Nineteen Seventy-Seven: The Red Riding Quartet, Book Two (9 page)

She’s standing in the middle of the room, under the paper lampshade, her hairbrush in her hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
She goes to the drawer and puts on some kind of black PVC top and a short denim skirt, the kind that buttons up the front.
My eyes are stinging, filling.
She looks so fucking beautiful and I don’t know how any of this happened, where we came in.
I say, ‘You don’t need to do this.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Why?’
‘Please. Don’t start.’
‘Don’t start? It never stops.’
‘It can stop any time you want.’
‘No, it can’t.’
‘Just don’t come around any more.’
‘I’ll leave her.’
‘You’ll leave your wife and baby for a Chapeltown scrubber, a whore? I don’t think so.’
‘You’re not a whore.’
‘Yes, I am. I’m a dirty little fucking whore, a woman who fucks men for money, who sucks for money on her knees in parks and cars, who’ll have at least ten blokes tonight if I’m lucky, so don’t pretend I’m not.’
‘I’ll leave her.’
‘Shut up, Bob. Shut up,’ and she’s gone, the sound of the door ringing through the room.
And I sit down on the edge of the bed and I cry.
I walk the streets down to St James.
Visiting time is almost up, people filing out, their duty done.
I take the lift up to the ward and walk down the corridor, past the overlit rooms of the nearly dead with their shaven heads and sunken faces, their sallow skin and cold, cold hands.
No air, only heat.
No dark, only light.
Another night in Dachau.
And I’m thinking,
never sleep, never sleep
.
Louise is gone and her father almost, eyes closed and alone.
A nurse comes by and smiles and I smile back.
‘Just missed them,’ she says.
‘Thanks,’ I nod.
‘Hasn’t half got your eyes, your lad,’ she laughs.
I nod and turn back to her father.
I sit down beside his bed, beside the packets of drugs, the drips and the tubes, and I’m thinking of Janice, there beside the half-dead body of my wife’s father, hard at the thought of another woman, of a Chapeltown whore, and while he’s on his back dying, she’s on her knees sucking, bleeding me.
I look up.
Bill’s looking at me, bloodshot and watery, trying to place me, seeking answers and truth.
A hand reaches through the bars on the side of the bed and he opens his mouth, cracked and dry, and I lean closer.
‘I don’t want to die,’ he whispers. ‘I don’t want to die.’
I pull away, away from his striped pyjamas and terrible breath, away from his coming threats and ramblings.
He tries to sit up but the restraints work and he can only raise his head. ‘Robert! Robert! Don’t leave me here, take me home!’
I’m on my feet, looking for the nurse.
‘I’ll tell her! I’ll tell her,’ he’s screaming.
But there’s no-one, only me.
I open the door, the house dark.
I pick the evening paper up off the mat.
Bobby’s little blue anorak is hanging from a peg.
I switch on the kitchen light and sit down at the table.
I want to go upstairs and see him but I’m afraid she’ll be awake, waiting.
So there I sit under the kitchen light, alone, just thinking.
Under the kitchen light, late into the night, pacing cancer wards, cradling Bobby, parked in a car; these are the places where I do my thinking, beside the dirty dishes and my father-in-law, looking at my son’s scribbles on the fridge door and the crumbs under the toaster, thinking.
I look at my watch, almost midnight.
I sit there, my head in my hands as they sleep upstairs, a broken Jubilee mug on the draining board, in the middle of my family, thinking about HER.
Thinking, this is where I came in:
I’d heard of her, heard the others talk about her, knew she used to tip some Bradford copper called Hall the odd word for a blind eye, but I’d never seen her, never seen her until 4 November last year
.
Mischief Night
.
I’d picked her up for soliciting near the Gaiety, drunk and weaving, trying to flag down lorries, dragged her down to Millgarth only to be driving her home five minutes later, the laughter loud and long in my ears, thinking
fuck ’em.
I’d been married five years and I had one son, almost a year then, and wanted another
.
