1974

Chapter 11

We were jumping into a river holding hands. The water was cold. I let go of her hand. I opened my eyes. It felt like a morning. I was lying at the side of a road in the rain and Paula was dead.

I sat up, my head splitting, my body numb.

A man was getting out of a car further up the road.

I looked out across empty brown fields and tried to stand.

The man came running towards me.

“I almost bloody killed you!”

“Where am I?”

“What the hell happened to you?”

A woman was standing by the passenger door of the car, looking down the road at us.

“I was in an accident. Where am I?”

“Doncaster Road. Do you want us to call an ambulance or something?”

“No.”

“The police?”

“No.”

“You don’t look so good.”

“Could you give me a lift?”

The man looked back at the woman standing by the car. “Where to?”

“Do you know the Redbeck Cafe, on the way into Wakefield?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking from me to the car and back again. “OK.”

“Thanks.”

We walked slowly back down the road to the car.

I got in the back.

The woman was sitting in the front, looking straight ahead. She had blonde hair the same shade as Paula’s, only longer.

“He’s been in an accident. We’re going to drop him down the road,” said the man to the woman, starting the engine.

The clock in the front said six.

“Excuse me,” I said. “What day is it?”

“Monday,” said the woman, not turning round.

I stared out at the empty brown fields.

Monday 23 December 1974.

“So tomorrow’s Christmas Eve then?”

“Yes,” she said.

The man was looking at me in his rearview mirror.

I turned back to the empty brown fields.

“This OK?” asked the man, pulling over by the Redbeck.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“You sure you don’t want a doctor or anything?”

“I’m sure, thanks,” I said, getting out.

“Bye then,” said the man.

“Bye and thanks very much,” I said, shutting the door.

The woman was still looking straight ahead as they drove away.

I walked across the car park, through the holes filled with muddy rain water and lorry oil, round the back to the motel rooms.

The door to Room 27 was open a crack.

I stood before the door listening.

Silence.

I pushed open the door.

Sergeant Fraser, in uniform, was asleep on a blanket of papers and folders, tapes and photographs.

I closed the door.

He opened his eyes, looked up, then stood up.

“Fuck,” he said, looking at his watch.

“Yeah.”

He stared at me.

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

He went over to the sink and began to run some water.

“You’d better sit down,” he said, leaving the sink to tip over the base of the bed.

I walked across the papers and the files, the photos and the maps, and sat down on the bare base of the bed.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m going to be suspended.”

“What the fuck did you do?”

“Know you.”

“So?”

“So I don’t want to be suspended.”

I could hear the rain coming down hard outside, lorries reversing and parking, their drivers running for cover.

“How did you find this place?”

“I’m a policeman.”

“Really?” I said, holding my head.

“Yeah, really,” said Sergeant Fraser, taking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves.

“Have you been here before?”

“No. Why?”

“No reason,” I said.

Fraser soaked the only towel in the sink, wrung it out, and tossed it across to me.

I put it to my face, ran it through my hair.

It came away the colour of rust.

“I didn’t do it.”

“I didn’t ask.”

Fraser picked up a grey bedsheet and began tearing off strips.

“Why’d they let me go?”

“I don’t know.”

The room was going black, Fraser’s shirt grey.

I stood up.

“Sit down.”

“It was Foster, wasn’t it?”

“Sit down.”

“It was Don Foster, I fucking know it.”

“Eddie…”

“They fucking know it, don’t they?”

“Why Foster?”

I picked up a fistful of foolscap. “Because he’s the link in all this shit.”

“You think Foster killed Clare Kemplay?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Bollocks. And Jeanette Garland and Susan Ridyard?”

“Yeah.”

“And Mandy Wymer and Paula Garland?”

“Yeah.”

“So why stop there? What about Sandra Rivett? Maybe it wasn’t Lucan after all, maybe it was Don Foster. And what about the bomb in Birmingham?”

“Fuck off. She’s dead. They’re all dead.”

“No but why? Why Don Foster? You haven’t given me a single fucking reason.”

I sat back down on the bed with my head in my hands, the room black, nothing making sense.

Fraser handed me two strips of grey bedsheet.

I wrapped the strips around my right hand and pulled tight.

“They were lovers.”

“So?”

“I have to see him,” I said.

“You’re going to accuse him?”

“There are things I need to ask him. Things only he knows.”

Fraser picked up his jacket. “I’ll drive you.”

“You’ll be suspended.”

“I told you, I’m going to be suspended anyway.”

“Just give me the keys.”

“Why should I?”

“Because you’re all I’ve got.”

“Then you’re fucked.”

“Yeah. So let’s leave it at me.”

He looked like he was going to puke, but tossed me his keys.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

I went over to the sink and rinsed the old blood off my face.

“Did you see BJ?” I asked.

“No.”

“You didn’t go to the flat?”

