by David Peace
He sniffed up, ‘So how much is a busy man like you prepared to give a poor working man like myself?’
‘Depends what you got, you know how it works.’
He took out a piece of folded paper and waved it in front of me. ‘Internal memo from Oldman?’
‘Twenty?’
‘Fifty.’
‘Fuck off. I’m just confirming what I’ve already heard. If you’d come straight to your old mate Jack yesterday, then that’d be a different story wouldn’t it?’
‘Forty.’
‘Thirty.’
‘Thirty-five?’
‘Show us.’
He handed me the paper and I read:
At twelve noon Sunday 12 June, the body of Janice Ryan, twenty-two years old, a convicted prostitute, was found secreted under an old settee on wasteground off White Abbey Road, Bradford.
A post-mortem has been carried out and death was due to massive head injuries caused by a heavy blunt instrument. It is thought that death occurred some seven days before due to the partial decomposition of the body.
It is also thought from the pattern of the injuries that this death is not connected, repeat not connected, with the other murders publicly referred to as the Ripper Murders.
At the present time no information is to be given to the press in regard to this crime.
I stood up.
‘Where you going?’
‘It’s him,’ I said and walked over to the telephone. ‘What about my thirty-five quid?’
‘In a minute.’
I picked up the telephone and dialled.
Her telephone rang, and rang, and rang:
Warn whores to keep off streets cause I feel it coming on again.
I hung up and then dialled again.
Her telephone rang, and rang, and –
‘Hello?’
‘Where were you?’
‘In the bath, why?’
‘There’s been another.’
‘Another?’
‘Him. In Bradford. Same place.’
‘No.’
‘Please, don’t go out. I’ll be over later.’
‘When?’
‘As soon as I can. Don’t go out,’
‘OK.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
‘Bye.’
And she hung up.
I walked back across the pub, visions of bloodstained furniture, holes and heads:
I have given advance warning so its yours and their fault.
I sat down.
‘You all right?’
‘Fine,’ I lied.
‘Don’t look it.’
‘So they got someone?’
‘Yep.’
‘Who?’
‘Fuck knows.’
‘Come on?’
‘Straight up. No-one knows, just brass.’
‘Why all the secrecy?’
‘I tell you, fuck knows.’
‘But they’re saying it’s not Ripper?’
‘That’s what they’re saying.’
‘What you reckon?’
‘Fuck knows, Jack. It’s weird.’
‘You heard owt else? Anything?’
‘How much?’
‘Call it an even fifty if it’s good.’
‘Couple of lads reckon some blokes have been suspended, but you didn’t hear that from me.’
‘Over this?’
‘Aye, that’s what a couple of lads here said.’
‘From Millgarth?’
‘That’s what they said.’
‘Who?’
‘DI Rudkin, your mate Fraser, and DC Ellis.’
‘Ellis?’
‘Mike Ellis. Fat twat with a big gob?’
‘Don’t know him. And they reckon they did this woman in Bradford?’
‘Now Jack, I didn’t say that. They’ve just been suspended, that’s all I know.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Aye.’
‘You surprised?’
‘Rudkin, no. Fraser, yes. Ellis, yeah but everyone hates him anyway.’
‘Cunt?’
‘Complete and utter,’
‘But everyone knew Rudkin was dirty?’
‘Lads don’t call him Harry for nowt,’
‘Fuck. What way?’
‘When he worked Vice he was keeping more than streets clean.’
‘And Fraser?’
‘You met him; he’s Mr fucking Clean. Owl’s always helped him along and all.’
‘Maurice Jobson? Why?’
‘Fraser’s married to Bill Molloy’s daughter, isn’t he?’
‘Fuck,’ I sighed. ‘And Badger Bill’s got cancer, yeah?’
‘Aye.’
‘Interesting.’
‘If you say so,’ shrugged Wilson.
I looked at my watch.
‘Best put that away,’ he said, pointing at the piece of paper on the table.
I nodded and put it in my pocket, taking out my wallet.
I counted out the notes under the table and handed him fifty.
‘That’ll do nicely, sir,’ he winked and stood up to go.
‘Anything at all, Samuel, give us a call?’
‘You bet.’
‘I mean it. If this is him, I want to know first.’
‘Got you,’ and he buttoned up his coat and was gone.
I looked at my watch and went to the telephone.
‘Bill? Jack.’
‘What you got?’
‘It’s strange, all right. Dead prostitute under a sofa in Bradford.’
‘Told you, Jack. I told you.’
‘But they’re saying it’s not a Ripper job.’
‘So why are they keeping it from us?’
‘I don’t know but, and this is just what I reckon, somehow some of brass have fucked up and there’s been some suspensions.’
‘Really?’
‘That’s what rumour is round Millgarth.’
‘Who?’
‘That Sergeant Fraser for one. John Rudkin and someone else.’
‘Detective Inspector John Rudkin? Over what?’
‘Don’t know. Might be nowt to do with this, but seems odd yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ve got a bloke going to let us know first thing he hears.’
