Nineteen Seventy-Four (11 page)

The line went dead.

I said, “I’m sorry, I’d have to check with my editor first. However, if you’d like to call back sometime tomorrow…I understand, thank you. Bye.”

“Another hot one Scoop?”

“Fucking Ratcatcher. Be the bloody death of me.”

Everybody laughed.

Even Jack.

Nine-thirty on a Monday night, 16 December 1974.

I pulled into the car park in front of the Gaiety Hotel, Roun-dhay Road, Leeds, and decided to stay put for half an hour. I switched off the engine and the lights and sat in the dark Viva, staring across the car park at the Gaiety, the lights from the bar giving me a good view of both the phonebox and the pub itself.

The Gaiety, an ugly modern pub with all the ugly old charms of any pub which bordered both Harehills and Chapeltown. A restaurant that served no food and a hotel that had no beds, that was the Gaiety.

I lit a cigarette, opened the window a crack, and tilted my head back.

About four months ago, soon after I’d first come back North, I’d spent almost an entire day, and some of the next, getting pissed out of my skull in the Gaiety with George Greaves, Gaz from Sport, and Barry.

About four months ago, when being back North was still a novelty and slumming in the Gaiety was a right laugh and a bit of an eye-opener.

About four months ago, when Ronald Dunford, Clare Kemplay, and Barry Cannon were still alive.

That all-day session hadn’t actually been much of a laugh, but it’d been a useful introduction for a new and very green North of England Crime Correspondent.

“This is Jack Whitehead Country,” George Greaves had whis pered as we pulled back the double doors and walked into the Gaiety around eleven that morning.

After about five hours I had been willing to go home but the Gaiety didn’t abide by local licensing laws and, despite having no food or beds or dancefloor, was able to sell alcohol from 11
AM
to 3
AM
by virtue of being either a restaurant or hotel or disco depending on which copper you talked to. And, unlike say the Queen’s Hotel in the city centre, the Gaiety also offered its daytime regulars a lunchtime strip-show. And additionally, instead of an actual hot food menu, the Gaiety was also able to offer its patrons the unique opportunity to eat out any member of the lunchtime strip-show at very reasonable rates. It was a snack that Gaz from Sport had assured me was worth a fiver of anybody’s money.

“He was Olympic Muff Diving Champion, our Gaz at Munich,” George Greaves had laughed.

“Not something the nig-nogs care for, mind,” added Gaz.

I’d first puked about six but had felt well enough to go on, staring at the pubes spinning in the broken toilet bowl.

The Gaiety’s daytime and evening clientele were pretty much the same, with only the ratios changing. During the day there were more prostitutes and Paid taxi drivers, while the night saw an increase in labourers and businessmen. Pissed journalists, off-duty coppers, and sullen West Indians were constant, day and night, day in, day out.

“
This is Jack Whitehead Country
.”

The last thing I really remember about that day was puking some more in the car park, thinking this is Jack’s Country not mine.

I emptied the Viva’s ashtray out of the window as a slot machine in the Gaiety paid out over the cheers that greeted yet another spin on the jukebox for
The Israelites
. I wound the window back up and wondered how many times I must have heard that bloody record that day about four months ago. Didn’t they ever get fucking tired of it?

At five to ten, as
Young, Gifted and Black
came on again, I got out of the Viva and Memory Lane and went over to wait by the phonebox.

At ten o’clock on the dot, I picked up the phone on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Who’s this?”

“Edward Dunford.”

“You alone?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re driving a green Vauxhall Viva?”

“Yeah.”

“Go on to Harehills Lane, where it meets Chapeltown Road, and park outside the hospital.”

The line went dead again.

At ten-ten I was parked outside the Chapel Allerton Hospital, where Harehills Lane and Chapeltown Road met and became the more promising Harrogate Road.

At ten-eleven someone tried the passenger door and then tapped on the glass. I leant across the passenger seat and opened the door.

“Turn the car around and head back into Leeds,” said the Maroon Suit with orange hair, getting in. “Anybody know you’re here?”

“No,” I said, turning the car around, thinking Bad Fucking Bowie.

“What about your girlfriend?”

“What about her?”

