1974

Hadden was frowning. “Yeah.”

“Miserable bitch.”

Hadden looked mildly annoyed, but pressed on. “So I thought, after you’ve been over to Castleford, you could pop in and see her. It’d be just right for Tuesday’s supplement.”

“Yeah. OK. But, I’m sorry, but what about Clare Kemplay?” It came from despair and the pit of my belly, from a man seeing only building sites and rats.

Bill Hadden looked momentarily taken aback by the pitiful whine of my question, before he remembered to stand up and say, “Don’t worry. As I say, Jack’11 hold the fort and he’s promised me he’ll work as a team with you. Just talk to him.”

“He hates my guts,” I said, refusing to move or hum along.

“Jack Whitehead hates everybody,” said Bill Hadden, opening the door.

Saturday teatime, downstairs the office thankfully quiet, merci fully devoid of Jack fucking Whitehead, the Sunday Post already in bed.

Leeds United must have won, but I didn’t give a fuck.

I’d lost.

“Have you seen Jack?”

Kathryn alone at her desk, waiting. “He’ll be at Pinderfields won’t he? For the post-mortem?”

“Fuck.” The story gone, visions of waves upon waves of more and more rats scurrying across mile upon mile of building sites.

I slumped down at my desk.

Someone had left a copy of the Sunday Post on top of my typewriter. It didn’t take Frank fucking Cannon to work out who.

MURDERED-BY JACK WHITEHEAD, CRIME REPORTER OF THE YEAR.

I picked it up.

The naked body of nine-year-old Clare Kemplay was found early yesterday morning by workmen in Devil’s Ditch, Wakefield.

An initial medical examination failed to determine the exact cause of death, however, Detective Chief Superintendent George Oldman, the man who had been leading the search for Clare, immediately launched a murder investigation.

It was expected that Dr Alan Coutts, the Home Office Pathologist, would conduct a post-mortem late Saturday evening.

Clare had not been seen since Thursday teatime when she went missing on her way home from Morley Grange Junior and Infants. Her disappearance sparked one of the biggest police searches seen in the county with hundreds of local people joining police in searches of Morley and nearby open land.

Initial police enquiries are concentrating on anyone who may have been in the vicinity of Devil’s Ditch between midnight Friday and six AM Saturday morning. Police would particularly like to speak to anyone who may have noticed any vehicles parked near Devil’s Ditch between those hours. Anyone with information should contact their nearest police station or the Murder Room direct on Wakefield 3838.

Mr and Mrs Kemplay and their son are being comforted by relatives and neighbours.

If it bleeds, it leads.

“How’d it go with Hadden?” Kathryn was standing over my desk.

“How do you fucking think.” I spat, rubbing my eyes, looking for someone easy.

Kathryn fought back tears. “Barry says to tell you he’ll pick you up at ten tomorrow. At your mother’s.”

“Tomorrow’s bloody Sunday.”

“Well why don’t you go and ask Barry. I’m not your bloody secretary. I’m a fucking journalist too.”

I stood up and left the office, afraid someone would come in.

In the front room, my father’s Beethoven as loud as I dared.

My mother in the back room, the TV louder still: ballroom dancing and show jumping.

Fucking horses.

Next door’s barking through the Fifth.

Fucking dogs.

I poured the rest of the Scotch into the glass and remembered the time when I’d actually wanted to be a fucking policeman, but was too scared shitless to even try.

Fucking pigs.

I drank half the glass and remembered all the novels I wanted to write, but was too scared shitless to even try.

Fucking bookworm.

I flicked a cat hair off my trousers, trousers my father had made, trousers that would outlast us all. I picked off another hair.

Fucking cats.

I swallowed the last of the Scotch from my glass, unlaced my shoes and stood up. I took off my trousers and then my shirt. I screwed the clothes up into a ball and threw them across the room at fucking Ludwig.

I sat back down in my white underpants and vest and closed my eyes, too scared shitless to face Jack fucking Whitehead.

Too scared shitless to fight for my own story.

Too scared shitless to even try.

Fucking chicken.

I didn’t hear my mother come in.

“There’s someone on the phone for you love,” she said, drawing the front room curtains.

“Edward Dunford speaking,” I said into the hall phone, doing up my trousers and looking at my father’s watch:

11.35p.m.

A man: “Saturday night all right for fighting?”

“Who’s this?”

Silence.

“Who is it?”

A stifled laugh and then, “You don’t need to know.”

“What do you want?”

“You interested in the Romany Way?”

“What?”

“White vans and gyppos?”

“Where?”

“Hunslet Beeston exit of the M1.”

“When?”

“You’re late.”

The line went dead.

Chapter 3

Just gone midnight, Sunday 15 December 1974.

The 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