Ploughing Potter’s Field

RATTIGAN: What’s he talking about? Dickhead!

MOIRA: He wants to know … we all want to know, how a shabby dosser like you ended up with all that cash in your coat pocket.

RATTIGAN: Seems fair.

SHOT: Well?

RATTIGAN: Someone gave it me.

SHOT: Helen Lewis? That what you’re saying, is it, Frank? She give it you, did she? Eventually?

RATTIGAN (laughing): She gave me nothing. But I really gave it to that bitch, didn’t I? Didn’t I, eh? Really gave it to her.

MOIRA: What do you know about her, Frank?

RATTIGAN: I know how her insides work. How they used to.

MOIRA: Why her?

RATTIGAN: Feed me.

MOIRA: Why her!

RATTIGAN (suddenly animated): She was there, right. I’d had a look at her gaff, thought I might pile in there and squat it out for a week or so. Looked like the place was unoccupied. Next I know, the fuckin’ front door’s opening, and the bitch just calmly walks in. No alternative, really. Just went to work on her.

MOIRA: She was an air hostess. Did you know that?

RATTIGAN (angrily): You think I fucking care! You think I give a shit about the stupid tart?

SHOT: What we’re saying, Frank, is that Helen Lewis had a good job. Few bob in the bank. Nice house. You break in, and next we know she’s dead, and you’re found with nearly a grand in cash.

WILLIAMS: You tortured her, didn’t you? Tortured the poor girl so’s she’d tell you where her money was, right? What happened first, Frank? Good-looking girl, she was. Fucked her, did you? Fancied a quickie before you started hunting for the cash?

MOIRA: How long were you in the house?

RATTIGAN: Three days.

MOIRA: During which time you killed her, right?

RATTIGAN: She killed me years ago.

MOIRA: You knew her, then, did you, from years ago? You sought her out?

RATTIGAN: Christ’s sake! You arseholes are so stupid. You don’t get it, do you? I didn’t have to find the bitch. She’s always been around. Smiling at me. Know what I’m saying? (Pause) I mean, it’s no good, is it, eh? To smile like that, and then … do nothing.

SHOT: I don’t know, Frank. Maybe you can tell us what you mean. I’m confused. What makes a smile useless? I don’t have a problem with a pretty woman smiling.

RATTIGAN: It was the first thing that went, you know, her fucking smile. (Laughs) They say, don’t they, ‘Just wipe that smile off your face’? I did the next best thing, didn’t I? Couldn’t be doing with all those screams. Found them, have you, the lips?

SHOT: Not really our job, Frank. We’re looking for something else. The reason. Your motive. You going to tell us?

RATTIGAN (laughs again): What, and end all the fun? Just when we’re all getting on so fucking famously? But from where I am, you clever boys seem to have it all worked out, don’t you? The money, isn’t it? Bit of rape, then I kill her for the cash. Sounds very plausible to me. Highly likely. Hurrah for the police! Trebles all round!

Moira suspends interview.

8 (#ulink_be1c5deb-248c-5629-adcc-bdfd72e69742)

The tape rolled on, turning slowly in the black machine on the cigarette-burnt table. Outside, suburban birds tried their best to divorce me from the tinny voices, a natural melody of harmless song inadequately competing with Rattigan’s sickening confession. But there was no comfort to be had from their happy twittering. Birds go on, regardless. Birds sing before every execution.

I began to see Allen’s purpose in sending me there a little more clearly. I had the benefit of a better insight, now. Rattigan had told me everything, and it chilled me to the bone. A significant part of me wanted nothing more to do with the Beast of East 16, leave him and his mind and motives be – as if I’d opened an abandoned manhole cover and found it clogged with all the shit from humanity.

However, another equally significant part urged me on, directed me down into the stinking mess of the man with dark, whispered promises of what lay waiting there. Truth was, the more I knew about the man the less it all made sense; the more I felt there was to discover. About him. And perhaps myself into the bargain.

I hated myself, but was honest enough to admit I was hooked. Addicted – as surely as I’d been to the booze.

Here’s a condensed version of what I heard that morning, taken from my own notes written at the time.

There are seven interviews in all, taken over a period of three days after Rattigan’s arrest. As each is terminated and another begins, new pieces fall into the puzzle as the investigation gathers momentum. A total of six officers and three psychiatrists take part at various times, each determined to make some sense of Helen Lewis’s apparently needless death.

And always the repeated question: ‘Why?’

And Rattigan’s ‘answer’: “Cause she was there. Pretty as a picture.’

… Police at Bethnal Green (headed by DCI Moira) quickly establish the previous movements of Frank Rattigan prior to the attack. An address found on the suspect’s clothes links him to Welland Farm, Suffolk, where further enquiries reveal he was working (cash in hand) as a fruit-picker during the week before the murder.

Two other pickers are tracked down and interviewed, when, in exchange for anonymity from the DHSS, they not only confirm Rattigan’s whereabouts, but go on to add that whilst picking plums, a green Jaguar XJS drew into the farmyard. The driver seemed anxious to speak to Rattigan in particular. The farmer, a Mr Bob Jenkins, verifies the incident, but cannot say whether the Jaguar’s driver sought out Rattigan specifically. It was Friday the 9th September, 1988.

In response to this, Rattigan would only say that the driver was lost and needed directions. He had no idea who the man was, and only sought to offer what help he could in the circumstances. However, both pickers were under the impression that the driver knew Rattigan personally. The suspect and the driver spent several minutes in conversation among the farm’s outbuildings, before the driver left the scene.