“She know you’re here?”

“No.”

The Maroon Suit sniffed hard, his orange hair turning this way and that. “Turn right at the park.”

“Here?”

“Yeah. Follow the road down to the church.”

At the junction by the church the Maroon Suit sniffed hard again and said, “Pull up here and wait ten minutes and then walk down Spencer Place. After about five minutes you’ll come to Spencer Mount, it’s the fifth or sixth on the left. Number 3 is on the right. Don’t ring the bell, just come straight up to flat 5.”

I said, “Flat 5, 3 Spencer Mount…” But the Maroon Suit and his orange hair were off and running.

At about ten-thirty I was walking along Spencer Place, thinking fuck him and this cloak and dagger shit. And fuck him again for making me walk down Spencer Place at ten-thirty like it was some kind of sodding test.

“Just looking are you, love?”

From ten until three, seven nights a week, Spencer Place was the busiest stretch of road in Yorkshire, bar the Manningham area of Bradford. And tonight, despite the cold, was no excep tion. Cars crawled up and down the road in both directions, brakelights shining red, looking like a Bank Holiday tailback.

“Like what you see, do you?”

The older women sat on low walls in front of unlit terraces while the younger ones walked up and down, stamping their boots to keep the cold at bay.

“Excuse me Mr Officer…”

The only other men on the street were West Indians, hopping in and out of parked cars, trailing heavy smoke and music behind them, offering wares of their own and keeping an eye on their white girlfriends.

“You tight fucking bastard!”

The laughter followed me round the corner on to Spencer Mount. I crossed the road and went up three stone steps to the front door of number 3, above which a chipped Star of David had been painted on the grey glass.

From Yid Town to Pork City, in how many years?

I pushed open the door and went up the stairs.

I said, “Nice neighbourhood.”

“Piss off,” hissed the Maroon Suit, holding open the front door to flat 5.

It was a one-room bedsit with too much furniture, big windows and the stink of too many Northern winters. Karen Carpenter stared down from every wall, but it was Ziggy playing guitar from inside a tiny Dancette. There were fairy lights but no tree.

The Maroon Suit cleared some clothes from one of the chairs and said, “Please sit down Eddie.”

“I’m afraid you have the advantage,” I smiled.

“Barry James Anderson,” said Barry James Anderson proudly.

“Another Barry?” The armchair smelt stale.

“Yeah, but you can call this one BJ,” he giggled. “Everybody does.”

I didn’t bite. “OK.”

“Yep, BJ’s the name, bjs the game.” He stopped laughing and hurried over to an old wardrobe in the corner.

“How did you know Barry?” I said, wondering if Barry Cannon had been a puff.

“I saw him around, you know. Just got talking.”

“
Backdoor Barry. Fucking puff
.”

“Saw him around where?”

“Just around. Cup of tea?” He said, rooting around in the back of the wardrobe.

“No thanks.”

“Suit yourself.”

I lit a cigarette and picked up a dirty plate for an ashtray.

“Here,” said BJ, handing me a Hillards carrier bag from the back of the wardrobe. “He wanted you to have this if anything happened to him.”

“If anything happened to him?” I repeated, opening the bag. It was stuffed full of cardboard folders and manila envelopes. “What is it?”

“His life’s work.”

I stubbed out my cigarette in dried tomato sauce. “Why? I mean, what made him leave it here?”

“Say it: why me, you mean,” sniffed BJ. “He came round here last night. Said he needed somewhere safe to keep all this. And, if anything happened to him, to give it to you.”

“Last night?”

BJ sat down on the bed and took off his jacket. “Yeah.”

“I saw you last night, didn’t I? In the Press Club?”

“Yeah, and you weren’t very nice were you?” His shirt was covered in thousands of small stars.

“I was pissed.”

“Well, that makes it all right then,” he smirked.

I lit another cigarette and hated the sight of the little queer and his star shirt. “What the fuck was your business with Barry?”

“I’ve seen things, you know?”

“I bet,” I said, glancing at my father’s watch.

He jumped up from the bed. “Listen, don’t let me keep you.”

I stood up. “I’m sorry. Sit down, please. I’m sorry.”

BJ sat back down, his nose still in the air. “I know people.”

