by David Peace
‘Not something the nig-nogs care for, mind,’ added Gaz.
I’d first puked about six but had felt well enough to go on, staring at the pubes spinning in the broken toilet bowl.
The Gaiety’s daytime and evening clientele were pretty much the same, with only the ratios changing. During the day there were more prostitutes and Paki taxi drivers, while the night saw an increase in labourers and businessmen. Pissed journalists, off-duty coppers, and sullen West Indians were constant, day and night, day in, day out.
‘This is Jack Whitehead Country.’
The last thing I really remember about that day was puking some more in the car park, thinking this is Jack’s Country not mine.
I emptied the Viva’s ashtray out of the window as a slot machine in the Gaiety paid out over the cheers that greeted yet another spin on the jukebox for The Israelites. I wound the window back up and wondered how many times I must have heard that bloody record that day about four months ago. Didn’t they ever get fucking tired of it?
At five to ten, as Young, Gifted and Black came on again, I got out of the Viva and Memory Lane and went over to wait by the phonebox.
At ten o’clock on the dot, I picked up the phone on the second ring. ‘Hello?’
‘Who’s this?’
‘Edward Dunford.’
‘You alone?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re driving a green Vauxhall Viva?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Go on to Harehills Lane, where it meets Chapeltown Road, and park outside the hospital.’
The line went dead again.
*
At ten-ten I was parked outside the Chapel Allerton Hospital, where Harehills Lane and Chapeltown Road met and became the more promising Harrogate Road.
At ten-eleven someone tried the passenger door and then tapped on the glass. I leant across the passenger seat and opened the door.
‘Turn the car around and head back into Leeds,’ said the Maroon Suit with orange hair, getting in. ‘Anybody know you’re here?’
‘No,’ I said, turning the car around, thinking Bad Fucking Bowie.
‘What about your girlfriend?’
‘What about her?’
‘She know you’re here?’
‘No.’
The Maroon Suit sniffed hard, his orange hair turning this way and that. ‘Turn right at the park.’
‘Here?’
‘Yeah. Follow the road down to the church.’
At the junction by the church the Maroon Suit sniffed hard again and said, ‘Pull up here and wait ten minutes and then walk down Spencer Place. After about five minutes you’ll come to Spencer Mount, it’s the fifth or sixth on the left. Number 3 is on the right. Don’t ring the bell, just come straight up to flat 5.’
I said, ‘Flat 5, 3 Spencer Mount …’ But the Maroon Suit and his orange hair were off and running.
At about ten-thirty I was walking along Spencer Place, thinking fuck him and this cloak and dagger shit. And fuck him again for making me walk down Spencer Place at ten-thirty like it was some kind of sodding test.
‘Just looking are you, love?’
From ten until three, seven nights a week, Spencer Place was the busiest stretch of road in Yorkshire, bar the Manningham area of Bradford. And tonight, despite the cold, was no exception. Cars crawled up and down the road in both directions, brakelights shining red, looking like a Bank Holiday tailback.
‘Like what you see, do you?’
The older women sat on low walls in front of unlit terraces while the younger ones walked up and down, stamping their boots to keep the cold at bay.
‘Excuse me Mr Officer …’
The only other men on the street were West Indians, hopping in and out of parked cars, trailing heavy smoke and music behind them, offering wares of their own and keeping an eye on their white girlfriends.
‘You tight fucking bastard!’
The laughter followed me round the corner on to Spencer Mount. I crossed the road and went up three stone steps to the front door of number 3, above which a chipped Star of David had been painted on the grey glass.
From Yid Town to Pork City, in how many years?
I pushed open the door and went up the stairs.
I said, ‘Nice neighbourhood.’
‘Piss off,’ hissed the Maroon Suit, holding open the front door to flat 5.
It was a one-room bedsit with too much furniture, big windows and the stink of too many Northern winters. Karen Carpenter stared down from every wall, but it was Ziggy playing guitar from inside a tiny Dancette. There were fairy lights but no tree.
