Blood Relatives

by Stevan Alcock

  ‘You’ll catch your death in them wet clothes.’

  I fetched a towel for her hair and face, and a large white T-shirt. She undressed down to her panties, draped her wet clothes over t’ arm of t’ settee. Squatting in front of t’ gas fire wi’ my T-shirt stretched over her knees, her hair lank and without make-up, she would have made a pitiful sight, had I felt any pity.

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘Not difficult, poppet. I rang your work and said I was your cousin, and that I wanted to send you a birthday card but didn’t have the address. It’s easy to find people when you use a bit of gumption.’

  ‘So I see.’

  ‘I’ve been inside.’

  ‘I heard. When did they let you out?’

  ‘A couple of weeks ago. I went to my mother’s for as long as I could stand it. When she drinks, which is most of the time, she loves me, hates me, then loves me in the same minute, like she’s ripping petals off a flower. She thinks that if she says she loves me often enough, one of us might start to believe it.’

  ‘So you just thought you’d pitch up ’ere? What about Victor? Why can’t you go to him – he is your husband.’

  ‘Was. Fuck knows what I saw in him. Opportunity, I suppose. He’s still got three months to go in Armley jail.’

  ‘And Jeremy?’

  ‘I think he’s holed up in Rotherham. He knows some of our people there.’

  ‘Your people, you mean. So you’ve got nowhere else to go. I’ve always wondered why you latched on to me in t’ first place. You know, at the FK Club.’

  ‘Don’t you know, poppet? You mean you really don’t know?’

  ‘No, I don’t. Not really.’

  ‘It was Tad.’

  ‘Tad worn’t there that night.’

  She arched her eyebrows at me. ‘Remember that girl I went off to see?’

  ‘The one you’d snogged?’

  ‘That one. Well, she wasn’t there, but I did have a cosy little chat with Tad. He was by the DJ box, watching us. Of course, you didn’t know Tad at that point. We couldn’t decide which way you swung. So we had a bet. A fiver on which of us got to fuck you first. We tossed a coin for who’d have first crack at you.’

  ‘So you won the toss and lost the bet,’ I said. ‘Where’s Tad now?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Cos you just do.’

  ‘Did you know my dad was in the Merchant Navy? I never met him. He left before I was born. Then a few years later my mother took up with this odious pub landlord. He had eczema, and fat red fingers. He made it clear I was in the way, except when he wanted me … He’d creep into my room at night. Anyway, one day that bastard took off as well. Stole the pub’s takings. Other men came and went. My mother took to drinking: women’s drinking – secretly, silently, until she was drinking enough that people started to notice. She’s been more or less drunk ever since.’

  ‘Where’s Tad?’

  ‘Did you ever try that telephone number, poppet? The one I wrote on your chest? Oh, you did? Then you’ll know it was a fake. We didn’t have a telephone at Paradise Buildings. We hadn’t expected you to latch on to us like that. You know, that time when you came running over to me and Jeremy like a lost dog.’

  ‘Where’s Tad?’

  ‘Where is Tad? Well, now …’

  ‘You can stay, so long as …’

  ‘Oh, you’re an angel, aren’t you? An angel! An angel!’

  ‘… So long as you tell me where he is.’

  She sucked on a strand of her hair.

  ‘Maybe he’s in prison.’

  ‘Or maybe not. If he wor, you would have have said so by now.’

  ‘Would I, poppet?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘The truth is, I neither know nor care where he is. As far as I’m concerned, Tad can rot in hell.’

  ‘And as far as I’m concerned …’

  I stood up and moved toward t’ door.

  ‘He’s in London,’ she said quickly, pulling the T-shirt tighter about her.

  ‘London? Have you got his address?’

  She tugged at her tangled hair. ‘Are you in love with him, poppet? Hmmm? Cos he never shuts up about you.’

  ‘If you give me his address …’

  Her lips parted slightly. I fetched a pen, tore a sheet from t’ pop-up telephone address book and stood over her while she scribbled an address. I snatched the sheet from her.

  ‘Stockwell?’

  ‘That was the last address he gave me.’

  I folded it and tucked it into my back pocket.

  Gina sighed. ‘Now what, poppet?’

  ‘Now you can get dressed and go.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. I don’t want you here. Get dressed and get out. Now!’

  She scowled at me, but seeing that I meant it, she struggled to her feet. As she pulled on her black jeans, which wor still damp, I touched her elbow to steady her.

  ‘Don’t touch me! Don’t ever touch me!’ she screamed.

