Nineteen Eighty (30 page)

I nod and stand up.
‘Good day Mr Hunter,’ he says.
‘One thing,’ I say –
He looks up.
‘Disciplinary Regulations demand that information be given to an accused officer in sufficient detail for him to be able to defend himself, and that the full name and address of the person making the complaint must also be provided to him.’
Angus nods and says: ‘I know.’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Then I look forward to receiving that information from you at two o’clock on Monday in Wakefield.’
Angus is looking at me, staring at me, staring at me stood there.
More silence –
More silence in the office that was my office, that was my office until yesterday afternoon –
More silence until the phone starts ringing –
Angus picks it up: ‘Chief Constable Angus speaking.’
He’s listening, still looking at me.
‘Yes he is,’ he says into the phone, eyes never leaving mine –
Mine never leaving his.
‘Just a moment,’ he says and puts his hand over the mouthpiece –
‘It’s for you,’ he says. ‘Won’t give his name, but says it’s an emergency.’
Never leaving his.
Ronald Angus leans forward and hands me the phone, the phone that was my phone until yesterday afternoon –
I take the phone from him and lean across the desk, the desk that was my desk, and I press the flashing red button: ‘This is Peter Hunter.’
‘Are you alone?’ a man’s voice asks – young.
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Well then, I’ll make this brief.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘I’ve got some information concerning one of the Ripper murders.’
‘I’m still listening,’ I say, thinking –
ASSUME THIS PHONE IS TAPPED.
Him: ‘Be in Preston tomorrow lunchtime.’
‘Where?’
‘St Mary’s? It’s a pub on Church Street.’
‘What time?’
‘One?’
‘Fine.’
The line goes dead.
I hand the phone, the phone that was my phone until yesterday afternoon, I hand it back to Ronald Angus –
He takes it from me, his eyes black and burning to know who that was, Jobson the same.
I say nothing and turn and walk to the door, the door that was my door, the door to the office that was my office, that was my office until yesterday afternoon.
‘Mr Hunter?’ says Angus as I open the door. ‘One thing for you.’
I turn around –
‘We will be asking you for authorisation to go directly to your bank and we will also be asking you to turn over official diaries and expenses, not forgetting all files pertaining to the Ripper.’
I nod and turn back to the door –
‘Is that a yes, Mr Hunter?’
I nod again, my back to him, and I step out into the corridor and shut the door, shut the door to the office that was my office, that was my office until yesterday afternoon.
I pull into the drive of Joan’s parents’ house at almost six o’clock and I can see Joan watching for me in their front room.
She comes out into the drive as I’m locking the car –
‘Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell me?’
I can see her parents standing in the hall, her father with his arms around her mother –
‘What?’
‘It’s all over the papers, the news. It’s everywhere.’
‘What is?’
‘Your suspension,’ she says, holding out the evening paper –
‘What?’
‘You didn’t know?’
I take the paper from her and stand in the dark and the rain of her parents’ drive straining to read the front page of the
Manchester Evening News
under a headline that’s as large as it is a lie:
Suspended
.
In big, black, bold type –
With my photograph underneath, one taken of me wrestling a student to the ground during a recent demonstration when Keith Joseph came North on a visit to Manchester Polytechnic.
Manchester Assistant Chief Constable Peter Hunter was today suspended from duty due to what police sources are describing as serious allegations
.
In a carefully worded statement, Mr Donald Lees of the Greater Manchester Police Authority told reporters that, Information has been received in relation to the conduct of a Senior Police Officer which disclosed the possibility of a disciplinary offence. To maintain public confidence, the Chairman of the Police Committee, Councillor Clive Birkenshaw, has requested the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, Mr Ronald Angus, to investigate this matter under the appropriate statutory provisions. The Assistant Chief Constable involved is on temporary leave of absence whilst the matter is being investigated.’
Mr Lees repeatedly refused to confirm or deny that the officer was Peter Hunter, but police sources confirmed that Mr Hunter had been suspended from duty. Attempts were made to contact Mr Hunter for comment, but he was unavailable at the time of going to press
.
Councillor Birkenshaw meanwhile was quoted as describing the complaint as ‘very trivial’ and had ‘blown up over the last two days’
.
