handed it to Veronica Blackman.

‘Thank you, sir … thank you, thank you …' Veronica Blackman gasped her thanks with genuine gratitude.

‘It finished me with driving taxis for my crust. It did that all right. I tell you, it was a taxi driver's worst fears come true.' Richard Bowes revealed himself to be a well-built man with a striking head of red hair and an equally striking red beard. Between the two was a pointed nose, at either side above which were piercing blue eyes. ‘I mean, you're always very wary of who you pick up, especially at night … always … Especially groups, and very especially groups of youths. You see, the York cabbies have organized themselves and they have a code: if they're wary of a fare they'll radio “code six”.'

‘Code six?' Carmen Pharoah echoed.

‘Yes. It means the cabbie has a dodgy fare. It was, in fact, the police who suggested they do that. He gives his location and any cab driver who is in the vicinity and who is free will drive to the assistance of the cab who's radioed code six. I did it once or twice and you can have up to three cabs following you. It's very reassuring.'

‘I can bet it is.' Carmen Pharoah held eye contact with Richard Bowes.

‘Well … when you get cabbies attacked, even murdered … which has happened,' Bowes opened his left palm, ‘I mean, then you need that sort of protection. We look out for each other. We, or they, have to, but like I said, after I was attacked I was done with the taxi driving … done with it for good.'

‘You didn't radio a code six that night, Mr Bowes?' Carmen Pharoah sat on the settee in the living room of Richard Bowes cluttered and untidy house in Sherburn-in-Elmet.

‘No, I didn't think it was necessary. I mean, what taxi driver would? The fare was a single young woman in her twenties. She wanted to go to an address in Rawcliffe. I was on the rank at the railway station and she walked past my cab and went to the cab which was standing in front of me so I saw her back view first. She was wearing a sweatshirt with a hood, and it had the logo of one of those American basketball teams, or football teams like … like … the Green Bay Packers or the Boston Red Sox, that sort of name, but I can't remember which team it was,' Richard Bowes added apologetically. ‘But it was a name like that.'

‘No matter.' Carmen Pharoah smiled. ‘Go on, please.'

‘So anyway, the cab in front had just taken a fare, otherwise I dare say you'd be talking to him now and not to me and that I'd still be driving taxis for a living, which I quite liked … it wasn't a bad way to make a living … And so he drove off and the girl walked back to me. I was the next taxi in line then, you see. She was light-haired, short, a squat sort of girl – square, really – not particularly feminine looking.' Richard Bowes held eye contact with Carmen Pharoah, ‘And she walked with her arms hanging by her side and a bit behind her, sort of angled back like little boys do when they run around pretending to be jet aeroplanes. She put me in mind of a penguin out of water, to be honest.'

‘I get the picture.' Carmen Pharoah looked out of the window of Richard Bowes' living room across the flat, ploughed fields which surrounded his house. She felt it was exceedingly pleasant to get out of the city and into the country, albeit briefly, all too briefly.

‘So,' Bowes continued, ‘she hires me to take her out to Rawcliffe and sits behind me … It turns out that there was a reason for that.' Richard Bowes' voice became lower and Carmen Pharoah detected a note of anger. ‘My cab was just an ordinary saloon car – it wasn't like a London taxi with a protected driver's compartment.'

‘I see.' Carmen Pharoah nodded. ‘In fact, I was going to ask about that. But do go on.'

‘So … I run her out to Rawcliffe – single girl, good area, so I feel safe. I didn't feel in no danger at all. I mean, who would? So we get to Rawcliffe,' Bowes continued, ‘and she asks me to turn off Manor Lane down into a side road and then she asks me to stop, so I do. Still nothing to worry about, I'm still calm while she gets her purse out of her handbag and hands me the money. I give her the change and she opens the rear passenger door. Then the car gets surrounded; one guy reaches in through the open door and, quick as a flash, opens my door, while the fare – the woman – reaches forward between the two front seats, presses my seatbelt release and reaches further forward, turns the ignition off so I can't sound the horn … then I'm dragged out on to the pavement by the two big guys and it's fists, boots … I mean, no build up, no verbals – they waded straight in. Before I knew what was happening I was out cold … and I wake up in hospital.'

‘Yes,' Carmen Pharoah replied, ‘so we read in the file. You were kept in for five days?'

‘Yes, and it finished me with taxi driving. After that I went on the buses till I retired. With taxis no two journeys are exactly the same but the buses … it's just back and forwards all shift … same route all day.' Bowes looked up at the ceiling of his living room. ‘I can tell you, you get some real idiot members of the public but the buses have a safe driver's compartment like London taxis. No one can attack you and you can radio control for assistance.' Bowes paused. ‘But that crew who attacked me, I probably saw them some years later.'

‘You did?' Carmen Pharoah gasped.

‘Probably. Probably,' Bowes repeated. ‘I can only say probably and then I only recognized the girl. I never saw who else attacked me that night, but anyway, I was in the George and Dragon pub on Foss Islands Road in the centre of York. I was standing at the bar and it was … probably still is, an L-shaped bar … early one evening, just a few punters having a quiet drink, which is when I like to have a beer, and there they were, the four of them. The girl I recognized by her jacket with the American sport's team logo. I saw then that it was a blue jacket. So they were four: two big lads and one small lad and the girl. One of the big lads moved about a lot and was standing up. He put his pint of beer into his inside jacket pocket and lifted it to his lips by getting hold of the lapel of his jacket and raising the jacket and he said to the publican, “A new way of drinking it, Frank”. So he was on first-name terms with the publican of the George and Dragon but the publican didn't like them in his pub – that was plain to see.' Richard Bowes paused for a moment. ‘The other big lad – he was very good looking. I mean, he could have made a living as a male model. He really was very handsome and, unlike his mate, he just sat still, so still and so, so quiet. It was like he was carved in stone. The other male, the third man, was very small, only about five feet tall, and had a serious face. He wasn't much to look at and he wore those type of shoes with very pointed toes. They used to be called “winkle-pickers”, so I believe.'