Midnight on Lime Street (13 page)

Jesus, help me. This wasn’t meant to happen, surely? I’m only human. I want what that man is getting from her. She’s naked now. So is he. In ten years, I have never seen Laura
in the nude. When we do get together, my attitude is almost apologetic, as if my wife’s doing me a favour.

Look. Look at her head thrown back and all that shining hair hanging lower down her spine, almost reaching her waist. Listen. She’s almost screaming, while he seems to growl like an
animal. The deed has been done.

They lie side by side for a while, and they’re having a quiet conversation. I’ve never had that, either. Laura always rolls away from me and falls asleep, sighing as if she’s
glad the whole business is over. There’s seldom anything to say, anyway, because she knows nothing of life beyond the house and the children, doesn’t even read the paper or listen to
the news. We’re a boring pair, I conclude. And now I almost understand why men use other women. Wives cook and clean and raise children, while these female receptacles serve a different
purpose.

He’s stroking her hair. They talk and laugh while he winds a long strand round his finger. I can almost feel her crowning glory, silky-smooth and long. Laura’s is sensible, I
suppose. She keeps it short and easy to deal with, because she’s busy running the house. A wash-and-go style, she calls it. It’s wiry, with no shine and very little colour. I married a
blonde, but she’s gone mousy as she’s got older. There seems to be more to living than waiting for safe days and a quick fumble in the dark. I love Laura, yet there is no pleasure to be
had with her, no happiness in mating.

The man’s getting dressed. He turns towards the window, startling me for a moment, but he doesn’t see me. I’m panicking for two reasons. First, I was afraid of being noticed;
second, I know who he is.

I step away and sit down under the window. That man is our butcher, a happy chap with red cheeks, smiling eyes and the best lamb chops for miles. Trevor Burns is his name. His wife works with
him in the shop; he calls her Em, so I suppose she’s Emily. I’m sitting here on a hard and unforgiving path and I’m shaking my head. He has five children. He goes to our church
with his wife and kids. Like most butchers, he’s slightly overweight, as is Em. Trevor Burns. Will he burn in hell? Is his name prophetic?

Life is a learning process, and Trevor Burns is my key to this house. I hear the van driving away. When I stand, the woman inside is wearing a shabby old blue robe and clutching a large towel.
Business is over for tonight, I guess, and she’s going for a bath. Water will not cleanse her soul of sin. And if I do what Butcher Burns just did, there’ll be no absolution for me,
either. It’s all very confusing. It’s also exciting. I have never felt as alive as I do tonight.

Jesus, is this part of it? Do I have to know these women in the biblical sense? Must I taste the sin before spitting it out and grinding it to dust?

This is confusing, exciting, bad, good – and perhaps it’s connected to my mission. I must bow to the will of my Master.

Roy and Bill were in it up to their necks. ‘You owe me,’ Boss told them. He focused on Bill. ‘I’ve brought you back here for a reason. I gave you over
the odds for your crop, and you can make it up by doing drops or manufacturing for me. You’ll get paid. When you’ve worked off your debt, you’ll get paid more.’

Bill was white as a sheet. ‘I’m starting work with my dad,’ he said. They were on the big man’s territory, and both boys were terrified.

The reply arrived through a fog of cigar smoke. ‘That’s OK. You can do evening and weekend drops.’

‘But I live at the other side of Liverpool.’

‘That doesn’t matter. We’ll come to you with the big drop, then you can do the smaller ones when we give you the meeting places. If you’re caught, you say nothing. All
drops will be in your area.’ He turned to Roy. ‘You can stay here. You’ll be fed and paid to work, and your wages will increase depending on how hard you work.’

Bill cleared his throat of fear. It tasted terrible. ‘I can’t do drops. We’ll be working in Chorley and Preston – he’s with a big firm, me dad. But I’ll keep
my gob shut, like.’

‘Make sure you do, or accidents will happen.’

‘Er – what will I be doing, Boss?’ Roy asked.

‘You’ll be on ready-made spliffs with an extra ingredient. Don’t use any of the LSD yourself, because you might have a bad trip.’

The boys looked at each other. A bad trip? The whole situation was a bad trip. They should have run away and let the plants die, since Roy was now tied into a life under Boss, who never used his
real name, while Bill didn’t feel exactly safe.

‘And don’t do anything clever. We know where your families are,’ the big man said, his voice low and threatening.

