Nineteen Seventy-Four (13 page)

Gaz solemnly took the cigarette and the light. “Know he was fucking dead though, don’t they?”

I nodded and said, “Funeral’s Thursday.”

“Fuck. That quick?”

“Yeah.”

Gaz sniffed hard and then spat on one of the stone steps. “Seen the boss?”

“I haven’t been inside yet.”

He stubbed out his cigarette and started up the steps. “Best make a move.”

I said, “I’m going to wait here. If they need me, they know where I am.”

“Don’t blame you.”

“Listen,” I said, calling after him. “You heard anything about Johnny Kelly?”

“Fuck all,” said Gaz. “Some bloke in the Inns last night was saying Foster’s had it with him this time though.”

“Foster?”

“Don Foster. Trinity Chairman.”

I stood up. “Don Foster’s the chairman of Wakefield Trinity?”

“Yeah. Where the fuck you been?”

“Waste of bloody time that was.” Thirty minutes later, Gaz from Sport was coming down the Town Hall steps with Bill Hadden.

“You can’t rush these things Gareth,” Hadden was saying, looking odd without a desk.

I got up from my cold step to greet them. “At least they can go ahead with the funeral.”—

“Morning Edward,” said Hadden.

“Morning. Have you got a minute?”

“Family seemed to be taking it better than you’d think,” said Gaz, lowering his voice and glancing back up the steps.

I said, “That’s what I’d heard.”

“Very strong people. You want a word?” Hadden put his hand on my shoulder.

“I’ll see everyone later,” said Gaz from Sport, down the steps two at a time, seizing his chance to dance.

“What about Cardiff City?” Hadden called after him.

“We’ll murder them Boss!” Gaz shouted back.

Hadden was smiling. “You can’t buy that kind of enthusiasm.”

“No,” I said. “That’s true.”

“What was it then?” Hadden said, folding his arms against the cold.

“I thought I’d go and see the two men who found the body, tie it in with this psychic and a bit about the history of Devil’s Ditch.” I said it much too quickly, like a man who’d had thirty minutes to think about it.

Hadden began stroking his beard, which was always bad news. “Interesting. Very interesting.”

“You think so?”

“Mmm. Except the tone worries me a little.”

“The tone?”

“Mmm. This medium, this psychic, it’s more of a background feature. Supplement stuff. But the men who found the body, I don’t know…”

Right back in his face: “But you said she knows the name of the killer. That’s not background, that’s Front Page.”

Hadden, not rising to the bait, said, “You’re going to talk to them today?”

“I thought I’d go over there now, seeing as I’ve got to go over to Wakefield anyhow.”

“All right,” said Hadden, walking off towards his Rover. “Bring it all back to me by five and we’ll go over it for tomorrow.”

“You got it,” I shouted, checking my father’s watch.

A Leeds and Bradford A to Z open on my lap, my notes on the passenger seat beside me, I nosed through the back and side streets of Morley.

I turned on to Victoria Road and drove slowly along, pulling up just before the junction with Rooms Lane and Church Street.

Barry must have been coming the other way, heading towards the Wakefield Road or the M62. The lorry would have been here, at the traffic lights on Victoria Road, waiting to turn right up Rooms Lane.

I flicked back through my notebook, faster and faster, back to the very first page.

Bingo.

I started the car, pulling out to wait at the traffic lights.

To my left, on the other side of the crossroads, a black church and, next to it, Morley Grange Junior and Infants.

The lights changed, I was still reading.

“
At the junction of Rooms Lane and Victoria Road, Clare said goodbye to her friends and was last seen walking down Victoria Road towards her home…
”

Clare Kemplay.

Last seen.

Goodbye.

I drove across the junction, a Co-op lorry waiting to turn right up Rooms Lane.

Barry’s lorry would have been here too, at the traffic lights on Victoria Road, waiting to turn right up Rooms Lane.

Barry Cannon.

Last seen.

Goodbye.

I crawled slowly along Victoria Road, car horns at my rear, Clare skipping along on the pavement beside me in her orange kagool and her red Wellington boots.

“
Last seen walking down Victoria Road towards her home
.”

