Nineteen Seventy-Seven: The Red Riding Quartet, Book Two (17 page)

We bath Bobby together, him splashing about in the bubbles, drinking the bathwater, crying when we take him out, and I dry him and then carry him up to our room and I read him a story, the same story three times:
‘Once upon a time there was a rabbit, a magic rabbit who lived on the moon.’
And half an hour later I say:
‘Magic telescope, magic telescope, please show me Yorkshire …’
And this time he doesn’t make a telescope with his hands, this time he just makes wet smacking sounds with his lips, and I kiss him night-night and go downstairs.
Louise is sitting on the settee watching the end of
Crossroads
.
I sit down next to her, asking, ‘Anything good on?’
She shrugs,
‘Get Some In
, that
XYY Man
thing you like.’
‘Is there a film?’
‘Later, I think,’ and she hands me the paper.
‘I Start Counting?’
‘Too late for me.’
‘Yeah, should have an early night.’
‘What time you on tomorrow?’
‘John was going to call.’
Louise looks at her watch. ‘You going to call him?’
‘No, I’ll just go in for seven.’
We sit and watch Max Bygraves, Bobby’s toys between us.
And later, in the adverts before
World in Action
, I say, ‘Do you think we can get over this?’
‘I don’t know love,’ she says, staring at the TV. ‘I don’t know.’
And I say, ‘Thanks for today.’
I must have fallen asleep because when I wake up she’s gone and I’m on the settee alone,
I Start Counting
ending, and I turn off the TV and go upstairs, get undressed and get into bed, Bobby and Louise beside me, sleeping.
In my dream I was sitting on a sofa in a pink room. A dirty sofa with three rotting seats, smelling worse and worse, but I couldn’t stand
.
And then in the dream I was sitting on a sofa in a playing field. A horrible sofa with three rusty springs, cutting into my arse and thighs, but I couldn’t stand, couldn’t get up
.
And then in the dream I was sitting on a sofa on wasteground. A terrible sofa thick with blood, seeping up into my palms and nails, but I still couldn’t stand, still couldn’t get up, still couldn’t walk away
.

The John Shark Show
Radio Leeds
Saturday 11th June 1977

Chapter 14

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and started to pull on my trousers.
It was dawn, grey and wet, Saturday 11 June 1977.
The dream hung like a lost ghost across her gloomy backroom, a dream of bloodstained furniture and fair-haired coppers, crime and punishment, holes and heads.
Again, bruised from sleep.
The windows rattled with the rain, my stomach with them.
I was an old man sitting on a prostitute’s bed.
I felt a hand on my hip.
‘You don’t have to go,’ she said.
I turned back round to the bed, to the sallow face on the pillow, and I leant in to kiss her, taking off my trousers again.
She pulled the sheet over us and opened her legs.
I put my left thigh between them, her damp on the skin and hair of my leg as I ran my hand through her hair, feeling again for the mark that he’d left.
I drove back to Leeds through morning traffic and continued showers, the radio keeping her at bay:
Widespread flooding expected, John Tyndall – the leader of the National Front – punched, 3,287 policemen left without a pension or gratuity, journalists’ strike to intensify
.
When I reached the dark arches, I switched off the engine and sat in the car thinking of all of the things I wanted to do to her, a cigarette burning down to the skin just below my nail.
Bad things, things I’d never thought of before.
I stubbed out the cigarette.
The office, empty.
Bored, I picked up today’s paper and re-read my inside piece:

THE VICTIMS OF A BURNING HATE?
Background by Jack Whitehead

It’s becoming an all-too-familiar scene for the luckless residents of the so-called ‘red light’ district of Chapeltown, Leeds
:
A mobile police command post, a towering radio mast, a noisy generator, cordoned-off roads, detectives with clipboards knocking on doors, and children peeping through curtains at endless blue lights
.
The fifth woman savagely murdered in the middle of the night in the last two years, the fourth within a two-mile radius, was immediately marked down as the latest victim of a killer who has become known as Yorkshire’s own ‘Jack the Ripper.’
Rachel Johnson, sixteen, like the others, was savagely attacked. Like two of the earlier victims her body was found in a playground-type area, a place for fun and games, and Rachel was also only a few hundred yards from her home
.
The major difference between Rachel, who only left school at Easter, and the previous victims was that the others were known prostitutes operating in the Chapeltown area
.
But Rachel may have made the same fatal mistake as the others – accepting a lift in a stranger’s car after an evening out – something the police say they have repeatedly warned against since the first of the murders in June 1975
.
The first prostitute victim of a man the police believe is a psychopath with a burning hatred of women was a 26-year-old mother of three, Mrs Theresa Campbell, of Scott Hall Avenue, Chapeltown
.
A milkman on his early morning rounds found Mrs Campbell’s partly-clothed bloodstained body on the Prince Philip Playing Fields, only 150 yards from her home where her three young children were anxiously waiting for their mummy to return from ‘work.’
She had been savagely stabbed to death
.
Five months later on the other side of the Pennines, Clare Strachan, a 26-year-old mother of two, was brutally beaten to death in Preston, a crime police now consider to be the work of the same psychopath
.
Just three months later, in February 1976, Mrs Joan Richards, a 45-year-old mother of four, also met a brutally violent death, this time in a little-used Chapeltown alley
.
Mrs Richards, who lived at New Farnley, had been beaten brutally about the head and repeatedly stabbed
.
Then, less than two weeks ago, 32-year-old Marie Watts of Francis Street, Chapeltown, was found dead on Soldier’s Field, Roundhay Park, with her throat cut and several stab wounds to her stomach. She had been depressed and was running away from her boyfriend
.
Mrs Campbell was last seen trying to thumb a lift in Meanwood Road, Leeds, just after 1 a.m. on the morning of her death. She is known to have visited earlier the Room at the Top club in Sheepscar Street
.
On the night Mrs Richards was murdered she had visited the Gaiety Public House, Roundhay Road, with her husband. She left him in the early evening and he never saw her again
.
The Gaiety was also one of the last places Marie Watts was seen alive
.
Yesterday, police again renewed their appeal for any member of the public with information to come forward
.
The telephone numbers of the Murder HQ at Millgarth Police Station are Leeds 461212 and 461213
.
‘Happy?’
I turned round, Bill Hadden in his Saturday sports jacket was looking over my shoulder.
‘Butchered. And I never used
savagely
and
brutally
so many times, did I?’
‘More.’
I handed him a folded piece of paper from my pocket. ‘You going to do the same to this?’
Millgarth, about ten-thirty.
Sergeant Wilson on the desk:
‘Here comes trouble.’
‘Samuel,’ I nodded.
‘And what can I do you for this fine and miserable June morning?’
‘Pete Noble in, is he?’
He looked down at the log on the counter.
‘No. Just missed him.’
‘Tuck. Maurice?’
‘Not these days. What was it about?’
‘I’d arranged with George Oldman to see some files. Clare Strachan?’
Wilson looked down at the book again. ‘Could try John Rudkin or DS Fraser?’
‘They about, are they?’
‘Hang on,’ he said and picked up the phone.
He came down the stairs to meet me, young, blond and from before.
He paused.
‘Jack Whitehead,’ I said.
He shook my hand. ‘Bob Fraser. We’ve met before.’
‘Barry Gannon,’ I said.
‘You remember?’
‘Hard to forget.’
‘Right,’ he nodded.
Detective Sergeant Fraser looked short of sleep, lost for words, old before his time, but mainly just plain lost.
‘You’ve done well for yourself,’ I said.
He looked surprised, frowning, ‘How do you mean?’
‘CID. Murder Squad.’
‘Suppose so,’ he said and glanced at his watch.
‘I’d like to talk to you about Clare Strachan, if you have time?’
Fraser looked at his watch again and repeated, ‘Clare Strachan?’
‘See, I spoke with George Oldman a couple of days ago and we arranged for Chief Superintendent Noble to show me the files, but …’
‘They’re all in Bradford.’
‘Right. So they said if John Rudkin or yourself wouldn’t mind …’
‘Yeah, OK. You better come up.’ I followed him up the stairs.
‘It’s all a bit chaotic,’ he was saying, holding open the door to a room of metallic filing cabinets.
‘I can imagine.’
‘If you want to wait here for a minute,’ he pointed at two chairs under a desk, ‘I’ll just go and get the files,’
‘Thanks.’
I sat down facing the cabinets, the letters and the numbers, and I wondered how many of the enclosed I’d written about, how many I’d filed away in my own drawer, how many I’d dreamt about.
Fraser came back kicking open the door with his foot, a large cardboard box in his arms.
He put it down on the table:
Preston, November 1975
.
‘This is everything?’ I said.
‘From our end. Lancashire have the rest.’
‘I spoke with Alf Hill. He seems sceptical?’
