stay the night, and come back first thing tomorrow.
OK.
How are you?
Im fine.
Ive got to go.
I know.
Ill see you soon.
Yes.
Bye.
Bye.
I put back the phone, conscious the whole of the room is watching me
The photos on the walls, the maps and the faces
The Ripper Room
Him .
I drive back fast, over the Moors
Fast over their cold, lost bones, the radio on loud:
Hunger Strikes & Dirty Protests
Ripper, Ripper, Ripper .
Fast, over the Moors
Over their cold, lost bones, the radio on:
Earthquakes & Hostages
Ripper, Ripper, Ripper .
Over the Moors, radio gone
Cold, lost bones:
The Strafford Shootings
Christmas Eve 1974:
The pub robbery that went wrong .
Four dead, two wounded policemen
Sergeant Robert Craven and PC Bob Douglas .
Driving, hating
I hate Bob Craven and I dont know why
Dont like the maybe why:
Hated him then, hate him now
Hated him since the day I met him, stuffed full of tubes and drugs on a Pinderfields bed.
Hated him like it was only yesterday:
Friday 10 January 1975
In we came:
Me and Clarkie
Detective Chief Inspector Mark Clark .
Two weeks on and theyd still got roadblocks across the county, the stink of an English Civil War, me and Clarkie walking down that long, long corridor, armed guards on the bloody hospital doors, Craven and Douglas on their backs in their beds, the only survivors .
Me and Clarkie, we shook hands with Maurice Jobson
Detective Chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson, legend
The Owl.
There were a lot of other faces about, that rat-faced journalist Whitehead from the Post for one .
They didnt know me then, but they would .
Douglas was sedated and Craven ought to have been
Lying there, head back, calling out from the depths, eyes twinkling up from those same depths, screaming:
Kill the cunt! Kill em all!
But that was as close as we ever got
Jobson wouldnt let us near him: Mans in no state. Took a butt to the head.
And for all the promises wed got coming, all the cups of tea up the Wood Street Nick, we never did get a good go at him .
Over the Moors, snow across their cold, lost bones
Clarkie turned to me and said: It stinks. Fuck knows why, but it does.
And I stared out at the lanes of lorries, the black poles and the telephone wires, thinking
Murder and lies, lies and murder
War:
My War
Bloody Yorkshire, hissed Clarkie . Over the Moors
Cold, lost bones:
It stank then and it stinks now, that same old smell
Bloody Yorkshire .
*
The house, my affluent detached house and two-car garage is quiet, dark, one light on in an upstairs room, the curtains open.
I push open the bedroom door and there she is, in front of the mirror in her dressing gown, eyes red.
You OK?
You startled me.
Sorry. You been crying, love?
No, she smiles. Just soap.
I walk over to her and kiss the top of her hair.
Didnt expect you so soon, she says.
Were looking at each other framed in the mirror, something missing.
I thought Id put the tree up.
Weve left it a bit late, havent we? All the stuffs up in the attic.
Ill get the steps from the garage. Have it up in no time.
Youll get filthy.
Got time, dont worry.
Up to you.
Got to make the effort.
Shes nodding, staring back into the mirror, back into her own eyes
Those lights are so old, she says.
The Christmas Ball, the Midland Hotel
Saturday 13 December 1980.
Through the black city streets, the broken lights and the Christmas ones, down Palatine, Wilmslow, and the Oxford Roads, the official black car and driver taking us in towards the red and the gold, the money and the honey, the home of the loot, holding hands in our rented clothes on the back seat of a car that is not our own, through dominions of disease and depopulation, the black streets that would have you dead within the hour, taking us in towards a thousand hale and hearty Manchester
Hannah Howell
Avram Davidson
Mina Carter
Debra Trueman
Don Winslow
Rachel Tafoya
Evelyn Glass
Mark Anthony
Jamie Rix
Sydney Bauer