The Maroon Suit cleared some clothes from one of the chairs and said, ‘Please sit down Eddie.’
‘I’m afraid you have the advantage,’ I smiled.
‘Barry James Anderson,’ said Barry James Anderson proudly.
‘Another Barry?’ The armchair smelt stale.
‘Yeah, but you can call this one BJ,’ he giggled. ‘Everybody does.’
I didn’t bite. ‘OK.’
‘Yep, BJ’s the name, bjs the game.’ He stopped laughing and hurried over to an old wardrobe in the corner.
‘How did you know Barry?’ I said, wondering if Barry Gannon had been a puff.
‘I saw him around, you know. Just got talking.’
‘Backdoor Barry. Fucking puff.’
‘Saw him around where?’
‘Just around. Cup of tea?’ He said, rooting around in the back of the wardrobe.
‘No thanks.’
‘Suit yourself.’
I lit a cigarette and picked up a dirty plate for an ashtray.
‘Here,’ said BJ, handing me a Hillards carrier bag from the back of the wardrobe. ‘He wanted you to have this if anything happened to him.’
‘If anything happened to him?’ I repeated, opening the bag. It was stuffed full of cardboard folders and manila envelopes. ‘What is it?’
‘His life’s work.’
I stubbed out my cigarette in dried tomato sauce. ‘Why? I mean, what made him leave it here?’
‘Say it: why me, you mean,’ sniffed BJ. ‘He came round here last night. Said he needed somewhere safe to keep all this. And, if anything happened to him, to give it to you.’
‘Last night?’
BJ sat down on the bed and took off his jacket. ‘Yeah.’
‘I saw you last night, didn’t I? In the Press Club?’
‘Yeah, and you weren’t very nice were you?’ His shirt was covered in thousands of small stars.
‘I was pissed.’
‘Well, that makes it all right then,’ he smirked.
I lit another cigarette and hated the sight of the little queer and his star shirt. ‘What the fuck was your business with Barry?’
‘I’ve seen things, you know?’
‘I bet,’ I said, glancing at my father’s watch.
He jumped up from the bed. ‘Listen, don’t let me keep you.’
I stood up. ‘I’m sorry. Sit down, please. I’m sorry.’
BJ sat back down, his nose still in the air. ‘I know people.’
‘I’m sure you do.’
He was on his feet again, stamping his feet. ‘No, fuck off. Famous people.’
I stood up, my hands out. ‘I know, I know …’
‘Listen, I’ve sucked the cocks and licked the balls of some of the greatest men this country has.’
‘Like who?’
‘Oh no. You don’t get it that easy.’
‘All right, then. Why?’
‘For money. What else is there? You think I like being me? This body? Look at me! This isn’t me.’ He was on his knees, screwing up his star shirt. ‘I’m not a puff. I’m a girl in here,’ he screamed, leaping to his feet and tearing down one of the Karen Carpenter pin-ups, screwing it up in my face. ‘She knows what it’s like. He knows,’ he said, turning and kicking the stereo, sending Ziggy scratching to a halt.
Barry James Anderson fell to the floor by the record player
and lay with his head buried, shaking. ‘Barry knew.’
I sat back down and then stood back up again. I went over to the crumpled boy in his silver star shirt and maroon trousers and picked him up, gently putting him down on the bed.
‘Barry knew,’ he whimpered again.
I went over to the Dancette and put the needle on the record, but the song was depressing and jumped, so I turned off the music and sat back down in the stale armchair.
‘Did you like Barry?’ He’d dried his face and was sitting up, looking at me.
‘Yeah, but I didn’t really know him that well.’
BJ’s eyes were filling up again. ‘He liked you.’
‘Why’d he think something was going to happen to him?’
‘Come on!’ BJ jumped up. ‘Fuck. It was obvious.’
‘Why was it obvious?’
‘It couldn’t go on. He had so many things on so many people.’
I leant forward. ‘John Dawson?’
