Book Extract: Toto Among the Murderers by Sally J Morgan

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. But what she doesn’t realise is that the violence is moving ever closer to home: there’s Janice across the road who lives in fear of being beaten up by her pimp again 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.

Toto Among the Murderers is having its launch as part of Verb Festival on Saturday, 7 November 2020.

Extracted with permission from Toto Among the Murderers by Sally J Morgan and published by Hachette, $34.99

Fred and Rose West committed a series of brutal killings beginning in 1967. They tortured victims to death in the cellar of their Gloucester home, and went undetected for more than twenty-five years.

‘The murderous couple’s modus operandi . . . was to drive out together in their car and offer lifts to isolated young women, sometimes suggesting that they come back to their house to sleep.’

Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal

1

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.