Toto Among the Murderers

by Sally J Morgan

Genres: Women's Fiction; Historical Fiction

Synopsis

'Vividly portrays the human face of young women on the margins of society, women who defy being statistics, who have their own stories and loves to tell' Sophie Ward

LONGLISTED FOR THE OCKHAM AWARDS

It is 1973 and Jude - known to her friends as Toto - has just graduated from art school and moves into a house in a run-down part of Leeds. Jude is a chaotic wild child who flirts with the wrong kind of people, drinks too much and gets stoned too often. Never happy to stay in one place for very long, her restlessness takes her on hitchhiking jaunts up and down the country. Her best friend, Nel, is the only steady influence Jude has but Nel's life isn't as perfect as it seems.

Reports of attacks on women punctuate the news and Jude takes off again, suffocated by an affair she has been having with a married woman. But what she doesn't realise is that the violence is moving ever closer to home: there is Janice across the road who lives in fear of being beaten up again by her pimp and Nel, whose perfect life is coming undone at her boyfriend's hands. At the same time infamous murderers, Fred and Rosemary West, are stalking the country, on the lookout for girls like Jude.

Release date: October 29, 2020

Publisher: John Murray Press

Print pages: 352

Sample

Toto

Someone has written fuck off in dark red chalk across the front door. The powdery, blood-coloured residue stains my hand as I push the door open, and I’m hit by the smell of dank carpets. Daylight falls onto a spider darting out from beneath the wallpaper, scuttling off to hide in a gap in the skirting board. Fly carcases pick up in the breeze from the open door and whirl along the passage, and, as the wind whips my hair, I linger on the step, looking up and down the rubbish-strewn street. This place has the feel of danger. Us three girls will have to be on our mettle to live here, so it’s probably a good thing that Hank will be staying off and on. He’s hidden in his scratched, blue transit van at the moment, but I hope he’ll make a display of carrying stuff into the house. It might make people think twice before they mess with us.

The other two are uncharacteristically quiet as they join me. Each of us is calculating what we think about our new neighbourhood in central Leeds.

‘Jude Totton, you’re a liar,’ Nel whispers. ‘You said this was Potternewtown.’

‘That’s what the landlady told us.’

She narrows her eyes at me. ‘This is fucking Chapeltown.’

Jo and I pretend not to have heard and start passing boxes in through the doorway of the terraced house while a gaggle of children watch. The chalked swearwords intrigue me every time I walk past them. In the distance a police siren wails as a man in a torn jacket yells through a letterbox a few doors away. I am distracted by the look of his sleeve, which is ingrained with dirt. Abuse pours out of his mouth. ‘I’m going to kill you. Sodding bitch. Let me in.’

As the gang of grimy kids circle our possessions, a little Jamaican girl in clean school clothes stops to stare at us. Her eyes meet mine as the door behind her opens and a woman in a nurse’s uniform pulls her inside. I’m suddenly self-conscious about my unkempt hippy-looking hair and paint-spattered clothes. There’s music in that house. Someone plays a piano laboriously while a wavering, female voice sings the chorus of a Tamla Motown love song. This is the nineteen seventies. Who sings like that these days? Sweet voice, though: mournful and out of place here. The door slams shut, leaving smells of unfamiliar spices and boiled meat hanging in the air.

When all the boxes and bags are unloaded, Hank finally unfolds his body out of the van and glares at the kids. They stop. He’s a craggy collection of angles and stubble wearing an army-surplus greatcoat. Pulling himself up to his full height, he looms over them and snarls, ‘Beat it, you manky little bastards.’ His gnarled knees show through the worn white threads of his jeans, and the laces of his steel capped boots hang untied. ‘What’re you waiting for?’

I love his pantomime fierceness, but the kids think it’s real.

Jo grew up on a tough council estate in Doncaster. ‘Don’t talk to the buggers,’ she says, pushes her dyed-black hair off her face and hands him a plastic bag to carry. ‘It’ll only encourage them.’