“I went to the flat.”

“And?”

“And he’s either done a runner or been nicked. Fuck knows which.”

I heard dogs barking and men screaming.

“I should phone my mother,” I said.

Sergeant Eraser looked up. “What?”

I was standing at the door, his keys in my hand. “Which one is it?”

“The yellow Maxi,” he said.

I opened the door. “Bye then.”

“Bye.”

“Thanks,” I said, like I’d never see him ever again.

I closed the door to Room 27 and walked across the car park to his dirty yellow Maxi, parked between two Findus lorries.

I pulled out of the Redbeck and switched on the radio: the IRA had blown up Harrods, Mr Heath had missed a bomb by minutes, Aston Martin was going bust, Lucan had been spotted in Rhodesia, and there was a new Mastermind.

It was going up to eight as I parked beside the high walls of Trinity View.

I got out of the car and walked up to the gates.

They were open, the white lights on the tree still on.

I looked up the drive, across the lawn.

“Fuck!” I shouted aloud, running up the drive.

Halfway up, a Rover had hit the back of a Jaguar.

I cut across the grass, slipping in the cold dew.

Mrs Foster, in a fur coat, was bent over something on the lawn by the front door.

She was screaming.

I made a grab for her, my arms around her.

She lashed out in every direction with every available limb as I tried to push her back, back towards the house, back from whatever was on the lawn.

And then I got a look at him, a good look:

Fat and white, trussed with a length of black flex that ran round his neck and bound his hands behind him, in a pair of soiled white underpants, his hair all gone, his scalp red raw.

“No, no, no,” Mrs Foster was screaming.

Her husband’s eyes were wide open.

Mrs Foster, the fur coat streaked black with rain, made another rush for the body.

I blocked her hard, still staring down at Donald Foster, at the white flabby legs running in mud, at the knees smeared in blood, at the triangular burns on his back, at the tender head.

“Get inside,” I shouted, holding her tight, pushing her back through the front door.

“No, cover him.”

“Mrs Foster, please…”

“Please cover him!” she cried, thrashing out of her coat.

We were inside the house at the foot of the staircase.

I pushed her down on to the bottom stair.

“Wait here.”

I took the fur coat and walked back outside.

I draped the damp coat over Donald Foster.

I went back inside.

Mrs Foster was still sat on the bottom step.

I poured two glasses of Scotch from a crystal decanter in the living room.

“Where were you?” I handed her a large glass.

“With Johnny.”

“Where’s Johnny now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who did this?”

She looked up. “I don’t know.”

“Johnny?”

“God no.”

“So who did?”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

“Who did you hit that night on the Dewsbury Road?”

“What?”

“Who did you hit on the Dewsbury Road?”

“Why?”

“Tell me.”

“You tell me why, why does it matter now?”

Falling, grasping, clutching. Like the dead were living and the living dead, saying: “Because I think whoever it was you hit, I think they killed Clare Kemplay, and whoever killed Clare, they killed Susan Ridyard, and whoever that was, they killed Jeanette Garland.”

“Jeanette Garland?”

“Yeah.”

Her eagle eyes had suddenly flown and I was staring into big black panda eyes, full of tears and secrets, secrets she couldn’t keep.

I pointed outside. “Was it him?”

“No, god no.”

“So who was it?”

“I don’t know.” Her mouth and hands were trembling.

“You know.”

The glass was loose in her hands, tipping whisky over her dress and the stairs. “I don’t know.”

“Yes you do,” I hissed and looked back at the body, framed in the doorway with that huge fucking Christmas tree.

I clenched my fist as best I could and turned back round, bringing up my arm.

“Tell me!”

“Don’t fucking touch her!”

Johnny Kelly was standing at the top of the stairs, covered in blood and mud, a hammer in his good hand.

Patricia Foster, miles from home, didn’t even glance round.

I edged back into the doorway. “You killed him?”

“He killed our Paula and Jeanie.”

Wishing he was right, knowing he was wrong, telling him, “No he didn’t.”

“The fuck you know about it?” Kelly stepped down on to the stairs.

“Did you kill him?”

He was coming down the stairs, staring straight at me, tears in his eyes and on his cheeks, a hammer in his hand.

I took another step back, seeing way too fucking much in those tears.

“I know you didn’t do it.”

He kept coming, the tears too.

“Johnny, I know you’ve done some bad things, some terrible things, but I know you didn’t do this.”

He stopped at the foot of the stairs, the hammer an inch from Mrs Foster’s hair.

I walked towards him.

He dropped the hammer.

I went over and picked it up, wiping it with a dirty grey handkerchief like all the bad guys and dirty cops on Kojak.

Kelly was staring down at her hair.

I dropped the hammer.

He started stroking her hair, pulling it rougher and rougher, someone else’s blood tangling and knotting the curls.

She didn’t flinch.

I pulled him away.

I didn’t want to know any more; I wanted to buy some drugs, buy some drink, and get the fuck out of there.

He looked me in the eye and said, “You should get out of here.”

But I couldn’t. “You too,” I said.

“They’ll kill you.”

“Johnny,” I said, taking him by the shoulder. “Who was it you hit on the Dewsbury Road?”

“They’ll kill you. You’ll be next.”

“Who was it?” I pushed him back against the wall.

He said nothing.

“You know who did it don’t you, you know who killed Jeanette and the other two?”

He pointed outside. “Him.”

I hit Kelly hard, a shot of sheer pain shooting stars to my eyes.

The star of Rugby League fell back on to the shagpile. “Fuck.”

“No. You fuck off.” I was bending over him, champing to crack open his skull and scoop out all his dirty little fucking secrets.

He lay on the floor at her feet, looking up like he was ten bloody years old, Mrs Foster rocking back and forth like it was all on someone else’s TV.

“Tell me!”

“It was him,” he whimpered.

“You’re a fucking liar.” I reached behind me, grabbing the hammer.

Kelly slid out from between my legs, crawling through a patch of whisky towards the front door.

“You fucking wish it was him.”

“No.”

I grabbed him by his collar, twisting his face back round into mine. “You want it to be him. Want it to be that easy.”

“It was him, it was him.”

“It wasn’t, you know it wasn’t.”. “No.”

“You want your bloody vengeance, then tell me who the fuck it was that night.”

“No, no, no.”

“You’re not going to do anything about it, so fucking tell me or I’ll smash your fucking skull in.”

He was pushing my face away with his hands. “It’s over.”

“You want it to be him so it’s over. But you know it’s not over,” I screamed, smashing the hammer into the side of the stairs.

She was sobbing.

He was sobbing.

I was sobbing.

“It’ll never be over until you tell me who you fucking hit.”

“No!”

“It’s not over.”

“No!”

“It’s not over.”

“No!”

“It’s not over, Johnny.”

He was coughing tears and bile. “It is.”

“Tell me, you piece of shit.”

“I can’t.”

I saw the moon in the day, the sun in the night, me fucking her, her fucking him, Jeanette’s face on every body.

I had him by the throat and hair, the hammer in my bandaged hand. “You fucked your sister.”

“No.”

“You were Jeanette’s fucking father, weren’t you?”

“No!”

“You were her father.”

His lips were moving, bubbles of bloody spit bursting on them.

I leant close into his face.

Behind me, she said, “George Marsh.”

I span round, reaching out and pulling her into us. “Say again.”

“George Marsh,” she whispered.

“What about him?”

“On the Dewsbury Road. It was George Marsh.”

“George Marsh?”

“One of Donny’s foremen.”

“Under those beautiful new carpets, between the cracks and the stones.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

I let go of them and stood up, the hall suddenly much bigger and lighter.

I closed my eyes.

I heard the hammer drop, Kelly’s teeth chattering, and then everything was small and dark again.

I went over to the phone and took out the telephone direc tory. I went to the Ms and the Marshes and found the G. Marshes. There was one in Netherton at 16 Maple Well Drive. The telephone number was 3657. I closed the directory.

I picked up a soft floral phonebook and turned to the Ms.

In fountain pen, George 3657.

Bingo.

I closed the book.

Johnny Kelly had his head in his hands.

Mrs Foster was staring up at me.

“Under those beautiful new houses, between the cracks and the stones.”

“How long did you know?”

The eagle eyes were back. “I didn’t,” she said.

“Liar.”

Mrs Patricia Foster swallowed, “What about us?”

“What about you?”

“What are you going to do with us?”

“Pray God forgives the fucking lot of you.”

I walked towards the front door and Donald Foster’s body. “Where are you going?”

“To finish it.”

Johnny Kelly looked up, bloody fingerprints on his face. “You’re too late.”

I left the door open.

“Under those beautiful new carpets, between the cracks and the stones.”

I drove Eraser’s Maxi back into Wakefield and out through Horbury, the rain beginning to sleet.

I sang along to Christmas songs on Radio 2 and changed to Radio 3 to avoid the News at Ten, listening to England lose the Ashes down under instead, shouting out my own news at ten:

Don Foster dead.

Two fucking killers, maybe three.

Me next?

Counting the killers.

Pushing the Maxi out Netherton way, the sleet now suddenly rain again.

Counting the dead.

Tasting gun metal, smelling my own shit.

Dogs barking, men screaming.

Paula dead.

There were things I had to do, things I must finish.

“Under those beautiful new carpets, between the cracks and the stones.”

I asked in Netherton Post Office and an old woman who didn’t work there told me where Maple Well Drive was.

