I'd done some digging about Duncan Roberts and discovered that he'd slashed his own throat with a Stanley knife and bled to death. The address was in Brixton, at the far end of the Victoria Line, which was convenient. Every town should have an underground system. I ticked off the stations, memorised the poem of the month and watched the people, grateful that this wasn't my patch. I'd have arrested every one of them. As I came out of the station a gang of seriously cool youths swept by on rollerblades, swerving in and out of the parked cars, and a consumptive skinhead jerked the lead of what looked like a pit bull terrier as I passed him. Living in a city has certain attractions, even for a small-town boy like me, but I was damned if I could remember any of them as I strolled by the derelict tenements and corner shops with security grilles over the windows. Flyposters and take away trays were a major industry round here. A wino, sitting on some steps with a rubbish bag for a back rest, watched me go by, wondering if he could tap a white man for a drink, deciding against it.
I saw the street I wanted and crossed the road.
The house could have been the one in Chapeltown. The door was open and the soulless, thump of a drum machine was coming from deep within. I hammered on the door in competition with it and smelled cooking. Spicy cooking. My stomach gurgled and sent a memo to my brain. It said:
"FEED ME!" I knocked again, but harder.
A giant West Indian ambled out of the gloom, a look of bewilderment on his face. He was grey-haired, wearing jeans and a vest the size of a marquee, and carrying a soup ladle. I decided to do it the proper way.
"Detective Inspector Priest," I said, holding my ID out. "Are you the proprietor?"
"What you want?" he asked, his face immobile.
"A word. Is this your place?"
"I am the proprietor," he replied, and his expression developed a hint of pride. I'd given him a new title.
"You do bed and breakfast for DSS clients," I said.
"Full," he told me. "No room."
I know I dress casual, but I'd never thought it was that casual. "I don't want a room," I told him. "You had a man called Duncan Roberts staying here until about two months ago?"
"No," he answered.
"You did."
"No."
"He committed suicide."
"Nobody of that name stay here."
I repeated the address to him and he agreed this was the place. "Well, he lived here," I insisted.
"No."
"He killed himself. Bled to death."
"Nobody do that here."
"I want to see his room."
"He not live here."
"What happened to his belongings?"
"He not live here."
He was stubborn, unhelpful and pretending to be thick. I know the type; I'm from Yorkshire. I started again at the beginning, but it was a waste of breath. I thanked him for his time and headed back towards the station. The yob with the dog was coming the other way. He nodded a hello, I said: "Ow do."
Gilbert greeted me with: "Ah! Just the man," when I called in his office for my morning cup pa and to discuss tactics. "What the devil did you volunteer us for at the SCOGs meeting?" He rummaged through his papers for the minutes of the meeting I' dattended.
"Er, nothing," I replied.
"It says here… where is it? Oh, here we are, in Any Other Business:
Examination of all outstanding murder cases going back thirty years, with Mr. Priest typed in the margin. I know you don't like going to the meetings, Charlie, but if you think this'll get you out of them you're mistaken."
I said: "Forget it, Gilbert. We were just discussing DNA testing in old cases, and I suggested it could be taken further."
"It looks as if you volunteered to do it."
"Well, I'll un-volunteer."
"Right. How did you go on yesterday?"
He wasn't too pleased when he learned that I'd be spending a large proportion of my time working for the SFO, but relaxed when I told him that they were paying my expenses.
"So where are you starting?" he asked.
"With the files. See what's on them that I never knew about. I was a humble sergeant at the time, and not on the case."
I drank my tea and went back downstairs to review the troops. Nigel was due in court, Jeff and Maggie had appointments with various people on the robbers' circuit and Dave was hoping to talk to someone on the Sylvan Fields estate who had ambitions of becoming a paid informer.
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?"
"Yes."
"In that case, she'd have to lean over if she were right-handed, which she didn't. It would make more sense if she were left-handed."
"We'll make a detective of you yet, Mr. Carter," I said. "I'd come to that conclusion myself. Now what about her description? Do you think you can give me one?"
