‘However the Mail on Sunday carries quotes from unnamed police sources claiming that the suspension is due to Mr Hunter’s own associations with a prominent local criminal from whom Mr Hunter had accepted lavish hospitality, photographs of which are ‘doing the rounds’ in some of the less salubrious Manchester pubs and clubs.
‘Meanwhile other papers continue to lead with either the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper or the prospects for the release of the fifty-two hostages being held…’
I swallow my food and get up from the table.
‘Where are you going?’ her mother asks.
‘Preston.’
‘Preston?’ repeats her father.
‘Preston,’ I nod.
Joan doesn’t even look up from the plate before her, greasy and cold.
Preston -
Sunday 28 December 1980:
11:05:02 -
I’m too early -
Much too early.
I don’t need to find St Mary’s, so I park in a multi-storey car park near the station and listen to the radio for a bit longer before I decide to sort out the car, stuffed full of half the office – the unopened post and cards; plus the Christmas presents – the various pens and socks, the diaries and chocolates, the handkerchiefs and tie; then the stuff from the Griffin – the Exegesis and the tapes, Hall’s notes and mine, the boot full of Spunks.
I open the doors and the boot and start shifting stuff about and when I’ve got the porn and the important stuff lying in the boot under a sea of socks and diaries, handkerchiefs and the tie, then I close the boot and get back inside, the unopened post and cards in a pile on the passenger seat, and with a mouth full of chocolate liquors I start going through the envelopes, one by one, the cards and the post, one by one, the official and the personal, one by -
One:
Flat and manila, in slanting black felt-tip pen:
Peter Hunter,
Police Chief,
Manchester.
Flat and manila, in slanting black felt-tip pen:
Photos Do Not Bend.
Flat and manila -
I rip it open and take them out -
Photographs, four of them -
Four photographs of two people in a park:
Piatt Fields Park, in wintertime.
Photographs, black and white -
Black and white photographs of two people in a park by a pond:
A cold grey pond, a dog.
Four black and white photographs of two people in a park -
Two people in a park:
One of them me.
St Mary’s, Church Street, Preston -
12:54:05 .
I’m sitting at a sticky-topped table by the door, the rain outside, the cold inside.
I’ve got a half of bitter in front of me, salt and vinegar crisps spilling here and there, sideways glances from the regulars.
I keep looking at my watch, my new digital watch -
12:56:05 .
Sitting at the sticky-topped table by the door, wondering if he’s here or if he’ll show, wondering if I would if I were him, wondering just who the fuck he is – the fuck I am.
An empty glass in front of me, salt and vinegar stinging my fingers, front-on stares from two men by the dartboard.
I look at my watch -
12:58:03 .
Sat there, damp and cold -
Evil eyes -
I look at -
‘Peter Hunter?’ shouts out the woman behind the bar, waving a telephone about -
And I’ve got my hand up, crossing the room.
She hands the phone across the bar -
‘This is Peter Hunter,’ I say into the receiver.
Him, that voice: ‘You alone?’
‘Of course I am.’
‘How do you know?’
I pause, replaying the route, scanning the room – the eyes and the stares – and then I say: ‘I am. Are you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Near enough.’
‘Where?’
‘Step outside, walk up the hill, turn left onto Frenchwood Street.’
‘And?’
But the phone is dead.
I walk up Church Street, the top of the multi-storey car park looming over the hill, the rain cold upon my face.
I turn left onto Frenchwood Street, a row of garages on the left side of the road, wasteland to the right, and I walk towards the last garage, the door banging in the wind, in the rain.
I pull back the door and there he is, standing among the bottles and the cans, the rags and the newspapers, leaning against a bench made from crates and boxes.
‘Afternoon,’ says a young man in a dirty black suit -
Face puffed and beaten, punctured and bruised, a plaster across a broken nose, one hand bandaged, the other pulling lank and greasy hair out of blue and black eyes.
‘Who are you? You got a name?’
‘No names.’
I shrug, touching my own cuts: ‘What happened to you?’
He’s sniffing and touching his nose: ‘Occupational hazard. Goes with the places I go.’
I look away, looking around the garage, the bottles and the cans, the rags and the newspapers, the chipboard walls, the rusting cans and the broken bottles, the rotting rags and the soiled papers, the splattered chipboard walls -
The swastikas.
Staring at him in the dark room, I ask him: ‘Is that what you wanted to talk about? The places you go? This place?’
‘You been here before, have you Mr Hunter?’
I nod: ‘Have you?’
‘Oh yes,’ he says. ‘Many times.’
‘Were you here the night of Thursday 20 November 1975?’
He pushes his hair back out of his beaten eyes, smiling: ‘You should see your fucking face?’
‘Yours isn’t that good.’
‘How’s that song go: if looks could kill they probably will?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, I do,’ he says and hands me a folded piece of paper.
I open it and look at it, then back at him -
He’s smiling, smiling that faint and dreadful smile.
I look back down at the piece of paper in my hands -
A piece of black and white Xeroxed paper -
A piece of black and white Xeroxed pornography -
Fat and blonde, legs and cunt -
Clare Strachan.
Across the top of the page, in black felt-tip pen:
Spunk, Issue 3, January 1975.
Across the bottom, in black felt-tip pen:
Murdered by the West Yorkshire Police, November 1975.
Across her face, in black felt-tip pen:
A target, a dartboard.
I look back up at him, standing there among the bottles and the cans, the rags and the newspapers, leaning against a bench made from crates and boxes, face puffed and beaten, punctured and bruised, a plaster across his broken nose, one hand bandaged, the other picking at his scabs, his sores -
Itching and scratching at his scabs and his sores, running -
Running scared.
He smiles and says: ‘Here comes a copper to chop off your head.’
‘You do this?’ I ask.
‘What?’
‘Any of it?’
He shakes his head: ‘No, Mr Hunter. I did not.’
‘But you know who did?’
He shrugs.
‘Tell me.’
He shakes his head.
‘I’ll fucking arrest you.’
Shaking his head: ‘No, you won’t.’
‘Yes, I will.’
‘For what?’
‘Wasting police time. Withholding evidence. Obstruction. Murder?’
He smiles: ‘That’s what they want.’
‘Who?’
Shaking his head: ‘You know who.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Well then, you’ve obviously been overestimated.’