The Liverpool Trilogy (130 page)

She threw down her weapon. ‘I’m off home,’ she announced. ‘I’m not stopping here to become a plaything for a bloke with a stopwatch. No, I’ll wait for the
real ice cream man, thanks.’

‘Coward,’ he cried.

‘Shut up, you’ll have the neighbours in.’ She struck a pose, hand on thrust-out hip, mouth chewing non-existent gum. ‘How much? How much will you pay for my time, mister?
I’m good on the flat, not bad over the jumps, and I’m experienced in dressage.’

‘Three-day eventing?’ he asked.

‘You couldn’t afford me for three days, love. I doubt you could afford me for three hours – we’ve Norwegian ships in, you know.’

‘One hour, then?’ he begged.

She nodded, removed the pretend chewing gum and stuck it to his windowsill. For the first time in ages, she was playing a game that could have only one result. ‘Follow me,’ she
commanded. ‘And you’ll never last an hour with Lola, sailor.’

‘Who’s Lola?’

Lola arrived home at nine thirty. The children were in bed, thank goodness, but Hawk-Eye remained lively; Rosh, wondering how she might escape upstairs to erase all signs of Lola, could hear
Anna clattering pots in the kitchen. Oh, God. The prodigal daughter closed her eyes and leaned against the front door. Twenty questions. Any minute now, torture would begin.

It began. ‘What time do you call this?’

Rosh didn’t open her eyes. ‘Lola,’ she replied.

‘What?’

‘I call it Lola.’

The smaller, older woman dragged her daughter into the dining room. ‘Well, I must say—’

‘No, you mustn’t.’

But silence was not an option in Anna’s book. ‘I must say you look as if you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.’

‘You should see the other fellow, Mam. Battered, he is.’ Again, she closed her eyes as if the lids would provide some armour against the inevitable onslaught.

A short pause served only to announce the advent of Anna’s next paragraph, which allowed little room for punctuation. ‘You didn’t . . . you haven’t been and . . . Rosh,
whatever will you say in Confession? You know it’s a mortal sin outside marriage. You’ll be giving the priest a heart attack, so you will. And such a good girl, you were. I have never
expected this sort of behaviour from you, but. Howandever, I’ll give you the chance to explain yourself.’

Rosh pleaded the fifth amendment.

‘That’s for Americans, Roisin.’

‘Lola’s probably a Yank. She’s very modern.’

Anna glared sternly at the sinner. ‘So you decided to try before you buy?’

Rosh opened her eyes. ‘Mother? That’s rather vulgar coming from such a good Catholic woman.’

Anna tapped a foot. ‘Well?’

‘I did. I tried before I bought, and I’m glad. I’ve always felt something for him, but I wasn’t sure about the intimate side of things. We’ll probably be marrying
once I get the café on its feet.’

‘Oh. Oh, Jesus.’ Anna ran back to the kitchen.

Rosh lingered by the dining-room door. Mam would be weeping under a tea towel. Whenever anything of huge emotional moment occurred, it was run, find a tea towel or similar covering, sit, weep
and moan. Yes, a moan emerged. ‘It’ll be all right, Mam,’ she called.

‘I know, I know. Oh, and God knows that’s a fine young man.’ Snivelling was duly resumed.

Rosh puffed out her cheeks and blew. This was Beecher’s Brook cleared with no injuries. ‘And I can love again,’ she whispered. ‘It’s allowed. Thank you, Phil. It
isn’t goodbye. It will never be goodbye.’ She sat at the table on whose surface two portions of beef strong enough with rice had been allowed to congeal. Had they eaten, she and Roy
might have been too weighted down for what followed . . .

He was lovely. She wanted to go back and sleep with him, wake with him, listen to a bit more of Beethoven’s Sixth. Roy was a true romantic without being soppy or silly. He took charge but
didn’t dominate, was kind, considerate, yet very masculine, and she loved him. Rosh was alive again; she had never fully realized how important the love of a good man could be.
‘Mam?’

‘What?’

‘Cocoa would be nice.’

A loud sniff was followed by, ‘What did your last slave die of?’

‘Lost the will to live and went into a decline. Last seen trudging over the mountains into Yorkshire.’

‘But that’s enemy territory, Rosh.’

They drank their cocoa in the front room.