Number 16 was a bungalow like the rest of the street, much like Enid Sheard’s, much like the Goldthorpe’s. A neat little garden with a low hedge and a bird table.

Whatever George Marsh had done, it hadn’t been here.

I opened the little black metal gate and walked up the path. I could see TV pictures through the nets.

I knocked on the glass door, the air making me gyp.

A chubby woman with grey permed hair and a tea-towel opened the door.

“Mrs Marsh?”

“Yes?”

“Mrs George Marsh?”

“Yes?”

I pushed the door hard back into her face.

“What the bloody hell?” She fell back on her arse into the house.

I barged in over the Wellington boots and the gardening shoes. “Where is he?”

She had the tea-towel over her face.

“Where is he?”

“I haven’t seen him.” She was trying to stand.

I slapped her hard across her face.

She fell back down.

“Where is he?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

The hard-faced bitch was wide-eyed, thinking about some tears.

I raised my hand again. “Where?”

“What did he do?” There was a gash above her eye and her lower lip was already swelling.

“You know.”

She smiled, a pinched little fucking smile.

“Tell me where.”

She lay there on top of the shoes and the umbrellas looking straight back up into my face, her dirty mouth in a half-open smile like we were thinking about having a fuck.

“Where?”

“The shed, up on the allotments.”

I knew then what I would find.

“Where is it?”

She was still smiling. She knew what I would find.

“Where?”

She raised up the tea-towel. “I can’t…”

“Show me,” I hissed, grabbing her by the arm.

“No!”

I pulled her up on her feet.

“No!”

I swung the door back.

“No!”

I dragged her down the path, her scalp red raw beneath her tight grey perm.

“No!”

“Which way?” I said at the gate.

“No, no, no.”

“Which fucking way?” I tightened my grip.

She spun round, looking back and beyond the bungalow.

I pushed her through the gate and marched her round the back of Maple Well Drive.

There was an empty brown field behind the bungalows, rising steeply up into the dirty white sky. There was a gate in a wall and a tractor path and, where the field met the sky, I could see a row of black sheds.

“No!”

I pulled her off the road and pushed her up against the dry stone wall.

“No, no, no.”

“Shut your bloody mouth you fucking bitch.” I gripped her mouth in my left hand, making a fish head of her face.

She was shaking but there were no tears.

“Is he up there?”

She looked straight at me, then nodded once.

“If he isn’t, or if he hears us coming, I’m going to fucking do you, you understand?”

She was looking straight at me, again she nodded just once.

I let go of her mouth, make-up and lipstick on my fingers.

She stood against the stone wall, not moving.

I took her by the arm and pushed her through the gate.

She stared up at the black line of sheds.

“Move,” I said, shoving her in the back.

We started up the tractor path, its trenches full of black water, the air stinking of animal shit.

She stumbled, she fell, she got back up.

I looked back down at Netherton, the same as Ossett, the same as anywhere.

I saw its bungalows and terraces, its shops and its garage.

She stumbled, she fell, she got back up.

I saw it all.

I saw a white van bumping up this path, throwing its little cargo around in the back.

I saw a white van bumping back down, its little cargo silent and still.

I saw Mrs Marsh at her kitchen sink, that fucking tea-towel in her hand, watching that van coming and going.

She stumbled, she fell, she got back up.

We were almost at the top of the hill, almost at the sheds. They looked like a stone-age village, built from the mud.

“Which one’s his?”

She pointed to the end one, at a patchwork of tarpaulin and fertiliser sacks, corrugated iron and house bricks.

I went ahead, dragging her along behind me.

“This one,” I whispered, pointing at a black wooden door with a cement sack for a window.

She nodded.

“Open it.”

She pulled back the door.

I shoved her inside.

There was a work-bench and tools, bags of fertiliser and cement stacked up, plant pots and feed trays. Empty plastic sacks covered the floor.

It stank of the earth.

“Where is he?”

Mrs Marsh was giggling, the tea-towel up over her nose and mouth.

I spun round and punched her hard through the tea-towel.

She shrieked and howled and fell to her knees.

I grabbed some grey perm and dragged her over to the work bench, forcing her cheek into the wood.

“Ah, ha-ha-ha. Ah, ha-ha-ha.”

She was laughing and screaming, her whole body shaking, one hand flailing through the plastic sacks upon the floor, the other squeezing her skirt up into her cunt.

I picked up some kind of chisel or wallpaper scraper.

“Where is he?”

“Mmm, ha-ha-ha. Mmm, ha-ha-ha.”

Her screams were a hum, her giggles rationed.

“Where is he?” I put the chisel to her flabby throat.

“Ah, ha-ha-ha. Ah, ha-ha-ha.”

Again she began to kick out, thrashing through the plastic sacks with her knees and feet.

I looked down through the sacks and the bags and saw a piece of thick muddy rope.

I let go of her face and pushed her away.

