by David Peace
‘Aye, Sammy. And another round.’
‘Very good, Mr Box.’
I took the spoon from my curry bowl and let a small amount slide on to the rice.
‘Get stuck in, lad. We don’t stand on ceremony here.’
I took a forkful of curry and rice, felt the fire in my mouth, and drained my pint.
After a minute, I said, ‘Yeah, that’s all right that is.’
‘All right? It’s fucking delicious is what it is,’ laughed Box with an open red mouth.
Paul nodded, breaking into a matching curry grin.
I took another forkful of curry and rice, watching the two fat men edging nearer to their plates with every mouthful.
I remembered Derek Box, or at least I remembered the stories people used to tell about Derek Box and his brothers.
I took a mouthful of yellow rice, looking over to the kitchen door for the next pint.
I remembered the stories of the Box Brothers practising their high-speed getaways down Field Lane, how kids would come down and watch them on a Sunday morning, how Derek was always the driver and Raymond and Eric were always the ones jumping in and out of the cars as they sped up and down Church Street.
The waiter returned with another silver tray of beer and three flat nan breads.
I remembered the Box Brothers getting sent down for robbing the Edinburgh Mail Train, how they claimed they’d been fitted up, how Eric had died inside just weeks before their release, how Raymond had moved to Canada or Australia, and how Derek had tried to enlist for Vietnam.
Derek and Paul were ripping their nans apart and wiping their bowls clean.
‘Here,’ said Derek Box, tossing me half a nan.
Having finished, he smiled, lit a cigar, and edged his chair back from the table. He took a big pull off his cigar, examined the end, exhaled and said, ‘Were you an admirer of Barry’s work?’
‘Mm, yeah.’
‘Such a waste.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, the lights catching the beads of sweat in Derek Box’s fair hairline.
‘Seems a pity to let it go unfinished, so much of it unpublished, don’t you think?’
‘Yeah. I mean, I don’t know …’
Paul held out the Ronson for me.
I inhaled deeply and tried to flex the grip of my right hand. It hurt like fuck.
‘If you don’t mind me asking, what are you working on at the moment, Mr Dunford?’
‘The Clare Kemplay murder.’
‘Appalling,’ sighed Derek Box. ‘Bloody appalling. There aren’t words. And?’
‘That’s about it.’
‘Really? Then you’re not continuing your late friend’s crusade?’
‘What makes you ask that?’
‘I was led to believe you were in receipt of the great man’s files.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘I’m not a grass, Mr Dunford.’
‘I know, I’m not saying you are.’
‘I hear things and I know people who hear things.’
I looked down at a forkful of rice lying cold upon my plate. ‘Who?’
‘Do you ever drink in the Strafford Arms?’
‘In Wakefield?’
‘Aye,’ smiled Box.
‘No. I can’t say that I do.’
‘Well, maybe you should. See, upstairs is a private club, bit like your own Press Club. A place where a businessman such as myself and an officer of the law can get together in a less formal setting. Let our hair down, so to speak.’
I suddenly saw myself on the back seat of my own car, the black upholstery wet with blood, a tall man with a beard driving and humming along to Rod Stewart.
‘You all right?’ said Derek Box.
I shook my head. ‘I’m not interested.’
‘You will be,’ winked Box, his eyes small and lashless, straight from the Deep.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Give it to him, Paul.’
Paul reached down under the table and brought out a thin manila envelope, tossing it across the dirty plates and empty pints.
‘Open it,’ Box dared me.
I picked up the manila envelope and stuck my left hand inside, feeling the familiar sheen of glossy enlargements.
I looked across the white tablecloth at Derek Box and Paul, visions of little girls wearing black and white wings stitched into skin swimming through the lunchtime bitter.
‘Take a fucking look.’
I held the envelope down with my grey bandages and slowly removed the photographs with my left. I pushed back the plates and the bowls and laid out the three enlarged black and white photographs.
Two men naked.
Derek Box was grinning, a slash for a smile.
‘I hear you’re a bit of a cunt man, Mr Dunford. So I apologise for the vile content of these snaps.’
I moved each picture apart.
Barry James Anderson, sucking the cock and licking the balls of an old man.
I said, ‘Who is it?’
‘Well, how the mighty have fallen,’ sighed Derek Box.
‘They’re not very clear.’
‘I think you’ll find they’re clear enough to Councillor and former Alderman William Shaw, brother of the more famous Robert Shaw, should you ever wish to present him with a couple of snaps for his family album.’
The old body came into focus, the flabby belly and the skinny ribs, the white hairs and the moles.
‘Bill Shaw?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ smiled Box.
Christ.
William Shaw, Chairman of the new Wakefield Metropolitan District Council and the West Yorkshire Police Authority, a former regional organiser of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, representing that union on the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party.
I stared at the swollen testicles, the silhouettes of the knotted veins in his cock, the grey pubic hairs.
William Shaw, brother of the more famous Robert.
Robert Shaw, the Home Office Minister of State and the man widely tipped Most Likely to Succeed.
Councillor Shaw, the Man Most Likely to Suck.
Fuck.
