by David Peace
Hadden looked at his watch and sighed, ‘What do you know about what Barry’s been doing?’
‘Dawsongate? Just what everyone knows, I suppose.’
‘And what do you think? Just between you and me?’ He was leading me, but I’d no idea where we were going or why.
I let myself be led. ‘Between you and me? I think there’s definitely a story there. I just think it’s more up Construction Weekly’s street than ours.’
‘Then we think alike,’ grinned Hadden, picking up a thick manila envelope and handing it across the desk to me. ‘This is all the work that Barry’s done so far and submitted to the legal department.’
‘The legal department?’ I felt like fucking Polly the bleeding Parrot.
‘Yeah. And, frankly, the legal boys reckon we’d be lucky to print one single bloody sentence of it.’
‘Right.’
‘I don’t expect you to read it all, but Barry doesn’t tolerate fools so …’
‘I see,’ I said, patting the fat envelope on my knee, eager to please if it meant …
‘And finally, while you’re out that way, I want you to do another piece on the Ratcatcher.’
Fuck.
‘Another piece?’ New depths, my heart on the floor.
‘Very popular. Your best piece. Lots of letters. And now that neighbour …’
‘Mrs Sheard?’ I said, against my will.
‘Yep, that’s her. Mrs Enid Sheard. She phoned and said she wants to talk.’
‘For a price.’
Hadden was frowning. ‘Yeah.’
‘Miserable bitch.’
Hadden looked mildly annoyed, but pressed on. ‘So I thought, after you’ve been over to Castleford, you could pop in and see her. It’d be just right for Tuesday’s supplement.’
‘Yeah. OK. But, I’m sorry, but what about Clare Kemplay?’ It came from despair and the pit of my belly, from a man seeing only building sites and rats.
Bill Hadden looked momentarily taken aback by the pitiful whine of my question, before he remembered to stand up and say, ‘Don’t worry. As I say, Jack’ll hold the fort and he’s promised me he’ll work as a team with you. Just talk to him.’
‘He hates my guts,’ I said, refusing to move or hum along.
‘Jack Whitehead hates everybody,’ said Bill Hadden, opening the door.
*
Saturday teatime, downstairs the office thankfully quiet, mercifully devoid of Jack fucking Whitehead, the Sunday Post already in bed.
Leeds United must have won, but I didn’t give a fuck.
I’d lost.
‘Have you seen Jack?’
Kathryn alone at her desk, waiting. ‘He’ll be at Pinderfields won’t he? For the post-mortem?’
‘Fuck.’ The story gone, visions of waves upon waves of more and more rats scurrying across mile upon mile of building sites.
I slumped down at my desk.
Someone had left a copy of the Sunday Post on top of my typewriter. It didn’t take Frank fucking Cannon to work out who.
MURDERED – BY JACK WHITEHEAD, CRIME REPORTER OF THE YEAR.
I picked it up.
The naked body of nine-year-old Clare Kemplay was found early yesterday morning by workmen in Devil’s Ditch, Wakefield.
An initial medical examination failed to determine the exact cause of death, however, Detective Chief Superintendent George Oldman, the man who had been leading the search for Clare, immediately launched a murder investigation.
It was expected that Dr Alan Coutts, the Home Office Pathologist, would conduct a post-mortem late Saturday evening.
Clare had not been seen since Thursday teatime when she went missing on her way home from Morley Grange Junior and Infants. Her disappearance sparked one of the biggest police searches seen in the county with hundreds of local people joining police in searches of Morley and nearby open land.
Initial police enquiries are concentrating on anyone who may have been in the vicinity of Devil’s Ditch between midnight Friday and six a.m. Saturday morning. Police would particularly like to speak to anyone who may have noticed any vehicles parked near Devil’s Ditch between those hours. Anyone with information should contact their nearest police station or the Murder Room direct on Wakefield 3838.
Mr and Mrs Kemplay and their son are being comforted by relatives and neighbours.
If it bleeds, it leads.
