by David Peace
You stagger on, on fat legs and fat feet -
Through the muck and the mud, the sound of rats here with you -
Near.
You stumble on a shoe -
A child’s summer sandal, covered in dust -
You wipe away the dust -
A child’s summer sandal, scuffed.
You leave it. You go on -
Back ripped raw from the beams and the bricks -
Until the roof rises again and you can stand in the shadow of a pile of rock.
You wait. You wait. You wait.
You turn the corner past the pile of rock and -
Fuck -
You see two skeletons lying on a bed of dead roses and old feathers, skulls turned up to a faded sky of bricks once blue, black cotton wool clouds stuck here and there among dim swinging Davy lamps -
Two skeletons entwined in osseous embrace -
Their black son rising out of the ground into the dim lamplight -
Into the lamplight, a hammer in his hand:
Leonard Marsh -
Little Leonard Marsh, a hammer in his hand -
Head shaved and chest bare, coming towards you -
His chest in bloody scars, it reads:
O LUV .
You do not move. You wait for Leonard Marsh -
A hammer in his hand, coming towards you.
You do not move. You wait until Leonard Marsh is almost upon you -
A hammer in his hand, coming towards you.
You raise the brick in your fist. You bring it down hard into the side of his head -
Leonard Marsh howls. He tries to bring the hammer down -
The hammer in his hand.
You raise the brick in your fist again. You bring it down hard again -
Leonard Marsh howling, trying to stand.
But you are behind him now and you have his hammer in your hand-
‘Remember me?’ you whisper.
Blind with his blood, you stop -
In this one long tunnel of hate, you see yourself;
In the ten broken mirrors -
The boxes and the bones -
The shadows and the lights -
The tape recorders and the screams -
The dead flowers and the feathers -
You see yourself and Leonard among the feathers -
Among the wings;
Your feathers and your wings -
Both stuck with his blood.
His mouth opens and closes again -
You put the hammer down.
‘No-one even looked,’ he whispers.
‘I know,’ you nod.
‘No-one.’
You wipe the tears from his cheek. You kiss his head. You say: ‘I know.’
He closes his eyes.
You put your wings over his mouth -
‘The children of sinners are abominable children -
Your wings, huge and rotting things -
‘And they frequent the haunts of the ungodly.
Big black raven things -
‘Children will blame an ungodly father -
Heavy and burnt, over his mouth.
‘For they suffer disgrace because of him.
He tries to raise his hand -
‘But whatever comes from the earth returns to the earth -
Tries to stop you -
‘So the ungodly go from curse to destruction.’
Stop you -
D-1 .
Chapter 60
He walks up path. He knocks on door.
‘It’s not locked,’ I shout downstairs.
He opens door. He steps inside.
‘Up here.’
He turns. He starts to walk upstairs. He reaches top of stairs. He stops.
Door is on its side, blocking his path.
He can see my mother lying on floor of back bedroom.
He climbs over door -
I turn -
Turn from out of front bedroom -
I thrust knife though his coat -
Through his coat, deep into his belly:
‘Hello,’ I say.
I pull knife out. I push it back in -
Back in, up and under his ribs.
‘Hello from back seat hard on last bus home, one that got away and lived to tell tale, from Barry Gannon and Eddie Dunford, Derek Box and his mate Paul, from my mate Clare and her sister Grace, Billy Bell and his spilt pint, from John Dawson and his brother Richard, Donald Foster and Johnny Kelly, from Pat they fucked and left behind, Jeanette Garland and her mum Paula, from Susan Ridyard and Clare Kemplay, Hazel Atkins and every missing child in this whole fucking world, from Graham Goldthorpe and his murdered Mary, Janice Ryan and Bad Bobby Fraser, from Eric Hall and his wife Libby, Peter Hunter and Evil Ken Drury, from Steve Barton and his brother Clive, Keith Lee and Kenny D, from Two Sevens and Joseph Rose, Ronnie Angus and George Oldman, from lovely Bill Shaw and Blind Old Walter, poor Jack Whitehead and Ka Su Peng, from Strafford Public House and Griffin hotel, Millgarth and Wood Street nicks, from Gaiety and both St Marys, motorways and car parks, from parks and toilets, idle rich and unemployed, from Maggie Thatcher and Michael Foot, from SWP and National Front, IRA and UDA, from M &S and C &A, Tesco and Co-op and every shopping centre in this wounded, wounded land, from shit they sell and shit we buy, my old mum and Queen sodding Mum, from kids with no mum and mums with no kid, Black Panther and Yorkshire Ripper, from Liddle Towers and Blair Peach, black bodies in Calder and ones in Aire, from all dead meat and my dead friends, pubs