‘Which newspaper was it that Duffle Coat Woman was showing around the station?’ I ask.
George takes the witness statements out of the folder, and flicks through them.
‘None of the witnesses could identify the newspaper,’ he says, ‘because she didn’t show them a whole page, or even a complete article. All she had was the picture of Grace Stockton. Does it matter?’
‘It could be vital,’ I tell him. ‘If it’s a national newspaper, she could have seen it anywhere in the country, but if it was a local newspaper, then that narrows down the area in which we need to search.’
‘In other words, if you find out it came from the Manchester Evening News, you’ll only have a city of over a million people to search, which should make it an absolute doddle.’
‘Well, you must admit it’s a start,’ I say, and I’m surprised to hear how defensive I’m being.
‘And, of course, before you can even begin that nigh-on-impossible search, you need to find out which newspaper she took the photograph from. And how do you propose to do that?’
‘I’m working on it,’ I say, sounding much more optimistic than I feel.
NINETEEN
My working assumption is that Duffle Coat Woman – now known to be Red Duffle Coat Woman – saw Grace Stockton’s picture in the newspaper no more than two weeks before Grace herself was murdered.
Why have I settled on two weeks?
There are a couple of reasons.
Reason number one: the fact that Red Duffle Coat Woman came to Oxford, even though she didn’t know precisely where Grace lived (and was therefore taking a gamble on finding out), would seem to imply she felt an urgent need to talk to the other woman.
Reason number two: the fact that she then killed Grace (as we are all assuming she did) is just a way of underlining that the mission really was urgent.
So given both those facts, is it likely RDCW would have put off the visit for more than two weeks?
Definitely not!
Well … probably not.
There are circumstances, I must admit, which might have forced her to put off making an appearance for longer than she might have wished. She could have been nursing a dying relative, for example, or have broken her leg. She could have been banged up in prison, or living abroad.
Now that I stop to think about it, I can come up with a dozen reasons for a delay, right off the top of my head.
But I have to start somewhere, and having settled on the two-week time limit, I go to Oxford’s very excellent central public library on Westgate, and search the newspaper archives.
I’ve been using the library a great deal since I started my agency (I love that word – agency – it gives my shoebox office a little of the gravitas it is badly in need of), and I have several friends there, including assistant librarian Elaine Williams, who greets me with a positive whisper of joy.
Elaine was one of my first clients, and I’m as grateful to her for giving me the work as she is to me for solving her problem.
Elaine Williams’ problem went by the name of Jack Stone. He was a six-foot-three, rugby-playing fireman. He also happened to be Elaine’s ex-boyfriend, and he had been persecuting her ever since she decided to break up with him.
The persecution started with phone calls in the middle of the night – calls during which the caller himself said nothing.
Next came the anonymous letters accusing her of every kind of moral weakness and sexual deviance known to man.
That had been bad enough, but then the hate campaign began to escalate. What had been suggested in the poisonous letters now appeared as poisonous graffiti – large-lettered, poisonous graffiti – on the side wall of the greengrocer’s shop near to Elaine’s flat, and on the bench next to the bus stop she used.
The late-night calls resumed, too, but this time they were not silent – this time they came from a number of foul-mouthed men who wanted to know where she lived and how much she charged.
At first, she had no idea what the origin of this latest horror was – and then she saw the business card in one of the local phone boxes.
Down both edges of the card, there was a silhouette of an obviously naked woman, and in the centre was the message:
Sexy Elaine
I’ll let you do anything you want to me.
Nothing is too dirty!
Her telephone number was listed below.
‘It’s turning me into a nervous wreck,’ she’d told me, with tears forming in her eyes even as she spoke. ‘I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I was Oxfordshire Library Assistant of the Year, last year, but now I’ve started making so many mistakes that I’ve been given my final warning. I’m going to lose my job. And I love my job, Miss Redhead. I really, really do.’
‘Why haven’t you reported it to the police?’ I’d asked her.
‘I have reported it, but they say that unless I can produce something to show that it is Jack doing all these horrible things, there’s nothing they can do. So find a way to prove it for me, Miss Redhead. Please find a way!’
I tried. I honestly did. I searched for a witness who had seen the graffiti being sprayed, but it seemed to have been done in the dead of night, when everyone was asleep. I tracked down the printer who had produced the cards, but he would say nothing, and I had no means of compelling him to.
It was soon obvious to me that Jack had been very careful, and that without the backing of a full police forensic lab, I was never going to be able to pin anything on him.
By rights, I should have reported this to my client, but I knew that it would break her heart.
It was then that I discovered I was losing all objectivity – that I was taking it personally.
It was the first time that it had ever happened – but it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
Oh dear me, no!
Not by a long chalk!
I decided to beard the lion in his den, the den in this case being the local rugby club, where, after the Saturday match, I knew he would be drinking with his mates.
Wait, Jennie! I can hear you shouting silently. Wasn’t it foolish to go onto his territory, especially when he was surrounded by his mates, and full of ale? Under those circumstances, there was probably little chance he would listen to a reasoned and reasonable argument, and it might actually turn quite nasty.
