Cut Short (14 page)

  He looked in all the newspapers he could find. He picked them out of bins. Sometimes they were dirty. That was how he found Miss Elsie again. She was getting into a car and she looked very cross. Under the picture it said: 'TROUBLE IN PARADISE'. He read all the words but it didn't make any sense. He kept the picture. He wished she was smiling in it. He tore it out carefully and put it in his pocket.

  Hidden behind his glasses, Jim went out looking for Bretts Music Shop. He knew he had to go out the back of the park to find it. He was following her trail. At the far end of all the shops he saw Bretts Music.

  'Well done,' Miss Elsie said. He was very clever. He stopped thinking for a moment because his head was hurting and it made his eyes feel funny. He had to concentrate. He couldn't remember what he was doing there. 'You have to do it by yourself,' Miss Elsie told him. She was cross because he'd forgotten.

  'I haven't forgotten,' he told her but she knew he was lying. The stranger in the park had told the newspapers about him and now she'd got him in trouble with Miss Elsie. He was going to find that dirty bitch and stop her mouth once and for all.

  'You have to try,' Miss Elsie said and she smiled. 'I know you can do it.'

  A little bell rang as he opened the door of the music shop and he looked around. Everything was fuzzy.

  'Don't look nervous,' Miss Elsie told him. 'They don't know you're scared unless you show them.'

  'Are you looking for anything in particular?' He hadn't heard the girl coming up behind him and he jumped. He looked at her long blonde hair and wished it was the other way round. Him creeping up behind her. He didn't know what to say. Miss Elsie had gone away.

  'No,' he stammered. The girl looked worried. She went behind the counter. She never stopped looking at him. He was scared. He wished she'd turn her back on him. By the till, he saw a desk diary and God sent him a revelation. He knew about diaries. You mustn't ever read them because they were private. That meant secrets. He needed to know a secret.

  'Let's not get our hopes up,' Miss Elsie warned him, but he knew it would help him because God had shown it to him. God loved him but he had to be careful. And clever. He had to help himself. He walked over to the counter. His eyes never left the girl's face. She looked worried. Seizing the diary, he spun round and ran out of the shop.

  'Hey!' the girl's voice followed him out on to the street as he fled. She didn't follow him. He was going to shut the bitch up so no one would ever find out what he'd done in the park. Then he could go out and do it again. There were lots of dirty women in Woolsmarsh. He was going to find them all and make the streets clean. Miss Elsie would be pleased. 'I'm doing God's work,' he whispered, and he giggled to himself. It was his work too.

  It was dark by the time he reached the shed. The glasses must have fallen off when he was running but it didn't matter. He didn't need them any more. He had to use his torch to read the diary. He wished he had pyjamas to wear in bed. He knew better than to sleep in his day clothes. That was dirty. It worried him that the tracksuit he wore in bed wasn't real pyjamas, but he never put it on in the daytime. There hadn't been any pyjamas in the bag of clothes he'd found on the pavement outside a shop.

  'Just do your best,' Miss Elsie told him and he nodded his head gravely, like a good boy.

  He heard rain drumming on the roof of the shed as he opened the diary. Slowly he read it out loud: Order this. Order that. Deliver this. Deliver that. He couldn't decipher some of the words and what he could read made no sense. He felt stupid and that made him cross. He threw the diary across the shed and kicked a pile of jumpers he'd found in a bin bag. Red, blue and green, they fell in a jumble but he didn't pick them up. He kicked them again, anger building in his head.

  Thinking about Angela made him feel better. He knew her name from the papers. Angela Waters. The papers said Angela had a boyfriend. That made him sad. Her boyfriend might be nice. They could have been friends. But her boyfriend wouldn't want to be his friend now. He picked up the diary and tried again. He still couldn't understand it so he dropped it on the floor and went out into the cool of the evening. He put his gloves on before he went out.

  'Always be prepared,' Miss Elsie said.