"Wasn't it on the file?"
"No, I didn't find it."
"Well, I told the detective who interviewed me. It's a bit late, if you don't mind me saying so. It's lost its impact."
"We appreciate that she'll be much older now," I said.
"It's not just that. Punk was just starting, and now every other young person you meet has purple hair, but up to then I'd only seen it on television."
I was up six times through the night. My neck itched, my wrists itched and my ankles itched. Big lumps came up in all these places. Now I knew why Carter kept his shirt tightly buttoned; he wasn't as dumb as I'd thought. I searched the bathroom cabinet for soothing gels but all I could find was some body lotion pour hommes that Nigel had told me contained pheromones and drove women wild. It didn't work, and wasn't any better on midge bites. I showered, dressed, wrecked the spider's web on the car door with great relish and went to work.
Sparky wanted to know all about it, and was as chuffed as a cock robin when I told him about the left-handed girl with purple hair.
"That's what we said," he reminded me. "When we found the chalk. How tall did he say she was?"
"About five feet, five-two."
"Bloody 'ell! We ought to be detectives."
"We are detectives."
"So Carter saw this punk bird mark the house and Duncan told his brother he was going out with someone with purple hair? It's got to be the same one."
"I'd have thought so. When did punk start?" I asked him.
"Umm, about 1980?" he suggested. "Bit before, maybe."
"Mid-seventies, according to the library. Their gazetteer says it "exploded" in 1976 and that's the year the Sex Pistols released "Anarchy in the UK". Never Mind the Bollocks was in '77. There can't have been too many of them around in '75 'specially in the provinces.
Maybe she was before her time, like me. How do you fancy a day on the telephone?"
"Er, I don't," he replied glumly, anticipating what I had in mind.
"But David," I began, 'it's essential work, which may lead to the apprehension of a vicious criminal. It's not just the glamorous jobs, such as mine, that bring results. They also serve who sit in the office all day drinking vast quantities of machine coffee."
"Gimme t'list," he said, reaching for it.
If you go into any high street shop and buy something, a vacuum cleaner for example, the pimply assistant manager who takes your order will punch your name and post code into his terminal and say: "Is that Mr.
Windsor of Buckingham Palace Road?" and you say it is and your full name and address is printed on the invoice. Our system is nearly as good. If you have ever bought anything on credit, taken out a driving licence, voted in an election or owned a telephone, we have you on record. Or maybe you've joined a motoring organisation, a book club or the Mormons. Most of these sell each other volumes of names and addresses, and we're on the circulation list. When we get really desperate we consult Somerset House. If you've been born, married or died they'll know all about it. I gave Dave the three pages of names and addresses that Jeremy had sent me from the university.
"These are Duncan Roberts's classmates," I told him, 'with their parents' addresses. It might be easier to see if mum and dad still live in the same place and ask them. Otherwise…" '… otherwise, consult the oracle," Dave finished for me.
"That's it, sunshine. And these…" I passed him another sheet, '… are names I extracted from the file yesterday. The three with the asterisks are the boyfriends of the women who died in the fire. Let's not lose sight of the fact that one of them might have started it. And then there are the names on the report that Crosby gave us. It wouldn't hurt to have a word with that lot.
I'll sort them out. If all else fails with the students, there's a department at the university called the alumni relations' office. Old boys' club to you. They might be able to help." His hangdog expression gave me a pain in the left ventricle that I couldn't ignore.
I said: "You could, of course, give Annette a crash course in the system and leave her to it." Annette Brown was a DC who'd been with us for a fortnight and had already fallen under Nigel's protective arm.
"I was going to ask you," he replied, 'but it'll upset Goldenballs."
"He'll recover. Anything else?"
"No. Where will you be if I need you?"
"Chemist's, to start with."
"Chemist's? What for?"
"Something for bloody midge bites."
It cost four quid and didn't work, and now I smelt like an apothecary's pinny. I came out of the toilets and went back upstairs to my office.
