My Dad isn’t home from work yet. He must be working overtime again. When he left this morning, dressed in his work boots and British Gas overalls, I heard him tell my Mum that he thinks this will be number thirteen. He always expects the worst, my Dad. I hear the clunk of the letter box snapping open and see the flash of the paper boy’s orange bag as he pedals away. I’m still in my school uniform, the knot of my blue and yellow striped tie hanging down low, the knees of my trousers rubbed shiny from too much rough and tumble before assembly on the polished gymnasium floor. My French homework is only half done, but my story about Xavier going camping in Brittany is going to have to wait. Because, I need to look at that newspaper. To see what the lead story will be, later tonight on Look North. It’s two whole days since they found her. By now surely they must know. I pull the Yorkshire Evening Post from the wire sprung jaws of the letter box and lay it out flat, right there on the hallway carpet. It’s the late edition and the news print still smells fresh. It will dye my hands inky black by the time I’m done reading, as if I’ve been finger printed down at Millgarth police headquarters. I wonder if that will ever happen with him; whether they will catch him, or whether he will go on forever. 

Usually, I turn straight to the sports pages, sucking up every last detail from the reports of the previous weekend’s games. United had drawn one each away at Villa. Derek Parlane had got the goal for us. But, that’s not where I turn first. Not today. My mum has also heard the sound of the letter box  and she comes out of from the kitchen, wiping her hands on the front of her apron, her tortoise-shell framed glasses slightly misty. In the background, a kettle whistles, blowing steam like smoke shooting upwards from a cooling tower, growing louder as the boiling water bubbles away. But, my Mum ignores it, letting the noise fill the house. She comes and stands over me, reading the front page headline over my shoulder. We both absorb it. She doesn’t say anything, but I hear her give an intake of breath, like she’s just pricked her finger.  The headline says simply: “It’s the Ripper”. 

“John says they have so many clues that they’ll know the minute they question him. That’s what John says”. My mum announces this to me and my Dad as we eat dinner later that evening. The Six O’clock News had led with the Ripper news, but had then moved on to the latest about the seven IRA Hunger Strikers in the Maze prison. My Dad insists on having the telly on while we eat. He says it helps him catch up on what’s going on in the world. And so, for as long as I can remember, we have eaten dinner without talking to each other, accompanied instead by the clink of cutlery on our plates, the slurp of tea and the drone of the newsreader over my Mum’s left shoulder. She stabs a potato with her fork, maybe to emphasize her point. By “clues” she means the five pound note, the boot mark and the list of cars spotted in the red light district. At first I hadn’t known what a prostitute was, so I’d asked my Mum about it. She’d told me something about women who go out at night and get in men’s cars. Her answer hadn’t made much sense, so I’d looked the word up in the dictionary, the red Chambers one my mum keeps tucked in her arm chair to help her do crossword puzzles. So, now I understand what a prostitute is, although I’m still not sure why anyone would ever do that. Not with a maniac like him on the streets. Somehow, it makes me sad when I think about it. How desperate each of them must be. “I suppose they need to money” my Dad had said when I’d asked him why they still go out at night with the Ripper on the loose. He is a practical man, my Dad.  

Although I don’t tell my parents, I have each of the murders committed to memory. I can name the victims just like I can name every player in Leeds United’s first team squad. David Harvey through to Terry Connor. Wilma McCann, through to Jaqueline Hill. I can recognize their faces too, each one staring back at me, their photos reproduced in the newspaper. At first I noticed that they printed them in a line, one next to the other. Until recently. Now, there are too many of them and they need to arrange the photos in a grid. Their faces all look grainy. Most of them aren’t smiling, as if they somehow already knew how they would eventually meet their end. Jayne McDonald is smiling though. She was only sixteen when he killed her. They say she was a mistake. The Ripper thought that she was a prostitute, but she wasn’t. She was killed in a children’s playground as she walked home one night. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time I suppose. It makes me scared that it can happen like that; to anyone. I’m fascinated by the places too. They seem so desolate and lonely. On Look North they always send a local reporter and a film crew out to each murder scene after a body has been discovered. They show pictures of uniformed policemen, on their hands and knees searching for clues, morning mist hanging heavy in the air, bleak and cold, with ice on the ground and a makeshift tent erected over the dead body. Seeing the places where these women died makes it all seem more real somehow. Dirty streets, dirty alleyways, waste ground, behind old couches, partially hidden from view. These places are not far away from here. I’ve been to Roundhay Park where they found Irene Richardson. We drive past it every Sunday, on my way to my Auntie Edna’s where we go to play with my cousin, Richard. When we watch Yorkshire play cricket at Headingley, my Dad parks the car not far from Alma Road where they just found Jacqueline Hill. This is my hometown. Maybe not parts of it where we live, where the semi-detacheds are well kept, where privet hedges are cut into boxes and where cars get washed on the driveway on Sunday mornings. But the Ripper is close by. Everyone knows that.   

