1977

I put my fingers to my face and they came away bloody.

I pinched my nose in a dirty old handkerchief and asked, ‘Carol?’

‘You remembered,’ she replied.

‘Thank you for seeing me at such notice.’

‘Not a problem,’ said Assistant Chief Constable George Oldman.

We were sat in his brand new Wakefield office, modern to the bone.

It was Wednesday 1 June 1977.

Eleven in the morning, the rain gone.

‘Listen to that,’ said George Oldman, nodding to the open window and the shouts and stomps of cadets drifting up from the Police College. ‘We’ll lose almost fifty per cent within five years.’

‘That many?’

He looked down at the papers on his desk and sighed, ‘Probably more.’

I looked round the room, wondering what he wanted me to say, wondering why I’d asked Hadden to set this up.

‘Looks like you been in the wars too, Jack?’

‘You know me,’ I said, touching the bruise beneath my eye.

‘How’ve you been, seriously now?’

Taken aback by the real concern in his voice, I smiled, ‘Fine, really. Thanks.’

‘It’s been a long time.’

‘Not really. Three years.’

He looked down at his desk again. ‘Is that all?’

He was right: 100 years.

I wanted to sigh, to lie face down on his floor, to be taken back to my bed.

George waved his hand across the desk and asked sadly, ‘But you’ve kept up with all this?’

‘Yeah,’ I lied.

‘And Bill wants you on it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you?’

Thinking about choices and promises, debts and guilt, nodding and keeping on lying, saying, ‘Yeah.’

‘Well, in a way, it’s good because we could use all the publicity we can get.’

‘Not like you.’

‘No. But neither’s this and…’

‘And it can only get worse.’

George handed me a thick white bound dossier and said, ‘Yeah.’

I read:

Murders and Assaults Upon Women in the North of England.

I opened up the first page and the bloody contents:

Joyce Jobson, assaulted Halifax, July 1974.

Anita Bird, assaulted Cleckheaton, August 1974.

Theresa Campbell, murdered Leeds, June 1975.

Clare Strachan, murdered Preston, November 1975.

Joan Richards, murdered Leeds, February 1976.

Ka Su Peng, assaulted Bradford, October 1976.

Marie Watts, murdered Leeds, May 1977.

‘It’s top secret.’

I nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘We’ve circulated it to all the other forces across the country.’

‘And you think each of these women was attacked by the same man?’

‘The three we’ve publicly linked, definitely. The others we can’t discount simply because we’ve no evidence either way’

‘Fuck.’

‘Clare Strachan looks more and more likely and, if she’s in with the others, that’ll be a big help.’

‘Evidence?’

‘More than we got over here.’

I flicked through the pages, skimming words:

Philips screwdriver, abdomen, heavy Wellington boots, vagina, ballpein hammer, skull.

Black and white photos leaping out:

Alleys, terrace backs, wasteland, rubbish tips, garages, playing fields.

‘What do you want me to do with it?’

‘Read it.’

‘I’d like to interview the survivors.’

‘Be my guest.’

‘Thanks.’

He looked at his watch and stood up. ‘Early lunch?’

‘That’d be nice,’ I lied again, another angel dying.

At the door, George Oldman stopped. ‘There’s me doing all the bloody talking and it was you who asked for the interview’

‘Just like old times,’ I smiled.

‘What was on your mind?’

‘We covered it. I wondered if you’d connected any other attacks or murders.’

‘And?’

We were standing in his doorway, half in and half out, women in blue overalls polishing the floors and the walls.

‘And if he’d made contact?’

Oldman looked back at his desk. ‘None.’

George brought the pints over.

‘Food’ll be five minutes.’

The College was quiet, a couple of other coppers drank up when they saw us, everyone else was either a lawyer or a businessman.

George knew them all.

‘How’s Wakefield?’ I asked.

‘Good, you know.’

‘You miss Leeds?’

‘Oh aye, but I’m over there every other bloody day. Especially now.’

‘Lillian and the girls, they keeping well?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

The wall was still there, as high as ever:

A car crash, four maybe five years ago. His only son dead, one daughter paralysed, all kinds of rumours.

‘Here we are,’ said George, two big plates of liver in front of us.

We ate in silence, stealing glances, forming questions, abandoning them under the weight of a thousand bad tangents, worse memories, mires and traps. And then for a moment, just one moment, between the liver and the onions, the dartboard and the bar, I felt sorry for the big man before me, sorry like he didn’t deserve the things he’d been through, the lessons he’d got coming, like none of us deserved our cruel cities and faithless priests, our barren women and unjust laws. But then I remembered all we’d done, the cuts we’d taken, the lives stolen and lost, and knew I was right when I said it could only get worse, so much more worse, the lessons we’d all got coming.

He dropped his knife and fork on to his empty plate and said, ‘Why did you ask if we’d had any contact?’

‘Just a hunch, a feeling.’

‘Yeah?’