the scene, officers found the downstairs empty and proceeded up the stairs. On entering the first floor bar, officers found three people dead at the scene and three seriously injured, two with gunshot wounds. There was no sign of the people responsible and calls were made to immediately set up roadblocks. Ambulances were called and arrived at 1:48 a.m.’
I stopped reading -
Clarkie was squatting down, eyes closed.
‘What you thinking?’ I asked him.
He looked up: ‘OK, let’s back up a bit?’
I nodded.
‘We’ve got to sort out what happened before Craven and Douglas, before the Specials.’
Me: ‘Go on.’
‘Well, looking at the sketches and the photographs,’ he said, doing just that. ‘We’ve got the barmaid Grace Morrison, dead behind here,’ and he walked behind the bar, putting the photograph down next to the till -
‘Then we’ve got the three men: Bell dead here,’ and Clarkie put a photo down on the sofa that ran along the window -
‘Box there,’ he pointed, handing me a photo to put down on the floor in front of the bar. ‘And Booker, bleeding to death next to him.’
Four photographs -
Four black and white photographs -
Stood there in the centre of the wreckage, Clarkie and me staring at the four black and white photographs laid out across the room.
‘Order?’ he asked me.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘We’ve got three guns: a shotgun, a Webley, and an L39 rifle.’
‘An L39? That’s the new police rifle,’ said Clarkie.
‘Yep. Popular weapon these days.’
‘So who got what?’
‘Box, Booker, and Douglas get the shotgun; Bell the L39 and the barmaid the pistol, the Webley.’
‘Well, Craven reckoned on a four-man team. We got three guns.’
‘Still can’t get the order clear, can you?’ I said.
‘This is what I reckon,’ said Clarkie, back over by the door. ‘Night before Christmas Eve, everywhere quiet waiting for the big night tomorrow; gone one, the downstairs closed. Strafford a well-known afterhours, bit of brass. Car pulls up outside, they hit the stairs running, burst in, shouting for the till – but there’s buttons, it’s a fuck up. They turn on the public – except this public is Derek fucking Box, professional villain and hardman, and his mate Paul. And they’re fucked if they’re going to hand over their big posh new watches to some crew of out of town nonces.’
Out of town?’
‘No-one local’s going to do the Strafford, Pete.’
‘Kids?’
‘Come on, an L39? This is some heavy bloody ordnance they’ve got here.’
I stared over at the sofa, at the hole in the back of the chair, the hole that went through into the wall -
The hole where 01’ Billy Bell had been sitting, his broken glass still on the floor.
Clarkie was saying: ‘So Derek and Paul are giving them bollocks and one of them let’s Derek have it, then Paul, and then it’s in for a penny in for a pound, bye-bye Billy, bye-bye Grade – who’s been screaming her fucking tits off anyway.’
I was nodding along, glancing at the photo on the bar.
‘Then they’re doing the till and their pockets, when in come our hero cops, and it’s thwack, bang, thank you Wakefield.’
Me: ‘Thanks for nothing.’
‘Four dead, two wounded coppers – and all for the change in their pockets.’
‘Can’t see it,’ I said. ‘Can’t see it.’
‘You will,’ said George Oldman, in through the back door with Maurice Jobson. ‘You will.’
Millgarth, Leeds -
Sunday 21 December 1980:
Murphy, McDonald, Hillman, Marshall.
‘Where’s Bob Craven?’ I ask -
Everyone shrugs their shoulders.
‘Well,’ I say. ‘This one’s me.’
Eyes down -
Silence in the dark room for the ritual of the dead -
Thinking, is this how the dead live:
‘At 6:30 a.m. on Saturday 19 May last year the body of Joanne Clare Thornton, a 19-year-old bank clerk, was found in Lewisham Park, Morley. She was not a prostitute nor was her moral character questionable. She was last seen alive when she left her aunt’s house at 11:55 p.m. on Friday 18 May to walk to her own home, a distance of just over one mile. Death was estimated to have occurred between 12:15 a.m. and 12:30 a.m. on Saturday 19 May 1979.
‘That death came from two blows to the back of the head as she walked through the park and was instantaneous, her skull fractured from ear to ear. Her killer then dragged her onto the grass, repositioned her clothes and stabbed her twenty-one times in the abdominal area, six times in the right leg, and three times on and in the vagina. When he had finished he placed one shoe between her thighs and her own raincoat over her.
‘Joanne lay like that until 6:30 when she was initially spotted by a bus driver who believed it was a bundle of rags and reported it as such when he returned to his depot. By that time, however, a local woman on her way to work had already realised what exactly that pile of rags was and reported it to the police.
‘George Oldman issued the following statement:
‘If this is connected with the previous Ripper killings, then he has made a terrible mistake. As with Rachel Johnson, the dead girl is perfectly respectable. It appears he has changed his method of attack and this is concerning me; now in a non-red light area and attacking innocents. All women are at risk, even in areas not recognised as Ripper Country.’
‘There was a big response,’ I continue, glancing at Helen Marshall. ‘And witnesses came forward providing us with one solid description plus three motors -
‘At about nine on the Friday night, a man had attempted to pick up a Jamaican woman as she walked along Fountain Street in the centre of Morley. He was driving a dark-coloured Ford Escort and was described as being about thirty years of age with dirty blond collar-length hair, which was greasy and worn over his ears. He had what was described as a Jason King moustache which ended halfway between the corners of his mouth and chin, with a square face and jaw and was generally described as being of a scruffy appearance. He was wearing a brown-brushed cotton shirt with a tartan check, open at the neck, under a tartan lumber jacket with a beige or white fur collar.
‘The same man was spotted at about midnight parked in the same Ford Escort outside a cafй on the Middleton Road, across from Lewisham Park. The witness described the Escort as being made between 1968 and 1975, which would make it something between a G and N redg.
‘A photofit of this man was shown to Linda Clark, who was the woman who’d been attacked in Bradford in June 1977, and has to date provided us with the best description of the Ripper.’
‘Assuming she was attacked by Ripper, that is,’ says Murphy.
‘Yep,’ I sigh. ‘Assuming she was attacked by the Ripper.’
