by Danuta Reah
It was a legitimate interview; Debbie should make it clear if she was talking off the record and what was she making all the fuss about? He’d only written what she had told him.
Debbie left college that day in the mood she’d often left school when she was a child, particularly that bad year when two of her classmates – once her friends – had decided to gang up on her. ‘We don’t want you,’ Tracy would say, putting her arm through Donna’s; and, ‘Nobody play with Deborah Sykes, her mum’s a witch!’ they’d tell the others. She couldn’t remember now what had started the campaign, or what had ended it, but she could still remember how miserable it had made her feel. She often thought that the saying, Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can never hurt you was one of the most stupid ones she’d ever heard.
As she walked through the town centre, she couldn’t shake off a feeling of foreboding. It was as if she was being watched by malicious eyes. She had felt exposed in the college, as though people were looking at her, talking about her, but now the feeling chilled her as it followed her through the streets to the station, until she managed to shake it off in the anonymous brightness of the train.
When she finally got home, the phone was ringing. She waited for a minute to see if it would stop, and when it didn’t, she answered it. ‘Deborah Sykes speaking.’ Silence. ‘Hello?’ she said. There was no reply, and then the phone was put down. She tried 1471, but no number was recorded.
Sarah was combing her hair in front of the mirror in the students’ cloakroom, prior to going home. She could smell the smoke from Leanne’s cigarette as Leanne and Rachel chatted over a cubicle door. Sarah stared into the mirror, and wondered if her face was too fat. She was thinking about Nick. Was she attractive enough? When she looked in the mirror she thought she was, but sometimes she caught sight of herself unexpectedly and saw someone frighteningly plain. She was seeing him on Friday. She put away her comb, anxiously looking at her reflection.
‘… essay title?’
‘Sorry?’ Her hand jerked a bit. Leanne was beside her, energetically back-combing her hair.
‘Have you written down that essay title?’ Leanne bundled her hair up on top of her head. ‘Look out, world,’ she said. She usually relied on other people to keep her up to date with assignments. ‘Are you coming to Adam’s party on Friday?’
Sarah felt the usual pang of exclusion. ‘He didn’t ask me,’ she said.
Leanne was applying colour to her eyes. ‘You don’t listen, do you? He asked everybody in the group. You can come with me and Raich if you want.’
Sarah was cautious. Leanne made her nervous. ‘I can’t, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m seeing Nick.’
‘Bring him.’ Leanne fastened a clip into her hair. Sarah bit her fingernail. Nick could be difficult with other people. He didn’t like students.
‘OK, I’ll ask him,’ she said, not meaning to. ‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t ask him, tell him,’ said Leanne, running the tap over her cigarette end and discarding it in the basin. ‘See you.’ She and Rachel left.
Sarah went back to her contemplation of the mirror. Now Leanne would want to know why she wasn’t there on Friday. She couldn’t say that Nick didn’t want to go. They wouldn’t ask her again. Maybe she should suggest it to him. It was the kind of thing he liked, though Sarah preferred quieter places where her soft voice wouldn’t be drowned out by loud music and shouting. Maybe if they did that they wouldn’t have an argument. She ran a tentative hand over the bruise hidden by the scarf on her neck.
Mick Berryman’s mind shut down on him. He needed a break. The clock on the wall said six, but it hadn’t been altered since the clocks went back weeks ago. He’d been at it for over ten hours. He could go home, put his feet up, but he decided to go over to the Grindstone for an hour or so. He needed a drink and he needed some quiet.
The pub, like most of the pubs in Moreham centre in the early evening, was almost empty. There were a couple of old men at a table in the corner, and a solitary drinker at the bar, reading a paper. As he crossed the room, he realized that the man at the bar was Rob Neave, and slowed his pace for a moment.
It was eighteen months now since Neave had left the force. He’d been one of the most talented officers in the division, following Berryman up the promotions ladder. They’d worked together, and they’d spent a lot of time at this bar. They’d made a good team. He couldn’t understand why Neave had left what had been a promising career, getting his promotion to DI six months before he gave it all up. But after Angie, Neave had gone to pieces. His colleagues had rallied round in support, looked after him, got him drunk – not that he’d needed any help with that at the time. Finally, Berryman had advised him to go on sick leave and get some help, even though that would put a blight on his promotion prospects. But Neave wasn’t interested.
