I took the cigarette, thinking of Mrs Ridyard and her posters, sitting in her neat front room with its spoiled view.
“How old is he?”
Jack lit his cigarette and said, “Twenty-two.”
“Twenty-two? That’d make him only sixteen or seventeen in ‘69.”
“So?”
“Come on, Jack?”
“What’s he do?” Hadden asked Jack, but looking at me.
“Works for a photo lab. Develops photos.”
My head awash, swimming with school girl photos.
Jack said, “It feels wrong doesn’t it, Scoop?”
“No,” I whispered.
“You don’t want it to be him, I know.”
“No.”
Jack leant forward in his chair. “I was the same. All that hard work, all those hunches, and it just doesn’t sit right.”
“No,” I muttered, adrift in a white transit van plastered with photographs of the smiling, fair-haired, little dead.
“It’s a bitter pill, but they got him.”
“Yeah.”
“You get used to it,” winked Jack as he stood up unsteadily. “I’ll see you both tomorrow.”
Hadden said, “Yeah, thanks Jack.”
“Big day, eh?” said Jack, closing the door behind him.
“Yeah,” I said blankly.
The room was quiet and still smelt of Jack and drink.
After a few seconds, I said, “What happens now?”
“I want you to do the background on this Myshkin feller. The whole thing’s technically sub-judice, but if he’s confessed and on remand we’ll be all right.”
“When are you going to print his name?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Who’s covering the remand hearing?”
“Jack’11 do that and the press conference.”
“He’s going to do both?”
“Well, you can go but, what with the funeral and everything, I thought…”
“Funeral? What funeral?”
Hadden looked at me over the top of his glasses. “It’s Barry’s funeral tomorrow.”
I was staring at a Christmas card on his desk, a picture of a warm and glowing cottage in the middle of a snow-covered wood. “Shit, I’d forgotten,” I whispered.
“I think it’s best Jack stays on it tomorrow.”
“What time’s the funeral?”
“Eleven. Dewsbury Crematorium.”
I stood up, all my limbs weak with the weight of dead blood. I walked across the seabed to the door.
Hadden looked up from his forest of cards and quietly said, “Why were you so sure it was James Ashworth?”
“I wasn’t,” I said and closed the door on my way out.
Paul Kelly was sitting on the edge of my desk.
“Our Paula’s been ringing you.”
“Yeah?”
“What’s going on Eddie?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“She called me. Said you’d told her about me seeing that Mandy Wymer woman.”
“Leave her be, Eddie.”
Two hours straight shit-work, one-handed typing making it four. I transcribed my Ridyard notes for Jack Whitehead’s big story, glossing over my meetings with Mrs Paula Garland:
Jack-Mrs Garland is reluctant to talk about the disappearance of her daughter. Her cousin is Paul Kelly, an employee of this paper, and he has asked that we respect her wish to be left alone.
I picked up the receiver and dialled.
On the second ring, “Hello, Edward?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are you?”
“At work.”
“When are you coming back?”
“I’ve been warned off again.”
“Who by?”
“Your Paul.”
“I’m sorry. He means well.”
“I know, but he’s right.”
“Edward, I…”
“I’ll ring you tomorrow.”
“Are you going to court?”
Alone in the office, I said, “Yeah.”
“It’s him, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it looks that way.”
“Please come over.”
“I can’t.”
“Please?”
“I’ll ring tomorrow, I promise. I’ve got to go.”
The line went dead and my stomach knotted.
I had my head in my good and bad hands, the stink of hospitals and her on them both.
I lay in the dark on the floor of Room 27, thinking of women.
The lorries in the car park came and went, their lights making shadows dance like skeletons across the room.
I lay on my stomach, my back to the wall, eyes closed and hands over my ears, thinking of girls.
Outside in the night, a car door slammed.
I jumped up, out of my skin, screaming.
Chapter 7
· AM, Thursday 19 December 1974.
My mother was sat in her rocking chair in the back room, staring out at the garden in the grey morning sleet.
I handed her a cup of tea and said, “I’ve come for my black suit.”
“There’s a clean shirt on your bed,” she said, still looking out of the window, not touching the tea.
