‘No.’
‘Come on, Jack. Fuck me.’
I ran into the kitchen, opened the drawer, took out the carving knife.
She had her fingers up her cunt, ‘Come on, Jack.’
‘Leave me alone,’ I shouted.
‘You’re going to use that are you?’ she winked.
‘Leave me alone.’
‘You should take it Bradford,’ she laughed. ‘Finish what he started.’
I flew across the room, the knife and a boot in my hands, on to the bed, battering her head, her white skin streaked red, her fair hair dark, everything sticky and black, laughter and screams until there was nothing left but a dirty knife in my hand, grey hairs stuck to the heel of my boot, drops of blood across the crumpled colour spread of dear Clare Strachan, fingers wet and cunt red.
My fingers were turning cold, dripping blood.
I’d cut my hand on the carving knife.
I dropped the knife and boot and put a thumb to my skull and felt the mark I’d made:
I suffer your terrors; I am
desperate.
I turned and there she was.
‘I’m sorry,’ I wept.
Carol said, ‘I love you, Jack. I love you.’
The John Shark Show
Radio Leeds
Sunday 12th June 1977
Chapter 15
In the dream I was sitting on the sofa again, on the wasteground, the sofa thick with blood, the blood seeping into my clothes and into my skin and next to me, sat beside me, was that journalist jack Whitehead, blood running down his face, and I looked down and Bobby was on my knee in his blue pyjamas holding a big black book and he started to cry, and I turned to jack Whitehead and said, ‘It wasn’t me.’
She’s asleep on the big hard chair next to mine, Bobby back home with next doors.
I get up to go, knowing he’s going to die, knowing it’ll be the minute I’m gone, but knowing I can’t stay, can’t stay knowing:
Knowing I’ve got to find those files, find those files to find him, find him to stop him, stop him to save her, save her to end these thoughts.
Knowing I’ve got to end these thoughts of Janice.
Knowing I’ve got to end these thoughts of Janice, end these thoughts of Janice to end everything, end everything to start again HERE.
Here with my wife, here with my son, here with her dying father.
My new deal, new prayer:
Stop him to save her,
Save her to start again.
To start again.
HERE.
She opens her eyes.
I nod morning and apologies.
‘What time did you get here?’ she whispers.
‘After I knocked off, about eleven.’
‘Thanks,’ she says.
‘Bobby with Tina?’ I ask.
‘Yeah.’
‘She mind?’
‘She’d say if she did.’
‘I’ve got to go,’ I say, looking at my watch.
She moves to let me pass, then catches my sleeve and says, ‘Thanks again, Bob.’
I bend down and kiss the top of her head. ‘See you later,’ I say.
‘See you,’ she smiles.
I drive from Leeds to Wakefield, the Ml Sunday morning quiet, radio loud:
Eighty-four arrested outside the Grunwick Processing Laboratories in Willesden. The Metropolitan Police accused of unnecessary brutality, aggressive and provocative tactics.
I park on Wood Street, another shower starting, not a soul to be seen.
‘Bob Fraser, from Millgarth.’
‘And what can I do for you, Bob Fraser from Millgarth?’ asks the Sergeant on the desk as he hands back my card.
‘I’d like to see Chief Superintendent Jobson, if he’s about?’
He picks up the phone, asks for Maurice, tells him it’s me, and sends me up.
I knock twice.
‘Bob,’ says Maurice, on his feet, hand out.
‘Sorry to barge in like this, without ringing.’
‘Not at all. It’s good to see you Bob. How’s Bill?’
‘Just come from the hospital actually. Not much change though.’
He shakes his head. ‘And Louise?’
‘Bearing up as ever. Don’t know how she does it.’
And we slip into a sudden silence, me seeing that taut boned body in its striped pyjamas sipping tinned fruit off a plastic spoon, seeing him and Maurice, the Owl, with his thick lenses and heavy rims, the pair of them taking thieves, pulling villains, breaking skulls, cracking the Al Shootings, getting famous, Badger Bill and Maurice the Owl, like something out of one of Bobby’s books.
‘What’s on your mind, Bob?’
‘Clare Strachan.’
‘Go on,’ he says.
‘You know Jack Whitehead? He gave me these, got them off Alf Hill in Preston,’ and I hand him the Wakefield file references.
Maurice reads them, looks up and asks, ‘Morrison?’
‘Clare Strachan’s other name.’
‘Right, right. Her maiden name, I think.’
‘You knew?’
He pushes the frames up the bridge of his nose, nodding. ‘You pulled them?’
Less sure, I hesitate and then say, ‘Well, that’s half of why I’m here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They’ve been pulled.’
‘And?’
I swallow, fidget, and say, ‘This is between us?’
He nods.
‘John Rudkin took them.’
‘So?’
‘They’re not in her file at Millgarth. And he’s never even mentioned them.’
‘You spoken to him?’
‘I haven’t had chance. But there’s another thing as well.’
‘Go on.’
I take another deep one. ‘I went over to Preston with him a couple of weeks ago, and we went through all the files.’
‘About Clare Strachan?’
‘Yeah, and we were to take copies back. Anything we didn’t have, anything we might have missed. And, anyway, I saw one of the files he was taking back and he’d taken the originals, not copies.’
‘Could’ve been a mistake?’
‘Could have been, but it was the Inquest.’
‘The Coroner’s Report?’
‘Yeah, and the blood grouping looked wrong. Like it had been typed in later.’
‘What did it say?’
‘B.’
‘And you think Rudkin had altered it?’
‘Maybe, I don’t…’
‘When you were over there the last time?’
‘No, no. He went over after we got Joan Richards.’
‘But why would he want to change it? What would be the point?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘I’m just saying it looked wrong. And one way or another he knows it’s wrong.’
Maurice takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes, and says, ‘This is serious, Bob.’
‘I know.’
‘Really bloody serious.’
He picks up the phone:
‘Yes. I’d like a check on two files, both Morrison, initial C. First one is 23rd August 1974, Caution for Soliciting 1A. Second one is 22nd December 1974, Witness Statement 27C, Murder of GRD initial P.’
He puts down the phone and we wait, him cleaning his specs, me biting a nail.
The phone rings, he picks it up, listens and asks:
‘OK. Who by?’
The Owl is staring at me as he speaks, unblinking:
‘When was that?’
He’s writing on the top of his Sunday paper.
‘Thanks.’
He puts down the phone.
I ask, ‘What did they say?’
‘A DI Rudkin signed them out.’
‘When?’
‘April 1975.’
I’m on my feet: ‘April 1975? Fuck, she wasn’t even dead.’
Maurice stares down at his newspaper, then looks up, eyes rounder and wider and larger than ever:
‘GRD-P,’ he says. ‘You know who that is?’
I slump back down in my chair and just nod.
‘Paula Garland,’ he says to himself, the mind behind the glasses off and scuttling along the corridors down to his own little hells.