‘About a link? Yeah, I think we all were.’
‘Were?’
‘Yeah, were,’ he said, knowing we both knew about the letters.
‘You’re convinced?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I see,’ I said.
He nodded at the box, ‘You don’t want me to talk you through all this, do you?’
‘No, but I was hoping you might know what these mean?’ and I handed him the two file references from Preston:
23/08/74 – WKFD/MORRISON-C/CTNSOL1A
22/12/74 – WKFD/MORRISON-C/MGRD-P/WSMT27C
He stared down at the letters and the numbers, pale, and said, ‘Where did you get these?’
‘From the Clare Strachan file in Preston.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Really.’
‘I’ve never seen them before.’
‘But you know what they refer to?’
‘No, not specifically. Just that they’re file references from Wakefield, to a C. Morrison.’
‘You don’t know any C. Morrison then?’
‘Not off the top of my head, no. Should I?’
‘Just that Clare Strachan sometimes went by the name Morrison.’
He stood there, staring down at me, cold blue eyes drowning in hurt pride.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, watching the walls come up, keys turn in the locks. ‘I didn’t mean to …’
‘Forget it,’ he muttered, like he never would.
‘I know I’m pushing it, but would it be possible for you to check on these?’
He pulled the other chair out from under the table, sat down and picked up the black phone.
‘Sam, it’s Bob Fraser. Can you put us through to Wood Street?’
He put the phone down and we sat in silence, waiting.
The phone rang and Fraser picked it up.
‘Thanks. This is Detective Sergeant Fraser at Millgarth, I’d like a check on two files please.’
A pause.
‘Yes, Detective Sergeant Fraser at Millgarth. Name’s Morrison, initial C. First one is 23-8-74, Caution for Soliciting 1A.’
Another pause.
‘Yep. And the next one is Morrison, C again. 22-12-74, Murder of a GRD-P, Witness Statement 27C.’
Pause.
‘Thanks,’ and he hung up.
I looked up, the blue eyes staring back.
He said, ‘They’ll call me back in ten minutes.’
‘Thanks for doing this.’
Fiddling with the paper, he asked, ‘You got these from Preston?’
‘Yeah, Alf Hill showed me a file. He said she was a prostitute, so I asked him if she’d had any convictions and he showed me a typed sheet. Just this written on it. You been over there?’
‘Last week. And he told you she went by the name Morrison?’
‘No, only time I ever saw it was in the
Manchester Evening News
, said she was originally from Scotland and also went by the name Morrison.’
‘Manchester Evening News?’
‘Yeah,’ and I handed him the cutting from my pocket.
The phone rang and we both jumped.
Fraser put the cutting on the desk and read as he picked up the receiver.
‘Thanks.’
Pause.
‘Speaking.’
Another pause, longer.
‘Both of them? Who was that?’
Pause.
‘Yeah, yeah. Our arse from our elbow. Thanks.’
He hung up again, still staring down at the cutting.
‘No luck?’ I said.
‘They’re here,’ he said, looking up at the box. ‘Or at least they should be. Can I keep this?’ he asked, holding up the cutting.
‘Yeah, if you want.’
‘Thanks,’ he nodded and upended the box, files spilling over the desk.
I said, ‘You want me to go?’
‘No, be my guest,’ he said, adding, ‘Eventually all this’ll be on the National Police Computer, you know?’
‘Think it’ll make a difference?’
‘Bloody hope so,’ he laughed, taking off his jacket as we started the search until, ten quiet minutes later, everything was back inside the box and the desk was bare.
‘Fuck,’ and then, ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said.
‘I’ll call you if anything comes of it,’ he said and stood up.
‘It was just a bit of background, that was all.’
We walked back downstairs and at the bottom he said again, ‘I’ll give you a ring.’
At the door we shook hands and he smiled and suddenly I said, ‘You knew Eddie didn’t you?’
And he dropped my hand and shook his head, ‘No, not really.’
Back across the haunted city, ghosts on every corner, drinking in working-class packs, the morning gone, the day sliding away.
I stood before the Griffin and looked up at her scaffold face, at the dark windows in the grey floors above, wondering which black hole was his.
I went inside, into the lounge with its empty high-backed chairs and dim light, and I went up to the front desk and rang the bell and waited, heart beating heavy and fast.
In the mirror above the desk I watched a little boy lead an old woman with a walking stick across the lounge.
I’d seen them before.
They sat down in the same two chairs that Laws and I had seven days before.
I went over and pulled up a third chair.
They said nothing but rose as one to sit at the next table.
I sat alone in my silence and then stood up and went back to the desk and rang the bell for a second time.
In the mirror I watched the child whisper to the old woman, the pair of them staring at me.
‘Can I help you?’
I turned back to the desk, to the man in the dark suit.
‘Yes, I was wondering if Mr Laws, Martin Laws is in?’
The man glanced at the wooden boxes behind him, at the dangling keys, and said, ‘I’m afraid Reverend Laws is out at the moment. Would you care to leave a message?’
‘No, I’ll come back later.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘I’d met him before.’
‘When was that?’ asked Hadden.
‘He was the one who was here over Barry.’
‘Right,’ sighed Hadden, right back there. ‘What a terrible time.’
‘Not like now,’ I said, and we both said nothing until he handed me a piece of paper.
‘I think you’ll find I spared the knife,’ he smiled.
I sat down across the desk from him and read: