12
‘The girls have really missed you, though they’d never admit it,’ said Caroline as I sat down, back in my Richmond digs, and told her about my time away in York. Lily had blown the audience away with her performance in the school play, apparently.
‘I’ve got this letter for you too,’ she said, knowingly. ‘Isn’t that Malcolm’s writing?’
It was. For some reason, I hesitated before opening it. I went into my bedroom and shut the door, before pulling out a thin piece of blue paper. His letters were never fulsome.
Dear Pam,
I hope all is well at the assizes and that you’re not getting into any mischief. I’ve spent the past week at the races, making tea. It’s just like you said, only worse, and it’s done nothing but rain these past weeks. I did have a laugh with the other lad in the van, but I never want to see a tea-leaf again, I can tell you.
I have another piece of news too. I’ve been posted to Catterick. Just up the road from Richmond. Must be fate. So we can see a lot more of each other.
Let me know you’re happy and keep safe.
Yours,
Malcolm
I folded the letter back up and lay on the bed. Malcolm was getting closer, and there seemed to be no turning back now. I was excited, though. Wasn’t I?
A few weeks later, Malcolm was settled into his new job, and I had quite a start when I came into the station at Richmond and there he was, in his uniform, sitting in the parade room.
‘Hello!’ I said.
‘Surprise.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Oh, that’s a nice greeting. Thought you’d be pleased.’
‘I am but, I wasn’t expecting …’
‘Well, actually, I’m here on a job. With you.’
Before he could explain, Inspector Armstrong came over.
‘Miss Rhodes. I believe you know Stevenson,’ he said, cleaning his reading glasses with his tie. ‘He’s off to pick up a young woman in Rotherham. A Miss Baxter. Been stealing up at Catterick. Milk bottles or something. Anyway, Rotherham have picked her up, but we need to question her. Bill’s out with the car so you’ll have to take the train.’
‘Stealing milk bottles. How odd.’
‘It happens quite a lot actually, the lads say. They nick them from outside people’s houses in the mornings.’
‘To do what? Drink them?’
‘I suppose so. I don’t think she was selling them on for export. Some people like stealing stuff, anyway,’ the Inspector said. ‘For no particular reason.’
So we took the train, having to change a couple of times, and eventually ended up in Rotherham, at the police station there, where a duty sergeant showed us in. Another PC came in with a young girl in tow, who couldn’t have been more than about nineteen or twenty. She was a boyish imp of a creature, with a short crop, sharp nose and scruffy mackintosh.
‘Lucy Baxter. Caught up in Catterick, but her family brought her back here, so you’ll be wanting her back up your way for all the paperwork, and so on.’
‘Thanks, Sergeant. We’ll take care of it.’
‘Philip’ll drive you back to the train station if you like.’
We all trooped outside and a young PC showed us into a huge Black Maria, a large van for transporting prisoners. I’d never seen one before in North Riding, so this was a real treat, a giant black shining hulk of a thing with huge doors and enormous wing mirrors. I climbed in the back with Lucy, who sat hunched up in the corner the whole way and didn’t say a word.
As we got out and walked towards the trains, Philip whispered a warning in my ear.
‘Watch out for this one. She might look innocent, but she’s a wild one, I can tell you. Just keep an eye on her, is all I’m saying.’
‘Thanks. I will.’
‘Good luck.’
When we got on the train, Lucy, Malcolm and I sat together in a carriage next to a woman with a baby who wouldn’t stop crying. No matter what she did, it just kept screaming and had gone completely red in the face. None of us could talk much, what with the din, though occasionally I’d see something out of the window and remark, ooh, look at the cows, or that lovely cottage, but we mostly kept quiet the whole way. I even tried to make some small talk with Lucy, but got little response.
When we got to York we had twenty minutes between trains, and the girl spoke for the first time.
‘I need to use the toilet,’ she said quietly.
‘Can’t you wait until we’re on the train?’
‘No. I need it now.’
