by Danuta Reah
There was graffiti – tags mostly – on the walls, and some of the windows above the shops were broken, black and empty. Others were boarded up. Debbie looked up at a flowered curtain that had been left, faded and rotting, hanging half out of one abandoned window. The pavements were a mess of wet leaves, crisp bags, cigarette ends, empty drinks cans. The faces of the people coming towards her seemed unfamiliar, tired, defeated. She watched a young woman – about her own age, it was hard to tell – pushing a pram and pulling a toddler by the arm. The young woman looked blankly ahead of her, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. She was overweight, and her shoes were trodden down. She wore a shapeless coat hanging open over a faded pink cardigan, her greasy hair flopped into her eyes. The child in the pram was crying, but the woman never looked at it, just pushed on impassively. Her eyes passed over Debbie’s briefly, but gave no sign of recognition. Debbie recognized her. She had been in Debbie’s class at school, she had been one of the clever ones, like Debbie. Debbie stood as she went past, pretending to look in the window of a junk shop, feeling cold inside. This future had loomed like a pit in front of her, pushing her on to achieve, to escape. Did it also lie in front of the unwary feet of her students – Leanne, Rachel, Sarah?
That evening, Debbie and her mother sat by the fire in her mother’s small front room. Gina had bought a neat little terrace, an ideal one-person house, after Debbie’s father had died. His redundancy money had still been in the bank, untouched. ‘He didn’t know what to do with it,’ Gina had said at the time. Now she looked at Debbie and said, ‘Are you going to tell me about it?’
Debbie flushed. ‘About what?’ she said, unconvincingly.
‘About whatever it is that’s making you look like a wet weekend. You’ve had a face on you all day. You aren’t in any kind of trouble, are you?’ Her mother’s expression indicated exactly what kind of trouble she had in mind.
‘Oh. No. No trouble.’ She wasn’t going to let her mother see that she’d understood her meaning. ‘I’m just – it’s just a …’ She wanted to give some kind of truthful explanation, but couldn’t think of the right way to put it. She didn’t want to go into details, because she hadn’t sorted those details out in her own mind yet. ‘I started this thing with someone at work, and it went wrong more or less straight away. Nobody’s fault, it just … well, anyway, that’s all it is.’
Her mother waited to see if Debbie was going to say any more. ‘Well, I’m always here to talk to, if it helps,’ she said after a moment. Debbie shook her head.
Later, they quarrelled amiably over who was going to cook. Debbie lost, and was left to lounge in her chair while her mother made fish and chips. ‘You look like a picked chicken,’ she said, when Debbie remonstrated at her choice of menu. ‘Fish and chips, proper fish and chips will do you good. It’s no good you being lovesick and pining away.’
They had a glass of wine and spent the evening watching television – Gina was a Casualty fan – and talking. ‘You’d wonder,’ Gina said at one point during the programme, ‘how anyone ever survives in that hospital.’ A nurse was having hysterics on the shoulder of a consultant, and two doctors were having a row about their deteriorating relationship. Various patients were having cardiac arrests.
‘Looks more interesting than City,’ Debbie said. Watching television with Gina was entertaining if you weren’t too bothered about seeing the programme. Debbie went to bed early and had the best night’s sleep she’d had for a week.
The drift of fur against his fingers. It is like that first touch of hair, and his hands want to grip, to twist and pull. But she will detect him in the air, that first note of alarm that could make her wary, make her run. He knows when the right time is for them to see him, when they are at bay, when there is no escape.
He waits in the darkness, and as he waits, he tells himself stories. He knows the stories, knows them well. His stories have bright colours, sharp lines, pictures in his head. He sees her smiling, waiting for him. She doesn’t know he is there, but she is waiting. He sees her eyes in the darkness, watching him. He sees her face, and she is fighting, but it is too late to fight. She knows him, now. But the colours are fading, the brightness is going, like her breath, going, gone …
And there are other stories.
