It's heart-warming when you hear of one of them trying to better himself, restores your faith in the system.
The West Yorkshire archives are in the central registry in the cellars of the Force HQ, or the Centre, as it is more usually called. Grey steel industrial racks, row after row, are bulging with brown folders stuffed with papers and photographs. Every written page is a testimony to man's indifference to the feelings of his fellows. There's not much joy down there, little to uplift the spirit when you consider that these are the unsolved cases. The ones we crack are usually destroyed to save space.
'1975, did you say?" the civilian archivist asked as he led me between the lines of Dexion shelving.
"July," I replied. "Possibly filed as Crosby."
He turned down an aisle, read a label, went a bit further, read another, backtracked a few paces and looked up. "We need the steps," he said.
"I'll fetch them." He walked with a pronounced limp and I was impatient. Our movements had stirred up fifty years of dust and the place smelled of old paper and corruption. I rolled the steps into position and locked the wheels.
The file was about two feet thick, in four bundles tied with string. I lifted the first one out and climbed down. "I'll leave you, then," he said.
"Thanks, you've been a big help. I'll put them back when I've finished."
When he'd gone I scanned the letters and numbers on the next rack of shelves, looking for a name. I was certain this one wouldn't have been destroyed. There it was, next but one: a whole bank of shelves devoted to one villain, the biggest file we'd ever had. I ran my fingers over them, leaving a clean trail through the dust. In there were the names of thirteen women and fifty thousand men, and the contents had touched the lives of everyone in the country. One man's name was printed within those pages nine times, but he wasn't caught until a lucky copper found him with a prostitute in his car and a ball-peen hammer in his pocket. Peter Sutcliffe, better known as the Yorkshire Ripper.
I took the first bundle from the fire file to the desk near the door and untied the string. There were photos and a list of names and the coroner's report. Sergeant Priest and PC Sparkington, first on the scene, weren't mentioned. An hour and a half later I retied the string and fetched the next bundle. The prostitutes in the next street were convinced that they were the intended target and the CID went along with that. I broke off for something to wash the dust out of my larynx and some fresh air.
Bundle three was mainly interviews with the ex-boyfriends and minders of the girls. Their pimps, in other words. They all had alibis, which wasn't a surprise, and plenty of witnesses to say they were visiting their moms at the time of the fire, whenever that might have been. I was gathering a good picture of the investigation and where it might have gone wrong, but nothing that helped Crosby's case. Maybe bundle four would hold the key.
It was more of the same. The usual suspects had been rounded up, informants consulted, gossip listened to. It had been a crime that aroused passions, it's always the same when children are involved, and plenty of people had their pet theories. The local branch of the National Front denied any responsibility and expressed lukewarm regret, and the leaders of the Asian community demanded more protection.
I scanned the next statement briefly, turned it upside down on the pile I'd finished with and reached for another one. I was working on automatic. Something clicked inside my brain and I picked it up again.
It was made by Paul Travis Carter to DC Jones, four weeks after the fire. Carter lived at number twenty-seven Leopold Avenue, just over the road. Two days before the fire he'd gone on an expedition to the Dolomites with a party of schoolkids and had just returned. About a week before leaving he went for his customary take away and as he locked the door he noticed a young woman approaching number thirty-two. She hesitated on the top step for a few moments and left. He'd assumed she'd put something through the letter box, although her actions didn't look like that. He followed her, because that was the way he was going, and she got into a posh car that was waiting round the corner and was driven away. The car might have been a two-litre Rover and the driver looked like a man, although his hair was longish and Carter couldn't be certain. "I don't suppose it's important," he'd told the DC, 'but I thought I'd better tell you." The DC had obviously agreed with the not important bit; there wasn't even a description of the woman.
"Wait till I tell Sparky," I said to myself, and made a note of Carter's details. He shouldn't be too hard to find. I put everything back and slapped the dust off my hands. As I turned to leave I took a last look at the Ripper files. We'd been misled on that one, gone off at a tangent, wasted thousands of man hours. Someone had made a big mistake with the fire, too, and I didn't think it was me.
Carter was a responsible citizen who conscientiously registered to vote. Two minutes on the computer upstairs in the HQ CID office and I had his latest address. Middleton, South Leeds. I thanked everyone for their help, flirted briefly with a rather attractive sergeant and left. Carter lived in a cottage along a dirt track near the golf course. It sounds nice, but a burnt-out shell of a Fiesta reminded me that just down the road was a rambling estate where middle-class meant having floorboards, and quiche was the plural of cosh.
He was in the garden, hacking at a grass jungle with a bargain-store sickle. A golf club would have done more good. His hedges were overgrown, heavy with honeysuckle and wild roses. It was a cottage garden gone mad, and it reinforced my belief that there is no such thing as a labour-saving garden. He looked up and demanded: "Who are you?" the sickle held handy to deliver a forearm volley. I told him.
I'd decided that his wife had left him long before he poured it out.
The garden; the state of his front room; having to wash two cups before he could offer me a coffee; they were all clues. I lived like that, once, before I reformed. Carter was wearing grey slacks, a striped cream shirt with the cuffs and neck fastened, and black brogues. His only concession to the weather had been to remove his tie. He told me he'd retired early and spent his time working for a Third World charity and trying to write a textbook on Roman England. He believed that Roman values were lacking in certain elements of our present-day society, and a return to them would be for the good.
Crucifixion? I thought.
He'd missed the fire, of course. First he knew of it was when he saw the boarded-up holes and smoke-streaked brickwork. He'd been shocked to learn that they'd all been killed, and disturbed by the matter-of-fact acceptance of it by his neighbours. They'd had a month to get used to the idea, and it's amazing how the human mind can accommodate disaster when it happens to someone else.
"It was twenty-three years ago," I reminded him. "Can you remember the girl you saw?"
"Oh yes, Inspector. I've thought about it so many times."
"You said in your statement that she may have put something through the letter box?"
He looked uncomfortable. "I know I did. She walked to the front door so purposefully, paused for a few seconds much longer than it would have taken to put a letter through and turned and left, equally purposefully."
"Maybe she was checking the address on the envelope," I suggested.
"I thought of that. It's possible, but her actions weren't right. I went through all this with the detective, you know."
"OK," I said, 'how does this sound? The woman walked up to the front door with a piece of chalk in her hand. The house was number thirty-two but the painted number had weathered away. She wrote thirty-two on the wall and left. Could that have been it?"
His eyes widened slightly and he nodded. His skin was sallow and hung in folds around his neck. He wasn't eating properly since she left. I didn't get this bad, did I? "Do you know, Inspector, I believe you could be right." He stood up and faced an imaginary door. "The numbers were painted about here," he said, raising his left hand to shoulder height. "At least, mine was." He went through the motions and said: "Did she write it at this side?"