STOP -
AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN -
You retch. Puke. Spew -
Blood in your mouth, blood on your shirt, blood on your hands -
Again and again and again -
Until it stops.
You drive through Wakefield and up the Barnsley Road, out of Wakefield and along the Doncaster Road, past the Redbeck into Castleford -
You pull up by a red telephone box. You get out. You walk over to the telephone box and open the door.
The phone is ringing.
You pick up the receiver. You listen -
There is a foreign voice on the other end;
You hang up. You wait -
No-one phones.
You stand in the red telephone box. You listen to the relentless sound of the rain on the roof of the telephone box. You watch the silent cars with all their killers at the wheel, watch them speed up and down the road, watch them point and laugh at you, missing children in their boots, tiny hands pressed to their back windows -
You pick up the receiver. You listen -
There’s no-one there;
The world outside so sharp and full of pain.
Brunt Street, Castleford -
The car stinks of sick. You wind the window down. You stare across at 11.
The red door opens. A woman comes out under a flowered umbrella. She locks the door behind her. She walks past the car, her boots on the wet pavement as she goes -
Down Brunt Street -
‘Terrible,’ says the old woman for the third time, her arms folded against the rain and the memories, the bruised and bandaged fat man on her doorstep.
You nod.
‘Just seemed to be one bloody thing after another,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘All started with the little lass though.’
You nod again.
‘If that’d never have happened,’ she sighs. ‘They could have had everything.’
And you nod again.
‘But he goes and kills himself, husband. Next their Johnny, he starts getting in all kinds of bother, letting his talent go to waste. Then -’
You look up.
She is staring down the street. ‘Then she’s murdered, mother. Right there.’
You follow her pointing bones down the street to number 11.
‘Right there on our own bloody doorstep,’ she sighs again. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Terrible,’ you say.
‘Terrible,’ says the old woman across the road. ‘Never same again, mother was.’
You shake your head.
‘You wouldn’t be, would you?’
You shake your head again.
‘Lovely little lass,’ she sighs, folding the tea-towel in her hands. ‘Always so cheerful, she was. Always smiling.’
And you shake your head again.
‘I mean,’ she says. ‘That’s the thing about mongols, isn’t it? Always happy, aren’t they? I don’t reckon they know -’
You look up.
She is staring across the road. ‘They’re lucky that way.’
You turn round and look across at the red door.
‘Broad daylight it was,’ she sighs again. ‘Broad bloody daylight.’
‘Terrible,’ you say.
‘Terrible,’ says Mr Dixon, the man in the cornershop. ‘Back then didn’t used to open up until three of an afternoon so there always be a queue of kiddies and she’d be among them. Had to watch her with the money mind, being how she was.’
You nod.
‘Wasn’t there that last Saturday though,’ he sighs. ‘I remember that.’
You nod again, looking at the sweets and the crisps, the cigarettes and the alcohol, the pet food and the local papers.
You say: ‘Heard husband topped himself?’
‘Aye,’ says Mr Dixon. ‘Be a couple of years later, mind.’
You nod towards the door. ‘In that house?’
Mr Dixon shakes his head. ‘Wife would know, good with stuff like that she is. Know it wasn’t here though.’
‘The mother?’ you ask. ‘That was here though?’
Mr Dixon nods. ‘Oh aye, that was here.’
‘Not a very lucky family,’ you say.
‘This bloody street,’ whispers Mr Dixon, the bloody street listening at the door. ‘You know who else lived on here, don’t you?’
You shake your head.
‘The Morrisons,’ he says. ‘Clare and Grace?’
You stop shaking your head. You swallow. You stare. You wait.
‘Grace was one of them that got shot when them blokes did over Strafford in centre of Wakey?’
‘And Clare?’
‘They thought Ripper did her, over in Preston,’ he smiles. ‘He’s always denied it mind, has Ripper.’
‘Clare Strachan,’ you tell him.
He nods. ‘That’d be her married name.’
‘What about him?’ you say. ‘Ever see him round here?’
Mr Dixon takes the photo from you. He stares at the twenty-two-year-old face of Michael Myshkin -
Round and smiling.
Mr Dixon shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I’d remember him.’
You drive into Leeds. You park under the arches -
The Dark Arches;
Two black crows fighting with a fat brown rat over a bin-bag -
You lock the car. You walk through the arches and out into the night -
It is Saturday 4 June 1983.
‘You shouldn’t keep coming here,’ says Kathryn Williams. ‘Folk’ll start talking.’
‘I wish they bloody would.’
