1977

The bed clothing at the right side is saturated with blood and on the floor beneath is a pool of blood covering about two feet square. The wall by the right side of the bed and in line with the neck is marked by blood which has struck it in a number of separate splashes.

The face has been gashed in all directions, the nose, the cheeks, eyebrows and ears being partly removed. The lips have been blanched and cut by several incisions running obliquely down to the chin. There are also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all the features.

The neck has been cut through the skin and other tissues right down to the vertebrae, the fifth and sixth being deeply notched. The skin cuts in the front of the neck show distinct eccymosis.

The air passage has been cut at the lower part of the larynx through the cricoid cartilage.

Both breasts have been removed by more or less circular incisions, the muscles down to the ribs being attached to the breasts. The intercostals between the fourth, fifth, and sixth ribs have been cut through and the contents of the thorax are visible through the openings.

The skin and tissues of the abdomen from the costal arch to the pubes have been removed in three large flaps. The right thigh is denuded in front to the bone, the flap of skin, including the external organs of generation and part of the right buttock. The left thigh has been stripped of skin, fascia, and muscles as far as the knee.

The left calf shows a long gash through skin and tissues to the deep muscles, reaching from the knee to five inches above the ankle.

Both arms and forearms have extensive and jagged wounds.

The right thumb shows a small superficial incision about one inch long, with extravasation of blood in the skin and there are several abrasions on the back of the hand showing the same condition.

On opening the thorax it appears that the right lung is minimally adherent by old firm adhesions. The lower part of the lung is broken and torn away.

The left lung is intact: adherent at the apex and there are a few adhesions over the side. In the substance of the lung are several nodules of consolidation.

The pericardium is open below.

In the abdominal cavity is some partly digested food and fish and potatoes and similar food was found in the remains of the stomach attached to the intestines.

Spitalfields, 1888.

The heart is absent and the door locked from the inside.

I woke to find them still perched across the sofa.

I flew from the bed and, casting them aside, I flung open Oldman’s dossier:

Murders and Assaults Upon Women in the North of England.

I read and read till my eyes were blood-red and bleeding from all that I’d read.

And then I began to type, type as they chattered among themselves, wheeling around the room in dreadful disharmony, Carol taunting me, scolding me:

‘You’re late. You’re late. You’re always so late.’

One bitten finger in my ear, I kept typing, texts rewritten in a matching, fetching, fresh blood-red.

In the darkest part of the night, before the dawn and the light, I’d finished, just one last thing to do:

I picked up the telephone and pulled the numbers round the dial, my stomach turning with each digit.

‘It’s me, Jack.’

‘I thought you’d never call.’

‘It’s not been easy’

‘It never is.’

‘I need to see you.’

‘Better late than never.’

With the dawn and more soft rain, I woke again. They were sleeping, wilted across my furniture.

I lay alone, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling, the chips in the paint, thinking about her, thinking about him, waiting for St Anne.

I rose and tiptoed past them to the table.

I pulled the paper from the typewriter.

I held the words in my hand and felt my belly bleeding:

Yorkshire, 1977.

The heart absent, the door still locked from the inside.

She came up behind me, leaning over my shoulder, warm against my ear, staring at the words I’d written:

Yesterday’s news, tomorrow’s headline:

The Yorkshire Ripper.

The John Shark Show

Radio Leeds

Thursday 2nd June 1977

Chapter 5

Spade work:

Twenty-four hours’ solid digging.

No sleep since we left Preston -

The drive back over Wednesday morning, Rudkin and Ellis as hung-over as fuck, passed out in the back.

Home, Millgarth still chaos and bodies, tips coming in one a bloody minute, no fucker free to follow them through. Me thinking, his name could be right here now in this room, right here now written in ink, right here now waiting for me.

Me, flying through slips, chasing up calls.

3.30 p.m. and I get the last call I want: another post office, another sub-postmaster.

Rudkin giving Noble shit: ‘Fuck’s it got to do with bloody Bob?’

‘We haven’t got anyone else.’

‘Neither have I.’

OT ban kicking in, Uniforms having voted to continue the ban while we were over the hills in Preston, Rudkin with his, ‘Who can fucking blame them?’ speech.

‘You’re getting to be a right whining bastard, John. It’s just for a couple of days.’

‘This is bollocks. We haven’t got a couple of days. He’s supposed to be Prostitute Murder Squad.’

But Noble’s gone and I’m back on the fucking post office jobs:

Hanging Heaton, Skipton, Doncaster, and now Selby.

Fuck-ups from start to finish.

Would be Robbery Squad and five years maximum if the dumb bastards had kept their fucking fingers off their bloody triggers in Skipton and didn’t insist on battering each of the old gits half to death.

Murder: life for a life.

Well done, boys:

Suspects believed to be four, gloved and masked with local accents.

Could be gypsies: surprise, surprise.

Could be black: no surprises.

Level of violence suggested white, late teens/early twenties, previous form and too much