by David Evans
“You can’t help me.” His face contorted with rage. “And don’t think you’re walking away from here either.”
The phone began to ring.
Within ten minutes of Strong’s call to Cunningham, two vanloads of uniformed officers arrived to seal off the streets surrounding Montgomery’s house. Blue and white police tape was growing like bindweed strangling the life out of a plant. It would form a flimsy barrier to keep the expected public and media interest at bay. Cunningham himself arrived shortly after. Strong briefed him as to what Kirkland had observed and Cunningham informed them that the armed response vehicle was on its way from Leeds, expected in about five minutes.
“In the meantime, let’s check the surrounding houses and get everyone out to a safe distance,” he instructed Sergeant Dyer, who’d come down in one of the vans with the uniforms. “And use the back doors as much as possible. We don’t want to create more alarm in there than we have to.”
With a nod, Dyer went off to organise his men.
Cunningham turned back to Strong. “I’ve got Luke tracing Montgomery’s number from BT. As soon as he lets me know we’ll try and establish some communication. In the meantime, you say it’s this character Souter who’s in there with him?”
“That’s right.”
“He’s really starting to irritate me. I want you to get on to the Post and see if they’ve got a mobile number for him. I’ll bet the bugger’s got it switched off though. Great, isn’t it? All this modern technology, the advantages of instant communications at all times, thwarted by the off switch.”
Strong went through the motions of contacting the paper, despite the fact that Souter’s mobile number was already programmed into his.
Meanwhile, Ormerod rang back with Montgomery’s land line number. Cunningham decided to make the call immediately.
“Who’s that?” Montgomery asked.
“Well you won’t know till you pick it up,” Souter said.
“Supposing it’s them.”
Souter made to stand but Montgomery gestured with the lighter for him to stay sitting. “Just stay calm and listen to what they say.”
Slowly, he lifted the receiver. “Hello?”
“Mr Montgomery,” came the voice from the other end, “this is Detective Chief Inspector Cunningham. I’d like to talk to you.”
“Well I don’t want to talk to you!” Montgomery slammed the phone down.
The line was strong enough for Souter to hear the caller. “Why did you do that, Alan? I told you your best policy was to listen calmly to what they had to say.”
Montgomery looked bewildered for a second. “He was a DCI. That’s a bit heavy isn’t it?”
The phone rang again. He picked it up once more but said nothing.
“Alan? It is Alan, isn’t it,” Cunningham was talking once more.
“Yes.”
“Now don’t put the phone down again. We need to talk.”
“What about?”
“I think you know what about. But first, why don’t you let your friend, Mr Souter, go?”
“My friend? Let him go?”
“We saw him enter, Alan, and we don’t want any trouble now do we?”
Montgomery began to chuckle, slowly at first, building to a full-blown belly laugh.
“Alan? Alan? What’s so funny?”
Montgomery stopped laughing. “You’re not so fucking clever as you think you are,” he said sharply, then pulled the telephone cable from the wall socket. Turning to face Souter, “He’s not is he?” He slouched back into the chair.
“You know they saw you with that,” Souter said, indicating the gun. “This could get completely out of hand.”
“What do you mean, ‘could get,’ it already is.”
“You know what they’ll be doing now? They’ll be waiting for some firearms officers. This is a siege.”
“Let them.”
“Come on, Alan, let me help you. It needn’t be like this.”
“But they’re not going to let me walk away from here, are they? I’ll be sent to prison. I couldn’t stand that. I saw what it did to my dad; all the tales he told me, I don’t know how he did it. No, that’s not for me.”
“Look, you can explain, like you’re doing to me. You said it was an accident with Williams. As for Hinchcliffe …”
He sneered. “And you honestly think a jury would believe that? Besides, there’s more than that, and I don’t mean all those women.”
“You’re talking Carlisle, aren’t you?”
Montgomery looked totally amazed. “You know about that? Fuck! Well, if you know, they know.” He glanced towards the street. “They’ll never believe my story on that one.”
“Give me a try.”
Cunningham turned to Strong. “He’s put the phone down on me again, the arsehole!” He redialled the number and listened for a minute. “I’ll bet the bastard’s pulled the bloody thing out the wall now.” Another minute passed and Cunningham gave up, just as an unmarked car drew to a swift halt alongside the pair.
Strong’s mobile rang and he turned away to answer it while Cunningham began to brief the officers from the Armed Response Unit. The call was short. He could feel a lump come to his throat and a burning sensation behind his eyes. He pulled out a cigar, licked the ends and took his time lighting up. He needed time to recover his composure, not wishing to make a show of his feelings in public. He also wanted to concentrate his thoughts on the news.
When the DCI had finished bringing the ARU team up to speed, Strong was puffing away. “Not still on those, are you?” Cunningham quipped.
“Not the best of days to give up, sir,” Strong replied. “That was Kelly, she’s at the hospital. They turned the life support off about ten minutes ago. We’re dealing with another murder.”
