by David Peace
The Rover’s engine started up.
I stuffed the photograph inside my jacket pocket, pressed record on the Philips Pocket Memo, and opened the door.
The Rover’s engine went dead as I approached through the grey light.
I tapped on the glass of the passenger door and opened it.
I glanced at the empty back seat and got in, shutting the door.
‘Just look straight ahead, Councillor.’
The car was warm and expensive and smelt of dogs.
‘What do you want?’ William Shaw sounded neither angry nor afraid, just resigned.
I was staring straight ahead too, trying not to look at the thin grey figure of respectability, his driving gloves limply clutching the steering wheel of a parked car.
‘I asked you what you want,’ he said, glancing at me.
‘Keep looking straight ahead, Councillor,’ I said, taking the creased photograph out of my pocket and putting it on the dashboard in front of him.
With one glove Councillor William Shaw picked up the photograph of BJ sucking his cock.
‘I’m sorry, it’s a bit bent,’ I smiled.
Shaw tossed the photograph on to the floor by my feet. ‘This doesn’t prove anything.’
‘Who says I’m trying to prove anything?’ I said and picked up the photograph.
‘It could be anyone.’
‘It could be. But it’s not, is it?’
‘So what do you want?’
I leant forward and pushed in the cigarette lighter below the car radio.
‘That man in the photograph, how many times have you met him?’
‘Why? Why do you want to know that?’
‘How many times?’ I repeated.
Shaw tightened his gloves around the steering wheel. ‘Three or four times.’
The lighter popped out and Shaw flinched.
‘Ten times. Maybe more.’
I put a cigarette to my lips and lit it, thanking God again for helping out a one-armed man.
‘How did you meet him?’
The Councillor closed his eyes and said, ‘He introduced himself.’
‘Where? When?’
‘At some bar in London.’
‘London?’
‘Some Local Government conference in August.’
They set you up, I was thinking, they fucking set you up Councillor.
‘And then you met him again up here?’
Councillor William Shaw nodded.
‘And he’s been blackmailing you?’
Another nod.
‘How much?’
‘Who are you?’
I stared out across the long-stay car park, the station announcements echoing over the empty cars.
‘How much have you given him?’
‘A couple of thousand.’
‘What did he say?’
Shaw sighed, ‘He said it was for an operation.’
I stubbed out the cigarette. ‘Did he mention anyone else?’
‘He said there were men who wanted to hurt me and he could protect me.’
I looked at the black dashboard, afraid to look at Shaw again.
‘Who?’
‘No names.’
‘He say why they wanted to hurt you?’
‘He didn’t have to.’
‘Tell me.’
The Councillor let go of the steering wheel, looking round. ‘First you tell me who the bloody hell you are.’
I turned quickly, pushing the photograph hard into his face, forcing his right cheek against the glass of the driver’s door.
I didn’t let go, pressing the photograph harder into his face, whispering into the Councillor’s ear, ‘I’m a man who can hurt you very fucking quickly and very fucking now, if you don’t stop whining and start answering my fucking questions.’
Councillor William Shaw was banging his hands against the tops of his thighs in surrender.
‘Now you tell me, you fucking puff.’
I let the photograph fall and sat back.
Shaw leant forward over the steering wheel, rubbing both sides of his face between his gloves, tears and veins in his eyes.
After almost a minute, he said, ‘What do you want to know?’
Far away on the other side of the car park I could see a small local train crawl into Westgate Station, dumping its tiny passengers on the cold platform.
I closed my eyes and said, ‘I need to know why they want to blackmail you.’
‘You know,’ sniffed Shaw, sitting back in his seat.
I turned sharply, slapping him once across the cheek. ‘Just fucking say it!’
‘Because of the deals I’ve done. Because of the people I’ve done deals with. Because of the fucking money.’
‘The money,’ I laughed. ‘Always the money.’
‘They want in. Do you want figures, dates?’ Shaw was hysterical, shielding his face.
‘I don’t give a fuck about your shitty little backhanders, about your weak fucking cement and all your dodgy fucking deals, but I want to hear you say it.’
‘Say what? What do you want me to say?’
‘Names. Just say their fucking names!’
‘Foster, Donald Richard Foster. Is that who want?’
‘Go on.’
‘John Dawson.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Of them that matter.’
‘And who wants in?’
Ever so slowly and quietly Shaw said, ‘You’re a bloody journalist aren’t you?’
A feeling, a gut feeling.
‘Have you ever met a man called Barry Gannon?’
‘No,’ screamed Shaw, banging his forehead down into the steering wheel.
‘You’re a fucking liar. When was it?’
Shaw lay against the steering wheel, shaking.
Suddenly sirens wailed through Wakefield.
I froze, my belly and balls tight.
The sirens faded.
‘I didn’t know he was a journalist,’ whispered Shaw.
I swallowed and said, ‘When?’
‘Just twice.’
‘When?’
‘Last month sometime and then a week ago, last Friday.’
‘And you told Foster?’
‘I had to. It couldn’t go on, it just couldn’t.’
‘What did he say?’
