Outside a train rattles past, shaking the room.
‘She asked me to stay the night with her and I lay on top of the covers, stroking her hair and asking her to marry me like I often had before, but she just laughed and said she’d only bring me trouble. I said, what did I care about trouble, but she didn’t want me. Not like that.’
My mouth’s dry, the room baking.
‘She knew she was going to die, Sergeant Fraser. Knew they’d find her one day. Find her and kill her.’
‘Who? What do you mean, kill her?’
‘First day I met her, she was drunk and I didn’t think much of it. I mean, you hear so many tall stories in a place like this. But she was persistent, insistent: They’re going to find me and when they do, they’ll kill me. And she was right.’
‘I’m sorry Mr Kendall, but I’m not clear. She say who exactly was going to kill her or why?’
‘The police.’
‘The police? She said the police were going to kill her?’
‘The Special Police. That’s what she said.’
‘The Special Police? Why?’
‘Because of something she’d seen, something she knew, or something they thought she’d seen or knew.’
‘Did she elaborate?’
‘No. Wouldn’t. Said it just meant others would be in the same boat as her.’
‘Don’t suppose you told this to the investigating officers at the time, did you?’
‘As if they’d listen. They didn’t take any notice of me anyway, especially after what happened to me.’
I say, ‘Why? What happened to you Mr Kendall?’
Walter Kendall rolls over in his bed and smiles: his eyes white, the colour gone, the man blind.
‘How did it happen?’ I ask.
‘Friday 21 November 1975. I woke up and I was blind.’
I look over at Colin Minton, who shrugs his shoulders.
‘I could see, but now I’m blind,’ laughs Kendall.
I stand up. ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Kendall. If you think of anything else, please…’
Kendall suddenly reaches out, grabbing the sleeve of my jacket. ‘Anything else? I think of nothing else.’
I pull away. ‘Call us.’
‘Be careful, Sergeant. It can strike anyone, anytime.’
I walk away, down the narrow corridor, pausing by the door to the room at the top of the stairs.
It’s cold here, out of the sun.
Colin Minton raises his eyes and starts to say how sorry he is.
‘Special Police? What fucking bollocks next?’ laughs Detective Inspector Rudkin.
We’re walking up Church Street, towards the garages.
‘These fucking people. They just never accept that the fucking mess they’re in is because they’re junkies and alcoholics. Has to be someone else or something else.’
Frankie’s laughing along. ‘Cunt went blind because he drank industrial-strength paint-stripper.’
‘See?’ says Rudkin.
‘Yeah,’ laughs Ellis. ‘Unlike Bob’s mate.’
‘If wit were shit,’ says Rudkin, shaking his head.
We turn the corner into Frenchwood Street.
On the left are the lock-ups, the garages.
Preston seems suddenly quiet.
That silence again.
‘It was that one,’ whispers Frankie, pointing to the one furthest from us, the one closest to the multi-storey car park at the end of the road.
‘Locked?’ asks Ellis.
‘Doubt it.’
We keep walking towards it.
My chest starts to constrict, ache.
Rudkin’s saying nowt.
Three Pakistani women in black cross in front of us.
The sun goes behind a cloud and I can feel the night, the endless fucking night I’ve always felt.
‘Take notes,’ I tell Ellis.
‘Like what?’
‘Feelings, man. Impressions.’
‘Bollocks. It’s been two years,’ he whines.
‘Do it,’ says Rudkin.
I can’t stop it:
I’m coming up the hill, swaying, bags in my hand. Plastic bags, carrier bags, Tesco bags.
We get to the garage and Frankie tries the door.
It opens.
I’m freezing.
Frankie lights a cig and stands out in the road.
I step inside.
Black, bloody, bleak.
Full of flies, fat fucking flies.
Ellis and Rudkin follow.
The room has the air of the sea bed, the weight of an evil ocean hanging over our heads.
Rudkin is swallowing hard.
I struggle.
Used to stare out the window and bark at the trains.
I’ve felt this before, but not often: Wakefield, December ’74.
Theresa Campbell, Joan Richards, and Marie Watts.
Today on the Moors.
Too often.
The sweet smell of perfumed soap, of cider, of Durex.
The headache is intense, blinding.
There’s a bench, table, wooden crates, bottles, thousands of bottles, newspapers, scraps of this and that, blankets, odd bits of clothing.
‘They did go through this, yeah?’ says Ellis.
‘Mmm,’ mumbles Rudkin.
Trains pass, dogs bark.
I can taste blood.
I’ve slipped on to my knees and he’s come out of me. Now he’s angry. I try to turn but he’s got me by my hair, punching me casually, once, twice, and I’m telling him there’s no need for that, scrambling to give him his money back, and then he’s got it up my arse, but I’m thinking at least it’ll be over then, and he’s back kissing my shoulders, pulling my black bra off, smiling at this fat cow’s flabby arms, and taking a big, big bite out of the underside of my left tit, and I can’t not scream and I know I shouldn’t have because now he’s going to have to shut me up and I’m crying because I know it’s over, that they’ve found me, that this is how it ends, that I’ll never see my daughters again, not now, not ever.
I look up. Ellis is staring at me.
This is how it ends.
Rudkin has a pair of plastic gloves on, pulling a dirt-caked carrier bag out from under the bench.
Tesco’s.
He looks at me.
I squat down beside him.
He opens it up.
Porn mags, old and used.
He closes the bag and slings it back under the bench.
‘Enough?’ he says.
Not now, not ever.
I nod and we go back out into the light.
Frankie lights another cig and says, ‘Lunch?’
Staring into dark pints, thinking worse thoughts, fucked if there’s anything I can do about it.
Frankie brings over the Ploughmans, all withered and bleached.
‘Fuck’s that?’ says Rudkin, getting up off his stool and going back to the bar.
Ellis raises his glass. ‘Cheers.’
Rudkin comes back and tips a whisky into the top of his pint and sits back down. He smiles at Ellis, ‘Impressions?’
Ellis grins back, reading Rudkin wrong, ‘Do I look like Dick fucking Emery?’
‘Yeah, and you’re about as much fucking use.’ Detective Inspector Rudkin’s stopped smiling. He turns to me. ‘Teach him something, Bob?’
‘I’m with you. Different bloke.’
‘Why?’
‘She was attacked indoors. Raped. Sodomised. She did receive substantial head injuries from a blunt instrument, however none were fatal or immobilising.’
Frankie’s got his head to one side. ‘Meaning?’
‘The killer or killers of Theresa Campbell and Joan Richards attacked them out in the open with one blow to the back of their heads. They were either dead or comatose before they hit the ground. Early indications are that the same is true of the latest one, Marie Watts.’
‘And it couldn’t be the same bloke over here using a different m.o.?’