‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’m dead sorry. I’ll get her back, I promise. I think I know where to find her.’
I bolted from t’ house after sis.
I guessed that the band might have to load up their equipment at their rehearsal rooms, which were about a mile away. I set out, running at first, then slowing to a brisk walk so I didn’t get a stitch. It wor icily cold. I crossed a main road and took a short cut through a park. The park wor frosted brittle and white. The branches of some of t’ smaller trees wor heavily laden wi’ snow, and looked as if they might snap. I crossed the gently rising open ground, my footprints crunching into t’ snow. A small dog wor yapping somewhere, and on t’ road beyond t’ park gates the traffic swished by, white headlights tracing the yellow arc of t’ streetlights.
The warehouse wor a rabbit warren of rooms that the management let out. No sign of t’ white van, but then it might be parked up in t’ yard or around t’ corner.
I followed a narrow side ginnel. At the end, some steps led down to a steel door. I shouldered it open and found mesen in a dank corridor, dimly lit by a dangling bulb. In front of me, three doors, all t’ same.
‘Mand!’ I called out, my voice bouncing off t’ pipes and unseen recesses. I could hear t’ dripping of slow, fat water drops. I listened. This place wor giving me t’ creeps. I blew into my palms and stamped the snow from my boots. I tried the nearest door. It wor padlocked.
‘Hello? Anyone?’
Water plopped monotonously. Either I’d been wrong, or I wor too late. But I’d been dead sure that this wor where she’d be holed up. I opened the second door. It wor a store cupboard.
I thought I heard a sound. I listened breathlessly, my heart nudging against my ribcage. I hoped it worn’t a friggin’ rat. Some fat bugger bunkering down from t’ cold. I’d encountered the odd rat or two out on t’ round. Mrs Husk had had one once, lodging in t’ pipes behind the sink, ’til t’ council sent in some men to flush it out. ‘Big bastard’ wor how Mrs Husk described it. Gave her summat else to natter about.
I edged toward t’ final door. I palmed it and it gave wi’ a long, un-oiled screech. I groped forward in t’ blackness.
‘Mandy?’ I whispered.
I could smell damp and stale ciggie butts and beer and an acrid trace of welding flux.
‘Mand. You here?’
It wor like stepping into a soft velvet wall. As my eyes adjusted to t’ gloom, I could make out egg boxes and bits of old carpet stuck to t’ walls, just as she’d described it in her diary. Then t’ big Marshall amp stacks stepped up, then t’ bass and snare drums showed their curves and the cymbal rims winked at me. Then, lastly, an old sofa against t’ far wall. Sitting in t’ middle, in deep shadow, wor a figure.
There wor summat about t’ figure that worn’t quite right. It worn’t Mand – too tall and thin. It wor probably a bloke, judging by t’ slaphead or t’ woolly hat he wor wearing.
‘Hello?’
The figure sat, motionless, not saying owt. I could make out the outline of a head, a shoulder, a leg. I shuffled a few steps forward.
‘You all right?’
I stubbed my boot against a metal box and stumbled into t’ figure, which fell apart beneath me, limbs crashing down. Even t’ head rolled off. Then the light came on.
I blinked in t’ sudden harshness of t’ bare bulb. In t’ doorway, one hand still on t’ light switch, which I saw now wor further away from t’ door than usual, wor a scrawny bloke wi’ lank hair. The same scrawny tyke I’d seen sis snogging earlier. Mand hersen appeared behind him, and looked at me all agog. At my feet lay the limbs, head and torso of a dismembered female dummy. The eyes stared up at me like glassy blue marbles. She had lashes like centipedes and painted-on eyebrows. She wor bald.
‘Rick? What the heck are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come to fetch you. You’re not going off like this.’
‘You can’t stop me!’
Then t’ thought struck her. ‘How did you know where to find me?’
I grimaced. ‘Read it in your diary.’
‘You’ve been reading my diary? I knew it! I knew it! How could you do that, Rick? You disgust me! You utterly disgust me!’
‘This your brother?’
‘No, Marcus, it’s the fucking Ripper. Of course it’s my brother!’
‘Half-brother,’ I corrected.
Mandy eyeballed me hatefully. ‘Gay half-brother.’
‘You’re gay?’ Marcus said.
‘Christ, what planet have you just landed from? You heard what she said, didn’t you?’
‘Just that I’ve never met someone who’s, you know, gay, before.’
‘You have, you just didn’t know it.’
‘I don’t know why you hide it, Rick. Mum knows. I started to tell her, but she told me to shut up and walked out the room. Course she knows.’
‘So what? I don’t want you to go on this stupid friggin’ so-called tour. It’s not a tour anyway, it’s one pissing little gig in Nottingham. Sister, half-sister, who gives a fuck? You’re still flesh and blood and I don’t want you to go …’
‘You can’t tell me what to do. Nobody cares. You don’t care, Mother don’t. No one.’
‘She does. Course she does. We all do, it’s just that we have our own ways of showing it.’
Marcus started to open his gob and say that he cared too, but Mand shut him up sharpish.
‘You just want sex all t’ time. If you really cared, Marcus, you wouldn’t eat all them disgusting licorice sweets before you snog me. It turns your tongue black and it tastes horrible.’
On t’ way home from work I spotted a poster that read ‘The Ripper is a Coward’. Some loaded Leeds businessman had shelled out for eight thousand of t’ friggin’ things to be plastered everywhere. As we drove past a whole row of them, Eric said, ‘That’s really going to do it, ain’t it? What a waste of money. What an utter waste of good money.’
By 7 o’clock every night the pubs wor nigh on empty, the streets wor dead, as if it wor a wartime curfew. Eric thought the businessman who paid for them posters must be suffering cos he owned a chain of pubs or restaurants, or a couple of nightclubs. ‘Otherwise,’ he said, ‘why would he care?’
‘Remember that Clark’s driver?’ Mother said as we wor watching The Two Ronnies Christmas Special on t’ telly. ‘You know, Peter Sutcliffe – that nice chap I told you about that always keeps his lorry clean and helps others out and …’
‘Aye. What about him?’ I wor annoyed wi’ her cos she wor blathering over a really good jape and I missed half of it.
‘Well, t’other drivers nicknamed him the Ripper cos he’d been picked up for questioning so many times.’
‘And?’
‘He handed in his notice this morning. From one day to t’ next. Just before Christmas an’ all.’
I turned over in bed. The digital glo-red figures of my new alarm clock (Christmas present from Mother) blurred into sight: 6.30 a.m. I clicked on t’ bedside light and lay there, blinking away t’ dying strands of fitful dreams. Early January mornings wor always the worst.
I heard Mother coming out of t’ bathroom. The hot-water pipes knocked as they cooled down.
I groaned softly, pulling the pillow over my face, and snuggled deeper down against t’ winter. Moments later I heard Mother’s foosteps clumping down t’ stairs, and then t’ kitchen radio come on.
Her cry wor one of shock, pain and surprise. Summat dropped. Not crockery or glass, nowt shattered or splintered, but a single, weighty object, like a cooking pot. I slung back the bed covers and tugged on my jeans, zipping up the fly as I bounded down t’ stairs.
She’d been holding a kettle of boiling water when t’ news came, news that had caused her to pour scalding water onto her hand, drop the kettle, cry out and slam on t’ cold tap. She wor still holding her hand in t’ water stream.
‘They’ve got him! They’ve ruddy well got him!’
She turned away from t’ sink and claspe
d me, pulling us both about t’ kitchen in an unbalanced jig that nearly ended up wi’ both of us on t’ deck. ‘They’ve got him, they’ve got him!’ Her tears of pain and joy wor t’ same tears. Her voice rose to a mouse-squeak. ‘They’ve got him, do you hear me?’
‘I hear you! I hear you!’
Her hand wor blossoming in a red weal. I took a tea towel, soaked it in t’ sink, then wrapped it about her hand, saying, ‘Wrap it once for me, twice for thee and three times for HIM.’
‘It’s over, Rick! It’s over.’
‘I’ll get you some Germolene.’
I fetched the ointment from t’ bathroom cabinet, then flung open Mandy’s bedroom door.
‘Mandy! Mandy! Wake up! It’s the bloody Ripper! They’ve got him, they’ve ruddy well got him!’ She raised hersen on one elbow, shielding her eyes wi’ her other arm as the landing light fell upon her.
‘What?’
‘They’ve caught HIM! They’ve got HIM! The Ripper! It wor on t’ news just now!’ I wor shouting at her. I yanked the edge of her bedclothes.