Shaw looked up, the whites of his eyes red. ‘Who?’
‘Foster.’
‘He said he’d deal with it.’
I stared out across the car park at the London train arriving, thinking of seaview flats and Southern girls.
‘He’s dead.’
‘I know,’ whispered Shaw. ‘What are you going to do?’
I picked a dog hair off my tongue and opened the passenger door.
The Councillor had the photograph in his hands, holding it out towards me.
‘Keep it, it’s you,’ I said, getting out.
‘He looks so white,’ said William Shaw, alone in his expensive motor, staring at the photograph.
‘What did you say?’
Shaw reached over to close the door. ‘Nothing.’
I leant back into the car, holding the door open, shouting, ‘Just tell me what you fucking said.’
‘I said he looks so different that’s all, paler.’
I slammed the door on him, tearing across the car park, thinking Jimmy James fucking Ashworth.
Ninety miles an hour.
One hand in the glove compartment, a bandage on the wheel, sifting through the pills and the maps, the rags and the fags.
The Sweet on the radio.
Nervous darts into the rearview mirror.
Finding the micro-cassette, yanking the Philips Pocket Memo out of my jacket, ripping one tape out, ramming another in.
Rewind.
Pressing play:
‘It were like she’d rolled down or something.’
Forward.
Play:
‘I couldn’t believe it was her.’
Listen.
‘She looked so different, so white.’
Stop.
Fitzwilliam.
69 Newstead View, TV lights on.
Ninety miles an hour, up the garden path.
Knock, knock, knock, knock.
‘What do you want?’ said Mrs Ashworth, trying to close the door on me.
A foot in the door, pushing it back.
‘Here, you can’t just come barging into people’s houses.’
‘Where is he?’ I said, knocking past her into one of her saggy tits.
‘He’s not here, is he. Here, come back!’
Up the stairs, banging open doors.
‘I’m calling the police,’ shouted Mrs Ashworth from the foot of the stairs.
‘You do that, love,’ I said, looking at an unmade bed and a Leeds United poster, smelling winter damp and teenage wank.
‘I’m warning you,’ she shouted.
‘Where is he?’ I said as I came back down the stairs.
‘He’s at work, isn’t he.’
‘Wakefield?’
‘I don’t know. He never says.’
I looked at my father’s watch. ‘What time did he set off?’
‘Van came at quarter to seven, same as always.’
‘He’s mates with Michael Myshkin, isn’t he?’
Mrs Ashworth held the door open, her lips pursed.
‘Mrs Ashworth, I know they’re friends.’
‘Jimmy always felt bloody sorry for him. He’s like that, it’s his character.’
‘Very touching, I’m sure,’ I said, walking out the door.
‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ shouted Mrs Ashworth from the front step.
At the bottom of the path, I opened the garden gate and stared up the road at the burnt-out Number 54. ‘I hope your neighbours agree.’
‘You’re always making something out of nothing, you people,’ she screamed after me, slamming the front door shut.
Flat out down the Barnsley Road into Wakefield, glances in the rearview mirror.
Radio on.
Jimmy Young and the Archbishop of Canterbury debating Anal Rape and The Exorcist with the housebound of Britain.
‘They should ban them both. Disgusting, that’s what they are.’
Through the Christmas lights and the first spits of rain, up past the County and Town Halls.
‘Exorcism, as practised by the Church of England, is a deeply religious rite and not something to be entered into lightly. This film creates a totally false impression of exorcism.’
I parked opposite Lumbs Dairy by the Drury Lane Library, the rain coming down cold, grey, and heavy.
‘If you take the guilt out of sex, you take guilt away from society and I do not think society could function without guilt.’
Radio off.
I sat in the car smoking, watching the empty milk floats return home.
Just gone eleven-thirty.
I jogged down past the prison and on to the building site, the Foster’s Construction sign rattling under the rain.
I pushed open the tarpaulin door of an unfinished house, the radio playing Tubular Bells.
Three big men, stinking and smoking.
‘Fuck, not you again,’ said one big man with a sandwich in his mouth and flask of tea in his hand.
I said, ‘I’m looking for Jimmy Ashworth.’
‘He’s not here, is he,’ said another big man with the back of his NCB donkey jacket to me.
‘What about Terry Jones?’
‘He’s not here either,’ said the donkey jacket to the grins of the other two men.
‘Do you know where they are?’
‘No,’ said the sandwich man.
‘What about your Gaffer, is he about?’
‘Just not your lucky day is it.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, thinking choke on it you thick fucking twat.
‘Don’t mention it,’ sandwich man smiled as I went back out.
I turned up the collar of my jacket and stuck my hands and bandages deep into my pockets. Down there, with Paul’s Ronson lighter and the odd pennies, I found a feather in my pocket.
I walked through the piles of cheap bricks and the half-built houses towards Devil’s Ditch, thinking of that last school photograph of Clare, with her nervous pretty smile, stuck on to the black and white shots on my Redbeck walls.
I looked up, the feather in my fingers.
Jimmy Ashworth was stumbling and running across the wasteland towards me, big red spots of blood dropping from his nose and his scalp on to his skinny white chest.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’ I shouted.
