by David Peace
Yorkshire –
Wakefield:
Wood Street Police Station –
We walk down the long, long corridor –
Uniforms stood around, drinking and laughing, singing fucking carols –
Jingle Bells –
Jimmy Ashworth sat at the table in Room 1 –
Jingle Bells –
Two teenage girls sat at the table in Room 2 –
Jingle –
Room 3 empty –
Fucking –
In Room 4 –
Bells –
Three big kings in their shirtsleeves:
Ronald Angus, George Oldman and Pete Noble –
Three big men in their shirtsleeves stood over him:
Michael John Myshkin, twenty-two, in police issue grey shirt and trousers –
Michael John Myshkin of Jenkins Photo Studio, Castleford –
Michael John Myshkin the man who is saying he murdered Clare Kemplay:
‘… she wouldn’t let me kiss her, so I kissed her anyway and then she wouldn’t shut up. Said she was going to tell her mam and dad and police, so I strangled her. Then I cut her and put the rose up her and the wings in her back …’
He is grossly overweight, his enormous head bowed and shaking –
Handcuffed, spots of blood are dropping from his nose on to the table.
He is crying. He has pissed himself.
Dick and I step inside.
Angus, Oldman and Noble turn round –
‘Maurice,’ says George. ‘This is Michael John Myshkin.’
I look back at Myshkin –
Head bowed and shaking.
‘Michael’s just been telling us what a bad boy he’s been, haven’t you, Michael?’
Myshkin doesn’t answer.
Noble bangs both palms down loud on the table. ‘Answer the man!’
Myshkin nods –
A fat and stupid moon in a black and cruel night;
‘Tell these gentlemen what you just told us, Michael,’ says Ronald Angus.
Michael Myshkin looks up at me –
Trembling and blinking through his fears and tears.
I say: ‘We’re listening, Michael.’
Michael John Myshkin smoothes down his hair. He blinks. He nods. He whispers: ‘I was driving the van in Morley and I saw her and I fancied her and I stopped and got her into the van but she wouldn’t let me kiss her, so I kissed her anyway and then she wouldn’t shut up. Said she was going to tell her mam and dad and police, so I strangled her. Then I cut her and put the rose up her and the wings in her back. Just like the others.’
‘Which others?’ I say.
‘Them two others.’
‘You did them too, didn’t you, Michael?’ says Noble.
He nods.
Noble: ‘Susan Ridyard?’
He nods.
Noble: ‘Jeanette Garland?’
Michael Myshkin looks from Noble to me for a split second –
A split second in which you can see him –
See him see her –
See Jeanette –
A split second in which he loses his life –
A split second before he nods.
‘Did what?’ shouts Noble.
‘Killed them.’
I say: ‘Michael? Where did you kill them?’
‘Under the grass, between the cracks and the stones –’
‘Where?’
‘Those beautiful carpets.’
‘Where is this?’
‘My kingdom,’ he says. ‘My underground kingdom.’
Noble steps forward. He slaps him hard across the top of his head. He shouts: ‘You’re going to have to do fucking better than that, you dirty fat fucking bastard!’
‘Come on,’ says Oldman. ‘Leave him to think on. I need a drink.’
‘A bloody whiskey,’ laughs Angus. ‘A bloody big one.’
Dick follows them out into the corridor.
I wait until they’re all out in the corridor. I lean across the table. I lift the lad’s head up. I look him in the eye. I tell him: ‘You didn’t really do it, did you, Michael?’
Michael Myshkin stares back. He doesn’t blink –
He shakes his enormous head.
‘But you know who did, don’t you, Michael?’
He looks at the table. He smoothes down his hair.
‘Who was it, Michael?’
He looks up –
There is blood on his face, tears on his cheek –
This fat and stupid moon in this black and cruel night;
He looks up. He blinks. He smiles. He laughs. He says: ‘The Wolf.’
*
They are waiting for me outside Room 4.
We walk back down the long, long corridor.
The two girls are still sat in Room 2.
They are wearing long skirts, tight sweaters and big shoes. They are about thirteen or fourteen years old.
‘Who are they?’ I ask Oldman.
‘These are two that first told us about Myshkin.’
I stand in the doorway of Room 2. I stare at them –
They have love bites on their necks.
‘One of them goes out with the lad that found the body,’ says Oldman.
‘Jimmy Ashworth?’
He nods: ‘Him and Myshkin live on same street out Fitzwilliam. He’s been driving Jimmy up and down to Morley to see her. They reckon he’s on some kind of pills to make his balls grow and his tits shrink. The lasses say he’s always whipping it out in churchyard. The one next to Morley Grange –’
‘Who pulled him?’
‘Girls went into Morley Station with their mams last night. Morley phoned it through. I sent John Rudkin up Fitzwilliam. He gets there. Myshkin’s done a runner. White Ford fucking Transit no less. Bob Craven and Bob Douglas spot him on the Doncaster Road. They chased him. They nicked him. Their collar.’