‘John Dawson’s just the tip of the fucking iceberg. Haven’t you read this stuff?’ He flicked his wrist at the carrier bag at my feet.
‘Just what he gave the Post,’ I lied.
He smiled. ‘Well, all the cats are in that bag.’
I hated the little sod, his games, and his flat. ‘Where did he go last night after here?’
‘He said he was going to help you.’
‘Me?’
‘That’s what he said. Something to do with that little girl in Morley, how he could tie it all together.’
I was on my feet. ‘What do you mean? What about her?’
‘That’s all he said …’
Consumed by a vision of wings stitched into her back, of cricket ball tits on him, I flew across the room at Barry James Anderson, shouting, ‘Think!’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t say.’
I had him by the stars on his shirt, pressed into the bed. ‘Did he say anything else about Clare?’
His breath was as stale as the room and in my face. ‘Clare who?’
‘The dead girl.’
‘Just he was going out to Morley and it would help you.’
‘How the fuck would that help me?’
‘He didn’t bloody say! How many more times?’
‘Nothing else?’
‘Nothing. Now fucking let go will you.’
I grabbed his mouth and squeezed hard. ‘No. You tell me why Barry told you this,’ I said, tightening my grip on his face as hard as I could before letting go of him.
‘Maybe because my eyes are open. Because I see things and I remember.’ His bottom lip was bleeding.
I looked down at the silver stars clasped in my other hand and let them fall. ‘You know bugger all.’
‘Believe what you want.’
I stood up and went over to the Hillards bag. ‘I will.’
‘You should get some sleep.’
I picked up the bag and walked over to the door. I opened the door and then turned back to the bedsit hell with one last question. ‘Was he drunk?’
‘No, but he’d been drinking.’
‘A lot?’
‘I could smell it on him.’ Tears were running down his cheeks.
I put down the carrier bag. ‘What do you think happened to him?’
‘I think they killed him,’ he sniffed.
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know their names and I don’t want to know.’
Haunted, ‘There are Death Squads in every city, in every country.’
I said, ‘Who? Dawson? The police?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why then?’
‘Money, what else? To keep those cats in that bag of yours. To put them in the river.’
I stared across the room at a poster of Karen Carpenter hugging a giant Mickey Mouse.
I picked up the carrier bag. ‘How can I reach you?’
Barry James Anderson smiled. ‘442189. Tell them Eddie called and I’ll get the message.’
I wrote down the number. ‘Thank you.’
‘Mention it.’
Back down Spencer Place in a sprint, foot down into Leeds and on to Motorway One, hoping to fuck I never saw him again:
Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Dark, theories racing:
The rain on the windscreen, the moon stolen.
Cut to the chase:
I knew a man who knew a man.
‘He could tie it all together …’
Angels as devils, devils as angels.
The bones of the thing:
ACT LIKE NOTHING’S WRONG.
I watched my mother sleeping in her chair and tried to tie it all together.
Not here.
Up the stairs, emptying carrier bags and envelopes, scattering files and photographs across my bed.
Not here.
I scooped the whole bloody lot into one big black bin-sack, stuffing my pockets with my father’s pins and needles.
Not here.
Back down the stairs, a kiss upon my mother’s brow, and out the door.
Not here.
Foot down, screaming through the Ossett dawn.
Not here.
Chapter 5
‘Dawn at the Redbeck Cafe and Motel, Tuesday 17 December 1974.
I’d driven all night and then come back here, as though it all came back here.
I paid two weeks up front and got what I paid for:
Room 27 was round the back, two bikers on one side and a woman and her four kids on the other. There was no phone, toilet, or TV. But two quid a night got me a view of the car park, a double bed, a wardrobe, a desk, a sink, and no questions.
I double-locked the door and drew the damp curtains. I stripped the bed and tacked the heaviest sheet over the curtains and then propped the mattress up against the sheet. I picked up a used johnny and stuffed it inside a half-eaten packet of crisps.
