Nineteen Seventy-four

by David Peace

Shaw’s election as Chairman of the first Wakefield Metropolitan District Council had been widely welcomed as ensuring a smooth transition during the changeover from the old West Riding.

  Local Government sources, last night, expressed consternation and dismay at the timing of Mr Shaw’s resignation.

  Mr Shaw is also Acting Chairman of the West Yorkshire Police Authority and it is unclear as to whether he will continue.

  Home Office Minister of State Robert Shaw was unavailable for comment on his brother’s resignation. Mr Shaw himself is believed to be staying with friends in France.

  Two more dark newsprint eyes, Shaw not smiling, looking already dead.

  Oh fucking boy.

  ‘The Great British Public get the kind of truth they deserve.’

  And I’d got mine.

  I put down the paper and closed my eyes.

  I saw them at their typewriters, Jack and George, stinking of Scotch, knowing their secrets, telling their lies.

  I saw Hadden, reading their lies, knowing their secrets, pouring their Scotch.

  I wanted to sleep for a thousand years, to wake up when their like were gone, when I didn’t have their dirty black ink on my fingers, in my blood.

  But the fucking house wouldn’t let me be, the typewriter keys mixing with that faint drumming noise, chattering in my ears, deafening my skull and bones.

  I opened my eyes. On the sofa next to me were huge rolled-up papers, architect’s plans.

  I laid one out across the glass coffee table, over Paula and Shaw.

  It was for a shopping centre, The Swan Centre.

  To be built at the Hunslet and Beeston exit of the M1.

  I closed my eyes again, my little gypsy girl standing in her ring of fire.

  ‘Because of the fucking money.’

  The Swan Centre:

  Shaw, Dawson, Foster.

  The Box Brothers wanting in.

  Foster fucking with the Boxes.

  Shaw and Dawson putting their various pleasures before business.

  Foster as Ringmaster, trying to keep the fucking circus on the road.

  Everybody out of their league, their tree, whatever.

  Everybody fucked.

  ‘Because of the fucking money.’

  I stood up and walked out of the living room, into a cold and light expensive kitchen.

  A tap was running into an empty stainless steel sink. I turned it off.

  I could still hear the drumming.

  There was a door to the back garden and another to the garage.

  The drumming was coming from behind the second door.

  I tried to open the door but it wouldn’t.

  From under the door I saw four slight trickles of water.

  I tried the door again and it still wouldn’t open.

  I flew out the back door and ran round to the front of the house.

  There were no windows built into the garage.

  I tried to open the double garage doors but they wouldn’t.

  I went back inside through the front door.

  A ring of keys was hanging by another from inside the keyhole.

  I took the keys back into the kitchen and the drumming.

  I tried the biggest, the smallest, and another.

  The lock turned.

  I opened the door and swallowed exhaust fumes.

  Fuck.

  A Jaguar, engine running, sat alone in the dark on the far side of the double garage.

  Fuck.

  I grabbed a kitchen chair and wedged the door open, kicking away a pile of damp tea-towels.

  I ran across the garage, the light from the kitchen shining on two people in the front seat and a hosepipe running from the exhaust into a back window.

  The car radio was on loud, Elton belting out Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

  I ripped the hose and more wet towels out of the exhaust pipe and tried the driver’s door.

  Locked.

  I ran round to the passenger door, opened it and caught a lung full of carbon monoxide and Mrs Marjorie Dawson, still looking like my mother, a bloody crimson freezer bag wrapped round her head, as she fell into my knees.

  I tried to push her back upright, leaning across the body to turn off the ignition.

  John Dawson was slumped against the steering wheel, another freezer bag over his head, his hands bound before him.

  ‘Here we go again. Reckless talk costs lives.’

  They were both blue and dead.

  Fuck.

  I switched off the ignition and Elton and sat back on the garage floor, bringing Mrs Dawson with me, her head in the bag in my lap, the two of us staring up at her husband.

  The architect.

  John Dawson, at last and too late, a face in a plastic freezer bag.

  John bloody Dawson, ever the ghost and now for real, a ghost in a plastic freezer bag.

