It’s raining heavily again.
We get out.
There’s tape around the shrubbery, the bushes.
We walk towards it.
Noble is stood next to me, squinting back down the road through the rain -
‘She got off the bus at nine-twenty,’ he’s saying -
Saying to himself: ‘Crossed the road and walked down here.’
He looks back to the other end of Alma Road -
‘Flat’s just up there,’ he says.
We stand in the rain before the bushes, Noble, Alderman, and me -
‘He come up behind her,’ says Alderman. ‘Hit her on the head and took her behind the bushes.’
No one says anything.
Alderman’s words just hanging there until -
Until Noble turns and we follow him back to the car, the driver stood under a black umbrella smoking.
Inside the car, I say: ‘Been fifteen months, yeah? Since the last one?’
Noble nods, Alderman turning around in the front seat.
I continue: ‘Makes you wonder what he’s been doing?’
‘We’re already running prison checks,’ says Alderman.
‘He’s not done time,’ I say.
Noble looks away from the window: ‘What makes you so certain?’
‘You’d have had him if he had.’
Alderman says: ‘What about the Services? Ireland?’
‘Maybe, but I doubt it.’
Noble agrees: ‘Someone would have said something.’
‘What then?’ asks Alderman.
‘You got a hobby?’ I ask him.
‘What?’
‘What’s your hobby?’ I say again.
‘Shooting. Hunting. Why?’
‘Where do you go?’
‘All over.’
‘Where?’
‘Eccup, that way’
‘How often do you go?’
‘Not as often as I’d like.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Work.’
‘Work?’
‘Aye, work. Because of bleeding Ripper for a start. Why?’
‘But before, before all this, you got out fairly regular?’
‘Yeah, except when kids were right young, yeah.’
‘How about before kids were born?’
‘Oh aye. Every day off I had.’
I nod: ‘That’s my point.’
‘What? What’s your point?’
I say: ‘He’s the same.’
‘Who?’
‘The Ripper.’
Alderman’s grinning: ‘What? He’s into shooting and all?’
Noble’s shaking his head: ‘He means he’s got the same bollocks in his life we all have. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?’
I nod: ‘When we get him, you’ll see the same patterns we all have, same pressures, rhythms: work, the wife, kids, holidays.’
Alderman: ‘You reckon Ripper’s married with kids? Fuck off.’
‘He’s married, I bet you.’
‘How much?’
‘Whatever you can afford.’
‘That the Ripper’s married with kids?’
‘Married,’ I say. ‘No kids.’
‘A hundred quid says you’re wrong,’ says Alderman, hand out.
We shake on it: ‘Hundred quid it is.’
Noble interrupts: ‘Why you so sure?’
‘You’re the bloke that got Raymond Morris,’ I say. ‘It’ll be the same, Pete.’
Noble looks away, the rain in sheets down the car windows.
‘What do you mean?’ says Dickie Alderman.
Noble, watching the water come down, whispers: ‘Raymond Morris had alibis from his wife.’
His window has misted over, the car stuffed.
Alderman is shaking his head: ‘No-one would cover for this cunt.’
‘She doesn’t think she is doing; doesn’t see him for what he is,’ I say, then: ‘But neither do we.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘No, half that Ripper Room are looking for a hunchbacked Geordie with hairy bloodstained hands, flesh between his teeth and a hammer in his pocket.’
Noble, a face full of fear and sneer: ‘Yeah? So who should we be looking for, Pete?’
I tell him what he already knows – knows in his heart, knows in his head: ‘He’s mobile, has his own vehicle. It must have come up numerous times in the sweeps, so he has to have a reason to be where he shouldn’t be – taxi driver, lorry driver, sales rep…’
Noble: ‘Copper?’
‘Copper…’
‘Fuck off,’ snorts Alderman.
I shrug: ‘He’ll have a good local knowledge as a result of his work and because he’s from round here – lives and works round here.’
Alderman: ‘You can’t say that? If he’s a lorry driver, he could be living any-bloody-where?’
‘No,’ I say quietly, shaking my head and wiping the side-window clean. ‘He’s from round here because he hates it, hates it enough to kill it – so he has to have been around here long enough to hate it, to want to kill it.’
Noble: ‘Go on.’
‘He’ll have a record, however minor.’
Alderman: ‘Why?’
‘Because when he was younger, he couldn’t control the hate like he can now. He’ll have made mistakes…’
‘We’d know,’ says Alderman.
‘Not if you’re not looking.’
‘We’re fucking looking,’ spits Alderman, almost over the seat and at me.
Me, hands up: ‘But for what? An unmarried hunchbacked Geordie with hairy bloodstained hands, flesh between his teeth and a hammer in his pocket?’
‘Fuck off, Pete,’ says Noble.
‘No,’ I tell him. ‘You should go back over every statement where the bloke’s been covered by his wife.’
‘Fuck off,’ says Alderman.
‘Start with your top ten.’
