Nineteen Seventy-Four (5 page)

Chapter 3

Just gone midnight, Sunday 15 December 1974.

T
he Hunslet and Beeston exit of the M1.

It came out of the dark at me like I’d been asleep my whole life:

Tall yellows and strange oranges, burning blues and real reds, lighting up the black night to the left of the motorway.

Hunslet Carr ablaze.

I pulled up fast on the hard shoulder, hazard lights on, thinking the whole of fucking Leeds must be able to see this.

I grabbed my notebook and bolted out of the car, scrambling up the embankment at the side of the motorway, crawling through the mud and bushes towards the fire and the noise; the noise, revving engines and the thunderous, continuous, monot onous banging of time itself being beaten out.

At the top of the motorway embankment I pulled myself up on my elbows and lay on my belly staring down into hell. There below me in the basin of Hunslet Carr, just 500 yards beneath me, was my England on the morning of Sunday 15 December, in the year of Our Lord 1974, looking a thousand years younger and none the better.

A gypsy camp on fire, each of the twenty or so caravans and trailers ablaze, each beyond relief; the Hunslet gypsy camp I’d seen out of the corner of my eye every single time I’d driven into work, now one big fat bowl of fire and hate.

Hate, for ringing the burning gypsy camp was a raging metal river of ten blue vans churning seventy miles an hour in one continuous circle, straight out of speedway night at Belle fucking Vue, trapping within the roaring wheels fifty men, women and children in one extended family hanging on to each other for dear life, the intense flames scolding and illuminating the sheer stark fucking terror upon their faces, the children’s cries and mothers’ howls piercing through the sheets and sheets of noise and heat.

Cowboys and fucking Indians, 1974.

I watched as fathers and sons, brothers and uncles, broke from their families and tried to charge between the vans, to punch, to kick, to beat on the metal river, screaming up at the night as they fell back into the mud and the tyres.

And then, as the flames rose higher still, I saw who the gypsy men were so desperately trying to reach, whose hearts they had their own so set upon.

Around the entire camp, in the shadows down below me, lay another outer circle beyond the vans, two men deep, beating out time with their truncheons upon their shields:

The new West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police putting in a spot of overtime.

And then the vans stopped.

The gypsy men froze in the firelight, slowly edging back towards their families in the middle, dragging the injured back through the dirt with them.

The banging of the shields intensified and the outer ring of police began to advance, one big fat black snake sliding in single file between the vans, until the outer circle became the inner, the snake facing the families and the flames.

Zulu
, Yorkshire style.

And then the banging stopped.

The only sounds were the fire cracking and the children crying.

Nothing moved, ‘cept my heart at my ribs.

Then, out of the night and away to the left, I could see a van’s headlights approaching, bumping across the wasteground towards the camp. The van, maybe white, suddenly braked hard and three of four men tumbled out. There was some shouting and some police broke off from the circle.

The men tried to get back into the van and the van, definitely white, began to reverse.

The nearest police van jerked into life, churned mud and hit the van full on in the side, nought to seventy in half the metres.

The van stopped dead and the police descended on it, drag ging men out through broken windows, exposing flanks of white flesh.

Sticks and stones set about their bones.

Within the circle a man stepped forward, barechested. The man lowered his head and charged, screaming.

Instantaneously the police snake sprang, moving in and swal lowing up the families in a sea of black and sticks.

I stood up too quickly and toppled down the banking, back towards my car, the motorway, and out.

I reached the bottom of the banking, puking:

Eddie Dunford, North of England Crime Correspondent, with my hand upon the Viva’s door, saw the flames reflected in the glass.

I ran along the hard shoulder to the emergency phone, praying to Christ that it worked and, when it did, beseeching the operator to summon every available emergency service to the Hunslet and Beeston exit of the M1 where, I breathlessly assured her, a ten-car pile-up was fast becoming more, with a petrol tanker ablaze.

That done, I ran back along the motorway and back up the banking, looking down on a battle being lost and a victory that filled my whole body with a rage as impotent as it was engulfing.