‘How’d it go with Hadden?’ Kathryn was standing over my desk.
‘How do you fucking think,’ I spat, rubbing my eyes, looking for someone easy.
Kathryn fought back tears. ‘Barry says to tell you he’ll pick you up at ten tomorrow. At your mother’s.’
‘Tomorrow’s bloody Sunday.’
‘Well why don’t you go and ask Barry. I’m not your bloody secretary. I’m a fucking journalist too.’
I stood up and left the office, afraid someone would come in.
In the front room, my father’s Beethoven as loud as I dared.
My mother in the back room, the TV louder still: ballroom dancing and show jumping.
Fucking horses.
Next door’s barking through the Fifth.
Fucking dogs.
I poured the rest of the Scotch into the glass and remembered the time when I’d actually wanted to be a fucking policeman, but was too scared shitless to even try.
Fucking pigs.
I drank half the glass and remembered all the novels I wanted to write, but was too scared shitless to even try.
Fucking bookworm.
I flicked a cat hair off my trousers, trousers my father had made, trousers that would outlast us all. I picked off another hair.
Fucking cats.
I swallowed the last of the Scotch from my glass, unlaced my shoes and stood up. I took off my trousers and then my shirt. I screwed the clothes up into a ball and threw them across the room at fucking Ludwig.
I sat back down in my white underpants and vest and closed my eyes, too scared shitless to face Jack fucking Whitehead.
Too scared shitless to fight for my own story.
Too scared shitless to even try.
Fucking chicken.
I didn’t hear my mother come in.
‘There’s someone on the phone for you love,’ she said, drawing the front room curtains.
‘Edward Dunford speaking,’ I said into the hall phone, doing up my trousers and looking at my father’s watch:
11.35 p.m.
A man: ‘Saturday night all right for fighting?’
‘Who’s this?’
Silence.
‘Who is it?’
A stifled laugh and then, ‘You don’t need to know.’
‘What do you want?’
‘You interested in the Romany Way?’
‘What?’
‘White vans and gyppos?’
‘Where?’
‘Hunslet Beeston exit of the M1.’
‘When?’
‘You’re late.’
The line went dead.
Chapter 3
Just gone midnight, Sunday 15 December 1974.
The Hunslet and Beeston exit of the M1.
It came out of the dark at me like I’d been asleep my whole life:
Tall yellows and strange oranges, burning blues and real reds, lighting up the black night to the left of the motorway.
Hunslet Carr ablaze.
I pulled up fast on the hard shoulder, hazard lights on, thinking the whole of fucking Leeds must be able to see this.
I grabbed my notebook and bolted out of the car, scrambling up the embankment at the side of the motorway, crawling through the mud and bushes towards the fire and the noise; the noise, revving engines and the thunderous, continuous, monotonous banging of time itself being beaten out.
At the top of the motorway embankment I pulled myself up on my elbows and lay on my belly staring down into hell. There below me in the basin of Hunslet Carr, just 500 yards beneath me, was my England on the morning of Sunday 15 December, in the yea
r of Our Lord 1974, looking a thousand years younger and none the better.
A gypsy camp on fire, each of the twenty or so caravans and trailers ablaze, each beyond relief; the Hunslet gypsy camp I’d seen out of the corner of my eye every single time I’d driven into work, now one big fat bowl of fire and hate.
Hate, for ringing the burning gypsy camp was a raging metal river of ten blue vans churning seventy miles an hour in one continuous circle, straight out of speedway night at Belle fucking Vue, trapping within the roaring wheels fifty men, women and children in one extended family hanging on to each other for dear life, the intense flames scolding and illuminating the sheer stark fucking terror upon their faces, the children’s cries and mothers’ howls piercing through the sheets and sheets of noise and heat.
Cowboys and fucking Indians, 1974.
I watched as fathers and sons, brothers and uncles, broke from their families and tried to charge between the vans, to punch, to kick, to beat on the metal river, screaming up at the night as they fell back into the mud and the tyres.
