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furniture.
It’s almost nine o’clock.
I’m the only person here.
I ring the bell and wait.
‘Can I help you?’ asks a receptionist, coming out of a back room.
‘Yes, I should have a reservation. My name is Hunter, Peter Hunter.’
He opens a book on the counter and goes down a list with his finger.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t seem to have anyone here by that name.’
‘Murphy? John Murphy?’
‘Ah, yes. Are you sharing with Mr Murphy?’
‘I hope not. I think maybe the reservation was made through a Superintendent Alderman from the Millgarth Police Station?’
He’s nodding: ‘Yes, yes.’
‘Has Mr Murphy checked in yet?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘Would it be possible to book me into a separate room?’
‘If that’s what you want.’
‘Please.’
‘Can you give me half an hour? We’re a bit short and some of the rooms are being redecorated.’
‘That’s fine. Can you lend me an umbrella?’
‘Bar’s open if you’re wanting a drink.’
‘I need a walk.’
He goes back into the office and returns with a black brolly.
‘Thanks,’ I say.
‘You know where you’re going?’ he asks.
‘Yep,’ I say.
‘Course you do,’ he laughs. ‘You’re a policeman, aren’t you?’
Back into the rain, back into the night, through deserted city streets, under broken Christmas lights swinging in the wind, along Boar Lane, the shopping centres and the vacant offices dark and huge, black canyon walls looming, up Market Street, the queues of empty buses all lit up with no place or passengers to go, through the Kirkgate stalls, past the mountains of rubbish, the rats and birds feeding, back to Millgarth, back underground, and two minutes later I’ve reversed the car up and out of the garage and am away, following the signs out to Headingley.
    *

    Two nights on and everything dead now –
A Leeds & Bradford A to Z in one hand, I come to the place where Headingley Lane becomes Otley Road, to the Kentucky Fried Chicken, to where the bus stops, to Alma Road and Laureen Bell.
I back into a dark wide drive and turn the car around.
I drive back towards the Kentucky Fried Chicken and pull into the car park, positioning the car so I face the main road, then I go inside.
It’s stopped raining but I am still the only customer.
I order some pieces of chicken and chips, a cup of coffee, and wait under the white lights for over ten minutes while the Asian staff prepare the order, staring at another light reflected in another cup of black coffee.
I take the food back out to the car and sit in the night, the window down, picking at the pale and stringy meat, watching the street.
No-one.
Two nights ago it must have been different.
I drink down the cold coffee, wanting another, the food salty.
I get out of the car and walk across the road to the bus stop.
It’s 9:53, the Number 13 coming up Headingley Lane.
It doesn’t stop.
I cross back and turn right onto Alma Road.
There’s police tape and two dark cars waiting.
I walk down the dim tree-lined street, crossing to avoid the cordon, past the officers sitting in the police cars.
At the end of the road is a school and I stop at the gates and stand and stare back down Alma Road –
Alma Road –
An ordinary street in an ordinary suburb where a man took a hammer and a knife to another man’s daughter, to another man’s sister, another man’s fiancée –
An ordinary street in an ordinary suburb where a man took a hammer and a knife to Laureen Bell and shattered her skull and stabbed her fifty-seven times in her abdomen, in her womb, and once in her eye –
And then, in this ordinary street in this ordinary suburb, he stopped –
For now.

it not on your life transmission one found by a milkman at six on friday the sixth of june nineteen seventy five on the prince philip playing fields scott hall leeds with multiple stab wounds to abdomen chest and throat inflicted by a blade four inches in length three quarters of an inch in width one edge sharper than the other severe lacerations to the skull and fractures to the crown inflicted by a hammer or an axe a