However Mr Clement Smith, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, told the
Evening News
that the allegations were, ‘very regrettable indeed and it is my hope that they will be cleared up as quickly as possible.’
Mr Lees was unable to give details of the allegations involving Mr Hunter but he did deny conflicting newspaper reports that the suspension was a result of a fire two days ago at Mr Hunter’s Alderley Edge home or his handling of the inquiry into the Yorkshire Ripper or rumoured links to the recent horrific murder of former Yorkshire policeman Robert Douglas and his young daughter in the Ashburys area of the city
.
I stop reading and look up at Joan standing there, standing there in the drive of her parents’ house, her own arms around herself.
‘You didn’t know?’ she’s asking me –
I shake my head and say: ‘Bastards, the fucking bastards.’
And she’s crying and so am I, unable to hold back my tears, unable to catch hers, unable to stop them, and all the things we’ve lost, there’s so much, we’ve lost so very much, too much, the things we’ve lost, there are so many, we’ve lost so very many things, too many, and I put my arm around her and lead her back up the drive and into her parents’ house, her parents’ house like the house that was our house, the house that was our house until Thursday night, her mother and father stood in the hall, his arm round her, her hands to her face, my arms round Joan, her hands to my face, my black ash face, and I look at the three of them and I say –
‘I’m sorry.’
is hard to hear e will stand real close and say thank you for being a friend and when we die and float away into the night the milky way you will hear me call as we ascend hear me cry but surely we were meant to win this fight not howl like dogs in the rain transmission eleven received on ash lane bradford on Sunday the ninth of September nineteen seventy nine identified as dawn Williams a large laceration on the back of her head and seven stab wounds in her trunk three of them round her umbilicus the knife reintroduced into the chest wound on a number of occasions she had numerous bruises and abrasions and had been struck on the head with a hammer and stabbed with a giant three sided screwdriver new suffering in the round of rain eternal a piteous sight confusing me to tears cursed cold and falling heavy unchanging thick hail and dirty water mixed with snow coming down in torrents through the murky air the earth stinking from this soaking rain wherein a ruthless and fantastic beast with all three of his throats howls out doglike above the drowning sinners of this place his eyes red his beard slobbered black his belly swollen he has claws for hands and he rips the spirits flays and mangles her in the shadows of the yard behind number thirteen pulling at her blouse lifting her brassiere pulling down her jeans and panties putting away the hammer taking out the screwdriver the knife stabbing stabbing stabbing stabbing stabbing stabbing stabbing replacing the blouse under a piece of carpet some leaves the rain welcome back to bradford said the sign above the door round the back in an old carpet a dead girl in a distorted jackknife posture in a cheesecloth shirt bra pushed up to expose her breasts and her jeans undone and partly pulled down stabbed seven times in the stomach and the shoulder blade with a four inch blade he is thirty two dark five feet eight inches tall calls himself ronnie or Johnnie related to the detective no he is an electrician from durham no he is a former sailor now electrician who loves dancing no e have seen his face in the stamp on the envelope of the letter he sent and e will not leave this place until he is caught no he is a father of two who works at a pumping station and has a dog no he is a lorry driver called peter who drives a cab with a name beginning with the letter C on the side and he lives in bradford in a big grey house elevated above the street behind wrought iron gates with steps leading up to the front door number six in its street peter will have committed crimes before and is connected to the containerbase at stourton and he will kill for the last time in leeds on Wednesday the tenth of december nineteen eighty a piteous sight confusing me to tears the onedin line finished this is the bradford police dawn has been reported missing since yesterday evening and we wondered if she had gone home no she has not and this is most unusual right we will keep checking and we will let you know as soon as we have any news this is just not like her perhaps it is a hoax a sick joke there are so many e thought e would ring you and have a chat we have no news yet e have got daughters too and e know what it is like then the doorbell and she is gone and we would like you to come up and identify her we will send a car around the colour of the coward on my face his body one mass of twitching muscle grabbing up fistfuls of mud quiet only with mouthfuls of food then barking thunder on dead souls who wished they were deaf and e say it is not usual for one of us to make the journey e am making now but it happens e was down here once before soon after e had left my flesh in death she sent me through these walls and down as far as the pit of judas
Chapter 18
The breakfast is greasy, the conversation cold, the weather both and the radio on:
‘Accusation and counter-accusation fill many of the Sunday papers this morning concerning the suspension of Peter Hunter, an Assistant Chief Constable with the Greater Manchester Police
.
