Strangers

by Paul Finch

  ‘What the fuck!’ Tammy broke off cleansing herself to gaze at her new pal in disbelief. ‘Aren’t you full of fucking surprises? You’re the hottest thing I’ve seen up here in yonks, you chuck your money round like there’s no tomorrow and now you don’t imbibe!’

  ‘I used to, but it never did me any good.’

  ‘Never does me any good either, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like it. Hand it over.’

  Lucy obliged, and Tammy took several large swigs, a quarter of the bottle vanishing in one fell swoop. She screwed the cap back on and belched again.

  ‘Ahhh … nothing better when you’ve had a chocolate log chucked in your face. Anyway –’ she grabbed the handbag and shoved the bottle back inside it ‘– gotta make a move. Nice meeting you. What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Keira,’ Lucy replied. ‘But my real name’s …’

  Tammy held a hand up. ‘Best if I don’t know your real name.’

  ‘You told me yours.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m a fuck-up … as you’ve seen. Bad stuff always happens to me, but it’s usually for a reason. Anyway, thanks again for your help.’ Tammy turned back from the doorway. ‘Listen … if you need someone to show you the ropes, the blonde bimbo outside, Sandy, can be alright. She’s a bit of piss-taker, but her bark’s worse than her bite. Just watch the other one, Tomasina. If she finds out you’ve got that much dosh in your purse, she’ll have the lot. And she’ll kick your face to mush in the process.’

  Lucy nodded and smiled in thanks. And then Tammy was gone, the toilet door slamming, the sound of it echoing through the damp cell that appeared to be their one and only indoor refuge on these cold, wet autumn nights. She turned back to the mirror, the sheet of grimy glass with Blowjob Queen of Manchester! scrawled over the top. A foul stench emitted from the sink. When she glanced down, she saw that someone had vomited into it. And now, just to complete the picture, it was also crammed with Tammy’s screwed-up, shit-stained tissues.

  Lucy regarded her sallow features in the tarnished glass.

  This was going to be a vastly more challenging stake-out than even she’d anticipated.

  Chapter 8

  As a policewoman, Lucy counted herself an old stager. She’d dealt hands-on with all the horrors of urban living, from child abuse to fatal road accidents, from violent brawls on Saturday nights to forgotten OAPs so long abandoned there were only bones remaining when someone finally found them. Nothing shocked her, nothing upset her – she simply refused to let it. But possibly thanks to her being in a semi-disorientated state due to the new work patterns, not to mention the strange nature of the new work, she couldn’t help but brood on what she’d seen that night. The memory alone was hardly conducive to sleep: that dank, soulless location; those wet woods and rain-washed roads; that grubby little lorry drivers’ caf with the rubbish heaped behind it and the nasty little toilet in its guts. And then the shadowy forms on the edges of her vision: the girls themselves, the pimps, the addicts, the muggers.

  Lucy’s alarm was set for two o’clock that afternoon, but she gave up on bed around seven-thirty a.m. When she tottered downstairs in a sweater and pyjama bottoms, her mum was still in the house, dressed for work but clearing away the breakfast things in her usual efficient way. The explanation Lucy offered was that she’d try to snatch some zeds later but that for now she wanted to catch up on what was happening, which was at least partly true. She curled on the couch and tuned the television to one of the all-day news channels, from whose coverage of the two latest murders she immediately detected a change in tone.

  The news teams were now all over it, to the exemption of any other item. It was still early, but various anchormen had already departed the studios. One was broadcasting live from outside Robber’s Row, which was almost hidden from view behind a wall of press and TV vans, while another was intoning into a microphone on the edge of one of the north-west’s many interchangeably bleak and featureless wastelands. In this latter case, dog-teams, both the officers and their pooches clad in hi-viz jackets, could be seen progressing slowly across the grey clinker-desert.

  ‘Two of them this time, apparently,’ Cora said, placing a cup of tea and a plate of buttered toast in front of Lucy as she sat riveted to the screen.

  ‘Yeah, I know … I heard last night.’

  ‘They don’t think these two were actually up to anything.’

