Nineteen Seventy-Four (7 page)

The Ratcatcher: a story that had touched the hearts of York shire folk.

The bus was coming up the road. I stuck out my thumb.

The Ratcatcher: Graham Goldthorpe, the disgraced music teacher turned council Rat Man who had strangled his sister Mary with a stocking and hung her in the fireplace last Mischief Night.

I paid the driver and went to the back of the deserted single-decker to smoke.

The Ratcatcher Graham Goldthorpe, who had then taken a shotgun to his troubled mind and its visions of plague upon plague of dirty brown rats.

Mandy Sucks Paki Cocks
, said the back of the seat in front of me.

The Ratcatcher: a story close to the heart of Edward Dunford, North of England Crime Correspondent, the former Fleet Street Hack turned Prodigal Son who had shaken and shocked a county with his troubled tale and its visions of plague upon plague of dirty brown rats.

Yorkshire Whites
, said the next seat.

The Ratcatcher: my first story at the
Post
and a Godsend with my father and Jack fucking Whitehead both in hospital.

I rang the bell wishing Jack Whitehead dead.

I stepped off the bus into the end of a Pontefract afternoon. I hid another cigarette inside my father’s old coat and beat the whip of a winter wind on the third attempt.

Ratcatcher Country.

It took me the exact length of the JPS to reach Willman Close from the bus stop, nearly treading in some bloody dogshit as I stubbed it out.

Dogshit in Willman Close, that would have really pissed Graham Goldthorpe off.

It was already dark and most of the Close had the lights on their Christmas trees all lit up. Not Enid Sheard though, the miserable bitch.

Not the Goldthorpes either.

I cursed my life and knocked on the glass door of the bungalow, listening to the barking of the huge Alsatian, Hamlet.

I’d seen it a hundred times before during my all-too-brief stint on Fleet Street. The families, the friends, the colleagues, and the neighbours of the dead or the accused, the very people who would act so offended, so appalled, so insulted, and even so angry at the mere mention of cash for their story. The self same families, friends, colleagues, and neighbours of the dead or the accused, the very people who would telephone a month later, suddenly so eager, so keen, so helpful, and so fucking greedy to mention cash for their story.

“Who is it? Who is it?” The miserable bitch wouldn’t even switch on the hall light, let alone open the door.

I hollered through the door, “It’s Edward Dunford, Mrs Sheard. From the
Post
, you remember?”

“Of course I remember. Today’s Sunday, Mr Dunford,” she screamed back over the noise of Hamlet the Alsatian.

“My editor,- Mr Hadden, said you telephoned and wanted to speak with one of his reporters,” I shouted through the rippled glass.

“I telephoned last Monday, Mr Dunford. I do my business during the working week, not on the Lord’s Day. I’d thank you and your Boss to do the same, young man.”

“I’m sorry Mrs Sheard. We’ve been very busy. I’ve come a long way and I don’t usually work…” I was mumbling, won dering whether Hadden had lied to me or just mixed up the dates.

“All I can say is, you better have my money then, Mr Dunford,” said Mrs Enid Sheard as she opened the door.

Nigh on penniless, I stepped into the dark and narrow hall and the stink of Hamlet the Alsatian; a stink I had hoped I would never have to suffer again.

The Widow Sheard, seventy irritable years if she was a day, ushered me through into the front room and once again I found myself sitting in the gloom with Enid Sheard, her memories and her lies, as Hamlet scratched at the foot of the glass kitchen door.

I perched on the edge of the sofa and said, “Mr Hadden said you wanted to talk…”

“I’ve never spoken with this Mr Hadden of yours…”

“But you do have something you want to share with us about the events next door?” I was staring at the blank face of the TV, seeing the dead eyes of Jeanette Garland, Susan Ridyard, and Clare Kemplay.

“I’d thank you not to interrupt when I’m speaking, Mr Dunford.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, my stomach hollowed out at each thought of Mrs Garland.

“You smell of alcohol to me, Mr Dunford. I think I’d prefer to meet with that nice Mr Whitehead of yours. And not on a Sabbath, mind.”

“You spoke to Jack Whitehead?”

