1983

My stop is next -

I am nine years old.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 -

All good children go to heaven.

I cross road. I cut through Corporation Cemetery. I come out on to street -

My street, our street:

Newstead View.

This is where it started:

Fitzwilliam, 1967 -

Not heaven.

I look at watch again. It says thirteen o’clock -

Hate Week.

I walk down street -

Our street;

I come to house -

Our house;

I open gate. I walk up path -

It is dark now. I am confused;

I press doorbell. I wait -

A shadow on her wall in silence of her night;

I hear footsteps. I see a small body through glass -

I think about her all time;

Wait almost over -

I’ve been so far away, so far from her arms;

Now I’m home -

Back from underground.

Chapter 52

I have found her. She is safe and well. I hold her hand. We get into my car. Her family will be overjoyed. I start the car. We drive. She needs the toilet. We pull into a motorway service station. I park among the lorries and the coaches. We get out of the car. I lock the doors. We walk across the tarmac. I hold her hand. She goes into the ladies. I stand outside. I wait. Her family will be overjoyed. I wait. It starts to spit. I wait. Lorries come and lorries go. I wait. She does not come out. I go inside to look for her. There is blood on the floor. Blood up the walls. I push open the cubicle doors. I come to the last one. It is locked. It will not open. I knock. I knock and knock and knock. Blood on the floor. Up the walls. I step back. I kick in the door. She’s not there. I run outside. She’s not there. The lorries and the coaches gone. Not there. The car park empty. Blood on my shoes. On my socks. A Bloody Tide, lapping at my ankles. Up my legs. I start to run. The waters rising. The Bloody Waters. The rain coming down. The Bloody Rain. I slip. I fall to the ground. I cannot stand. I am drowning here. The Bloody Tide, a Bloody Flood.

I woke on my knees, my hands in prayer, in the shadows and dead of the night, the house quiet and dark, listening for something, anything: animal or bird’s feet from below or above, a car in the street, a milk bottle on the step, the thud of the paper on the mat, but there was nothing; only the silence, the shadows and the dead, remembering when it wasn’t always so, wasn’t always this way, when there were human feet upon the stairs, children’s feet, the slam of a ball against a bat or a wall, the pop of a cap gun and a burst balloon, bicycle bells and front doorbells, laughter and telephones ringing through the rooms, the smells, sounds and tastes of meals cooked, served and eaten, of drinks poured, glasses raised and toasts drunk by men with cigars in black velvet jackets, their women with their sherries in their long evening dresses, the spare room for the long summer nights when no-one could drive, when no-one could leave, no-one wanted to leave, before that last time; that last time the telephone rang and brought the silence that never left, that was here with me now, lying in the shadows and dead of a house, quiet and dark, empty -

Tuesday morning.

I reached for my glasses and went down the stairs to the kitchen and put on the light and filled the kettle and lit the gas and took a teapot from the cupboard and a cup and saucer and unlocked the back door to see if the milk had been delivered yet but it hadn’t and there wasn’t any milk in the fridge but I still put two teabags in the teapot and took the kettle off the ring and poured the water on to the teabags and let it stand while I washed the soup pan from last night and the bowl and then dried them both up, staring out into the garden and the field behind, the kitchen reflected back in the glass, a man fully dressed in dark brown trousers, a light blue shirt and a green v-necked pullover, wearing his thick lenses with their heavy black frames, an old man fully dressed at four o’clock in the morning -

Tuesday 7 June 1983.

I put the teapot and cup and saucer on the plastic blue tray and took it into the dining room and set it down on the table and poured the tea and lit a cigarette and then switched on the radio and sat in the chair and waited for the news on Radio Leeds:

‘Police searching for missing Morley schoolgirl, Hazel Atkins, are expected to come under renewed pressure for a breakthrough in the investigation following criticisms of the police handling of the case made by Hazel’s parents.

‘In a newspaper article in this morning’s Yorkshire Post, Mr and Mrs Atkins say they have not been kept informed of the progress of the inquiry into their daughter’s disappearance and have only learned of certain key developments through the press or television. Mr and Mrs Atkins were particularly critical of Chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson, the man leading the investigation. Hazel’s parents say that Mr Jobson spoke to them on just three occasions early in the inquiry but that he has since been either unavailable or unwilling to meet them.

‘Mr Jobson has so far refused to comment on…’

Radio off, glasses off -

I was sat in the chair in tears again;

In tears -

For I knew there was salvation in no-one else -

No other name under heaven.

In tears -

Tuesday 7 June 1983:

Day 27.

Just gone seven -

Morley Police Station -

The Incident Room.

No-one here but me -

No-one and nothing here but two dozen four-drawer filing cabinets, nearly two hundred card-index drawers, a two-tier wooden rack for the scores of Action books and ten trestle tables with five huge computers and twenty telephones, the telephones on tables fitted out as desks for writing up Actions, statements and reports, card-writing and cross-checking the house-to-houses and the cars, cross-indexing and entering data, updating files and sending out for more -

Or not, marking them: