Cape Ann Mystery ch 1 Digital

Alexis Feridge had arranged her bedroom in her house in Folly Cove so that the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes, across a steep meadow and the end of Folly Point, was the changeable water of Ipswich Bay. Today it is milky blue, with a light canopy of pale gold clouds overlaid with silver. It is late in September and there is a light frost. Alex follows her morning routine: pull on a tracksuit and sneakers, slip out with the dog, and don’t disturb the neighbors. Alex and the dog go pretty much the same route every day, up the hill, past Hannah Button's shack of a house, past Nilsson’s quarry, down the path past an empty A-frame, where the raccoons have made a home, through the low bush blueberries, over the granite scree to the broken down milldam. There they stepped across from stone to stone as the brown water curls over the edge of what is left of the dam itself, then up the trail into a beech wood. The ground is clear of brush and carpeted with deep green mosses. The first fallen beech leaves are honey colored and crisp underfoot. Many-colored mushrooms reminded Alex of early Disney cartoons. She was climbing up the side of the stream towards the old railway embankment when she saw the finger.

The dog had passed it by completely, having been distracted by a chipmunk that had hidden in a nearby dry stone wall. The finger lay on the right hand side of the path, looking like a plastic toy. That’s what she thought it was, one of those joke fingers that a kid would mail order from the back of Mad magazine. She stared at it. It had too much detail to be plastic. The nail was rough and ridged, with dirt underneath it. The end looked like old meat, but cleanly butchered. She turned and ran hard up the path to the road where the railway used to run. As she stood at the top of the embankment fighting to calm her pounding heart with some logic, She realized she had to go down and get it. She couldn’t leave it there. What if a raccoon got to it before the police did? If it was necessary to take it away, how could she touch a thing like that? Something dead. Something that perhaps had been parted from its owner in a way she didn’t like to think about. In her pocket she had a plastic bag designed for picking up dog doo. She told herself it would be no big deal, no worse than picking up one of the mice that the cat brought as a gift - different, though.

Perhaps she had just imagined that it was a human finger. Better check. When she got down to the bottom of the embankment it was still there, lying on a luxuriant patch of sphagnum moss. An ant ran excitedly over the knuckle. The cut had been made below the second joint and the skin was very pale, white with the slightest tinge of pale yellowish green. She slipped her hand into the plastic bag and used it to acquire the finger. It was lighter than she thought it would be. She ran all the way back to the house, with the dog dancing around her, excited by her haste. She picked up the Jeep keys, scooped out some kibble for the dog and managed to shut the door on him, preventing him from following her as she left. He was grinning as the screen door clapped shut: what fun! Tell me all about it when you come back, Alex!

The road that runs round Cape Ann is like a roller coaster. She drove it rather faster than she would have done normally, putting cats, squirrels and a neighbor’s lame cockerel to flight as she went. The day was getting brighter and warmer. To her left, she could see in between the small frame houses. Each house has the sea in its back yard, colored a deeper blue now, with bright sun shimmer. By the time she got to the police station in Gloucester, she had become almost used to the feeling of the finger in the front pocket of her sweatshirt.

It reminded her of a story her father used to tell. He had been a motorcycle cop in her home town in England in the seventies. He was called to the scene of an accident and accompanied the injured driver to the hospital. In the emergency room, the EMTs found that the driver had lost an ear. Could the constable go back to the scene and find it? It was in the gutter a few yards from the crash site. Constable Feridge picked it up. Because it was a cold, rainy day, he tucked it inside his uniform jacket to keep it warm. When he got back to the hospital, a surgeon sewed it back on, and it took well enough. There was something about the finger in her pocket that made Alex Feridge believe that the owner would no longer be able to accept a graft.

She parked outside the police station and court offices and paid the meter. It was a newish brick building with an interesting circular stairway, and a good view of the expanse of Gloucester Harbor. Cops, lawyers and criminals are lucky to enjoy such a panorama while waiting to make a court appearance. For various reasons, she had been in police stations in Britain, Holland, Australia and Sri Lanka as well as here in Massachusetts. They seemed to have some of the same characteristics: a strong smell of human beings, mingled with cigarette smoke and Lysol. The battered paint, concrete and reinforced glass were all familiar. There is always a cop at the desk with an expression that says: go ahead - shock me. This one was built like a grizzly bear. She took out her plastic package. “I found this near the old Imperial Quarry railway this morning. I expect someone will be missing it.”