Roy shuffled on the spot. At least Bill would be going home and working with his dad. And yes, he did know what happened to families. A guy who had grassed up some big drugs people got his photo
in the congratulations column of a local paper.
Well done with the interview
, the message had read. The interview had been with the cops, and the guy’s mother had been tied to a
chair at home and beaten halfway to death. There was no hiding place.

Constables Eddie Barnes and Dave Earnshaw were among many who had volunteered for low-paid and sometimes unpaid overtime. While some officers searched for a murderer, others
chased about looking for the three supposedly abused boys who had fled and disappeared to God alone knew where. Both cases were of interest to national media, so the whole country was watching the
Liverpool police force.

It was a hard job for uniformed men who made their presence felt in the city for at least eight hours a day. After a shift in the Lime Street area, the two constables were fed in the station
canteen, after which they enjoyed an hour’s rest before returning to duty when dusk began its descent. Somewhere out there, a serial killer was indulging his pastime.

After their too-short break, Eddie and Dave joined colleagues spaced along the riverfront, which stretched for miles. Since the brutal murder of Dolly Pearson, whose broken body had upset even
pathologists, nothing further had happened. As August peeped over the horizon, no new evidence had been found, and nobody else had died at the hands of a person nominated by the press as the Mersey
Monster.

‘Maybe he’s moved on,’ Dave suggested. ‘He might go from one river to another, and he could be in Chester now, looking for women along the Dee. Mind, they won’t get
many merchant sailors down the Dee, will they? Perhaps he’s given up.’

Eddie held strong opinions, because he’d been reading everything he could find on the subject of serial killers. ‘They don’t give up, Dave, they get stopped by us or by their
own death. I just get the feeling – and don’t ask me why – that he’s trying to clear Liverpool of prostitutes. Of course, he knows now that Mrs Pearson was just an eccentric
elderly lady who wore the wrong clothes, so I think he’s having a pause. He’s a bad bugger on a mission; I feel it in my bones.’

Dave pondered. ‘All these coppers and detectives will be putting him off. But this is a bloody long stretch of riverfront, Eddie. He could be anywhere from Otterspool to Waterloo.’
He paused. ‘It’s almost as if we’re wanting him to do another one, but we’re too visible.’

‘Then lives are being saved for now, which can’t be a bad thing. Come on, we’ll get a cuppa in that late-night cafe. What with murdered women and runaway boys, we’re all
a bit overstretched and we deserve a short sit.’

They stepped into the decrepit place known as Pat and Paul’s Cafe. A smell of rancid fat hung in the air and clung lovingly to curtains and tablecloths. The floor was covered in ancient
lino that boasted stains in various colours. Dave went to order tea while Eddie settled in an uncomfortable chair and lit a longed-for Navy Cut.

The dump was quite busy, filled mostly by lorry drivers, but with a few policemen and detectives scattered about. There wasn’t a single clean item in the place, and the staff, just the man
and wife, looked totally unfit to be in human company. They were sweaty, and their supposedly white overalls bore almost as many shades of colour as the lino.

‘What the hell are we doing in here?’ Eddie mouthed quietly after blowing a perfect smoke ring.

A man at the next table smiled. ‘Not a pleasant place to eat, is it? My wife would be sending for a fumigation unit.’

‘We’re desperate,’ Eddie replied. ‘Been on our feet for ten hours.’

The man nodded. ‘This is the only cafe open along here at this time of night. A lot of hard work for you just now,’ he added. ‘The murders, I mean. Any idea who it is yet? He
must be very different from ordinary folk, I suppose.’

‘It’s a psycho,’ Eddie said. ‘A psycho looks just like everybody else. According to an expert in these things, he’s possibly even married with a couple of kids, a
wife who has no idea what he’s up to, and a very ordinary job. A clever nutcase on a mission can take some catching, but we’ll get him.’

‘Are you sure?’ the stranger asked.

‘Even brilliant psychos make mistakes. Dolly Pearson was one of them.’

‘Let’s hope you put a stop to him, then.’ Neil Carson finished his cuppa, said goodnight and walked to the door. He got his bike and wheeled it past the window, waving to the
policeman as he raised a leg over the crossbar. ‘Good luck,’ he mouthed. They would need luck, because Neil Carson’s target now sat out in the wilds, a farmhouse shielded by
bushes and trees and a fat queen bee. They would catch him? Oh no, he was too clever for that.