She stares them down until, synchronised like a swarm, they disperse with whoops and curses towards the overgrown park at the end of the street. Running a hand over her hip to adjust her miniskirt she returns to moving things into the house. ‘Bloody kids, you’ve got to watch those thieving little sods.’

At the back doors of Hank’s van, I’m worrying whether they’ve nicked anything of mine. A scab on my cheekbone twinges as I search for the only things I own, my rucksack and sleeping bag.

‘Move yourself a wee bit.’ The laundered scent of Nel’s cheesecloth blouse follows her as she reaches around me for her belongings. She pauses to re-fix the tortoiseshell combs controlling her straw-coloured hair, and notices that I’m fingering the little cut I got yesterday. ‘Don’t keep touching it.’ Her Scottish accent seems stronger as her voice gets louder. ‘Do you want it to heal or not?’

‘Is it bleeding?’

‘Aye. You’ll need antiseptic on it.’ She drags a box of books and paints from the van. Cradling it in her arms, her gaze returns to the threat written on our door, and she seems hesitant to go past it. ‘Where am I headed with this? I suppose you two have already chosen the good rooms? I don’t want this one looking onto the pavement. That’s all I’m saying.’

Jo interjects in a no-nonsense voice, ‘Jude’s having that. I’m by the bathroom, and you’ve got the nice airy one, upstairs at the front.’

Nel blurts out, ‘You knew this was Chapeltown, didn’t you?’

‘Sorry flower.’ Jo busies herself with her belongings. ‘We didn’t want you freaking out on us.’

‘This area has just about the worst reputation in Leeds.’ Nel looks about her as though she can’t believe we’ve done this. ‘It’s full of smackheads and prostitutes and … and muggers and whatever! People get murdered here.’

I get a thrill at her words. I like danger. I like to be frightened. Yes, this is the roughest part of Leeds, if not the whole of Yorkshire. It’s dodgy as fuck and supposed to be full of gangs that prey on the immigrants who can’t afford to live anywhere else. People get attacked all the time.

‘Don’t worry. It’s not going to be a problem.’ I swivel my rucksack up onto my shoulder. ‘We’ll be safe in the house and it’s only a two-minute walk to the bus stop. No time for anything to happen between here and there. Stop stressing. You’re always bloody worrying when there’s no need.’

She glares at me, ‘Well you … by the way … you … look like fucking Lady Macbeth with that red stuff all over your hands.’

‘Was Lady Macbeth ginger?’ I laugh, and she can’t stop herself from grinning back.

She softens. ‘Your hair is auburn, sweetheart. Dark auburn.’

I need a fag, but as I reach into my pocket the rucksack slumps forward awkwardly. Dumping it, I dig out a hand-rolled cigarette that tastes of tar and shredded apple. As the smoke blows away in the wind, Nel gives it a covetous glance and I take it from my mouth to place it between her lips.

‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘You are perfect. Even if you are a scheming bloody trickster who’s brought me to live in the deep dark woods against my better judgement.’

She shifts the box higher in her arms with the help of her knee. ‘You stay out here whilst I take this in,’ she says, ‘best not to leave the van unguarded … and don’t catch your hair on fire, lovely, it’s blowing into your rollie.’

I look at my hands. Nel’s right, they do look like they’re covered in blood and there are streaks of it on my coat. I rub the chalked swearword off our door as a woman stares from behind red curtains in the house across the street. One of the kids is back from the park, and he’s standing too close to my stuff. How long has he been there? I remember what Jo said about thieving little sods and get worried about my prized possession, my blues harmonica. I rummage through my rucksack for it. My ex-boyfriend, Michael, gave it to me when we were in second year at art school. I thought it was a weird gift at the time. But I learned to play better than anyone expected and now it’s like my best friend. After my palm finds its familiar form, I buckle the bag extra tight and straighten up, reassured.

A young woman with a hard face and a chain around her ankle scoots across the road towards me. Her shoes are scuffed and, like me, she has a cut on her cheekbone. She might be my age, but her eyes are hollow and seem older than the rest of her. I’m struck by her hair, which is long and red like mine.

She says, ‘Are you girls in business?’

‘What?’

‘Are you working girls?’

I haven’t got a clue what she’s talking about.

She checks me over, lingering on my paint-stained, flared jeans.

‘Or are you students, or what?’

I say yes, even though I’m not. Jo and Nel are part way through a post-graduate teaching course at Leeds University, but I’m on the dole. It wasn’t the plan but moving in with them seemed for the best after Dad threw me out in November.

The woman flicks her hair back and glowers at me. ‘This is our patch. Do you get me?’

I don’t get her. I realise we’re being warned off but have no idea what from.

‘Yeah, OK.’

‘That’s where we work.’ She indicates the doorway she came from. ‘No room for anyone else. All right?’

I nod, still trying to understand.

The woman seems satisfied that her point’s been made as she nods and heads back across the road.

Hank appears at the front door, filling the frame with his lanky body. ‘What was she after?’

As I throw my rucksack and sleeping bag into the passageway behind him, I relate the conversation and he grins at me sidelong.

‘She wanted to find out if you was competition, flower.’

He spells it out.

‘Prostitutes.’

‘Wow! You’re kidding.’ I watch the woman with heightened interest and pay extra attention to her red-curtained house. Stepping out on to the pavement, Hank looks around the street. There’s something of the guard dog in his stance, like he’s sniffing the air for signs of danger.

‘You want to be careful round here, I reckon. Especially after dark.’

Jo emerges from inside the house, drawn by the sound of his voice.

Her hand strokes the small of his back. ‘It’s cheap, love. Chapeltown is the only place we can afford a whole house.’

‘You want to be careful coming from that bus stop at night. I’m not being funny but be careful what you wear and who you talk to.’

She pats him in the centre of his chest. ‘It’s all under control, petal.’

The frown he’s wearing fades as he links his arms around her. ‘I thought being married meant we would be living together.’

‘Now listen to me, Mr Colin Hanks, this is 1973, not 1923. Things have changed. Haven’t you heard of Women’s Liberation? Anyway, we’ll be together all the time, once I get this bastard diploma.’

‘Don’t call me Colin. Only me mam calls me Colin!’

Jo laughs as Hank squirms. Glancing at me, she pulls away and says affably, ‘Oi, Jude Totton, get these boxes carried.’

Hank grabs me around the neck in a gentle wresting grip, like I’m his dog or little sister, which sometimes I feel like I am.

‘You heard her,’ he says and does a perfect impression of our old sculpture technician. ‘Get them boxes inside. It’s not a bloody holiday camp, is it?’

‘Piss off.’ I pick up the box full of plates. ‘Get something carried yourself, Cowboy.’ I dodge to one side as he makes as though to kick my arse.

Following the passageway, I find a cramped room that’s both kitchen and lounge. The tattered red carpet is worn into holes near the doorway and has black patches like trampled tar near the chipped fireplace. There’s the stale odour of neglect that student houses always have. It comes out of the walls and floors and stays forever, like sweat and gravy with a vague hint of cat’s piss. Jo sets about sorting out saucepans and cutlery. Hank’s priorities are different. He props a battered record player on a low shelf near the table and pulls out an LP. Taking it carefully from its paper sleeve, he lowers it onto the turntable and swings the arm on to it. Pink Floyd’s newest album, The Dark Side of the Moon, rasps out from under the blunt needle. He contemplates the spinning disc. It makes the room soft with something familiar.

Nel has made us all instant coffee. I settle beside her under mildewed curtains. The off-white padded chairs make strange noises when we move, like Sellotape peeling off plastic. As we sit contemplating this new place that we will soon call home, there’s a crash from upstairs. Not a loud one, but one that indicates something falling over.

We all stiffen and look at the ceiling.

‘Was that in my room or yours?’ Nel says to Jo.

Hank shakes his head, ‘Can’t tell. Sounded like something heavy.’

They get up and head for the stairs.

‘Stay where you are, Toto,’ Nel says. ‘Take care of my coffee for me.’