‘The fact is,’ he’d told Berryman, ‘I just don’t give a bugger about any of it any more. I just want out.’ Berryman was beginning to understand that feeling now, though he hadn’t been able to understand it then, the same way he’d never been able to understand Neave’s obsession with Angie – oh, pretty, he’d give you that, but weird. He couldn’t have stood it for a week.
He hadn’t seen Neave for nearly six months. Claire had had a go at him – ‘Why don’t you ask Rob round for an evening? We’ll feed him up, have a few beers, it might cheer him up.’ Claire had developed a soft spot for his ex-colleague. He’d phoned, but the offer had been declined, as Berryman had known it would be. Without the job, they had lost their common ground. He went up to the bar. ‘Want another one in there?’
Then he couldn’t think of anything to say. Berryman had been with Neave when he and Angie first met, and it had been Berryman who had seen him at the end. She stood between them like an unspoken ghost.
Neave looked pleased to see him, but turned down the offer of a drink. He still had almost a pint in his glass and it looked as if he had been spinning it out for a while. They exchanged bits and pieces of news, the talk halting and awkward. Looking around for topics, Berryman glanced at the paper Neave had been reading when he came into the pub. It was the Moreham Standard. It was open at the two-page spread about the Strangler.
Berryman groaned. It had got in the way of his thoughts all afternoon. The police should be doing this, the police aren’t doing this, Christ, what did they expect? Magic? Neave glanced at him, saw what he was looking at and gave him a sympathetic grin. ‘Giving you a hard time,’ he said, rather than asked.
‘They want my balls on a plate,’ Berryman said gloomily.
‘Yeah. Then Mystic Meg could gaze into them and give you the answers.’ Neave looked at the paper again. ‘Is it right? You’ve got nothing?’
Berryman decided to talk. He knew he could trust Neave to keep his mouth shut. ‘This bastard really knows what he’s doing,’ he said, after a moment. ‘He’s not made many mistakes. We’re getting nowhere. Four of them now, and we’ve got nothing.’
‘Nothing? You must have something. He’s got to leave something behind.’
‘Oh, we’ve got stuff that’ll help when we catch him. If we catch him. We’ve got lines of enquiry we haven’t used up yet, but we’ve got nothing to tell us who he is. It’ll be a Yorkshire Ripper thing again. He’ll do it once too often and we’ll have him. This kind of thing doesn’t help. It just gets people panicked, and it puts out information I don’t want putting out.’ He tapped the article headlined, I saw the face of the Strangler. ‘That’s rubbish. It’s just speculation. Stupid bitch.’
Neave looked at the article. ‘He works at the college,’ he said, indicating the name of the writer. ‘She probably forgot he was a journalist when she talked to him. She was worried about it. She asked me what she should do.’ He intercepted Berryman’s look and grinned again. ‘I told her to talk to you lot. I didn’t tell her to sell her story.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘You’re worried about it though. Was it him she saw?’
‘I don’t fucking know
. Whole of South fucking Yorkshire knows, but I don’t.’
But the fact was, Berryman was worried by Debbie’s story. ‘One thing we’ve got is that we know where he picked up the first one, Lisa Griffin. He left her by the track just outside Mexborough station. That’s where she was headed for, and we had witnesses who put her there. He’s learned something since then. We don’t know where he killed the others. They were dumped on the line away from any stations. There were two things we found – fingerprints we can’t account for, on her bag. I’m not saying they’re the killer’s, but they’re there. Also, broken glass. We don’t know why. He’d taken the lights out on the platform near where we found Lisa. We found broken glass on the others as well. Kate, Kate Claremont, there was glass in her hair. And there were bits of glass caught in Mandy’s dress.’
Neave looked off into space, his eyes half closed. ‘Is it lights he doesn’t like, or is it glass? Reflections? Does he need the glass? Does he use it on them?’