“I’m sure you do.”

He was on his feet again, stamping his feet. “No, fuck off. Famous people.”

I stood up, my hands out. “I know, I know…”

“Listen, I’ve sucked the cocks and licked the balls of some of the greatest men this country has.”

“Like who?”

“Oh no. You don’t get it that easy.”

“All right, then. Why?”

“For money. What else is there? You think I like being me? This body? Look at me! This isn’t me.” He was on his knees, screwing up his star shirt. “I’m not a puff. I’m a girl in here,” he screamed, leaping to his feet and tearing down one of the Karen Carpenter pin-ups, screwing it up in my face. “She knows what it’s’like. He knows,” he said, turning and kicking the stereo, sending Ziggy scratching to a halt.

Barry James Anderson fell to the floor by the record player and lay with his head buried, shaking. “Barry knew.”

I sat back down and then stood back up again. I went over to the crumpled boy in his silver star shirt and maroon trousers and picked him up, gently putting him down on the bed.

“Barry knew,” he whimpered again.

I went over to the Dancette and put the needle on the record, but the song was depressing and jumped, so I turned off the music and sat back down in the stale armchair.

“Did you like Barry?” He’d dried his face and was sitting up, looking at me.

“Yeah, but I didn’t really know him that well.”

BJ’s eyes were filling up again. “He liked you.”

“Why’d he think something was going to happen to him?”

“Come on!” BJ jumped up. “Fuck. It was obvious.”

“Why was it obvious?”

“It couldn’t go on. He had so many things on so many people.”

I leant forward. “John Dawson?”

“John Dawson’s just the tip of the fucking iceberg. Haven’t you read this stuff?” He flicked his wrist at the carrier bag at my feet.

“Just what he gave the
Post
,” I lied.

He smiled. “Well, all the cats are in that bag.”

I hated the little sod, his games, and his flat. “Where did he go last night after here?”

“He said he was going to help you.”

“Me?”

“That’s what he said. Something to do with that little girl in Morley, how he could tie it all together.”

I was on my feet. “What do you mean? What about her?”

“That’s all he said…”

Consumed by a vision of wings stitched into her back, of cricket ball tits on him, I flew across the room at Barry James Anderson, shouting, “Think!”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

I had him by the stars on his shirt, pressed into the bed. “Did he say anything else about Clare?”

His breath was as stale as the room and in my face. “Clare who?”

“The dead girl.”

“Just he was going out to Morley and it would help you.”

“How the fuck would that help me?”

“He didn’t-bloody- say! How many more times?”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing. Now fucking let go will you.”

I grabbed his mouth and squeezed hard. “No. You tell me why Barry told you this,” I said, tightening my grip on his face as hard as I could before letting go of him.

“Maybe because my eyes are open. Because I see things and I remember.” His bottom lip was bleeding.

I looked down at the silver stars clasped in my other hand and let them fall. “You know bugger all.”

“Believe what you want.”

I stood up and went over to the Hillards bag. “I will.”

“You should get some sleep.”

I picked up the bag and walked over to the door. I opened the door and then turned back to the bedsit hell with one last question. “Was he drunk?”

“No, but he’d been drinking.”

“A lot?”

“I could smell it on him.” Tears were running down his cheeks.

I put down the carrier bag. “What do you think happened to him?”

“I think they killed him,” he sniffed.

“Who?”

“I don’t know their names and I don’t want to know.”

Haunted, “
There are Death Scjuads.in every city, in every country
.”

I said, “Who? Dawson? The police?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why then?”

“Money, what else? To keep those cats in that bag of yours. To put them in the river.”

I stared across the room at a poster of Karen Carpenter hugging a giant Mickey Mouse.

I picked up the carrier bag. “How can I reach you?”

Barry James Anderson smiled. “442189. Tell them Eddie called and I’ll get the message.”

I wrote down the number. “Thank you.”

“Mention it.”

Back down Spencer Place in a sprint, foot down into Leeds and on to Motorway One, hoping to fuck I never saw him again:

Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Dark
, theories racing:

The rain on the windscreen, the moon stolen.

Cut to the chase:

I knew a man who knew a man.