‘Right, you take her then,’ said Malcolm. ‘I’ll wait here and keep an eye out.’
So we walked to the public toilets on the platform, and when we got there I realized I was in need too. So she went into one cubicle, and I went into another. I kept an eye on her coat under the partition, safe in the knowledge that Malcolm was outside too.
When I came out, though, I looked into her cubicle and the coat was on the floor but there was no sign of the girl. Panic set in. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been charged with this duty and I’d let her get away. How could I have been so stupid?
‘Malcolm, Malcolm!’ I hissed. He was standing by a hoarding outside the entrance to the toilets. ‘Did you see her?’
‘What?’
‘Lucy. I think she’s gone.’
‘What? No! I’ve been here all the time. But, well, I did go for a quick walk on the platform. But I would have seen her. You idiot! How could you have let her go? In broad daylight?’
‘But I had to go. Anyway, you were supposed to be keeping an eye out too!’
‘Oh, Pam! The Sergeant’s going to kill us. You and me both.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, feeling a little hurt by his response.
‘Right. You go that way, I’ll walk up the platform. Meet back here. And you’d better find her or this has been more than just a wasted journey. It could cost us our jobs.’
As we separated I rushed up the platform, sweat streaming down my forehead as the panic rose up in my stomach like a thousand barbed-wire butterflies. At one point, I thought I saw the back of her head in the crowd, and called out.
‘Lucy! Lucy, stop.’
But when she turned round it wasn’t her at all. It was a young lad. He gave me a funny look so I turned away and continued on.
I scanned every person I could see: an old couple sitting on a bench, a couple of soldiers in uniform, smoking and laughing, and a woman and her two children, all standing innocently on the platform. But no sign of the little milk thief. The announcer on the platform began to call our train, and then I could see it puffing its way into the station with a great screech of coal and iron. There was nothing to do but run back to the spot where I’d left Malcolm and work out a plan of action.
‘We’ll have to tell someone. A guard or something,’ I said as I arrived back, completely out of breath.
But then, just as I looked back, Lucy came wandering out of the toilets nonchalantly.
‘Left my coat,’ she said, looking at us both. And her impish eyes lit up ever so slightly. ‘I could have got away from you, you know. But I didn’t,’ she said, turning sort of glum.
‘Thank goodness you didn’t. Where have you been anyway?’
‘Over there.’ And she pointed to a cubbyhole in the wall, just big enough to fit a small girl in. ‘Just watching you lot panic. That’s all.’
I looked at Malcolm with a feeling of relief. I didn’t care if we’d been duped. At least she hadn’t escaped.
‘So why didn’t you, then? Run away?’ asked Malcolm, as we took our seats on the train.
‘What would I do?’ she said quietly. ‘For food? Steal bread and milk? No thanks. I’ve had it with that.’
For the rest of the journey I didn’t take my gaze off that girl for a moment, until she was safely inside Richmond police station and under the Sergeant’s watchful eye. But something about her made me believe she was telling the truth, and that maybe this brush w
ith the law meant that her milk-thieving days were over.
With Malcolm now based in Catterick we saw more of each other and, although nothing ‘happened’ in that sense, he would come over to see me at my landlady’s occasionally. We’d read books together, or sit and chat, but since our first kiss I’d been adamant that nothing more would happen without a ring on my finger. I had seen enough of pregnancy out of wedlock in my job to know the repercussions. In those days it meant being ostracized from your community, maybe even your family too, such was the stigma. So, for the time being, we stuck to holding hands and the occasional kiss.
One evening towards the end of March, Sergeant Hardcastle came out of the office looking very serious.
‘Ah, good. Rhodes. You’re on tonight.’
‘Yes, beat three. Up Theakston Lane.’
I expected him to leave at that point, as he usually did, but for some reason he lingered for a while, and rubbed his chin.
