by Paul Finch
“Look … I’m doing a suspended sentence for burglary. Stitch me up with that, and I’ll go down for sure!”
“Stop pissing me round and you’ll be okay!”
“I don’t know the number, but it’s Dudley Street I think. That’s where all the bedsits are. I swear that’s all I can tell you.”
I grinned, nodded and then whacked him, a good, crisp, rock-hard shot to the jaw. He flew backwards, his skull clanging on the fuel tank, and fell lifeless into the damp foliage.
I didn’t bother to step on his face as I left. He was already out for the count.
*
A 34-year-old mother of two was abducted from the rear yard of her Hag Fold home on the evening of June 22nd 1997. She was found the following day in a dumpster four miles away. She had been bound and raped, tortured with a cigarette lighter and battered to death with a blunt instrument, possibly a house brick.
It was a sultry summer evening, so before they went on into the park they bought ice cream from a vendor by the gates. Tim wanted everything on his – nuts, raspberry sauce, hundreds and thousands – but Erika kept hers plain. She didn’t even want a flake.
Tim asked her about this as they strolled into the park.
“I just like ice cream,” she said, refusing to elaborate.
Only at this point did it strike him that making conversation might be awkward. He asked what sort of stuff she was interested in, but she wasn’t massively forthcoming about that either, saying that she liked going out and had recently enjoyed herself when she sneaked in with some mates to watch Saturday Night Fever. Tim asked her what other films she’d seen, but she only shrugged and said that most of the new ones were “lads’ stuff” and that she wasn’t bothered about those. He wondered if she liked horror films. She seemed ambivalent about that – some were okay. She said she’d quite liked Jaws, though they’d been on a school holiday to Newquay at the time, and nobody had wanted to go in the sea afterwards.
By this time, they’d crossed the first lawn and were following a stone path into one of the park’s many wooded areas. This path led to the playground where groups of kids from school habitually hung out on the swings and roundabout, but, fifty yards before this, it branched, one trail leading off deeper into the trees and finally coming to the gents’ toilets. These had long been boarded up because of the activities of perverts, but were still shunned by ordinary folk. In late evening, the squat little building, now derelict, overgrown and surrounded by dense rhododendrons, took on a sinister aspect.
“Why are we going this way?” Erika asked, as Tim steered her down the side path.
“I just thought we could have a chat first, get to know each other properly … before we meet everyone else.”
She accepted that, but seemed uneasy – so much that she didn’t object when he put his arm around her. The shadows under the trees were turning from green to black. Delaney Park normally echoed to the cries and laughter of children, but at this moment those children sounded a long way away.
“What’s the story with you and this care home?” Tim casually asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well … you’re not planning to stay there, surely?”
“Course I’m not,” she said. She sounded shocked that he could even think such a thing. “Soon as I’ve finished school, I’ll move out. Probably get a flat or something.”
“What’s it like in there?”
“What’s it like in your house?”
Tim thought about his mother. “You don’t want to know.”
Erika seemed to understand. “Well, ours isn’t so bad. The other kids are okay. Just like a big family, really.”
“Do you get like … presents at Christmas, and stuff like that?”
“Course we do. Don’t you?”
Tim didn’t answer. Instead, he threw the soggy remains of his ice cream cone away. The gents’ toilets were visible ahead. Planks hung loose from the small, battered-in windows; bird-shit streaked the old brickwork.
“How did you end up in there?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” She sounded increasingly uncomfortable with the line of questioning.
“I mean, why are you in there and not with your own family?”
“I don’t have a family.”
“You must’ve had at one time. Must’ve had a mum and dad, at least.”
“Look, I don’t really want to talk about this stuff.”
“I’m genuinely interested,” he said. “I want to know all about you.”
The gents now loomed in front of them. Someone had torn down the woodwork barring its entrance; the dank, black interior beckoned.
Erika halted. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“Who gave you your name?” he asked. “It’s a great name, Erika.”
“I don’t know … I’ve always had it.”
“It must’ve been your mum, yeah? Or your dad? Your real ones, I mean.”
She shrugged his arm off. “I think I’d better be going.”
Tim tried to kiss her, but she pushed him back.
“Come on,” he coaxed, “just tell me a bit about yourself.”
She began to retreat. “I’d best get off. They’ll be wondering where I am.”
“They know where you are.” Voice hardening, he reached out and snatched her by the wrist. “You’re with me.”
Erika looked shocked, and not a little alarmed – like a frightened bunny rabbit, he thought, rather pleased.
“That hurts!” She tried to pull free. “Let go!”
He gripped her tighter.
“Tim, please!”
“Well at least you know my name. You know, that’s the first time you’ve used it.”
“Let go, I said.” And with a supreme effort, she was able to yank herself loose. She backed off, rubbing at her sore forearm, watching him warily.
He gave her a crooked smile. “So after we’ve walked out together, you’re just going to dump me, eh? And in a place where weirdos hang out.”
She seemed about to add something to that final comment, but then shook her head, turned and walked quickly away up the path.
“What you’ve never had you’ll never miss, I suppose,” he called after her. But she didn’t look back.
