1974

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?”

“No. Only this one,” I said.

“Well, I suppose this’d be the one that interested them,” said Enid Sheard, using her torch as a Colditz searchlight to sweep the room from corner to corner.

“Can you tell what’s missing?”

“Mr Dunford! I never set foot in Mr Goldthorpe’s bedroom before tonight. You journalists. Minds like sewers, the lot of you.”

“I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.”

“They took away all his drawings and his tapes, I do know that.” The beam of white light fixed upon the reel- to-reel. “Saw them carrying the stuff off myself.”

“Mr Goldthorpe never said what was on the tapes?”

“A couple of years ago Mary did tell me he kept a diary. And I remember I said, he likes writing then Mr Goldthorpe does he? And Mary said, he doesn’t write a diary, he tells it to his tape-recorder.”

“Did she say what kind of things he…”

The bright beam hit me square in the eyes. “Mr Dunford, how many times? She didn’t say and I didn’t ask. I…”

“You mind your own business, I know.” With A Guide to the Canals of the North half under my shirt, half down my trousers, I awkwardly picked up the candle. “Thank you, Mrs Sheard.”

Out in the hall Enid Sheard paused by the door to the front room. “You went in there then?”

I stared at the door. “No.”

“But that’s where…”

“I know,” I whispered, picturing Mary Goldthorpe hanging by her stocking in the fireplace, her brother’s brains across three walls. I saw Paula Garland’s husband in the same room.

“Bit of a wasted journey, if you ask me,” muttered Enid Sheard.

In the kitchen I opened the back door and blew out the candle, leaving the saucer on the draining board.

“Better come back inside for a cup of tea,” said Enid Sheard as she locked the back door and dropped the key in her apron pocket.

“No thank you. I’ve taken up quite enough of your Sunday.” The large book was digging into my stomach.

“Mr Dunford, you may conduct your business out in the street for all to see, but I do not.”

I smiled. “I’m sorry. I don’t quite follow you.”

“My money, Mr Dunford.”

“Oh, of course. I’m sorry. I’ll have to come back tomorrow with a photographer. I’ll have a cheque for you then.”

“Cash, Mr Dunford. Mr Sheard never trusted banks and neither do I. So I’ll have one hundred pounds cash.”

I started to walk down the garden path. “One hundred pounds cash it is then, Mrs Sheard.”

“And I trust this time you’ll have the good manners to tele phone and see it’s convenient,” shouted Enid Sheard.

“Really Mrs Sheard. How could you think otherwise,” I shouted, breaking into a run, A Guide to the Canals of the North into my ribs, a bus at the top of the main road.

“One hundred pounds cash, Mr Dunford.”

“Having a nice time?”

· PM The Press Club, in the sights of the two stone lions, Leeds City Centre.

Kathryn was ordering a half, I was nursing a pint.

“How long have you been here?” she said.

“Since they opened.”

The barmaid smiled at Kathryn, mouthing six as she passed her the cider.

“How many you had?”

“Not enough.”

The barmaid held up four fingers.

I scowled at the barmaid and said, “Let’s get a fucking table.”

Kathryn ordered two more drinks and followed me to the darkest corner of the Press Club.

“You don’t look so good, love. What you been doing?”

I sighed and took a cigarette from her pack. “I don’t know where to begin.”

Life on Mars came on the jukebox. “Take your time. I’m in no rush,” said Kathryn, putting her hand on mine.

I pulled my hand out from under hers. “Did you go into the office today?”

“Just for a couple of hours.”

“Who was in?”

“Hadden, Jack, Gaz…”

Jack fucking Whitehead. My neck and shoulders ached with tiredness. “What was he doing in on a Sunday?”