This is the story of a child, a stepfather and a mother. This story is told on yellowing paper, the letters fading where the paper is folded. APPALLING CATALOGUE OF CRUELTY. These pictures are not bright, the lines are blurred and grainy. The child, big-eyed behind his wire-rimmed glasses, bewildered as children often are, is pictured in a family group, mother, son and new husband. It is a story of beatings, a story of burnings. The mother could have protected her son, but perhaps she had been afraid of her new husband, perhaps, almost certainly, she had been ignorant of the extent of the abuse.
He can see the yellowing paper in his head, see the words scrolling past his eyes, see them as they slow and come to an end. But the story continues.
The strange thing was, parts of it had been good. The child liked travelling on the train with the stepfather, liked the times when he was sneaked into the cab or watched the furnace being stoked in the red glow by men stripped to the waist. He wanted to do that. He liked watching the cinders fly, and the way the trains flew past houses and yards and he could see women hanging out their washing, children playing in the streets, in the courts, the narrow boats on the canals and the white-hot glow of the metal as they flashed past the great steelworks at night. And if some of the men were cruel sometimes, it was just part of being a man who could swing a huge shovel as though it weighed nothing, who could strip to the waist in the depths of winter. Sometimes it was a cuff across the face that split his lip, sometimes it was a kick, but it was quick and impersonal. Sometimes it wasn’t him, it was something else, like the time they threw a cat into the furnace and he watched with horror and fascination.
But that was later. He learnt to be wary when the stepfather came in smelling of that strong, eye-stinging stuff. Sometimes he’d come into the child’s room at night, after the mother had gone to bed. The moonlight would shine through the window, reflected in the mirror that stood on the tallboy. He’d pinch out the night light that burned in a saucer beside the bed. The child was scared of the dark. ‘Shut up,’ he’d say when the child cried. And later, ‘Shut up, you little shit, or you’ll get what the cat got.’
Then there were the other times. The other men would come to the house. ‘He can come with me tonight,’ the stepfather would say to the mother.
‘Mam …’ the child would say.
‘You be off. You should be grateful. I’ve never known such a child for looking a gift horse in the mouth.’
And they would go, and he would watch all the things go past and all the stops, but he wouldn’t really see them because at the end there would be the dark place. The first time he had cried, and the stepfather had said, ‘Don’t you look at me like that, you little shit.’ It was black and close in there and the smell was terrible. Hands were held over his mouth and round his neck so that he could hardly breathe. The stepfather would say, ‘If you tell anybody, you’re going into the furnace. ‘When he got home, the mother would exclaim over the dirt on his clothes, his face, his hands. ‘Oh, really,’ she’d say, ‘can’t you keep him clean, Charlie?’ and the stepfather would growl, ‘Shut up. Stupid cunt.’
When she came in to say good night, she’d pick up his clothes, look at his pants and say, ‘Oh, you’re too big to make that kind of mess.’ He’d say, ‘Mam …’ but she wasn’t looking at him, her face was a blank and she went on talking. ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness, the child is father to the man …’ She’d hold her hand over his eyes. ‘See no evil,’ she’d whisper. He learnt to hide his clothes after he’d been out on one of the special nights. The mother was often in bed when they came back. ‘I just seem to feel so tired sometimes,’ she’d say, next day.
He doesn’t like this story. He tells himself another story, a better one,
after the stepfather was gone. The trains. He’d bunk off school every day and stand and watch the trains, sometimes sneaking rides up and down the local lines. He learnt quickly which trains ran on the line regularly, where they stopped, where they slowed, where they waited. He remembers the cat. He used to go to the pet shop with his money – the mother would always give him money – and buy a mouse. Mice were best because they were small with long tails. One and six, they cost. He had a secret place on the railway where he could light a candle and hold the mouse up by its tail over the flame. He liked watching the way its legs scrabbled and the way it tried to climb up itself. They always died.