‘Who?’ She pulled at her hair, tidying hersen. She wor staring at me like I wor an intruder. Then she seemed to register what I wor saying.
‘They’ve got HIM!’
Her expression flick-knifed. She grabbed the nearest thing off her bedside table and slung it at me. It bounced off my arm. It wor her diary.
‘Get out of my room! Get out! Get out, get out, get out!’
I slammed her door behind me. I heard her burst into tears.
All day we wor glued to t’ news on t’ telly and the radio. He wor being held at Dewsbury cop shop.
Mr Clark wor interviewed. Clark’s long building and sign behind him, Clark wor saying, ‘They’ve been twice and interviewed us, and we thought that we wor clean.’
Mother said that wor an odd word for Mr Clark to use. ‘Clean’. She worn’t due in at Clark’s that day.
In t’ afternoon we took the bus from Bradford Interchange to Dewsbury. The journey seemed to take an age. Mandy chewed her chipped nails. Mother wor messing wi’ her face in a compact mirror. She wore a disconnected expression. I sat directly across t’ bus from them, taking in all our fellow passengers. A silent charge choked the air, as if the whole bus knew, and we wor setting out on a mission from which we might not return. Could we all be headed to Dewsbury cos of HIM? Not the elderly couple in light macs, surely? Not the woman wi’ t’ toddler on her knee? Not t’ teenager in t’ Judas Priest baseball cap, his knees up against t’ seat in front of him, tapping out a rhythm on t’ seat rail?
Near my head, a small insect crawled over t’ windowpane. I watched it make its way up, down, then up again, then across, and then back up again. Every so often it would stop and appear to stroke its feelers against t’ glass. Did it know it wor crawling over summat solid, or wor t’ glass like an invisible wall? Did it hurt when it had collided wi’ it?
I opened the small top window and held my forefinger beneath t’ insect. It seemed to hesitate a moment, then it boarded. I raised my finger very slowly toward t’ open window, then flicked the insect away, out into t’ cold air, where it could take its chances. Maybe in doing that I wor killing it.
By t’ time we arrived at Dewsbury bus station it wor late afternoon, and winter dark had set in. Rain started to fall. Mother pulled up her collar against t’ cold, looking about.
‘What now?’
Mand wor tugging at her hair.
‘Dunno.’ Mother nodded toward a small knot of women across t’ street. ‘We could follow them.’
We set off, following t’others, who wor following others also, an urgency in our stride as we trudged along t’ rain-shiny streets. We soon came to t’ grey TV vans, arc lights, thick cables lying across t’ road, noisy journalists and lines of jumpy cops. The air crackled wi’ a nervous frenzy. My stomach churned over. Mother had taken hold of Mandy’s hand. Ahead of us the hum of t’ still unseen crowd grew, like we wor approaching a trillion bees. As we came closer, this hum of voices wor punctured by yells and piercing screams, shrill screechings. Mandy shouted to us that it wor like t’ time she’d hitched to Manchester Airport wi’ two school mates to scream at David Cassidy. Mother gave her a frown that meant, ‘When wor this then?’
We pushed on forward, the way seeming to part for us. We wor in t’ presence of evil, and that evil still had the power to strike any one of us. We hardened and emptied our minds ’til only an icy collective hate remained. Close by me, a large woman in a purple anorak and black headscarf gave out a hoarse, throaty cry. Beside her, another woman wor in silent tears. Placards proclaiming ‘The Ripper is a Coward’ bobbed and danced above our heads. A chant started, low, uncertain at first, a few lone cries of ‘Hang the bastard!’ cutting the air, then ‘Kill him! Kill him!’, a low rumble dredged from t’ pits of our stomachs, growing stronger, growing ever louder, faces contorted so that on any photograph (and from t’ flash of t’ cameras there would be many) our mouths would be deformed, our hands madly clenched, our eyeballs bulging.
Mother fell in wi’ them, at first only her lips moving to ‘Kill him! Kill him!’ as if she wor feeling her way into a tune she barely knew, repeating ‘Kill him! Kill him!’ like a runner exhaling, punching the air wi’ short jabs of her bandaged fist. She wor crying and laughing at the same time.
It wor then that I glimpsed summat in t’ far corner of my eye. Glistening in t’ TV arc lights, the shaven pates of a group of skinheads. I saw t’ rope, oily black against t’ searing lights as it squirmed loosely upward toward t’ top of a lamppost, danced in t’ air and fell. Then up it went again, this time snagging on t’ light.