and clubs, from gutters and stars, local tips and old slag heaps, from ladies of night and boys in bogs, headlights and brake-lights, high life and low, from mucky mags and dirty vids, silent pits and page three tits, from Nazis and Witches, West Yorkshire coppers and their bent mates, from all little shits and things we get to see, dead bodies piled up in first-floor bars, stink of shotguns mixed with beer, sirens that howl for ten long years bloodstained with fear, from one that got away, un-lucky one, from Dachau to Belsen, Auschwitz to Preston, from Wakefield to Leeds, Stanley Royd and fucking North, from West bloody Riding and Red Riding Hood, final solution and wrath of God, from Church of Abandoned Christ and her twenty-two disciples, Michael Williams and Jack’s wife Carol, from pictures and tapes, murders and rapes, from whispers and rumours, cancers and tumours, from badgers and owls, wolves and swans -’
I twist knife:
‘This is for all things you made me do, for all things you had me see, for every cock I’ve ever sucked and every night I’ve never slept, for voices in my head and silence of night, for hole in my head and scars on my back, words on my chest, for boy I was and them boys that saw, Michael Myshkin and Jimmy Ash, fat Johnny Piggott and his brother Pete, Leonard Marsh and his dad George, for every little lad you ever fucked and all their dads who liked to watch, with their cameras in their hands and their cocks in my arse, your tongue in my mouth and your lies in my ear, loving you loving me, his nails in my hands and yours in my head, for that knife in my heart and this one in you -’
‘Goodbye Dragon,’ I spit -
I pull knife back out again and -
With one last kiss -
I let him fall -
Backwards -
Down -
Stairs.
Bare-chested and soaked in blood -
I turn. I see myself in bathroom mirror:
Hole in my head -
Stumps in my back -
Seven letters on my chest:
One Love.
‘Barry!’ she is screaming. ‘Barry!’
I follow him downstairs to front door -
I open it.
Maurice is coming up garden path.
I strike a match.
He stops. He stares.
I let it fall -
Our house starts to burn.
I step over dead body of Martin Laws -
Into red rain, white floodlights and police lights blue.
My shoes gone, I walk barefoot into garden.
Head bobbed and wreathed, I drop knife and raise shotgun.
Chapter 61
There were no sirens, only silence -
No lights, only darkness.
We parked under Millgarth. I did not go upstairs -
Angus would be waiting:
More crimes and more lies, more lies and more crimes.
I walked through the market. I walked through the dawn -
Thursday 9 June 1983.
I cut through the backstreets. I ran up the Headrow.
I turned on to Cookridge Street.
I opened the door into the Church of Saint Anne.
I staggered down the side aisle.
I fell before the Pietа.
I took off my terrible glasses. I closed my tired eyes.
I prayed:
‘Lord, I do not understand my own actions.
I know that nothing good dwells within me, in my flesh.
I do not do what I want, but I do the very things that I hate.
I can will what is right but I cannot do it.
I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
When I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.
Wretched and damned man that I am!
Will you rescue me from this body of death?’
I opened my eyes. I looked up at Christ -
The wounded, dead Christ.
I was crying as I stood -
I was crying as I turned to go -
I was crying when I saw him.
He was sat among the Stations. His head shaved -
He was dressed in white, bleeding from his hands and his feet.
There were children sat around him -
Little girls and little boys.
‘Jack?’
He smiled at me.
‘Jack?’
He stared through me.
‘What?’ I cried. ‘What can you see?’
He was smiling. He was staring at the Pietа-
‘How can you still fucking believe?’ I shouted. ‘After all the things you’ve seen?’
‘It’s the things I’ve not seen,’ he said.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘During an eclipse there is no sun,’ he smiled. ‘Only darkness.’
‘I don’t -’
‘The sun is still there,’ he said. ‘You just can’t see it.’
‘I -’
‘But in your heart you know the sun will shine again, don’t you?’
I nodded.
‘Faith,’ he whispered -
‘The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’
I turned again to the Pietа. I turned back to the wounded Christ -
No other name.
There was a hand squeezing mine -
A ten-year-old girl with blue eyes and long straight fair hair, wearing an orange waterproof kagool, a dark blue turtleneck sweater, pale blue denim trousers with a distinctive eagle motif on the back left pocket and red Wellington boots, holding a plastic Co-op carrier bag in her other hand.