She smiled with thin lips. “I spoke to a Mr Whitehead. He never told me his Christian name and I never asked.”

I was suddenly hot inside her cold black hole of a room. “What did he say?”

“He said I should speak to you, Mr Dunford. That it wasn’t his story.”

“What else? What else did he say?” I was struggling for air.

“If you’d let me finish…”

I moved along the sofa towards the Widow’s chair. “What else?”

“Really Mr Dunford. He said I should let you have the key. But I said…”

“Key? What key?” I was almost off the sofa and in the Widow’s lap.

“The key to next door,” she proudly announced.

Suddenly the kitchen door flew open with a crash and a thunder of barking as Hamlet the Alsatian charged into the room and jumped between us, his tongue hot, loose, and wet on both our faces.

“Really Hamlet, that’s quite enough.”

It was night outside and Mrs Enid Sheard was fumbling with the back door key to the Goldthorpes’ bungalow. She turned the lock and in I went.

A month ago the police had point blank refused all requests to view the scene of the tragedy and Enid Sheard had not even so much as intimated that she might have had any means of access, but here I stood in the Goldthorpes’ kitchen, in the Lair of the Ratcatcher.

I tried the kitchen light.

“They’ll have disconnected them, won’t they?” whispered Mrs Sheard from the doorstep.

I gave the switch another flick. “Looks that way.”

“Wouldn’t fancy going in there without any light. Gives me the willies just standing here.”

I peered into the kitchen, wondering when Enid Sheard last had any willy. The place smelt stale, like we’d just got back from a week at the caravan.

“You’ll have to come back when it’s light, won’t you? I did tell you you shouldn’t work on a Sunday, didn’t I?”

“You did indeed,” I mumbled from under the kitchen sink, wondering if Enid Sheard had enjoyed her last willy and if she missed it and how that would explain quite a bit.

“What are you doing down there, Mr Dunford?”

“Hallelujah!” I shouted, coming up from under the sink with a candle, thinking thank fucking Christ for that and the Three Day Week.

Enid Sheard said, “Well if you will insist on looking around in the pitch dark, I’ll see if I can’t find you one of Mr Sheard’s old torches. He was always a great one for his torches and his candles was Mr Sheard. Be prepared, he always said. And what with all these strikes and what have you.” She was still chund-ering on as she walked back to her own bungalow.

I closed the back door and took a saucer from a cupboard. I lit the candle and dripped the melting wax on to the saucer, securing the candle to the base with a few drops.

Alone at last in the Lair of the Ratcatcher
.

The blood in my feet had run cold.

The candle lit up the walls of the kitchen in reds and yellows, reds and yellows that plucked me up and dropped me back on a hill above a burning gypsy camp, the face of a young girl with brown curls crying out into the night while another little girl lay on a mortuary slab with wings in her back. I swallowed hard, wondered what the fuck I was doing here and pushed open the glass kitchen door.

The bungalow was laid out exactly the same as Mrs Sheard’s. A little light coming through the glass front door at the other end of the hall added to the candle, illuminating a thin hall with a couple of drab Scottish landscapes and an etching of a bird. The five other doors off the hall were all closed. I set the candle on the telephone table, rummaging through my pockets for scraps of paper.

In the Lair of the Ratcatcher
…

I’d have no trouble selling it to the nationals. A few photo graphs and I’d be set. Maybe a quick paperback after all. Like Kathryn had said, it practically wrote itself:

6 Willman Close, home to Graham and Mary Goldthorpe, brother and sister, killer and prey
.

Inside the hall of the Ratcatcher, I took out my pen and picked a door.

The back bedroom had been Mary’s. Enid Sheard had said before that Graham had been particular about this, insisting that his big sister have the big bedroom for privacy’s sake. The police had also confirmed that Graham had telephoned twice in the twelve months prior to the events of 4 November, complaining of a Peeping Tom at his sister’s window. The police had never been able to substantiate his claims, or had never tried. I felt the heavy dark curtains and wondered if they were new, if Graham had bought them for Mary, to keep out Tom and save her from the eyes he saw.

Whose were those eyes that moved across his sister’s body? The eyes of a stranger, or the same eyes that now stared back at him in the mirror
.

