by Danny Rhodes
‘He just about said as much.’
‘Fuck off, mate. It’s in that house he lives in. In that fucking pristine lawn of his. It’s in that fucking missus of his, too. And his kids.’
‘I hope not, for all of them.’
‘It’s simmering, mate. You mark my fucking words.’
‘Fucking hell…’
‘I fucking hope so, mate. I fucking hope so.’ BJ laughed.
‘What happened with you and Hopper anyway?’ asked Finchy.
‘Eh?’
‘You two were like that.’
Finchy pinched his finger and thumb together.
BJ shrugged, smiled his quiet smile, diverted his eyes to the TV.
‘Life, mate. Life’s what happened. He got married. I didn’t. He stopped flirting with the old bill. I didn’t. That’s about the sum of it. I got nicked at Bramall Lane, he wiped his hands. Fucking SYP again.’
‘I remember how hostile they were. I remember that. On the bus up from the station, on the Penistone Road…’
‘That’s the SYP for you. Those bastards fucked everybody over, just like they fucked the blokes at Orgreave.’
‘Some of them, mate. Not all of them. I saw police in tears that day.’
‘Aye, some of them. And some of them lied … anyway, fuck it. I don’t want to talk about that any more. I’m done talking about it. I thought you were going to call your missus.’
Finchy thought about Kelly, of the early years, the life they had then, their social circle, the travelling, the two of them in catering jobs they forgot about the moment they came off a shift. Everything easy. He thought about Hopper in the cul-de-sac, the freshly cut lawn, the cosy shape of his missus beyond the frosted glass, the way she’d looked at him when he turned up on the doorstep. He looked at BJ laid out on the sofa, at the piles of match-day programmes on the carpet. He looked at the stacks of DVDs, the row of coffee mugs on the TV, the tin cans. His mind drifted once more to Kelly, the circle forever completing itself, the look on her face when she told him the test result, the fucking joy there, and he thought of how he’d well and truly wiped that fucking joy off her face, how he’d crushed that joy with his reaction. He was suddenly full of self-loathing.
Not for the fucking first time.
‘Just gonna borrow your phone, mate,’ he said.
BJ barely stirred.
‘Stick your cash in the jar,’ he said.
There was no jar. He dialled home, thinking how fucking strange that word was. He really didn’t know what home was any more, where the fuck to lay his hat or plonk his backside. Still, a phone rang in some distant fucking place, rang and fucking rang, rang some more.
It’s me. Don’t hang up. I love you.
Ha fucking ha.
I want the same things you want.
Pull the other one.
I’ve been a coward.
Now you’re talking.
I had some problems but I’ve dealt with them.
Have you? Have you really?
I’m coming home.
Where the fuck is that then?
Seriously, I’m coming home.
Do what you fucking like, I won’t be here.
The phone rang and rang. He pictured the empty house, the phone sounding out in the hollow kitchen. He pictured Kelly standing beside it, waiting for it to stop, waiting to see who was calling, if it was him, too fucking stubborn to speak to him. And he imagined the other thing, the house colder than cold, exactly as he’d left it, the same mug on the side, the same unwashed pans in the sink, the bedroom door closed, hiding a diabolical secret.
His life on a fucking precipice.
The present and the past.
The past and the present.
Kelly in their early days. Kelly all arse and attitude. Right up his street.
The two of them in the corner of the club, him with one eye on the place, petrified of running into his sixth-formers. The two of them at her place. Six months of untethered fucking until the novelty wore off, a year of settled solidarity, another of soul-searching and somnambulism.
And everything that came after.
Everything that had happened since.
Another Friday evening. Him and Kelly on the sofa, pile of shite on the TV.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.
Fatal hesitation. The weight of a moment.
‘You can’t be…’
He watched her face fall.
Such a cunt.
‘I took a test.’
He got to his feet, walked into the kitchen, left her sitting there.
Such a fucking cunt.
Him pacing the lino, lost in the fuzz of information, floundering in his own terror.
It was dark out. The garden was just a black vault beyond the window. Panic black. Breathing shallow, head pounding, part of him wanted to tear into it, tear off like a mad fucker and never look back. He stopped at the kitchen door instead, turned on himself, stared across the living room to the place where he’d left her staring at the wall. And he understood what he was, what a bastard. Years of daydreaming about this moment, half a fucking lifetime and this is what she got, the cold fucking shoulder, a bloke that couldn’t see past his own arsehole. He stepped back into the living room, sat down opposite her again.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
She shook her head.
‘I get it,’ she said.
He raised his hands.
‘No, I really do get it,’ she said. ‘I’ve been there the past week.’
She shifted across on the sofa.
‘Sit down next to me,’ she said. When he didn’t move she added, ‘please.’
He placed himself next to her. She leant against him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.
‘It’s alright,’ he said.
‘Is it?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I just need a while.’
It wasn’t alright. She miscarried at twelve weeks. She was away when it happened, visiting her folks. Like a cunt, like a self-centred fucking cunt he measured his relief in pints at the local. It was two days before he went to fetch her, until he met her zombified form on the doorstep of her mother’s place.