  I thought she wor going to go for me. I wor tensed up, ready for it. Instead, she put her face close to mine and whispered viciously, ‘Maybe I lied about the address.’

  ‘I’ll risk it.’

  She finished dressing without another word. I followed her into t’ hallway. She stopped and turned. ‘You’re no better than the rest of them.’

  ‘You’re probably right on that score. I’ll say one word. Dora.’

  ‘Dora? I don’t know any Dora, poppet.’

  I watched her walking away down t’ road ’til t’ darkness had swallowed her. When I came back inside I found Mand waiting by t’ door.

  ‘Promise me you won’t go to London.’

  ‘Never ask anyone to make a promise,’ I said. ‘They’ll only break it.’

  For once I wor alone in t’ house. It wor so quiet I could hear t’ pipes knocking. When I wor small Mitch had told me it wor little men scurrying along wi’ tiny hammers, carrying out emergency repairs in case t’ pipes burst into our lives.

  Sis wor getting careless wi’ that diary. It wor on t’ floor beside her bed, barely covered by a Jackie mag.

  I crouched down and leafed through it, turning the pages gingerly ’til: Friday. I read quickly. Seemed that Marcus fancied himsen as a bit of a drummer. He wor even in some band, called Max Squid. ‘Max friggin’ Squid,’ I chortled. What kind of a friggin’ shite name wor that? They rehearsed in t’ basement of a warehouse in Bramley. Sis described it. I knew it – I could picture the building.

  I flipped back a week. Boring. Fast forward. Thursday.

  Ah, more like it. Sis and Marcus had been having sex in t’ rehearsal room. He’d had an extra key cut. He’d done her a tape of his favourite shite bands like Gryphon and Gentle Giant and Spooky Tooth and Budgie. I looked at the cassette lying on t’ floor. ‘Music from Marcus: For Mandy’.

  I closed the diary and unfolded the scrap of paper wi’ Tad’s address on it, stroking my thumb across it thoughtfully. Then I flopped back on sis’s bed and undid my fly.

  Mother’s new job wor at Clark’s hauliers, over Shipley way. It wor just three days a week, doing paperwork and answering the phone. Mitch would have never allowed it. Mitch always believed that a married woman’s place wor firmly wedded to t’ kitchen sink. But then, this wor t’ same Mitch who’d told me that no woman would become Prime Minister in his lifetime. What wor it I’d seen in a feminist pamphlet at a Gay Lib meeting? ‘It starts when you sink in his arms and ends with your arms in his sink.’

  By t’ end of her first week you couldn’t shut Mother up. She retold every last friggin’ detail over and over: who said what, where, when and why. Who drank tea, who preferred coffee, how many friggin’ sugars – the whole nine ruddy yards. I couldn’t say how many sugars Craner had in his friggin’ tea, only that he fair heaped it in. But it wor good to see her smiling again, although sometimes I’d catch a sadness in her eyes. Maybe Mand saw it too, cos one day she asked her, ‘Do you th
ink Mavis would miss Don if he died?’

  ‘You get used to folk,’ Mother said.

  In July the DVLA finally transferred the car over to Mother’s name, and she sold it to a car dealer who screwed her over on t’ price – her being a middle-aged widow who didn’t drive. I wor riled at her for not discussing it wi’ me, but she said she’d just wanted shot of it.

  After she’d paid off what we owed on t’ telly, Mother said she wanted to eat out at a restaurant. A proper restaurant, where you sit at a table and get served. And so we did. The three of us. A small Italian place just up from Bradford railway station, wi’ frescos of Sicily and wine bottles in wicker baskets hanging off the stucco walls.

  We wor t’ only people there. It felt like we’d invaded a stranger’s front room. Mandy plumped for t’ spaghetti Bolognese, and Mother and I both chose the lasagna. Two glasses of Lambrusco and a Coke. The waiter, a podgy Italian wi’ big lugs and bristly eyebrows, put a small basket of white bread nestling in a napkin and a saucer of olive oil on t’ red-and-white check tablecloth. The food arrived double quick, in stoneware pots that wor too hot to touch. The waiter then retreated behind a corner bar area that wor decorated wi’ shells. He divided his attention between watching us eat and ogling a small black-and-white telly on t’ wall behind his head.

