‘But I haven’t.’
‘We’ll see,’ I say. ‘We’ll see who’s not done anything.’
Rudkin sticks his head in, ‘Right, quiet now ladies. Eyes front.’
He opens the door wider and Oldman, Noble, and Craven lead in Karen Burns.
Karen fucking Burns.
Fuck.
She looks down the line, looks at Craven, who nods, and steps towards us.
Noble puts a hand on her arm to hold her back.
He turns to Rudkin, ‘Where are the bloody numbers?’
‘Shit.’
Noble rolls his eyes and turns to Karen Burns and says in a low voice, ‘When you see the man you saw last year on the night of 6th February please stand before him and touch his right shoulder.’
She nods, swallows, and steps towards the first man.
She doesn’t even look at him.
Past the second, straight to us.
She stands before Ellis, and I’m wondering if he’s ever fucked her, if there’s a man in this room who hasn’t.
Ellis is almost smiling.
She glances down the line at me.
I fix on the wall ahead, the white patches where the pictures were.
She moves on.
Fairclough coughs.
She’s standing in front of him.
He’s staring at her.
‘Eyes front,’ hisses Rudkin.
She’s staring back.
He’s smiling.
She moves her hand.
The whole row turns.
She adjusts the strap of her bag and turns to me.
I can see the teeth of Fairclough’s grin out the corner of my eye, in my face.
He’s laughing.
I swallow.
She’s before me, smiling.
I pull her from the bed, across the floor.
My eyes dead ahead.
Just a pair of pink knickers, tits out.
Staring me up and down.
And she’s under me, hands across her face because I’m slapping the shit out of her.
I can feel myself start to rock, a mouth full of sand.
And I slap her again and then I look down at her bleeding lips and nose.
She won’t stop staring.
The bloody smears on her chin and neck, her tits and arms.
I’ve got sweat running down my face, down my neck, down my back, down my legs, rivers of salt.
And I pull off her pink knickers and drag her back to the bed and pull open my trousers and push it into her.
She doesn’t move.
And I slap her again and turn her over.
Rudkin’s next to her, Ellis turning sideways back down the line.
And she starts struggling, saying we don’t need to do it like this.
She moves her arm, her hand coming up.
But I push her face down into the dirty sheets and bring my cock up.
I step back.
And stick it in her arse and she’s screaming.
She sniffs, wipes her nose, and she smiles.
And she’s lying there on the bed, semen and blood running down her thighs.
I look down.
And I get up and do it again and this time it doesn’t hurt.
‘He’s not here,’ she says, not even looking at six and seven.
I look up.
‘Would you like to go through them one more time? Just to be sure,’ says Noble.
‘He’s not here.’
‘I think you should take one more…’
‘He’s not here. I want to go home.’
‘The fuck was that?’ Noble’s shouting at Craven. ‘You said you could fucking deliver her…’
‘Ask fucking Fraser.’
‘Tuck off,’ says Rudkin. ‘Nowt to do with us.’
Craven’s spewing, spit in his beard, the lot of us jammed into Noble’s office, Oldman wedged behind the desk, pitch black outside, same inside:
‘She grasses for you, doesn’t she?’
‘So fucking what,’ says Ellis and I know then he’s been shagging her.
And so does Craven: ‘You fucking her Mike? Taking a leaf out of his book,’ he yells, pointing my way.
Me with a feeble: ‘Fuck off.’
Noble’s shaking his head, staring round the room at us, ‘Right fucking balls-up.’
‘OK. Now what?’ asks Rudkin, looking from Noble to Oldman.
‘Total fucking cock-up.’
‘We can’t let the cunt just walk. He’s our man, I know it,’ says Ellis.
‘He’s not going anywhere but down,’ says Noble.
‘Fucking know it,’ Ellis is saying.
Rudkin looking to George, ‘So what then?’
Oldman:
‘Do it the hard way’
He’s naked on his knees, on the floor, in the corner, holding his balls, body bloody.
My arms are weak.
‘Come on,’ Rudkin is screaming, over and over, again and again, screaming, ‘Where the fuck were you?’
I was searching for a whore.
He’s crying.
Ellis, fists into Fairclough’s face, ‘Tell us!’
I was searching for a whore.
He’s crying.
‘You murdering fucking cunt. She wasn’t a slag. She was a good girl. Sixteen fucking years old. From a good Christian family. Never even had a bloody fuck! A child, a bloody child.’
I was searching for a whore.
He just keeps crying, face like Bobby, no noise, just tears, mouth open, crying, like a child, a baby.
‘The truth. Give us the fucking truth!’
I was searching for a whore.
Just crying.
Rudkin picks him up off the floor, rights the chair and ties him to it with our belts, taking out his cigarette lighter.
‘You fucking sit here and you think about where the fuck you were at two o’clock yesterday morning and what you were bloody doing.’
I was on the floor of the Redbeck, in tears.
Crying.
Rudkin flicks the lighter open and Ellis and me, we take a leg each and keep his knees apart as Rudkin puts the flame to Donny’s tiny little balls.
I was on the floor of the Redbeck, in tears.
Screaming.
The door flies open.
Oldman and Noble.
Noble: ‘Let him go!’
Us: ‘What?’
Oldman: ‘It’s not him. Let him fucking go.’
The John Shark Show
Radio Leeds
Thursday 9th June 1977
Chapter 12
Silence.
A hot, dirty, red-eyed silence.
Twenty-four hours for the four of us.
Oldman was staring at the letter in his hands, the piece of flowered cloth in another plastic envelope on the desk, Noble avoiding me, Bill Hadden biting a nail in his beard.
Silence.
A hot, dirty, yellow, sweaty silence.
Thursday 9 June 1977.
The morning’s headlines stared up from the desk at us:
RIPPER RIDDLE IN MURDER OF RACHEL, 16 .
Yesterday’s news.
Oldman put the letter flat on the desk and read it aloud again:
From Hell.
Mr Whitehead,
Sir, this is a little something for your drawer, would have been a bit of stuff from underneath but for that dog. Lucky cow.
Up to four now they say three but remember Preston 75, come my load up that one. Dirty cow.
Anyway, warn whores to keep off streets cause I feel it coming on again.
Maybe do one for queen. Love our queen.
God saves
Lewis.
I have given advance warning so its yours and their fault.
Silence.
Then Oldman: ‘Why you Jack?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why’s he writing to you?’
‘I don’t know.’