by Steve Wilson
“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s the thought of two gentle females being together, with nothing rough and unpleasant happening. After all, if there’s a sex scene in a film, blokes will only look at the woman. With a lesbian scene, they don’t have to avert their eyes at all.”
“Yeah, no doubt they refuse to watch out of envy. Most men seem to lose the ability to count in that area. Or perhaps they answer in centimetres instead of inches.”
“Quickly changing the subject. Yes, Anna Friel. I do remember that kiss. It was an iconic moment in television history.”
“What about reality TV, Ethan? Isn’t there anything about it that you like?”
“Not really. I hate The X Factor and programmes like that.”
“How can you not like The X Factor?” Trish went on to list a host of names that meant absolutely nothing to me, and I found my mind wandering as the evening progressed. I was almost relieved when it was time to go our separate ways, and, although the goodnight kiss was just as pleasant as our first kiss a week earlier, I felt as if something had been lost during the previous hour or so.
***
I was apprehensive before meeting Debbie at the coffee bar the following evening. Having looked forward to my date with Trish so much the night before, and then being ultimately disappointed at the outcome, I feared that tonight might go the same way; I needn’t have worried.
“We didn’t really get to know much about each other last week, did we?” I asked as we sat down with our drinks.
“No, we didn’t. That was my fault, sorry. I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I really am glad that you want to come out with me on a Saturday night. A lot of men prefer to stay in and watch football.”
“I like football, don’t get me wrong, but if it comes to the choice between watching a game on the box and having a drink with an attractive woman — well, it’s no contest.”
“Flatterer,” she said, but I could tell that she was pleased. “So, if you aren’t glued to Match of the Day all the time, what do you watch? I assume you do have a TV.”
This was the key moment, right at the beginning of the evening. Was I sitting with another reality-soap aficionado? “Yes, I do have a set, but I’m not an avid watcher. For a start, I’m not into soaps or reality programmes, although I did watch Come Dine With Me before I came out tonight.”
“Come dine with me? Are you asking me out? If I say yes do you promise not to take me to a tapas bar? I don’t think I’d feel comfortable there after what we’ve heard about this week.” I laughed, and relaxed a little. “I’m a bit like you, I suppose,” she continued. “Give me a good documentary any day of the week. I much prefer factual programmes to that stuff they put on that professes to be entertainment. I suppose I was one of the people who loved the old BBC2, when you could watch the Royal Ballet.” I smiled as she said this, causing her to respond, “Yes, I know, I don’t look like the sort who’d enjoy culture, do I?”
“No, that isn’t it at all. I was smiling because it reminded me of an old episode of Steptoe and Son.”
“Oh, I used to love that programme.”
“I don’t know if you remember the one, then, but Harold divided the house by installing wooden panels. He tried to make his half upmarket, and decided he wanted to watch the ballet on television, which was part in his half and part in Albert’s. But Albert had the controls on his side, and as he wanted to watch a horror movie, that’s what they ended up watching.”
“Oh, yes, I remember it. It isn’t that I’ve a great memory, but I watched the box set not too long ago. So comedy is your thing, is it?”
“I like to think so, but my daughter would probably disagree. She’d tell you that I’m a devotee of crime shows, and it’s true, I suppose. I do love detective programmes, and I watch everything from Sherlock Holmes through to Castle.”
“Sounds like she knows you well. After all, you’re proving yourself to be a bit of a sleuth now, aren’t you? You’re certainly taking what Louise says very seriously. By the way, what did you say your daughter was called? Julie Walton or something like that, was it?”
“You do have a good memory. I only think I mentioned her married name the once.”
“I’m just observant, that’s all. She sounds like a lovely girl, anyway, from what you said about her. It’s a shame she lives so far away.”
“Yes, it is. If she’d still been living in Lancashire, she’d have dragged me along kicking and screaming to the course that first night. I wasn’t really too sure about coming, if truth be known, and it was probably only because I’d promised her I’d come that I did.”
“It’s a pity she isn’t from round here. I would have loved to meet her.”
“She’s coming home for a few days at the end of the month. Perhaps,” I added, hesitatingly, “you could meet her then?”
“Taking me home to meet the family, are you? Interesting. The end of the month, did you say? Perhaps I will.”
We chatted some more about our interests and I was amazed at how much we seemed to have in common. It was fair to say that we conversed at an intellectual level that had been lacking the evening before. After finishing our coffee, Debbie suggested we go and have something stronger to drink, and we ended up in the same hostelry that I had frequented with Trish twenty-four hours earlier. I did notice the barmaid casting some strange glances in my direction, but I chose to ignore them; after all, what was wrong with going for a drink with people from my course?
My only disappointment from the evening came as we prepared to leave. Debbie’s eyes had glazed over once or twice while I was speaking. “I’m not boring you, am I?” I asked.
“No, of course not. I’m just a little tired. It’s nothing to be concerned about. It’s quite late for me, really. I’m very busy at work, and, as I don’t normally go out at night, I’ve been feeling like this ever since the course began. I’ll be fine once I get some rest.”