‘Before you go … there’s been an All Stations, you see. The Met,’ he said, straightening up and broadening his shoulders. ‘They’re looking for a fella, Christie. He’s wanted for questioning. Looks like he could be anywhere in the country. Biggest manhunt in history, they’re calling it. Got the whole lot out looking for him. Some pretty grisly murders, looks like it might be, but there’ll be more news tomorrow, no doubt.’
‘Gosh. What did he do?’
‘Women. Scores of them at his house in London, I was told. Off the record, HQ says it looks like they’ve turned up several bodies already. Urgent they catch him before the full moon, they said. Not sure why. Perhaps he’s a werewolf.’
‘My goodness. Where is he, then? Have they got any idea?’
‘That’s the thing. He moved out of his house not long ago. New tenants found the bodies. As I say, looks like it’s pretty nasty. Anyway, they reckon he could be anywhere. But hear this, he has connections with Yorkshire, they’re saying. So when you’re out there tonight, keep an eye open, won’t you? He’s targeting women.’
‘Will do,’ I said, less than pleased to be out at night with this on the possible cards.
As I traced the line of my beat along the map, I realized I had only ever done it in the daytime. It was a route that went largely on the outskirts of town, where there was little light and not many houses either, mostly woodland and farmland and a few dirt tracks.
I picked up my torch and my whistle and headed out through Market Place, past a few pubs and the Market Cross, where a couple of squaddies stood smoking cigarettes and chatting. I bade them good evening as I walked past, made my way down Station Road and across the River Swale, which was rushing down in torrents after a heavy rainfall. It was eerily empty as I crossed the bridge, only the sounds of the water swishing by and the odd dog barking in the distance. As I walked up the lane, I saw the bright beam of the evening bus and an army lorry disappearing off up the hill towards the garrison. Then there was complete quiet as I made my way further out of town.
Although I’d walked up here before during the day, by night it was a different matter. Things I thought I knew as familiar – the post box on the corner, the fence post at the top of the hill – all took on shifting shapes and gave deceiving flickers as I approached them. One minute they looked like a man in a greatcoat, the next a giant creature, poised to pounce. At one point I thought I felt something brush against my cheek, but before I could look back to see what it was, I felt compelled to run as far as a big tree, where I leant against the trunk, panting to get my breath back.
I had to get to the only phone box on this beat, which was on The Green, a mile or so away. First, though, I had to make my way past the outlying farms. In the eerie silence, the buildings took on a sinister air at this time of night, the chimneys of the old farmhouses crooked against the moonlight.
The further I walked the darker it got, and eventually I had to flash my torch from one side of the road to the other, just to ensure I didn’t trip in a pothole or get tangled up in any overhanging trees. The more I walked, cold air filling my nostrils, the more I could hear. At first it had seemed like silence, but as I left the town behind I began to hear not human sounds and traffic, but things which only ever come out at night. I heard scrapings in the bushes, curious animal shufflings from across the fields and a sudden, loud snort which made me jump and pick up my pace.
The darkness was pressing in deeper and deeper as I walked on, into a particularly thick section of woodland, the road overhung by trees. Suddenly I heard an almighty scream from in among the trees. It sounded like a woman. I stopped dead still in the road and flashed my light around, picking up the odd darting insect, the track below, a wayward moth attracted by the light. But I could see nothing else. As the screaming persisted, it sounded muted and unearthly, but seemed to be getting louder. I held onto my whistle, flashed my torch around again and walked on.
Horrible images jumped into my mind. A woman lying on the floor, her face blue as the last breaths of life were expelled. Or a Jack the Ripper scenario, in which a woman had been neatly and skilfully dissected. I opened and shut my eyes a few times to expel the horrible images.
A few pigeons flapped and flustered round my head, and suddenly the screaming stopped. It was completely silent again. I held my breath as I put one foot in front of the other. But before I could relax, the screaming started up again, this time getting louder and louder and more desperate.
Could it be that Christie had made his way here after all? But why would he choose Richmond, of all places? It seemed so unlikely. But it was possible, wasn’t it? Sergeant had said the whole country was on alert. My shoulders stiffened as I clutched on tighter to my whistle and torch.