The West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police had opened up the backs of their vans and were throwing the bloodied and beaten men inside.

Within the big wheel of fire, officers stripped gypsy women and children of their clothes, throwing the rags into the flames and randomly striking out with their clubs at the naked white skin of the women.

Sudden and deafening shotgun blasts punctuated the horror, as petrol tanks exploded and gypsy dogs were shot, as the police took their shotguns to anything that looked remotely salvageable.

I saw in the midst of this hell, naked and alone, a tiny gypsy girl, ten years old or less, short brown curls and bloody face, standing in that circle of hate, a finger in her mouth, silent and still.

Where the fuck were the fire engines, the ambulances?

My rage became tears; lying at the top of the banking I searched my pockets for my pen, as though writing something, anything, might make it all seem a bit better than it was or a little less real. Too cold to fucking grasp the pen properly, scraw—ling red biro across dirty paper, hiding there in those skinny bushes, it didn’t help at all.

And then he was right there, coming towards me.

Wiping the tears away with mud, I saw a red and black shining face tearing straight out of hell and up the banking towards me.

I half stood to greet it, but fell straight back down into the ground as three black-winged policemen grabbed the man by his feet and greedily took him back down into their boots and clubs.

And then I saw HIM, in the distance, behind it all.

Detective Chief Superintendent George Oldman, illuminated behind the sticks and the bones like some bloody cave painting against the side of a police van, smoking and drinking with some other coppers as the van rocked from side to side.

George Oldman and friends tilted back their heads to the night and laughed loud and long until George stopped dead and stared straight at where I lay 500 yards away.

I threw my face deep down into the mud until it filled my mouth and small stones cut into my face. Suddenly I was ripped free of the mud, pulled up by the roots of my hair, and all I could see was the dark night sky above me before the fat white face of a policeman rose like the moon into my own.

A learner fist went hard into my face, two fingers in my mouth, two blinding my eyes. “Close your fucking eyes and don’t you speak.”

I did as I was told.

“Nod if you know the Redbeck Cafe on the Doncaster Road.” It was a vicious whisper, hot in my ear.

I nodded.

“You want a story, be there at five o’clock this morning.”

Then the glove was gone and I opened my eyes to the black fucking sky and the sound of a thousand screaming sirens.

Welcome home Eddie.

Four hours straight driving, trying to outrun my visions of children.

A four-hour tour of a local hell: Pudsey, Tingley, Hanging Heaton, Shaw Cross, Batley, Dewsbury, Chickenley, Earlsheaton, Gawthorpe, Horbury, Castleford, Pontefract, Normanton, Hem-sworth, Fitzwilliam, Sharlston, and Streethouse.

Hard towns for hard men.

Me, soft; too pussy to drive through Clare’s Morley or sneak a peak at Devil’s Ditch, too chicken to go back to the gypsy camp or even home to Ossett.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, sleep nailing shut my eyes, I’d drifted into some Cleckheaton lay-by and dreamt of Southern girls called Anna or Sophie and a life before, waking with a hard-on and my father’s final rattle:

“
The South’11 turn you bloody soft, it will
.”

Awake to the face of a brown-haired girl ringed in a wheel of fire and school photographs of little girls no longer here.

Fear turned the key as I rubbed my eyes free and drove off through the grey light, everywhere the browns and the greens waking up all damp and dirty, everywhere the hills and the fields, the houses and the factories, everywhere filling me with fear, covering me in clay.

Fear’s abroad, home and away.

Dawn on the Doncaster Road.

I pulled the Viva into the car park behind the Redbeck Cafe and Motel. I parked between two lorries and sat listening to Tom Jones sing
I Can’t Break the News to Myself
on Radio 2. It was ten to five when I walked across the rough ground to the toilets round the back.

The toilets reeked, the tiled floor covered in black piss. The mud and clay had dried hard on my skin, turning it a pale red beneath the dirt. I ran the hot tap and plunged my hands into the ice-cold water. I brought the water to my face, closing my eyes and running my wet hands through my hair. The brown water trickled down my face and on to my jacket and shirt. Again I brought the water up to my face and closed my eyes.

