by David Peace
He waved back. ‘How long do they keep this up?’
‘No idea.’
‘They had tents all over this until last night.’
I was staring down into Devil’s Ditch, at the rusted prams and the bicycles, at the cookers and the fridges. Foliage and litter snaked through everything, pulling it down into its mouth, making it impossible to see the bottom.
‘Did you see her?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Fuck.’
‘She was lying on top of a pram, about halfway down.’
‘A pram?’
He was staring off at something far, far away. ‘Police took it. She had, aw fuck …’
‘I know.’ I had my eyes closed.
‘Police said we hadn’t to tell anyone.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘But, fuck …’ He was fighting with a lump in his throat, tears in his eyes.
I handed him another cigarette. ‘I know. I saw the photographs from the post-mortem.’
He pointed with the unlit cigarette at a separately marked piece of ground. ‘One of the wings was over there, near the top.’
‘Fuck.’
‘I wish to Christ I’d never seen her.’
I stared into Devil’s Ditch, the photos on the wall at the Redbeck swimming through my mind.
‘If only it hadn’t been her,’ he whispered.
‘Where does Jimmy Ashworth live?’
Terry Jones looked at me. ‘I don’t think that’s a right good idea.’
‘Please?’
‘He’s taken it badly. He’s only a lad.’
‘It might help him to talk,’ I said, looking at a dirty blue pram halfway down the slope.
‘That’s bollocks,’ he sniffed.
‘Please?’
‘Fitzwilliam,’ said Terry Jones and turned and walked away.
I ducked down under the blue police ribbon and, leaning into Devil’s Ditch by the root of a dead tree, I plucked a white feather from a bush.
*
An hour to kill.
I drove up past the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, parked, and jogged back into Wakefield through the rain, quickening my pace as I passed the school.
Fifty minutes to kill.
Being Tuesday, I walked round the second-hand market, smoking cigarettes and getting soaked to the skin, staring at the prams and the children’s bicycles and the pickings from the house clearances of the dead.
The Indoor Market stank of wet clothes and there was still a book stall where Joe’s Books had been.
I glanced at my father’s watch, leafing through the pile of old superheroes.
Forty minutes to kill.
Every Saturday morning for three years, my father and I had got the 126 at half-past seven from Ossett bus station, my father reading the Post, talking about football or cricket, the empty shopping bags on his lap, as I dreamt of the pile of comics that was always my wage for helping Joe.
Every Saturday morning until that Saturday morning Old Joe hadn’t opened up and I had stood there waiting, my father coming by with two bags of shopping, the cheese wrapped in paper on the top.
Thirty-five minutes to kill.
In the Acropolis at the top of Westgate, where I’d once fancied the waitress, I forced down a plate of Yorkshire Pudding and onion gravy and then puked it straight back up in the little toilet in the back, the toilet where I’d always fantasised I’d finally get to fuck that waitress called Jane.
Twenty-five minutes to kill.
Outside in the rain, I headed on up to the Bullring, past the Strafford Arms, the hardest pub in the North, past the hairdresser’s where my sister had worked part-time and met Tony.
Twenty minutes to kill.
In Silvio’s, my mother’s favourite cafe and the place where I used to secretly meet Rachel Lyons after school, I ordered a chocolate eclair.
I took out my damp notebook and began to read through the scant notes I had on Mystic Mandy.
‘The future, like the past, is written. It cannot be changed, but it can help to heal the wounds of the present.’
I sat in the window and stared out at Wakefield.
Futures past.
It was raining so hard now that the whole city looked under water. I wished to Christ it was, that the rain would drown the people and wash the place the fuck away.
I had killed all the time I had.
I drank down the cup of hot sweet tea, left the eclair, and headed back up to St Johns, a tea-leaf stuck to my lip and a feather in my pocket.
Blenheim Road was one of the most beautiful in Wakefield, with big strong trees and large houses set back in their own small grounds.
Number 28 was no exception, a rambling old house that had been subdivided into flats.
I walked across the drive, avoiding the holes full of puddles, and went inside. The windows in the hallway and on the stairs were stained glass and the whole place had the stink of an old church in winter.
Number 5 was on the first-floor landing, to the right.
I looked at my father’s watch and rang the doorbell. The chimes sounded like Tubular Bells and I was thinking of The Exorcist when the door opened.
A middle-aged woman, fresh from the pages of Yorkshire Life in her country blouse and country skirt, held out her hand.
‘Mandy Wymer,’ she said and shook hands briefly.
‘Edward Dunford. From the Yorkshire Post.’
‘Please, come in.’ She pressed herself into the wall as I passed, leaving the front door ajar as she followed me down the dim hall, hung with dim oils, into a big dim room with large windows blocked by larger trees. There was a litter tray in one corner and the whole room smelt of it.
‘Please sit down,’ said the lady, pointing to the far corner of a large sofa draped in a tie-dyed cloth.
The woman’s conservative appearance jarred, both with the Oriental-cum-hippy decor and with her profession. It was a thought I obviously couldn’t disguise.
‘My ex-husband was Turkish,’ she suddenly said.