Berryman went over the old ground again. They didn’t know, they could only guess. ‘The glass isn’t the kind that breaks into shards. It doesn’t look like a weapon. He seems to be funny about lights. He smashes them, but he isn’t consistent.’ He saw Neave’s question forming. ‘We don’t know. It could be a convenience thing, pure and simple, but it’s there.’ He sighed and emptied his glass. Neave signalled to the barman.
‘How does he pick them up?’ he asked.
‘Good question,’ Berryman said. ‘And one we’d like the answer to.’ They didn’t know where he’d picked them up, where he’d taken them or where he’d killed them. They knew what he’d done to them though. ‘This last one, for instance, Julie, she was last seen leaving work on Broomegate. She never got home. He must have got her shortly after she was last seen, but the time of death was probably around midnight. If he picked her up on the street, someone should have seen it. There were enough cars around. If he picked her up in the station, how did he get her to bloody Rawmarsh? If he’s using a car, he’s got to get her out of the station and then he’s still got to get her down to the line – no road where we found her. Someone must have seen something, but no one’s come forward.’
‘Apart from.’ Neave indicated the photo in the paper.
Berryman scowled. ‘We need to talk to her again. We need to be sure that Julie wasn’t at the station. We need to find this man, whoever he is. He might have seen something.’
‘But it could be your man?’ Neave didn’t wait for an answer. ‘So how does he find them?’ His glass was now empty. He shook his head as the other man gestured to ask if he wanted another. He had that narrow-eyed intent look that Berryman remembered from earlier days.
‘We’re working on it,’ he said. The general feeling of the men working the investigation was that the killer chose his victims at random – waited till he saw a likely-looking one, then struck. Berryman wasn’t so sure. ‘I’ve got a bit of a feeling about it. Lisa’s little girl, she’s only five, she kept talking about the ugly man – and Mandy’s mum said that Mandy had been getting some funny phone calls. Mind you, she said that was down to Mandy’s boyfriend. I don’t know. It doesn’t add up to much. We’ve looked into it, and there’s nothing there you can put your finger on. I’ve got Lynne Jordan’s team working on it now. You know Lynne?’ Neave made a noncommittal noise. ‘The boyfriend admits he made “one or two” calls. It’s not just that, though. It’s too neat the way he lifts them. He always manages to do it without a witness. He’s got to know about them to do that. No, my money says he plans it well ahead.’
It was gone ten when they left the pub. Berryman headed for his car and Neave turned towards the river and his flat. Outside the pub, he zipped up his jacket and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. Winter had the town in its grip now. The air was icy and the pavement sparkled with frost. The centre was deserted as usual – just a few kids rode their skateboards around the pedestrianized shopping area, a small group of adolescents huddled together outside the local burger joint. His footsteps echoed as he walked through the pedestrian precinct towards the river. The wind cut between the buildings and blew bits of rubbish around on the ground and up into the air. An empty can rattled its way down the street as if in pursuit of the lighter burger cartons and chip wrappings. A twenty-minute walk and he’d be home. He was glad he didn’t have to watch over his shoulder, to be wary of every empty alleyway. He thought of Deborah walking through the town centre alone.
Berryman’s mind drifted back to the past. Angie. He and Neave had been working over in Sheffield at the time. There had been some attacks on women in the university district. A young woman had reported a prowler and they were following it up. The house was a typical student house, a terrace with an uncared-for frontage, and ragged curtains up in the bay window. The young man who opened the door gave them a hostile stare as they announced themselves, then called over his shoulder, ‘Angie!’ He pushed past them on his way out. Neave gave Berryman a look – give the little shit a hard time? – but they let him go. Putting the frighteners on a cocky young man wasn’t what they were here for.
A young woman was coming down the stairs, tying the belt of a flimsy dressing gown round her waist. Her hair was wet, and she was carrying a towel. She looked surprised to see them. ‘I thought …’ They were obviously not who she was expecting to see.
