1983

‘You’d have liked to have gone with him?’

I nod.

‘Why’s that then?’

‘I did a lot of work on the Jeanette Garland case,’ I tell him.

‘I know that.’

‘A lot of my own work, on my own time.’

‘I know that too,’ he says.

I want to ask him how he knows. But I don’t. I wait.

He puts his hands down flat on his desk. He looks across at me. He says: ‘It was never our case in the first place, Maurice.’

‘I know that,’ I say. ‘But once we were asked, I…’

‘Let it get under your skin, eh?’

I nod again.

‘Now you think there could be some connection between this business in Rochdale and little Jeanette and you’re annoyed Bill’s over there with George Oldman while you’re stuck back here twiddling your thumbs talking to me?’

I shake my head. I open my mouth. I start to speak. I stop.

Walter Heywood smiles. He pushes himself up from behind his desk. He walks round the papers and the files, the cigarettes and the cups, the photographs and the trophies. He stands in front of me. He puts a hand on my shoulder.

I look up at him.

He looks down at me.

I say: ‘I’d just like to be involved, that’s all.’

He pats my shoulder. He says: ‘I know you would, Maurice. But it’s not for you, not this one.’

‘But -’

He grips my shoulder tight. He bends down into my ear. He says: ‘Listen to me, Maurice. You’ve made a name for yourself, you and Bill: the A1 Shootings, John Whitey; getting headlines, cracking cases. But you and I both know it were Bill that got them headlines, that cracked them cases. Not you. Stick with him, learn from him, and you’ll get your chance. But this isn’t it. Not yet. Listen to me and listen to Bill.’

I close my eyes. I nod. I open my eyes.

Walter Heywood walks back round to the other side of his desk. He sits back down. He puts his hands together under his chin again. He looks across at me. He says: ‘You’re in a good position, Maurice. Very good. Sit tight, wait, and let’s see what the future brings.’

I nod again.

‘Good man,’ says Walter Heywood, Chief Constable of the Leeds City Police, sat behind his desk with his back to the window and the Law Courts. ‘Good man.’

Back downstairs in my own office with a cold cup of tea and an unlit cig. I lock the door. I go to my desk. I unlock the bottom drawer. I take out the file -

The thick file, marked with one word.

I sit down. I light the cig. I open the file -

The thick file, marked with one word -

One name -

Her name:

Jeanette.

I take out a new notebook. I begin again -

Begin again to go through the carbons and the statements -

And then I stop -

Stop and pick up the phone -

Pick up the phone and dial -

Dial Netherton 3657 and listen to it ring -

Listen to it ring until it stops -

Until it stops and a woman’s voice says: ‘Netherton 3657, who’s speaking please?’

‘Is George there?’

‘He’s at work,’ she says. ‘Who is this?’

‘And where’s work these days? Rochdale way?’

‘Who is this?’

‘Jeanette.’

A black day in a black month in a black year in a black life with time to kill:

Black time -

Sat in the car in the dark with the radio on:

‘… Commander Kenneth Drury of the Flying Squad, the officer named in the investigation ordered by the Commissioner last week, has been suspended. The inquiry, which is being conducted by a deputy assistant chief constable of the Metropolitan Police, will look into allegations that the Flying Squad Chief spent a holiday in Cyprus with a strip-club owner and pornographer…’

Sat in the car in the dark on Brunt Street, Castleford -

Tuesday 21 March 1972:

A black day in a black month in a black year in a black life -

Of black times.

Almost ten -

The Redbeck car park, the Doncaster Road.

I pull in and park, lights out.

There’s a fog coming down again, the one streetlight blinking on and off.

Across the car park a dark Ford van flashes its lights twice.

I get out of my car. I lock the door. I cross the car park, my breath white against the black night.

The driver is John Rudkin, a hard man just out of uniform and on his way up:

Bill’s Boy.

The man in the passenger seat next to him is Bob Craven, another cunt just out of uniform -

Another one of Bill’s Boys.

Rudkin nods through the windscreen. I bang on the side of the van.

The back door opens. I get inside.

‘Evening,’ says Bill.

Dick Alderman and Jim Prentice are sat down the far end of the van, all in black like Bill -

Like me.

‘How was Rochdale?’ I ask him.

‘Sod that,’ he says and bangs the doors shut. ‘We got some real work to do.’

He nods down the van. Dick Alderman taps on the partition and off we set -

‘Some real money to make,’ Bill laughs.

Off we bloody go -

No turning back.

From the Redbeck car park back into Castleford -

Silence in the black of the back of the van -

Dim lights down black back roads -

Sat in the back of the black of the van -

Yorkshire, 1972:

You’ll wake up some morning as unhappy as you’ve ever been before.

The van slows down. It bumps over some rough ground. It stops.

Bill chucks me a black balaclava: ‘Put that on when you get inside.’

I put the balaclava in my coat pocket.