Nineteen Seventy-Seven: The Red Riding Quartet, Book Two (6 page)

The John Shark Show
Radio Leeds
Wednesday 1st June 1977

Chapter 4

The court is a narrow yard of six houses, whitewashed up to the first storey, the windowframes showing the remnants of green paint. Entrance to the court is obtained through an arched, tunnel-like passage which runs between numbers 26 and 27 Dosset Street, both of which are owned by a Mr John McCarthy, a 37-year-old naturalised British subject born in France. Number 27, to the left of the passage, is McCarthy’s chandler’s shop, but the building doubles above and behind as a lodging house. Number 26 is also a lodging house and the rear ground floor has been partitioned, so that a second room has been created. This is her room, number 13
.
It’s small, about twelve feet square, and is entered through a door at the right-hand side of the passage at the furthest end from the street. Apart from the bed, there are two tables, another smaller table and two dining-type chairs, one of which has a broken back. A fierce fire has been burning in the grate and the ashes disclose the remains of clothing. Above the fireplace opposite the door hangs a print entitled
The Fisherman’s Widow.
In a small wall cupboard next to the print there’s some crockery, some empty ginger beer bottles, and a piece of stale bread. A man’s pilot coat doubles as a curtain over the window, one of two looking out into the courtyard at right angles to the door of the room
.
I woke before the light, the rain clattering against the window, ladies’ heels down a dark alley.
I sat up in the sheets to see them perched upon the furniture, six white angels, holes in their feet, holes in their hands, holes in their heads, stroking their hair and wings.
‘You’re late,’ said the tallest one, coming over to my bed.
She lay down beside me and took my hand, pressing it against the walls of her stomach, hard beneath the white cotton cloth of her gown.
‘You’re bleeding,’ I said.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘It’s you.’
I put my fingers to my face and they came away bloody.
I pinched my nose in a dirty old handkerchief and asked, ‘Carol?’
‘You remembered,’ she replied.
‘Thank you for seeing me at such notice.’
‘Not a problem,’ said Assistant Chief Constable George Oldman.
We were sat in his brand new Wakefield office, modern to the bone.
It was Wednesday 1 June 1977.
Eleven in the morning, the rain gone.
‘Listen to that,’ said George Oldman, nodding to the open window and the shouts and stomps of cadets drifting up from the Police College. ‘We’ll lose almost fifty per cent within five years.’
‘That many?’
He looked down at the papers on his desk and sighed, ‘Probably more.’
I looked round the room, wondering what he wanted me to say, wondering why I’d asked Hadden to set this up.
‘Looks like you been in the wars too, Jack?’
‘You know me,’ I said, touching the bruise beneath my eye.
‘How’ve you been, seriously now?’
Taken aback by the real concern in his voice, I smiled, ‘Fine, really. Thanks.’
‘It’s been a long time.’
‘Not really. Three years.’
He looked down at his desk again. ‘Is that all?’
He was right:
100 years
.
I wanted to sigh, to lie face down on his floor, to be taken back to my bed.
George waved his hand across the desk and asked sadly, ‘But you’ve kept up with all this?’
‘Yeah,’ I lied.
‘And Bill wants you on it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And you?’
Thinking about choices and promises, debts and guilt, nodding and keeping on lying, saying, ‘Yeah.’
‘Well, in a way, it’s good because we could use all the publicity we can get.’
‘Not like you.’
‘No. But neither’s this and …’
‘And it can only get worse.’
George handed me a thick white bound dossier and said, ‘Yeah.’
I read:
Murders and Assaults Upon Women in the North of England
.
I opened up the first page and the bloody contents:
Joyce Jobson, assaulted Halifax, July 1974
.
Anita Bird, assaulted Cleckheaton, August 1974
.
Theresa Campbell, murdered Leeds, June 1975
.
Clare Strachan, murdered Preston, November 1975
.
Joan Richards, murdered Leeds, February 1976
.
Ka Su Peng, assaulted Bradford, October 1976
.
Marie Watts, murdered Leeds, May 1977
.
‘It’s top secret.’
I nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘We’ve circulated it to all the other forces across the country.’
‘And you think each of these women was attacked by the same man?’
‘The three we’ve publicly linked, definitely. The others we can’t discount simply because we’ve no evidence either way’
‘Fuck.’
‘Clare Strachan looks more and more likely and, if she’s in with the others, that’ll be a big help.’
