by David Peace
No more Christmases.
The policeman on the desk is picking the scabs off his boils.
You look down at the linoleum floor, at the white squares and the grey, at the boot and the chair marks –
‘Mr Piggott?’
You look up.
‘Sign here please, sir,’ says a young, blond policeman –
A young Bob Fraser –
Smiling and holding out a clipboard, two large brown paper bags on the desk.
You take the clipboard and the pen from him. You sign the papers.
He hands you the large brown paper bags. ‘Here you go, sir.’
You stand up. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
You walk across the linoleum floor, the white squares and the grey, the boot marks and the chair marks, walk towards the double doors and out –
‘Sir,’ the young officer calls after you. ‘Just a minute.’
You turn back round –
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘You wanted a copy of the inventory, didn’t you?’
You nod.
He hands you a photocopied piece of A4. ‘The Chief would’ve had my guts for garters. He said to be sure you got it.’
You sit in the car in the car park between the bus station and the market, still in the shadow of Millgarth, the two large brown paper bags open on the passenger seat with the photocopied piece of A4 in your hand:
One pair of black leather motorcycle boots, size nine.
Two pairs of blue navy wool socks, size eight.
One pair of white underpants, size M.
One pair of Lee blue denim jeans, size 30, with black leather belt.
One brown handkerchief.
One pair of medium-sized black leather motorcycle gloves.
One white T-shirt, size M.
One blue and white cotton check shirt, size M.
One sleeveless Wrangler blue denim jacket with patches and badges, size M.
One black leather jacket, marked Saxon and Angelwitch with bird wing motif.
One pair of round-framed gold spectacles.
One Casio digital calculator wristwatch.
One black leather studded wristband.
One Star of David metal key-ring with three keys attached.
One brown leather wallet containing one five pound note, driving licence in the name of James Ashworth, 69 Newstead View, Fitzwilliam, a Mass card and stamps to the value of twenty-five pence.
One packet of Rothmans cigarettes containing five unsmoked cigarettes.
One disposable white plastic cigarette lighter.
One packet of Rizla cigarette papers.
Seventy-six-and-a-half pence in loose change.
You put the list down. You root through the bags for the belt.
You find the jeans first, but the belt isn’t in them –
It’s at the very bottom of the second bag.
You pull it out. You hold it up:
They open the door to Room 4 and there he is, his boots still turning as they struggle to cut him down, the stink of piss among the suds, his body attached to the ventilation grille, a belt holding him there by his neck, hanging in a jacket that says Saxon and Angelwitch between a pair of swan’s wings, his tongue swollen and eyes as big as plates, still struggling to cut him down and take him away, to put him in a hole in the ground and make it go away –
But it won’t and it never will –
Not for her –
Nor you.
But you cannot remember if it was this belt –
Holding him there by his neck –
This belt here in your hands.
You put the belt back in the bag. You close both large brown paper bags. You fold the photocopied piece of A4. You put it in your pocket. You start the car. You pull out without looking in your mirror.
A motorcycle brakes hard behind you.
You stop.
The rider dismounts. He tears off his helmet. He is coming towards you with his angry words and violent threats.
You start the car again. You drive off up George Street, drive off thinking –
No helmet.
At the top of George Street you piss around on the various one-way systems till you come out on to the Headrow. You check the rearview to be sure Sid fucking Snot isn’t still on your tail. You go up Cookridge Street.
You are looking for Portland Square –
Flat 6, 6 Portland Square, Leeds 1.
*
You park on Great George Street. You wander around behind the Law Courts and the Cathedral, the Infirmary and the Library –
Looking for Flat 6, 6 Portland Square, Leeds 1 –
Looking for Jack.
It is Wednesday 1 June 1983 –
D-8.
Off Calverley Street, tucked between Portland Way and Portland Crescent, up by the Poly and opposite the Civic Hall, you find it –
Suitably ruined Victorian grandeur, ill-gotten and squandered, waiting for the Wrecking Ball; two empty terraces staring down at the grass and the weeds rampant between the cracks and the stones:
Portland Square –
You pick your way along the line until you come to number 6:
The front door is wide open and there are no curtains in the windows of the ground floor. There is a tree stood in the patch of ground that sets the place back from where the pavement lies buried. The tree is taller than the building and hiding the lamppost, its branches scratching down the upstairs windows.
You walk up the three stone steps. You push the door open wider.
There is a staircase leading up to the left, leaves and crisp packets, old unopened post and papers, all scattered across the brown carpet.
You step inside. You call out: ‘Hello? Hello?’
No answer.
You walk up the stairs to the first floor and Flats 3 and 4.
The carpet is cleaner here.
You cross the landing. You go up the second flight of stairs.
At the top is Flat 5 and at the end of the landing is number 6.
The carpet is clear of leaves and crisp packets, unopened post and papers.
You try the bell on the door of Flat 6, 6 Portland Square, Leeds 1.
No answer.
You knock. You shout: ‘Hello? Hello?’