The Sports Ground, Sandmead Close, Winterbourne Avenue.

Clare was standing at the corner of Winterbourne Avenue, waving.

I indicated left and turned on to Winterbourne Avenue.

It was a cul-de-sac of six older semi-detached and three new detached.

A policeman’ was standing in the rain outside number 3.

I reversed up the drive of one of the new detached houses to turn around.

I stared across the road at 3 Winterbourne Avenue.

Curtains drawn.

The Viva stalled.

A curtain twitched.

Mrs Kemplay, arms folded, in the window. The policeman checked his watch. I pulled away.

Foster’s Construction.

The building site was behind Wakefield Prison, yards from Devil’s Ditch.

Lunchtime on a wet Tuesday in December and the place was as quiet as the grave.

A low tune on the damp air,
Dreams Are Ten A Penny
.

I followed my ears.

“All right?” I said, pulling back the tarpaulin door of an unfinished house.

Four men chewing sandwiches, slurping tea from flasks.

“Help you?” said one.

“Lost are you?” said another.

I said, “I’m actually looking for…”

“Never heard of them,” said one.

“Journalist are you?” said another.

“Shows does it?”

“Yeah,” they all said.

“Well, do you know where I can find Terry Jones and James Ashworth?”

A big man in a donkey jacket stood up, swallowing half a loaf of bread. “I’m Terry Jones.”

I stuck out my hand. “Eddie Dunford.
Yorkshire Post
. Can I have a word?”

He ignored my hand. “Going to pay me are you?”

Everybody laughed into their tea.

“Well, we can certainly discuss it.”

“Well, you can certainly piss off if you don’t,” said Terry Jones to more laughter.

“Seriously,” I protested.

Terry Jones sighed and shook his head.

“Got a right bloody nerve, some folk,” said one of the men.

“Least he’s fucking local,” said another.

“Come on then,” yawned Terry Jones, before swilling out his mouth with the last of his tea.

“Make sure he bloody coughs up,” shouted another man as we went outside.

“Have you had a lot of papers here?” I asked, offering Terry Jones a cigarette.

“Lads said there was a photographer from
Sun
, but we were up Wood Street Nick.”

There was a thick drizzle in the air and I pointed to another half-built house. Terry Jones nodded and led the way.

“Police keep you long?”

“No, not really. Thing like this though, they’re not going to take any bloody chances are they?”

“What about James Ashworth?” We were standing in the doorway, the rain just missing us.

“What about him?”

“They keep him a long time?”

“Same.”

“Is he about?”

“He’s sick.”

“Yeah?”

“Something going around.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Terry Jones dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his boot and added, “Gaffer’s been off since Thursday, Jimmy yesterday and today, couple of other lads last week.”

I said, “Who found her, you or Jimmy?”

“Jimmy.”

“Where was she?” I said, looking out across the mud and the piss.

Terry Jones hawked up a massive piece of phlegm and said, “I’ll show you.”

We walked in silence over the building site to the trough of wasteland that runs parallel to the Wakefield-Dewsbury Road. A ribbon of blue and white police tape was strung along the ridge of the ditch. Across the ditch, on the road side, two coppers were sat in a Panda car. One of them looked across at us and nodded at Terry Jones.

He waved back. “How long do they keep this up?”

“No idea.”

“They had tents all over this until last night.”

I was staring down into Devil’s Ditch, at the rusted prams and the bicycles, at the cookers and the fridges. Foliage and litter snaked through everything, pulling it down into its mouth, making it impossible to see the bottom.

“Did you see her?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Fuck.”

“She was lying on top of a pram, about halfway down.”

“A pram?”

He was staring off at something far, far away. “Police took it. She had, aw fuck…”

“I know.” I had my eyes closed.

“Police said we hadn’t to tell anyone.”

“I know, I know.”

“But, fuck…” He was fighting with a lump in his throat, tears in his eyes.

I handed him another cigarette. “I know. I saw the photo graphs from the post-mortem.”

He pointed with the unlit cigarette at a separately marked piece of ground. “One of the wings was over there, near the top.”

“Fuck.”

“I wish to Christ I’d never seen her.”

I stared into Devil’s Ditch, the photos on the wall at the Redbeck swimming through my mind.