I kicked away the sacks and found a manhole cover threaded through like a giant metal button with the dirty black rope.

I coiled the rope around my good and bad hands and pulled up the manhole cover, swinging it to the side.

Mrs Marsh was sat on her arse giggling under the bench, drumming her heels in hysterics.

I peered into the hole, into a narrow stone shaft with a metal ladder leading down into a faint light some fifty odd feet below.

It was some kind of drainage or Ventilation shaft to a mine.

“He down there?”

She drummed her feet up and down faster and faster, blood still running down from her nose into her mouth, suddenly spreading her legs and rubbing the tea-towel over the top of her tan tights and ruby red knickers.

I reached under the bench and dragged her out by her ankles. I pulled her over on to her stomach and sat astride her arse.

“Ah, ha-ha-ha. Ah, ha-ha-ha.”

I reached up and took some rope from the bench. I hooked it round her neck and then ran it down round her wrists, finally knotting it twice round the leg of the bench.

Mrs Marsh had pissed herself.

I looked back down the shaft, turned round and put one foot into the dark.

I eased myself down into the shaft, the metal ladder cold and wet, the brick walls slippery against my sides.

Down I went, ten feet down.

I could hear the faint sound of running water beneath Mrs Marsh’s shrieks and screams.

Down I went, twenty feet down.

A circle of grey light and madness above.

Down I went, thirty feet down, the laughter and the cries dying with the descent.

I could sense water below, picturing mine shafts sunk with black water and open-mouthed bodies.

Down I went towards the light, not looking up, certain only that I was just going down.

Suddenly one of the sides to the shaft was gone and I was there in the light.

I twisted round, looking into the yellow mouth of a hori zontal passage leading off to my right.

I went a little way further down and then turned, putting my elbows on to the mouth of the hole.

I pulled myself up into the light and crawled on to the shelf. The light was bright, the tunnel narrow and stretching off.

Unable to stand, I forced my belly and elbows across the rough bricks, along the passage towards the source of the light.

I was sweating and tired and dying to stand.

I kept on crawling, thinking of feet and then miles, all dis tance lost.

Suddenly the ceiling went up and I got to my knees, shuffling along, thinking of mountains of dirt piled on top of my head, until my knees and shins were raw and rebelled.

I could hear things moving in the dim light, mice or rats, children’s feet.

I put out my hand into the shale and the slime and brought back a shoe; a child’s sandal.

I lay on the bricks in the dust and the dirt and fought back the tears, stuck with the shoe, unable to throw it, unable to leave it.

I stood in a stoop and began to move again, banging my back on girders and beams, making a yard here, a foot there.

And then the air changed and the sound of water was gone and I could smell death and hear her moaning.

The ceiling went up again and there were more wooden beams to bang my head on and then I turned a corner at an old fall of rock and there I was.

I stood upright in the mouth of a big tunnel in the glare of ten Davy lamps, panting and sweating and thirsty as fuck, trying to take it all in.

Santa’s bloody grotto.

I dropped the shoe, tears streaking through my dirty face.

The tunnel had been bricked up about fifteen feet ahead, the bricks painted blue with white clouds, the floor covered in sacking and white feathers.

Against the two side walls were ten or so thin mirrors all lined up in a row.

Christmas tree angels and fairies and stars hung from the beams, all shining in the glow of the lamps.

There were boxes and there were bags, there were clothes and there were tools.

There were cameras and there were lights, there were tape recorders and there were tapes.

And, beneath the blue wall at the end of the room, lying under some bloody sacking, there was George Marsh.

On a bed of dead red roses.

I walked across the blanket of feathers towards him.

He turned into the light, his eyes holes, his mouth open, his face a mask of red and black blood.

Marsh opened and closed his mouth, bubbles of blood bursting and popping, the howl of a dying dog coming up from within the pit of his belly.

I bent down and looked into the holes from where his eyes had once seen, into the mouth from where his tongue had once spoken, and spat a little piece of me.

I stood up and pulled back the sacking.

George Marsh was naked and dying.

His torso was purple, green, and black, smeared with shit, mud, and blood, burnt.

His cock and balls were gone, flaps of loose skin and pooled blood.

He was twitching and reached up to me, his little finger and thumb all he had left.

I stood up, kicking the blanket back at him.

He lay there with his head raised, praying for an end, the low moan of a man calling for death filling the cavern.

I went to the bags and to the boxes, tipping them over, spilling out clothes and tinsel, baubles and knives, paper crowns and giant needles, looking for books, looking for words.

I found pictures.

Boxes of them.

Schoolgirl photographs, head-shots of wide white smiles and big blue eyes, yellow hair and pink skin.

And then I saw it all again.

Black and white shots of Jeanette and Susan, dirty knees pulled up in corners, tiny hands-across shut eyes, big white flashes filling up the room.