She reached up to the raised counter (she was barely five foot tall) and laid the white plastic bag down open, to show the finger. He looked down, not touching it, his face blank, as if he were looking for distinguishing marks. He then looked down at her, seeing what appeared to be a young girl, with a very white face and a shock of red hair. “You realize that you should have left it where it was?” “I’m sorry, no I didn’t.” She was quite taken aback. If it had been a whole body she would have left it alone. She felt her effort to be brave and bring it in was being slighted. It only occurred to her now that she been unreasonably confident that the rest of the body wasn’t close by. “I think I was worried that some animal would have eaten it if I had left it in the woods... I was also pretty shaken up. I wasn't thinking straight.” “You’ll have to fill in a incident report.” She was surprised that he had a pat answer to the situation, but reminded herself that policemen are bureaucrats for most of the time. Paperwork had practically driven her father from the Force. By the time she had filled in the form and returned it, he had taken the finger, still in its plastic bag, out the back door to his den.

“What will happen to it?” she asked him on his return. “We’ll take a print, see if it’s anyone we know. Try the local morgues for a match.” “Will you tell me what happens to it?” She felt proprietary about the finger and almost regretted letting it go. She was annoyed by the sergeant’s businesslike manner. It was in high contrast to her current adrenaline shivers. Did people come in with severed fingers every day? “You’ll be hearing from us. If you don’t get a call in the next few days, call this number.” He gave her a card. She smiled at his unresponsive face and said good-bye, wondering what she’d got herself into.

Sheffield and The Yorkshire Ripper

I had been with the travelling circus for a couple of weeks. I was actually helping to dig a latrine, almost over my head in a 6x6 foot pit, when I heard the voice of the director from above. "You swing that pickaxe like a girl." he commented, grinning. I leant on the haft of the pickaxe and frowned up at him from under my bandanna. He added "Do you want to come to the pub for a pint?" I looked down at my dusty dungarees and work boots. "It's not that kind of a place" he reassured me. "No one will notice you." So, I climbed out of the pit and shortly a group of eight of us was crowded into the circus personnel vehicle, the ancient Bedford hearse that was featured in one of the acts.

The pub was in a poor area of Sheffield, which was at the time, a redundant description, since Sheffield was the heart of the Yorkshire rust belt. We disembarked outside a run down looking building with bars over the windows. We stood around while drinks were ordered, and I noticed that the furniture, wooden tables and chairs with steel legs, were bolted to the floor. Just as I was sinking the first delicious taste of bitter after a hot, dry afternoon, the barman came over to us. "You've got a woman there?" he asked the director. The director straight away assumed his most charming manner, and said "Why do you ask?" Somehow I recognised that his voice, with its pristine Oxford accent, would have a most irritating effect on the bar in general. "Women have to go to the Ladies Lounge." the barman declared. "House rules." said a deeper, gruffer voice from the back of the room. "Don't worry. We'll go with you." said the principal performer. It was not until this point that I realized that I was the only woman in the group.

Under the disapproving glare of the customers, mostly out-of-work steel workers, we took our cissy Southern selves to the other side of the pub, carrying our pints with us through the street and round the corner. The Ladies Lounge was a deeper shade of decrepit than the main bar, which had a workmanlike scrubbedness to it. There was a woman with a pram sitting with a friend, both with vodka and lime. A group of older women were at a long table at one side of the bar with bottles of stout or barley wine. But most of the customers were a different kind. Next to me, stood a fleshy girl with very black hair and carelessly applied black eye makeup. She wore a thin red sweater and a black leather mini-skirt over fish-net tights. An older woman sat behind her, in a sequinned knit cardigan and a tight white skirt, again with the black fishnets, this time with holes. Both women had large handbags that they clutched defensively across their bodies.

The director whispered close to my ear "I think I know where the whores are now" and giggled. I was not sure how to react. I was at once angry because I had been thrown out of a place just because I was a woman, which had never happened to me before, and scared and humiliated to be grouped with prostitutes. What I didn't know was the extent of the terror that the serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper had cast over the area in which we were playing. I didn't know that the Leeds football fans had taken to chanting "Ripper 12, police nil", nor that men in bars sometimes sang an adaptation of an old pub song which started "One Yorkshire Ripper, there's only one Yorkshire Ripper." as if he were a folk hero. If I had asked one of the locals if I should be scared, he might have said, as was reported by others, "Don't worry - he's only doing tarts." No wonder I felt vulnerable. The atmosphere of misogyny was tangible. The liberal, feminist, hippie "love peace and understanding" in which I had lived in for more than four years had insulated me from this sexual real-politik.