Councillor Shaw as Barry’s Third Man?
Dawsongate.
I said, ‘Barry knew?’
‘Aye. But he lacked the tools, so to speak.’
‘You want me to blackmail Shaw with these?’
‘Blackmail’s not the word I had in mind.’
‘What word had you in mind?’
‘Persuade.’
‘Persuade him to do what?’
‘Persuade the Councillor that he should bare his soul of all his public wrongdoings, safe in the knowledge that his private life shall remain exactly that.’
‘Why?’
‘The Great British Public get the kind of truth they deserve.’
‘And?’
‘And we,’ winked Box. ‘We get what we want.’
‘No.’
‘Then you’re not the man I thought you were.’
I looked down at the black and white photographs lying on the white tablecloth.
‘And what kind of man was that?’ I asked.
‘A brave one.’
‘You call these brave?’ I said, pushing the photographs away with my grey right hand.
‘In these times, yes I do.’
I took a cigarette from my pack and Paul reached across the table with the Ronson.
I said, ‘He’s not married is he?’
‘Makes no odds,’ smiled Box.
The waiter came back carrying an empty tray. ‘Ice-cream, Mr Box?’
Box waved his cigar in my direction. ‘Just one for my friend here.’
‘Very good, Mr Box.’ The waiter began piling the dirty plates and glasses on to the silver tray, leaving only the ashtray and the three photographs.
Derek Box ground out his cigar in the ashtray and leant across the table.
‘This country’s at war, Mr Dunford. The government and the unio
ns, the Left and the Right, the rich and the poor. Then you got your Paddys, your wogs, your niggers, the puffs and the perverts, even the bloody women; they’re all out for what they can get. Soon there’ll be nowt left for the working white man.’
‘And that’s you?’
Derek Box stood up. ‘To the victor, the spoils.’
The waiter returned with a silver bowl of ice-cream.
Paul helped Derek Box into his cashmere coat.
‘Tomorrow lunchtime, upstairs in Strafford Arms.’
He squeezed my shoulder tightly as he went out.
I stared down at the ice-cream in front of me, sitting in the middle of the black and white photographs.
‘Enjoy your ice-cream,’ shouted Derek Box from the door.
I stared at the cocks and the balls, at the hands and the tongues, the spit and the spunk.
I pushed the ice-cream away.
A one-coin call at the top of Hanging Heaton, the stink of curry on the receiver.
No answer.
Out the door, a fart in my stride.
The one-armed driver on the road to Fitzwilliam, the radio on low:
Michael John Myshkin leading on the local two o’clock, the IRA Christmas ceasefire on the national.
I glanced at the envelope on the passenger seat and pulled over.
Two minutes later and the one-armed driver was back on the road, the manila sins of Councillor William Shaw hidden beneath the passenger seat.
I checked the rearview mirror.
Almost dark and not yet three.
Newstead View revisited.
Back amongst the ponies and the dogs, the rust and plaggy bags.
I drove slowly along the dark street.
TV lights on in Number 69.
I parked in front of what was left of 54.
The pack had been to the terrace, feasting and fighting, leaving three black eyes where the windows had been.
Hang the Pervert and LUFC were written in dripping white paint above the front window.
A brown front door lay amongst a forest of chopped and charred sticks of furniture, kicked and severed in the middle of a tiny lawn strewn with a family’s tat.
Two dogs chased their arses in and out of the Myshkin family’s home.
I picked my way up the garden path, over the headless lamps and slashed cushions, nervously past a dog wrestling with a giant stuffed panda, and through the splintered doorway.
There was the smell of smoke and the sound of running water.
A metal dustbin sat on a sea of broken glass in the centre of a wrecked front room. There was no television or stereo, just the spaces where they’d been and a plastic Christmas tree bent in two. No presents or cards.
I stepped over a pile of human shit on the bottom step and went up the sodden stairs.
All the taps in the bathroom were on full, the bath overflowing.
The toilet and the sink had both been kicked in and shattered, flooding the blue carpet. There was runny yellow diarrhoea down the outside of the bath and NF sprayed in red above it.
I turned off the taps and pushed up the sleeve of my left arm with my bandages. I stuck my left hand into the ice-cold brown water and felt for the plug. My hand brushed against something solid at the bottom of the bath.
There was something in the bath.
My one good hand froze, then quickly I pulled the plug and my hand straight out together.
I stood staring at the draining water, drying my hand on my trousers, a dark shape forming beneath the shitty brown water.
I stuck both hands under my armpits and screwed up my eyes.
There was a blue leather Slazenger sports bag in the bottom of the bath.
It was zipped up and on its side.
Fuck it, leave it, you don’t want to know.
Mouth dry, I crouched down and flicked the bag upright.
The bag felt heavy.
The last of the water ran down the plughole, leaving just a shit-stained sludge, a nail brush, and the blue leather Slazenger bag.
Fuck it, leave it, you don’t want to know.
I used the bandaged hand to steady the bag and began to unzip it with my left.
The zip jammed.
Fuck it.
It jammed again.
Leave it.
The fresh stench of shit.
You don’t want to know.