Dave was busy on the phone, pencil poised over a half-filled page. I reread the list of Fox's shady dealings that Crosby had given us and extracted any relevant names. If they were really on Fox's payroll we'd need a jemmy to prise it from them, but it was worth a try. They'd be relaxed, not expecting a call from us. When they say they'll only talk in front of a solicitor you know you've struck paydirt.
Dave knocked and came in. He sniffed and said: "Cor, have you been using fly spray? I've found a couple of locals, if you want to be getting on with it."
"Who are they?" I asked, leaning back.
"Terence John Alderdice read chemistry at Leeds Uni with Duncan Roberts. He lives in Leeds and will be home after about six, according to his wife. And, wait for it, Watson Pretty, who was the ex-boyfriend of Daphne Turnbull, Jasmine's mother, now lives in Huddersfield, right on our doorstep. He's out on licence after serving five years for the manslaughter of one of his subsequent girlfriends. They had a quarrel and she fell down the cellar steps and broke her neck. Oh, and she had a ten-year-old daughter."
"He sounds a right charmer," I said. "What do they see in them?"
Dave shrugged his shoulders. "Want me to see Alderdice tonight?" he asked, but my phone rang before I could answer.
I listened, raising a finger to Dave to signify that this was interesting. "Grab your coat," I told him as I put the phone down and unhooked mine from behind the door.
"What is it?" he shouted after me as we ran down the stairs.
"Halifax Central have just arrested someone for using Joe McLelland's Visa card in Tesco. He'll be in their cells by the time we get there."
If my geometry was any good he wasn't the one in the video. He had the build, but was only about five feet six. They brought him from the cell to an interview room and sat him down with his packet of fags before him. He was about twenty, wearing torn jeans and a T-shirt from the Pigeon Pie English Pub on Tenerife. They served Tetley's bitter and Yorkshire puddings and I could hardly wait to go.
"So where did you get the card?" Sparky demanded. I've told him before about being too circumspect.
"I found it."
"Where?"
"In t'car park."
"Which car park?"
"Tesco's."
"When did you find it?"
"Just then."
"Before you went shopping?"
"Yeah."
"What were you doing in the car park?"
"Goin' shoppin'! What do you think I were doin'?"
"You had no money on you."
"I'd left me wallet at 'ome. I didn't realise until I was in t'shop. I was goin' to 'and t'card in, but I'd filled me trolley by then and I din't know what to do, so I used t'card." He whined his well-rehearsed story as if it were the most self-evident explanation in the world.
"You fell to temptation," I said.
He swivelled to face me and jumped on my words as if they were a life raft. "That's it! I fell to temptation!"
"Does your weekly shop normally run to four bottles of Glenfiddich?"
Dave wondered.
"We'saving a party," he replied, lamely.
"And six hundred cigs?"
"I'm a 'cavy smoker."
"And two packs of fillet steak?"
"You've gotta eat."
Dave was silent for a few seconds, then he asked him if he had form. He had.
"What for?" Dave asked.
"Thieving."
"Have you done time?"
"Yeah."
"How was it?"
"Orrible. I'atedit."
"You could go back in for this."
"It was a mistake! "Onest! I din't mean to use it, it just 'appened. Things just 'appen to me. Like 'e said, I was tempted."
I clunked my chair back on all four legs. "You made a good job of Mr.
McLelland's signature," I said.
"I just copied it."
"Whoever stole this card from Joe McLelland left him tied in his chair, and his wife, for ten hours," I told him. "They are both elderly. It's a miracle they were found. This was nearly a murder case. Now I'm prepared to believe that it wasn't you who tied them up. I'm prepared to believe that someone sold you the card. That's what I think, so if I'm right you'd better tell me a name, or we'll just have to assume you took it off them yourself. What do you say?"
His elbows were on the table, his fingers interlocked and both thumb-nails between his teeth. He chewed away for nearly a minute, then looked straight at me and said: "I found it. If I'm lying may my little lad be dead when I go 'ome."
It's always someone else they want dead. "He might be," I replied. "Of old age."