‘That’s it? A wank in the graveyard and he does a runner?’
George shakes his head.
‘What else you got?’
George hands me an envelope.
I open it –
A school photograph:
Blue-sky background –
Eyes and smile shining up in my face;
One pair of mongol eyes –
One crooked little smile:
Jeanette Garland.
‘It was in his wallet,’ says Oldman. ‘His fucking wallet.’
Ronald Angus stands between me and George Oldman. He already smells of whiskey. He puts an arm around each of our shoulders.
I try to move away.
Angus grips my shoulder. He says: ‘He did it, Maurice.’
I look at him.
‘You know it in your heart,’ he says.
I turn. I walk down the corridor –
‘In your heart,’ shouts Angus.
I walk past Room 1 –
Jimmy Ashworth still sat at the table, long lank hair everywhere. He is crying.
So am I –
In my heart.
Back upstairs they’re choosing Myshkin a solicitor, calling in Clive McGuinness and a thousand fucking favours, the talk now of Chivas Regal and press conferences, new tankards and trophies, like we’re some gang of monkeys who’ve just found their own arses without a fucking map, but I’m still wishing there’d been no amalgamation, no West Yorkshire fucking Metropolitan Police, wondering where the fuck the Badger is –
‘Maurice?’
Ronald Angus is looking at me –
My Chief Constable.
‘Pardon?’
‘I said, George will do the Press Conference if you’ve no objections.’
I stand up. I say: ‘None whatsoever.’
‘Where you off now?’ asks George.
‘Well, if you’ve no objections,’ I say. ‘I thought someone ought to go up the pervert’s house and get some fucking evidence. If that is you’ve no objections?’
Out of Wakefield and up the Doncaster Road,
past the Redbeck –
Blue lights spinning, the sirens screaming like the undead but buried –
Screaming all the way into Fitzwilliam –
Dick shouting: ‘You remember him, yeah?’
Nodding –
‘You know who nicked him?’
Nodding –
‘You know who they got him for a solicitor?’
Nodding –
‘You think he did it?’
Foot down –
‘I fucking hope he did.’
Foot down, nodding.
One, two, three, four –
Five o’clock:
54 Newstead View, Fitzwilliam –
Three police cars and a van, parked angular –
Doors open, hammers out –
His mam and his dad at the front door in their nightclothes –
Dick knocking them to one side on to their tiny front lawn –
Shouting: ‘We have a warrant to –’
Old man Myshkin coughing his blood and guts up, her screaming –
I give her a slap. I push them both back inside –
‘Upstairs,’ I say to Dick and Jim Prentice –
Old man Myshkin, hands full of stringy blood trying to comfort his wife –
I push them down into their tatty old sofa. ‘Sit down and shut up!’
‘Where’s Michael?’ she’s crying. ‘What have you done to Michael?’
‘Boss,’ says Dick –
Dick and Jim are standing in the doorway:
Jim is holding up a huge drawing of a rat –
A rat with a crown and wings –
Swan bloody wings.
Dick with a box full of photographs –
Photographs of ten or twelve young girls –
The windows look inwards, the walls listen to your heart;
School photographs –
Where one thousand voices cry;
Eyes and smiles shining up in my face –
Inside;
Ten pairs of blue eyes –
Inside your scorched heart;
Ten sets of smiles –
There is a house;
That same blue-sky background –
A house with no door;
One pair of mongol eyes –
The earth scorched;
One crooked smile –
Heathen and always winter.
100 miles an hour out of Fitzwilliam and down into Castleford, the undead but buried spinning and howling –
Spinning and howling all the way into Castleford –
Dick shouting: ‘You tell Oldman where we’re going?’
Shaking my head –
‘You called Bill, didn’t you?’
Shaking my head –
‘You think we should call him?’
Shaking my head –
‘I fucking hope you know what you’re doing?’
Foot down, shaking.
Heathen and always winter –
The car slows down. It bumps over the rough ground. It stops.
I chuck Dick and Jim their black balaclavas: ‘Put them on when you get inside.’
I stuff my balaclava in my coat pocket.
I hand them a hammer each.
I put on my gloves. I pick up another hammer. I put it in my other pocket.
We get out of the car –
We’re at the back of a row of shops in the centre of Castleford.
‘Jim, go round the front to keep an eye out,’ I tell him.
He nods.
I pull down my balaclava. I turn to Dick: ‘You set?’
Dick nods.
They follow me along the back of the shops. I stop by the metal gate in the high wall with the broken glass set in the top. I look at Dick.
Dick nods.
He gives me a leg up and over the wall and the broken glass.
I land on the other side in the backyard of Jenkins Photo Studio:
There’s a light on upstairs, a hammer in my pocket –
A photograph.