Neither noticed the man across the road. As night spread its black umbrella across clouded skies, the two women chatted happily about a dress suitable for a second marriage, about bridesmaids,
hats and flowers, a venue good enough for the wedding breakfast.

‘I’ll make the girls’ dresses,’ Anna promised. ‘But you and I are going haughty culture.’

‘We’d need an allotment.’

‘Eh?’

‘For horticulture.’

‘All right, haute couture. You know I know what I mean. I know you know I know what I mean. I know—’

‘Shut up, Mother.’

Clive Cuttle remained motionless, eyes fixed on the most beautiful woman in Liverpool. He didn’t like women. He hated women. The good-looking ones were the worst. He
still remembered
her
, all light and happiness, long, chestnut hair, a laugh like tinkling bells, pretty face, heady perfume, perfect smile.

He woke one day and she was gone. At the age of eight, he had been abandoned to the streets of the Dingle, a drunken, abusive father his only companion in a house that had become filthy. And she
never came back. Sometimes people fed him, but there were occasions when nothing was available, and he had stolen from shops, waste bins and houses.

At school, no one would play with him. He stank to high heaven, and that fact had prompted him to take clothes from washing lines and shops. Shoes had been a problem, as they were seldom
displayed in pairs, and residential areas had become hunting grounds for footwear. Money for the public baths had prompted further exploration, and he had, of necessity, grown bolder and rather
reckless in his mission to remain alive and acceptable.

Until he’d been caught, of course. That final beating had put him in hospital and his father in jail. Children’s homes. The joy of three square meals, a bath every night, clean
clothes and outings to zoos and seaside towns. The misery when he discovered he had no social skills, no way of knowing how to converse or play with his peers. An outcast. An outcast because of
her
, because of Mam.

Women were a curse. His mission was to clean up the streets, just as he’d cleaned up himself. So over there in that house sat a candidate ideal for cleansing. He had no intention of
working for her. If she disappeared, old Ma Bailey would sell the business to a bloke who would leave Clive Cuttle in charge. Rosh Allen was a marked woman.

Cleansings are never easy. I keep telling myself to hunt on foreign soil, but I take no notice of me, never have. Liverpool isn’t very far away, or I could get to the
Wirral, Wales, St Helens, Warrington, yet it doesn’t work that way, does it? They aren’t hunted, sought out and chosen by me. No. They arrive. They arrive and challenge me simply by
being there. Some don’t even need to talk to me; I can tell from the attitude, from facial expressions, from the way they walk. She’s the one. Why? Why not the one standing next to her,
or the other across the road? What’s so special?

Dad, may he rot in hell, always said Mam was a whore. Seems he got word about her selling favours down in London. Good looks make women bad, he said. Dad turned evil into an art form, but
only after Mam had gone.

Well, I am like my father, blast him, and these women send me to the dark side. It’s like an illness. Yes, they make me sick. My hell is here and now, on earth in the year 1959. They
got cocky since the war, the females of the species. They knock home a couple of rivets, build a bomb, throw an aeroplane together and whoa! They suddenly own the world. Not my bloody world,
though. I didn’t fight my way through North Africa to come home and be owned by a woman.

Oh, yes, there she is in a house paid for by the death of her man. Dangerous. Too close to me, to my home and my job. With each one, I’ve taken another step nearer to arrest and trial.
Roisin Allen has friends and family; this is no stray bitch wandering the Dock Road looking for customers. She has a mother, some children, a man friend just across the road. And I shouldn’t
be bringing trouble to Waterloo, should I? Mind, I’ve got away with plenty up to now, and they weren’t all at a great distance.

The last one I did was from a large family. Where did I bury her? Why can’t I remember all the big things I’ve done? When I’m at home and I get the stuff out of their boxes,
when I touch their clothing and bits of jewellery, all the details come back to me so clearly. The terror in the eyes before the chloroform hits, the cutting, the strangling, that wonderful sense
of peace when it’s all over. They’re all different, you see. Yet I can only live through it properly when I hold their belongings. Those items aren’t so much trophies as
aides-memoires. Cheap perfumes, waxy red lipsticks, the scent of fear, the odour of blood as it trickles, seeps, pools and clots. I keep pieces of their lives and, via those tokens, I relive my
triumphs.