  I heard the TV news come on, the theme tune cutting through t’ sixties Italian pop that wor spilling out of t’ speakers above our heads. The headline bulletin wor all about HIM. HE’d sent a tape to t’ police (if it wor him), that wor about to be played on t’ news. When it started playing the waiter grimaced apologetically at us, ’til Mother asked him to turn up the volume. We stopped eating and turned in our chairs to watch. The waiter moved to one side so we could all see.

  The camera zoomed in on Superintendent George Oldfield’s face. Maybe it wor t’ distorted small screen, but he looked friggin’ haggard. A man hanging on t’ edge of hope. He pressed the on switch of t’ tape recorder. Camera bulbs flashed.

  I’m Jack. I see you are having no luck catching me. I have the greatest respect for you, George, but Lord you are no nearer catching me now than four years ago when I started. I reckon your boys are letting you down, George. They can’t be much good, can they? The only time they came near to catching me was a few months back in Chapeltown, when I was disturbed. Even then it was a uniformed copper, not a detective. I warned you in March that I’d strike again. Sorry it wasn’t Bradford. I’m not quite …

  ‘Is that HIM?’ Mandy hissed at me across t’ table.

  ‘Shush, will you!’

  … September, October or even sooner …

  The waiter turned the TV down again. We heard the opening chords of Andrew Gold’s ‘Thank You for Being a Friend’ being played at the end of HIS tape before it cut out. Mand continued to sing after it, ’til she clocked from our faces that somehow it worn’t right. Mother straightened her shoulders and set her fork down on her plate.

  ‘A Geordie then,’ she said crisply. ‘Does anyone want dessert?’

  15 July 1979. The Yorks Evening Post published a special crime report. There wor a big black square containing a question mark, wi’ t’ words ‘Face of the Ripper?’, along wi’ a whole set of friggin’ questions for t’ readers. Mother read ’em aloud to us.

  ‘Question 5: Do you have a husband, father, brother, son, fiancé, boyfriend or neighbour with access to a car whose whereabouts on the murder nights are not known or cannot be established?’

  She held the paper up, staring at the black square as if she wor waiting for HIS image to emerge out of t’ blackness. Then she laid the paper aside and picked up her monthly competition magazine. ‘Oooh,’ she said. ‘Win a holiday cottage in Wales.’

  ‘If someone don’t burn it down first,’ I said.

  Over t’ summer the police interviewed 150,000 people. Sometimes they interviewed the same ones more than the once. They turned up at our house again one warm August evening. I wor out the front wi’ a bucket and a soft cloth, cleaning the windows.

  ‘Mitchell Thorpe?’ one of t’ constables asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m Richard Thorpe.’

  ‘Do you know where we can find Mitchell Thorpe?’

  ‘Aye,’ I said.

  I set the bucket down, showed them into t’ living room and pointed to t’ urn that sat on t’ nest of tables next to t’ telly.

  ‘He’s right there.’

  Simon Alexander: Expressed his intention to visit the scenes of the Ripper murders ‘to pick up the vibrations’. These vibrations would lead him to the Ripper’s door.

  Alfred Cartwright: A clairvoyant and medical herbalist for forty-two years, offered the police a description of the killer.

  Stanley King: A Yorkshire clairvoyant, saw the Ripper in a dream living in a small village in the Pennines. His vision was so strong he felt compelled to give the police a description of the place.

  The Sunday People announced that the famous clairvoyant Doris Stokes had ‘seen’ the face of the Ripper. According to Mrs Stokes the Ripper ‘is about five foot eight inches tall and in his mid twenties to thirties with dark hair and a scar below his left eye which twitches when he gets agitated’. She added that his name was Johnnie, or possibly Ronnie.

  Mrs Tracey, another clairvoyant, derived her inspiration from studying the Ripper’s handwriting on the letters received by the police. Her view was that the killer was a gentle person with a ‘deep psychological mother rejection’.

  On 26 July 1979, Manchester astrologer Reginald de Marius predicted that ‘the Ripper will strike tomorrow’. He added, ‘I’ve deduced that the Ripper was born on 15 September 1946.’

  Mrs Nella Jones, clairvoyant consultant, was brought in by the police to apply her expertise to the Ripper case. She claimed that she had become ‘locked into the mind of the Ripper’ whilst sitting in her Kentish home with a South London policewoman.

  Mrs Husk swirled the dregs in her teacup, emptied it and studied the contents. She gasped. ‘My, my,’ she said, looking down at Lord Snooty, who raised his heavy head momentarily from his resting place beside her chair. ‘It’s a rum world. It is that.’