And then, as the flames rose higher still, I saw who the gypsy men were so desperately trying to reach, whose hearts they had their own so set upon.
Around the entire camp, in the shadows down below me, lay another outer circle beyond the vans, two men deep, beating out time with their truncheons upon their shields:
The new West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police putting in a spot of overtime.
And then the vans stopped.
The gypsy men froze in the firelight, slowly edging back towards their families in the middle, dragging the injured back through the dirt with them.
The banging of the shields intensified and the outer ring of police began to advance, one big fat black snake sliding in single file between the vans, until the outer circle became the inner, the snake facing the families and the flames.
Zulu, Yorkshire style.
And then the banging stopped.
The only sounds were the fire cracking and the children crying.
Nothing moved, ’cept my heart at my ribs.
Then, out of the night and away to the left, I could see a van’s headlights approaching, bumping across the wasteground towards the camp. The van, maybe white, suddenly braked hard and three of four men tumbled out. There was some shouting and some police broke off from the circle.
The men tried to get back into the van and the van, definitely white, began to reverse.
The nearest police van jerked into life, churned mud and hit the van full on in the side, nought to seventy in half the metres.
The van stopped dead and the police descended on it, dragging men out through broken windows, exposing flanks of white flesh.
Sticks and stones set about their bones.
Within the circle a man stepped forward, barechested. The man lowered his head and charged, screaming.
Instantaneously the police snake sprang, moving in and swallowing up the families in a sea of black and sticks.
I stood up too quickly and toppled down the banking, back towards my car, the motorway, and out.
I reached the bottom of the banking, puking:
Eddie Dunford, North of England Crime Correspondent, with my hand upon the Viva’s door, saw the flames reflected in the glass.
I ran along the hard shoulder to the emergency phone, praying to Christ that it worked and, when it did, beseeching the operator to summon every available emergency service to the Hunslet and Beeston exit of the M1 where, I breathlessly assured her, a ten-car pile-up was fast becoming more, with a petrol tanker ablaze.
That done, I ran back along the motorway and back up the banking, looking down on a battle being lost and a victory that filled my whole body with a rage as impotent as it was engulfing.
The West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police had opened up the backs of their vans and were throwing the bloodied and beaten men inside.
Within the big wheel of fire, officers stripped gypsy women and children of their clothes, throwing the rags into the flames and randomly striking out with their clubs at the naked white skin of the women.
Sudden and deafening shotgun blasts punctuated the horror, as petrol tanks exploded and gypsy dogs were shot, as the police took their shotguns to anything that looked remotely salvageable.
I saw in the midst of this hell, naked and alone, a tiny gypsy girl, ten years old or less, short brown curls and bloody face, standing in that circle of hate, a finger in her mouth, silent and still.
Where the fuck were the fire engines, the ambulances?
My rage became tears; lying at the top of the banking I searched my pockets for my pen, as though writing something, anything, might make it all seem a bit better than it was or a little less real. Too cold to fucking grasp the pen properly, scrawling red biro across dirty paper, hiding there in those skinny bushes, it didn’t help at all.
And then he was right there, coming towards me.
Wiping the tears away with mud, I saw a red and black shining face tearing straight out of hell and up the banking towards me.
I half stood to greet it, but fell straight back down into the ground as three black-winged policemen grabbed the man by his feet and greedily took him back down into their boots and clubs.
And then I saw HIM, in the distance, behind it all.
Detective Chief Superintendent George Oldman, illuminated behind the sticks and the bones like some bloody cave painting against the side of a police van, smoking and drinking with some other coppers as the van rocked from side to side.
George Oldman and friends tilted back their heads to the night and laughed loud and long until George stopped dead and stared straight at where I lay 500 yards away.
I threw my face deep down into the mud until it filled my mouth and small stones cut into my face. Suddenly I was ripped free of the mud, pulled up by the roots of my hair, and all I could see was the dark night sky above me before the fat white face of a policeman rose like the moon into my own.
