They sit down and push a tea across the table.
They look tired.
Not happy, resigned.
Jim Prentice says, ‘Bob? I’m going to ask you again just to give us a bit more about this domestic problem. It’d help us a lot. Help you.’
‘How?’
‘Bob, we’re all policemen here. All on the same side. If you don’t start helping us out a bit, then we’ll have to turn it over to another crew. And no-one wants that, do they?’
‘But you’re not going to tell us what this is about?’
‘Bob, how many more times? We already have. It’s about what you were up to in them “missing hours”?’
I pick up the cigarette Alderman’s chucked down beside my tea and lean forward to let him light it.
I sit back in the chair, the smoke curling up to the low ceiling, my head with it, until finally I say:
‘I was having an affair with another woman.’
Alderman sniffs up, disappointed: ‘Was? Past tense?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why’s that?’ he asks.
‘She left.’
‘What’s her name, this woman?’
I look up at the ceiling again and weigh up the odds.
‘Janice Ryan,’ I say.
‘When did you last see her?’
‘Saturday morning.’
‘What time?’
‘About eight.’
‘And that’s why you were drinking?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Because she left you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Does your wife know?’
‘Know what?’
‘That you had a bit on the side?’
‘No.’
‘Is there anything more you want to tell us about your relationship with this other woman?’
‘No.’
‘Thanks, Bob,’ says Jim Prentice and they leave, locking the door behind them.
I look up, the room dark.
The door opens, men rush in and hood me and handcuff me.
They take me from the room, up the stairs, out to the night, into the back of a car, and then we go for a drive.
No-one’s speaking and the car smells of alcohol and cigarettes.
I’m guessing, but I think there are three other men in the car; two in the front and one next to me on the back seat.
About thirty minutes later we leave the road and pull up on what feels like wasteland.
The door opens and they take me out of the car, leading me across uneven ground.
I stumble once and someone hooks an arm through mine.
We stop and stand still for a moment, then they take off the hood.
Blinded by lights, I blink, blink, blink.
It’s night at the edges, white light at the core.
Noble, Alderman, and Prentice are standing before me, under the floodlights, the bright alien floodlights.
Centre-stage, a sofa.
A horrible, terrible, rotting, eaten, bloody sofa.
‘You been here before?’ asks Noble.
I’m staring at the sofa, the rusted metal springs sharpened to spikes, the velvet almost gone.
‘You know where you are?’ Prentice asks.
I look up at them, the angel glow around their faces, and I shake my head.
Again Alderman asks, ‘You been here before or not?’
And I have; in those nightmares, this is where I’d come, and so I’m nodding, saying, ‘Yes.’
And Noble lunges forward and punches me in the jaw and I fall to my knees, tears running down my cheeks, blood filling my mouth, the lights out.
A slap and I’m awake, sat in a chair in a cell, hood and handcuffs gone.
‘Look at her!’ Noble is yelling. I try and focus on the table-top. ‘Look at her!’
Noble is standing, Alderman seated.
I pick up the photograph, the enlarged black and white photograph of her face, her swollen lids and risen lips, her blackened cheeks and matted hair, and I’m shaking, shaking, then puking, puking across the table, hot yellow bile all over the room.
‘Aw Christ, for fuck’s sake.’
I’m in a clean pair of overalls and shirt.
Noble and Alderman are sat across from me, three hot teas on the table.
Alderman sighs and reads from a piece of typed A4:
‘At 12 noon Sunday 12th June, the body of Janice Ryan, twenty-two years old, a convicted prostitute, was found secreted under an old settee on wasteground off White Abbey Road, Bradford.
‘A post-mortem has been carried out and death was due to massive head injuries caused by a heavy blunt instrument. It is thought that death occurred some seven days before due to the partial decomposition of the body.
‘It is also thought from the pattern of the injuries that this death is not connected, repeat not connected, with the other murders publicly referred to as the
Silence.
Then Noble says, ‘She was found by a kid. Saw her right arm sticking out from under the couch,’
Silence.
Then I say, tears not dry, ‘And you think I did it?’
Silence.
Then Noble nods and says, ‘Yeah, and this is how I think you did it: I think you drove her out to Bradford, took her on to wasteground, hit her on head with a rock or stone, then you jumped up and down on her until you broke her ribs and ruptured her liver. You didn’t have a knife on you, but you thought you’d try and make it look like a Ripper job, so you pulled up her bra and pulled down her panties, took off her jeans, then dragged her by her collar over to couch and dumped it on top of her, then you threw her handbag away and pissed off.’
Silence.
Then I say, ‘But why?’
‘Forensics, Bobby,’ says Alderman. ‘We got her all over your clothes, you all over hers, you’re in her flat, under her fucking nails and up her bloody cunt.’
‘But why? Why would I kill her?’
Silence.
‘Bob, we know,’ says Alderman, glancing at Noble.
‘Know what?’
‘She was pregnant,’ he winks.