‘Tad!’ I said, aloud and to mesen.
Or someone who looked like Tad. I peeled away from Mother and Mandy, and pushed through to where I’d seen him. It had been just a fleeting moment, and if it wor Tad, then he’d shaven his head again and wor back in his skinhead garb. Then t’ crowd swallowed him, and cops wor pushing through and gesturing at the fascists to take down t’ hangman’s noose. His mates wor there all right; that friggin’ cabal of pasty-faced youths in their drainpipe jeans, wi’ their Nazi insignia and Union Jack badges sewn neatly onto their jackets. (By who? By their mothers?) Again the rope swivelled skyward, a fleeting, shifting shape.
Sirens upon sirens.
A roar went up. The mass surged again, almost unbalancing me, and the women, for it wor mostly women, wor shoving, shouting, yelling, ‘Hang the bastard! Hang him! Killer! Killer!’
There wor a mighty ruckus as a white police van drove through. HIM. It must contain HIM. Police helmets bobbed, a border of dark, glinting helmets, a poison toadstool line, two, three deep, as they linked arms to hold the crowd at bay. A woman’s shoe flew through t’ air, launched toward t’ van. Arms, necks, shoulders, breasts, thighs pressed in on me. The crowd swelled again as the van doors wor opened, and a woman wor bundled out the back and into t’ police station, her head hidden beneath a blanket. HIS wife.
I elbowed my way toward a small space, but as soon as I got there it wor gone. The crowd wor being pushed back by t’ flanks of coppers. I heard Mandy call out, ‘Mum! Rick!’ but I couldn’t turn my head, couldn’t see her.
I used my fists and elbows to shove through toward where I’d heard her, standing on some woman’s foot so that she screamed and swore at me. I could see parts of sis – her cheek, her elbow, her hip. I lurched forward and tried to grab her, but then t’ crowd cast her away from me.
‘Rick, get me out of here please! Please! I hate this!’
‘I’m trying! Just try to stay upright!’
‘Please! I can’t breathe!’
I could hear her panic. The crowd swirled and I saw her again, up ahead of me. A sliver of space opened up and she tore hersen through it. Then t’ crowd closed about me and I lost her.
I found mesen stood before someone else. We wor almost face to face, about ten feet apart. For a moment each stared at t’other, as if not quite taking it in. By t’ l
ook of him, he wor back in wi’ his old tribe. His expression travelled from recognition, through disbelief, to astonishment tainted by shame. Like someone caught wi’ his hand in t’ bikkie barrel by t’ very person he’d least expected. He opened his mouth and began to say summat, but just then two coppers grabbed him by t’ crooks of his arms and dragged him away. He managed to turn his head so that our eyes met one last time. That look seared into me.
I wor never to see Tad again.
The next morn the news confirmed that HE wor t’ Clark’s driver, Peter Sutcliffe.
My breath hung in front of my face in t’ icy air as I followed the high kerb of t’ dual carriageway, lurching along wi’ my bag banging against my thigh. The distant tower blocks looked like they wor dissolving in milk. Every so often I set the bag down and squinted up at the pale sun, slowly emerging from behind a gauze of winter cloud.
By t’ time I reached the roundabout that fed into t’ southbound lane of t’ motorway my shoulder wor sore where t’ bag strap had been cutting into it. I set the bag down, stretched my arm, feeling the blood tingling back into my fingers, and pulled up my collar against t’ cold. A car passed, windscreen wipers swishing furiously. More cars, vans, trucks slowing down, gears changing, picking up speed as they hit the slipstream of t’ roundabout and then out again, down onto t’ motorway below.
I placed the bag a little out of sight and stuck out a thumb. I put my other thumb through my belt loop and let my fingers dangle about my crotch area.
I didn’t have to wait long. A dark-blue Ford pulled onto t’ hard shoulder a few yards ahead.
The passenger door fell open. A slim bloke, early middle age, salt-and-pepper hair, clean white shirt, suit jacket hanging against t’ rear side-window – probably a salesman of some sort, probably out on t’ road all week, probably had a wife and two snivelling kids in surburbia somewhere, probably picked up lone young male hitchers whenever he got the chance. I struggled toward t’ car, half-running, half-limping, the bag knocking against my leg.
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