of the public for assistance, saying, “We must catch this fiend before he takes another young innocent life.”
Detective Chief Superintendent Oldman added that the police are particularly interested in speaking to anyone who was in the vicinity of Devil’s Ditch, Wakefield on the night of Friday 13 December or early on the morning of Saturday 14 December.
West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police are appealing for anybody with information to contact the Murder Room direct on Wakefield 3838 or 3839 or to contact their nearest police station. All calls will be treated in the strictest confidence.
The report was accompanied by two photographs: the school photograph of Clare which had accompanied my initial report into her disappearance, and a grainy one of police searching Devil’s Ditch in Wakefield, where Clare’s body had been found.
Hats off to Jack.
I tore the Front Page off, stuffed it inside my jacket pocket, and walked across to Barry Cannon’s desk. I opened the bottom drawer and took out Barry’s trusty bottle of Bells, pouring a triple into a half-drunk cup of coffee.
Here’s to you Barry Cannon.
It tasted fucking shit, so fucking shit I found another cup of cold coffee on another desk and had another bloody one.
Here’s to you Ronald Dunford.
Five minutes later I put my head down on my desk and smelt the wood, the whisky, and the day’s work on my sleeves. I thought about phoning Kathryn’s house but the whisky must have beaten the coffee and I fell into a crap sleep beneath the bright office lights.
“Wakey-wakey Scoop.”
I opened one eye.
“Rise and shine Mr Sleepyhead. Your boyfriend’s on line two.”
I opened the other.
Jack Whitehead was sat in Barry’s chair at Barry’s desk, waving a telephone receiver across the office at me. The place was no longer dead, gearing up for the next edition. I sat up and nodded at Jack. Jack winked and the phone buzzed on my desk.
I picked up the phone. “Yeah?”
A young man’s voice said, “Edward Dunford?”
“Yeah?”
There was a pause and a click, Jack having taken his fucking time hanging up. I stared back across the office. Jack Whitehead raised his empty hands in mock surrender.
Everybody laughed.
My breath stank against the phone. “Who is this?”
“A friend of Barry’s. You know the Gaiety pub on Roundhay Road?”
“Yeah.”
“Be at the phonebox outside at ten.”
The line went dead.
I said, “I’m sorry, I’d have to check with my editor first. However, if you’d like to call back sometime tomorrow…I understand, thank you. Bye.”
“Another hot one Scoop?”
“Fucking Ratcatcher. Be the bloody death of me.”
Everybody laughed.
Even Jack.
Nine-thirty on a Monday night, 16 December 1974.
I pulled into the car park in front of the Gaiety Hotel, Roun-dhay Road, Leeds, and decided to stay put for half an hour. I switched off the engine and the lights and sat in the dark Viva, staring across the car park at the Gaiety, the lights from the bar giving me a good view of both the phonebox and the pub itself.
The Gaiety, an ugly modern pub with all the ugly old charms of any pub which bordered both Harehills and Chapeltown. A restaurant that served no food and a hotel that had no beds, that was the Gaiety.
I lit a cigarette, opened the window a crack, and tilted my head back.
About four months ago, soon after I’d first come back North, I’d spent almost an entire day, and some of the next, getting pissed out of my skull in the Gaiety with George Greaves, Gaz from Sport, and Barry.
About four months ago, when being back North was still a novelty and slumming in the Gaiety was a right laugh and a bit of an eye-opener.
About four months ago, when Ronald Dunford, Clare Kemplay, and Barry Cannon were still alive.
That all-day session hadn’t actually been much of a laugh, but it’d been a useful introduction for a new and very green North of England Crime Correspondent.
“This is Jack Whitehead Country,” George Greaves had whis pered as we pulled back the double doors and walked into the Gaiety around eleven that morning.
After about five hours I had been willing to go home but the Gaiety didn’t abide by local licensing laws and, despite having no food or beds or dancefloor, was able to sell alcohol from 11 AM to 3 AM by virtue of being either a restaurant or hotel or disco depending on which copper you talked to. And, unlike say the Queen’s Hotel in the city centre, the Gaiety also offered its daytime regulars a lunchtime strip-show. And additionally, instead of an actual hot food menu, the Gaiety was also able to offer its patrons the unique opportunity to eat out any member of the lunchtime strip-show at very reasonable rates. It was a snack that Gaz from Sport had assured me was worth a fiver of anybody’s money.
“He was Olympic Muff Diving Champion, our Gaz at Munich,” George Greaves had laughed.
“Not something the nig-nogs care for, mind,” added Gaz.
I’d first puked about six but had felt well enough to go on, staring at the pubes spinning in the broken toilet bowl.
The Gaiety’s daytime and evening clientele were pretty much the same, with only the ratios changing. During the day there were more prostitutes and Paid taxi drivers, while the night saw an increase in labourers and businessmen. Pissed journalists, off-duty coppers, and sullen West Indians were constant, day and night, day in, day out.
“
The last thing I really remember about that day was puking some more in the car park, thinking this is Jack’s Country not mine.
I emptied the Viva’s ashtray out of the window as a slot machine in the Gaiety paid out over the cheers that greeted yet another spin on the jukebox for
At five to ten, as
At ten o’clock on the dot, I picked up the phone on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Who’s this?”
“Edward Dunford.”
“You alone?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re driving a green Vauxhall Viva?”
“Yeah.”
“Go on to Harehills Lane, where it meets Chapeltown Road, and park outside the hospital.”
The line went dead again.
At ten-ten I was parked outside the Chapel Allerton Hospital, where Harehills Lane and Chapeltown Road met and became the more promising Harrogate Road.
