After a while, he stood up. “You don’t know where I could reach Kathryn Taylor do you?”
“If she’s not in the building she’s probably gone home.”
“No, I’ve been unable to contact her either here or at home.”
“Well I doubt she knows anything. She was with me most of the evening.”
“So I’ve been told. But you never know.”
I said nothing.
The Sergeant put on his hat. “If you do speak with Miss Taylor, please ask her to get in touch. I can be reached any time through the Morley Station.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you for your time Mr Dunford.”
“Thanks.”
“See you tomorrow then.”
“Yeah.”
I watched him walk over to reception, say something to Lisa behind the desk, and then leave through the revolving doors.
I lit a cigarette, my heart beating ninety miles an hour.
Three hours straight I sat at my desk and worked.
There’s no quiet time on the only regional newspaper with a morning and an evening edition, but today was as close to the grave as it got, everybody pissing off as early as possible. A goodbye here, a goodbye there, and a few of us’ll be down the Press Club later if you fancy it.
No Barry Cannon.
So I typed and typed; the first real work I’d done since my father died and Clare Kemplay disappeared. I struggled to remember the last time I’d sat at this desk and just worked and typed. Joyriders, that would’ve been it. But I couldn’t remember if my father had still been in the hospital or if he’d been moved back home by then.
No Ronald Dunford.
At about six, Kelly brought the photos up and we went through them, putting the best in the drawer. Kelly took my piece and his photos to the Sub, then to Layout. In the process I lost fifty words which, on a good day, would’ve been cause for a large one in the Press Club with Kathryn.
But this wasn’t a good day.
No Kathryn Taylor.
I’d been to see Fat Steph and told her to keep it shut but she didn’t know what the fuck I was going on about, except that Jack Whitehead was right about me. We’re all upset you know, but I should get a grip. Jack was right about me, Stephanie had said over and over, again and again, to me and everyone else within a ten-mile radius.
No Jack fucking Whitehead?
No such rucking luck.
On every desk were copies of tonight’s paper.
CATCH THIS FIEND.
Banner headlines across the Front Page of the Evening Post.
BY JACK WHITEHEAD, CHIEF CRIME REPORTER & CRIME REPORTER OF THE YEAR 1968 &1971.
Fuck.
A post-mortem into the death of ten-year-old Clare Kemplay revealed that she had been tortured, raped, and then strangled. West Yorkshire Police are withholding the exact details of the injuries, but Detective Chief Superintendent George Oldman, speaking at a press conference earlier today, described the extreme nature of the murder as ‘defying belief and as ‘by far the most horrific case encountered by myself or any other member of the West Yorkshire Metropolitan Force’.
Home Office pathologist Dr Alan Coutts, who conducted the post mortem, said, “There are no words to fully convey the horror visited upon this young girl.” Dr Coutts, a veteran of over fifty murders, looked visibly moved as he spoke, saying he hoped, “never to have to perform such a duty again.”
Detective Chief Superintendent Oldman spoke of the urgency in finding the killer and announced that Detective Superintendent Peter Noble would be in charge of the day to day hunt for whoever was responsible for Clare’s murder.
In 1968, Detective Superintendent Noble, then with the West Midlands Force, gained national recognition as the man chiefly res ponsible for the arrest of the Cannock Chase Murderer, Raymond Morris. Between 1965 and 1967, Morris had molested and then suffo cated three little girls in and around Stafford, before being arrested by then Detective Inspector Noble.
Detective Superintendent Noble spoke of his resolution to find Clare Kemplay’s murderer, appealing to members of the public for assistance, saying, “We must catch this fiend before he takes another young innocent life.”
Detective Chief Superintendent Oldman added that the police are particularly interested in speaking to anyone who was in the vicinity of Devil’s Ditch, Wakefield on the night of Friday 13 December or early on the morning of Saturday 14 December.
West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police are appealing for anybody with information to contact the Murder Room direct on Wakefield 3838 or 3839 or to contact their nearest police station. All calls will be treated in the strictest confidence.
The report was accompanied by two photographs: the school photograph of Clare which had accompanied my initial report into her disappearance, and a grainy one of police searching Devil’s Ditch in Wakefield, where Clare’s body had been found.
Hats off to Jack.
I tore the Front Page off, stuffed it inside my jacket pocket, and walked across to Barry Cannon’s desk. I opened the bottom drawer and took out Barry’s trusty bottle of Bells, pouring a triple into a half-drunk cup of coffee.
Here’s to you Barry Cannon.
It tasted fucking shit, so fucking shit I found another cup of cold coffee on another desk and had another bloody one.
Here’s to you Ronald Dunford.
Five minutes later I put my head down on my desk and smelt the wood, the whisky, and the day’s work on my sleeves. I thought about phoning Kathryn’s house but the whisky must have beaten the coffee and I fell into a crap sleep beneath the bright office lights.
“Wakey-wakey Scoop.”
I opened one eye.
“Rise and shine Mr Sleepyhead. Your boyfriend’s on line two.”
I opened the other.
Jack Whitehead was sat in Barry’s chair at Barry’s desk, waving a telephone receiver across the office at me. The place was no longer dead, gearing up for the next edition. I sat up and nodded at Jack. Jack winked and the phone buzzed on my desk.
I picked up the phone. “Yeah?”
A young man’s voice said, “Edward Dunford?”
“Yeah?”
There was a pause and a click, Jack having taken his fucking time hanging up. I stared back across the office. Jack Whitehead raised his empty hands in mock surrender.
Everybody laughed.
My breath stank against the phone. “Who is this?”
“A friend of Barry’s. You know the Gaiety pub on Roundhay Road?”
“Yeah.”
“Be at the phonebox outside at ten.”
The line went dead.
I said, “I’m sorry, I’d have to check with my editor first. However, if you’d like to call back sometime tomorrow…I understand, thank you. Bye.”
“Another hot one Scoop?”
“Fucking Ratcatcher. Be the bloody death of me.”
Everybody laughed.
Even Jack.
Nine-thirty on a Monday night, 16 December 1974.
I pulled into the car park in front of the Gaiety Hotel, Roun-dhay Road, Leeds, and decided to stay put for half an hour. I switched off the engine and the lights and sat in the dark Viva, staring across the car park at the Gaiety, the lights from the bar giving me a good view of both the phonebox and the pub itself.
The Gaiety, an ugly modern pub with all the ugly old charms of any pub which bordered both Harehills and Chapeltown. A restaurant that served no food and a hotel that had no beds, that was the Gaiety.
I lit a cigarette, opened the window a crack, and tilted my head back.
About four months ago, soon after I’d first come back North, I’d spent almost an entire day, and some of the next, getting pissed out of my skull in the Gaiety with George Greaves, Gaz from Sport, and Barry.
About four months ago, when being back North was still a novelty and slumming in the Gaiety was a right laugh and a bit of an eye-opener.
About four months ago, when Ronald Dunford, Clare Kemplay, and Barry Cannon were still alive.
That all-day session hadn’t actually been much of a laugh, but it’d been a useful introduction for a new and very green North of England Crime Correspondent.