Mr Jobson was nodding.
I put my cup down on the low coffee table next to the Philips Pocket Memo, the wheels turning.
‘And how are you now?’
‘Better. I mean, every time there’s another and every time it’s a prostitute, I know it starts folk talking again. I just wish they’d hurry up and catch the bastard.’
‘You met Anita yet?’ asked Mr Jobson.
‘This afternoon.’
‘Tell her Donald and Joyce said hello.’
‘Of course.’
At the door Mr Jobson said, ‘Sorry about the photographs, it’s just we…’
‘I know, don’t worry. You’ve been more than kind just letting me in.’
‘Well if it helps catch the…’ Mr Jobson looked off down the street, then said quietly, ‘Just ten minutes alone with the cunt, that’s all I ask. And I wouldn’t need no fucking hammer or screwdriver.’
I stood there on his front step, nodding.
We shook hands.
‘Thank you again,’ I said.
‘You’re welcome. Do call us if you hear owt.’
‘Of course.’
I got in the Rover and drove away.
Anita Bird lived in Cleckheaton in exactly the same kind of terrace as the Jobsons, both houses at the top end of steep inclines.
I knocked on the door and waited.
A woman with bleached blonde hair and heavy make-up answered the door.
‘Jack Whitehead. We spoke on the telephone.’
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to excuse the mess.’
She cleared a pile of ironing off one end of the sofa and I sat down in her gloomy front room.
‘Cup of tea?’
‘I’ve just had one, thanks. Donald and Joyce Jobson said to say hello.’
‘Right, of course. How is she?’
‘I’d not met her before, so it’s hard for me to say. She doesn’t go out though.’
‘I was same, me. Then I just thought, fuck him. Excuse my French, but why should he do that to me and leave me sat at home like it’s me that’s in prison while he walks round free as a bloody bird. No thank you. So one day I just said to myself, Anita, you’re not staying locked up in here you silly cow or you might as well top yourself and have done with it, much use you are to anyone like this.’
I was nodding along, placing the tape recorder on the arm of the sofa.
‘Sometimes it seems like a lifetime ago, other times like it was just yesterday’
‘You weren’t living here, I understand?’
‘No, I was staying with Clive, the feller I was seeing back then. Over on Cumberland Avenue. That was half the problem, him being black and all.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well they all thought it must have been him, didn’t they.’
‘Because he was black?’
‘That and he’d battered me a couple of times and police had had to come down.’
‘Was he ever charged?’
‘No, he always talked me round, didn’t he. Smooth he is, Clive.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Clive? Armley, last I heard. GBH.’
‘GBH?’
‘Hit some bloke down International. Police hate him, always have. Daft bastard played straight into their hands.’
‘When’s he due out?’
‘Twelfth of bloody never as far as I’m concerned. You sure you don’t want that cup of tea?’
‘Go on then. Twist my arm.’
She laughed and went off into the kitchen.
In the corner the TV was on with the sound off, lunchtime news with pictures from Ulster, changing to Wedgwood-Benn.
‘Sugar?’ Anita Bird handed me a cup of tea.
‘Please.’
She brought a bag of sugar from the kitchen. ‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘Thanks.’
We sat and sipped our teas, watching silent cricket from Old Trafford.
The Second Test.
I said, ‘Do you mind telling me what happened again?’
She put down her cup and saucer. ‘No.’
‘It was August ’74?’
‘Yeah, the fifth. I’d gone down Bibby’s to look for Clive but…’
‘Bibby’s?’
‘It was a club. Shut down. And Clive wasn’t there. Typical. So I’d had a drink, well more than one actually and then I’d had to go because one of his mates, Joe, he was drunk and trying to get me to go home with him and I knew if Clive had come in there’d have been trouble so I just thought I’d go back to Cumberland Avenue and wait for him there. So I came back and sat there and felt a bit of a lemon like and decided to go back down Bibby’s again and that’s when it happened.’
The room was dark, the sun gone.
‘Did you see him?’
‘Well, they reckon I did. Couple of minutes before it happened, some bloke passed me and said something like, “Weather’s letting us down,” and just kept going. Police reckoned it could have been him because he never came forward like.’
‘Did you say anything back?’
‘No, just kept going.’
‘But you saw his face?’
‘Yeah, I saw his face.’
She had her eyes closed, her hands locked together between her knees.
I sat there in her front room, another wicket down, like he was there on the sofa next to me, a big smile, a hand on my knee, a last laugh amongst the furniture.
She opened her eyes wide, staring past me.
‘You OK?’
‘He was well-dressed and smelt of soap. Had a neat beard and moustache. Looked Italian or Greek you know, like one of them good-looking waiters.’
‘He have an accent?’
‘Local.’
‘Tall?’
‘Nowt special. Could have been wearing boots and all, them Cuban type.’
‘And so he walked past you and…’
She closed her eyes again and said slowly, ‘And then couple of minutes later he hit me and that was that.’