The adult smiles and the child’s eyes, dirty knees in angel suits, tiny hands across bloody holes, big white laughs filling up the room.

I saw a man in a paper crown and nothing else, fucking little girls underground.

I saw his wife stitching angel suits, kissing them better.

I saw a halfwit Polack boy, stealing photos and developing more.

I saw men building houses, watching little girls playing out across the road, taking their photos and making their notes, building new houses next to the old.

And then I was staring down at George Marsh again, the Gaffer, dying in agony on his bed of dead red roses.

“George Marsh. Very nice man.”

But it wasn’t enough.

I saw Johnny Kelly, a hammer in his hand, a job half done.

It still wasn’t enough.

I saw a man wrapped in paper and plans, consumed by dark visions of angels, drawing houses made out of swans, pleading for silence.

And it still wasn’t enough.

I saw the same man crouched down on his arches in a dim corner, screaming do this for me George, because I WANT MORE AND I WANT IT NOW.

I saw John Dawson.

And it was too much, much too much.

I fled from the room back down the tunnel, stooping then crawling, listening for water and the shaft to the shed, his screams filling the dark, their screams my head:

“There was a lovely view before they put them new houses up.”

I came to the ladder and pulled myself up, scraping my back on the lip to the light.

Up I went, up.

I got to the top and hauled myself back into the shed.

She was still there, trussed on her belly and tied to the bench.

I lay on the plastic sacks, panting and sweating and running on fear.

She smiled at me, drool down her chin, piss on her tights.

I grabbed a knife from the bench and cut through the ropes.

I pushed her over to the shaft and pulled her head back by her perm, the knife at her throat.

“You’re going back down there.”

I turned her around and kicked her legs into the void.

“You can climb or fall. I don’t give a fuck.”

She put a foot upon a rung and began to climb down, her eyes on mine.

“Until death do you part,” I spat after her.

Her eyes shone up from the dark, not blinking.

I turned round, picked up the thick black rope, and swung the manhole cover back over the hole.

I grabbed a bag of cement and hauled it over on to the manhole, and then another, and another, and another.

Then I took bags of fertiliser and put them on top of the bags of cement.

I sat on the bags and felt my legs and feet go cold.

I got up and picked a padlock and a key off the work-bench.

I got up and went out of the shed. I closed the door and locked it with the padlock.

I ran down the field, throwing the key off into the mud.

The door to Number 16 was still ajar, Crown Court on the TV.

I went inside and took a shit.

I turned off the TV.

I sat on their sofa and thought about Paula.

Then I went through their rooms and all of their drawers.

I found a shotgun in the wardrobe and boxes of shells. I wrapped it in a bin bag and went out to the car. I put the shotgun and the shells in the boot of the Maxi.

I went back to the bungalow and had a last look around, then I locked the door and went down the path.

I stood by the wall and looked up at the black row of sheds, the rain on my face, me covered in mud.

I got in the car and drove away.

4 LUV .

All for love.

Shangrila, raindrops falling from its gutters, crouched alone against the worn grey sky.

I parked behind another dirty hedge on another empty road and walked up another sad drive.

It was sleeting and I wondered again if it made a blind bit of difference to the giant orange fish in the pond and I knew George Marsh was suffering and that Don Foster must have suffered too and I didn’t know how that made me feel.

I wanted to go and see those big bright fish, but I kept on walking.

There were no cars in the drive, just two wet pints of milk sitting on the doorstep in a wire-frame basket.

I felt sick and scared.

I looked down.

I had a shotgun in my arms.

I pressed the doorbell and listened to the chimes echo through Shangrila, thinking of George Marsh’s bloody cock and Don Foster’s bloody knees.

There was no answer.

I pressed the doorbell again and started knocking with the butt of the gun.

Still no answer.

I tried the door.

It was open.

I went inside.

“Hello?”

The house was cold and almost quiet.

I stood in the hallway and said again, “Hello?”

There was a low hissing noise followed by a repeated dull click.

I turned left into a large white living room.

Above an unused fireplace there was an enlarged black and white photograph of a swan taking off from a lake.

She wasn’t alone:

On every table, on every shelf, on every windowsill, wooden swans, glass swans, and china swans.

Swans in flight, swans asleep, and two giant swans kissing, their necks and bills forming a big love-heart.

Two swans swimming.

Bingo.

Even down to the matchboxes above the empty fireplace.

I stood staring at the swans, listening to the hissing and the clicking.

The room was freezing.

I walked over to a big wooden box, leaving muddy footprints on the cream carpet. I put down the shotgun and lifted up the lid of the box and picked the needle off the record. It was Mahler.

Songs for Dead Children.

I turned around suddenly, looking out across the lawn, thinking I could hear a car coming up the drive.

It was just the wind.

I went over to the window and stood looking down at the hedge.

