Once Adam had gone, Christopher found himself alone in the house. He had been alone in the house before, of course, but now without Adam, without the promise of his return, it felt emptier, lonelier. He went upstairs to pack the rest of his things. His clothes were already in the grotty suitcase where he had found the blanket and the note three years earlier. The thought took him back to the dark attic space behind his loft room. What had he felt? Nothing. Nothing at all. Not then. Everything he had felt about that note had come later, over years. In those first moments there had been only numbness, then in the weeks that followed action, action almost without thought.
In his chest of drawers was the Ripper scrapbook he had made. The thing bulged with articles he had cut out over the years, and yet they still hadn’t caught him. The north of England was in a state of paranoia. Someone knew who it was. Or did they? He was a Geordie. Or was he? What if he had put on an accent on that tape? What if he was not from Wearside but from Barnsley or Lancaster or even Scotland? What if he was from Morecambe? Did his wife, his sister, his mother know it was him? Did the Ripper himself even know it was him? What if even he, the monster, didn’t realise he had murdered those women? He might have killed them in some blind and frenzied act, only to black it out from his mind.
Was that possible – to do something so heinous you buried it deep, deep, deep until you didn’t believe you’d done it at all?
Christopher flipped through his scrapbook and found the police-issue picture of the Ripper.
Do you know this man?
With the scrapbook still in his hands, he went into the bathroom and stared into the mirror. His black hair, his black beard. He removed his glasses and leant into his reflection. He looked like, could pass for that picture. Yes, he looked like him. Craig - or was it Darren? – had said so when they were in Anglesey – out of the mouths of babes… A memory: himself, washing his hands, weeping over a sink, the water trailing brown into the plughole. Brown: not red, not blood. But even so, when was this? It was something he had not remembered before – only now when he had trained his mind to it had it come up. Were there other memories, down, down with that one, memories yet to surface? Was it possible that he, Christopher, was him? Was he the Yorkshire Ripper?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Christopher shaved his beard off that day, I think. Certainly, by the time he was living in Runcorn more permanently, he was clean-shaven as he had been when he first met Phyllis. A clean shave was not enough to stop the monster though, I think now as I flick through Christopher’s scrapbook. Here, near the back: August 1980, forty-seven-year-old Marguerite Walls, the latest victim. There are articles from The Guardian, The Telegraph and the Daily Mail. I picture him cutting them out, gluing them into place. I picture him and wonder what on earth he was thinking about.
I picture him. That’s the problem. I can’t stop the images from forming. I see the Ripper, I see him, the two of them coalescing in my mind’s eye as they did in his. No matter how I try and shake off these visions, they are beyond my control.
I picture him now, returning to Morecambe for what remained of his things. In the loft room he had grown to loathe, he must have packed his clothes, which Margaret had laundered during his short stay; his tapes; his writing set; two old pairs of shoes. He remembered the letter he had written to Phyllis that first Christmas. He had put it in his old school trousers but had neglected to post it. Of his school trousers there was no sign.
Behind him came the clatter of feet on the metal steps and he turned to see Margaret, her shoulders and head at the hatch like a scrawny plaster-cast bust.
‘All ready?’ she said, her face set in the expression of angst he had known all his life.
‘Yes. Almost done.’
She threw a Safeway carrier bag onto the floor of the room, then climbed in after it. She had not, he realised, been up here before – at least not while he was there.
‘I wondered if you had room for these.’ She brought the carrier bag over to the bed and sat down. The hunched set of her spine had a beaten air about it. She looked withered. From the bag she lifted a block covered in thick foil. ‘It’s only a fruit cake,’ she said. ‘Keeps you going, does fruit cake.’
‘Thank you.’ What was it with mothers and fruit cake?
‘Aye, and there’s some pickled red cabbage your father made, and some damson jam. We had a lot this year.’ She looked down into her lap, as if disappointed, or sorry. For what, he did not ask.
‘Thank you,’ he said instead. ‘I’ll write once I get there.’
‘So your digs, is it other student teachers, did you say?’
‘It’s a room in a house,’ he said – a lie of omission, nothing more. ‘It’s near the college. I’ll write my address in the book in the phone table.’ A more deliberate lie; he had no intention of doing so. ‘I can’t find my old school trousers, by the way.’
‘Our Jack’s got them, love. Why, did you need them?’
‘No. No, of course not.’ His brother must have found the letter. Christopher wondered what the chances of him not having read it were. He would catch him before he left this place for good.
‘And you start in September?’ Margaret said, her implication clear.
‘Yes, but I was hoping to find a job in the run-up. A bar job or something. I’ve paid the rent up front so it makes sense to live there.’ He forced himself to stop talking – the deeper into justification he got, the more lies he would weave, and he had already woven so many.
She nodded. ‘Happen you’ve got your car now anyroad.’
‘A car, yes. Such as it is.’ He bit his lip. Why he had said that was anyone’s guess. With his pub savings and a little help from Phyllis, he had paid for driving lessons and bought a third-hand Escort. Starting it was a challenge, but once he got it going, it ran well enough. The words had come out wrong. They sounded like reproach, but he hadn’t meant that. He just didn’t want anything about his new life to appear flash – that was it. Or threatening. Or better.
‘Your brother’ll be pleased anyway,’ she said, looking about her. ‘He’s got his eye on this room.’
Jack Junior, stealer of Scalextric, robber of bedrooms, of graves. ‘I’m sure he’ll love it. Tell him to watch the steps going down.’
‘Aye.’ His mother allowed herself a brief chuckle. ‘I hadn’t realised how tricky they were, them steps. We should have put in a proper staircase.’ She frowned. ‘We should have made you some blinds for the skylight.’
‘It’s fine, Mum, honestly. It’s fine.’