Chapter 54
Chapter Fifty-Four
It was another three weeks before Tania Dove contacted the police.
The five hundred pounds Henry Bishop had given her for her statement and dramatic performance in court came with a condition. Once the case was over with, she was to leave Whitby, preferably Yorkshire as a whole, and keep her head down.
She had put the Anthony Winstanley case out of her mind.
Her life in Whitby was a dark time she wanted to forget.
As a child, she was either being beaten by her alcoholic mother or sexually molested by her uncle.
To escape them both, she ran away and slept on park benches until she became friends with a woman who allowed her to share her flat.
But with no money and no qualifications, the only way she could earn her keep was by joining the woman on the streets, selling her body for a fiver here and a tenner there, just so they could afford to turn the radiators on or buy a loaf of bread.
It was a pathetic excuse for an existence, and when Henry Bishop handed her a new life on a plate, she snatched it.
She didn’t see Pauline’s appearance on TV, but read about it a couple of days later in a feature in the Daily Mail.
When she read what Anthony had endured in prison, the fact he was now blind in one eye and living on a dependency wing, she knew she had to do the right thing, but that would mean dragging up her past. Eventually, she contacted Jennifer Ripley at Wrongly Accused, and arranged to travel north and meet with her and Freya Sloan.
‘You should be proud of your achievements,’ Jennifer said after Tania told her what she’d been doing since leaving Whitby.
They were sitting in an interview room at the police station in Whitby. Their conversation was being recorded and videotaped and both Freya and Jennifer were making extensive notes.
‘You’re a success story,’ Jennifer went on. ‘Not many are able to turn their lives around like you did.’
‘It was blood money that got me out of here, though. I feel so ashamed.’ She tucked her dyed blonde hair behind her ears.
‘Nobody is here to judge you, Tania,’ Freya said. ‘We just want the truth.’
Tania nodded. ‘I did know Anthony. I liked him. I know what you’re going to say, that I’ve a funny way of showing it seeing as I betrayed him. He’d come down to Canal Street every now and then, not all the time, just occasionally, and he’d always come and talk to me. None of the others.’
‘Why you?’ Jennifer asked.
‘I don’t know. We’d chat about … well, nothing really. The weather, last night’s TV, the usual rubbish. I know some of the girls thought he was hanging around for a freebie, but I never thought that, and he never asked for anything. I got the impression he was lonely and just wanted some company.’
‘Why did Bishop approach you to go to court?’
‘Do I have to answer that question?’
‘It would help.’
‘Bishop was a bastard. It’s the only way I can describe him.
Now, he did have freebies. And he always made it seem like he was doing us a favour and looking after us, when in fact he just wanted a free shag.
He gave me an easy fifty quid to make a statement.
I thought that would be it, but he came back, didn’t he?
I didn’t want to go to court, but … he’d got my statement.
I’d signed it. He said he could do me for – what did he call it?
– obstructing a murder enquiry, or something. He…’ She trailed off.
‘Go on,’ Freya prompted.
‘Bishop showed me photographs of Alice, of what had happened to her. The poor kid. He said he’d been speaking with a psychologist who said the killer was someone who was sexually repressed, a loner, someone who didn’t know what to do with women and had just snapped when he saw Alice.
He told me Anthony had confessed but he needed my help to make sure he was locked up for good.
Looking back, he was trying to convince me that it was Anthony. And I fell for it.’
‘You can’t blame yourself, Tania,’ Freya said.
‘Bishop said that, if I didn’t testify, Anthony could end up being the next Yorkshire Ripper.’
‘But didn’t you tell Bishop that you’d seen Anthony at the coast on the night of the murder?’ Jennifer asked.
‘I did. But he said the murder happened later. After I’d seen him.’
‘Did he tell you that before or after you told him the time you saw Anthony?’
‘After. I know, he was telling me what I wanted to hear to convince me Anthony was the killer. I just … Bishop was a nasty piece of work. He could make life very difficult if you disagreed with him.’
‘Did he hurt you?’ Jennifer asked.
‘Not physically, but he implied he would. He really didn’t give me any choice.’
‘What time did he tell you Alice was killed?’
‘He said around midnight.’
‘It was much earlier than that,’ Freya said, shaking her head. ‘Based on her stomach contents, the pathologist put time of death somewhere around seven or eight o’clock that evening.’
‘But that’s when I saw Anthony from my flat. He knew, didn’t he? Bishop knew all along that Anthony wasn’t the killer.’
‘It would appear so,’ Freya said.
‘How could he do that? He’s ruined that man’s life.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Will this get him out of prison?
‘I’m not sure,’ Jennifer said. ‘But it’s a massive step towards ordering a retrial.’