1980

I pulled open the door and stepped inside -

Inside:

Inside there was a man sat upon a low table, a man with a beard and a shotgun in his hands, staring at a TV with the sound turned low, the walls tattooed with shadow and pain -

The pain of the photographs -

Joyce Jobson, Anita Bird, Grace Morrison, Carol Williams, Theresa Campbell, Clare Strachan, Joan Richards, Ka Su Peng, Marie Watts, Linda Clark, Rachel Johnson, Janice Ryan, Elizabeth McQueen, Kathy Kelly, Tracey Livingston, Candy Simon, Doreen Pickles, Joanne Thornton, Dawn Williams, Laureen Bell, Karen Douglas, Libby Hall -

The pain of twenty-two photographs, plus the one on the low table next to him -

The one on the table next to him -

I picked up the photograph -

The one on the table -

It was Helen Marshall.

The man turned from the TV -

Prom the people on the TV singing hymns, the people on the TV singing hymns with no face, no features, machines -

The people on the TV singing hymns with no face, no features, machines -

People on the TV singing hymns of hate:

‘You are a beast with no feelings, a coward, not a man. All people hate you. I think you are the Devil himself.’

On the TV singing hymns of hate:

‘You are a very inadequate person, certainly physically and mentally. You can’t make a relationship with a live woman. Possibly your only relationships are with dead women.’

The TV singing hymns of hate:

‘Doesn’t it bother you to think people hate you for doing this? It is nothing to be proud of, the things you do.’

TV singing hymns of hate:

‘You are the worst coward the world has ever known and that should go down in the Guinness Book of Records.’

Singing hymns of hate:

‘You are an obscenity on the face of the earth. When they catch you and put you away, they will throw away the key.’

Hymns of hate:

‘Look over your shoulder, Ripper. Many people are looking for you. They hate you.’

Of hate -

The man with the beard turned from the TV -

Turned from the TV, from the hate -

Turned and said:

‘You don’t see them, you don’t – but I see them; they are hunting me down - I must move on.’

And he put the gun to his mouth, fingers on the trigger, and -

– a shot.

I’m awake -

Awake in my car on Alma Road, Headingley -

Sweating, afraid -

Birds overhead, screaming.

I look at my watch:

06:03:00 -

Tuesday 30 December 1980:

Alma Road -

The ordinary street in the ordinary suburb, not one hundred yards from a main road.

The ordinary street in the ordinary suburb where a man took a hammer and a knife to another man’s daughter, to another man’s sister, another man’s fiancйe.

The ordinary street in the ordinary suburb where the Yorkshire Ripper took his hammer and his knife to Laureen Bell and shattered her skull and stabbed her fifty-seven times in her abdomen, in her womb, and once in her eye -

In this ordinary street in this ordinary suburb, this ordinary girl -

This ordinary girl, now dead.

‘I’m not sure about this,’ the woman in white is saying, trying to take hold of the sleeve of my raincoat. ‘I really think you should speak to Mr Papps.’

But I’m away -

Away through the second-hand furniture, the large wardrobes, the dressers and the chairs, the heavy carpets and the curtains -

Away through the skin and the bones, their striped pyjamas and their spotted nightgowns, their slippers and their vespers, their scratchings and their mumblings -

Away up their stairs, down their corridors -

Half green, half cream -

Fresh green, fresh cream -

Wet paint -

Away -

My wings, away -

The woman in white at my heels, still saying: ‘I’m not sure about this.’

My warrant card in her face: ‘Open the doors.’

And she starts turning keys, unlocking doors, until -

Until we come to the last door at the end of the last corridor -

Jack’s door.

We stand there, panting -

Panting until -

Until I say: ‘Open it, please.’

And she turns the key, unlocks the door.

‘Thank you,’ I say and open the door.

I step inside, closing the door behind me -

Behind me, so it’s just me and Jack -

Jack’s lying on his back in a pair of grey striped pyjamas, his hands loose at his sides, eyes open and face blank, his whole head and face shaven.

‘Mr Whitehead,’ I say.

‘Mr Hunter,’ he replies.

‘Sounds like someone fixed the toilet?’

He nods: ‘And I miss it.’

‘The dripping?’

‘Yes, the dripping.’

And there is silence -

Just silence -

Just silence until -

Until I ask: ‘How was Pinderfields?’