“Whatever,” said Jack.
“What about her?”
“Told Stephanie she’s feeling a little under the weather this morning. But that it’s just something she’ll have to get used to.”
“You’re fucking joking?” said Tom from Bradford.
Gilman was looking at the floor, shaking his head from side to side.
I just stood there, Edward Dunford, North of England Red Face, the eyes of the room on me, National and Local.
“So?” I said lamely.
“Going to make an honest woman of her, I hope?”
“Honest! What the fuck would you know about honest?”
“Temper, temper.”
“Fuck off.” I started to edge along the row. It took an age to get there. Just long enough for Jack to get another laugh.
“I don’t know, young people these days.”
The whole room was smirking and tittering along.
“I think Mrs Whitehouse has got a point.”
The whole room giggling with Jack.
“The Permissive fucking Society, that’s what it is. Me, I’m with Keith Joseph. Sterilise the fucking lot of them!”
The whole room laughed out loud.
One hundred years later I got to the end of the row and the aisle.
Jack Whitehead shouted, “And don’t forget to turn yourself in.”
The whole room erupted.
I pushed past the wink-wink coppers and the nudge-nudge technicians and got to the back of the room.
I wanted to curl up and die.
There was a bang.
The whole room went dead.
The side door down the front slammed shut.
I turned around.
Detective Chief Superintendent George Oldman and two other men in suits entered.
I turned my red face for one last look.
Oldman had aged another hundred years.
“Thank you for coming gentlemen. We’re going to keep this very brief as you all know where we’d rather be. The gentleman on my right is Dr Courts, the Home Office pathologist who conducted the post-mortem. On my left is Detective Superin tendent Noble who, along with myself, will be leading the hunt for the killer or killers of little Clare Kemplay.”
Detective Superintendent Noble was looking straight at me.
I knew what was coming and I’d had enough of it to last me a lifetime.
I turned away through the double doors.
“They’re saying Barry was drunk?”
Rain ran down the inside of the phonebox making a pool around my shoes. I stared through the dirty glass at the yellow lights of the Wood Street Nick across the road.
Hadden on the other end sounded gutted. “That’s what the police are saying.”
I fumbled through my pockets. “It’s what Jack’s saying as well.”
I stood in the puddle, my shoes taking in water, juggling a box of matches, a cigarette, and the receiver.
“When you coming back to the office?”
I got the cigarette lit. “This afternoon sometime.”
A pause and then, “I need to speak to you.”
“Of course.”
A longer pause and then, finally, “What happened yesterday, Eddie?”
“I got to see Enid Sheard. She’s only got a bleeding key to Goldthorpe’s house.”
Hadden, many more than ten miles away, said, “Really?”
“Yeah, but I need some photos. Can you get Richard or Norman to meet me there?”
“When?”
I checked my father’s watch. “About twelve. And maybe it’d be best if one of them brought the money.”
“How much?”
I stared down Wood Street, past the Police Station, as black clouds made an evening of the morning.
I inhaled deeply, a small pain in my chest. “Greedy bitch wants two hundred.”
Silence.
Later, “Eddie, what happened yesterday?”
“What?”
“With Mrs Dawson? What happened?”
“I never saw her.”
Hadden, anger in his voice, said, “But I asked you specifically…”
“I stayed in the car.”
“But I asked you…”
“I know, I know. Barry thought I’d make her too nervous.” I dropped my cigarette in the puddle at my feet and almost believed myself.
Hadden, down the line, suspicious: “Really?”
The cigarette hissed in the dirty water. “Yeah.”
“What time will you be back?”
“Sometime between two and three.”
“I need to see you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
I hung up.
I watched as Gilly and Tom and the rest of the pack came running out of the Nick, jackets over their heads, making for their cars and offices with their warm yellow lights.
I pulled my jacket up over my head and got ready to make a run for it.
Thirty minutes later and the Viva stank of bacon.
I wound down the window and stared down Brunt Street, Castleford.
My fingers felt greasy from the sandwich.
The light was on in the front room of number 11, reflecting in the wet black pavement outside.
I took a mouthful of hot sweet tea.
The light went off and the red door opened.
Paula Garland came out of the house under a flowered umbrella. She locked the door and walked up the street towards the Viva.
I wound up the window and slid down in my seat. I could hear her tall brown boots approaching. I closed my eyes and swallowed and wondered what the fuck I’d say.
The boots came and went on the other side of the street.
I sat up and looked out of the back window.
The brown boots, the beige raincoat, and the flowered umbrella turned the corner and disappeared.
Barry Cannon had once said something like, “All great buildings resemble crimes.”
In 1970, according to the notes Hadden had given me, John Dawson had designed and built Shangrila to the acclaim of both the architectural community and the general public. Television, newspapers, and magazines had all been invited inside to witness the equally lavish interior in dutiful double-page spreads. The cost of the enormous