No answer.
There is a metal letterbox in the old wooden door.
You squat down. You lift the flap. ‘Mr Whitehead? Jack Whitehead?’
No answer.
You peer in through the letterbox:
The inside of the flat is dark and the smell unpleasant.
You can hear the bells ringing for Evensong, the trees scratching at the windows.
You let the flap go. You stand back up. You drop to your knees again –
Someone has scratched a single word into the metal flap of the letterbox:
Ripper.
You let the flap go again. You stand back upright. You stare at the door –
Someone has also scratched a number on either side of the six:
6 6 6.
You are thinking of your mother again –
The things they wrote on her walls and door.
Maybe Whitehead and son don’t want to be found.
Back outside among the grass and the weeds, the cracks and the stones, you follow the bells into St Anne’s. You want to ask if anyone knows any Whiteheads living local, but there’s no-one in a collar to pester.
Fat, bald and tired –
Scared to go home, you sit down at the back.
Down in the front pew there’s an old woman with a walking stick trying to stand. A little boy is helping her to her feet, a book under his arm.
Up on the Cross, there’s Christ –
Just hanging around as usual, waiting for someone to save or seduce –
Some lonely old widow trapped in her house by the endless night and its kids.
The boy is leading the old woman down the aisle. They reach the back pew where you are sat
. The boy takes the book from under his arm. He opens it and hands it to you.
You look at the boy and the old woman.
They look back at you, familiar.
You start to speak but they walk off.
You look down at the pages of the book –
The Holy Bible –
Look down at the passage marked:
Job 30, 26–31.
Look down and read it:
When I looked for good,
Then evil came unto me:
And when I waited for light,
There came darkness.
My bowels boiled,
And rested not:
The days of affliction prevented me.
I went mourning without the sun:
I stood up,
And I cried in the congregation.
I am a brother to dragons,
And a companion to owls.
My skin is black upon me,
And my bones are burned with heat.
My harp also is turned to mourning,
And my organ into the voice of them that weep.
Back in the car on Great George Street, you rummage around in the bags until you find Jimmy’s wallet. You take it out. You open it. You find the fiver, his driving licence, the stamps to the value of twenty-five pence –
Not the Mass card –
It isn’t there.
But tucked inside the split silken lining is a photograph –
A photograph of a girl:
Not Tessa.
It’s a photograph cut from a newspaper –
A cutting:
Hazel.
Chapter 33
Dawn or fucking near enough –
Sunday 12 June 1977 –
(You better paint your face) –
Banging on Joe’s door: ‘Open fucking door!’
‘Who is it?’
BJ hiss: ‘We’re fucking late!’
Locks slide, keys turn/new locks, new keys –
BJ: over right shoulder/over left –
(Hair in his face, he is dressed in the black of the corner of my eye) –
Him: wide white eyes at crack –
(Here is your friend again) –
Paranoid looks to left/paranoid looks to right –
(Me, my face, my eye) –
BJ push open door into this private little Chapeltown hellhole:
Joe’s mate Steve Barton on mattress and angry: ‘You the late boy, not me.’
BJ: ‘You fucking ready?’
Steve: ‘Been waiting for you.’
‘Things to do.’
‘No shit,’ nods Steve. ‘You get them done, them things?’
‘Fuck off with him,’ says Joe.
‘You fuck off,’ he spits.
BJ: ‘Fuck is with you two?’
‘Bad night.’
‘Aren’t they all?’
Joe is shaking his head: ‘Word is Janice be dead.’
‘Janice Ryan?’
He nods.
‘Fuck that,’ BJ say. ‘She’s protected, double I hear.’
He snorts: ‘Aren’t we all?’
Steve: ‘First Marie –’
BJ: ‘Stop man, stop right there.’
‘Be out of hand, I say.’
BJ turn to Steve: ‘Then this is your fucking payback, man.’
‘Be that Pirate,’ whispers Joe.
‘Fuck her,’ BJ say. ‘Fuck him.’
No-one speaks.
‘We going or what?’
No-one moves.
BJ ask them again, check them two-times: ‘You up for this?’
Joe, he doesn’t smile, just says again: ‘Show me mine enemy.’
BJ turn to Steve: ‘Payback time?’
He shrugs and gets up off mattress, tracing sevens on walls and sevens on door, sevens on ceiling and sevens on floor –
All them pretty little sevens, dressed up in red, dressed up in gold and green:
Them two sevens –
Joe stagger-dancing out door, his voice of thunder still chanting: ‘War in the East, war in the West; War in the North, war in the South; Crazy Joe get them out …’
Steve: ‘Heavy Manners.’
Heavy fucking Manners –
COMING DOWN.
Three young men sitting in a stolen Cortina:
(Down we slide, further) –
Steve Barton, Joe Rose, and BJ –
(On Satan’s side) –
Edgy with cause/edgy with reason –
(Treacherous times) –
BJ look at BJ’s watch:
Seven twenty-five, nineteen seventy-seven.
