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‘They are outstanding police officers who have our heartfelt thanks.’

Thinking, fuck off.

The Pride, Bradford, just down from the Telegraph & Argus. Tom was already there, coughing into his beer at the bar.

I put my hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Sorry, springing this on you.’

‘Yeah,’ he smiled. ‘Awful having to drink with the enemy.’

‘Sit down?’ I said, nodding at the table by the door.

‘Not getting a drink?’

‘Don’t be daft,’ I said and ordered one and another for him.

We sat down.

‘Not very nice,’ I said. ‘That piece about the letter.’

‘Nothing to do with me,’ he said, palms up, genuine.

I took a sip and said, ‘They’re hoaxes anyway.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘They’re not from the bloody Ripper, tell you that.’

‘We had them tested.’

‘We? Thought it was nowt to do with you.’

‘There was evidence and all.’

‘Fuck it. It wasn’t why I phoned.’

‘Go on,’ he said, relaxing, relieved.

‘I want to know about one of yours, Eric Hall?’

‘What about him?’

‘Been suspended, yeah?’

‘Him and rest of them.’

‘Right. What you got on him?’

‘Not much.’

‘You know him?’

‘Say hello, that way.’

‘You know this last one, this Janice Ryan?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, I got me a bloke saying she was Eric’s bird, that Detective Inspector Hall pimped her a bit and all.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Yep.’

‘Doesn’t surprise me like but, these days, not much bloody would.’

‘So you don’t know anything else? Anything extra on him?’

‘They’re a law unto themselves, Bradford Vice. But it’s same with your lot, I bet.’

I nodded.

‘To be honest,’ he continued. ‘I always thought he was a bit on thick side. You know, at press conferences, after work.’

‘Thick enough to murder the prostitute he was pimping and try and make it look like a Ripper job?’

‘Be beyond him, mate. Out of his bloody league, he’d be. Never pull it off.’

‘Maybe he hasn’t.’

Tom was shaking his head, sniffing up.

I said, ‘How well do you know lasses over here?’

‘What you asking, Jack?’

‘Come on. Do you know them?’

‘Some.’

‘You know a Chinese lass, Ka Su Peng?’

‘The one that got away,’ he smiled.

‘That’s the one.’

‘Yeah. Why?’

‘What do you know about her?’

‘Popular. But you know what they say about a Chinky?’

‘What?’

‘An hour later and you could murder another.’

I knocked once.

She opened the door, said nothing, and walked back down the bare passage.

I followed her and stood there, there in her room, with its sticks of shit and stink of sex, and I watched her rubbing hand-cream into her fingers and into her palms, up her wrists and into her arms, down into her knees.

There were the spits of an afternoon rain on the window, the bright orange curtains hopeless in the gloom, her rubbing her childish knees, me staring up her skirt.

‘Is this the last fuck?’ she asked later, lying in the back bedroom with the curtains drawn against the rain, against the afternoon, against the Yorkshire life.

And I lay there beside her, looking up at the stains on the ceiling, the plastic light fittings that needed a wipe, listening to her broken words, the beat of her battered heart, alone and depressed with my come on her thighs, her toes touching mine.

‘Jack?’

‘No,’ I lied.

But she was crying anyway, the magazine open on the floor beside the bed, her top lip swelling.

I parked outside a nice house with its back to the Denholme Golf Course.

There was a blue Granada 2000 sat in the drive.

I walked up to the door and rang the bell.

A gaunt middle-aged woman answered the door, fiddling with the pearls around her neck.

‘Is Eric in?’

‘Who are you?’

‘Jack Whitehead.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I’m from the Yorkshire Post.’

Eric Hall came out of the living room, his face black and blue, nose bandaged.

‘Mr Hall?’

‘It’s all right Libby, love…’

The woman gave her pearls another tug and went the way he’d come.

‘What is it?’ hissed Hall.

‘About Janice Ryan?’

‘Who?’

‘Fuck off, Eric,’ I said, leaning into the doorway. ‘Don’t be a silly cunt.’

He blinked, swallowed, and said, ‘You know who I am, who you’re talking to?’

‘A dirty copper named Eric Hall, yeah.’

He stood there, in the doorway to his nice house with its back to the Denholme Golf Course, his eyes full of tears.

‘Let’s go for a drive, Eric,’ I suggested.

We pulled up in the empty car park of the George.

I turned off the engine.

We sat in silence and stared at the hedge and the fields beyond.

After a while I said, ‘Have a look in that bag at your feet.’

He opened his fat little legs and bent down into the bag.

He pulled out a magazine.

‘Page 7,’ I said.

He stared down at the dark-haired girl with her legs spread, her mouth open, her eyes closed, a prick to her gob and spunk on her face.

‘That yours?’ I asked him.

But he just sat there, shaking his head from side to side, until he said, ‘How much?’

‘Five.’

‘Hundred?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Five fucking thousand? I haven’t got it.’

‘You’ll get it,’ I said and started the car.

The office was dead.

I knocked on Hadden’s door and went in.

He was sat behind his desk, his back to Leeds and the night.

I sat down.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘They’ve let Fraser go.’

‘You seen him?’

‘Yep,’ I smiled.

Hadden smiled back, an eyebrow arched. ‘And?’

‘He’s been suspended. Reckons Rudkin and some bloke from Bradford Vice are up to their ears in it.’

‘What do you think?’

‘Well, I went out to have a look and Rudkin’s up to his ears in something, but I’m fucked if I know what.’

Bill Hadden didn’t look very impressed.

‘Saw Tom,’ I said.

Hadden smiled. ‘He apologise, did he?’

‘Sheep-faced, he was.’

‘And rightly-bloody-so.’

‘Said they still reckon the letter’s genuine.’

Hadden said nothing.

‘But,’ I went on. ‘He didn’t have anything on this Bradford copper.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Hall. Eric Hall?’

Hadden shook his head.

I asked, ‘You got anything new?’

‘No,’ he said, still shaking his head.

I stood up. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then.’

‘Right,’ he said.

At the door, I turned back. ‘There was one other thing.’

‘Yeah?’ he said, not looking up.

‘You know the one in Preston?’

He looked up. ‘What?’

‘The prostitute they say was a Ripper job?’

Hadden was nodding.

‘Fraser said she was a witness in the Paula Garland murder,’

‘What?’

And I left him with his mouth open, eyes wide.

He was sitting in the dim lobby in a high-backed chair, his eyes on his hat, his hat upon his knee.

‘Jack,’ he said, not looking up.

‘I dream of rivers of blood, women’s blood. When I fuck, I see blood. When I come, death.’

Martin Laws leant forward.

He parted his thin grey hair between his fingers and the hole leapt from the shadows.

‘There has to be another way,’ I said, tears in the dark.

He looked up and said: ‘Jack, if the Bible teaches us nothing else, it teaches us that this is the way things are, the way things have always been, and will always be until the end.’