  Lucy glanced at her. ‘Sorry … what do you mean?’

  ‘According to the news, they were just a pair of lads trying to sling some rubbish.’

  ‘Yeah?’ This was first Lucy had heard about the new murders in any actual detail, and it surprised her. She turned back, refocusing on the breaking story.

  It seemed that two young men from Hindley Green, Wigan, Kevin Crumper, aged twenty-five, and Arnold ‘Barney’ Hall, aged twenty-seven, were thought to have been fly-tipping on the evening of October 18th, on a stretch of former colliery wasteland at Bickershaw, when they’d encountered their killer.

  Twenty-five and twenty-seven.

  Two robust young blokes.

  Again, Lucy wondered if there might be more than one assailant. If there was – say if there was more than one prostitute involved – it meant that she and the rest of the Ripper Chicks would have to step even more lightly. One twisted killer was dangerous enough, but a conspiracy of them? Under those circs, you had to be extra wary who you got friendly with and who you asked questions of. But still … there had only been that single figure on the Atherton CCTV video.

  What kind of girl would a single killer have to be to overpower two red-blooded young guys on her own? In her mind’s eye, Lucy pictured a kind of Amazon, an unfeasible example of the female form, someone part way between an Olympic athlete and a supermodel. Unless, of course, she’d used guile rather than brute force. Both men had not necessarily been killed at the same time, for example. They could have been separated from each other first.

  But even then it couldn’t have been easy.

  On reflection, Lucy wasn’t sure which theory was more unlikely, the Amazon Queen or the tag-team from Hell. Whatever, in this particular case it was certain the two victims had fallen foul of the same person, or persons, known as Jill the Ripper. According to the TV, the causes of death had now been determined by medical examiners. Both men had been brutally beaten with a blunt instrument, probably a hammer, and then mutilated with a knife, subsequently dying from blood loss.

  She pondered this as she sipped her tea and nibbled her toast.

  It was noticeable and understandable that the taskforce was still withholding the detail of the severed genitals, but adding that there were unspecified mutilations was more information than had been given out previously. The probability was that they were seeking to ram it home to the public just how sickening these crimes were and thus make it more likely that someone, if they knew anything, would talk.

  The choice of victims was a bit of a right-turn, though. Two lads dumping waste.

  Lucy knew from her own experience, which admittedly wasn’t extensive in this field – though she had worked on the periphery of murder investigations before – that repeat sex-killers didn’t always stick religiously to their MO. Inevitably, some targets had to be targets of convenience. This ‘double-event’, as reporters were now referring to it, was also responsible for a new tone of sobriety in terms of the coverage. Beforehand, while the press hadn’t exactly demonstrated an air of frivolousness with regard to these crimes, there’d been the usual morbid fascination but minus any attached horror and dismay – as if kerb-crawlers were asking for trouble anyway and maybe, just maybe, were getting what they deserved. Now the attitude was markedly different

  For her own part, Lucy always tried to avoid making any such rushed judgement.

  From what she’d seen, men who used prostitutes didn’t always have sinister motives. Often, they were lonely or had problematic sex lives at home, or they simply didn’t wish to offend their wives or girlfriends by asking for fe
tishistic things. Certainly there were oddballs and weirdos out there – they existed too, but it didn’t sound as if Crumper and Hall were especially wholesome characters either. They’d been in the act of committing an offence when they were attacked, but of course had no record for being sexual predators, so the press at least was prepared to cut them some slack.

  ‘What’s the latest?’ Cora asked, sitting in the armchair, also sipping tea.

  ‘I think it’s all about to move up a gear,’ Lucy replied.

  ‘You anywhere near catching her?’

  ‘Not as far as I’m aware, though this could change everything. New crime scene, new evidence. We’ll have to wait and see what the forensic teams make of it.’

  ‘At least she’s only killing men,’ Cora said.

  Lucy glanced round at her. ‘Personally, I’d rather she wasn’t killing anyone.’

  ‘So do I, but, well …’ Cora shrugged and sipped again. ‘I know lots of women who’ve had a rough time over the years thanks to the fellas in their lives.’