*
It was inevitable from the moment I returned north that I was going to get assigned to the serial killer taskforce. Firstly, I was a specialist firearms officer, secondly I’d been born in Hag Fold and had grown up there, so I knew it like the proverbial back of my hand, or it was hoped I did. But thirdly, and most importantly, they needed every man they could get.
The Giro City Strangler had now claimed seven victims that were known about – probably not a lot in the great pantheon of mass murderers, but bear in mind he’d been on the rampage, unchecked, for nearly two decades. In a nutshell, if something didn’t happen soon the world was going to cave in on police heads. There’d already been numerous replacements at the top, senior investigators having been sacked, sidelined or forced through overwork into early retirement. A catalogue of errors, initially caused by a preponderance of evidence so vast it literally overwhelmed the pre-computer age intelligence system, had received glaring press attention and had been referred too scornfully in the House of Commons. We’d had the usual barrel-load of hoaxes, some obvious, some not so obvious, but all of which had had to be investigated, which had soaked up yet more time and manpower. Experts from Scotland Yard had been called in, but had failed to make an impact. Even the FBI had been contacted; they’d provided GMP detectives with a detailed profile of the killer, but that too had failed to get results. There’d been door-to-door questionings, traffic spot-checks, random stop-and-searches, follow-up interviews based on all vehicle registrations spotted in the district – still nothing. There’d even been widespread blooding for DNA, though that hadn’t been much use as the Strangler always took care to wear a condom when he raped. It’s probably fair to say that as much as was humanly poss
ible was being done, but as long as the maniac was at liberty to strike, that wasn’t going to be enough. By the time I transferred to GMP, we had ‘Men Off the Streets’ marches to contend with, ‘Reinstate the Death Penalty’ protests, public vigilance committees – basically gangs of drunken hooligans who got off on harassing strangers once the pubs had chucked-out – and a constant stream of well-meaning cranks, who poured into police stations armed with everything from crystal balls to divining rods.
I avoided all this for as long as I could, putting in for one training course after another, sitting my sergeants’ exam, even volunteering to work Firearms at the airport. It might not sound very public-spirited of me, but let me tell you there is nothing even vaguely romantic about wandering the backstreets all night dressed as a tramp, or going house-to-house all day with an artist’s impression so vague it could be your own uncle and you wouldn’t recognise him. But after the Beverly Jones murder – she was the yummy mummy dragged from her own back garden – the shit really hit the fan. There was wholesale panic: police stations were besieged; patrol cars got jeered at; chief superintendents ran amok in their own offices. Leave was cancelled across the board, and squads and reliefs were denuded of staff in order to revitalise the dispirited task force.
This was the draft I got caught up in. As I say, I’d known it was inevitable from the outset, and, after ducking and diving for a couple of years, I thought what the hell, and put my ticket in to give it a go.
At least as an SFO, they weren’t about to waste me by pitching me into the sea of paperwork. As I’d expected, I was attached to an all-night surveillance unit. We were armed and put in plain clothes, then sent out to scour the highways and bi-ways for anyone who looked as if they were up to no good. Once we’d located a target, we had to latch onto him and discreetly shadow him until he’d either left the district, gone indoors somewhere or clearly set out his stall to commit a criminal offence, at which point we obviously had to intervene, preferably before the law was actually broken; we didn’t want to gum up the works with collars felt for relatively minor things like burglary or criminal damage. If he made contact with any female at all, whether it be a prostitute or some old dear putting the cat out, even if he apparently knew her and was only making polite conversation, we were under strict orders to get as close as we could without arousing suspicion, the idea being that we could then catch the killer in the act or, hopefully, as he was about to commit the act. If this plan seemed terribly risky for the women, remember that it was terribly risky for women to be out after dark at all, though that didn’t seem to stop them. Seven murders on, and the benighted Hag Fold streets were still alive with hookers looking for johns, addicts trying to buy drugs, and drunken shop-girls toddling home from nightclubs with skirts up to their backsides and heels so high they’d break their necks if they fell off them. This, after all, was Hag Fold.
Hag Fold.
There’d never been an especially positive vibe about the place. It had started out innocently enough as an Anglo-Saxon settlement called Tunwic, which later grew into a market town, though during the Middle Ages it was decimated by the plague. Apparently three in every five died. Despite that, its ghoulish-sounding new name was not given to it until the early seventeenth century, when a series of sensational witch trials occurred there. All that was long ago now, of course. During the Industrial Revolution, Manchester expanded and swallowed Hag Fold – or ‘the Fold’, as we knew it – and it was soon a traditional working class borough, comprising ordered rows of red-brick terraces and a populace largely employed in the city’s many mills and factories. But any prosperity from this didn’t last. By the late-1970s, the district had degenerated into a jobless wasteland, a sprawling wilderness of dereliction and decay. Entire lines of houses stood empty and condemned; the flats and tenements had become urban jungles, vandalised and rubble-strewn, crawling with muggers and drug-dealers; good-time girls plied their trade from every street corner; vacant lots and shadowy underpasses were strewn with syringes and condoms. It was a toilet, a sewer, a running sore on the face of England’s northern capital. Little wonder it was now more popularly known as ‘Giro City’.
