David Peace - 1980

Alderman says: ‘What about the Services? Ireland?’

‘Maybe, but I doubt it.’

Noble agrees: ‘Someone would have said something.’

‘What then?’ asks Alderman.

‘You got a hobby?’ I ask him.

‘What?’

‘What’s your hobby?’ I say again.

‘Shooting. Hunting. Why?’

‘Where do you go?’

‘All over.’

‘Where?’

‘Eccup, that way’

‘How often do you go?’

‘Not as often as I’d like.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Work.’

‘Work?’

‘Aye, work. Because of bleeding Ripper for a start. Why?’

‘But before, before all this, you got out fairly regular?’

‘Yeah, except when kids were right young, yeah.’

‘How about before kids were born?’

‘Oh aye. Every day off I had.’

I nod: ‘That’s my point.’

‘What? What’s your point?’

I say: ‘He’s the same.’

‘Who?’

‘The Ripper.’

Alderman’s grinning: ‘What? He’s into shooting and all?’

Noble’s shaking his head: ‘He means he’s got the same bollocks in his life we all have. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?’

I nod: ‘When we get him, you’ll see the same patterns we all have, same pressures, rhythms: work, the wife, kids, holidays.’

Alderman: ‘You reckon Ripper’s married with kids? Fuck off.’

‘He’s married, I bet you.’

‘How much?’

‘Whatever you can afford.’

‘That the Ripper’s married with kids?’

‘Married,’ I say. ‘No kids.’

‘A hundred quid says you’re wrong,’ says Alderman, hand out.

We shake on it: ‘Hundred quid it is.’

Noble interrupts: ‘Why you so sure?’

‘You’re the bloke that got Raymond Morris,’ I say. ‘It’ll be the same, Pete.’

Stafford, 1965-67 .

Noble looks away, the rain in sheets down the car windows.

‘What do you mean?’ says Dickie Alderman.

Noble, watching the water come down, whispers: ‘Raymond Morris had alibis from his wife.’

Three little girls, raped, suffocated, dumped .

His window has misted over, the car stuffed.

Alderman is shaking his head: ‘No-one would cover for this cunt.’

‘She doesn’t think she is doing; doesn’t see him for what he is,’ I say, then: ‘But neither do we.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘No, half that Ripper Room are looking for a hunchbacked Geordie with hairy bloodstained hands, flesh between his teeth and a hammer in his pocket.’

Noble, a face full of fear and sneer: ‘Yeah? So who should we be looking for, Pete?’

I tell him what he already knows – knows in his heart, knows in his head: ‘He’s mobile, has his own vehicle. It must have come up numerous times in the sweeps, so he has to have a reason to be where he shouldn’t be – taxi driver, lorry driver, sales rep…’

Noble: ‘Copper?’

‘Copper…’

‘Fuck off,’ snorts Alderman.

I shrug: ‘He’ll have a good local knowledge as a result of his work and because he’s from round here – lives and works round here.’

Alderman: ‘You can’t say that? If he’s a lorry driver, he could be living any-bloody-where?’

‘No,’ I say quietly, shaking my head and wiping the side-window clean. ‘He’s from round here because he hates it, hates it enough to kill it – so he has to have been around here long enough to hate it, to want to kill it.’

Noble: ‘Go on.’

‘He’ll have a record, however minor.’

Alderman: ‘Why?’

‘Because when he was younger, he couldn’t control the hate like he can now. He’ll have made mistakes…’

‘We’d know,’ says Alderman.

‘Not if you’re not looking.’

‘We’re fucking looking,’ spits Alderman, almost over the seat and at me.

Me, hands up: ‘But for what? An unmarried hunchbacked Geordie with hairy bloodstained hands, flesh between his teeth and a hammer in his pocket?’

‘Fuck off, Pete,’ says Noble.

‘No,’ I tell him. ‘You should go back over every statement where the bloke’s been covered by his wife.’

‘Fuck off,’ says Alderman.

‘Start with your top ten.’

‘Impossible,’ says Noble.

‘You’ve had him, you know you have.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘But somehow you’ve let him go.’

Silence -

Just the rain on the roof.

Noble leans forward and taps on the driver’s window -

The driver opens the door, shakes the rain from his umbrella and gets in, the smell of cigarettes and damp with him.

‘Millgarth,’ says Noble.

As the car pulls into the underground car park, I turn to Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Peter Noble and ask: ‘How did you catch Morris?’

‘Luck,’ he says. ‘Bloody luck.’

‘Bollocks, Pete,’ I say. ‘Bollocks.’

Alderman looks around in the front seat again, but Noble’s gone.

Back in our room, the one next to theirs, next to his, I close the door behind me.

They’re all there, plus Bob Craven, looking up from their work, waiting, expectant:

‘I should have said this before, but when you’re taking down all these names, can you denote the married ones.’

John Murphy smiles: ‘We have been.’

‘Thank you,’ I smile back, nodding: ‘Then let’s move on.’

Another Millgarth afternoon -

Dark outside, darker still in:

Another sйance -

Same ritual -

Round the table, hands and knees touching, more calls to the dead -

John Murphy this time, sheet-white with black-rings, calling them:

‘What a fucking year it was, 1977:

‘First up, Marie Watts, formerly Owens, thirty-two years of age, found dead Sunday 29 May on Soldiers Field, Roundhay; extensive head injuries, stab wounds to the abdomen, and a cut throat. Watts was a known prostitute and the connection with Campbell and Richards was obvious, leading to the formation of what was then known as the Prostitute Murder Squad. This was headed up by ACC Oldman, with Pete Noble the effective day-to-day gaffer.’

Murphy pauses, looking at Bob Craven, then continues:

‘As Bob said yesterday, it was the Watts murder where the press coined the Yorkshire Ripper moniker. Also when the first letter arrived. Plus the B type blood grouping taken from semen stains off Watts’ coat – it was them stains that linked in Clare Strachan in Preston and the letters, using saliva tests and the content of the letters and later the tape.’

Long pause, a deep, deep sigh, then:

‘The names, the numbers, the descriptions, the whole bloody lot, it’s all there and, to be honest if it hadn’t have been for what came next, who knows if we’d be sitting here today’

Here she comes, here she comes, here she comes again:

‘Skipping over, for now, the Linda Clark attack in Bradford, one week on from Marie Watts and the body of sixteen-year-old Rachel Johnson was found in the Reginald Street adventure playground on the morning of Wednesday 8 June, morning after the Jubilee. She had suffered appalling head injuries, though had probably died some time after the initial attack had taken place. She was not a prostitute, a ‘good-time girl’, or anything other than a sixteen-year-old Leeds shop assistant on her way home from a first bloody date.’

We’re all looking at the floor or the walls or the ceiling, our nails or our pens or our papers, anywhere other than Murphy and his files and photographs of her.

‘I’m sure,’ he says. ‘Like me, you remember her.’

All of you , I’m thinking -

I remember all of you .

‘Break,’ I say and stand up and walk out of the room, into the light of the corridor, through the phones and the typewriters, into the toilets and into a cubicle and throw up.