‘Ex?’ I said, switching on the Philips Pocket Memo in my pocket.
‘He went back to Istanbul.’
I couldn’t resist. ‘You didn’t see it coming?’
‘I’m a medium, Mr Dunford, not a fortune teller.’
I sat on the far end of the sofa, feeling like a twat, unable to think of anything to say.
Eventually I said, ‘I’m not making a very good impression, am I?’
Miss Wymer rose quickly from her chair. ‘Would you care for some tea?’
‘That’d be nice, if it’s no trouble?’
The woman almost ran from the room, stopping suddenly in the doorway as though she had walked into a plate of glass.
‘You smell so strongly of bad memories,’ she said quietly, her back to me.
‘Pardon?’
‘Of death.’ She stood in the doorway, shaking and pale, her hand gripping the frame of the door.
I got up. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I think you’d better leave,’ she whispered, slipping down the frame of the door and on to the floor.
‘Miss Wymer …’ I went across the room towards her.
‘Please! No!’
I reached out, wanting to pick her up. ‘Miss Wymer …’
‘Don’t touch me!’
I backed off, the woman curling into a tight ball.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘It’s so strong.’ She was moaning, not speaking.
‘What is?’
‘It’s all over you.’
‘What is?’ I shouted, angry, thinking of BJ and these days and nights spent in rented rooms with the mentally ill. ‘What is, tell me?’
‘Her death.’
The air was suddenly thick and murderous.
‘What are you fucking talking about?’ I was going towards her, the blood drumming in my ears.
‘No!’ She was screaming, sliding back on her arse up the hall, her arms and legs s
played, her country skirt riding up. ‘God no!’
‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ I was screaming now, flying up the hall after her.
She scrambled to her feet, begging, ‘Please, please, please, leave me alone.’
‘Wait!’
She turned into a room and slammed the door on me, trapping one of the fingers of my left hand in the hinges for a second.
‘You fucking bitch!’ I shouted, kicking and punching the locked door. ‘You crazy fucking bitch!’
I stopped, put my throbbing left fingers in my mouth and sucked.
The flat was silent.
I leant my head against the door and quietly said, ‘Please, Miss Wymer …’
I could hear scared sobs from behind the door.
‘Please, Miss Wymer. I need to talk to you.’
I heard the sound of furniture being moved, of chests of drawers and wardrobes being placed in front of the door.
‘Miss Wymer?’
A faint voice came through the layers and layers of wood and doors, a child whispering to a friend beneath the covers.
‘Tell them about the others …’
‘Pardon?’
‘Please tell them about the others.’
I was leaning against the door, my lips tasting the varnish. ‘What others?’
‘The others.’
‘What fucking others?’ I shouted, pulling and twisting at the handle.
‘All the others under those beautiful new carpets.’
‘Shut up!’
‘Under the grass that grows between the cracks and the stones.’
‘Shut up!’ My fists into wood, my knuckles into blood.
‘Tell them. Please tell them where they are.’
‘Shut up! Fucking shut up!’
My head against the door, the tide of noise retreating, the flat silent and dim.
‘Miss Wymer?’ I whispered.
Silence, dim silence.
As I left the flat, licking and sucking my knuckles and fingers, I saw the door across the landing open slightly.
‘Keep your fucking nose out!’ I shouted, running down the stairs.
‘Less you want it bloody cutting off!’
Ninety miles an hour, spooked.
Foot down on Motorway One, exorcising the Ghosts of Wakefield Past and Present.
Into the rearview mirror, a green Rover hugging my tail. Me paranoid, making it for an unmarked police car.
Eyes high into the sky, driving inside the fat belly of a whale, the sky the colour of its grey flesh, stark black trees its mighty bones, a damp prison.
Into the mirror, the Rover gaining.
Taking the Leeds exit at the charred remains of the gypsy camp, the black frames of the burnt-out caravans more bones, standing in some pagan circle to their dead.
Into the mirror, the green Rover heading North.
Underneath the station arches, parking the Viva, two black crows eating from black bin-bags, ripping through the wasted meat, their screams echoing into the dark in this, the Season of the Plague.
Ten minutes later I was at my desk.
I dialled Directory Enquiries, then James Ashworth, then BJ.
No answers, everybody Christmas shopping.
‘You look terrible.’ Stephanie, files in her arms, fat as fuck.
‘I’m fine.’
Stephanie stood there, in front of my desk, waiting.
I stared at the only Christmas card on my desk, trying to switch off the visions of Jack Whitehead fucking her up trap two, getting a little hard myself.
‘I spoke to Kathryn last night.’
‘So?’
‘Don’t you bloody care?’ She was already angry.
So was I. ‘It’s none of your business how I fucking feel.’
She didn’t move, just kept standing there, shifting her weight from foot to foot, her eyes filling up.
I felt bad and so I said, ‘I’m sorry Steph.’
‘You’re a pig. A fucking pig.’
‘I’m sorry. How is she?’
She was nodding her fat face, agreeing with her own fat thoughts. ‘It’s not the first time is it?’
‘What did Kathryn say?’
‘There have been others haven’t there?’