“Shit. Not entirely unexpected, though.” Cunningham paused in thought. “Look, did you get that Souter character’s number?”
Strong nodded.
“Well, see if you can get hold of him and find out what the situation is in there.”
Cunningham walked away to speak to one of the uniforms.
Strong began to dial.
“So far as I know, there’s only one detective out there who suspects any connection with Carlisle,” Souter said. “At the moment, I don’t think he’s shared those suspicions with anyone else on his team.”
“How do you know all this?”
“That doesn’t really matter.”
“How do I know you’re not filth?”
“You’ve got my card. Give them a ring if you don’t believe me.”
Montgomery stared at him for a few seconds, then looked away.
“Come on, Alan, let me hear your side of the story.”
Montgomery fumbled for his cigarettes, took one, lit up, then threw the pack across. There was only one left. Souter used his own lighter and screwed up the empty packet. He looked across at Montgomery who seemed to be using the time to gather his thoughts.
“Mum and Dad split when I was fifteen,” he finally began. “As soon as I was sixteen, I left too. Followed Dad south to Carlisle. He got work in a rough pub. All the tarts hung out there, so I got to know a few of them.” He got up once more and checked for activity through the net curtains.
“So what happened?”
He walked over and leaned against the sideboard. “Well, one Thursday night I was walking down to the pub for a pint when this one, I’d seen her around a few times, comes on to me. She was pissed as a fart.” He smirked at the memory. “She took me back to this boarded up house where the old winos used to go. We did it there. Next thing, she’d passed out. So I thought, bollocks to this, if she’s that bad, she probably won’t remember who it was, so I lifted her handbag and legged it.”
“Let me get this straight, Alan. Are you saying that when you left her, she was out of it, but alive?”
“Snoring her fucking head off.” He set off on his trav
els around the room again.
“And you didn’t return?”
“No, why should I?”
“So what we’re saying is that someone else must have turned up after you left, found her and battered her to death?”
He stopped and faced Souter. “Now, on top of everything else, can you imagine a jury believing that?”
Souter ignored the rhetorical question. “And then later?”
He sat back down in the chair. “They didn’t find her for three days. Next thing, they’re taking saliva samples from anyone remotely connected with her. Also, they’re looking for the handbag and the contents. Fortunately, I hadn’t tried to flog any of that tat. Later, I destroyed the bag but kept a few of her things.”
“Those in the box, you mean?”
“Yeah, and look at the trouble it’s caused now.” He leaned forward and squashed the life out of his latest cigarette butt in the ashtray.
Scotland The Brave abruptly interrupted their conversation. Souter removed the mobile phone from his jacket pocket.
“Who is it?” Montgomery asked.
Souter studied the display. “It’s the detective I told you about.”
“Not that DCI?”
“No, this is another one.”
“Is he outside too?”
“I think so.”
“Then you’d better answer it, before that fucking tune drives me mad.”
Souter pressed a button. “Yes?”
“Bob, can you talk?” came Strong’s voice.
“It’s okay, so far,” Souter replied in guarded tones.
“Are you in any danger? Is he threatening you?”
“No. Everything’s fine. We’re just having a little chat.”
“He’s pulled the land line out the wall, hasn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
“What do they want?” Montgomery was growing irritated.
Souter spoke into the phone, “He wants to know what you want.”
“Tell him we’d like to talk to him, so why doesn’t he come out?”
He held the phone out towards Montgomery. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Not yet.”
Souter put the mobile back to his ear. “He says …”
“Yes, I heard that. Listen,” Strong lowered his voice, “just so’s you know, Rosie Hudson died a few minutes ago.”
“I see.”
“The place is sealed off, so he won’t be going anywhere.”
Montgomery finally lost patience. “Look, end that now! I’ll talk to them when I’m ready.”
“Got to go.”
“Bob? Be careful.”
“Goodbye.”
“What else did he say?” Montgomery queried.
“They’ll wait for you.”
“That’s very considerate of them.”
Souter was keen to refocus the conversation. “Now, you were saying about the items you kept; that wasn’t the end of the story, though, was it?”
“You know, don’t you?”
“Keep going, Alan.”
Montgomery rubbed his face with his hand. “Shite! You got any more fags?”
Souter pulled out the pack from his pocket and passed them across.
Montgomery lit up and after a couple of deep draws, resumed his account. “About six months after they found her, Dad got sent down for eighteen months. I took off. There was nothing to keep me there, although the heat had died down after the initial burst of activity. When Dad got out, he moved to Leeds and got a bed-sit in Headingley. Later, he got a small flat nearby and I took his bed-sit on.
“I was still worried about what had happened in Carlisle; constantly waiting for the knock on the door. Dad said I was being stupid. I’d done nothing so there was nothing to worry about. Anyway, around this time, 1975 I think it was, the Yorkshire Ripper started his spree. I remember Dad reading this book all about the original Whitechapel Murders. Apparently, the police had received letters at the time from somebody claiming to be the murderer and calling himself Jack the Ripper.