  If Lucy had been surprised by the previous comment from her normally mild-mannered mum, she was even more surprised by this. Cora’s friends, whom she sometimes went out for a couple of drinks with at the Labour Club, all seemed pretty normal: mostly married and with grown-up kids, the majority of them hard-workers and gentle souls.

  ‘But all this dirty business, you know …’ Cora shook her head, a pink dot on either cheek. ‘Girls going out at weekends, making a show of themselves. You’ve seen them in the town centre. Practically nothing on. And they’re not even prostitutes. Blokes sniffing round them like dogs at the butcher’s dustbin …’

  ‘Mum, for God’s sake!’ Lucy exclaimed.

  ‘Well, what do you expect to happen, Lucy? You’re not telling me that won’t lead to trouble. But maybe now that it’s trouble for the men things will change.’

  ‘It’s not all men, Mum.’

  ‘No, of course it’s not all men. But look at the problems only a handful have created.’

  Not for the first time, Lucy found herself wondering about the father she’d never met.

  Dan the Bus Driver.

  That was the only name she’d ever had for him; she’d never even been told what his surname was. She knew next to nothing about him as a person, except that he’d apparently been a happy-go-lucky rogue. It was true that the only stories she’d ever heard involving him had been amusing, not least the one concerning Dan and Cora’s very first get-together.

  At the time, Cora was nineteen and still living with her own parents in Moston. She’d been resisting this guy Dan for quite some time, but allegedly he was so smitten with her that he’d turned up one Saturday afternoon outside her parent’s little terraced house while still in his bus, to beg her for a date. He was supposed to be driving his route at the time, so a whole bunch of bemused passengers had found themselves peering out through the vehicle’s windows and in through the windows of the Clayburn family’s front room.

  Quite a surprise for Cora’s father, who at the time was watching the racing from Kempton.

  Old Mr Clayburn had taken an instant dislike to Dan the Bus Driver, as he apparently didn’t trust anyone with ‘that much of the gab’. And he hadn’t been especially sorry when Dan had later fled the scene, even though he left Cora pregnant.

  Both Lucy’s grandparents had died before she was old enough to get to know them, so she’d never been able to verify these stories. But why should her mother have lied about it? Unless the truth about the laugh-a-minute bus driver was actually not so amusing.

  Lucy glanced at the clock on the mantel – it was now ten past eight. Plenty of time to try and get some shuteye before she had to head to Robber’s Row. She still had to pen her end-of-shift report from last night and email it in, but that wouldn’t take long. There wouldn’t be a great deal to include. Normally, it would be anything she’d deemed pertinent to the enquiry, and aside from the incident with the switchblade, there’d been precious little of that.

  The other Ripper Chicks, who were dotted all over Greater Manchester from here to Stalybridge, would be doing exactly the same thing now, though in truth she doubted many would even have got out of bed yet. Most would have been exhausted by their first ‘hooker shift’, even if they hadn’t had to spend it wiping the shit off a pretty girl’s face.

  Chapter 9

  The next few days weren’t anything like as eventful as the first. As there seemed to be more girls hanging around the lorry park and the lorry park café, Lucy made that her pitch rather than the picnic area. The café owners didn’t mind the girls coming in for a coffee or a cheese roll, but they didn’t want them touting for business inside or round the front of the building. So long as the girls were out of sight and out of mind, that was fine; as such, they mostly congregated at the rear of the caf or out across the lorry park, under the cover of the trees.

  Even so, the twelve-hour shifts could be tedious. To maintain appearances, Lucy would drive away with a ‘customer’ at least three times per shift, usually for about an hour on each occasion. Most often it was with lads from the Tactical Support Group, who were almost invariably young and hunky, which to a degree raised her standing with the other girls.

  But of course, there were times when she had regular johns to deal with too, and though it was easy enough sending them off with a flea in their ear when they were obvious losers driving ramshackle, rust-bucket cars, that wasn’t the case indefinitely, as she discovered on the fifth night of the undercover operation.

