David Peace - 1977

‘No.’

‘But they do, don’t they?’

I stared past him, the rain on the window, an underwater cave, a chamber of tears.

‘Are you going to print that?’

I stared at him, the tears on his cheeks, trapped in this underwater cave, this chamber of tears.

I swallowed, caught my breath at last and said: ‘The night she died, who knew who she was going to meet?’

‘Everybody did.’

‘Who?’

‘Mr Whitehead, I think you know who it was.’

‘Tell me.’

Walter Kendall held his fingers up to the rain:

‘Where you seek one there’s two, two three, three four. Where you seek four there’s three, three two, two one and so on. But you know this anyway.’

I was on my feet, shouting at the blind man with the white eyes and the grey face, shouting into those eyes, that face:

‘Tell me!’

He spoke quickly, one finger in the air:

‘Clare left the pub up the road, St Mary’s, at ten-thirty. We told her not to go, told her she shouldn’t, but she was tired Mr Whitehead, so fucking tired of running. They said, your taxi’s here but she just walked up the street, up to French, up through the rain, rain worse than this, up to a car parked in the dark at the top, and we just watched her go.’

‘Go to who?’

‘A policeman.’

‘A policeman? Who?’

Lancashire Police Headquarters, Preston.

A big plainclothes with a moustache showed me up to the second-floor offices of Detective Chief Superintendent Alfred Hill.

The big man knocked on the door, and I popped in another polo.

‘You can go in,’ said the plainclothes.

‘Jack Whitehead,’ I said, hand out.

The small man behind the desk put away his handkerchief and took my hand.

‘Have a seat, Mr Whitehead. Have a seat.’

‘Jack,’ I said.

‘Well Jack, can I get you anything to drink: tea, coffee, something stronger. Toast the Queen?’

‘I’d better not. Got a long drive back.’

‘Right, so what is it brings you over our way then?’

‘Like I said on the telephone, it’s the Clare Strachan murder and what George Oldman said a couple of days ago, about the possibility of there being a link…’

‘With the Ripper?’

‘Yes.’

‘George was saying how it was you who coined that one.’

‘Unfortunately.’

‘Unfortunately?’

‘Well…’

‘I wouldn’t say that, you should be proud. Good piece of journalistic licence like that, should be proud.’

‘Thank you.’

‘George thinks publicity will help him. You’ve done him a favour.’

‘You don’t agree?’

‘Wouldn’t say that, wouldn’t say that at all. Case like this, you can’t do anything without the public’

‘You got quite a bit with Clare Strachan at first.’

He’d taken out his handkerchief again, examining the contents, about to add some more, ‘Not really’

‘Did you get anywhere with the diary?’

‘The diary?’

‘You seemed to think at the time that there was a diary in her missing bag.’

He was coughing hard, a hand on his chest.

‘Did anything ever come of that?’

His face was bright red, panting into his hankie, whispering, ‘No.’

‘What made you think there was a diary?’

Detective Chief Superintendent Alfred Hill had his hand up:

‘Mr Whitehead…’

‘Jack, please.’

‘Jack, I’m not quite sure what we’re doing here. Is this an interview, is that what we’re doing here?’

‘No.’

‘So you’re not going to print any of this?’

‘No.’

‘So like, what exactly are we going through all this for? I mean, if you’re not going to print anything?’

‘Well, background. Given the possibility that it’s the same man.’

He took a sip of water, disappointed.

I said, ‘I don’t mean to waste your time.’

‘That wasn’t what I meant, Jack. Not what I meant at all.’

‘Can I ask you then, sir, do you think this murder, that it is the same man?’

‘Off the record?’

‘Off the record.’

‘No.’

‘And on the record?’

‘There are certainly similarities,’ he said, nodding at the window, ‘similarities, as my erstwhile colleague across those hills has said.’

‘So off the record, what makes you think it’s not the same man?’

‘We had over fifty men on her, you know.’

‘I thought it was eighty?’

He smiled. ‘All I’m saying is we did a thorough job on her, very thorough. It’s been said that because of who she was, her history, what she was, that we didn’t give it priority but I can tell you we worked flat out while we could. It’s a lie, a complete lie to say that we don’t take things like what happened to her seriously. Of course something like the murder of a kiddie, course it gets the headlines, gets the attention and keeps it, but I was one of first in that garage and I’ve seen some stuff, stuff like Brady and his, but what they’d done to her, slag or not, well no-one deserves that. No-one.’

He was away, far away, back in that garage, back with his own tapes.

And we sat there, in our silences, until I said:

‘But it wasn’t him.’

‘No. From what George has shown us, what we’ve heard from the lads they sent over, no.’

‘Can you be specific?’

‘Look, George wants them linked. I’m not going to touch that.’

‘OK. So how’s George linked them?’

‘Off the record?’

‘Off the record.’

‘Blood group, life-style of the victim, head injuries, and some positioning of the body, some arrangement that we’re not publicising.’

‘Blood group?’

‘Same.’

‘Which group?’

‘B.’

‘B. That’s rare.’

‘Ish. Nine per cent.’

‘I’d call that rare.’

‘I’d call it inconclusive.’

‘So what makes you so conclusively against it?’

‘Clare Strachan was penetrated, sodomised twice, once postmortem, hit on the head with a blunt instrument, but not fatally, throttled, but not fatally, and after all that she was finally killed, finally killed by a punctured lung which was caused by someone jumping up and down on her chest until one of her ribs snapped off and speared her lung, flooding it with blood so she choked, drowned.’

Again we sat in our silences, our desperate little silences, our nails down the window panes, our faces to the glass, wanting out out out.

‘Can I ask you one more question then?’

He folded up the handkerchief again and nodded.

‘You interviewed the people from the hostel?’

‘St Mary’s? Yes. Had them all in.’

I paused, my lips dry, a terrible vision on the hills out the window, above the room, a vision of the drunk and the mental, the drunk and the mental howling at a moon glimpsed through cell bars, bars high on a dark cell wall.

Eventually I said, ‘And what did they tell you? What did they say?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Did you speak to a Walter Kendall?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘The blind man? Repeatedly’

‘And what did he say?’

Alfred Hill, Detective Chief Superintendent Alfred Hill, he looked me dead for the first time and he said:

‘Mr Whitehead, you have an extremely high reputation among the men of the West Yorkshire force, a high reputation as a diligent crime reporter who assists investigations and I’m prepared to give a lot of rope on that account, a lot of rope, but I must say I object to the insinuation.’

‘What insinuation?’

‘I am well, well aware of the things Mr Kendall has said, has said repeatedly, and I’m surprised that a journalist, a man of your reputation, surprised you would even credit such nonsense with a question.’