I went back out to the car, stopping for a piss in those toilets where I’d bought my ticket to this death trip.
I stood there pissing, not sure if it was Tuesday or Wednesday, knowing this was as close as I could get. I shook it off and kicked open the cubicle door, knowing there’d be nothing but a melting yellow turd and puffter graffiti.
I went round the front to the cafe and bought two large black coffees with loads of sugar in dirty styrofoam cups. I opened the boot of the Viva and took the black bin-sack and the black coffees back to Room 27.
I double-locked the door again, drank down one of the coffees, emptied the bin-sack over the wooden base of the bed and went to work.
Barry Gannon’s files and envelopes were by name. I laid them out alphabetically on one half of the bed and then went through Hadden’s thick manila envelope, stuffing the sheets of paper into Barry’s relevant files.
Some names had titles, some ranks, most just plain mister. Some names I knew, some rang bells, most meant nothing.
On the other half of the bed, I spread out my files in three thin piles and one big one: Jeanette, Susan, Clare and, to the right, Graham Goldthorpe, Ratcatcher.
In the back of the wardrobe I found a roll of wallpaper. Taking a handful of my father’s pins, I turned over the wallpaper and tacked it to the wall above the desk. With a big red felt-tip pen I divided the back of the paper into five big columns. At the top of each column, in red block capitals, I wrote five names: JEANETTE, SUSAN, CLARE, GRAHAM, and BARRY.
Next to the wallpaper chart I pinned a map of West Yorkshire from the Viva. With my red pen, I marked four red crosses and a red arrow straight out Rochdale way.
Drinking down the second cup of coffee, I steeled myself.
With trembling hands, I took an envelope from the top of Clare’s pile. Asking for forgiveness, I ripped open the envelope and took out three large black and white photographs. My stomach hollow, my mouth full of pins, I walked back over to my wallpaper chart and carefully pinned the three photographs above three of the names.
I stood back, tears on my cheeks, and gazed upon my new
wallpaper, upon skin so pale, hair so fair, and wings so white.
An angel in black and white.
Three hours later, my eyes red with tears from the things I’d read, I got up from the floor of Room 27.
Barry’s story: 3 rich men: John Dawson, Donald Foster, and a third who Barry couldn’t or wouldn’t name.
My story: 3 dead girls: Jeanette, Susan, and Clare.
My story, his story – two stories: Same times, same places, different names, different faces.
Mystery, History:
One Link?
I had a small stack of coins on top of the payphone inside the lobby of the Redbeck.
‘Sergeant Fraser please?’
The lobby was all yellows and browns and stank of smoke. Through the double glass doors I watched some kids playing pool and smoking.
‘This is Sergeant Fraser.’
‘It’s Edward Dunford speaking. I’ve received some information about Sunday night, about Barry …’
‘What kind of information?’
I cradled the phone between my chin and my neck and struck a match. ‘It was an anonymous call to the effect that Mr Gannon had gone to Morley in connection with Clare Kemplay,’ I said with a cigarette between my teeth.
‘Anything else?’
‘Not over the phone.’ To the side of the phone, etched in biro, were the words Young Cock and six telephone numbers.
‘We better meet before the inquest,’ said Sergeant Fraser.
Outside it had started to rain again and the lorry drivers were all pulling coats over their heads as they ran for the cafe and the bogs.
I said, ‘Where?’
‘Angelo’s Cafe in an hour? It’s opposite Morley Town Hall.’
‘OK. But I need a favour?’ I looked for an ashtray but had to use the wall.
Fraser whispered down the line, ‘What?’
The pips went and I put in another coin. ‘I need the names and addresses of the workmen who found the body.’
‘What body?’
‘Clare Kemplay’s.’ I began to count the love-hearts scribbled here and there around the phone.
‘I don’t know …’
‘Please,’ I said.
Someone had written 4eva 2geva inside one of the hearts in red.
Fraser said, ‘Why me?’
‘Because I think you’re a decent bloke and I need a favour and don’t know anybody else to ask.’