The curtains and all the other furniture seemed too heavy for the room, but the same was true of Enid Sheard’s next door and my mother’s. There was a single bed, a wardrobe, and a chest of drawers with a mirror on top, all of them big and wooden. I set the candle down by the mirror beside two hair brushes, a clothes brush, a comb, and a photograph of the Goldthorpes’ mother.

Did Graham come into this room while she slept, taking strands of yellow hair from her brush, hair like their mother’s, to treasure and to keep?

In the top left-hand drawer was some make-up and some skin creams. In the top right-hand drawer I found Mary Gold-thorpe’s underwear. It was silk and had been disturbed by the police. I touched a white pair of knickers, remembering the photographs we’d published of a plain but not unattractive woman. She had been forty when she died and neither the police or myself had turned up any boyfriends. It was expensive underwear for a woman with no lover. And a waste.

Graham watched her as she slept, her hair upon the pillow. Quietly he slipped open the top right-hand drawer, burying his hands deep in the silk contents of her most private drawer. Suddenly Mary sat up in bed
.

The bathroom and the toilet were together in the one room and smelt of cold pine. I stood on a pink mat and took a quick piss in Graham Goldthorpe’s toilet, still thinking of his sister. The sound of the flush filled the bungalow.

“
Graham? What are you doing?” she whispered
.

Graham’s bedroom was next to the bathroom at the front of the house, small and filled with more heavy inherited furniture. On the wall above the head of his single bed were three framed pictures. I rested a knee on Graham’s bed and brought the candle up close to three more etchings of birds, similar to the one in the hall. Graham’s pyjamas were still under his pillow.

Graham froze, his pyjamas stuck to his body with sweat
.

Beside the bed were stacks of magazines and files. I put the candle down on a bedside table and picked up a bunch of magazines. They were all transport magazines, about either trains or buses. I left them on the bedspread and went over to the desk, on top of which was a large reel-to-reel tape recorder. There was a space on the bookcase where the police had removed the spools.

Fuck.

The Ratcatcher Tapes, gone and not for good.

“
Tonight she caught me in her room as I watched over her,” whis pered Graham underneath the bedcovers as the spools span silently round. “Tomorrow is Mischief Night and tomorrow they will come
.”

I pulled a thick book of old railway timetables from the bookcase, marvelling at the uselessness of the thing. On the inside title page Graham Goldthorpe had stuck a drawing of an owl wearing glasses and written:

THIS BOOK BELONGS TO GRAHAM AND MARY GOLDTHORPE. DO NOT STEAL IT OR YOU WILL BE HUNTED DOWN AND KILLED
.

Fuck.

I took another book from the shelf and found the same message and in another, and another, and another. Bloody weirdo. I began to put the books back, stopping when I came to a hardback copy of
A Guide to the Canals of the North
which wouldn’t shut properly.

I opened up
A Guide to the Canals of the North
and went straight back smack into Hell.

Stuck between the photographs of various canals of the North were the photographs of ten or twelve young girls.

School photographs.

Eyes and smiles shining up in my face.

My mouth dry, heart pounding, I slammed the book shut.

A second later I had it open again, closer to the candle, flying through the photographs.

No Jeanette.

No Susan.

No Clare.

Just ten or so school portraits, six by four inches, of young girls aged ten to twelve.

No names.

No addresses.

No dates.

Just ten pairs of blue eyes and ten white smiles against the same sky-blue background.

Mind and pulse racing, I took another book from the shelf, and another, and another.

Nothing.

Five minutes later I had turned every book and every maga zine inside out.

Nothing.

I stood in the middle of Graham Goldthorpe’s bedroom clutching
A Guide to the Canals of the North
, the rest of his room at my feet.

“I don’t know what’s so important that you couldn’t come back another day. Oh my! What a mess.” Enid Sheard shone the torch from corner to corner, shaking her head. “Mr Goldthorpe would have a fit if he saw his room like this.”

“You don’t know what the police took away do you?”

She shone the torch in my eyes. “I mind my own business, Mr Dunford. You know that.”

“I know that.”

“They swore to me mind, swore to me they’d left everything just as they’d found it. Will you look at this mess. Are the other rooms the same?”