  John fucking Dawson, just his works remaining, looming and haunting, leaving me as robbed and fucked as the rest of them; robbed of the chance to ever know and fucked of the hope it might bring, sat there before him with his wife in my arms, desperate to raise the dead for just one second, desperate to raise the dead for just one word.

  Silence.

  I raised Mrs Dawson as gently as I could back into the Jaguar, propping her up against her husband, their freezer bag heads slumped together in more, more, fucking silence.

  Fuck.

  ‘Reckless talk costs lives.’

  I took out my dirty grey handkerchief and started the dusting.

  Five minutes later I closed the door to the kitchen and went back into the house.

  I sat down on the sofa next to their plans, their schemes, their fucked-up dreams, and thought of my own, the shotgun in my lap.

  The house was quiet.

  Silent.

  I stood up and walked out of the front door of Shangrila.

  I drove back to the Redbeck, the radio off, the wipers squeaking like rats in the dark.

  I parked in a puddle and took the black bin-bag from the boot. I limped across the car park, every limb stiff from my time underground.

  I opened the door and went in out of the rain.

  Room 27 was cold and no home, Sergeant Fraser long gone.

  I sat on the floor with the lights off, listening to the lorries come and go, thinking of Paula and barefoot dances to Top of the Pops just days ago, from another age.

  I thought of BJ and Jimmy Ashworth, of teenage boys crouched in the giant wardrobes of damp rooms.

  I thought of the Myshkins and the Marshes, the Dawsons and the Shaws, the Fosters and the Boxes, of their lives and of their crimes.

  Then I thought of men underground, of the children they stole, and of the mothers they left.

  And, when I could cry no more, I thought of my own mother and I stood up.

  The yellows of the lobby were brighter than ever, the stink stronger.

  I picked up the receiver, dialled, and put the coin to the slot.

  ‘Hello?’

  I dropped the coin in the box. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  Through the double glass doors, the pool room was dead.

  ‘To say I’m sorry.’

  ‘What did they do to you?’

  I looked round at the brown lobby chairs, looking for the old woman.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘One of them slapped me, you know.’

  I could feel my eyes stinging.

  ‘In my own house, Edward!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She was crying. I could hear my sister’s voice in the background. She was shouting at my mother. I stared at the names and the promises, the threats and the numbers, scribbled by the payphone.

  ‘Please come home.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Edward!’

  ‘I’m really sorry, Mum.’

  ‘Please!’

  ‘I love you.’

  I hung up.

  I picked the receiver up again, tried to d
ial Kathryn’s number, couldn’t remember it, hung up again, and ran back through the rain to Room 27.

  The sky above was big and blue without a cloud.

  She was outside in the street, pulling a red cardigan tight around her, smiling.

  Her hair was blonde and blowing in the breeze.

  She reached out towards me, putting her arms around my neck and shoulders.

  ‘I’m no angel,’ she whispered into my hair.

  We kissed, her tongue hard against mine.

  I moved my hands down her back, crushing our bodies closer together.

  The wind whipped my face with her hair.

  She broke off our kiss as I came.

  I woke on the floor with come in my pants.

  Down to my underpants at the sink of my Redbeck room, lukewarm grey water slopping down my chest and on to the floor, wanting to go home but not wishing to be anyone’s son, photographs of daughters smiling in the mirror.

  Crosslegged on the floor of my Redbeck room, unravelling the black bandages around my hand, stopping just short of the mess and the flesh, ripping another sheet with my teeth and binding my hand with the strips, worse wounds grinning from the wall above.

  Back in my muddy clothes at the door of my Redbeck room, swallowing pills and lighting cigarettes, wanting to sleep but not wishing to dream, thinking this’ll be the day that I die, pictures of Paula waving bye-bye.

  Chapter 12

  1 a.m.

  Rock On.

  Tuesday 24 December 1974.

  Christmas bloody Eve.

  Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?

  I drove down the Barnsley Road into Wakefield, homes switching off their Christmas lights, The Good Old Days finished.

  I had the shotgun in the boot of the car.

  I crossed the Calder, went up past the market, and into the Bullring, the Cathedral trapped in the black sky up above.