Others, always the bloody others.
‘I know you, Eddie Dunford,’ she went on, leaning forward across the desk, her arms like thighs. ‘I know you.’
‘Shut up,’ I said quietly.
‘How many others have there been, eh?’
‘Keep your bloody nose out, you fat bitch.’
Applause and cheers rang out across the office, fists banging on desks, feet stamping.
I stared at Kathryn’s Christmas card.
‘You pig,’ she spat.
I looked up from the card but she was gone, sobbing out the door.
Across the office George Greaves and Gaz raised their cigarettes in salute, giving me the thumbs up.
I held up my thumb, fresh blood on my knuckle.
It was five o’clock.
‘I still need to talk to the other one, James Ashworth. He was the one who actually found the body.’
Hadden looked up from his pile of Christmas cards. He put one of the larger cards to the bottom of the pile and said, ‘It’s all a bit thin.’
‘She was round the bloody twist.’
‘Did you try and get a quote from the police.’
‘No.’
‘Maybe just as well,’ he sighed, continuing to look through his cards.
I was tired beyond sleep, hungry beyond food, the room beyond hot and all too real.
Hadden was looking up from his cards at me.
‘Anything new today?’ I asked, my mouth suddenly full of bilious water.
‘Nothing that’s fit to print. Jack’s off on one of his …’
I swallowed. ‘One of his?’
‘He’s playing his cards close to his chest, shall we say.’
‘I’m sure he’s doing what’s best.’
Hadden handed back the draft of my piece.
I opened the folder on my knee, putting away the one piece and taking out another. ‘And then there’s this?’
Hadden took the sheet from me and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
I stared out of the window behind him, the reflection of the yellow office lights on top of a dark wet Leeds.
‘Mutilated swans, eh?’
‘As I’m sure you know, there’s been a spate of animal mutilations.’
Hadden sighed, his cheeks turning red. ‘I’m not stupid. Jack showed me the post-mortem.’
I could hear people laughing in another part of the building.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
Hadden took off his glasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. ‘You’re trying too bloody hard.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.
‘You’re like Barry. He was the same, always …’
‘I wasn’t going to mention the post-mortem or Clare.’
Hadden was on his feet, pacing. ‘You can’t just write things and then assume it’s the bloody truth because you think it is.’
‘I never do that.’
‘I don’t know,’ he was talking to the night. ‘It’s like you’re shooting at the whole bloody bush just on the off-chance there might be something in there worth killing.’
I said, ‘I’m sorry you think that.’
‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat, you know.’
‘I know.’
Hadden turned round. ‘Arnold Fowler’s worked for us for years.’
‘I know.’
‘You don’t want to be going out there and frightening the poor bloke with your horror stories.’
‘I wouldn’t do that.’
Hadden sat back down and sighed loudly. ‘Get some quotes. Give it a paternal tone and don’t mention the bloody Clare Kemplay case.’
I stood up, the room suddenly going dark and then light again. ‘Thank you.�
��
‘We’ll run it on Thursday. Straightforward abuse of animals.’
‘Of course.’ I opened the door for air, support, and an exit.
‘Like the pit ponies.’
I ran for the bogs, my guts in my gob.
‘Hello. Is Kathryn there please?’
‘No.’
The office was quiet and I had almost finished what I had to do.
‘Do you know when she’ll be back?’
‘No.’
I was drawing wings and roses upon my blotter. I put down my pen.
‘Can you tell her Edward called?’
They hung up.
I scrawled The Medium & The Message across the top of the article in biro, then added a question mark and lit a cigarette.
After a few drags, I tore a sheet of paper from my notebook, stubbed out my cig, and wrote two lists. At the bottom of the page I wrote Dawson and underlined it.
I felt tired, hungry, and utterly lost.
I closed my eyes against the harsh bright office light and the white noise that filled my thoughts.
It took me a moment to pick out the sound of the phone.
‘Edward Dunford speaking?’
‘This is Paula Garland.’
I leant forward in my chair, my elbows on the desk supporting the weight of the phone and my head. ‘Yes?’
‘I heard you saw Mandy Wymer today.’
‘Yeah, sort of. How did you know?’
‘Our Paul said.’
‘Right.’ I’d no idea what to say next.
There was a long pause, then she said, ‘I need to know what she said.’
I was upright in my chair, changing hands and wiping the sweat on my trouser leg.
‘Mr Dunford?’
‘Well, she didn’t say very much.’
‘Please, Mr Dunford. Anything at all?’
I had the phone cradled between my ear and my chin, looking at my father’s watch and stuffing The Medium & The Message into an envelope.
I said, ‘I can meet you in the Swan. About an hour?’
‘Thank you.’
Down the corridor, into records.
Through the files, cross index, tear it down.
Looking at my father’s watch, 8.05 p.m.
Back in time:
July 1969, the Moon Landings, small steps and giant leaps.
12 July 1969, Jeanette Garland, 8, missing.
13 July, A Mother’s Emotional Plea.
14 July, Detective Superintendent Oldman appeals.
15 July, police retrace Jeanette’s last small steps.
16 July, police widen search.