This is quite true. In fact, I was banking on him turning nasty, because that would create the ideal scenario for testing out the old adage that while calling names can never hurt you, sticks and stones might well break your bones.
The rugby club consisted largely of a big square room which served as a meeting room, boozer and dance hall. Women often graced it with their presence, but on Saturday afternoons, it was a strictly male preserve, thick with coarse language and testosterone. On the small stage, a trio was lethargically performing their repertoire, no doubt conscious of the fact that it little mattered to most people whether they were there or not. Waiters rushed back and forth, carrying trays weighted down with pints of bitter, and the gentlemen’s toilet was doing thriving business.
Jack and his bunch of mates were sitting at a table near the stage, waiting for the stripper – ‘All the way from Droitwich – Miss Lola Perez’ – to make an appearance. They were all dressed in blue blazers and rugby club ties. They had already drunk quite a lot (as was evidenced by the number of empty glasses on the table) but their eyes had not yet acquired the dullness that only comes with true rat-arsed drunkenness.
I looked from one to another. I’m not prejudiced, I’ve known any number of intelligent, sensitive rugby players – and even slept with a couple of them – but what I was viewing now was a prime selection of absolute meatheads.
‘Take a seat, Ginger,’ Jack Stone said, patting the chair next to him. ‘Or if you like, you can sit on my knee.’
I was quite grateful to him for his chauvinism, since it was making it all that much easier for me to do what I had to do.
‘Yeah, sit on his knee,’ called
one of Jack’s mates. ‘Or sit on his thing, if you’d like it better.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m here on business,’ I told Jack.
He smiled. Here was an unexpected opportunity to have some sport, he was thinking.
‘What kind of business?’ he asked.
‘I want you to stop playing all your nasty little tricks on Elaine right now,’ I told him.
‘Are you talking to me?’ he asked, looking round expectantly, to make sure that all his mates were listening.
‘Talking to you?’ I answered. ‘No, certainly not.’
‘Good, because—’
‘Unless, of course, you happen to be a slime-ball gutter-snipe named Jack Stone.’
‘Now look here—’ he began.
‘So you are the shitehawk I was looking for!’
His mates were all grinning, and he was beginning to suspect he was losing this encounter.
‘I think you should be very careful what you—’ he began.
‘You’re a coward and a loser,’ I interrupted him. ‘Every other feller in this room would take rejection by a woman like a proper man should. But then you’re not a man at all, are you – because you have to lash out at someone weaker than you? You’re beneath contempt.’
His mates were looking at him – still amused, but mainly wondering what he would do next.
For a second or two, I was afraid that he’d do nothing at all, which would have been humiliating for him, true, but nowhere near humiliating enough to fulfil my purposes.
Then I realized that it was not so much a question of his responding as it was of working out what particular form that response should take.
Verbal fencing just wouldn’t cut it, because that would bestow on me an equality he wasn’t ready to concede. Besides, I was clearly a bright girl, and with a few well-chosen thrusts and parries, I might even win.
So it had to be something physical. But what form should that physicality take?
If I’d been a man, he would have hit me, but I was seven inches shorter and four stone lighter than he was, and even his bunch of creepy friends would consider it an awfully bad show.
Then a complacent smile spread across his face.
‘You can’t speak to me like that,’ he said. ‘Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to teach you a lesson.’
‘If you’re the teacher then it must be a very simple lesson indeed,’ I said, just in case there was even a slight chance of him backing away from a confrontation at the last moment.
‘I’m going to put you over my knee, and tan your bare arse till it’s as red as your hair,’ he said.
His friends roared with laughter at this witticism, and elbowed one another in the ribs. This was classic Jack, they told each other.
I think he was half-expecting me to run away, which would have served his purposes well enough, since it would have left him clearly the winner.
But I stood my ground, which was even better from his point of view, because what he was about to do now, he believed, was going to make him a rugby club legend.
Just looking at him, I could tell he could see the whole thing clearly in his head.
Me – bent over his knee, red hair dusting the ground, skirt raised and knickers down.
Him – raising his ham-like hand and striking my backside, leaving a red imprint on my white skin, while all his mates cheered and banged their pint pots on the table.
Perhaps his imagination took him even further than that. Perhaps the treatment I had received would captivate me, and I would become his willing slave – it being well known that all women dream of being dominated by a caveman just like him.
He stood up. ‘Well, you asked for it,’ he said.
Two seconds later, he was lying on the floor. It seemed to have come as a complete surprise to him.
‘What …?’ he moaned. ‘How did you …?’
How did I learn to flip him over so easily?
It’s really very simple, my friend, I thought, and it goes right back to my childhood.
When you’re a redhead called Redhead, you see, you’re the ideal target for playground bullies who are always on the lookout for an excuse to pick on someone, which was why, as soon as I was old enough, I enrolled in a course of mixed martial arts – and turned out to be rather good at it.
He struggled to his feet.