Nel began calling me Toto when we were flatting together as students in Sheffield. It started as a joke because of my surname and it stuck because she thinks I’ve got the same lack of concern for consequences as that little dog from The Wizard of Oz. According to her I’m always running off without warning, stealing wizards’ sausages and biting witches’ legs. She thinks someday one of those witches will bite me back.

Jo, Nel and I are close. Really close. At college, our painting studio overlooked the city hills in one direction, and a hospital on the other. Nel’s desk was at the window under the hanging fabrics she’d made in the textiles workshop. They looked like they’d been spun by spiders, billowing like sails over the feathery watercolours on her table. At the other side of the room Jo hurled gobs of acrylic at huge canvases. Streaks of colour went undulating through the air to land with the sound of wet mud. Without even looking I could tell how well it was going according to the frequency and volume of the splats. Hank was trying to get her to marry him in those days and would come up from the sculpture workshop to visit. He smelled of sulphur and had dark-glassed goggles pushed back on his head as he brought her presents of little horses made from welding rods. She would name each of them: Malcolm, Margery, Alfred, and put the latest one in the pile with all the others.

For my part, I hunched in the furthest corner, labouring over small oil paintings of unlikely scenes. Fine-tipped brushes: zero, double zero, triple zero, my desk crammed with piles of soft and hard things. A palette of creamy colours; rags for blending out the brush marks; a magnifying glass. Jo is always saying that she can’t understand why my paintings are so precise when I am so chaotic. The lecturers said that I was good at detail, but had a problem pulling it all together. I couldn’t help myself; I was constantly diverted from the big picture by the disparate details. My tutor said the Royal College of Art would never accept me because of that. I always expected I would go there next. Took it for granted. But when they said I was no good, I lost my bottle and didn’t even apply. I really thought I could stay at art school forever, so there was no plan B.

After graduation I couldn’t think what to do. So I went back home to Bradford and hung around getting bored and angry. One Sunday afternoon in November I drank a bit too much of Dad’s best whisky and decided to ride his Norton around the garden. I’d never driven a motorbike before, and after a few drinks that seemed like a big omission. I’d barely got on it before it reared up and took off like a bullet through our hawthorn hedge, leaving me embedded in the thorny twigs. Luckily, I’d dressed up in Dad’s goggles and leather gloves because I liked the look, so I didn’t lose an eye or anything. The bike went down the slope in the field behind us and ended up in a stony stream. It still ran for a while underwater, wheels spinning, everything bent, shiny paintwork scratched to buggery. When the family got back from their lunch at a country pub, I was passed out on the front drive.

There was a lot of shouting after that, and the next day I hitched up to Leeds to join Nel and Jo in their flat in Headingly. I was going to stay for the weekend, but I ended up as a permanent fixture on their settee. It was a nice neighbourhood, close to the university, and just around the corner from the Alternative School, where I volunteer. I liked the pubs and the parks, and the fact that I could walk to the dole office, but after a few months we got sick of living on top of one-another in a two-bedroom flat and needed somewhere bigger. Chapeltown is a whole bus ride further out but at least I’ll have my own room.

On the floor above Nel calls to Jo. ‘It’s all OK in here and the bathroom. What about in yours?’

‘Panic over, my suitcase fell off the bed,’ Jo responds, ‘everything’s come out of it though. Right mess.’

I shift on the seat and gaze about me. This musty place is it now. This is where I’ll live while I wait for life to happen.

Nel’s face is so close to mine that I can feel her breath as she inspects the cut on my face. ‘Let me see, Toto.’ I wince as she strokes my cheekbone. She is pretending to be unconcerned. ‘Just a wee cut – might bruise later,’ she pauses and brushes it again. ‘Hmm, actually that’s quite deep. She must have caught you with a ring or something.’

Jo gets up to peer at it but remains unmoved. ‘You’ll live.’

Hank lights up with curiosity. ‘Someone smack you in the mush?’

‘I can’t really remember … it was at Jeff’s party last night. I was a bit out of it.’

