wearing jeans and a vest the size of a marquee, and carrying a soup ladle. I decided to do it the proper way.
'Detective Inspector Priest,' I said, holding my ID out. 'Are you the proprietor?'
'What you want?' he asked, his face immobile.
'A word. Is this your place?'
'I am the proprietor,' he replied, and his expression developed a hint of pride. I'd given him a new title.
'You do bed and breakfast for DSS clients,' I said.
'Full,' he told me. 'No room.'
I know I dress casual, but I'd never thought it was that casual. 'I don't want a room,' I told him. 'You had a man called Duncan Roberts staying here until about two months ago?'
'No,' he answered.
'You did.'
'No.'
'He committed suicide.'
'Nobody of that name stay here.'
I repeated the address to him and he agreed this was the place. 'Well, he lived here,' I insisted.
'No.'
'He killed himself. Bled to death.'
'Nobody do that here.'
'I want to see his room.'
'He not live here.'
'What happened to his belongings?'
'He not live here.'
He was stubborn, unhelpful and pretending to be thick. I know the type; I'm from Yorkshire. I started again at the beginning, but it was a waste of breath. I thanked him for his time and headed back towards the station. The yob with the dog was coming the other way. He nodded a hello, I said: 'Ow do.'
Gilbert greeted me with: 'Ah! Just the man,' when I called in his office for my morning cup pa and to discuss tactics. 'What the devil did you volunteer us for at the SCOGs meeting?' He rummaged through his papers for the minutes of the meeting I' dattended.
'Er, nothing,' I replied.
'It says here… where is it? Oh, here we are, in Any Other Business:
Examination of all outstanding murder cases going back thirty years, with Mr. Priest typed in the margin. I know you don't like going to the meetings, Charlie, but if you think this'll get you out of them you're mistaken.'
I said: 'Forget it, Gilbert. We were just discussing DNA testing in old cases, and I suggested it could be taken further.'
'It looks as if you volunteered to do it.'
'Well, I'll un-volunteer.'
'Right. How did you go on yesterday?'
He wasn't too pleased when he learned that I'd be spending a large proportion of my time working for the SFO, but relaxed when I told him that they were paying my expenses.
'So where are you starting?' he asked.
'With the files. See what's on them that I never knew about. I was a humble sergeant at the time, and not on the case.'
I drank my tea and went back downstairs to review the troops. Nigel was due in court, Jeff and Maggie had appointments with various people on the robbers' circuit and Dave was hoping to talk to someone on the Sylvan Fields estate who had ambitions of becoming a paid informer.
It's heart-warming when you hear of one of them trying to better himself, restores your faith in the system.
The West Yorkshire archives are in the central registry in the cellars of the Force HQ, or the Centre, as it is more usually called. Grey steel industrial racks, row after row, are bulging with brown folders stuffed with papers and photographs. Every written page is a testimony to man's indifference to the feelings of his fellows. There's not much joy down there, little to uplift the spirit when you consider that these are the unsolved cases. The ones we crack are usually destroyed to save space.
'1975, did you say?' the civilian archivist asked as he led me between the lines of Dexion shelving.
'July,' I replied. 'Possibly filed as Crosby.'
He turned down an aisle, read a label, went a bit further, read another, backtracked a few paces and looked up. 'We need the steps,' he said.
'I'll fetch them.' He walked with a pronounced limp and I was impatient. Our movements had stirred up fifty years of dust and the place smelled of old paper and corruption. I rolled the steps into position and locked the wheels.
The file was about two feet thick, in four bundles tied with string. I lifted the first one out and climbed down. 'I'll leave you, then,' he said.
'Thanks, you've been a big help. I'll put them back when I've finished.'
When he'd gone I scanned the letters and numbers on the next rack of shelves, looking for a name. I was certain this one wouldn't have been destroyed. There it was, next but one: a whole bank of shelves devoted to one villain, the biggest file we'd ever had. I ran my fingers over them, leaving a clean trail through the dust. In there were the names of thirteen women and fifty thousand men, and the contents had touched the lives of everyone in the country. One man's name was printed within those pages nine times, but he wasn't caught until a lucky copper found him with a prostitute in his car and a ball-peen hammer in his pocket. Peter Sutcliffe, better known as the Yorkshire Ripper.
I took the first bundle from the fire file to the desk near the door and untied the string. There were photos and a list of names and the coroner's report. Sergeant Priest and PC Sparkington, first on the scene, weren't mentioned. An hour and a half later I retied the string and fetched the next bundle. The prostitutes in the next street were convinced that they were the intended target and the CID went along with that. I broke off for something to wash the dust out of my larynx and some fresh air.
Bundle three was mainly interviews with the ex-boyfriends and minders of the girls. Their pimps, in other words. They all had alibis, which wasn't a surprise, and plenty of witnesses to say they were visiting their moms at the time of the fire, whenever that might have been. I was gathering a good picture of the investigation and where it might have gone wrong, but nothing that helped Crosby's case. Maybe bundle four would hold the key.
It was more of the same. The usual suspects had been rounded up, informants consulted, gossip listened to. It had been a crime that aroused passions, it's always the same when children are involved, and plenty of people had their pet theories. The local branch of the National Front denied any responsibility and expressed lukewarm regret, and the leaders of the Asian community demanded more protection.
I scanned the next statement briefly, turned it upside down on the pile I'd finished with and reached for another one. I was working on automatic. Something clicked inside my brain and I picked it up again.
It was made by Paul Travis Carter to DC Jones, four weeks after the fire. Carter lived at number twenty- seven Leopold Avenue, just over the road. Two days before the fire he'd gone on an expedition to the Dolomites with a party of schoolkids and had just returned. About a week before leaving he went for his customary take away and as he locked the door he noticed a young woman approaching number thirty-two. She hesitated on the top step for a few moments and left. He'd assumed she'd put something through the letter box, although her actions didn't look like that. He followed her, because that was the way he was going, and she got into a posh car that was waiting round the corner and was driven away. The car might have been a two-litre Rover and the driver looked like a man, although his hair was longish and Carter couldn't be certain. 'I don't suppose it's important,' he'd told the DC, 'but I thought I'd better tell you.' The DC had obviously agreed with the not important bit; there wasn't even a description of the woman.
'Wait till I tell Sparky,' I said to myself, and made a note of Carter's details. He shouldn't be too hard to find. I put everything back and slapped the dust off my hands. As I turned to leave I took a last look at the Ripper files. We'd been misled on that one, gone off at a tangent, wasted thousands of man hours. Someone had made a big mistake with the fire, too, and I didn't think it was me.
Carter was a responsible citizen who conscientiously registered to vote. Two minutes on the computer