‘Under the headline
, Hunter: Conspiracy or Coincidence?
an editorial in the
Observer
asks whether Mr Hunter’s suspension is in any way linked to an apparently hostile report he was preparing into the management and practices of the West Yorkshire Police in regard to their handling of the on-going Ripper Inquiry. A report that has now been shelved
.
‘However the
Mail on Sunday
carries quotes from unnamed police sources claiming that the suspension is due to Mr Hunter’s own associations with a prominent local criminal from whom Mr Hunter had accepted lavish hospitality, photographs of which are ‘doing the rounds’ in some of the less salubrious Manchester pubs and clubs
.
‘Meanwhile other papers continue to lead with either the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper or the prospects for the release of the fifty-two hostages being held …’
I swallow my food and get up from the table.
‘Where are you going?’ her mother asks.
‘Preston.’
‘Preston?’ repeats her father.
‘Preston,’ I nod.
Joan doesn’t even look up from the plate before her, greasy and cold.
Preston –
Sunday 28 December 1980:
11:05:02 –
I’m too early –
Much too early.
I don’t need to find St Mary’s, so I park in a multi-storey car park near the station and listen to the radio for a bit longer before I decide to sort out the car, stuffed full of half the office – the unopened post and cards; plus the Christmas presents – the various pens and socks, the diaries and chocolates, the handkerchiefs and tie; then the stuff from the Griffin – the
Exegesis
and the tapes, Hall’s notes and mine, the boot full of
Spunks
.
I open the doors and the boot and start shifting stuff about and when I’ve got the porn and the important stuff lying in the boot under a sea of socks and diaries, handkerchiefs and the tie, then I close the boot and get back inside, the unopened post and cards in a pile on the passenger seat, and with a mouth full of chocolate liquors I start going through the envelopes, one by one, the cards and the post, one by one, the official and the personal, one by –
One:
Flat and manila, in slanting black felt-tip pen:
Peter Hunter,
Police Chief,
Manchester
.
Flat and manila, in slanting black felt-tip pen:
Photos Do Not Bend
.
Flat and manila –
I rip it open and take them out –
Photographs, four of them –
Four photographs of two people in a park:
Piatt Fields Park, in wintertime
.
Photographs, black and white –
Black and white photographs of two people in a park by a pond:
A cold grey pond, a dog
.
Four black and white photographs of two people in a park –
Two people in a park:
One of them me
.
St Mary’s, Church Street, Preston –
12:54:05
.
I’m sitting at a sticky-topped table by the door, the rain outside, the cold inside.
I’ve got a half of bitter in front of me, salt and vinegar crisps spilling here and there, sideways glances from the regulars.
I keep looking at my watch, my new digital watch –
12:56:05
.
Sitting at the sticky-topped table by the door, wondering if he’s here or if he’ll show, wondering if I would if I were him, wondering just who the fuck he is – the fuck I am.
An empty glass in front of me, salt and vinegar stinging my fingers, front-on stares from two men by the dartboard.
I look at my watch –
12:58:03
.
Sat there, damp and cold –
Evil eyes –
I look at –
‘Peter Hunter?’ shouts out the woman behind the bar, waving a telephone about –
And I’ve got my hand up, crossing the room.
She hands the phone across the bar –
‘This is Peter Hunter,’ I say into the receiver.
Him, that voice: ‘You alone?’
‘Of course I am.’
‘How do you know?’
I pause, replaying the route, scanning the room – the eyes and the stares – and then I say: ‘I am. Are you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Near enough.’
‘Where?’
‘Step outside, walk up the hill, turn left onto Frenchwood Street.’
‘And?’
But the phone is dead.
I walk up Church Street, the top of the multi-storey car park looming over the hill, the rain cold upon my face.