Fur, I could see fur.
A fat dead tabby cat.
A twisted spine and an open mouth.
A blue collar and a name tag I wouldn’t touch.
Memories of pet funerals, Archie and Socks buried back in the Wesley Street garden.
Fuck it, leave it, but you bloody asked.
Out on the landing, two more doors.
The bigger bedroom, the one on the left with the two twin beds, stank of piss and old smoke. The mattresses had been pulled off and the clothes piled on them. There were scorch marks up the wall.
Again sprayed in red, Wogs Out, Fuck the Provos.
I walked across the landing to another cheap plastic plate that said, Michael’s Room.
Michael John Myshkin’s room was no bigger than a cell.
The single bed had been tipped on its side, the curtains pulled from their rail, the window cracked by the falling wardrobe. Posters torn from the walls, having taken strips of the magnolia wallpaper with them as they went, lay on a floor strewn with American and English comics, sketch pads and crayons.
I picked up a copy of The Hulk. The pages were wet and reeked of piss. I let it fall and used my foot to sift through the piles of comics and pieces of paper.
Beneath a book about Kung-Fu, a sketch book looked intact. I bent down and flicked it open.
A full page cover of a comic stared back up at me. It had been hand-drawn in felt-tip pen and crayon:
Rat Man, Prince or Pest?
By Michael J. Myshkin.
In a childish hand, a giant rat with human hands and feet was sitting on a throne in a crown, surrounded by hundreds of smaller rats.
Rat Man was grinning, saying, ‘Men are not our judges. We judge men!’
Above the Rat Man logo, in biro, was written:
Issue 4, 5p, MJM Comics.
I turned to the first page.
In six panels, the Rat People asked Rat Man, their Prince, to go above ground and save the earth from the humans.
On page two, Rat Man was above ground being chased by soldiers.
By page three, Rat Man had escaped.
He’d sprouted wings.
Fucking swan’s wings.
I stuffed the sketch pad comic inside my jacket and closed the door on Michael’s Room.
I walked down the stairs, banging and children’s voices coming from the front door.
A ten-year-old boy in a green sweater with three yellow stars was stood on a dining room chair, balanced on the front step, hammering a nail into the frame above the door.
His three friends were egging him on, one of them holding a washing-line noose in his dirty little hands.
‘What you doing?’ said one of the boys as I came down the stairs.
‘Yeah, who are you?’ said another.
I looked pissed off and official and said, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing,’ said the boy with the hammer, jumping from the chair.
The boy with the noose said, ‘You police?’
‘No.’
‘We can do what we want then,’ said the boy with the hammer.
I took out some coins and said, ‘Where’s his family?’
‘Pissed off,’ said one.
‘Not coming back and all, if they know what’s good for them,’ said the boy with the hammer.
I shook the coins and said, ‘Father’s a cripple?’
‘Yeah,’ they laughed, making spastic wheezing noises.
‘What about his Mam?’
‘She’s a fucking evil witch, she is,’ said the boy with the washing-line.
‘She work?’
‘Which one?’
‘Fitz Junior on main road.’
I moved the chair out of the doorway and walked down the path, looking at the dark quiet terraces on either side.
‘You going to give us some brass?’ the youngest boy shouted after me.
‘No.’
The boy with the hammer put the chair back, took the line from his friend, stood on the chair, and hung the noose from the nail.
‘What’s that for?’ I asked, unlocking the Viva.
‘Perverts,’ shouted one of the boys.
‘Here,’ laughed the boy with the hammer, standing on the chair. ‘You best not be one.’
‘There’s a dead cat upstairs in the bath,’ I said as I got into the car.
‘We know,’ giggled the youngest boy. ‘We fucking killed it, didn’t we?’
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, all good children go to heaven.
I sat in my car across the road from Fitzwilliam Junior and Infants.
It was going up to five and the school lights were still on, illuminating walls of Christmas drawings and paintings inside.
There were children playing soccer in the dark playground, chasing after a cheap orange ball in a pack of baggy trousers and dark wool sweaters with those big yellow stars.
I sat freezing in the Viva, my bandages stuffed up into my armpit, thinking of the Holocaust and wondering if Michael John Myshkin had gone to this school.
After ten minutes or so, some of the lights went out and three fat white women came out of the building with a thin man in blue overalls. The women waved goodbye to the man as he walked over to the children and tried to take their ball from them. The women were laughing as they left the school gates.
I got out of the car and jogged across the road after the women.
‘Excuse me, ladies?’
The three fat women turned round and stopped.
‘Mrs Myshkin?’
‘You’re joking?’ spat the largest woman.
‘Press are you, love?’ smirked the oldest.
I smiled and said, ‘Yorkshire Post.’
‘Bit late aren’t you?’ said the largest.
‘I heard she worked here?’
‘Until yesterday, aye,’ said the oldest.
‘Where’d she go?’ I asked the woman with the steel-rimmed spectacles who hadn’t said anything.
‘Don’t look at me. I’m new,’ she said.
The oldest woman said, ‘Our Kevin says one of your lot is putting them up in some posh hotel over in Scarborough.’