There was something down there, something in the garden.

For a moment, I thought I could see a brown-haired gypsy girl sitting under the hedge, barefoot with twigs in her hair.

I closed my eyes, opened them, and she was gone.

I could hear a faint drumming sound.

I stepped back on to a deep cream rug, kicking a glass that was already lying on its side in a damp stain. I picked it up and placed it on a swan coaster on a glass coffee table, next to a newspaper.

It was today’s newspaper, my newspaper.

Two huge headlines, two days before Christmas:

RL STAR’S SISTER MURDERED.

COUNCILLOR RESIGNS.

Two faces, two sets of dark newsprint eyes staring up at me.

Two stories, by Jack fucking Whitehead and George Greaves.

I picked up the paper, sat down on a big cream sofa, and read the news:

The body of Mrs Paula Garland was found by police at her Castle-ford home early Sunday morning, after neighbours reported hearing screams.

Mrs Garland, thirty-two, was the sister of Wakefield Trinity forward Johnny Kelly. In 1969, Mrs Garland’s daughter Jeanette, aged eight, disappeared on her way home from school and, despite a massive police hunt, has never been found. Two years later, in 1971, Mrs Garland’s husband Geoff committed suicide.

Police sources told this correspondent that they are treating Mrs Garland’s death as murder and a number of people are believed to be helping police with their enquiries. A news conference has been sched uled for early Monday morning.

Johnny Kelly, twenty-eight, was unavailable for comment.

The dark newsprint eyes, Paula not smiling, looking already dead.

William Shaw, the Labour leader and Chairman of the new Wake-field Metropolitan District Council, resigned on Sunday in a move that shocked the city.

In a brief statement, Shaw, fifty-eight, cited increasing ill-health as the reason behind his decision.

Shaw, the older brother of the Home Office Minister of State Robert Shaw, entered Labour politics through the Transport and General Workers’ Union. He rose to be a regional organiser and repre sented the T.G.W.U. on the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party.

A former Alderman and active for many years in West Riding politics, Shaw was, however, a leading advocate of Local Government reform and had been a member of the Redcliffe Maud Committee.

Shaw’s election as Chairman of the first Wakefield Metropolitan District Council had been widely welcomed as ensuring a smooth transition during the changeover from the old West Riding.

Local Government sources, last night, expressed consternation and dismay at the timing of Mr Shaw’s resignation.

Mr Shaw is also Acting Chairman of the West Yorkshire Police Authority and it is unclear as to whether he will continue.

Home Office Minister of State Robert Shaw was unavailable for comment on his brother’s resignation. Mr Shaw himself is believed to be staying with friends in France.

Two more dark newsprint eyes, Shaw not smiling, looking already dead.

Oh fucking boy.

“The Great British Public get the kind of truth they deserve.”

And I’d got mine.

I put down the paper and closed my eyes.

I saw them at their typewriters, Jack and George, stinking of Scotch, knowing their secrets, telling their lies.

I saw Hadden, reading their lies, knowing their secrets, pouring their Scotch.

I wanted to sleep for a thousand years, to wake up when their like were gone, when I didn’t have their dirty black ink on my fingers, in my blood.

But the fucking house wouldn’t let me be, the typewriter keys mixing with that faint drumming noise, chattering in my ears, deafening my skull and bones.

I opened my eyes. On the sofa next to me were huge rolled-up papers, architect’s plans.

I laid one out across the glass coffee table, over Paula and Shaw.

It was for a shopping centre, The Swan Centre.

To be built at the Hunslet and Beeston exit of the M1.

I closed my eyes again, my little gypsy girl standing in her ring of fire.

“Because of the fucking money.”

The Swan Centre:

Shaw, Dawson, Foster.

The Box Brothers wanting in.

Foster fucking with the Boxes.

Shaw and Dawson putting their various pleasures before business.

Foster as Ringmaster, trying to keep the fucking circus on the road.

Everybody out of their league, their tree, whatever.

Everybody fucked.

“Because of the fucking money.”

I stood up and walked out of the living room, into a cold and light expensive kitchen.

A tap was running into an empty stainless steel sink. I turned it off.

I could still hear the drumming.

There was a door to the back garden and another to the garage.

The drumming was coming from behind the second door.

I tried to open the door but it wouldn’t.

From under the door I saw four slight trickles of water.

I tried the door again and it still wouldn’t open.

I flew out the back door and ran round to the front of the house.

There were no windows built into the garage.

I tried to open the double garage doors but they wouldn’t.

I went back inside through the front door.

A ring of keys was hanging by another from inside the keyhole.

I took the keys back into the kitchen and the drumming.

I tried the biggest, the smallest, and another.

The lock turned.

I opened the door and swallowed exhaust fumes.

Fuck.

A Jaguar, engine running, sat alone in the dark on the far side of the double garage.