I heard the door open and felt a blast of colder air.

I started to open my eyes.

My legs went from beneath me, kicked out.

My head hit the edge of the sink, bile filled my mouth.

My knees found the floor, my chin the sink.

Someone grabbed my hair, forcing my face straight back into the sink’s dirty water.

“Don’t you fucking try to look at me.” That vicious whisper again, bringing me an inch out of the water and holding me there.

Thinking, Fuck You, Fuck You, Fuck You. Saying, “What do you want?”

“Don’t fucking speak.”

I waited, my windpipe crushed against the edge of the sink.

There was a splash and I squinted, making out what looked to be a thin manila envelope lying next to the sink.

The hand on my hair relaxed, then suddenly pulled back my head and casually banged it once into the front of the sink.

I reeled, thrashing out with my arms, and fell back on to my arse. Pain pounded through my forehead, water seeped through the seat of my pants.

I pulled myself up by the sink, stood and turned and fell through the door out into the car park.

Nothing.

Two lorry drivers leaving the cafe pointed at me and shouted, laughing.

I leant against the door to the toilets and fell back through, the two lorry drivers doubling up with laughter.

The A4 manila envelope lay in a pool of water by the sink. I picked it up and shook off brown drops of water, opening and closing my eyes to ease the pain in my head.

I opened the door to the cubicle and grabbed the metal chain, flushing away the long pale yellow shit in the bowl. I closed the cracked plastic lid on the roaring water and sat down and opened the envelope.

Fresh hell.

I pulled out two thin sheets of typed A4 paper and three enlarged photographs.

It was a copy of the post-mortem on Clare Kemplay.

Another horror show.

I couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t look at the photographs, I just read as the dread rose.

The post-mortem was conducted at 7.00
PM
on 14 December 1974 at Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield by Dr Alan Courts, with Chief Superintendent Oldman and Superintendent Noble in attendance.

The body measured four feet three inches and weighed seventy-two pounds.

Facial abrasions, possibly bites, were noted on the right upper cheek, as well as on the chin and on the front and back of the neck. Ligature marks and burns upon the neck indicated strangulation as the cause of death.

Strangulation
.

The tongue had been gouged by her own teeth as she died strangling. It was suggested that she was probably not uncon scious when the final force was applied.

Probably not unconscious
.

The markings 4 LUV had been cut into the victim’s chest with a razor blade. Again, it was suggested this wound was not post-mortem.

4 LUV
.

Ligature marks were also found on both the ankles and the wrists. Both sets of marks had drawn blood from deep cuts, suggesting that the victim had fought her attacker for a length of time. The palm of each hand had also been pierced through, possibly by a large nail or a similar metal instrument. A similar wound was found on the left foot and it appeared that an unsuccessful attempt had been made to inflict the same injury to the right foot, resulting in only a partial piercing.

The victim had fought her attacker for a length of time
.

Further tests would be needed, however an initial examin ation of particles taken from the victim’s skin and nails revealed a strong presence of coal dust.

Coal dust
.

I swallowed.

The vagina and anus showed tears and bruising, both internal and external. The internal tears to the vagina had been caused by the stem and thorns of a rose inserted into the vagina and left there. Again, the substantial majority of these wounds were not post-mortem.

The stems and thorns of a rose
.

Horror on horror.

I fought hard for my breath.

They must have turned her over then, on to her chest.

Clare Kemplay’s back was a different world.

A different hell:

Two swan’s wings had been stitched into her back.

“
TOOK THE WINGS CLEAN OFF AND LEFT THE POOR BASTARD JUST LYING THERE
.”

The stitching was irregular and used a thin waxed rope. In places the skin and the muscle had been reduced to pulp and the stitching had broken free. The right wing had become com pletely detached, the skin and the muscle unable to support the weight of either the wing or the stitching, causing a large tear along the victim’s right shoulder blade.