A leather fist went hard into my face, two fingers in my mouth, two blinding my eyes. ‘Close your fucking eyes and don’t you speak.’
I did as I was told.
‘Nod if you know the Redbeck Cafe on the Doncaster Road.’ It was a vicious whisper, hot in my ear.
I nodded.
‘You want a story, be there at five o’clock this morning.’
Then the glove was gone and I opened my eyes to the black fucking sky and the sound of a thousand screaming sirens.
Welcome home Eddie.
Four hours straight driving, trying to outrun my visions of children.
A four-hour tour of a local hell: Pudsey, Tingley, Hanging Heaton, Shaw Cross, Batley, Dewsbury, Chickenley, Earlsheaton, Gawthorpe, Horbury, Castleford, Pontefract, Normanton, Hemsworth, Fitzwilliam, Sharlston, and Streethouse.
Hard towns for hard men.
Me, soft; too pussy to drive through Clare’s Morley or sneak a peak at Devil’s Ditch, too chicken to go back to the gypsy camp or even home to Ossett.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, sleep nailing shut my eyes, I’d drifted into some Cleckheaton lay-by and dreamt of Southern girls called Anna or Sophie and a life before, waking with a hard-on and my father’s final rattle:
‘The South’ll turn you bloody soft, it will.’
Awake to the face of a brown-haired girl ringed in a wheel of fire and school photographs of little girls no longer here.
Fear turned the key as I rubbed my eyes free and drove off through the grey light, everywhere the browns and the greens waking up all damp and dirty, everywhere the hills and the fields, the houses and the factories, everywhere filling me with fear, covering me in clay.
Fear’s abroad, home and away.
Dawn on the Doncaster Road.
I pulled the Viva into the car park behind the Redbeck Cafe and Motel. I parked between two lorries and sat listening to Tom Jones sing I Can’t Break the News to Myself on Radio 2. It was ten to five when I walked across the rough ground to the toilets r
ound the back.
The toilets reeked, the tiled floor covered in black piss. The mud and clay had dried hard on my skin, turning it a pale red beneath the dirt. I ran the hot tap and plunged my hands into the ice-cold water. I brought the water to my face, closing my eyes and running my wet hands through my hair. The brown water trickled down my face and on to my jacket and shirt. Again I brought the water up to my face and closed my eyes.
I heard the door open and felt a blast of colder air.
I started to open my eyes.
My legs went from beneath me, kicked out.
My head hit the edge of the sink, bile filled my mouth.
My knees found the floor, my chin the sink.
Someone grabbed my hair, forcing my face straight back into the sink’s dirty water.
‘Don’t you fucking try to look at me.’ That vicious whisper again, bringing me an inch out of the water and holding me there.
Thinking, Fuck You, Fuck You, Fuck You. Saying, ‘What do you want?’
‘Don’t fucking speak.’
I waited, my windpipe crushed against the edge of the sink.
There was a splash and I squinted, making out what looked to be a thin manila envelope lying next to the sink.
The hand on my hair relaxed, then suddenly pulled back my head and casually banged it once into the front of the sink.
I reeled, thrashing out with my arms, and fell back on to my arse. Pain pounded through my forehead, water seeped through the seat of my pants.
I pulled myself up by the sink, stood and turned and fell through the door out into the car park.
Nothing.
Two lorry drivers leaving the cafe pointed at me and shouted, laughing.
I leant against the door to the toilets and fell back through, the two lorry drivers doubling up with laughter.
The A4 manila envelope lay in a pool of water by the sink. I picked it up and shook off brown drops of water, opening and closing my eyes to ease the pain in my head.
I opened the door to the cubicle and grabbed the metal chain, flushing away the long pale yellow shit in the bowl. I closed the cracked plastic lid on the roaring water and sat down and opened the envelope.
Fresh hell.
I pulled out two thin sheets of typed A4 paper and three enlarged photographs.
It was a copy of the post-mortem on Clare Kemplay.