‘Evidence?’
‘More than we got over here.’
I flicked through the pages, skimming words:
Philips screwdriver, abdomen, heavy Wellington boots, vagina, ballpein hammer, skull
.
Black and white photos leaping out:
Alleys, terrace backs, wasteland, rubbish tips, garages, playing fields.
‘What do you want me to do with it?’
‘Read it.’
‘I’d like to interview the survivors.’
‘Be my guest.’
‘Thanks.’
He looked at his watch and stood up. ‘Early lunch?’
‘That’d be nice,’ I lied again, another angel dying.
At the door, George Oldman stopped. ‘There’s me doing all the bloody talking and it was you who asked for the interview’
‘Just like old times,’ I smiled.
‘What was on your mind?’
‘We covered it. I wondered if you’d connected any other attacks or murders.’
‘And?’
We were standing in his doorway, half in and half out, women in blue overalls polishing the floors and the walls.
‘And if he’d made contact?’
Oldman looked back at his desk. ‘None.’
George brought the pints over.
‘Food’ll be five minutes.’
The College was quiet, a couple of other coppers drank up when they saw us, everyone else was either a lawyer or a businessman.
George knew them all.
‘How’s Wakefield?’ I asked.
‘Good, you know.’
‘You miss Leeds?’
‘Oh aye, but I’m over there every other bloody day. Especially now.’
‘Lillian and the girls, they keeping well?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
The wall was still there, as high as ever:
A car crash, four maybe five years ago. His only son dead, one daughter paralysed, all kinds of rumours.
‘Here we are,’ said George, two big plates of liver in front of us.
We ate in silence, stealing glances, forming questions, abandoning them under the weight of a thousand bad tangents, worse memories, mires and traps. And then for a moment, just one moment, between the liver and the onions, the dartboard and the bar, I felt sorry for the big man before me, sorry like he didn’t deserve the things he’d been through, the lessons he’d got coming, like none of us deserved our cruel cities and faithless priests, our barren women and unjust laws. But then I remembered all we’d done, the cuts we’d taken, the lives stolen and lost, and knew I was right when I said it could only get worse, so much more worse, the lessons we’d all got coming.
He dropped his knife and fork on to his empty plate and said, ‘Why did you ask if we’d had any contact?’
‘Just a hunch, a feeling.’
‘Yeah?’
I swallowed the last of my lunch, the first in a long time. ‘If it’s the same fellow, he’ll want you to know.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Wouldn’t you?’
I drove back to Leeds, the long way, stopping for a third pint at the Halfway House.
‘Not at all. Secrets should stay secret.’
And another.
Radio on:
Princess Anne greeted by noisy protesters as she opens the Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall, police urged not to cooperate on new complaints procedure, Asian man given three years for killing white man
.
Three years, that’s all it had been.
It was Wednesday 1 June 1977.
The office Derby-crazy.
Gaz was shouting, ‘What you got, Jack?’
‘Haven’t looked.’
‘Haven’t bloody looked? Come on, Jack. It’s the Derby. Jubilee Derby at that.’
‘Your common people’s race,’ echoed George Greaves. ‘None of your Royal Ascot here.’
‘They reckon there’ll be over a quarter of a million there,’ said Steph. ‘Be great.’
I opened up the paper, hiding the file.
Bill Hadden looked over my shoulder and whistled, ‘Minstrel five to one.’
‘It’ll be Lester’s eighth Derby if he does it,’ said Gaz.
I wanted to fold up the paper, but I didn’t want to see the file again. ‘Can’t see him not, can you?’
‘Go on, Jack. Back Baudelaire,’ smiled Bill.
I made an effort. ‘What you fancy George?’
‘A large one.’
‘Slap him Steph,’ shouted Gaz. ‘Can’t let him talk about you, like that.’
‘You hit him, Jack,’ laughed Steph.
‘Royal Plume,’ said George.
‘Who’s on it?’
‘Joe Mercer,’ said Gaz.
George Greaves was talking to himself. ‘Royal Plume in Jubilee year, it’s fate.’
‘Come on, Jack. I want to get down there before they’re in the stalls.’
‘Hang on, Gaz. Hang on.’
‘Milliondollarman?’ laughed Steph.
‘Can’t fucking rebuild Jack, can they,’ said Gaz.
I said, ‘Hot Grove.’
‘Carson and Hot Grove it is,’ said Gaz, out the door.
An hour later, Piggott had won his eighth Derby and we’d all lost.
We were down the Press Club, drowning our sorrows.
George was saying, ‘Trouble with racing is it’s like sex, great build-up but it’s all over in two minutes thirty six point four four seconds.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Gaz.
‘Unless you’re French,’ winked Steph.
‘Yeah, they don’t even have a great build-up.’
‘What would you know George Greaves,’ screamed Steph. ‘You haven’t had it in ten years and bet then you never took your socks off.’
‘You told me not to, said they turned you on.’
I picked up the file and left them to it.
‘Should’ve backed it for a place, Jack,’ shouted Gaz.
Grey evening sky, still hot with the rain to come, leaves green and stinking, tapping on my window like I LOVE YOU.
The moon down, the file open.
Murders and Assaults Upon Women in the North of England
.
Sugar spilt, milk spoilt.
Mind blank, eyes hollow.
Unlucky stars fallen to the earth, they mocked me with their idiot lines, taunted me with their playground rhymes:
Jack Sprat who ate no fat
.
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
.
Little Jack Horner, sat in his corner
.
Jack and Jill went up the hill
.
No Jill, the Jills all gone, just Jacks.
Jack in a box, Jack the lad.
Jack, Jack, Jack.
Yeah, I’m Jack.
Union Jack.
The same room, always the same room
:
The ginger beer, the stale bread, the ashes in the grate
.
She’s in white, turning black right down to her nails, hauling a marble-topped washstand to block the door, falling about, too tired to stand, collapsed in the broken-backed chair, spinning, she makes no sense, the words in her mouth, the pictures in her head, they make no sense, lost in her own room, like she’s had a big fall, broken, and no-one can put her together again, messages: no-one receiving, decoding, translating
.
‘What shall we do for the rent?’ she sings.
Just messages from her room, trapped between the living and the dead, the marble-topped washstand before her door
.
But not for long, not now
.
Just a room and a girl in white turning black right down to her nails and the holes in her head, just a girl, hearing footsteps on the cobbles outside
.
Just a girl
.
I woke panting, burning, sure they’d be waiting.
They smiled and took my hands and feet.
I closed my eyes and let them rip me right back into that room, the same room, always the same room –
Different times, different places, different towns, different houses, always the same room.
Always that same bloody room.
The body is lying naked in the middle of the bed, the shoulders flat, the axis of the body inclined to the left side of the bed. The left arm is close to the body with the forearm flexed at a right angle, lying across the abdomen. The right arm is slightly abducted from the body and resting on the mattress, the elbow bent and the forearm supine with fingers clenched. The legs are wide apart, the left thigh at right angles to the trunk, the right forming an obtuse angle with the pubes
.
The whole of the surface of the abdomen and thighs has been removed and the abdominal cavity emptied of its viscera. The breasts cut off, the arms mutilated by several jagged wounds and the face hacked beyond recognition of the features. The tissues of the neck have been severed all round, down to the bone
.
The viscera are in various parts viz: the uterus and kidneys with one breast under the bed, the other breast by the right foot, the liver between the feet, the intestines by the right side, and the spleen by the left side of the body. The flaps removed from the abdomen and thighs are on the table
.
The bed clothing at the right side is saturated with blood and on the floor beneath is a pool of blood covering about two feet square. The wall by the right side of the bed and in line with the neck is marked by blood which has struck it in a number of separate splashes
.
The face has been gashed in all directions, the nose, the cheeks, eyebrows and ears being partly removed. The lips have been blanched and cut by several incisions running obliquely down to the chin. There are also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all the features
.
The neck has been cut through the skin and other tissues right down to the vertebrae, the fifth and sixth being deeply notched. The skin cuts in the front of the neck show distinct eccymosis
.
The air passage has been cut at the lower part of the larynx through the cricoid cartilage
.
Both breasts have been removed by more or less circular incisions, the muscles down to the ribs being attached to the breasts. The intercostals between the fourth, fifth, and sixth ribs have been cut through and the contents of the thorax are visible through the openings
.
The skin and tissues of the abdomen from the costal arch to the pubes have been removed in three large flaps. The right thigh is denuded in front to the bone, the flap of skin, including the external organs of generation and part of the right buttock. The left thigh has been stripped of skin, fascia, and muscles as far as the knee
.
The left calf shows a long gash through skin and tissues to the deep muscles, reaching from the knee to five inches above the ankle