BJ close BJ’s eyes -
‘Get off,’ he whispers.
BJ open BJ’s eyes: ‘I want to go to Manchester.’
‘Don’t give a fuck where you want to go,’ he spits. ‘It’s all over bloody radio and all over your fucking face.’
‘I…’
‘I don’t want to know,’ he says and chucks Derek Box’s tenner at BJ.
BJ pick it up. BJ walk past him down aisle.
BJ get off. BJ stand on freezing platform.
BJ watch coach pull out and away.
It’s three in morning:
Christmas Eve, 1974 -
Three in morning, Christmas Eve 1974 when BJ remember Clare -
Scotch Clare.
Holy fuck, no.
Chapter 4
Wakefield Metropolitan Police Headquarters -
Day 5:
Monday 16 May 1983 -
‘Go straight in,’ said the Chief Constable’s secretary. ‘He’s expecting you.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, adjusting my glasses.
I knocked once. I opened the door.
Chief Constable Angus was sat behind a big desk with his back to the window and another grey sky. He was writing. He glanced up. He nodded at the seat across from him.
I sat down.
‘Any news?’ he asked, knowing the answer.
I shook my head.
He stopped writing. He put down his pen. ‘What about the Press?’
‘Reconstruction would keep them quiet.’
‘Bit premature that, don’t you think?’
‘Anniversary Check.’
‘You want to do it Thursday?’
‘Long as we can let them know today or tomorrow.’
‘The Press?’
‘And the family.’
He nodded: ‘Fine.’
‘Could go National?’
‘Thought you reckoned it was local?’
‘Still do.’
He shrugged.
I opened the file on my knee. I handed him a black and white photograph: ‘Remember her?’
‘Very funny, Maurice,’ he said, not laughing.
‘Seems like a lot of folk do.’
‘What?’
‘Remember her.’
‘Heard you were sniffing around.’
‘You blame me?’
‘It’s a coincidence.’
‘There’s no such thing.’
‘He’s behind lock and key,’ said Angus. ‘Where he belongs and where you helped put him.’
‘What if
‘He’d have said.’
‘He says he didn’t do it.’
‘He never did before.’
‘We never let him.’
‘Maurice, listen to me,’ he pleaded. ‘Michael Myshkin might have been soft in the head, but his heart was hard, rock hard. He did those things, killed them girls. Sure as I’m sitting here and you’re sitting there.’
I said nothing.
‘You know it in your heart,’ he said. ‘You know it in your heart.’
I shook my head: ‘So it’s just a bleeding coincidence then?’
‘Like I say.’
‘Well, like I say, there’s no such fucking thing.’
Ronald Angus sighed. He slapped his hands down hard on the top of his big desk. He stood up. He walked over to the window. He looked up at another grey sky over Wakefield.
It was starting to rain again.
His back to me, he said: ‘That’s not to say he might not have a fan or someone, way these animals are.’
‘I want to go and see him,’ I said.
He was nodding at the grey sky.
I asked: ‘That a
He turned back from the grey sky. ‘Just keep it out of the bloody papers, that’s all.’
I stood up, adjusting my glasses.
It was raining heavily against the window.
I picked up the black and white photograph from his desk -
Clare Kemplay smiling up at me, out of my hands -
I took the motorway back into Leeds, odd and sudden patches of sunlight falling from the dirty grey sea up above, childhood memories of sunshine and cut grass drowned by voices; terrifying, hysterical, and screeching voices of approaching doom, disaster and death -
The odd and sudden patches of sunlight gone, I came off the motorway at the Hunslet and Beeston exit, past the terrifying lorries, the hysterical diggers and the screeching cranes. I took the Hunslet Road then Black Bull Street into the centre and Millgarth, my hands shaking, knees weak and stomach hollow with approaching doom, disaster and death -
It was Day 5 -