I looked down at my hand in hers -
There were no bruises on the backs of my hands.
‘He was not abandoned,’ smiled Clare. ‘He is loved.’
Chapter 62
Thursday 9 June 1983-
D-Day:
Flat 5, 28 Blenheim Road, St John’s, Wakefield -
Heart lost.
You can’t go to sleep; you can’t go to sleep; you can’t go to sleep -
The branches still tapping against the pane -
Everybody knows;
You are lying on your back in your underpants and wings -
The branches tapping against the pane -
Everybody knows;
You are lying on your back in your underpants and wings, black with his blood, black with all their blood -
The branches banging against the pane -
Everybody knows;
You are lying on your back in your underpants and wings, black with his blood, black with all their blood, that terrible tune and her words in your head -
Everybody knows; everybody knows, everybody knows and -
The branches cracking the pane.
You look at your watch. You see it is time:
2.25 a.m.
You get out of bed. You walk across the floor upon your knees.
You switch on the radio. The TV too -
The Hate:
‘Where there is discord, may we bring harmony -
The Hate:
‘Where there is error, may we bring truth -
The Hate:
‘Where there is doubt, may we bring faith -
The Hate:
‘Where there is despair, may we bring hope.’
Radio off. The TV too -
The branches have smashed the pane.
The rain pouring in -
No hope for Britain.
*
You open the bathroom door. You step inside. You turn on the bath taps. You put a circle of salt around the bath. You take out a pair of scissors. You cut your hair. You cut your nails. You take out a razor. You shave your head. You place the hair and the nails in an envelope. You put the envelope in the sink. You light a match. You burn the envelope. You look up into the mirror.
In blood, it states:
Nobody cares.
You get in the bath. You lie in the bath in your wings -
The water is warm.
You see the scenes; see the scenes as you could not at the time -
The shadows in your heart, the fear and the hate -
The hate and the fear.
You put all your fear and all your hate together and get:
Yorkshire, England, 1983.
You pick up the razor blade from the side of the bath:
My county, my country, right or wrong.
Four tears trickle down the sides of your nose.
But it’s all right, everything is all right, the struggle is finished -
The water red.
You write three last words on a piece of damp paper.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following people for their support during the writing of the Quartet:
James Anderson, Marcel Berlins and the Times, the staff of Books Etc Covent Garden, Borders Leeds, Jenny Boyce, George and Gill Chambers, Hiroyuki Chida, Julian Cleator, Crime Time, Jim Driver, Simon and Chiaki Evans, Judith and Reg Eyles, Max Farrar, Anne and Dave Francis, Robert and Astrid Fraser and family, Gregory Gannon, Leland and Carolyn Gaskins, Shigeko and Daisuke Goto, Franзois Guйrif, Alan Hadden and family, Richard and Alison Hall, Tamako Hamaguchi, Paula Hammerton, Seishu Hase, Nick Hasted, Hiroshi Hayakawa and all the staff of Hayakawa Publishing, Michael Hayden and Sam Dwyer, Jon Haynes, Shizuyo Ide, Jonathan Kelly, Darren Kemplay, Mrs Lambert, Paul Landymore, Pete and Persis Lunt, Maxim and all the staff at Murder One, Hamish Macaskill, Takashi Matsuki, Yumiko Mikado, the Nash family, Chris Nelson and the Big Issue in the North, Yasuko Nomura, Joseph O’Neill, Basil and Felicity Peace, Jonathan Peace, George P. Pelecanos, Ruth Petrie, Justin Quirk, Jon Riley, Junzo Sawa, Yukako Higuchi and all the staff at the English Agency Japan, the staff of Serpent’s Tail, Stephen Shoebridge, Mario Tauchi, Stuart Turnbull, Cathi Unsworth, Nicola Upson at the New Statesman, Anna Vallois, Marco Vicentini, Andrew Vine and the Yorkshire Post, Tomohiro Yoshida, the staff of Waterstone’s Leeds and Manchester, Sarn and Tara Warbis, Daina and Keri Warbis, Paul Westlake, Lynda Wigelsworth and family, Bob and Celia Wilkinson and family, Gareth and Sophia Williams, Mark and Susan Williams, Michael Williams, and last but most of all Izumi, George and Emi Peace. Thank you.
David Peace
David Peace is the author of The Red Riding Quartet, GB84, The Damned Utd, Tokyo Year Zero, and Occupied City. He was chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists, and has received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the German Crime Fiction Award, and the French Grand Prix de Roman Noir for Best Foreign Nov
el. He lives in Yorkshire.
***
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