‘Even a moron like you should know when you’re outclassed, so why don’t you just quit,’ I advised him, knowing he wouldn’t take my warning seriously – and not wanting him to.
He roared with rage, and when he came at me again, all thoughts of my femininity had been pushed aside. He intended to attack me as if I were a man, and hurt me badly.
This time I was not so gentle, and inflicted a few injuries which would probably trouble him for several days.
When he hit the floor for a second time, I knelt down beside him.
‘You leave Elaine alone, or I’ll come back and really give you something to moan about,’ I said softly. ‘If you’ve understood, nod your head.’
He just lay there.
‘If you’ve not understood, maybe we should continue the lesson,’ I suggested. ‘So before I begin again, I’ll give you one last chance. Did you understand me or didn’t you?’
This time, his head did move a little, though the effort obviously hurt.
I stood up, and surveyed the table.
‘Would anyone like to buy me a drink while we wait for the police to arrive?’ I asked.
All Jack’s mates had their heads down and were studying the table, but now one of them looked up and said, ‘Nobody’s called the police …’
‘Oh well, I expect it’s only a matter of time before they do.’
‘… and nobody’s going to.’
Of course they wouldn’t. I knew that. Jack had attacked me, rather than the other way around. And even if they could persuade the police to arrest me, all that would mean was that I would go to trial, and Jack would be even more humiliated – this time in open court.
‘I still fancy a drink, but I can’t get it myself, because I’m not a member of this club,’ I said. ‘So would anyone like to be a gentleman and buy me a gin and tonic?’
This was their chance to show they had a bit of style, but none of them availed themselves of it, so I left.
When Elaine asked me what had happened, I told her Jack and I had had a serious discussion and he’d seen the error of his ways, which was (if you’re interpreting the incident generously) what actually happened.
It would have been impossible for Jack to continue living in an area where everyone knew he had been humiliated by a woman – and a ginger woman, at that. I was told that he applied for a transfer the very next day, and within a week he had been moved to a fire station somewhere on the south-east coast.
I don’t think anybody really missed him.
‘How’s life, Elaine,’ I whisper to my old client.
By way of an answer, she points to the badge pinned just above her right breast, which says ‘Library Assistant of the Year 1974’.
Second time, hey? Pretty good!
‘And I’m getting married next year,’ she says. ‘You must come to the wedding.’
‘I’d love to,’ I enthuse.
And already my mind is working on how I can get out of it without hurting her feelings, because a wedding reception seems to me a bit like the wake at a funeral – a celebration of a life now at an end – which just shows you what a sick puppy I really am.
But though I hate to admit it, I do get a bit of a warm glow over the thought that Elaine seems very happy, and that I have played my part in it.
In a way, I’m a little like the Lone Ranger, except that I don’t have any silver bullets.
Or a horse!
Or a faithful Indian companion!
OK, bad example.
‘I’m going down into the newspaper stacks,’ I say. And then, Captain Oates-like, I add, ‘I might be some time.’
&nb
sp; ‘I’ll bring you a coffee in about an hour,’ Elaine says.
Good girl!
British newspapers come in all shapes and sizes. The Telegraph and The Times are broadsheets, which makes them almost impossible to read on the train or bus, unless, that is, you were born into the world of men who wear bowler hats and pinstriped trousers, where such a skill seems inherent. The Mail and the Express pretend to be broadsheets, but are slightly smaller and much less weighty. They are traditionally read by men who wear trilbies, often with a feather in the hatband. The Sun and the Mirror are tabloids, the fodder of the working class. They often feature pictures of semi-naked young women, and make less of an effort to hide their irrational prejudices than the more respectable tomes take to hide theirs.
Down here in the archives, all newspapers are equal – even the Financial Times, which is not only a broadsheet but pink – because they have been captured on microfilm, and are thus reduced, each and every one of them, to black shiny plastic.
I feed the first newspaper into the reader, and get to work.
April 1972 was, it appears, a very busy time. Jack Nicklaus triumphed at the US Masters, and Jane Fonda and Gene Hackman both won Oscars, Fonda for Klute and Hackman for The French Connection. The USSR performed an underground nuclear test, and the Provisional Irish Republican Army exploded twenty-four overground bombs in towns and cities across Northern Ireland. Apollo 16 astronauts landed on the moon, which was rapidly becoming NASA’s favourite picnic spot. And for American fans still mourning the break-up of the Beatles there was some good news – John Lindsay, the young and dynamic mayor of New York City, had made a personal appeal to the US immigration department not to deport John Lennon.
There was news of a more parochial nature, too. A new link road to the M6 motorway had been completed, a boom in the sale of colour televisions was expected soon, and there was a man in Swindon who ate sandwiches which had cigarettes as their filling.
After three hours of intense microfilm reading – and three coffees kindly provided by Elaine – I have a splitting headache and the room seems be swimming before my eyes, but I haven’t found a single mention of Dr Grace Stockton, anthropologist and murder victim of this parish.
Daughters of Darkness Page 10