“If only it hadn’t been her,” he whispered.

“Where does Jimmy Ashworth live?”

Terry Jones looked at me. “I don’t think that’s a right good idea.”

“Please?”

“He’s taken it badly. He’s only a lad.”

“It might help him to talk,” I said, looking at a dirty blue pram halfway down the slope.

“That’s bollocks,” he sniffed.

“Please?”

“Fitzwilliam,” said Terry Jones and turned and walked away.

I ducked down under the blue police ribbon and, leaning into Devil’s Ditch by the root of a dead tree, I plucked a white feather from a bush.

An hour to kill.

I drove up past the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, parked, and jogged back into Wakefield through the rain, quick ening my pace as I passed the school.

Fifty minutes to kill.

Being Tuesday, I walked round the second-hand market, smoking cigarettes and getting soaked to the skin, staring at the prams and the children’s bicycles and the pickings from the house clearances of the dead.

The Indoor Market stank of wet clothes and there was still a book stall where Joe’s Books had been.

I glanced at my father’s watch, leafing through the pile of old superheroes.

Forty minutes to kill.

Every Saturday morning for three years, my father and I had got the 126 at half-past seven from Ossett bus station, my father reading the Post, talking about football or cricket, the empty shopping bags on his lap, as I dreamt of the pile of comics that was always my wage for helping Joe.

Every Saturday morning until that Saturday morning Old Joe hadn’t opened up and I had stood there waiting, my father coming by with two bags of shopping, the cheese wrapped in paper on the top.

Thirty-five minutes to kill.

In the Acropolis at the top of Westgate, where I’d once fancied the waitress, I forced down a plate of Yorkshire Pudding and onion gravy and then puked it straight back up in the little toilet in the back, the toilet where I’d always fantasised I’d finally get to fuck that waitress called Jane.

Twenty-five minutes to kill.

Outside in the rain, I headed on up to the Bullring, past the Strafford Arms,
the hardest pub in the North
, past the hairdresser’s where my sister had worked part-time and met Tony.

Twenty minutes to kill.

In Silvio’s, my mother’s favourite cafe and the place where I used to secretly meet Rachel Lyons after school, I ordered a chocolate eclair, I took out my damp notebook and began to read through the scant notes I had on Mystic Mandy.

“
The future, like the past, is written. It cannot be changed, but it can help to heal the wounds of the present
.”

I sat in the window and stared out at Wakeh’eld.

Futures past
.

It was raining so hard now that the whole city looked under water. I wished to Christ it was, that the rain would drown the people and wash the place the fuck away.

I had killed all the time I had.

I drank down the cup of hot sweet tea, left the eclair, and headed back up to St Johns, a tea-leaf stuck to my lip and a feather in my pocket.

Blenheim Road was one of the most beautiful in Wakefield, with big strong trees and large houses set back in their own small grounds.

Number 28 was no exception, a rambling old house that had been subdivided into flats.

I walked across the drive, avoiding the holes full of puddles, and went inside. The windows in the hallway and on the stairs were stained glass and the whole place had the stink of an old church in winter.

Number 5 was on the first-floor landing, to the right.

I looked at my father’s watch and rang the doorbell. The chimes sounded like
Tubular Bells
and I was thinking of
The Exor cist
when the door opened.

A middle-aged woman, fresh from the pages of
Yorkshire Life
in her country blouse and country skirt, held out her hand.

“Mandy Wymer,” she said and shook hands briefly.

“Edward Dunford. From the
Yorkshire Post
.”

“Please, come in.” She pressed herself into the wall as I passed, leaving the front door ajar as she followed me down the dim hall, hung with dim oils, into a big dim room with large windows blocked by larger trees. There was a litter tray in one corner and the whole room smelt of it.

“Please sit down,” said the lady, pointing to the far corner of a large sofa draped in a tie-dyed cloth.

The woman’s conservative appearance jarred, both with the Oriental-cum-hippy decor and with her profession. It was a thought I obviously couldn’t disguise.

“My ex-husband was Turkish,” she suddenly said.

“Ex?” I said, switching on the Philips Pocket Memo in my pocket.