  ‘What’s up, babe … rich man’s money too good for you?’ a guy in a silver Jaguar XE said through his powered-down tinted window. ‘I’ve got plenty of it … look.’

  He cruised the edge of the lorry park, one ring-bedecked hand on the steering wheel as he dug a side-stitched pigskin wallet from inside his pinstriped jacket. It was fat with notes.

  ‘I don’t have to get into any car I don’t want to, sir,’ Lucy told him for the second time. ‘And I don’t want to get into yours. So goodnight.’

  As Lucy increased her pace along the kerb, he accelerated sufficiently to stay parallel. Older than her by about fifteen years, with longish grey hair, designer stubble and a gold crucifix glinting in the fuzzy chest-hair exposed through the open collar of his shirt, he wasn’t Lucy’s type at all, but he wasn’t exactly odious. And he was clearly loaded. The main problem of course was that he wasn’t one of hers.

  ‘You cheeky mare!’ he laughed harshly. ‘You’ve got some nerve, walking around out here like the princess of the night, looking like the best shag on the A580 … and you won’t even give me the time of day? Me, of all people!’

  ‘Goodnight, sir.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what, I like a challenge. So I’ll pay you double your going rate. Triple even.’

  ‘Goodnight, I said.’

  ‘Babes, I want that sweet, satin-clad arse of yours.’

  ‘Hey pal, fuck off!’ She spun to face the car again. ‘I’m not interested … you got it?’

  ‘You snotty bitch!’ he called as she changed direction, leaving him stranded. ‘I hope some weirdo fucking strangles you.’

  A group of the other girls had gathered nearby and now regarded her curiously as she strode away from him. They’d taken in the flashy motor and were wondering what the problem was.

  ‘Don’t make me tell you what he asked me to do,’ she told them in a disgusted voice.

  They didn’t look much less bemused even after that, so it was a relief half a minute later, when a Ford Focus slid up beside her and Andy Clegg wound its window down.

  She leaned quickly into it. ‘Hello, sir … looking for a bit of fun?’

  ‘Everything alright?’ he asked quietly, clearly having observed the incident.

  ‘It’s fine. Here … drive us about for a while.’

  At first, Lucy’s air of apparent superiority played a little bit into her hands, when, the following night, Sandy, the bottle-blonde, was finally moved to spe
ak to her conversationally.

  ‘Try not to knock back all the social rejects, eh?’ Sandy said. ‘They end up coming to me.’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘Call me picky, but I’ve got to like what I see before I can get into a car with them.’

  ‘Good job you get so many lookers then.’

  ‘Suppose I’m lucky on that score.’

  ‘Nah, you’re a doll.’ Sandy shrugged. ‘Don’t know what your story is, but you’re too good for this place.’

  Tomasina, a constant, chain-smoking presence at Sandy’s shoulder, still said nothing, her face like a gaudily made-up breezeblock, though within another day, even she started to open up, snorting with laughter the next night when they were all sheltering under the café awning during a rainstorm, and Sandy said that her hair was ruined, only for Lucy to comment that she didn’t know why they bothered tarting themselves up as a recent news report had offered stats allegedly proving that the majority of internet porn browsers went in search of “granny” and “old bag” sites.

  ‘I’m a granny and an old bag,’ Tomasina said in a husky, smoke-damaged voice. ‘And I don’t get any more action than the rest of you. I saw that report too. If it was true, I’d be a bloody millionaire by now.’ And from that point on she and Lucy spoke regularly, as if they’d been friends for years, though there was never any substance to it. The reality was that few of these women had anything in common other than a sisterly need for companionship on the edge of the dark, dangerous world that was Punterville.

  As a further indication of the strangeness of this existence, hostilities one day might be completely forgotten the next. A week and a half after the incident at the picnic area, when the black girl – whose name was Bianca – had pulled the knife, Lucy met her in the café toilets, where they were both looking to fix their make-up.

  ‘Evening, Keira,’ Bianca said as if they’d never been enemies. ‘Different day, same shit, eh?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lucy responded, trying not to look fazed that she was now shoulder-to-shoulder with a woman who for a brief time had been a potential suspect in the case.