  The rain had settled into a steady downpour and daylight was fading early. He thought about Angela as he walked towards the park. He liked to walk in the park. It helped him think. He liked it best in the rain because he had the park to himself then. He needed the park to be empty, so when he saw her he would be free to do God's work.

PART 3

'we have gone on living,
Living and partly living,
Picking together the pieces'

T. S. Eliot

24

Meeting

Tiffany wasn't going to say anything to the other girls until after she'd done it. Best to keep it quiet or, knowing them, they'd all turn up, just for a laugh. Only it wasn't funny. It was dead serious because it was going to be her first time.

  'I been with loadsa boys, loadsa times,' Holly boasted. 'You should see what I got just for doing it. You ought to try it, Tiffany. Only I don't suppose you can get anyone to do it with.'

  'Could if I wanted,' Tiffany muttered. She should have made up a boy, someone out of school. 'I got a boyfriend,' she imagined herself saying. 'He's seventeen and he's got a car.' But they would have known. They always knew. They'd have laughed at her even more. Even smelly Della had done it. She only went with Harry, but still, she'd done it. Tiffany hadn't ever done it. Not yet, at any rate.

  Tiffany's face had burned on Valentine's Day when she didn't receive any cards. She suspected some of the girls had sent cards to themselves, just so they could show them off. She should have thought of that. She could have jacked herself a huge one, maybe with a red love heart on it.

  'This one's my best,' Holly had said, waving a card in the air so the whole class could see. It was pink with a big fat squishy red love heart on it. Some of the boys sniggered but the girls were impressed.

  'Who's it from then?' Tiffany had asked without thinking, and the other girls shrieked with laughter.

  'They don't tell you, thicko.'

  Tiffany didn't care that she hadn't been sent any cards. She was used to the other girls laughing at her. She knew she'd never be like them. Her clothes were all wrong, for one thing. But she wished she'd got herself a really big card, just to make them think someone fancied her. No one ever did. Holly was right about that. All the boys ignored her. She might as well have been invisible.

  It was worse when people did notice her.

  'I can't believe you've not done your homework again, Tiffany May,' the new maths teacher complained one morning. He sounded so surprised, she laughed out loud. He must have got her mixed up with someone else. Mostly the teachers left her alone. No point putting her in detention. She had better things to do, especially now she'd been given a working telly off the social for her mother. As if her mother was ever going to sit up and watch the telly. That stupid fucking social worker didn't have a clue, but Tiffany had persuaded them to give her a telly anyway. Result! It was better than the crackly old one that never worked properly. At least she had something to go home for now.

  When she was little, Tiffany had wanted to be a hair dresser, like Auntie Jean. But you couldn't do anything without the qualifications the teachers were always going on about. Tiffany didn't care. She never wanted a stupid job anyway. She had a better idea. Before long she'd have her own place like Della next door. She'd be like Carrie Bradshaw and the girls she watched on the telly. That would make the other girls sit up and take notice. Because Tiffany was going to have a baby to love her like no other and she'd be given a place of her own. She was going to take the telly with her too. Her mother wouldn't know.

  His name was Pat; Pat the Pratt, the girls at school called him. It wasn't that Tiffany fancied him. She didn't like anything about him. He was short and fat, and he smelled of farts.

  'That's his sexy stink when he sees our Tiffany coming,' Holly said and the other girls doubled up, laughing. Tiffany was sorry she'd ever told them about him. She'd have preferred almost any other boy in her class, but it didn't matter who it was. The baby would be hers, whoever she did it with, and a baby was her ticket to a better life.

  Pat told her to meet him at six o'clock by the park gate that evening, but when she set off, she wasn't sure which gate he meant. There were two. She decided to get there early, and wait by the main gate. That way, if he didn't show up at six, she could take a short cut by legging it across the park to the other gate. Her spirits rose as she hurried along the wet pavement to have a baby and start her new life. Mrs Rutherford said they weren't allowed in the park because of some dead woman, but Tiffany didn't give a fuck about the headmistress and her stupid rules. All she had to do was wait until six o'clock. She hoped Pat wasn't going to chicken out. With any luck he'd be there, waiting for her in the park.

