1980

‘So he was a copper when you met him, Bob?’

Nodding: ‘Yeah, did you know him well?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Not well.’

‘He didn’t want to leave, you know?’

‘So I hear.’

‘We did all right though.’

‘He never worked at this shop in Batley then?’

‘No. Wasn’t him, was it. He rents it to some Pakis.’

‘So what did he do?’

‘He’s got his business interests.’

‘His business interests?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ she shrugs.

‘Fair enough,’ I say.

‘Sorry, look at me forgetting my manners,’ she says, standing up suddenly. ‘Have a cup of tea, will you?’

‘Go on then. If you’re making one.’

She crosses the room and then stops in the doorway: ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?’

‘Peter Hunter,’ I smile.

‘Sharon,’ she smiles back. ‘Sharon Douglas…’ and then she stops -

Stops and turns right round -

I’m still smiling at her.

‘Peter Hunter, did you say?’

I nod, smiling.

‘You were here on Sunday, that was you. You’re the bloke that investigates all the police, aren’t you?’

I try to keep smiling: ‘And we met at Headquarters -’

‘And you were over in Wakefield after Bob got shot, I remember you now. They were always -’

‘They were always what, love?’

But she looks right at me, shaking her head: ‘I think you’d better leave.’

I stay put, right where I am: ‘They were always what, Sharon?’

‘I want you to leave.’

I stand up and take a Spunk out: ‘I need to talk to you about these.’

‘Get out!’ she shouts, not even a glance at the magazine.

‘These his business interests, are they love?’

‘Get out!’

‘Look at it, Sharon.’

‘Get out!’

I walk towards her: ‘This how you two met, was it?’

‘Fuck off!’ she shouts, heading for the door -

I follow her out into the hall: ‘Don’t worry, love. I’ve got them all. Every bleeding issue.’

She opens the door and grabs my arm, pulling and then pushing me out into the drive -

‘Bastard!’ she screams. ‘My daughter’s dead, you fucking bastard!’

‘Which issue were you -’

‘Fucking bastard!’ she spits and slams the door.

I hold the magazine open up to the glass, saying: ‘Have to make some copies for your neighbours.’

‘I’m calling the police,’ comes the voice from the other side of the door -

‘Good idea,’ I say, walking off. ‘We love a bit of smut.’

And then somewhere over the Moors again, I remember it’s almost Christmas and I hate myself afresh, wondering what the fuck I thought I was doing, what the fuck I thought I was going to do, the bad dreams not leaving, just staying bad, like the headaches and the backache, the murder and the lies, the cries and the whispers, the screams of the wires and the signals, like the voices and the numbers:

666 .

Parked by a church on the way into Denholme, the Exegesis on my lap, listening to the tapes in my head again -

Listening and revising, filling in the blanks -

Fleshing out the bones -

Convinced:

Robert Charles Douglas was born in Mirfield, West Yorkshire on October 12, 1946, sharing a birthday with the cultist and black magician Aleister Crowley. Attended Mirfield Grammar School, briefly enrolling at a technical college before leaving to join the Bradford police when he was eighteen. Age of twenty-seven, Douglas married Sharon Pearson, a glamour model ten years his junior. February 1974, daughter Karen born. 1974, as a Detective Constable, Douglas became nationally known as one of the two policemen responsible for the arrest of Michael Myshkin, the man later convicted of the murders of Jeanette Garland, Susan Ridyard, and Clare Kemplay. Only weeks later Douglas was again in the headlines, this time as the victim of a serious gunshot wound received as he attempted to foil a robbery at the Strafford Arms public house in the centre of Wakefield. Forced to retire from the police on disability grounds on October 13, 1975, the day after his twenty-ninth birthday. It was a decision he’d annealed three times. With the substantial compensation for the injuries and his forced retirement, Douglas bought a new house in Levenshulme in Manchester and a newsagents in Batley. He later sublet the newsagents in order to concentrate on other business interests with a Bradford Vice detective named Eric Hall and a Manchester businessman called Richard Dawson. They started publishing a pornographic contact magazine - Spunk. His life however began to deteriorate from October 13, 1975. Always a heavy drinker – even as a serving policeman Douglas was considered to be ‘unstable’ and ‘a weak link’ by some of his colleagues – from 1975 on, Douglas was involved in a number of minor incidents all of which, however, highlighted a growing dependency on alcohol. Throughout 1977, Douglas was frequently reported missing by his wife and, on his intermittent returns to their Manchester home, police were called by neighbours reporting insulting and threatening behaviour and physical assaults upon his wife. In June 1977 both Eric Hall and his girlfriend, a sometime Spunk model called Janice Ryan, were murdered. Douglas was not mentioned in either investigation. During the summer of 1979, Douglas was actually listed as a missing person by local police who were unable to locate him. He eventually turned up at his brother’s flat in Glasgow in September 1979. He returned to his wife later the same month, apparently having given up drinking. He remained in Manchester until late November 1980 when he once again began disappearing for days at a time. Bob Douglas was scared, running – sometime between Tuesday 16 and Wednesday 17 December 1980, Bob Douglas and his daughter were murdered.

Douglas, Dawson, and Hall -

Convinced:

Obsessed, possessed, convinced.

I pull up once more in front of that lonely house with its back to the Denholme golf course and I walk up the drive and I ring the bell -

Another voice from behind another door: ‘Hello?’

‘Mrs Hall? It’s Peter Hunter.’

I listen to a chain being dropped and two locks sliding back -

The door opens:

‘Good afternoon, Mr Hunter,’ smiles Libby Hall -

‘Is it?’ I say, looking round at the looming night and the constant rain into sleet into snow into rain into sleet into snow that seems to be haunting me, plaguing me, cursing me.

‘Come in,’ she says. ‘I seem to be quite the flavour of the month.’