“John says they haven’t interviewed him yet,” my Mum tries again. “But as soon as they do…” Her voice trails off. She is trying to convince herself I think. She wants to believe that they are close to catching him. 

“Well, John and his boys better get a bloody move on then,” replies my Dad gruffly. He cuts his chicken breast in half, and then half again. My Dad has a funny way of eating. He works his way through all his potatoes first, then all his meat, then all his vegetables. He does it in sequence, never mixing a mouthful and always cutting everything into super small chunks. My Dad says it prevents choking. He sees danger everywhere, my Dad. “He’s up to thirteen already,” he says after he has finished chewing. And now they’re not even sure if he’s a Geordie or not”. 

“Hrumph” says my Mum. She does not want to think about that. My Dad is taking about the tapes. After George Oldfield, the detective in charge of the Ripper investigation, had his heart attack and they brought in Jim Hobson to head up the enquiry. Hobson seems to have decided that maybe the tapes and letters were a hoax after all. But I’m not so sure. “I’m Jack” says the voice on the tapes. It makes me shiver whenever I hear it, each of the sentences delivered so slow and measured, like he’s reading from a script. The hiss of the tape fills the silent pauses, loaded with menace. “But Lord, you are no nearer catching me now than four years ago when I started”. They say from the accent they can tell that he’s not from round here. They think he’s from Sunderland, from Wearside. I’ve never been there and I hope I never will. I’d be too frightened. The police have also been going around the pubs and nightclubs in Leeds, playing the recording over and over to anyone who’ll listen, just in case someone recognizes the voice. They showed a clip of them doing the rounds on Look North: dark suited detectives in ties, bent over a portable tape deck, deadly serious, the tiny wheels spinning slowly. They don’t know where he’ll strike next. It could be tonight. It could be next week., next month, next year. It could be in Leeds, in Bradford, or anywhere in Yorkshire, even across the Pennines in Manchester. He’s killed two there already. He moves around. My Dad says that’s one of the reasons he’s proving so hard to catch. Because he’s unpredictable. My Mum says my Dad would have made a good detective, if he’d passed his eleven plus exam.   

“Seems like he’s too clever for ‘em” says my Dad. The dark, fleshy bags that hang beneath his eyes make him look constantly tired and his tone of voice sounds the same way. He is not an optimistic man, my Dad.    

“John says…..” my Mum says, but my Dad cuts her off. 

“Give it a rest, will you, Dorothy. John this, John that. If John and his copper mates were any bloody good, this maniac would be behind bars by now”.  My mum scowls at him, down her nose, but falls silent. She runs a hand through her hair, and I see grey at the roots.   

Uncle John is a policeman. In fact, he is Assistant Chief Constable, which my mum says means he’s second in command. He goes to the same Methodist Church my parents take me to every Sunday. The sermons there bore me half to death, but my mum lets me take my copy of Shoot! to read so it’s not too bad. Just as long as I don’t make a noise turning the pages. Uncle John’s not really my uncle, in fact he’s not related to me at all. But I wish he was. He’s a big man, used to giving orders, but always with a kind manner about him. Not like the teachers at school, especially Mr. Berry who smacks you on the knuckles with his big wooden board ruler if you don’t follow his orders. I only saw Uncle John in uniform one time. He had one of those peaked caps with the black and white checked band, not a normal copper’s helmet. He also had a bunch of multicolored medal ribbons lining the top of his breast pocket. But, most of the time when we go around to his house, he looks just like anyone else. He wears leather slippers and a big wooly jumper and laughs out loud when the Generation Game is on TV and the contestants are trying to use a potter’s wheel to make a vase. And he knows all about footy too. He takes his son Nigel to watch Leeds United play at Elland Road. My Dad won’t take me to the football. He says there’s too much violence on the terraces these days. He calls the Leeds fans a bunch of yobos and says it’s too dangerous for us to go. He is a cautious man, my Dad. 