Hard going after that. A year of toil, pathetic shots at tenderness and understanding until she started talking about trying again.
‘We didn’t try the last time,’ he said.
‘I want to try now.’
‘Soon,’ he said.
‘How soon?’
‘Christmas,’ he said. ‘Let’s try after Christmas.’
And Christmas came and went. Winter became spring. Spring became summer. He got his two banks of four in place, fended off wave after wave of pressure, happy to keep the fucking score at 0–0.
Such a fucking cunt.
And now it was October, the months grating away, a great fuck-off elephant with them in everything they did. One great fucking elephant and then another. It was all fucking elephants. A great herd of the bastards.
They were miles from each other.
In all sorts of ways.
Or worse.
When he came out of himself BJ was standing beside him.
‘What?’
‘You need to see a fucking doctor,’ said BJ.
‘Yeah? Why’s that?’
‘You’ve been muttering away to yourself for the past two minutes. You were in another fucking world.’
‘Chance would be a fine thing.’
BJ laughed.
‘Nobody’s keeping you here, mate,’ he said. ‘You know where the fucking door is. Maybe then I’ll get my favourite sofa back.’
Finchy planted a palm on the wall to steady himself.
‘These last few days have been a trial.’
‘You’re alright, mate,’ said BJ. ‘You can fuck off down south when it suits, put all of this shit behind you.’
‘I did that once already.’
‘Aye, and you’ll do it again. Not like us sad fuckers trapped he
re, forced to wake up to it every fucking day.’
‘It’s not so bad, mate.’
‘What?’
‘This place. It’s not so bad.’
‘Isn’t it? What do you fucking know about it? Seriously?’
‘I know there are worse places.’
‘No doubt, but it’s not the place I’m talking about, it’s the life, the sameness, the history on every fucking corner. It’s not fucking healthy to stay in one place. It wears you down. I should have got away like you. I didn’t have the balls.’
‘It’s never too late.’
‘Do me a favour and shut the fuck up,’ said BJ. ‘I’m talking about a decade ago.’
BJ downed the rest of the can, chucked it on the carpet.
‘Fuck this festering shit,’ he said. ‘Let’s go for a quick pint before bed.’
The office still buzzing. Blokes whispering, blokes shaking their heads, blokes being blokes. Spence on a roll.
‘The barmaid.’
‘What about her?’
‘You know they interviewed Harris about it?’
Finchy takes off his jacket, rests it on his seat.
‘Six fucking hours. Right through the night.’
Finchy. Numb in the legs and in the belly and all the way up and down his fucking arms.
‘What do you think?’ continues Spence. ‘Do you think it’s him?’
‘Rumour says he was knocking her off…’
‘Not lately. Word is she’d settled down with that bloke of hers, sorted herself out.’
Spence, setting the letters in the frame. Never fucking rushed or flapping about. Never chasing the clock. Always a step ahead. Bastard.
‘Don’t fucking joke about it.’
‘I’m not joking,’ says Spence. ‘It’s hardly something to joke about.’
Finchy picks up his first pile of letters, starts the day, hands moving on autopilot to one corner of the frame and the next, not reading the numbers, just the names, knowing every fucking name on the route now. Maybe the cunts in time and motion are right. A more personal service, they say. Except it’s shit boring. A fucking machine could do it.
‘I can’t see it,’ he says at last.
‘What?’
‘Harris. I can’t see it being him.’
‘Give me a reason.’
‘Fucking hell. You know the bloke. We all do. He might be a pisshead but he’s not a fucking murderer. He’s not going to strangle some girl, strip her half-naked and dump her in a fucking hedge bottom.’
Spence chews his bottom lip.
‘Why not?’
‘Do you think it’s him?’ asks Finchy. ‘Seriously?’
‘No,’ says Spence.
‘Well then?’
‘Well then, what?’
‘Why the fuck are you asking me if you don’t think it yourself? What the fuck is all this about?’
‘I’m just making conversation. But then I’m not CID, am I?’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘Well, they know what questions to ask. Take the other evening at your gaff for instance…’
Finchy nods. Finchy laughs. Finchy understands now. He doesn’t ask Spence how he knows or where he gets his information. He’s given up trying.
‘It was just routine,’ he says. ‘They were ticking boxes.’
‘Still,’ says Spence. ‘I don’t expect it was very pleasant.’
‘It was just routine,’ says Finchy again.
‘A routine murder investigation…’
‘They were clearing a few things up from last week.’
‘And visiting a few of their suspects, no doubt.’
‘It really wasn’t about me…’
‘Still, can’t have been easy to have the murder squad at your door.’
‘Fuck off,’ he shouts at last. He can’t help himself.
‘Is he off on one again?’ asks Jack Stanley.
‘Aye, Jack,’ says Spence. ‘All set on the hair trigger…’
‘Youth of today…’
Blokes are laughing now. Blokes are taking the piss. Everything’s firing in his direction. He tries to switch off from it, to get on with his prep, but it’s no good. He’s surrounded. They appear from the rows of frames, mischief in their eyes, eager to be part of the wind-up. Harcross appears with a fist full of mail, dumps another hundred letters on his frame.
‘You missed some.’