I felt that she was telling the truth, and it was much later than I had realised. Once she had again assured me that there was nothing for me to worry about, I took her arm and we left the bar. She turned to kiss me goodnight, but when, once again, she placed a soft peck on my cheek, it was far removed from the passion of Trish’s goodnight kisses. But, as I consoled myself while I drove home, there would be plenty more opportunities to meet and progress our relationship; somebody like Debbie was worth waiting patiently for, and I realised I had come to a decision about which of the two women I wanted to be with.
Chapter Thirteen
Debbie — Sunday 13th November 2011
Debbie flicked through the channels on the television looking for something that might interest her. Such a shame, she thought, that I had to miss ‘Strictly’ last night. But she hadn’t had much choice, not if she wanted to see Ethan. She knew he was interested in her, but he was also interested in Trish. It was a good job that he’d primed her by saying he didn’t like soaps and reality shows; at a guess, they were the sort of things that Trish did enjoy, and no doubt she had told him all about them on their date. Oh, yes, their date. Ethan thought he was being clever, but the tell-tale signs were there; not least the look on the barmaid’s face when they had entered that pub. Women stuck together at times like this, and the barmaid had been quite prepared to fill in all the details while Debbie was buying her round of drinks.
Still, that was only to be expected. For now, she had Ethan’s interest, thanks mainly to her invented love of culture rather than trash. She had a knack of knowing what to say and when to say it, and it came from years of experience of studying people. Knowing everything about those around you was a skill that took time to learn, but it was well worth putting the hours in. Hadn’t he been pleased when she remembered his daughter’s name? There’d been some interesting developments after that; things could have turned out very differently. A new craving rose in her breast, quite unlike the one that had plagued her over the last few weeks; this one was quite bearable.
Yes, she was very observ
ant, as she’d told him. She had watched Ethan carefully, week by week, and knew how to play him. The demure goodbye peck on the cheek at the end of the evening, for instance. Leave them wanting more, that was the tactic; it would ensure Ethan would remain interested. And as long as she had his attention, she was in control.
And with that control, she could now take action to get her out of the scene. What she’d learnt this week meant that it was way past time to do something about her. She was going to enjoy doing that.
Chapter Fourteen
Week 8 — Accrington — Stabbing
Tuesday 15th November 2011
I was about to leave for the course when the phone rang. It was Julie.
“I’m just on my way out. Can I ring you later?”
“It won’t take a minute, Dad. I won’t be in when you get back home as I’m going to a works function with Dave. It’ll probably go on until the early hours. I just rang to let you know about Gary.”
“What about him?” I said, unable to keep the concern from my voice.
“It’s good news. He’ll be back for Christmas after all. He told me on Skype last night.”
I sighed with relief. “That is good news. I wasn’t expecting to see him again until Easter. I’m proud of what he does out there, but I’m always worried about what might happen when he’s on the other side of the world.”
“Me too. Oh, and I know the schedule for the conference now.”
“The conference…you mean the one in a couple of weeks?”
“Yes, that’s right. My advertising presentation, remember? I wasn’t sure which day I’d be involved, as it’s a three-day event, but the programme’s been confirmed now. I’m presenting my campaign on the opening day, Tuesday, so I’ll be travelling up after work on the Monday.”
“That means you’ll not be here till late on Monday, then. Tell you what, we’ll go out together on the Tuesday night.”
“You can’t miss your course! It’s the last week, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is, but I haven’t seen you for months, so that’s more important.”
“No, Dad. I’ll not let you miss it. It means too much to you. Besides, what would Trish say?”
“Or Debbie,” I muttered under my breath.
Julie hadn’t heard, of course, and she continued talking. “Anyway, I’ll probably be tired by the time I’m through on Tuesday, as it’s certain to be a gruelling day. And now Wednesday looks like it will be just as busy. I’d hoped to have some free time then, but my boss has asked me to help out with his presentation, so I’ll no doubt be working on that Tuesday evening. Between you and me, he’s hopeless.”
I was disappointed, but I tried not to show it. “It’s all good experience. As I say, carry on like this and you certainly won’t be a junior much longer.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But the best news is — I’m here on Thursday as well. I’m not involved with any of the conference sessions then, so my boss has said I can take some time off. He might be hopeless at his job, but he does have a human side to him. We can spend all day together. As your course will have finished, you can tell me how you solved the murders, Sherlock. Oh, and you can also keep me updated on Trish. And Debbie,” she added. So she had heard me!
“Will do,” I promised. “I really must go now — I don’t want to be late again. See you on the first. Oh, and by the way, I’ve done something you’ll be proud of me for. I’ve finally bought a mobile phone. I’ll text you later so you get my number. And I’ve bought a laptop. I’m finally on the Internet.”
“Huh,” she said, feigning annoyance, “you wouldn’t get a mobile when I asked you to, but you change your mind when you get a couple of girlfriends!”
