Walking with Ghosts

undivided attention of his father. He was too young to recognize that the camera was there to make a statement, but the core of him, reaching out a tiny hand towards his father, illuminated an action that perhaps still continued down to the present day.
     
    Sam picked up the Yorkshire Post and read the Stop Press headline on the back page. He paid for the paper and took it outside to a bench on the main road. He knew what it was going to say before he began reading it. It was like an epiphany, something he’d known was going to happen all along, something that he might have averted if he’d known it consciously. But he’d known it instinctively, with a kind of tribal knowledge. Until he’d seen the headline he hadn’t even known that he knew.
     
    The Surgeon Strikes Again?
Police were called to a house in York last night, after an attack on a young woman, believed to be the fourth intended victim of the serial killer known as the Surgeon.
A spokesperson said that the attacker was interrupted by the victim’s boyfriend as he was attempting to strangle the woman. The attack took place at a flat in the Fishergate area of the town.
The woman is recovering in hospital.
The Surgeon, who has struck three times before in the York area, is known to use a distinctive modus operandi, and the attacker last night seemed to be following the same pattern.
The police spokesperson confirmed that no one had been detained. Various leads were being followed and investigated. An incident room was being established.
There will be a further statement later today.
     
    It was the woman Billy had followed. Sam played it back ' his head, the night he had followed Billy following ^ woman to the flat in Fishergate. Fie could see Billy watchin from the shelter of the bus stop as she pressed the bell and was let into the flat. After she’d disappeared inside, Billy stjjj waited, watching the building, looking up at the windows He’d locked on to her and followed her halfway across the town, and now she had been attacked, nearly killed.
    Dora had asked Sam to find Billy, her son, because she missed him, and because she was dying and wanted to see him one last time. What was he supposed to do? Go back and tell her Billy was a serial killer? Brighten up her last days with that?
    Or should he do nothing, let Dora die in peace? Leave Billy free to kill again?
    It was the kind of problem that made Sam Turner want to find a friendly pub. Get a high stool next to the bar and order a little glass of Scotch. Watch the world and all its problems recede into the distance.
    It was always there, that thought. Have a drink and forget. Sam nodded at it inwardly. It was a demon he didn’t need, but a demon he had to deal with.
    Was Billy the Surgeon? Circumstantial evidence seemed to point that way. But circumstantial evidence wasn’t admitted by the courts. The state wouldn’t convict Billy on that evidence, but Sam Turner the great liberal had already judged him guilty without hearing what the guy had to say for himself.
    And although in theory the state didn’t convict anyone on circumstantial evidence, Sam knew from first-hand experience that in reality that was often the only kind of evidence available. And the fact that it was circumstantial had never stopped a good copper from going for the conviction. When he was a young man in Liverpool, the local filth had fitted Sam Turner up with a quantity of dope, searched him, found it, charged him, and sent him down.
    He shrugged. So, slow down, Sam, he said to himself, you weren’t a dealer when all the evidence said you were. It’s at least possible that Billy isn’t the Surgeon, even though it looks as though he is. Be suspicious. Don’t close your eyes. But don’t hang the guy until you’re sure.
    I’ve got a suspect, he told himself. That’s all. A prime suspect.
     
    Billy came out of the house in St Mary’s and walked up to Bootham carrying a black holdall. Sam followed. Over to the east the sky was darkening, and violent squalls blew paper bags and bus tickets along the street. Billy crossed over the road and walked the length of Gillygate, eventually disappearing into a launderette on Clarence Street. Nothing sinister in that, Sam thought, the guy doing his weekly wash. Unless, of course, the black holdall contained clothing stained with the blood of the girl who had been attacked in Fishergate.
    Sam watched through the window while Billy unloaded underwear and socks, a shirt, a