The only arrest John has ever had is a cardiac one”. My Dad laughs at himself and gives my mum a toothy grin. He heard this joke from one of his pals, a beat copper who joined the police at the same time as Uncle John. But Uncle John got promoted fast up through the ranks while my Dad’s friend is still a constable walking the streets. My Dad tells this joke every chance he gets and it irritates my Mum. My mum says my Dad is jealous of Uncle John because he is successful. Whenever she says this, my Dad says “Oh will you shut up, Dorothy” in a tone of voice, which makes me think it’s probably true. 

But, tonight, my Mum is not in a mood to pick a fight. “I just hope they catch him soon,” she says quietly with a sigh, and leaves it at that. She hands me a small metal bowl containing tinned peaches with the top of the milk poured over them. I notice the surface of the milk trembles ever so slightly as she passes it over. I know she’s scared. She’s too frightened to even go outside to the rubbish bin with him on the loose. I heard her talking to my Dad about it earlier, when she thought I couldn’t hear them. The bin is only a few paces from the back door, on the square of paving next to the big bed of hydrangeas. But it’s November, and it’s pitch black before my Dad gets home, and we have that small passageway between our garage and Mr. Marshall’s the next door neighbor. It’s not very wide and there’s a set of, almost rotten, fence poles that my Dad stacked down there and then never got around to moving. But, it’s wide enough. Wide enough for someone to hide in, crouching in the darkness. Someone with a hammer, or a knife. My Dad had told my Mum that she shouldn’t be daft, and that the Ripper’s not after people like her. But, she said that things had changed and that it’s not just prostitutes he’s after anymore. This last one was a student. And the one before that. Plus, he’d also killed that office worker in Halifax. My Dad had nothing to say to that. Because, my Mum is right. Anyone could be next. 

“I’ve got guild tonight,” she reminds him and she gets up and starts to clear away the plates while my Dad is still eating. “Sheila’s picking me up”. Every Wednesday my Mum goes out to a Methodist Guild meeting with her friend Sheila Stavely. Sheila’s husband is also called David and he’s a builder. Despite sharing a name, My Dad doesn’t like David much. He calls him a capitalist because he owns his own business. 

“Alright with me,” says my Dad without much enthusiasm, although I know he secretly enjoys it when she goes out. It means he can take his time doing the drying up and can talk to himself about whatever happens to be on his mind. He is a talker my Dad. Just not to other people.

“I said Sheila should pull into the drive and flash her lights and that you’d walk me to the car. You know, with everything that’s happened you can’t be too careful”. She puts special emphasis on the word “everything”. She means the Ripper murders. 

“Heavens above, Dorothy,” says my Dad rolling his eyes. 

But, this is what he is doing to everyone, I think to myself. Nobody feels safe anymore. 

After my Mum goes out to her Methodist guild meeting and my Dad heads to the kitchen to do the drying up and to talk to himself. I lie on the rug in front of the gas fire and read through the newspaper story one more time. It lists the weapons the police say the Ripper used on Jaqueline Hill: a hammer, a knife and a screwdriver. As I read the words, I can feel myself starting to ball up, my muscles tightening. The report tells me that the screwdriver had been used to stab her in the eye. Just the thought of it jolts me, and I stop reading. The gas fire hisses and I’m grateful for its warmth. I look at the curtains which hang in front of the French window that faces out towards our back garden. I know there’s a gap between the curtain and the door. If somehow he had got into the house he could be hiding there, watching and listening. I know that’s silly and could never happen, but I want to go and pull them open just the same, check that nobody is hiding there.

Eventually my Dad comes back into the room, done with his chores. We watch Coronation Street together and when the closing credits start to roll my Dad whistles the theme tune. He is a good whistler my Dad.

“School night. Time for bed,” he announces to me and I immediately begin to negotiate, just as I do every night. “Can I just watch the adverts then go up?” I ask, hoping that he’ll forget once the next program starts. But, on Wednesdays, it is only World in Action, which is boring. It’s about the recession and my Dad immediately starts to mutter under his breath about the Tories and how “that bloody woman”, which is the name he calls Mrs. Thatcher, will ruin this country. So, I wish him goodnight and head up to bed. I have a special routine to make my way upstairs and tonight, more than ever, I follow it, switching on each light in turn so that I never have to move into a room that’s in darkness. In the bathroom, I brush my teeth, feeling nervous as the blackness from outside the frosted window, presses in on me. I hear the sound of the wind, blowing in urgent gusts and I worry suddenly about my Mum, walking under the pale orange glow of the streetlights after her Methodist Guild meeting, back to wherever Sheila parked her Datsun Sunny. Is he hiding somewhere, watching her, with his hammer and his knife and his screwdriver? I try to tell myself that there’s nothing to worry about. The Ripper is not after people like my Mum or Sheila Stavely. He is not likely to be hiding in the streets around Halton Methodist church, with its stained glass windows and signs about Jesus and all that he can do to save you. I convince myself for a moment, but then the next gust of wind rattles the window pane and I am suddenly not so sure. 

