I can prove this.
Yours Sincerely,
Elizabeth Hall
I fold up the letter and put it back in the envelope -
No escape, no escape at all -
‘How is she?’ I ask Laws.
‘Not well, but she is very determined to see you.’
‘I can send round one of my team?’
‘She is insistent on speaking to you. Only you.’
Bloody hell -
‘Tomorrow morning?’
Mr Laws nods but says: ‘Now? She’s outside in my car.’
Fuck -
‘It would mean a lot,’ he adds.
I sigh and stand up: ‘OK. Let’s go.’
I follow Martin Laws out of the Griffin and back into the night and the rain, follow him round the back of the hotel, past the Scarborough Public House, down the dark arches and under the railway tracks until we come to an old green Viva parked in the gloom.
Mr Laws taps gently on the passenger window and a frightened white face suddenly springs from the black to the glass -
I jump back, my heart racing.
He unlocks the door.
‘You can talk inside,’ he says. ‘I’ll wait over here till you’re done.’
He opens the door for me and I lean down inside, swallowing my heart -
‘Mrs Hall?’
The woman nods, her teeth biting into her lower lip, a hand pulling at the skin of her neck.
I push forward the front seat and get in beside her, shutting the door.
‘Lock the door please,’ she whispers.
I press it down and wait -
She sits here in the dark of the back seat beside me, underneath the arches, rubbing her hands round her neck and up and down her shins -
‘They don’t believe me,’ she says. ‘I know that. You won’t either.’
‘I -’
‘No, they’ll tell you what they did to me. You probably already know. They’ll say that’s why she’s like that, says the things she does. Then they’ll pause and shake their heads and say she’d have been better off dead, the things they did.’
I’m staring ahead, staring between the backs of the front seats.
‘Do you know what they did to me?’
‘I know a bit -’
‘Well, I’ll tell you shall I? Get it out of the way.’
‘There’s really no need, Mrs Hall.’
‘But you see there’s every need, Mr Hunter.’
She turns to face me in the dark, a hand on my arm:
‘It was Sunday 19 June 1977. I’d been to church, evensong. I came home, opened the door, and they grabbed me, dragged me by my hair into the dining room and Eric, sitting there in front of the TV with his throat cut. Then they tied my hands behind my back and left me on the floor at his feet, in his blood, while they went into the kitchen, making sandwiches from our fridge, drinking his beer and my wine, until they came back and decided to have their fun with me, there on the floor in front of Eric. They stripped me and beat me and put it in me, in my vagina, in my bottom, in my mouth, their peruses, bottles, chair legs, anything. They urinated in my face, cut chunks of my hair off, forced me to suck them, lick them, kiss them, drink their urine, eat their excrement. Then they took me to the bathroom and tried to drown me, leaving me unconscious on the floor for my son to find.’
Silence, darkest silence -
‘A robbery, revenge; that’s what they said it was, the police.’
She looks at me and I nod: ‘The same gang who’d been responsible for a number of post office robberies and murders, that’s what I heard.’
She’s smiling: ‘The Nigger Gang?’
‘They weren’t black?’
‘Oh, they were black all right, Mr Hunter. As the ace of spades.’
‘Well, I -’
‘You don’t see my point, do you?’
I turn to face her again: ‘It’s not that, Mrs Hall. Not that at all. I just want to say I’m sorry, but it doesn’t seem enough. But I am; I’m really sorry this happened to you.’
She swallows and takes my hand in hers: ‘Mr Hunter, before he was murdered, Eric was suspended. He kept talking about you, how you were going to be coming over, that he’d done some bad things and you’d find out and he’d be finished.’
I’ve got my eyes closed, wanting her to stop.
‘And then you never came and he ended up dead and I -’
Summer Seventy Seven -
A10 on a rolclass="underline"
The Porn Squad, the Dirty Squad -
Drury, Moody & Virago:
‘The architects of this conspiracy of corruption; monumentally evil men who lived among the sewerage of society.’
West Yorkshire next, Bradford Vice, then someone called the dogs off -
Eric Hall dead.
‘He hated you, Mr Hunter. They all do. But they hate you because they know you find things out, find them out, that you’re a good man. Even Eric, he called you Saint -’
‘Saint?’
‘Saint Cunt.’
I smile, but then it’s gone and I’m back there:
Summer Seventy Seven -
The last miscarriage.
Baby dead.
I look up -
She says: ‘So I think you can help me.’
‘How?’
‘Eric knew Janice Ryan. Knew her very well. When she turned up under that sofa, he was a suspect and so was another policeman: a Detective Sergeant Fraser at Millgarth. You remember him?’
‘Killed himself on the Moors?’
‘Yes he did; two days before Eric was murdered. Did you know he’d been involved in the Ripper Hunt?’
‘No but, to be honest, today was only our third day.’
‘Well, Eric was sure this Sergeant Fraser had killed Ryan. She was pregnant with his child and, as I say, they had him in -’
‘Who?’
‘This man Fraser. They had him in for it, but then another letter came, supposed to be from Ripper, and that was that. He was out, scot-free, and she was Number 6.’
‘And you don’t believe she was killed by the Ripper?’
‘No.’
‘You think Fraser killed her?’
‘Or someone else.’
‘Someone else?’
‘Well, Eric didn’t keep his mouth shut did he? He said it was Fraser, especially after the bloke topped himself. That Saturday, the day before, he kept on and on about it. Calling people up, the papers. That journalist Jack Whitehead, he’d been up at the house that same week. Eric was calling anybody, anybody who’d listen. So someone put them onto Eric. To shut him up.’
‘Someone put this gang onto Eric? Because he thought Fraser killed Janice Ryan?’
‘Because he knew it wasn’t the Ripper.’
I’m staring between the seats, the sound of the clock filling the car, watching the lights at the other end of the arches.
‘You said you had proof?’
She is nodding: ‘Eric wrote a lot of stuff down. He kept copies, tapes. He knew he’d need them someday.’
‘Who have you told?’
‘Me? Anyone who’d listen.’
‘What about the copies, the tapes? You told anyone about them?’
‘George Oldman.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said I should turn everything over to the man in charge of the investigation into Eric’s death.’
‘Who was?’
‘Is, Mr Hunter. It’s still open. No-one’s been arrested.’
‘I’m sorry. Who is -’
‘Maurice Jobson.’
The Owl.
‘And did you?’
‘What?’
‘Give him Eric’s notes?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘When it happened; three years ago.’