  Everything was dead.

  I parked outside a shoe shop.

  I opened the boot.

  I took the shotgun out of the black bin-bag.

  I loaded the gun in the boot of the car.

  I put some more shells in my pocket.

  I took the shotgun out of the boot.

  I closed the boot of the car.

  I walked across the Bullring.

  On the first floor of the Strafford the lights were on, downstairs everything dark.

  I opened the door and went up the stairs one at a time.

  They were at the bar, whiskys and cigars all round:

  Derek Box and Paul, Sergeant Craven and PC Douglas.

  Rock ‘n’ Roll Part 2 was on the jukebox.

  Barry James Anderson, his face black and blue, dancing alone in the corner.

  I had a hand on the barrel, a finger on the trigger.

  They looked up.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ said Paul.

  ‘Drop the gun,’ said one of the coppers.

  Derek Box smiled, ‘Evening, Eddie.’

  I told him what he already knew. ‘You killed Mandy Wymer?’

  Box turned and took a big pull on a fat cigar. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘And Donald Foster?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I want to know why.’

  ‘Ever the journalist. Take a wild bloody guess, Scoop.’

  ‘Over a fucking shopping centre?’

  ‘Yeah, over a fucking shopping centre.’

  ‘What the fuck did Mandy Wymer have to do with a shopping centre?’

  ‘You want me to spell it out?’

  ‘Yeah, spell it out.’

  ‘No architect, no shopping centre.’

  ‘So she knew?’

  He was laughing, ‘Fuck knows.’

  I saw little dead girls and brand new shopping schemes, scalped dead women and the rain off your head.

  I said, ‘You enjoyed it.’

  ‘I told you from the start, we’d all get what we wanted.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Revenge and money, the perfect combination.’

  ‘I didn’t want revenge.’

  ‘You wanted fame,’ hissed Box. ‘It’s the same.’

  There were tears running down my face, on to my lips.

  ‘And Paula? What was that?’

  Box took another big pull on his fat cigar. ‘Like I said, I’m no angel …’

  I shot him in the chest.

  He fell back into Paul, air hissing out of him.

  Rock ‘n’ Roll.

  I reloaded.

  I fired again and hit Paul in his side, knocking him over.

  Rock ‘n’ Roll.

  The two policemen stood there staring.

  I reloaded and fired.

  I hit the short one in the shoulder.

  I started to reload but the tall one with the beard stepped forward.

  I turned the shotgun round and swung the handle into the side of his face.

  He stood there looking at me, his head to one side, a little bit of blood dripping from his ear on to his jacket.

  Rock ‘n’ Roll.

  The room was filled with smoke and the strong smell of the shotgun.

  The woman behind the bar was screaming and there was blood on her blouse.

  A man at a table by the window had his mouth open and his hands up.

  The tall policeman was still standing, eyes blank, the short one crawling towards the toilets.

  Paul was lying on his back looking up at the ceiling, opening and closing his eyes.

  Derek Box was dead.

  BJ had stopped dancing.

  I pointed the gun at him, chest high.

  I said, ‘Why me?’

  ‘You came so highly recommended.’

  I dropped the gun and went back down the stairs.

  I drove back to Ossett.

  I parked Fraser’s Maxi in a supermarket car park and walked back to Wesley Street.

  The Viva was alone in the drive, my mother’s house all dark and asleep beside it.

  I got into the car and switched on the engine and the radio.

  I lit my last cigarette and said my little prayers:

  Clare, here’s one for you.

  Susan, here’s one for you.

  Jeanette, here’s one for you.

  Paula, they’re all for you.

  And the unborn.

  I sat there, singing along to The Little Drummer Boy, with those far-off days, those days of grace, coming down.

  Waiting for the blue lights.

  Ninety miles an hour.

  FIRST VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EDITION, FEBRUARY 2009

  Copyright © 1999 by David Peace

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Great Britain by Serpent’s Tail, an imprint of Profile Books Ltd., London, in 1999.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data for Nineteen Seventy-four is on file at the Library of Congress.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-74164-6

  www.vintagebooks.com

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