But what I got was the fuck of my life in the back of an unmarked police car and my first taste of her, licked off her lips, off her nipples, out of her cunt, out of her arse, off the lids of her eyes, off the tips of her hair
.
And that night I went home to Louise and Bobby and watched them sleeping, the cot squeezed in beside our bed
.
I’d had a bath to wash her off but ended up drinking down the water just to taste her again
.
And later that night I’d woken up screaming that Bobby was dead, rushing to the cot, checking he was still breathing, the sweat stinking the room out, then lying in the bath again, hard, wanking
.
And it never stopped
:
From that night on I thought about her every second, flying through arrest sheets, asking questions I shouldn’t, combing the streets, pulling files, knowing one wrong word and the whole thing’d come tumbling down
.
So I learnt to keep secrets, to lead two lives, to kiss my son with the same lips I kissed her with, learnt to cry alone in overlit rooms while all three of them slept, learnt to control myself, to ration, knowing there’d be famine and drought, worse plagues than this, learnt to kiss three sets of lips
.
Under the kitchen light, between the fridge and the washer, thinking:
She’s twenty-two, I’m thirty-two.
She’s a half-caste prostitute and I’m a white Detective Sergeant, married to the daughter of one of the finest Yorkshire coppers there ever was.
I have an eighteen-month-old baby boy called Bobby.
After me.
And then, when I can think no more I go upstairs.
She’s lying on her side, wishing I was dead.
Bobby’s in the cot, and later he’ll wish I were dead too.
She swears in her sleep and rolls over.
Bobby opens his eyes and looks up at me.
I stroke his hair and bend down into the cot to kiss him.
He goes back to sleep and, later, I go back downstairs.
I walk through the dark house, remembering the day we moved in, the first Christmas, the day Bobby was born, the day he came home, the times the house was all lit up.
I stand in the front room and watch the cars drive past, their empty seats and their yellow headlights, their drivers and their boots, until each one becomes just another punter back from the red lights, back from Janice, their motors just another way to transport the killer from A to B, just another way to carry the dead back and forth, just another way to take her away.
And I swallow.
I walk back into the kitchen, legs weak, stomach empty.
I sit back down, tears on the evening paper and tears on Bobby’s book and I open up his little book and I stare at the picture of the frog in galoshes but it doesn’t help a bit because I don’t live in a little damp house among the buttercups at the edge of the pond, I live here:
Yorkshire, 1977.
And I wipe my eyes but they won’t dry because the tears won’t stop and I know they’ll never stop until I catch him.
Until I catch him.
Before he catches her
.
Until I see his face.
Before he sees hers
.
Until I say his name.
Before he says hers
.
And I turn over the
Evening Post
and there he is, one step ahead, waiting for us both:
The Yorkshire Ripper
.
Part 2
Police & thieves

The John Shark Show
Radio Leeds
Friday 3rd June 1977

Chapter 6

Jubela …
Twice. He hit me twice, right on the top.’
Mrs Jobson leant forward, parting her grey hair to reveal the indentations in her skull.
‘Go on, feel them,’ urged her husband.
I reached across the room to touch the top of her head, the roots of her hair oily beneath my fingertips, the dents huge and hollow craters.
Mr Jobson was watching my face. ‘Some hole isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
It was Friday, going up to eleven, and we were sitting in Mr and Mrs Jobson’s homely front room at the bottom end of Halifax, sipping coffee and passing round photos, talking about the time a man hit Mrs Jobson twice on the head with a hammer, lifted up her skirt and bra, scratched her stomach once with a screwdriver and masturbated across her breasts.