Jo is more than happy to fill in the details. ‘She started trying to shag Jeff’s creepy flatmate, what’s his name? Philip. That weird one what gets shitty if you call him Phil … always ogling your tits when he thinks you’re not looking. Anyway, she passes out before anything happens. Comes around again and gets into a fight with Mira.’

I’m indignant. ‘Shagging Philip’ – the thought is humiliating – ‘I don’t remember that!’

Nel’s giving me another look. ‘Off your face, Toto,’ she says quietly. ‘You’d be better with a spliff. You’re always nice and chilled when you’re stoned, but you’re like a lunatic on the booze.’

It’s true. I have too much joie de vivre, too much bonhomie, too much red-headed crazy. I get the taste of it, and the feel of it, the whole upward buzz of it, and suddenly I’ve drunk too much. Then I can’t stop.

Jo has to put her coffee down so that she can gesticulate as expansively as the tale demands. ‘You passed straight out. Bang. Just like that. By the time you come around, Philip’s decided he’s got a better chance with Mira – and she’s loving it because she’s had a thing about him for ages, which is hard to believe, I know, but we’ve always said she’s got a screw loose. Next thing, he’s got hold of her like he owns her, and they’re both laughing at you because you’re legless. Then, for some reason, Mira turns into a screaming banshee and tells Philip to stop looking at you. So, you tell her she’s a silly cow.’

‘Ah,’ Hank says as though everything has now become clear, ‘so she whacked you one.’

‘But that’s all I said! The woman’s a fucking maniac.’

Jo gets distracted by a ladder in her tights.

‘Shit, this is my last pair.’ Looking at me brightly she continues, ‘I thought you were going to kill her. You had her by the throat in some sort of, I don’t know, judo grip or something. If Nel hadn’t dragged you into the bathroom to cool off, I wouldn’t have fancied that lass’s chances. Like a bloody little fox terrier, aren’t you?’

I’m trying to find it funny, but it isn’t. ‘She kicked me so hard … and I just lost it.’

To emphasise my point, I roll up my trouser leg. We all contemplate the bruise.

I have to admit that I lost control. It’s frightening to lose it like that.

‘You don’t expect someone to attack you just for calling them a silly cow,’ I say. ‘I mean, what’s wrong with her?’

Nel lights the spliff she’s been making, and gently puts it between my lips. Jo leans forward as though telling me something profound.

‘Well, the thing is, Toto, Mira’s never liked you. On top of that, you were shagging her lovely Philip.’

I widen my eyes and cover my mouth with my fingers, ‘I wasn’t! He’s disgusting.’

Nel nods. ‘To be fair Jo, he was groping Toto after she’d lost consciousness. She had no idea what was happening. He, however, knew exactly what he was at. And that’s not on.’ Her eyes are steely. ‘Actually, me and Jeff had to drag him off you, Toto. He’s an arsehole.’

The top button of Jo’s pink cardigan slips open, as it always seems to do, and she tries to re-button with one hand while still keeping hold of her coffee cup. Hank leans over and undoes it again.

Jo studies her coffee. ‘I need sugar in this. How come you never put sugar in my coffee?’

Nel adjusts the silver bangles on her wrist, and wonders about it. ‘Maybe because I don’t think you should have sugar.’

‘Penelope Gale, you’ve known me since I was eleven. You know I take three sugars.’

‘Ridiculous. Ridiculous amount of sugar.’

There’s a pause, then Jo says lightly, ‘Mira would give me three sugars.’

And we crack up. We’ve all had a decent toke on the spliff, so most things seem funny.

The three of us are seated on the back steps while we wait for Hank to return with the second load from the old flat in Headingly. The backyard is small and dirty with a straggly self-seeded sycamore tree pushing up between moss-covered flagstones. We’re talking about our names. Jo has been doing a project on designing family crests for teaching practice. She’s traced all our surnames, and now she’s telling us about them.

‘OK, my name, my married name, Hanks. Let me see.’ She leafs through her notebook, ‘Descended from Flemish weavers. First recorded mention is Anke de Ankinton in Lincolnshire in 1194.’