I open the gate for Dick.
I pick up one of the metal dustbin lids. I drop it on the floor with a crash –
We stand flat against the wall in the shadows by the back door –
In the shadows by the back door, waiting –
The door stays shut, the light on upstairs.
I nod.
Dick picks up the metal dustbin. He hoists it up. He hurls it through the back window –
Glass and wood everywhere.
He pulls himself up on to the ledge. He shoulders in through the broken glass and splintered frame. He jumps down on the other side to open the back door –
No turning back.
In and down the corridor to the front of the shop, Dick straight up the stairs –
Me past the window full of school portraits. I tap on the door. I open it for Jim.
He steps inside.
I point at the ceiling.
He puts on his balaclava. He follows me through to the back stairs –
Up the narrow steep stairs past a dark room on the right and into a living room-cum-bedroom on the left.
Dick is standing alone in the room on a carpet of photographs –
Photographs of young girls –
School photographs –
Thousands of eyes and hundreds of smiles shining up in our faces:
Pairs of eyes and sets of smiles all against that same blue-sky background –
That same sky-blue background favoured by Mr Edward Jenkins, photographer.
I take the photograph from my pocket –
The photograph of a young girl –
A school photograph –
Eyes and smile shining up in my face:
Mongol eyes and crooked smile against that same blue-sky background –
Jeanette Garland.
I take off my balaclava. I put my glasses back on –
Their thick lenses and black frames –
The Owl:
I am the Owl and I see everything from behind these lenses thick and frames black, everything in this upstairs room with its carpet of innocent eyes and trusting smiles, abused and exposed under a single dirty light –
Unblinking –
A single dirty light bulb still left on.
I put the photograph of Jeanette back in my pocket.
‘He’s gone then,’ says Jim.
I nod.
Dick hands me a large black Letts desk diary for 1974. ‘Forgot this in his haste.’
I turn to the back. I flick through the names and addresses –
Initials and phone numbers listed alphabetically.
I turn the pages. I read the names. I see the faces:
Looking for one name, one number, one face –
I see John Dawson. I see Don Foster –
I see me –
I see Michael Myshkin, John Murphy, the Badger and then –
That name, that number, that face:
GM: 3657.
I close the book –
They’re all going to die in this hell;
Close my eyes –
We all are.
‘What now?’ Jim is asking.
I open my eyes.
They are both staring at me.
‘Torch the place,’ I tell them.
They nod.
I walk back down the stairs. I go out into the alley.
It is daylight now.
I take off my glasses. I wipe them. I put them back on. I look up at the sky –
The moon gone –
No sun –
Jeanette Garland missing five years and six months –
Susan Ridyard missing two years, ten months –
Clare Kemplay dead five days –
Dead:
The windows look inwards, the walls listen to your heart –
Where one thousand voices cry;
Inside –
Inside your scorched heart;
There is a house –
A house with no doors;
The earth scorched –
Heathen and always winter;
The room murder –
This is where I live:
The grey sky turning black –
Fresh blood on my hands –
No turning back.
I drive out of Castleford –
Over to Netherton.
I park at the end of Maple Well Drive –
The morning sky black.
All the bungalows have their lights on –
Even number 16;
Fuck –
Never leave, never leave, never leave;
I get out –
I walk along the road.
The living room light is on –
Their white Ford Transit parked outside.
I go up the path –
I ring the doorbell:
A grey-haired woman opens the door, pink washing-up gloves dripping wet: ‘Yes?’
She’s put on weight since last we met.
I say: ‘Mrs Marsh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Police, love. Is your George in?’
She looks at me. She tries to place me. She shakes her head. ‘No.’
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s at his sister’s, isn’t he?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘That’s why I’m asking you.’
‘Well, he is.’
‘Where’s that then? His sister’s?’
‘Over Rochdale way.’
‘When did you last see him?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When did you last see your husband?’
‘Day he left.’
‘Which was?’
‘Last Thursday.’
‘Heard he was sick?’
‘He is. He’s gone for a break.’
‘Is that right?’
‘That’s what I just said, isn’t it?’
I want to push the door back hard into her face. I want to slap her. To punch her. Kick her. Beat her.
‘Is everything all right?’ asks a man from the doorway to the kitchen –
A tall man in black, his hat in his hands –
A priest.
I smile. I say: ‘Thank you for your time, Mrs Marsh.’
She nods.
I turn. I walk away, back down the garden path.
Back at the gate, I turn again –
Mrs Marsh has closed her front door, but there’s that shadow again –
Behind the nets in the front room –
Two shadows.
I walk back down Maple Well Drive –
Back to the car.
I get in and I wait –
I wait and I watch –
I wait.
I watch.
Chapter 44
You sleep in the car. You wake in the car. You sleep in the car. You wake in the car –