Berryman took over. He always played the hard man, a part he was well suited to with his heavy jaw and thick eyebrows. Neave would stay back, quietly, looking sympathetic and friendly. It established a useful relationship if it was needed for later, though it didn’t particularly reflect the way they actually were, Berryman thought. He was a bit of a soft touch, unlike Neave. He introduced himself, showing her his identification. ‘We’re here about this man you reported.’ She had phoned in, and later told the patrol officer that a man had been peering in through the ground-floor windows late at night. Berryman didn’t doubt it, if she always went around dressed like that. Her gown was made of some silky material that kept sliding off her shoulders, and where her wet hair dripped on to it, it clung and lost its opacity.
He tried to catch Neave’s eye as the woman took them into the downstairs front room, but all he met was an expression of blank amazement. He looked as if he’d been hit by a car he hadn’t seen coming. Berryman grinned. He didn’t often see Neave rattled.
The room was a tip. There were papers all over the floor, and books. Two empty cups occupied the rug in front of the fire. The walls were a confusion of colour from pictures, posters, photographs, hangings all tacked up at random. In one corner there was a music stand and a violin case on the floor beside it. There was a bed under the window with a patterned cover thrown over it. The woman sat down on the rug, briefly revealing the inside of a white thigh, and gestured towards the bed. ‘I’m a bit short of chairs. Please sit down.’ Berryman sat himself gingerly on the bed. He didn’t like mess and he didn’t like women who couldn’t keep a place clean. Neave remained standing and leant his arm on the mantelpiece. The woman began to towel her hair in front of the fire, the towel providing some of the concealment that the dressing gown failed to do.
‘Right, Miss …’ Berryman checked his notes. ‘Kerridge. What can you tell us about this man? Just start from the beginning and tell us what you can remember.’ It didn’t sound like the same man – it sounded like the Peeping Tom they’d had problems with in the past. He wound the interview up quickly, asked her if she’d be prepared to make a statement and look at some photographs. As they left, he was conscious that Neave had been a silent spectator throughout. He tried a ribald comment on the woman’s dress or lack of it, but got a monosyllabic response. Neave could be a moody bastard.
He didn’t say anything to Berryman about seeing the woman again, but three weeks later she had moved into his flat, and two years after that, just after Flora was born, they were married.
They were all young, under twenty-five. Lisa was the oldest at nearly twenty-five, Kate was just twenty
, killed within a month of her birthday, Mandy was twenty-one and Julie was twenty-four. Their lives had some similarities, some differences. Lisa was married, had been for three years. Her young husband had been given a hard time by the investigating team when her mutilated body had been found on the line near Mexborough station. She had a little girl, Karen, five years old. Kate and Mandy were both single and had no children. Kate got out and about – the Warehouse, pubs with comedy evenings, concerts at the Arena, the students’ union, the Leadmill. Lived in a shared house with three other students. Lots of boyfriends, no one special. They’d talked to them all. Nothing. Mandy was quieter, lived with her parents, had a little mongrel bitch, had been engaged for a couple of months but had just finished with her boyfriend. They’d given him a hard time, too, but there was nothing they could pin on him. Julie, they still had to find out more about Julie. She was single, lived alone, apparently had no children but they didn’t have much more information yet. Lisa worked part time as a secretary, Kate was a politics student, active in the students’ union, Mandy was a clerk for the local council and Julie was a PA. Her company had just won a Small Business of the Year Award before she was killed.
Lynne Jordan went through the details of the victims again, looking for that elusive something that linked them together. It was there, and she was missing it. She looked at the photographs the families had supplied. Lisa was dark-haired, attractive. She was smiling at the camera and doing an exaggerated glamour pose. She looked young, happy, confident. Kate was more serious, dark-haired again, strong features, well-defined brows. This picture had been taken when she was campaigning for the student union presidency. Attractive, but in a different way from Lisa’s vivacious femininity. Mandy had fair hair, a light brown often called mousy. She smiled rather tensely and artificially at the camera. A plain woman, if the picture was right. She doesn’t take a good photo, our Amanda, her mother had said sadly. We had a lovely one for the engagement announcement. We put it in the paper. Julie was blonde, fine-boned, lovely. She smiled confidently at the camera, a young woman at ease with her looks.