He slowed to a walk as he drew near me, pretending like nothing was up.
‘What happened to you?’
‘Just piss off, will you.’
In the distance, Terry Jones was coming up behind Jimmy from Devil’s Ditch.
I grabbed Jimmy’s arm. ‘What did he say to you?’
He tried to twist free, screaming, ‘Get off me!’
I grabbed the other arm of his jacket. ‘You’d seen her before, hadn’t you?’
‘Fuck off!’
Terry Jones had broken into a jog, waving at us.
‘You told Michael Myshkin about her, didn’t you?’
‘Fuck off,’ shouted Jimmy, twisting out of his jacket and shirt, breaking into a run.
I span round, rugby tackling him into the mud.
He fell into the mud beneath me.
I had him pinned down, shouting, ‘Where had you fucking seen her?’
‘Fuck off!’ Jimmy Ashworth was screaming, looking up past me into a big grey sky that was pissing down all over his muddy, bloody face.
‘Tell me where you’d fucking seen her.’
‘No.’
I slapped my bandaged hand across his face, pain shooting up my arm into my heart, yelling, ‘Tell me!’
‘Get the fuck off him,’ said Terry Jones, pulling me backwards by the collar of my jacket
‘Fuck off,’ I said, my arms flailing and lashing out at Terry Jones.
Jimmy Ashworth, breaking free from my legs, got to his feet and ran bare-chested towards the houses, the rain, the mud, and the blood running down his naked back.
‘Jimmy!’ I shouted, wrestling with Terry Jones.
‘Leave it fucking be,’ hissed Jones.
Over by the houses, the three big men had come out and were laughing at Jimmy as he sprinted past them.
‘He’d fucking seen her before.’
‘Leave it!’
Jimmy Ashworth kept on running.
The three big men stopped laughing and started walking over towards me and Terry Jones.
He released me, whispering, ‘You best piss off.’
‘I’m going to fucking have you, Jones.’
Terry Jones picked up Jimmy Ashworth’s shirt and jacket. ‘Then you’re wasting your time.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ he smiled sadly.
I turned and walked away towards Devil’s Ditch, wiping the mud from my hands on to my trousers.
I heard a shout and looked round to see Terry Jones, his arms up, shepherding the three big men back towards the half-built houses.
There was no sign of Jimmy Ashworth.
I stood on the lip of the Ditch, looking down at the rusted prams and bicycles, the cookers and the fridges, thinking all of modern life is here and so was Clare Kemplay, aged ten.
My fingers black with dirt, I took the small white feather from my pocket.
At Devil’s Ditch, I looked up into the big black sky and put the small white feather to my pale pink lips thinking, if only it hadn’t been her.
The Strafford Arms, the Bullring, Wakefield.
The dead centre of Wakefield, the Friday before Christmas.
Mud Man, up the stairs and through the door.
Members only.
‘It’s all right Grace, he’s with me,’ said Box to the woman behind the bar.
Derek
Box and Paul at the bar, whiskys and cigars in their hands.
There was Elvis on the jukebox.
Just Derek, Paul, Grace, Elvis, and me.
Box got up from his stool and walked across the room to a table in the window.
‘You look like shit. What the fuck happened to you?’
I sat down opposite Box, my back to Paul and the door, looking out on a wet Wakefield.
‘I went down Devil’s Ditch.’
‘I thought they’d got someone for that?’
‘So did I.’
‘Some things are best left,’ said Derek Box, examining the end of his cigar.
‘Like Councillor Shaw?’
Box relit his cigar. ‘Did you see him?’
‘Yeah.’
Paul put a whisky and a pint in front of me.
I tipped the whisky into my pint.
‘And?’
‘And he’s probably talking to Donald Foster as we speak.’
‘Good.’
‘Good? Foster had Barry fucking killed.’
‘Probably.’
‘Probably?’
‘Barry got ambitious.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You know what I’m talking about. Barry had his own agenda.’
‘So what? Foster must be fucking insane. We can’t just let it go. We’ve got to do something about it.’
‘He’s not insane,’ said Box. ‘Just motivated.’
‘You know him well or something?’
‘We were in Kenya together.’
‘Business?’
‘Her Majesty’s business. We did our National fucking Service in the Highlands, protecting fat cunts like I am now, fighting the fucking Mau Maus.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Yeah. They’d come down from the hills like a tribe of bloody Red Indians, raping the women, cutting the cocks off the men, stringing them upon fence posts.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘Do I look like I’m joking?’
‘No.’
‘We weren’t angels, Mr Dunford. I was with Don Foster when we ambushed a fucking War Party. We shot them in the knees with.303s so we could have some fun.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Foster took his time. He taped the screams, the dogs barking, claimed it helped him sleep.’
I picked up Paul’s lighter from the table and lit a cigarette.
Paul brought over two more whiskys.
‘It was war, Mr Dunford. Just like now.’
I picked up my glass.
Box was sweating as he drank, his eyes off deep in the dark. ‘A year ago they were going to bring back rationing. Now we got inflation at fucking 25 per cent.’