‘Press conference is tomorrow.’
‘Sunday?’
‘Monday’s a Bank Holiday.’
‘It’s going to play hell with your Jubilee coverage.’
‘She’s not dead.’
‘Really?’
‘She got lucky.’
‘You think so?’
‘Oldman reckons he was disturbed.’
‘Hats off to George.’
‘Oldman says you should get in touch the minute you receive anything.’
‘He took something then?’
‘Oldman’s not saying. And neither should you.’
Oh Carol, no wonders for the dead?
Jubelum…
There was another voice in the Bradford flat, there in the dark behind the heavy curtains.
Ka Su Peng looked up, lips moving, the words late:
‘In October last year I was a prostitute.’
She had travelled ten thousand miles to be here, sat across a dim divide of stained chipped furniture, her skin grey, hair blue, ten thousand miles to fuck Yorkshire men for dirty five pound notes squeezed into damp palms.
Ten thousand miles to end up thus:
‘I don’t know many of the others so I’m usually alone. I do the early time on Lumb Lane, before the pubs close. He picked me up outside the Perseverance. The Percy they call it. It was a dark car, clean. He was friendly, quiet but friendly. Said he hadn’t slept much, was tired. I said, me too. Tired eyes, he had such tired eyes. He drove us to the playing fields off White Abbey and he asked me how much and I said a fiver and he said he’d give it to me after but I said I wanted it first because he might not pay me after like happened before. He said OK but he wanted me to get into the back of the car. So I got out and so did he and that’s when he hit me on the head with the hammer. Three times he hit me and I fell down on to the grass and he tried to hit me again but I closed my eyes and put up my hand and he hit that and then he just stopped and I could hear him breathing near my ear and then the breathing stopped and he was gone and I lay there, everything black and white, cars passing, and then I got up and walked to a phone box and called the police and they came to the phone box and took me to hospital.’
She was wearing a cream blouse and matching trousers, feet together, bare toes touching.
‘Can you remember what he looked like?’
Ka Su Peng closed her eyes, biting her bottom lip.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘It’s OK. I don’t want to remember, I want to forget, but I can’t forget, only remember. That’s all I do, remember.’
‘If you don’t want to talk about it…’
‘No. He was white, about five feet six inches…’
I felt a hand on my knee and there he was again, as if by magic, smiling through the gloom, meat between his teeth.
‘Stocky build…’
He patted his paunch, burped.
‘With dark wavy hair and one of them Jason King moustaches.’
He primped at his hair, stroking his moustache, that grin.
‘Did he have a local accent?’
‘No, Liverpool perhaps.’
He arched an eyebrow.
‘He said his name was Dave or Don, I’m not sure.’
He frowned and shook his head.
‘He was wearing a yellow shirt and blue jeans.’
‘Anything else?’
She sighed, ‘That’s all I can remember.’
He winked once and was gone again, as if by magic.
She said, ‘Is that enough?’
‘It’s too much,’ I whispered.
After the horror, tomorrow and the day after.
Suddenly she asked, ‘You think he’ll ever come back?’
‘Has he ever gone away?’
‘Sometimes, sometimes I can hear his breathing on the pillow next to me,’ she said, her sad face hewn from violence with blunt tools, black and blue leaves of hair weeping across the damage.
I reached out across the dark, ‘May I?’
She leant forward, parting her hair.
In the back room she drew the curtains.
I placed a ten pound note under the clock on the bedside table and then we sat with our backs to each other on opposite sides of the same single bed, unbuttoning our clothes on a Sunday morning in Bradford.
I stood up and lowered my trousers.
When I turned round she was lying on the bed, naked.
I laid down on top of her, my penis limp.
She moved her hand between my legs until she stopped and pushed me on to my back and leant over to the bedside table and took out a johnny.
She placed it over my cock and then straddled me, me inside her.
She began to move up and down, her tits just nipples, up and down, her sallow body bones, up and down, eyes closed, up and down, mouth open, up and down, up and down, up, down, up, down, up.
I closed my eyes.
Down.
We dressed in silence.
At the door I said, ‘Can I come again?’
‘Now?’ she asked, and we both laughed, surprised.
Assistant Chief Superintendent George Oldman with a grave smile:
‘Gentlemen, as you are aware, at approximately three a.m. on Saturday morning, the 4th, Mrs Linda Clark, aged thirty-six, of Bierley, was subjected to a violent assault on wasteland behind the Sikh temple on Bowling Back Lane, Bradford. In the course of the attack, Mrs Clark sustained a fractured skull and stab wounds to her back and abdomen. On Saturday morning Mrs Clark underwent surgery and will have to undergo another operation later this week. However, despite the seriousness of her injuries, Mrs Clark has been able to provide us with a detailed account of the time leading up to her attack.’
He paused, sipped a glass of water and continued:
‘Mrs Clark spent Friday night at the Mecca ballroom in the centre of Bradford. She was wearing a long black velvet dress and a green cotton jacket. At approximately two o’clock Mrs Clark left the Mecca and made her way to Cheapside where she began to queue for a taxi. About fifteen minutes later she decided to start walking back towards Bierley. About thirty minutes later Mrs Clark accepted a lift from the driver of a white or yellow Ford Cortina Mark II with a black satin-look roof which pulled up on the Wakefield Road. Mrs Clark was then driven on to Bowling Back Lane where the assault took place. Mrs Clark has been able to provide a detailed description of the driver.’
He paused again.
‘The man we would like to speak to is white, approximately thirty-five years of age, about six feet and of a large build. He is described as having light brown shoulder-length hair with thick eyebrows and puffy cheeks. We would appeal for any member of the public who knows a man fitting this description and who drives a white or yellow Ford Cortina Mark II with a black roof, or who has access to such a vehicle, to please contact the Bradford Incident Room or their local police station as a matter of some urgency.’
Another sip of water, another pause.
‘I would like to add that forensic evidence gathered at the scene of the attack leads me to believe that the man responsible for the assault upon Mrs Clark is the same man who murdered Theresa Campbell, Clare Strachan, Joan Richards, and Marie Watts, the same man who we believe assaulted Joyce Jobson in Halifax in 1974, Anita Bird in Cleckheaton also in 1974, and Miss Ka Su Peng in Bradford last October.’
Pause.
The whole room:
The Yorkshire Ripper.
I wrote: Clare Strachan?
I circled her name.
Oldman was asking for questions:
‘Roger?’
‘Would the Assistant Chief Constable care to elaborate on the forensic evidence that points to this latest attack being the work of the, the work of the Yorkshire Ripper?’
‘At this point, no.’
He’s getting away…