Fuck.

I grabbed a kitchen chair and wedged the door open, kicking away a pile of damp tea-towels.

I ran across the garage, the light from the kitchen shining on two people in the front seat and a hosepipe running from the exhaust into a back window.

The car radio was on loud, Elton belting out Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

I ripped the hose and more wet towels out of the exhaust pipe and tried the driver’s door.

Locked.

I ran round to the passenger door, opened it and caught a lung full of carbon monoxide and Mrs Marjorie Dawson, still looking like my mother, a bloody crimson freezer bag wrapped round her head, as she fell into my knees.

I tried to push her back upright, leaning across the body to turn off the ignition.

John Dawson was slumped against the steering wheel, another freezer bag over his head, his hands bound before him.

“Here we go again. Reckless talk costs lives.”

They were both blue and dead.

Fuck.

I switched off the ignition and Elton and sat back on the garage floor, bringing Mrs Dawson with me, her head in the bag in my lap, the two of us staring up at her husband.

The architect.

John Dawson, at last and too late, a face in a plastic freezer bag.

John bloody Dawson, ever the ghost and now for real, a ghost in a plastic freezer bag.

John fucking Dawson, just his works remaining, looming and haunting, leaving me as robbed and fucked as the rest of them; robbed of the chance to ever know and fucked of the hope it might bring, sat there before him with his wife in my arms, desperate to raise the dead for just one second, desperate to raise the dead for just one word.

Silence.

I raised Mrs Dawson as gently as I could back into the Jaguar, propping her up against her husband, their freezer bag heads slumped together in more, more, fucking silence.

Fuck.

“Reckless talk costs lives.”

I took out my dirty grey handkerchief and started the dusting.

Five minutes later I closed the door to the kitchen and went back into the house.

I sat down on the sofa next to their plans, their schemes, their fucked-up dreams, and thought of my own, the shotgun in my lap.

The house was quiet.

Silent.

I stood up and walked out of the front door of Shangrila.

I drove back to the Redbeck, the radio off, the wipers squeaking like rats in the dark.

I parked in a puddle and took the black bin-bag from the boot. I limped across the car park, every limb stiff from my time underground.

I opened the door and went in out of the rain.

Room 27 was cold and no home, Sergeant Fraser long gone.

I sat on the floor with the lights off, listening to the lorries come and go, thinking of Paula and barefoot dances to Top of the Pops just days ago, from another age.

I thought of BJ and Jimmy Ashworth, of teenage boys crouched in the giant wardrobes of damp rooms.

I thought of the Myshkins and the Marshes, the Dawsons and the Shaws, the Fosters and the Boxes, of their lives and of their crimes.

Then I thought of men underground, of the children they stole, and of the mothers they left.

And, when I could cry no more, I thought of my own mother and I stood up.

The yellows of the lobby were brighter than ever, the stink stronger.

I picked up the receiver, dialled, and put the coin to the slot.

“Hello?”

I dropped the coin in the box. “It’s me.”

“What do you want?”

Through the double glass doors, the pool room was dead^

“To say I’m sorry.”

“What did they do to you?”

I looked round at the brown lobby chairs, looking for the old woman.

“Nothing.”

“One of them slapped me, you know.”

I could feel my eyes stinging.

“In my own house, Edward!”

“I’m sorry.”

She was crying. I could hear my sister’s voice in the back ground. She was shouting at my mother. I stared at the names and the promises, the threats and the numbers, scribbled by the payphone.

“Please come home.”

“I can’t.”

“Edward!”

“I’m really sorry, Mum.”

“Please!”

“I love you.”

I hung up.

I picked the receiver up again, tried to dial Kathryn’s number, couldn’t remember it, hung up again, and ran back through the rain to Room 27.

The sky above was big and blue without a cloud.

She was outside in the street, pulling a red cardigan tight around her, smiling.

Her hair was blonde and blowing in the breeze.

She reached out towards me, putting her arms around my neck and shoulders.

“I’m no angel,” she whispered into my hair.

We kissed, her tongue hard against mine.

I moved my hands down her back, crushing our bodies closer together.

The wind whipped my face with her hair.

She broke off our kiss as I came;

I woke on the floor with come in my pants.

Down to my underpants at the sink of my Redbeck room, luke warm grey water slopping down my chest and on to the floor, wanting to go home but not wishing to be anyone’s son, photo graphs of daughters smiling in the mirror.

Crosslegged on the floor of my Redbeck room, unravelling the black bandages around my hand, stopping just short of the mess and the flesh, ripping another sheet with my teeth and binding my hand with the strips, worse wounds grinning from the wall above.

Back in my muddy clothes at the door of my Redbeck room, swallowing pills and lighting cigarettes, wanting to sleep but not wishing to dream, thinking this’ll be the day that I die, pictures of Paula waving bye-bye.