I pulled into the nick car park and suggested we have a fairly early night. Dave said: "I could do another window frame round at the mother-in-law's, or I could cut the grass."
"You're spoilt for choices," I commented.
"Or…" he began,"… or I could nip into Leeds after tea and talk to Mr. Alderdice, former student at Leeds University and erstwhile friend of Duncan Roberts."
"Uh-uh," I said, shaking my head.
"Why not?"
"Because I don't want your Shirley blaming me for you never being there."
"I can handle her. I'd like to find out about this punk bird, fast as possIt's niggling me."
"I know what you mean," I replied. "Fair enough, you see Alderdice and I'll have a word with Mr. Pretty. That'll be two names fewer to investigate. Do you want to meet in a pub afterwards and compare notes?"
"Er, no, if you don't mind. I know I said I could handle her, but there are limits."
When he'd driven away I locked the car and walked into the town centre and had a teatime special in the Chinese restaurant. I enjoyed it, all by myself, with no one to entertain or worry about. Maybe this was my natural state, I thought.
But I didn't really believe it. Back in the car I rang Jacquie and told her I was on my way to a meeting. We could grab a quick drink later, if she wanted. I moaned about my midge bites and she said:
"Lavender oil."
"Lavender oil," I repeated. "What will that do?"
"It's aroma therapy Lavender oil will cool you down and de-stress you, then you need aloe vera to soothe the damaged tissue. I'll show you, when you come round."
"Ooh! I can hardly wait," I said.
Watson Pretty lived on the edge of Huddersfield town centre, not far from where I did my probationary training. Not much had changed. The main difference was that now both sides of every street were lined with cars; some worth much more than the houses they stood outside, some rusting wrecks standing on bricks, awaiting the invention of the wheel.
The doctor's surgery was in the same place, but with wire mesh over the windows, and the greengrocer's was now a mini-market. I smiled at the memories and checked the street names.
He invited me in, speaking very softly, and told me to sit down. He was wearing pantaloons, a T-shirt with a meaningless message emblazoned across it and modest dreadlocks. He must have been fifty, but was refusing to grow up. The room was overfurnished with stuffed cushions and frills, and primitive paintings of Caribbean scenes on the walls.
At a guess, it had belonged to his mother. He was out on licence, so I knew he'd be no trouble. One word out of place and he could be back inside to serve the rest of his sentence. Well, that's what we tell them.
"I'm looking for a girl," I began. "A white girl with purple hair."
"I know no such girl," he replied.
"How about back in 1975? Did you know her then?"
"No, I not know her."
"You had a girlfriend called Daphne Turnbull."
"Yes."
"She died in a fire."
"Yes."
"And you didn't know a girl with purple hair?"
"Who is she, this girl?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out. You remember the fire?"
"I hear about the fire, but I live in Halifax at the time."
He was a founder member of the Campaign for Simplified English. The first rule is that you only speak in the present tense. "With Daphne?"
I asked.
"We live together for a while, but she leave me."
"Why did she leave you?"
He shrugged and half-smiled. "Women?"
"Was her daughter, Jasmine, yours?"
"No."
I'd read the interviews with him and knew he had a good alibi, but he could have hired someone to start the blaze. At the time he'd been my definite number-one suspect, although I'd never met him. Now I wanted to eliminate him, but I still wasn't sure. I rarely have hunches and don't trust my feelings about people. Evidence is what counts. I quizzed him about his relationship with Daphne and kept returning to the girl with purple hair, but he was adamant that he didn't know her.
Talking about the fire didn't disturb him at all. It was just history to him.
I thanked him for his help and left. I'd parked at the top of his street and as I neared the car a woman came round the corner. There are some women you see and you think: Corf She's beautiful; and there are others who deprive you of even that simple ability. You gawp, slack-jawed, and realise you are flat lining but don't care, because this would be as good a time and place as any to drop down dead. Her hair shone like spun anthracite and she wore a white dress with buttons down the front. It was short, above her knees, and the seamstress had been very economical with the buttons. She turned to wait and a little girl with braided hair and a matching dress followed her round the corner, gravely avoiding the cracks between the flagstones.