And in amongst the photos, in amongst the ornaments, between the postcards and the empty vases, beside the pictures of royalty, there were bottles and bottles of pills because Mrs Jobson hadn’t left the house since that night three years ago when she met the man with the hammer and the screwdriver coming back as she was from her weekly lasses’ night out, lasses who’ve also stopped going out, lasses who got beatings from their husbands when the police suggested that Mrs Jobson liked to make a bit of pin money by sucking black men’s willies down the bus station on her way back home from her weekly lasses’ night out, Mrs Jobson who hasn’t left the house since that last lasses’ night out in 1974, not even to scrub the graffiti off the front door, the graffiti that said she liked to suck black men’s willies down the bus station, graffiti that her husband, bad back or not, graffiti Mr Jobson painted over and had to paint over a second time, the same graffiti that made their Lesley never go to school because of all the things they were saying about her mum and the black men down the bus station, and it got to the point where Lesley came right out and asked her mum if she’d ever been down the bus station with a black man, standing there in her nightie at the bottom of these stairs having wet the bed for the third time that week and like Mrs Jobson said that night and many times since has said:
‘There’s times, times like that, when I wish he’d finished me off.’
Mr Jobson was nodding.
I put my cup down on the low coffee table next to the Philips Pocket Memo, the wheels turning.
‘And how are you now?’
‘Better. I mean, every time there’s another and every time it’s a prostitute, I know it starts folk talking again. I just wish they’d hurry up and catch the bastard.’
‘You met Anita yet?’ asked Mr Jobson.
‘This afternoon.’
‘Tell her Donald and Joyce said hello.’
‘Of course.’
At the door Mr Jobson said, ‘Sorry about the photographs, it’s just we …’
‘I know, don’t worry. You’ve been more than kind just letting me in.’
‘Well if it helps catch the …’ Mr Jobson looked off down the street, then said quietly, ‘Just ten minutes alone with the cunt, that’s all I ask. And I wouldn’t need no fucking hammer or screwdriver.’
I stood there on his front step, nodding.
We shook hands.
‘Thank you again,’ I said.
‘You’re welcome. Do call us if you hear owt.’
‘Of course.’
I got in the Rover and drove away.
Jubelo …

Anita Bird lived in Cleckheaton in exactly the same kind of terrace as the Jobsons, both houses at the top end of steep inclines.
I knocked on the door and waited.
A woman with bleached blonde hair and heavy make-up answered the door.
‘Jack Whitehead. We spoke on the telephone.’
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to excuse the mess.’
She cleared a pile of ironing off one end of the sofa and I sat down in her gloomy front room.
‘Cup of tea?’
‘I’ve just had one, thanks. Donald and Joyce Jobson said to say hello.’
‘Right, of course. How is she?’
‘I’d not met her before, so it’s hard for me to say. She doesn’t go out though.’
‘I was same, me. Then I just thought, fuck him. Excuse my French, but why should he do that to me and leave me sat at home like it’s me that’s in prison while he walks round free as a bloody bird. No thank you. So one day I just said to myself, Anita, you’re not staying locked up in here you silly cow or you might as well top yourself and have done with it, much use you are to anyone like this.’
I was nodding along, placing the tape recorder on the arm of the sofa.
‘Sometimes it seems like a lifetime ago, other times like it was just yesterday’
‘You weren’t living here, I understand?’
‘No, I was staying with Clive, the feller I was seeing back then. Over on Cumberland Avenue. That was half the problem, him being black and all.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well they all thought it must have been him, didn’t they.’
‘Because he was black?’
‘That and he’d battered me a couple of times and police had had to come down.’
‘Was he ever charged?’
‘No, he always talked me round, didn’t he. Smooth he is, Clive.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Clive? Armley, last I heard. GBH.’
‘GBH?’
‘Hit some bloke down International. Police hate him, always have. Daft bastard played straight into their hands.’
‘When’s he due out?’
‘Twelfth of bloody never as far as I’m concerned. You sure you don’t want that cup of tea?’
‘Go on then. Twist my arm.’
She laughed and went off into the kitchen.
In the corner the TV was on with the sound off, lunchtime news with pictures from Ulster, changing to Wedgwood-Benn.
‘Sugar?’ Anita Bird handed me a cup of tea.
‘Please.’
She brought a bag of sugar from the kitchen. ‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘Thanks.’
We sat and sipped our teas, watching silent cricket from Old Trafford.
The Second Test.
I said, ‘Do you mind telling me what happened again?’
She put down her cup and saucer. ‘No.’
‘It was August ’74?’
‘Yeah, the fifth. I’d gone down Bibby’s to look for Clive but …’
‘Bibby’s?’
‘It was a club. Shut down. And Clive wasn’t there. Typical. So I’d had a drink, well more than one actually and then I’d had to go because one of his mates, Joe, he was drunk and trying to get me to go home with him and I knew if Clive had come in there’d have been trouble so I just thought I’d go back to Cumberland Avenue and wait for him there. So I came back and sat there and felt a bit of a lemon like and decided to go back down Bibby’s again and that’s when it happened.’
The room was dark, the sun gone.
‘Did you see him?’
‘Well, they reckon I did. Couple of minutes before it happened, some bloke passed me and said something like, “Weather’s letting us down,” and just kept going. Police reckoned it could have been him because he never came forward like.’
‘Did you say anything back?’
‘No, just kept going.’
‘But you saw his face?’
‘Yeah, I saw his face.’
She had her eyes closed, her hands locked together between her knees.
I sat there in her front room, another wicket down, like he was there on the sofa next to me, a big smile, a hand on my knee, a last laugh amongst the furniture.
She opened her eyes wide, staring past me.
‘You OK?’
‘He was well-dressed and smelt of soap. Had a neat beard and moustache. Looked Italian or Greek you know, like one of them good-looking waiters.’
He was stroking his beard, grinning
.
‘He have an accent?’
‘Local.’
‘Tall?’
‘Nowt special. Could have been wearing boots and all, them Cuban type.’
He was shaking his head
.
‘And so he walked past you and …’
She closed her eyes again and said slowly, ‘And then couple of minutes later he hit me and that was that.’
He winked once and was gone again
.
She leant forward and pulled her blonde hair flat across the top of her head.
‘Go on, feel it,’ she said.
I reached across another room to touch the top of another head, through another set of damaged black roots, another huge and hollow crater.
I traced around the edges of the indentation, the smoothness beneath the hair.
‘You want to see my scars?’
‘OK.’
She stood up and pulled up her thin sweater, revealing broad red strokes across a flabby pale stomach.
They looked like giant medieval leeches, bleeding her.
‘You can touch them if you want,’ she said, stepping closer and taking my hand.
She ran my finger across the deepest scar, my throat dry and cock hard.
She held my finger in the deepest point.
After a minute she said, ‘We can go upstairs if you want.’
I coughed and moved back. ‘I don’t think …’
‘Married?’
‘No. Not …’
She pulled down her sweater. ‘You just don’t fancy me, right?’
‘It’s not that.’
‘Don’t worry, love. There’s not many that do these days. Attacked by that fucking maniac and known all over cos of her black fellers, that’s me. Only fucks I get are from darkies and weirdos.’
‘That why you asked me?’
‘No,’ she smiled. ‘I like you, don’t I.’
Collapsed in my car, picking through the fish and the chips,
the ones that got away
.
I looked at my watch.
It was time to go.
Underneath the arches, those dark, dark arches: Swinegate.
We’d said we’d meet at five, five while the light was still with us.
I parked down the bottom end but I could already see him, at the other end, up by the Scarborough Hotel, still wearing that hat and coat, despite the weather, to spite the weather, still carrying that case, just like the last time:
Sunday 26 January 1975
.
‘Reverend Laws,’ I said, my hand in my pocket.
‘Jack,’ he smiled. ‘It’s been too long,’
‘Not long enough.’
‘Jack, Jack. Always the same, always so sad.’
I was thinking,
not here, not in the street
.
I said, ‘Can we go somewhere. Somewhere quiet?’
He nodded at the big black building looming over the Scarborough, ‘The Griffin?’
‘Why not.’
