‘He was upset about Bob Douglas and their little girl Karen.’
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘Who wasn’t. But usually?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says and lets go of my hand. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘For example, you knew Bob Douglas and his wife?’
‘But that was different, I introduced them.’
‘Right, right,’ I’m nodding. ‘Through the school?’
‘Yes,’ she says, standing up and beginning to pace.
‘I’m sorry, Linda,’ I say. ‘But can I ask you some names, see if they ring any bells?’
She stops by the window, the big cold front window.
I say: ‘Bob Craven?’
She has her back to me and the room, looking out of the window, silent -
‘Linda?’
Looking out of the window over the garden, across the rain on the pond.
I ask her again: ‘Bob Craven?’
Out of the window, over the garden, across the rain on the pond.
‘Linda?’
‘No,’ she says, standing slightly on tiptoes.
‘Eric Hall?’
The window, the garden, the rain, the pond, silent -
I say again: ‘Eric Hall?’
Silent, then -
‘Peter!’
‘What?’
‘No,’ she says, her hands on the glass, turning to me – turning back: ‘No!’
I get up, over to the window -
Linda saying over and over: ‘No! God, no!’
Roger Hook and Ronnie Allen are walking up the gravel to the front door.
‘No!’
I swallow and walk towards the door.
‘Oh no, please no!’
And I open the door and see the looks on their faces -
‘No, no, no,’ she’s screaming, tearing into the back of the house: ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.’
The doorbell rings again -
‘Where is she?’ says Joan.
‘In the bedroom.’
‘What about the kids?’
‘They’re not here. With her parents.’
‘Do they know?’
I shake my head.
‘What happened?’ she asks, her face twitching, lip trembling.
‘Come in here,’ I say and lead her into the lounge -
‘You know Roger?’ I say. ‘And this is Ronnie Allen.’
Roger Hook smiles and Ronnie Allen shakes my wife’s hand: ‘Nice to meet you, Mrs Hunter.’
We sit down on the cream leather sofa and I say: ‘His body was discovered following a fire at a newsagents in Batley, West Yorkshire.’
‘Batley? A fire?’
I shake my head: ‘He’d been murdered, love.’
‘How? I mean what -’
I’ve got my hand up: ‘Listen love, I’m going to tell you the details because Linda will want to know and right now you’re the only person she’s going to let into that bedroom.’
Joan’s twitching, trembling.
‘The fire was on the Bradford Road, Batley, at a newsagents called RD News in the early hours of Tuesday morning, 23 December. His body wasn’t discovered until about lunchtime on Tuesday in the flat above the shop. It looks like the fire started in the flat.’
Roger Hook is listening, nodding along.
‘He had been stripped, stabbed, and strangled – his hands cut off, his teeth smashed in with a hammer. His body had then been doused in petrol and set alight.’
Joan’s trembling.
‘They were only able to identify the body because of his feet.’
‘His feet?’ she says.
‘He’d been born without a heel on his left foot,’ I’m telling her, when I hear -
‘No.’
A faint and dreadful sound from the doorway, and we all look up and there she is -
Her blouse gone, just a bra and skirt, blood dripping from her wrists onto the cream carpet -
‘No!’ screams Joan. ‘No, Peter please -’
And Ronnie’s got Linda in his arms, his hands across her wrists, the blood everywhere -
Me holding Joan back -
The blood everywhere -
Roger shouting into the telephone -
The blood -
The blood everywhere.
to bring a spirit out and that place is the lowest and the darkest the farthest from the sphere that circles all and e saw him down there a lorry driver called peter who drives a cab with a name beginning with the letter C on the side and he lives in bradford transmission interrupted on the twentieth of november nineteen seventy nine in batley tessa smith attacked on a path on grassland on the council estate where she lived with her boyfriend and her baby cutting across the grassland from a late opening estate grocery shop she was struck on the head from behind so hard that the hammer went through her skull and as she fell remembers the man with the beard and a moustache and he hit her again on the forehead but she was screaming and he ran away will not somebody help me will not somebody help me will not somebody help me her boyfriend watching from the window is chasing him down the street shouting ripper ripper hunt hunt ripper ripper cunt cunt but e am too fast for them e am away like a thief in the night to leave them standing upon the brink of griefs abysmal valley that collects the thunderings of endless cries so dark and deep and nebulous it is that try as you might you cannot see the shape of anything faces painted with pity there are no wails just the anguished sound of sighs rising and trembling through the timeless air the sounds of sighs of untormented grief cut off from hope to live on in death in a place where no light is her personality changed drastically since the attack she was always quick with a smile but now she seems to flare up at the slightest thing she only seems happy to be in the company of the baby she argues about every little thing in fact e am sad to say she has become a bit of a tyrant it will never be the same for any of us again even now we tell each other when we go out and where we are going we are all very nervous cut off from hope e have a great mistrust of men jimmy and e had planned to get married in the near future and when e came out of the hospital we got back together for a while but it just did not work out e am on edge all of the time and frightened at being alone with him all that mattered was that he was a fellow and e did not feel safe e preferred to be at home with my mother and my sisters e am obsessed with having my back to the wall all the time even when e am surrounded by friends e have tried to stop myself but e simply cannot stand anyone at my back cut off from hope in a place where no light is where the damned keep crowding up in front of me where the notes of anguish play upon