“I think it was ’78, just after the murder in Huddersfield, there was a letter sent to that bloke leading the investigation, Oldfield, with a similar one to the newspapers. We only found out about it later. The police kept quiet until a paper printed a story about them in early ‘79. Just after this, another letter appears then finally in the June, the tape.”
“The piece-de-resistance.”
“Eh?”
“Sorry, go on.”
“Well, I couldn’t believe it. All these references to Carlisle. Then some papers spotted the similarities with the original Jack the Ripper letters.”
“And you remembered Billy reading that book on the original Jack the Ripper?”
“Well, yes. But it was the voice.”
“What about it?”
“It sounded just like Dad doing one of his deliberate piss-take Wearside accents. He used to make us laugh as kids with stories of his relatives back in Sunderland.”
“So, it was Billy, trying to deflect responsibility for the Carlisle case onto the Ripper.”
“At first I thought it was. They were all posted in Sunderland. I thought he must have done that when he went to visit his parents, my grandparents. They still lived up there. I never went. I’d stopped going to see them when I was about twelve. But the best bit about the tape was that it sounded like him doing his impression of his Uncle Josh who’d died a few years before. So I thought that even when they were driving people mad with appeals for anyone who recognised the voice, he’d know that he was fire-proof.”
“So what convinced you it wasn’t him?”
“It took me a while to believe him but eventually we discovered, when more details came out, that when the first letters were posted he was in court in Huddersfield on a driving charge.”
“He could have been in Sunderland the night before, slipped them in a box and been back for the court case. That would still give the letters a postmark from the following day.”
“True. But when the tape was posted, he was on holiday in Spain for a week. No, I could tell from other things he said he didn’t do it. The way he discussed events. No, it wasn’t him. It used to amuse him, though.”
Souter was still doubtful. After all, Strong’s evidence, mainly circumstantial as it was, sounded solid. “A bit convenient for you, though, Alan,” he said. “People thinking that the Carlisle murder had been committed by the Ripper?”
“But I didn’t do anything in Carlisle. Whoever it was sent that tape must have been involved, but that wasn’t me, or Dad.”
Souter let his thoughts come out loud. “I mean, those letters, and especially the tape, they actually gave Sutcliffe the means to escape detection for another, what, eighteen months.”
Montgomery tensed. “If the police had done their job properly, Sutcliffe would have been sent down long before he was, though, wouldn’t he?”
Souter held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “No, you’re right but, it must have been one hell of a burden to carry for whoever did send them. No matter which way you look at it, their actions contributed directly to the murders of at least three women. And why? That’s the big question.”
“Are you saying you don’t fucking believe me? That Dad did it?”
“No, not at all, but you must admit, it does sound a bit bizarre.”
“And don’t you think I feel like shite too? After all this time, I’d put it to the back of my mind but now, here we are, twenty odd years later, because of those two arseholes breaking in here …”
Souter was growing in confidence. Despite facing this disturbed man with a gun and the rollercoaster of emotions displayed, he was thinking that, if he’d meant him serious harm, that would have already happened. “Look, you can’t do anything to make a difference about all that, but you can do something to help someone who’s in prison now for something they didn’t do.”
&nbs
p; “Who’s that?”
“In November 1996, did you attack a young woman by the name of Irene Nicholson as she walked home from her job as a barmaid in Wakefield?”
“They put some other soft bastard away for that.”
“Yes, but that ‘soft bastard,’ as you put it, is innocent, isn’t he?”
Souter’s mobile rang again.
Cunningham came striding back up the street towards Strong. “Right,” he said, “that’s firearms in position, front and back covered. Jim Dyer tells me everyone’s out from the surrounding properties. Some bloke in forty-two wasn’t best pleased, though,” he laughed. “Apparently, he thought Len Bradshaw was his fancy piece’s old man come back to catch them at it.”
“That’ll have made Len’s day,” Strong remarked.
“Did you get any response from Souter’s mobile, by the way?”
“Yes.”
“How were things in there?”
“A bit tense.” Strong then related his conversation with Souter along with the overheard remarks from Montgomery.
“I think it might be worth another call,” Cunningham suggested. “See if we can talk to Montgomery direct. He did seem to indicate he would come out when he was ready, didn’t he?”
“You want me to?” he asked, slightly surprised, expecting the DCI to want to take the lead.
“It’ll maintain continuity. Besides, from what you said, you seemed to have more success, but I’ll listen in.”
Strong dialled.
Souter picked up his mobile and opened his eyes wide towards Montgomery in a gesture that sought permission to answer the call.
Montgomery nodded.
He pressed a button and held the unit to his ear. “Hello.”
“Mr Souter, this is Detective Inspector Strong again.”
He instantly knew by the formal introduction that other people would be listening in to the conversation. “Hello, Inspector.”
“I’d like to speak to Mr Montgomery, if I may.”
“He wants to speak to you.” He held the phone out towards Montgomery.
After a brief pause, Montgomery leaned forward and took it. “Yes.”