The Reverend Martin Laws led the way, walking ahead in his stoop, a giant too big for this world or the next, his grey hair protruding from under his hat, licking the collar of his coat. He turned to hurry me along, through the passers-by, past the shops, between the cars, under the scaffolding and into the dim lobby of the Griffin.
He waved at some seats in the far corner, two high-backed chairs under an unlit lamp, and I nodded.
We sat down and he took off his hat, placing it on his lap, his case at his calves.
He smiled at me again, through his long grey stubble and his dirty yellow skin, an old newspaper, just like mine.
He smelt of fish.
A Turkish waiter approached.
‘Mehmet,’ said Reverend Laws. ‘How are you?’
‘Father, so good to have you back. We are fine, all of us. Thank you.’
‘And the school? The little one settled in?’
‘Yes, Father. Thank you. It was just as you said.’
‘Well, if there’s ever anything more I can do, please …’
‘You’ve been too kind, really.’
‘It was nothing. My pleasure.’
I coughed, fidgeting in my jacket.
‘Are you ready to order, Father?’
Reverend Laws smiled at me. ‘Yes, I believe we are. Jack?’
‘Brandy, please. And a pot of coffee.’
‘Very good, sir. Father?’
‘A pot of tea.’
‘Your usual?’
‘Thank you, Mehmet.’
He bowed quickly and was gone.
‘Lovely, lovely man. Not been here that long, just since the trouble.’
‘Good English.’
‘Yes, exceptional. You should tell him, be your friend for life.’
‘I wouldn’t wish it on him.’
Reverend Laws smiled again, that same quizzical smile of faint disbelief that either melted or froze you. ‘Come on now,’ he said. ‘You’re being too hard on yourself. I enjoy being your friend.’
‘It’s hardly mutual.’
‘Sticks and stones, Jack. Sticks and stones.’
I said, ‘She’s back.’
He looked down at the hat in his hands. ‘I know.’
‘How could you?’
‘Your call the other night. I could feel …’
‘Feel what? Feel my pain? Bollocks.’
‘Is that why you wanted to meet me? To abuse me? It’s OK, Jack.’
‘Look at you, you hypocritical cunt, sat there all pompous and papal in your dirty old raincoat with your hat on your cock and your little bag of secrets, your cross and your prayers, your hammer and your nails, blessing the fucking wogs, turning the tea into wine. It’s me Martin, it’s Jack, not some lonely little old woman who hasn’t had a fuck in fifty years. I was there, remember? The night you fucked up.’
I’d stopped and he was just sat there.
The night Michael Williams cradled Carol in his arms one last time
.
Just sat there, the hat revolving in his fingers.
The night Michael Williams …
He looked up and smiled.
The night …
I opened my mouth to start up again, but it was the waiter he was smiling at.
Mehmet put down the drinks and then took a small envelope from his pocket and pressed it into the Reverend’s hands.
‘Mehmet, I couldn’t. There’s no need.’
‘Father, I insist,’ he said and was gone.
I looked round at the Griffin’s lounge, watching the waiter scurry off back to his hole down below, an old woman with a walking stick trying to stand up from another high-backed chair, a child reading a comic, the dark yellow light at the front desk, the old brochures and paintings and lights almost gone, and it didn’t seem such a mystery why the Reverend Martin Laws was drawn to the Griffin Hotel, looking as it did for all the world like an old church in need of repair.
He leant forward, the hat still between his fingers, and said, ‘I can help you.’
‘Like you helped Michael Williams?’
‘I can make it go away’
‘Well you certainly got rid of Carol.’
‘Make it stop.’
I looked down at his hat, at the long fingers white at the tips. ‘Jack?’
I said, ‘I want it to stop. To end.’
‘I know you do. And it will, believe me.’
‘Is there only that way. The one way.’
‘I have a room. We can go upstairs right now and it’ll all be over.’
I was staring at the old woman with the walking stick, at the child in the corner, the brochures and the paintings, the light fading.
Jubela, Jubelo …
‘Not today,’ I said.
‘I’ll be waiting.’
‘I know’