BJ nod.
Everybody gets out of car.
Everybody walk across Gledhill Road, Morley.
Everybody pull on their masks.
BJ knock on back door.
Everybody wait –
Wait, wait, wait:
The key turns.
The door opens.
Steve kicks it straight back in bloke’s face.
Bloke goes down on other side of door (like a sack of fucking spuds):
His hair in his face, his teeth all covered in blood –
Everybody step over him –
Steve giving him a kick (just to make sure he’s going to be a good boy).
‘What the –’
Granny coming down stairs –
Steve straight across room to give her a slap, hard.
He bungs a bag over her head, ties her arms behind her, pretends to suck her tit:
‘Please, please –’
Bound, gagged and bagged.
Steve back on his feet and through into Post Office, pointing Joe upstairs –
Joe saying: ‘Upstairs?’
Steve turning and nodding, finger to his mask.
BJ stand in back with old bloke still out for count, his wife crying in a pool of her own piss.
Steve is back with a bag of cash.
Joe coming down stairs, empty-handed and shrugging his shoulders.
BJ walk over to Steve. BJ peer into bag:
NOT ENOUGH –
Not a grand, nowhere near.
Nowhere near and BJ tell him so: ‘Someone’s fucked up here.’
‘Shut up, man,’ hisses Steve. ‘Deal with it later, not here.’
BJ shake BJ’s head.
BJ walk out back door.
They follow.
Everybody leave –
Leave them lying in their little pools on floor of their little Post Office:
He will need thirty-five stitches in his head and in six months she’ll be dead.
Everybody take their masks off.
Everybody get in Cortina.
Everybody drive back into Leeds, old sun already behind new clouds –
Steve laughing as he drives, shouting: ‘Payback!’
Joe chanting to himself: ‘War in the East, war in the West; War in the North …’
Old sun already behind new clouds, shadows across car –
BJ say: ‘We’ve fucked up.’
Joe counting cash: ‘Still be more than seven hundred here, man.’
‘We’ve fucked up,’ BJ say again. ‘It was a set-up.’
‘No set-up,’ Steve is saying, shaking his locks. ‘Just pure fucking payback.’
BJ nodding, knowing –
(The never-never, can’t go on forever) –
Knowing what’s coming –
(Close my eyes but he will not go away) –
COMING –
(But I have the will to survive) –
COMING –
(I will cheat and I will win) –
COMING –
(You think I’m a raving idiot, just off the boat) –
COMING –
(But I’ll be round the back of your house in the dead of the night) –
COMING –
(Watch you sleeping in your bed) –
COMING –
(When the bloody heavens clash) –
CO
MING DOWN –
(The Two Sevens).
Chapter 34
Saturday 25 March 1972 –
‘You wake up some morning as unhappy as you’ve ever been …’
I lie alone in our double bed, listening to the sound of things getting worse:
‘Protests mount over direct rule in Northern Ireland after the Government’s agreement yesterday that Ulster is to be ruled direct from Westminster for a year ran into opposition immediately with both wings of the IRA saying they would fight on and militant Protestants demanding widespread strike action despite calls from Mr Faulkner for calm.
‘Meanwhile Mr William Whitelaw, the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, yesterday described the task ahead of him as, “Terrifying, difficult, and awesome.”’
I lie alone in the double bed, listening to the sound of things getting worse as my family dress for a wedding –
‘Mr & Mrs William Molloy gratefully request the presence of Mr & Mrs Maurice Jobson & family at the marriage of their daughter Louise Ann to Mr Robert Fraser.’
A celebration.
‘Paul!’ the wife shouts up the stairs. ‘Paul, hurry up, love, will you? We’re all waiting.’
My wife, my daughter and I stood at the front door –
My wife looking up the stairs, my daughter in the mirror, me at my watch.
The Simon and Garfunkel abruptly stops and down he comes.
‘I’ll get the car out,’ I say and open the door.
‘I’ll lock up,’ nods the wife, pushing the children towards the door.
I go out. I open up the garage. I drive the car out, the family car –
The Triumph Estate.
I get back out. I lock the garage door.
‘It’s open,’ I tell the wife and kids as they stand around the car wishing we were all somewhere else –
Someone else –
Other people.
We get in the family car.
Clare asks me to put the radio on.
‘We haven’t got one,’ I reply.
She slouches down in the back. Paul whispers something to her. They both smile.
They are fifteen and thirteen and they hate me.
I glance in the rearview mirror. I say: ‘Leeds have got Arsenal today, haven’t they?’
Paul shrugs. Clare whispers something to him. They both smile again.
They are fifteen and thirteen and I hate them and I love them.
My wife Judith says: ‘Hope they get a bit of sun for the photos.’
And her –
I hate her –
Hate her in her hat too big for the car.
Ossett Parish Church has the tallest steeple in Yorkshire, so they say. It stands black and tall for all to see, across the golf courses and the fields of rape and rhubarb.