‘Good. I’ll have Front Page on standby.’
‘But you best not say why’
‘You still going to Manchester?’
‘I think so, yeah. But I’ll come back via Bradford.’
‘Keep in touch, Jack.’
‘Bye.’
I sat on the train and smoked and drank a warm can, picked at a sandwich and flicked through a paperback book, Jack the Ripper: the Final Solution.
After Huddersfield I just dozed, bad ale and sleep to match, waking to the hills and the rain, hair stuck against a dirty window, drifting:
I look at my watch, it’s 7.07.
I’m on the Moors, walking across the Moors, and I come to a chair, a high-backed leather chair, and there’s a woman in white kneeling before the chair, hands in angel prayer, hair across her face.
I lean down to scoop the hair away and it’s Carol, then Ka Su Peng. She stands up and points to the middle of the long white dress and a word in bloody fingerprints there writ:
livE.
And there on the Moors, in the wind and in the rain, she pulls the white dress up over her head, her yellow belly swollen, and then puts the dress back on, inside out, the word in bloody fingerprints there writ:
Evil.
And a small boy in blue pyjamas comes out from behind the high-backed leather chair and leads her away across the Moors and I stand there in the wind and in the rain and I look at my watch and it’s stopped:
7.07.
I woke, my head against the window, and looked at my watch.
I picked up my briefcase and locked myself in the toilet. I sat on the rocking bog and took out the porno mag. Spunk.
Clare Strachan in a
ll her bloody glory.
Hard again, I checked the address and went back to my seat and the half-eaten cheese sandwich.
From Stalybridge into Manchester I tried to put all of Wilson’s shit together, re-reading Oldman’s memo, wondering what the fuck Fraser could have done, knowing suspensions could be anything these days:
Back-handers and one-handers, dodgy overtime and faked expenses, sloppy paperwork, no paperwork.
John bloody Rudkin leading Mr fucking Clean astray.
Clueless, I went back to the window, the rain and the factories, the local horror movies, remembering the photographs of death camps my uncle had brought back from the war.
I’d been fifteen when that war ended and now, in 1977, I was sat on a train, head against the black glass, the bloody rain, the fucking North, wondering if this one ever would.
I was thinking of Martin Laws and The Exorcist when we pulled into Victoria.
In the station, straight to a telephone:
‘Anything?’
‘Nothing.’
Out of Victoria, up to Oldham Street.
270 Oldham Street, dark and rain-stained, rotting black bin bags heaped up outside, MJM Publishing sat on the third floor.
I stood at the foot of the stairs and shook down my raincoat.
Soaked through, I walked up the stairs.
I banged on the double doors and went inside.
It was a big office, full of low furniture, almost empty, a door to another office at the back.
A woman sat at a desk near the back door, a bag, typing.
I stood at the low counter by the door and coughed.
‘Yes?’ she said, not looking up.
‘I’d like to talk to the proprietor please?’
‘The what?’
‘The owner.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Jack Williams.’
She shrugged and picked up the old telephone on her desk: ‘There’s a man here wants to see the owner. Name’s Jack Williams.’
She sat there, nodding, then covered the mouthpiece and said, ‘What do you want?’
‘Business.’
‘Business,’ she repeated, nodded again, and asked, ‘What kind of business?’
‘Orders.’
‘Orders,’ she said, nodded one last time, and then hung up.
‘What?’ I said.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Leave your name and number and he’ll call you back.’
‘But I’ve come all way over from Leeds.’
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘Bloody hell,’ I said.
‘Yep,’ she said.
‘Can I at least have his name?’
‘Lord High and Bloody Mighty,’ she said, ripping the piece of paper out of the typewriter.
I went for it: ‘Don’t know how you can work for a bloke like that.’
‘I don’t intend to for much longer.’
‘You out of here then?’
She stopped pretending to work and smiled, ‘Week next Friday.’
‘Good on you.’
‘I hope so.’
I said, ‘You want to earn yourself a couple of quid for your retirement?’
‘My retirement? You’re no spring chicken yourself, you cheeky sod.’
‘A couple of quid to tide you over?’
‘Only a couple?’
‘Twenty?’
She came over to the front of the office, a little smile. ‘So who are you really?’
‘A business rival, shall we say?’
‘Say what you bloody well want for twenty quid.’
‘So you’ll help me out?’
She glanced round at the door to the back office and winked, ‘Depends what you want me to do, doesn’t it?’
‘You know your magazine Spunk?’
She rolled her eyes again, pursed her lips, and nodded.
‘You keep lists of the models?’
‘The models!’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Addresses, phone numbers?’
‘Probably, if they went through the books but, believe me, I doubt they all did.’
‘If you could get us names and anything else on models that’d be great.’
‘What you want them for?’
I glanced at the back office and said, ‘Look, I sold a job lot of old Spunks to Amsterdam. Got a bloody bomb for them. If your Lordship is too busy to earn himself a cut, then I’ll see if I can’t set myself up.’