The stepfather did come home again. But the child was no longer there, not really, not any more. The mother took the stepfather back. Let him who is without sin … Vengeance is mine. The stepfather fell down the stairs and broke his neck. Fires are better for vermin, but a snare will do, at a pinch.
The cat rubs itself against him. Vermin. But he has more important things to do.
Debbie left Goldthorpe on the Sunday evening, taking the train back to Sheffield. Gina saw her off from the station, despite Debbie’s protests. ‘It’s too cold,’ she said. ‘Go home, I’m fine.’ But her tone lacked conviction. The station was dark and almost deserted, apart from one other traveller who waited in the shadows at the far end of the platform.
‘I’m staying here.’ Gina wasn’t having any argument. ‘With that maniac around, I’m not leaving you alone in any station.’ She pulled her scarf more tightly round her neck and shivered. ‘It is a bit thin,’ she conceded.
It was after eight by the time Debbie got back. She called to Buttercup, who usually came running to greet her as she was unlocking the door. She found the cat huddled behind the settee, her place of refuge after a trip to the vet’s. Debbie picked her up and stroked her as she walked into the house. ‘What’s the matter with you, you daft thing?’ she said. It felt cold, and the first thing she did was light the gas fire, and stand in front of it, waiting for the chill to leave the room. Buttercup wriggled out of her arms and started stalking up and down, demanding food. ‘You’ve been fed,’ Debbie said severely. Her neighbour, Jill, was very good about feeding Buttercup when Debbie was away.
The house felt strange, as though she’d been away a lot longer than one night. Debbie looked around. Her diary was on the table – surely she’d put that away before she left. She didn’t write much personal in it, but she didn’t want Jill reading it. She looked round the room again. The drawer where she kept her photographs wasn’t properly shut. Perhaps Jill had been having a nosy. She was a bit curious about Debbie, and kept an eye on the comings and goings. That was what was making the house feel strange. Things had been disturbed, shifted, and they were out of order. Debbie was annoyed, but she didn’t want to confront Jill. She didn’t want a row with her neighbour, and if the price for a peaceful relationship, and having someone nearby to feed Buttercup, was a bit of prying, she’d tolerate it – but she’d lock everything away next time. That would be enough of a hint.
When she went back to work on Monday, she felt a lot better. She breezed through her Monday morning class, helped along by the students’ insistence that in the last week before Christmas, they couldn’t be expected to do any serious work. She came out of the classroom at the end of the morning, her hair festooned with Silly String that the students were aerosoling all over the college, a bundle of Christmas cards in her hand, and the cheery farewells of the students, who wouldn’t see her again until after Christmas, ringing in her ears. Perhaps Christmas would be bearable after all.
In the afternoon, her A-level group were disinclined for work. They nagged her about assessments, and seemed distracted. She’d been half expecting this and was surprised they had turned up at all, but the only absence was, surprisingly, Sarah. She gave them a quiz, as a gesture to Christmas, and for some reason this bit of frivolity helped to buoy up her spirits. At the end of the class, she went back to the staff room feeling better than she had for a long time. She was sorry that Sarah hadn’t been there, and wondered what had happened to her. She didn’t usually miss classes.
Her good spirits gave her the courage to phone Rob Neave to ask him about her keys – maybe he’d found them and left them on her desk, or something. Maybe she’d dropped them at his flat … she veered her mind away from dangerous ground. However, when she phoned his number, it was answered by Andrea, the clerical assistant. ‘He isn’t here,’ she said. ‘I’m not expecting him in until next week.’ The way her high spirits plummeted warned her that making contact was a bad idea. She’d been using the keys as an excuse to phone, she might as well admit it. It was probably just as well he was away now until after the college closed, and she wouldn’t see him again until after Christmas. She couldn’t always protect herself from being hurt, but she could make some effort to avoid it.