Harcross turns and ushers the men back to work.
‘Fuck me, you’ll be out until lunch again,’ says Spence, bundling up already, bundling up and packing his fucking bags.
Finchy stares at the frame, at the numbers and the letters, at the thin black segments. Five hundred and ninety-eight bastard gates, five hundred and ninety-eight bastard pathways, five hundred and ninety-eight bastard snapping letter boxes. He closes his eyes, thinking of Hope Close, thinking of Nobber Harris in an interrogation room. A chill runs up his spine.
Will they come for me?
‘Fuck,’ he whispers to himself.
Two hands swoop across his vision and lift a pile of letters in their grip. Stubby fingers shape the pile into a manageable form.
‘Shove over, you daft bastard,’ says Spence. ‘I’ll give you ten fucking minutes and then I’m out the door.’
‘Cheers, mate,’ says Finchy.
Four hands at the work of two.
‘They didn’t charge him, then?’ asks Finchy.
‘Of course not.’
‘What’s his alibi?’
‘Home with the missus.’
‘Six hours to sort that?’
‘I don’t think they believed her.’
‘Right, like his missus is going to protect him from that sort of thing? How do you know all this?’
‘Robbie’s been over there. Can’t keep a fucking thing to himself.’
He laughs.
‘Surprised they haven’t had you in,’ says Spence.
A lurch in the belly.
‘Why the fuck would they do that?’
‘It’s your patch.’
‘So what? What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Maybe you saw something.’
‘I didn’t see a thing.’
‘You’re a Bell man.’
‘So are half the lads in the town.’
‘Single male. Desperate for a bit. Sexy barmaid…’
‘Desperate? Fuck off.’
‘… no alib—’
‘I stayed in. That’s an alibi.’
‘Well, that’s what you told them.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘Of course it is, mate. Of course it is. Then there’s trying to implicate others…’
‘Eh?’
‘Telling all and sundry her personal history…’
‘Fucking hell. It’s common knowledge. I didn’t tell them anything they didn’t know. Three blokes I mentioned. Three blokes.’
‘Old Arnie’s well fucked off with you.’
‘What for?’
‘Telling them he’d had a bit…’
‘What makes him think I told them?’
‘They told him. They asked about you…’
‘Fuck off. They knew about him already. They asked me what I knew.’
Spence, laughing away, a source of amusement to himself.
‘You’re a prick,’ says Finchy. ‘You know that?’
‘Fucking hilarious, though,’ says Spence. He slips the last letter into its slot. ‘There. How’s that?’
Spence in shirtsleeves, heaving his bag over his shoulder.
‘Four,’ he says.
‘Eh?’
‘You said three. It’s four.’
‘Four what?’
‘Four blokes.’
‘Who?’
Spence shakes his head.
‘I’m not a stirring bastard,’ he says. ‘You know me better than that.’
Spence winks in Finchy’s direction.
‘Who is it?’
/>
He shakes his head again, taps a finger against his nose.
‘Not so long ago, either.’
And then he’s away, down the line of frames, around the end of the row and out of sight. Finchy turns back to the frame, to sorting the bundles, finds a rogue fucking letter in the first slot, another and another and another.
Spence. Practical fucking joker.
Finchy jumps from his seat and runs out the door. No sign of the cunt at the bike sheds. He hops off the ramp, jogs across the yard to the gates. Spence is a hundred yards away, pedalling furiously in the direction of the railway bridge. Spence looks over his shoulder and waves.
Cunt.
Finchy turns back and heads inside. Harcross gives him a look and taps his watch. He goes back to the frame and works his way through the bundles rectifying Spence’s wind-up, thinking about the lads, trying to decipher who number four might be, trying to remember what the fuck occurred in the hours with the American bird and afterwards, how the fuck he wound up crashed at the bottom of the stairwell sporting bruises to his arms and legs, covered in shit, cursing his flatmate for keeping dodgy fucking beans and the American lass for making him bite off more than he could chew.
In the locker room, sorting his bags, he doesn’t hear Arnie Burrows come up behind him, doesn’t know he’s there until the little bastard has him cornered.
‘Oi, what the fuck have you been saying about me?’
‘Eh?’
‘You fucking know. To CID. What the fuck have you been saying?’
He tries to speak, to explain, but he can’t get a word in.
‘I’ve got a wife and kids,’ says Burrows.
Red face. Wide eyes. Dark black circles.
‘I didn’t tell them anything,’ says Finchy.
‘Well, you fucking told them something. Because at 3 a.m. this morning I was in the nick answering their fucking questions and now my wife thinks I’ve been dipping my wick where it doesn’t belong and she’s took the kids to her mam’s, so you said fucking something.’
‘Rumours,’ he says. ‘I told them they were rumours.’
‘You didn’t have to tell them anything.’
‘They already knew.’
‘Is that right? Is that the fucking case? That’s not what they told me. They said you’d been naming names, pointing the finger.’
‘Arnie,’ he says. ‘I didn’t tell them anything. They’re chasing shadows. They don’t have a fucking clue…’
Jack Stanley comes in to get his bags. He stops at the door, leans against the frame, folds his arms.