The screaming was by now so loud I felt like I could reach out and touch it. And yet I couldn’t find its source; no matter how far I walked it never seemed to arrive. I was almost across The Green when I flashed my torch over to where the sound appeared to be coming from, fully expecting to see the man himself, mid strangulation, his poor victim on the floor at his feet.
Instead, my torch lit upon two eyes at ground level, then a bushy shape; another face with some pointy ears in hot pursuit. I stopped and they stopped and we all looked at one another, me and two enormous foxes out on a night’s prowl, their eyes flashing before they disappeared into the bushes.
I had never felt such relief in all my life as the realization dawned that a fox screeching sounds like a woman being strangled. As I waited in the phone box I leant back, panting with relief, before stepping back out and on towards Goal Bank and the station.
Before I arrived back I did have one more start, though. There was a shape on the pavement. A body still juddering in the throes of death? Oh my God. I almost couldn’t bear to look. But as I flashed my torch over on full beam, there, looking up at me, was a giant badger, white stripe down its long nose, big black legs and white pointy ears. He had a look on his face as if to say, what are you doing out here at this time, human? This is badger territory.
I looked at him for a while, and he at me, but neither of us moved. My dad used to tell me they could give you a nasty nip, but this one came nowhere near me. Eventually I turned one way and he the other, as if in mutual agreement to allow one another to pass undisturbed; before I knew it, his large speckled back disappeared along the lane.
I very nearly ran back to the station after that, and once I hit the pavements along Goal Bank, and on to the stables and the station, I was a jangling mess of nerves.
‘You look like you’ve seen Napoleon’s ghost,’ said Peter, who was just going out on his beat on the other side of town, all geared up in a warm winter tunic and cape.
‘Almost,’ I said, as I stretched out my arms over the open fire.
As I sat there and watched the flickering flames, it felt like I had encountered all the beasts of the wild on that journey. But, thank goodness, the one beast I didn’t encounter was John Christie.
All week at the station everyone was talking about the manhunt. Af
ter ten days they found Christie on a bridge in London. They had found bodies in the garden at his address, and under the floorboards, in kitchen cupboards even. One was his wife, but there were also prostitutes too, it looked like. I came in one morning and overheard two of the lads on Motor Patrol who had called in. They were in the office having a cuppa from a flask, the newspapers spread out on the table in front of them.
‘See that?’ said Peter, pointing at a grainy picture of a man on the front page, in a raincoat and glasses. ‘Mad as a March hare. Gassed during the war. Didn’t speak for three years. Led him to a life of sexual perversion, so they say.’
‘Yeah, but plenty of people were gassed during the war, and they don’t all go strangling women and hiding their bodies in alcoves,’ said Tony, as he took a big gulp of tea.
‘Says here he’s admitted it all, though. Unbelievable!’ said Jack, flicking through another newspaper. ‘Look here. Had sex with the bodies once they were dead. Eurgh! They found bits of women’s … hair … in his shed in pots. That is disgusting.’
I didn’t think they’d noticed me so I sat down quietly and went through some reports on the desk left by the Inspector. They carried on talking.
‘Remember that bloke, Evans, hanged a couple of years ago for killing his wife and baby?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘Wasn’t all there, apparently. Well, looks like the wife and kid might have been killed by this Christie fella too. Same house and everything. See, that’s what’s wrong with the death penalty, right there in black and white. An innocent man hanged probably. And for what?’
‘Yeah, but do you want Christie still alive, after this? A life of luxury in prison, paid for by Joe Public?’
‘They should lock him up, granted, but once the country itself becomes a murderer, can we really take the moral high ground?’
‘Well, I say there are just some people not fit to live in this world. If he’d killed my daughter, I’d hang him myself and that’s for sure. I’d enjoy it too. I couldn’t give two hoots for no moral high ground.’
Bobby on the Beat Page 26