She planned to put in an hour’s work before she went home, and got out her marking folder, that seemed to increase in size each time she looked at it. She was just settling down to work, when the phone rang, the long ring that indicated an internal call. Maybe Rob was in, maybe Andrea had told him … She picked up the phone, heard the shake in her voice as she tried to control her breathing, but the phone went dead. Debbie was angry with herself for hoping, so that the pang of disappointment was all the stronger. What if it had been him? What would he have said to make any difference? The phone rang again, and she made herself wait, let it ring a couple of times before she picked it up. ‘Hello, Deborah Sykes.’ Again, it went dead. She shook her head impatiently. Her hard-won recovery seemed false and empty, and a feeling of depression and anxiety began to creep over her. Suddenly, the thought of marking seemed intolerable. She was going home. She stuffed the folder of work into her bag, pulled on her coat and left, closing the staff-room door on the ringing phone.
Tim Godber wanted to be a journalist – not someone who did a bit of freelancing, but ultimately a columnist on a national. And the first step into that career was a writer’s job on a national. The short cut to that was a big story, one that would get his name known where it mattered. OK, so he wrote stories for the poxy little local paper, but that wasn’t good enough. He was in the middle of a big story now, right on the doorstep, and he couldn’t work out how to use it. Strangler stories were being written up by everyone – human interest angles, psychological angles, local-colour angles – The killer who stalks the streets of a shattered metropolis – but these didn’t need his particular local knowledge. He’d tried insinuating himself into Mick Berryman’s circle. They had some contacts in common, but Berryman was keeping a distance from the press, and Tim had a feeling his story about Debbie had queered his pitch. He hadn’t realized that that bastard Neave had Berryman in his pocket. There was something going on with Neave and Debbie, he was certain of it, and he intended making it his business to find out.
He fantasized for a few minutes about getting lucky, about finding the Strangler, being in on the next kill – not in on it, of course, but maybe to be the person the Strangler decided to contact, things like, The next one will be … They missed me this time … I am God’s messenger. He could see the photographs – him looking serious and concerned, sitting by his phone, his articles on the screen of his word processor. He did have one important contact. He knew Debbie had seen the Strangler. All his journalist’s instincts told him that. And since his story, the killer had seen Debbie. He’d pay attention to his press. They always did. Tim needed a high-profile association with. Debbie in a way that would bring him to the attention of the killer. How … He began to plan what he would write when he – a journalist – led the police to the Strangler.
Actually, Tim thought, he needed a better nickname. ‘The Strangler’ was boring and utilitarian. He began playing with names for when he could write his big story. The Eye Guy, the Orb Man, Vision Express – no, he’d never get that past the legal team – something catchy but gruesome and scary. He’d made a bad mistake falling out wi
th Debbie. He’d better start sweet-talking her. She’d been looking a bit down in the mouth lately.
He headed towards the cubbyhole she shared with Louise Hatfield, wondering if a bit of professional discussion might not be a starting point. A student was hanging around near the staff room, the lanky, dishwater blonde who’d been in his media group for a while. She was standing outside the door, chewing the nail of one finger, looking indecisive. He caught her eye and smiled. ‘Hello’ – he racked his brains – ‘Sarah. You look a bit lost.’ When she turned to look at him, he saw that she had a bruise on the side of her face, and a swollen lip. She looked as if she’d walked into a left hook.
She smiled back, not quite meeting his eyes. ‘I was looking for Debbie. I couldn’t get to class this afternoon and I needed to see her,’ she said, after a moment. She looked a bit tense, a bit nervous.
He was pretty sure this was one of Debbie’s lame ducks. Get into the good books! He smiled again, injecting a bit of ruefulness this time. ‘Me too. Isn’t she in?’ The girl shook her head, and backed off as though she was planning to leave. Tim stopped her. ‘Do you want me to give her a message?’ This would be the opportunity he needed to talk to Debbie. Come on, love, give me a message for Miss.