  The late-August sun beat down on us through t’ Corona van windscreen. The concertina doors wor pinned open to t’ elements, so a welcome breeze wafted through t’ cab as we hurtled along.

  We wor on a different round today, delivering to posher houses out in Roundhay. Each house wor detached or a big semi, often set back from t’ road wi’ a driveway and a double garage.

  Sometimes I didn’t know which door to deliver to, although t’ rule of thumb wor t’ back door, if there wor a back door. Posh folk bought less and took longer to do it. It seemed to me that it wor more important to them to be offered and say no than actually buy owt.

  One hot afternoon when I wor delivering some orange squashes and tonic waters I surprised Billy Bremner on t’ back lawn of his bungalow. He wor stretched out in his shorts on a sun lounger. There wor an ashtray beside him on t’ grass. Billy Bremner wor a footie hero at Leeds Utd. I mumbled ‘Hello,’ and he looked at me nonplussed and then his wife came out from t’ kitchen, deeply tanned and wearing a white bikini that barely covered her decency. I told Eric and he said that from now on only he wor allowed to deliver to t’ Bremners, the sight of Mrs Bremner in a bikini being wasted on me. He never did see her in that bikini.

  One day Eric asked me out of t’ blue if I’d ever seen the Matterhorn Man again, and I said I hadn’t. Him reminding me of t’ Matterhorn Man made my cheeks turn tomato, cos he wor a straight man asking a gay man about personal stuff. I couldn’t help but wonder sometimes where Jim had ended up, how he lived his life now. Being gay wor illegal in Scotland, so I supposed life up there couldn’t be easy. I could still remember the scent of him, the skip of his Scots brogue, lying in his bed and listening to Pink Floyd’s Meddle. I never bought that album, cos I never wanted to hear it anywhere else but in Jim’s bedroom.

  Prog rock had gone t’ way of all
dinosaurs. I found mesen sitting wi’ Terry, Fizzy and Camp David in t’ back yard at Radclyffe Hall, listening to Talking Heads’ Fear of Music and necking Red Stripe. Unable to get a US visa, Fazel, I wor told, had gone to Amsterdam. Fizzy said he wor living in a big squat wi’ loads of other folk. I wor to hear nowt more about Fazel after that ’til, in t’ savage winter of 1981, in t’ same week that HE wor finally caught, I heard that his badly beaten body had been found face-down on a frozen Amsterdam canal.

  Barbara Leach

  02/09/1979

  Our Corona van wor working its way through a housing estate in Hunslet when a police van sped by. On t’ side of t’ van wor a poster that read ‘The Next One Might be Innocent’.

  ‘A bit fuckin’ late!’ I yelled.

  Wi’ t’ new footie season underway the Geordie tape wor being played at footie stadiums all over t’ North and out of speakers lashed to t’ backs of cars. There wor a humungous TV campaign, and people wor encouraged to ring the hotline and listen to t’ tape. At Elland Road the footie crowds jeered and drowned out the tape, chanting ‘Ripper 12, Police 0!’

  When Garthy rolled up at work sporting a badge saying ‘Leeds United – More Feared than the Yorkshire Ripper’, Craner lost it. He yelled at Garthy that if he didn’t take that badge off at once he’d be out on his ear. Craner wor snorting like a dragon on heat. He pulled everyone he cound find into his office.

  ‘No badges of any kind! Any kind at all! Understood, Mr Thorpe?’

  All eyes turned to me. Afterward, I went into t’ bog and took off the small pink triangle badge I’d pinned to my Corona coat lapel. They should have employed Craner to catch the Ripper. He would have had it sorted by now. Nowt escaped Craner’s beady eye.

  The story went that Barbara Leach had been in t’ Mannville Arms ’til nigh on 1 a.m., having an after-hours lock-in bevy wi’ her friends cos she’d helped the pub manager clear up. She left her friends and chose to walk home. HE must have chanced upon her. Her body wor found in a back yard, half-hidden under a piece of carpet.

  There wor a new guy in charge of t’ Ripper investigation – Chief Constable Ronald Gregory. Poor old Assistant Super Oldfield, it wor announced, wor somewhat sickly and had been put out to grass. Gregory launched a media blitz, wi’ billboards going up everywhere that said ‘The Ripper Would Like You to Ignore This …’. A four-page newspaper about HIM wor shoved through our letterboxes, the Geordie tape wor played in pubs, works canteens, schools, working men’s clubs, on t’ BBC and all local radio stations. We wor blitzed wi’ t’ Ripper ’til we wor buried by him.