‘That is the most stupid name I’ve ever heard,’ I say, ‘Sounds like Hanky of Hankytown. I mean, are you kidding; Mr and Mrs Hanky of Hankytown? I’d keep that quiet if I were you. What about your maiden name? What does Salvin mean?’

‘Old French. Traces back to the Norman Conquest.’

‘So, you’re aristocracy, are you?’ Nel looks doubtful.

‘Yes, I bloody am. The name means,’ she reads, ‘savage and untamed … and I’ve got a great family crest: two gold mullets.’

Nel nods sagely. ‘Yes. I agree. You are completely untamed, and that crest is so appropriate for denoting savagery: two dead fish.’

‘Cheeky cow. Let’s find yours, Miss Gale.’ Jo turns the pages again. ‘Well, it seems Gale is Old English for a cheerful and roisterous person …’

She pauses and we slowly look Nel up and down.

‘Don’t know what happened there then,’ Jo says, and Nel play-slaps her.

‘Don’t tell my dad our name is English,’ Nel says. ‘He’ll commit suicide by kilt or something.’

‘What about me?’ I’m eager to know, ‘Totton. What’s Totton?’

‘Hang on.’ Jo licks her fingers and parts pages. ‘All right. It says here … there’s some disagreement about its origin. It might mean your ancestors came from the Nottinghamshire village of Toton. Or,’ she goes on, ‘it’s from the German word meaning the dead.’

‘That is ludicrous,’ I say. ‘Why would you wait until someone’s died to give them a surname? A bit bloody redundant by then, I would have thought.’

Jo purses her mouth in agreement. ‘Good point, which is why the last suggestion is the best. Read that please, Miss Gale.’

She tilts her open notebook and Nel recites in an amused tone. ‘It derives from the old English word “totte”, which means Fool. Oh blimey, Toto. Fool. That’s unfortunate!’

I should be insulted, but I’m not, because in the Tarot, the Fool is the best card in the Major Arcana: the innocent soul on the journey to knowledge. Jo says it’s typical of me to find a positive in something as crap as having a name that means idiot.

Nel reaches into her patterned shoulder bag and recovers her tobacco tin. She makes a cigarette with infinite care. Withdrawing contentedly into her own thoughts, she blows smoke upwards and away like frosty breath. I sit close to her on the steps and roll cigarettes for later. Trying to get them all the same thickness, tearing one apart and starting again when it looks like I haven’t rolled it tightly enough.

Jo nods at me. ‘You’re bloody obsessive, you, aren’t you?’

It’s said without malice, just an observation. I suppose I am and wonder whether that should worry me. Jo seems to have this ease with life, a readiness to laugh, to eat, to fuck. She would make an open book seem secretive. She tells us everything, even the things we don’t want to know. Like the time she discovered masturbation when we were flatting together in first year. She’d been in the bath for ages, and when she came out, she was all glowing, ‘You have all got to try that! That was amazing!’ And then she told us how to do it.

We were awestruck. Nel’s family are strict Presbyterian and I went to a convent school, so we’ve got a different mindset to Jo, who’s never had anything to do with religion in her life. For us it wasn’t that Jo had done it, or talked about it, that was so mesmerising. We were in awe of her lack of shame. Shame freaks me out so much that I pretend I don’t feel it. Nel gets wracked by it. Things she won’t talk about. It’s all that Presbyterian stuff. Sin is big for them and you can’t confess it away like Catholics do. I think all that stuff sits inside her even though she doesn’t believe in it any more.

Dark is falling and the rain has started. I love the smell of it. It reminds me of hitchhiking, and the scent of rain on roads when I’m thumbing a ride without a clue where I’ll end up. I love not knowing where the hell I am. It means freedom to me, like the low-level thrill I’m getting from this new place where we live.

We go back inside to wait for Hank, who’s taking longer than expected. Nothing is comfortable yet. I don’t know where anything will belong.

‘Come on, let’s do the messages.’ Nel is pulling on her coat. ‘We need milk and some eggs for our tea and I’ll need to ge. . .