Spooked, I run quickly across the landing to my room. But, before I get into bed, I carefully take out the notebook that I keep in my bedside table top drawer. It’s ring bound with a blue cover. I go over to the window and crack the curtains. I look to see if our neighbor’s car is still parked in his driveway which runs alongside ours, separated only by a red brick wall, low enough to jump clean over. For a while now, I have had a theory that maybe our neighbor, Mr. Marshall, is the Yorkshire Ripper. He lives on his own and is a bit weird. He never says much, drives a white Austin Allegro, smokes a pipe and has a beard and glasses. So, I have taken to keeping notes, just in case the police ever need it. Each night before I go to bed I do the same thing. I go to my window, look outside and see if his car is there or not. This tells me whether he is in or out and, over time, has allowed me to compare his movements to any critical dates when there was a murder. I look at the clock on my bedside table and carefully note down my observations, along with the date and time. I flip back through my notebook to the notes I’d made two nights ago. The night Jacqueline Hill was killed. He was out that night, just as he was when number eleven, Barbara Leach, was killed in Bradford. I feel a little skip of excitement, as if I might be onto something.  A few days ago, I had even asked my Mum what she thought about it. But, she had just laughed, showing off all her silver dentures. “No, love,” she’d told me. “Not Mr. Marshall. He’s a lovely man”. But later, I had seen her with her hands in a sink full of washing up suds, scrubbing away at the pots and pans, looking out of the kitchen window at Mr. Marshall standing on his back step quietly sucking on his pipe, the smoke coming out in huffs like dragon breaths in the cold evening air. She had paused for a moment and watched him, and I had seen how she had folded her bottom lip under her top one, lost for a moment, thinking perhaps about what I had said. 

I put away my notebook, climb into bed then tug the covers up as high as they will go. I draw my legs up towards my chin and lie still, feeling the patch of bedclothes underneath me grow steadily warmer. After a few minutes I hear the sound of my Dad climbing the stairs, the familiar creak of the third step from the top. He opens the door and enters the room, sitting on the edge of my bed, just as he’s done every night for as long as I can remember. For all his gruffness and his bad temper, I have always been certain that he loves me and he leans over and gently ruffles my hair.  

“You okay?” he asks me quietly. Outside wind gusts again and there is now also the sound of raindrops,  spattering against the window pane. “Wild night out there,” he says. “But you’re all tucked up, warm and cozy in here”. He pulls the bed clothes up and tucks them around me so that I am completely cocooned. 

“You scared by the news today?” he asks me, kneeling down beside the bed and lying his head next to mine. I can’t see his face properly he is so close, just the familiar smell of the Vitalis hair tonic he uses every day. 

“Nuh-huh” I tell him, shaking my head, although he probably knows I’m lying. Because I am scared. I’m scared of the Yorkshire Ripper with his hammer and his knife and his screw driver. I am worried that he’s already killed thirteen and that he’s still on the loose; right here in my town. I am scared that it’s not just prostitutes anymore, and that anyone could be next. I am scared that my mum is not home yet. But none of this I tell him, because he is not a man who is good at talking about feelings, my Dad. 

“Nothing to worry about,” he says. “Uncle John says they’ll catch him soon. They’ve got a lot of clues to go on, and every time he kills someone he leaves some more. They’ll get him soon”. 

Now it’s his turn to lie, I think to myself. “Get some sleep,” he says, and I feel the bristles on his chin as he kisses me on the forehead, before he stands back up and switches off my bedside light. 

He moves over to the door and I watch him slide out of the room, like smoke escaping up a chimney. He leaves my door ajar and I hear the creak of the third step from the top as he makes his way back downstairs. But when he reaches the hallway, he does something different. On every other night, he would flip out the landing and hall light switches, engulfing my room in total darkness. But not tonight. Tonight, he leaves the light on for me. Because he knows it will stop me being scared. He thinks about things like that, my Dad.