That first night, as I prowled Hag Fold’s squalid alleyways, looking suitably local in my jeans, trainers and rumpled leather jacket, but with my gun snugly holstered under my armpit, I marvelled that a girl like Erika could end up back here – though it wasn’t entirely a new story. We put such emphasis on the human struggle to overcome depravation, on the gallantry and courage of those who fight their way to the top despite the encumbrance of a wasted youth. But sadly, it’s an ideal rather than a reality. So many who start at the bottom of the ladder seem to finish there again.
So thinking, I continued to patrol, and only at around ten-to-ten, did I go and knock on the door of 56, Dudley Street.
All right, I admit it. This had been part of the plan all along. I mean, Hopfrog’s revelations had inspired me. Okay – I’d still smashed his face, but what he’d told me had made my day. Erika was back in Manchester. Not only that, she was back in Hag Fold. And that was where I’d been posted. And I hadn’t seen her for nineteen years. And let’s be honest, this had to be more than the hand of fate.
“Hello?” came a querulous female voice.
“Police, love,” I said. “Can you open the door for a minute?”
There was a moment of silence, then I heard someone fumbling with a latch. The door opened a crack, and a thin slice of face looked out over a safety-chain. I held up my warrant card and radio.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” I said, but I need a quick chat.
The face regarded me uncertainly, and then withdrew. With a click and rattle, the chain was removed and the door opened properly.
Erika stood there.
Without any doubt it was Erika, though time had taken its toll. Her hair was cut very short, and her face, though still handsome – the eyes still a startling blue – was visibly lined. Her boobs were a lot bigger than I remembered, but sagging, while she was noticeably larger round the hips. However, she only wore a knee-length white nightie, so the overall picture remained seductive.
“Yeah?” she said warily.
I leaned on the doorjamb. “Don’t recognise me, eh?”
“Sorry?”
Clearly she didn’t, which wasn’t a surprise. As a man, I was far burlier than I had been as a lad; my face was stonier, more pitted, more seamed with old scars; the mop of black hair was long gone – it was now shot with grey and razored to a crew-cut.
“We went out together once,” I said.
She shook her head, baffled.
I smiled. “You must remember. You got spooked because we went near the lads’ toilets, and it was getting late.”
A hint of recognition came into her eyes, but she still seemed bewildered. “Tim?”
I nodded, smiling all the more.
“I thought … I thought you’d gone into the army?”
“I did. But I’ve been a copper for twelve years now.”
“Oh.” The news didn’t seem to thrill her.
“Any chance I can come in?”
“It’s a bit late.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that, but I only came on at nine.” I paused for a second. “I won’t outstay my welcome, I promise.”
She thought about this, then – reluctantly, I felt – stepped aside and let me in. We went along a musty passage to a two-room apartment. One room was a small, poky kitchenette; the other served as a lounge-bedroom. A single lamp shed weak, yellow light over ratty furniture; in one corner, a portable TV played to itself.
“Been to check out your old pad since you’ve moved back?” I asked her.
“It’s gone,” she said. “Slum clearance programme.”
That surprised me. “Slum clearance? Don’t reckon that place was any worse than this, do you?”
“They’ll get round to this one as well, eventually.”
“Suppose so.”
She ma
de a move towards the kitchenette. “Can I get you tea, or something?”
“Ta. Milk, two sugars.”
There was another awkward silence while she brewed up. She didn’t make herself a drink, I noticed, but I didn’t mention this. I took the mug, thanked her, and sipped.
“So,” she said, “what exactly can I do for you?” She’d made an effort to stand away from me. In fact, she was on the other side of the armchair, subconsciously using it as a shield. Her expression remained guarded.
“It’s what I can do for you, really. I thought I’d let you know I’m working this district every night now … until the Strangler gets caught. I can pay special attention to Dudley Street if you want.”
She seemed nonplussed. “Why would you do that?”
“It’s the least I can do after the way I left things.”
“Left things?” She shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Between us.” I put the tea down. “You know, that night? There’s not a lot I can say, apart from sorry.”
For the first time, she smiled, but it was a smile of politeness rather than affection. “Tim, there’s something you need to know. I’ve been married since then. It’s history.”
“You’re not married anymore, though, are you?”
Her smile faded. That I knew something about her was apparently disconcerting. “What is this?” she asked.
“Come on, Erika.” I moved towards her. “Don’t be stand-offish. We really could’ve got something going, you and me. We can again.”
She backed away, which irritated me, and shook her head. “Tim … I went for a walk with you. Once … while I was at school. I’m sorry, but I hardly even remember you.”
“Well I remember.” I tried to sound hurt rather than angry. “Like it was yesterday … you were going to tell me all about the abuse and stuff.”
“What?”
“You know, all the things that had gone on in your life. When you were a kid.”
She shook her head again, now forcibly, and pointed at the door. “Look, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to leave.”
That pissed me off royally, and I suspect it started to show.