I mumbled something original and amusing, like: "Lovely morning," and was rewarded with a smile that kicked my cardiac system back into action. In the car I gazed at the digital clock and wondered if there was any hope for me. It was seven forty-three in the evening. I sat for a few seconds, deciding whether to go through the town centre or do a detour, and started the engine. Neither. I did a left down the street parallel to the one Pretty lived in and a left and another left at the bottom of the hill. I pulled across the road and parked.
The woman and her little girl were now coming down towards me. Mum was tiring of the slow progress so she took her daughter's hand and led her for a while. They passed a few gateways then turned into one and mounted the steps. She knocked, the door opened almost immediately and mother and daughter disappeared inside. I stared at the door for a couple of minutes, long enough for a welcoming kiss and for her to settle in the easy chair I'd just left, and pointed the car homewards.
Oh dear, I thought. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
What would I do without Jacquie to come back to? She smiled and kissed me in a mirror-image of the scene I'd imagined forty minutes earlier.
We had coffee and shop-bought cake and talked about our days. One of her assistants was causing trouble and the rents in the mall were going up. I rambled meaninglessly about what went off behind closed doors in this wicked world we lived in.
"You're stressed out," she told me.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm not very good company."
"How are the midge bites?"
"Agonising." I smiled as I said it.
She went away for a while and returned carrying a box filled with coloured bottles, like a paintbox. She placed it on the coffee table alongside me and drew a chair up directly in front of mine. "Prince Charles swears by lavender oil," she said.
"Right," I replied. "Right." If it was good enough for him it was good enough for Charlie Priest.
She lit three small porcelain burners about the room and turned the lights low. I relaxed. I had a feeling I was in for a treat. Jacquie sat facing me and took my hand. "First the lavender, to absorb all your stresses," she whispered. I watched her long fingers caress my wrists, her scarlet nails skimming my skin but not touching it. She did my fingers, one by one, and I discovered things about myself that I'd never imagined.
"And now the aloe vera," she said.
I breathed deeply and closed my eyes, and wished this could go on forever. She removed my shoes and socks and stroked my feet, fingertips and exotic oils mingling together so I couldn't tell touch from smell, pleasure from torture, arousal from relaxation. I stopped trying.
"This is where the problem is," Jacquie told me. She was massaging my neck now, harder than before, her thumbs probing muscle, searching for knots. "You're tight here." I let my head loll up and down in agreement. It could have been the most magical evening of my life, but it wasn't. She cured the itching and the stress; all I had now was confusion and frustration.
It was the hottest night of the year, which didn't help. I lay on my bed with just a sheet over me and the window open. When the blackbird on the roof started singing at about three thirty I got up and read a book. I don't mind him singing, but he will insist on tapping time with his foot, and he has no sense of rhythm. At seven I went to work.
Terence John Alderdice, Dave told me, remembered Duncan Roberts but was mystified about the girl. "He reckoned Duncan was. a right plonker,"
Dave said. "He was quite friendly with him the first year. They became mates on day one and were in the same tutorial group, whatever that means, then drifted apart as they found more kindred spirits, as you do. He said Duncan developed some repulsive habits. They were in a hall of residence, and Duncan took great pleasure in never washing his plate or coffee mug. He just used them over and over again."
"Sounds delightful," I said.
"In the second year," he continued, "Alderdice said Duncan just gave up studying. He lost interest and moved into a squat with a bunch of other dead-beats. Alderdice didn't see much of him again and never saw him with a girl and doesn't remember ever seeing one with purple hair.
So there. How did you go on?"
"Similar. Waste of time. Except that the cycle is repeating itself. I saw Pretty's girlfriend come to visit, just as I left. Black girl, early twenties, with a little daughter, 'bout five."
Dave said: "Number three lining up for the chop. What can we do about it?"
"Not much. I'll have a word with his probation officer, see if he's any suggestions. She was gorgeous."
"The little girl?"
"No, turnip brain, the mother. The little girl was… little."