“You know it isn’t like that. I’m still a bit bemused by all the options on it, but I’m trying. The same goes for the computer. Oh, and by the way, Debbie would like to meet you when you come to visit. Must go now. Bye.”
I put the phone down and let out a long, deep breath. I felt as if I’d taken the first step towards making a commitment.
***
“This week, we are talking about the events of 1978,” began Louise as the class started. A metaphorical light bulb sparked to life in my head: 1978, eleven years after the last case. And I realised that I had been right all along, although I had misinterpreted the information. It wasn’t that the murders occurred in years divisible by eleven, as I had first thought, but the time difference between them was the same. I couldn’t remember all the dates, but I knew each one was eleven years and a few months after the preceding one. So, inevitably, at some point the calendar would tick over onto a year that wasn’t divisible by eleven, but the pattern would still continue. Perhaps it was because Remembrance Day had been in everybody’s minds only a few days earlier — the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in the eleventh year of the new century — that the significance finally made itself known to me.
“I said, what’s up, Ethan?” repeated Louise, and I realised that I must have been gawping like a mindless child. But the smile on Louise’s face indicated that perhaps she did know what was going through my mind. I glanced to my left and right, but saw only puzzled looks on the faces of Trish and Debbie.
“To continue, then, now that Ethan’s jaw has returned to its normal position. It was another Thursday murder, as on April thirteenth Yasmine Bond was stabbed in Accrington. Yasmine was a twenty-two-year-old punch-card operator who worked at the college at Blackburn, which was about four miles away from her home. She was born in Iran — hence the spelling of her first name — and came to England with her parents three years earlier.”
“Is this another racial murder?” asked Trish.
“No, not this time, even though it was a tense time in East Lancashire in the late 1970s. It occurred a week prior to the tenth anniversary of Enoch Powell’s infamous and inflammatory Rivers of Blood speech, although the town hadn’t seen any racial trouble of any real significance since locals clashed with the Asian and Caribbean immigrants sixteen years earlier. So a racial motive was never really considered in this case.
“Yasmine’s parents worked at the factory over at Huncoat that produced the famous Accrington NORI brick, the hardest and densest building brick in the world — these bricks were used in the construction of the Blackpool Tower and the Empire State Building. Yasmine, though, wanted more from life than to follow in her parents’ footsteps, which was quite a brave thing to do for a middle-eastern woman, especially back then. She applied for the job at the college and was successful at the interview; she also enrolled on a part-time evening course in computer programming at the same location.
“It was Yasmine’s responsibility to key-punch the coding forms for the students undertaking full-time computer programming courses, transcribing from their coding sheets onto punched cards for processing on the ICL computer. There were two other punch-card operators, Sandra Furner and Vera Broad, both of whom were around forty years old. Sandra was the senior in the team, and had been working there for five years, whereas Vera had only been working there for a few months.”
“How many months?” I asked.
“Just under three, Ethan. Why? Do you think that is significant?”
“I was just curious, Louise. I want to get all the facts straight before I come to any conclusions.”
“Both women left shortly after the incident, distraught, no doubt, at the murder of such a young girl. They no longer felt safe at the college, although security after the event was so tight that it was possibly the safest place in England to be.”
“How did Yasmine die?” asked Trish quietly. “I know you said she was stabbed, but what exactly happened?”
“I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that nobody really knows what happened. Yasmine and her family lived across the way from the police station in Accrington, and Yasmine was at home sick. She had only been back at work a few days after the Easter break, and it seems that she caught a tummy bug, probably as
a result of something she ate. When her parents returned from their shift at the factory, they found her blood-soaked body sprawled across the living-room floor.”
“So who were the suspects?” I asked. “No, don’t tell me, it had to be Sandra and/or Vera, both of whom conveniently left after the murder. Were they ever traced?”
“One question at a time, Ethan. There was a suspect, a very good one. One of the students, Paul Morrison, had failed an assignment that he had to complete for Easter, and he was about to be excluded from the course. He argued vehemently that it wasn’t his fault, saying that Yasmine had made a complete mess of typing up the data cards for his program, which meant that it produced totally incorrect results. He had even gone so far as to produce the original coding sheets — or so he claimed — but Yasmine said they weren’t the ones she had punched up, as she always signed her initials on each page as she completed it.
“Morrison, though, was adamant, and he swore he would take his revenge when he was discontinued from the course — as much for his attitude as his academic failure. So, when she became ill, her colleagues thought it was because of the stress of the threats, and when her body was found Morrison became the number one suspect.
“The problem was, he had an unbreakable alibi — he had been in police custody across the road from Yasmine’s house after being apprehended trying to throw a brick through her front window. There was a gap, though, of three hours, when he was at the station but unattended, and although nobody saw him leave and return, it was argued that nobody could say he didn’t leave, commit the murder and return. The police station was so badly organised that it was impossible to say one way or another, yet no case was ever brought against Morrison — other than attempted criminal damage — probably to save face for those police officers. But they didn’t arrest anybody else over the killing, and it remains an unsolved murder to this day.”