25

Women

When Melanie was invited to join the Woolsmarsh Women's Group, she introduced herself as Melanie Tillotson. She liked using Terry's name. It was hard to meet normal people when you were Ron Rogers' daughter. The other women had known each other for a long time, but they welcomed her into their group. Melanie watched one of them slop milk into chipped cups, which clattered softly on the tray as it was carried round the circle.

  'Biscuit?'

  'I know I shouldn't.'

  'Sugar?'

  'Shhh.'

  Julie launched into a speech. Melanie stifled a yawn. She wished Julie would stop talking about the park. Melanie had come to the meeting to discuss social inequality in the area. The previous week Julie had made a speech about lobbying the council to help the poor. It wasn't something Melanie had thought about much, but since she'd moved in with Terry it occurred to her that someone should be concerned about raising living standards for the disadvantaged. It was appalling how often Terry's hot water didn't work, and there were many people living in similar conditions, or worse, some of them with young children.

  'It's a poverty trap,' Julie had declared. 'Do you know how many women are living on the minimum wage, here in Woolsmarsh? And what are the council doing to help them?' Melanie had liked the sound of that. She wanted to hear what the council were going to do to help people on low incomes. But this week, they all seemed obsessed with the park. Julie was very strident, and she had an unpleasant nasal voice. Melanie tossed her head cautiously, so as not to spill her tea, but her long blonde hair fell back over her face again.

  'And if the police aren't doing anything,' Julie was saying, 'then it's about time we did.'

  'What do you suggest we do?' one of the women asked.

  'You're the one who should be on the council, Julie, not that husband of yours,' someone else called out. Melanie joined in with the murmurs of agreement. She couldn't care less about the council, but she did want to be part of the group. Her family home had been in West Woolsmarsh all her life but she'd never really mixed with people from the town centre before.

  'It's time we women took action,' Julie declared firmly. Melanie saw two of the women exchange a smile, as if to say, 'She's off again.' Other women nodded. 'If a
woman
was in charge, they'd have caught this killer by now. He's been roaming the streets for nearly a week. It's all right for the men, they're OK. He only attacks women. But we can't step outside our homes without fearing for our lives. We know all about the sexism that's rife in the police force. It's everywhere—'

  'I think you'll find it's a woman who's in charge of the investigation,' someone butted in.

  'Well, that just proves my point. Why haven't they put their top man on the case? Because it's only women being attacked, that's why.'

  'Perhaps this woman
is
their top detective,' someone else pointed out.

  Julie frowned impatiently. 'You're all missing the point. What I'm saying is, as women, we want to feel safe on the streets, don't we? As women? It's not fair. It's all right for the men.'

  'But what can we do?'

  'We'll start a campaign.' There was a brief pause as Julie gulped her tea. 'We'll mobilise the women of Woolsmarsh, get everyone out on the streets, and protest about police inaction. It's an insult to women. We want something done about it, and we want it done now. We can't just sit around waiting for someone else to be murdered! Nice cup of tea, by the way.' Melanie thought the police were probably doing their best, but she went along with the idea of a campaign. It sounded like fun.

  'You know Julie Master's married to the leader of the local council?' Terry asked her when she told him about the project.

  'They've split up,' Melanie said. 'He doesn't want people to know in case it puts them off voting for him. Julie told us.'

  Terry whistled. 'I feel quite sorry for Jonathon Masters, not much chance of keeping his problems quiet with you lot gossiping for England.'

  'That's not fair. We don't just gossip. We talk about other things too, like the sink estates no one's doing anything about, and what the council should be doing to help people living in poverty. Anyway, Jonathon Masters doesn't deserve sympathy. He's brought it on himself by neglecting his wife. All he cares about is his political career. He's not 'poor old Jonathon' at all.'