etime tomorrow, and now the Welsh national press have picked up on the book - the Welsh Jack the Ripper connection interests them. And so later this week I will be speaking to The South Wales Echo about A Policeman's Lot and Jack the Ripper/Buffalo Bill's link with the Welsh town of Pontypridd.
It's all go for a jobbing hack, or so it seems. At the moment I'm going through a final edit of A Policeman's Lot ready for the publisher's own editors to wield their editing knife - perhaps a cut-throat razor would be apropos.
It's all happening and I'm walking around in a state of perpetual excitement. So watch this space for more news - in the meantime The Archive presents an extract from the forthcoming, A Policeman's Lot by Gary M. Dobbs
Parade, standing next to Cody, took another look at the dead man and then shook his head. The man’s throat was slashed almost from ear to ear, the blood splattered wound looking ghastly in the pale moonlight, but the worse thing were the eyes which had rolled back into their sockets and stared sightlessly at the night sky. Those eyes seemed to display the shock and horror of a sudden and horrible death, as if the man’s last moments were captured, like a photograph, upon the lens of the iris.
A crowd of circus performers had gathered and Parade noticed several Indians among the colourful ensemble.
‘Suppose we should be grateful he's not been scalped,’ Parade joked and then wished he hadn’t when he noticed Cody’s eyes harden. The Indian braves remained impassive; waiting for whatever wisdom Parade would bring to the situation. Which, given the policeman’s fatigued state, would not be considerable.
‘No one’s to leave camp,’ Parade said. ‘We’ll need to search every person, every tent.’
‘To what purpose?’ Cody asked.
‘To find the murder weapon for one thing,’ Parade said, annoyed. ‘This isn’t the primitive frontier. We’ve got our ways of doing things. We don’t just chalk it up to outlaws, stick up a wanted poster and leave it at that.’
‘Whoever did this deserves to be whipped and lynched.’ Cody’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head.
‘Agree with you there,’ Parade said. ‘I want this area secured. We’ll do what has to be done as quickly as possible. Until then you’ll have to endure the inconvenience.’
Cody knelt to the corpse and closely examined the wound. ‘I’d say a large knife,’ he said. ‘Not a Bowie. The cut’s too smooth for that. Something razor sharp with a blade of about six to seven inches long.’
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