Doreen Pickles, murdered Manchester, May 1978.

1979:

Joanne Thornton, murdered Morley, May 1979.

Dawn Williams, murdered Bradford, September 1979.

He’s already written the next chapter:

1980:

Laureen Bell, murdered Leeds, December 1980.

My chapter -

The last chapter.

I close the red ring-binder, the red ring-binder they gave me -

Nothing new.

I look up at the wall, the map and the photographs, the letters and the dates, the numbers:

Seven years, thirteen dead women, seven of them mothers, twenty orphaned children.

Reed’s voice echoing around the shed:

‘What do you know?’

My words echoing back:

‘Not much more than I’ve read in the papers.’

Echoing back round my head, this shed, this room -

My room -

The War Room -

My obsessions:

Murder and lies, lies and murder -

See them, smell them, taste them.

The War Room -

My War:

Motherless children, childless mothers.

I am forty years old, Joan thirty-eight.

We have no children, we can’t.

Somewhere back on the Moors, the visibility down to yards, I’d made that deal again:

I catch him, stop him murdering mothers, orphaning children, then you give us one, just one.

transmission two in cleckheaton on Cumberland avenue attractive anita bird on monday the fifth of august nineteen seventy four day clive had hidden every pair of my shoes grabbed my head and plunged it into a bucket of cold water he was a mental man who had been advised to keep away from women for at least five years but he had bought me a colour television and we made up but e was frightened of him and feeling a bit tearful