‘Twenty quid?’
‘Twenty quid.’
She said, ‘I can’t do it now.’
I looked at my watch. ‘What time you finished?’
‘Five.’
‘Bottom of stairs at five?’
‘Twenty quid?’
‘Twenty quid.’
‘See you then.’
I stood in a red telephone box in the middle of Piccadilly Bus Station and dialled.
‘It’s me.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Still in Manchester.’
‘What time you coming home?’
‘Soon as I can.’
‘I’ll wear something pretty then.’
Outside, the rain kept falling, the red box leaking.
I’d been here before, this very box, twenty-five years before, my fiancée and I, waiting for the bus to Altrincham to see her Aunt, a new ring on her finger, the wedding but one week away.
‘Bye,’ I said, but she’d already gone.
I stepped back into the sheets of piss and walked about Piccadilly for a couple of hours, going in and out of cafés, sitting in damp booths with weak coffees, waiting, watching skinny black figures dancing through the rain, the lot of us dodging the raindrops, the memories, the pain.
I looked at my watch.
It was time to go.
Going up to five, I found another telephone box on Oldham Street.
‘Anything?’
‘Nothing.’
At five to five I was huddled at the bottom of the steps, ringing wet.
Ten minutes later she came down the stairs.
‘I’ve got to go back up,’ she said. ‘I’m not finished.’
‘Did you get the stuff?’
She handed me an envelope.
I glanced inside.
She said, ‘It’s all there. What there is.’
‘I believe you,’ I said and handed her twenty folded quid.
‘Pleasure doing business with you,’ she laughed, walking back upstairs.
‘Bet it was,’ I said. ‘Bet it was.’
I went down to Victoria where they told me the Bradford train went from Piccadilly.
I ran up through the cats and the dogs and caught a cab for the last bit.
It was almost six when we got there, but there was a train on the hour and I caught it.
Inside, the carriage stank of wet clothes and stale smoke and I had to share a table with an old couple from Pennistone and their sweating sandwiches.
The woman smiled, I smiled back and the husband bit into a large red apple.
I opened the envelope and took out tissue-thin pieces of duplicate paper, three in all.
There were lists of payments, cash or cheque for February 1974 through to March 1976, payments to photoshops, chemists, photographers, paper mills, ink works, and models.
Models.
I ran down the list, out of breath:
Christine Bowen Teresa Lane Mary Shore
Catherine Macey Alison Wilcox Marcella Oldroyd
Susan Baker Jane O’Neill Carolyn Ellis
Tracy Olsen Sharon Pearson Gaye Catton
Nicola Knox Liz McDonald Helen Mills
Fiona Sutton Heidi Toyer Patricia Oscroft
Linda Shay Michelle May Mona Balston
Stephanie White Melanie Freeman Julie Toy
Jane Hogan Emily Radford Grace Dalgliesh
Barbara Miller Jane Dixon Sar
ah Raine
Clare Morrison Jane Ryan Sue Penn
Everything stopped, dead.
Clare Morrison, known to be Strachan.
Everything stopped.
I took out Oldman’s memo:
Jane Ryan, read Janice.
Everything –
Sue Penn, read Su Peng.
Stopped –
Read Ka Su Peng.
Dead.
There on that train, that train of tears, crawling across those undressed hells, those naked little hells, those naked little hells all decked out in tiny, tiny bells, there on that train listening to those bells ring in the end of the world:
1977.
In 1977, the year the world broke.
My world:
The old woman across the table finishing the last sandwich and screwing up the silver foil into a tiny, tiny ball, the egg and cheese on her false teeth, crumbs stuck in the powder on her face, her face smiling at me, a gargoyle, her husband bleeding his teeth into that big red apple, this big red, red, red world.
1977.
In 1977, the year the world turned red.
My world:
I needed to see the photographs.
The train crawled on.
I had to see the photographs.
The train stopped at another station.
The photographs, the photographs, the photographs.
Clare Morrison, Jane Ryan, Sue Penn.
I was crying and I wanted to stop, wanted to pull myself together but, when I tried, the bits didn’t fit.
Pieces missing.
1977.
In 1977, the year the world fell to bits.
My world:
Going under, to the sea-bed, better off dead, that evil, evil bed, those secret underwater waves that floated me up bloated, up from the sea-bed.
Beached, washed up.
1977.
In 1977, the year the world drowned.
My world:
1977 and I needed to see the photographs, had to see the photographs, the photographs.
In 1977, the year –
1977.
My world:
An imagined photograph.
Wear something pretty …
I didn’t stop in Bradford, just changed trains for Leeds and sat on another slow train through hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell:
Hell.
In Leeds I ran through the black rain along Boar Lane, stumbling, through the precinct, tripping, on to Briggate, falling, into Joe’s Adult Books.
‘Spunk? Back issues?’
‘By the door.’
‘You got every issue?’
‘I don’t know. Have a look.’
