‘But I am.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ she says. ‘Just be careful.’
‘I will.’
‘I love you.’
‘Me too,’ I say.
‘Night-night.’
‘Night, love,’ I say and hang up.
No sleep, just -
Tearing through the bedside drawers -
Flapping about through the sheets and the blankets -
Windows open -
Tipping over the bed -
Stripping every sheet and curtain -
Windows closed -
Tearing and flapping and tipping and stripping the whole fucking room until -
Until there it is -
There behind the radiator -
Behind the radiator -
The Holy Bible -
Lying on the sheets and the blankets -
Flapping through the pages -
Job open -
Skipping this page and that -
Skimming that one and this -
Psalms -
Lying and flapping and skipping and slamming the whole bloody book until -
Until I’m sure -
Sure it’s gone -
Ripped and torn, stripped and shorn -
Revelation, gone -
No Revelation -
Not tonight -
Not tonight the foot upon the dark stair, the knock upon the door, the key in the lock -
Turning once and only once -
Not tonight -
No Revelation tonight -
Revelation gone -
The missing pages -
The missing -
Missing -
Missing her.
to the place you spoke about that e might see the gate that another peter guards but they say it is a local incident and we are convinced a local man is involved and all talk that tessa may have been attacked by ripper is only making it more difficult for me to catch her assailant transmission twelve sent from harrogate in august nineteen eighty received new years eve nineteen eighty and identified as prudence banks strangled and severely bludgeoned in the densely wooded grounds of a local magistrates house but again no one is receiving do not feel this is the work of the yorkshire ripper and he may very well have retired or topped himself as it has been more than a year he may even have met a nice girl and settled down got married like a normal bloke or he may have moved abroad or have been nicked over something else but this is not him he has gone away but prudence banks still avoided the short cut that would have taken ten minutes off her journey preferred the brightly lit main roads and she walked quickly along the road with the big empty houses and their long drives but we do not feel this is the work of the yorkshire ripper this is not him he has gone away e do not like the method of strangulation it takes them even longer to die but e did it because the press and the media had attached a stigma to me e had been known for some time as the yorkshire ripper e did not like it was not me did not ring true e had been on my way to leeds to kill a prostitute when e saw prudence banks it was just unfortunate for her that she happened to be walking by stepping out from the shadows hitting her on the head she staggers along the pavement blood gushing screaming again he hits her and again she does not fall so he puts his hands to her throat strangles her dragging her into the driveway of one of the big empty houses into the shrubbery the bushes down the side of a garage prudence dead he tears off her clothes her black gabardine coat her cardigan her purple skirt her brassiere her panties her shoes her tights and handbag the body naked in the shrubbery the bushes down the side of the garage the hammer out again he rains down blows upon her flesh then he takes a pile of leaves and covers the body but e am sleeping less and less every night e wake and watch moon after moon go by before e dream the evil dream which ripped away the veil that was my future and awoke to hear the children sobbing in their sleep missing mummy and if you are not weeping now do you ever weep for from below e heard him driving nails into the dreadful tower door and e stared in silence at my flesh and blood but did not weep but turned to stone inside e held back my tears and bit my hands in anguish and my daughters who thought hunger made me bite my hands were quick to say father you would make us suffer less if you would feed on us for you were the one who gave us this sad flesh you take it from us but we sat in silence behind the wires and the alarms until on the fourth day my first daughter fell prostrate before my feet crying why do you not help us father and she then died and just as you see me here e saw the other twelve fall one by one as the days passed became weeks months years and e who had gone blind groped over their bodies though some were dead five years e called their names until hunger proved more powerful than grief and e attacked again their wretched skulls with teeth as sharp as a dogs and as fit for grinding bones before e then moved to by where the frozen waters wrap in harsh wrinkles across another sinful set their faces not turned down but looking up where here the weeping puts an end to weeping and the grief that finds no outlet from the eyes turns inward
Chapter 20
It was New Year’s Eve:
I was walking across a car park, puddles of rain water and motor oil underfoot, heading for a door -
A door to an upstairs room -
A door banging in the wind, in the rain -
I climbed the dark stairs one at a time and stopped before the door -
The door to the upstairs room -
The door banging in the wind, in the rain.
I pulled open the door and stepped inside -
Inside:
Inside there was a man sat upon a low table, a man with a beard and a shotgun in his hands, staring at a TV with the sound turned low, the walls tattooed with shadow and pain -
The pain of the photographs -
Joyce Jobson, Anita Bird, Grace Morrison, Carol Williams, Theresa Campbell, Clare Strachan, Joan Richards, Ka Su Peng, Marie Watts, Linda Clark, Rachel Johnson, Janice Ryan, Elizabeth McQueen, Kathy Kelly, Tracey Livingston, Candy Simon, Doreen Pickles, Joanne Thornton, Dawn Williams, Laureen Bell, Karen Douglas, Libby Hall -
The pain of twenty-two photographs, plus the one on the low table next to him -
The one on the table next to him -
I picked up the photograph -
The one on the table -
It was Helen Marshall.
The man turned from the TV -
Prom the people on the TV singing hymns, the people on the TV singing hymns with no face, no features, machines -
The people on the TV singing hymns with no face, no features, machines -
People on the TV singing hymns of hate:
‘You are a beast with no feelings, a coward, not a man. All people hate you. I think you are the Devil himself.’
On the TV singing hymns of hate:
‘You are a very inadequate person, certainly physically and mentally. You can’t make a relationship with a live woman. Possibly your only relationships are with dead women.’
The TV singing hymns of hate:
‘Doesn’t it bother you to think people hate you for doing this? It is nothing to be proud of, the things you do.’
TV singing hymns of hate:
‘You are the worst coward the world has ever known and that should go down in the Guinness Book of Records.’
Singing hymns of hate:
‘You are an obscenity on the face of the earth. When they catch you and put you away, they will throw away the key.’