Eddie Barnes shivered, though he didn’t know why, because the evening was warm. What did Mam always say when she shuddered involuntarily? ‘Somebody walked over my grave’? Yes,
that was it.

Dave arrived with two mugs of tea and some wrapped biscuits. ‘We should get the health inspectors in here. Folk could be poisoned.’ He gazed at his partner. ‘Are you all right,
lad? You look done in.’

‘I think I’m OK. I’m a bit tired, that’s all.’ But he still felt cold.

‘Who were you talking to?’ Dave asked.

‘Just some bloke who agreed with me about this wonderfully clean, high-class restaurant. He said we should try the caviar and the smoked salmon, but what can we do on a cop’s pay,
eh? Glad you bought wrapped biscuits, Dave. I wouldn’t want anything touched by either of them at the counter.’

They sat together eating their biscuits and sipping at strong, stewed tea.

Dave frowned. ‘I wonder when this was brewed. Yesterday?’

Eddie looked at the owners. ‘It could be him,’ he whispered. ‘Always open late. Maybe he sends the wife home early while he closes the cafe before going out to do his other
job.’

Dave grinned. ‘Look at him. About six stone wet through. I reckon he couldn’t lift the skin off custard, and he’s certainly a stranger to cleaning up.’

‘You’re right. It’s more likely somebody the same as men we see every day. Average height, average weight, average looks, ordinary job, maybe shift work. He’ll have read
about Dolly Pearson, and I reckon she was a big error, because he’s after working girls like poor Jean Davenport. He knows the docks are crawling with cops, so he’ll be working on new
ideas.’

‘Is he crazy?’

Eddie raised his shoulders. ‘That’s a matter of opinion. Does he know what he’s doing? Yes, he does. Does he know why? Maybe he does, and maybe he doesn’t. Another thing
I heard was that he can’t appreciate how other people feel. He could even be an excellent dad, a genuinely good family man till he gets out and about. I bet he’s OK at his job, too,
although that psych bloke at the station said he’s probably working at a level he considers beneath him. But I think he’ll steer clear of the docks for a while.’

Dave grinned. ‘I bet you’ve passed your sergeant exams, Ed.’

‘I have. And I think I’m trying for CID. I like the whys and the hows and the whos. Listening to that expert in our office, I thought how interesting it was to dig into the human
mind and work out the type we’re hunting.’

‘Are you and me getting a divorce, then?’

‘Let’s see, shall we? Come on, we should get out of this hole before we come down with cholera or typhoid.’

They stood outside on the pavement. ‘It might even be him,’ Eddie said quietly.

‘Him who?’

‘Him who was talking to me, sitting at the next table. Ordinary chap, knows the right thing to say, the right way to behave. They’re good actors, these psychopaths. The killer might
even be a policeman or a judge or a clergyman.’

‘You serious, Ed?’

Eddie nodded. ‘Yes. And he hasn’t finished his work, Dave. The odd thing is that he should have left a trail earlier in life, because they don’t usually kick off with killing
people. They might hurt animals and other kids first, but everyone on our books has been checked. He could have moved here from just about anywhere.’

‘So he might be on another force’s list?’

Again, Eddie nodded. ‘Could be Scottish, Irish, Welsh. Or he might be what they call inspirational.’

‘What’s that when it’s at home?’

‘Our killer might have been given orders from voices only he can hear. So he could have a completely clean sheet so far. But he still knows what he’s doing is wrong.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Yes, that as well. Let’s get back to the cop shop. We’re on earlies tomorrow.’

A few yards away, a man with a bicycle watched the two policemen as they walked towards town. They would catch him? They probably couldn’t catch as much as a cold. He left the recessed
doorway and rode homeward back to Laura. Whatever it took, he must make love to her tonight. It was a safe day; it was marked on the calendar.

Belle Horrocks tucked her precious girl into bed. ‘And the big, bad wolf was never seen again.’ She kissed her beloved daughter’s hair; it smelled of
childhood, happiness and Johnson’s baby shampoo. Lisa Marie Horrocks was the most beautiful child in the world.

Lisa frowned. ‘Did he have to get killed, that wolf?’

‘It was either him or Red Riding Hood’s grandma, love. Which would you choose to save?’