And here’s my next. Old Bailey dying like that hasn’t helped. Old Bailey. That’s where they try murderers, isn’t it? Worked at that shop for years, I have. Just the
two of us, and we rubbed along quite nicely. Now this. Mrs Bailey’s delighted about a café. It’ll be all net curtains, frills and fancies. Mrs Allen. I’ve walked up and
down Lawton Road a few times today. She’s a friend of that bloke with a limp; he used to buy a paper in the morning on his way to the bus stop.

Funny. I hardly noticed Mrs Allen till Mrs Bailey told me I’m to be offered an extra ten bob a day because of what the new boss calls my unsocial hours. I like those hours, early
morning, no one about, air fresher before mankind starts to soil it with all the comings and goings, chimneys spouting smoke, buses pumping out poison. Lady bloody Bountiful offered me a bribe I
didn’t need. And in the hours that followed, I saw how beautiful she is, almost as lovely as Mam used to be. Mrs Allen arrived. Oh yes, she pulled into my station and I applied the
brakes.

I watched her during today and this evening. And him, the limping clown who probably follows her everywhere when he’s not at work, his eyes never leaving her, his body aching because
he’s wanting a taste of her. Straight away, I would know when they’ve had each other. She’s already blushing, and he’s looking anxious, hoping she won’t say no. She
won’t say no. I only need a glimpse to know all about them. I’m like that. I know people. Young widows are always on the lookout for the next victim. You’ll never get her, Roy
Baxter, not when I’ve finished with her, because she’ll be as dead as a coffin nail.

The day my father died in Walton Jail, I cried like a baby. Not because I missed him, but because I never got to kill him. That last beating left me different, no use with a woman. The doc
says it’s probably psychological, but I know I’m not a man. Don’t know where my mother is, whether she’s alive or dead, can’t get her, can’t punish her. My old
man’s dead of natural causes, but there was nothing natural about the way he beat me for trying to stay clean. Jack the Ripper? I’m Clive the Cleaver. Never used a cleaver, but you know
what I mean; it has a ring to it.

I’ve got all the cuttings in my flat. Some earrings, a chain with a cross dangling from it, beads, underwear covered in blood. I’m not as evil as Jack the Ripper, since I
don’t remove body parts, but I cut them up inside to leave them as messed up as I am. Yes, I kill them. Even with the mask, you never know, one of them might recognize me and tell the cops.
Perhaps I should try to keep this one alive and useless to men . . . No. She has to go.

If she buggers off out of it, Mrs Bailey will go back to the number she first thought of, the bloke with a chain of small shops. I’ll be left in charge, my own business to all intents
and purposes, and a wage big enough to afford a car— Hang on. Something’s happening in the house.

Ah. Mrs Allen’s mother’s bedroom light’s on, and she’s closing the curtains. Her light’s out now. Mother in bed, kids in bed, no sign of life in the
limper’s house. I’ve got my mask, the chloroform, a handkerchief. I’ll just nip down the side, see if her kitchen light’s on. She’ll be found. I’ve no way of
shifting her, no transport, no spade. My bike’s at home with its sidecar. But for a reason I can almost fathom for once, it has to be now and it has to be her. Before the paperwork on the
shop’s done, I’ll do her.

Anna’s neglected beef strong enough was fast becoming a distant memory, so Roy had decided to go for fish and chips, since he and Rosh were both hungry after their
exertions. He couldn’t keep the smile off his face. If it hadn’t been for his leg, he might have danced up Lawton Road and along College Road to George’s Chippy. The off-licence
was open, so he might buy a nice bottle of wine on his way back home. Home. She was going to marry him, and he would be part of a family at last. Lola had gone home, but Rosh would be hungry.

He glanced at Rosh’s shop. Soon it would be up and running, smart little café round the side, staff continuing to run the sweets, tobacco and newsagency part of the business. He was
so proud and so in love that he wanted to shout, to wake the world and enlighten mankind. But no, he was going for chips. He wiped the grin from his face and joined the queue.
Act sensible
,
he warned himself inwardly.
Don’t show yourself up. More to the point, don’t show Rosh up.

To redirect his thoughts further, he engaged in a conversation whose subject seemed, at first, to be of little interest to him. But no. Everyone should be paying heed, because the matter under
discussion was missing girls and one corpse. There was probably a serial killer on the streets of West Lancashire, and he needed to be found before more girls disappeared. Women had been warned not
to go out alone at night, to lock doors and send for police if any suspicious behaviour was noticed.