Nineteen Seventy-Four (22 page)

A sigh from the ends of the earth.

“Tell him, Eddie called and it’s urgent.”

I went back to the bar and picked up my pint.

“That your bag over there?” said the landlord, nodding at a Hillards plastic bag under the phone.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said and drained my pint.

“Don’t be leaving bloody plastic bags lying around, not in pubs.”

“Sorry,” I said, walking back over to the phone, thinking fuck off.

“There’s me thinking it could be a bomb or anything.”

“Yeah, sorry,” I muttered as I picked up Michael John Mysh-kin’s sketch book and the photos of Councillor William Shaw and Barry James Anderson, thinking it is a bomb you stupid fucking cunt.

I parked up on the pavement outside Trinity View, Wood Lane, Sandal.

I stuffed the plastic bag back under the driver’s seat with
A Guide to the Canals of the North
, stubbed out my cigarette, took two painkillers, and got out.

The lane was quiet and dark.

I walked up the long drive towards Trinity View, triggering floodlights as I went. There was a Rover in the drive and lights on upstairs in the house. I wondered if it had been designed by John Dawson.

I pressed the doorbell and listened to the chimes cascade through the house.

“Yes? Who is it?” said a woman from behind the artificially aged door.

“The
Yorkshire Post
.”

There was a pause and then a lock turned and the door opened.

“What do you want?”

The woman was in her early forties with dark expensively permed hair, wearing black trousers, a matching silk blouse, and a surgical collar.

I held up my bandaged right hand and said, “Looks like we’ve both been in the wars.”

“I asked you what you wanted.”

Mr Long Shot Kick de Bucket said, “It’s about Johnny Kelly.”

“What about him?” said Mrs Patricia Foster, much too quickly.

“I was hoping either you or your husband might have some information about him.”

“Why would we know anything about him?” said Mrs Foster, one hand on the door, one hand on her collar.

“Well, he does play for your husband’s club and…”

“It’s not my husband’s club. He’s only the Chairman.”

“I’m sorry. You’ve not heard from him then?”

“No.”

“And you’ve no idea where he might be?”

“No. Look, Mr…?”

“Cannon.”

“Cannon?” said Mrs Patricia Foster slowly, her dark eyes and tall nose like an eagle’s looking down on me.

I swallowed and said, “Would it be possible to come inside and have a word with your husband?”

“No. He’s not home and I have nothing else to say to you,” Mrs Foster said, closing the door.

I tried to stop the door shutting in my face. “What do you flunk’s happened to him, Mrs Foster?”

“I’m going to call the police, Mr Cannon, and then I’m going to call my very good friend Bill Hadden, your boss,” she said from behind the door as the lock turned.

“And don’t forget to call your husband,” I shouted and then turned and ran down the floodlit drive, thinking a plague on both your houses.

Edward Dunford, North of England Crime Correspondent, in a phonebox on the Barnsley Road, beating the ground to startle the snakes.

Here goes nothing:

“Wakefield Town Hall, please?”

“361234.”

I looked at my father’s watch, thinking 50/50.

“Councillor Shaw, please?”

“I’m afraid Councillor Shaw’s in a meeting.”

“It’s a family emergency.”

“Can I have your name, please?”

“I’m a friend of the family. It’s an emergency.”

I looked across the road at the warm front rooms with their yellow lights and Christmas trees.

A different voice said, “Councillor Shaw’s up at County Hall. The number is 361236.”

“Thanks.”

“Nothing serious, I hope?”

I hung up, picked up, and dialled again.

“Councillor Shaw, please?”

“I’m sorry, the Councillor’s in a meeting.”

“I know. It’s a family emergency. I was given this number by his office.”

In one of the upstairs windows across the road, a child was staring out at me from a dark room. Downstairs a man and a woman were watching the TV with the lights off.

“Councillor Shaw speaking.”

“You don’t know me Mr Shaw, but it’s very important we meet.”

“Who is this?” a voice said, nervous and angry.

“We need to talk, sir.”

“Why would I want to talk to you? Who are you?”

“I believe someone is about to attempt to blackmail you.”

“Who?” the voice pleaded, afraid.

“We need to meet, Mr Shaw.”

“How?”

“You know how.”

“No I don’t.” The voice, shaking.

“You have an appendix scar and you like to have it kissed better by a mutual friend with orange hair.”

“What do you want?”

“What kind of car have you got?”

“A Rover. Why?”

“What colour?”

“Maroon, purple.”

“Be in the long-stay car park at Westgate Station at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Alone.”

“I can’t.”

“You’ll find a way.”

I hung up, my heart beating ninety miles an hour.

I looked up at the window across the road but the child had gone.

Edward Dunford, North of England Crime Correspondent, bringing a plague to all their houses, bar one.

“Where’ve you been?”

“All over.”

“Did you see him?”

“Can I come in?”

Mrs Paula Garland held open the red front door, wrapping her arms tight around herself.

A cigarette was burning in a heavy glass ashtray and
Top of the Pops
was on low on the TV.

“What did he look like?”

“Shut the door, love. It’s cold.”

Paula Garland closed the red front door and stood staring at me.

On the TV, Paul Da Vinci was singing
Your Baby Ain’t Your Baby Anymore
.

A tear dripped from her left eye on to her milk-white cheek.

“She’s dead then.”

I walked over to her and put my arms around her, feeling for her spine beneath the thin red cardigan.

I had my back to the TV and I could hear applause and then the opening to
Father Christmas Do Not Touch Me
.

Paula lifted her head up and I kissed the corner of her eye, tasting the salt from her damp stained skin.

She was smiling at the TV.

I turned to one side and watched as Pan’s People, dressed as Sexy Santas, cavorted around the Goodies, their hair alight with tinsel and trimmings.

I lifted Paula up, moving her small stockinged feet on to the tops of my shoes, and we began to dance, banging the backs of our legs into the furniture until she was laughing and crying and holding me tight.

I woke with a start on her bed.

Downstairs, the room was quiet and smelt of old smoke.

I didn’t switch on a light, but sat down on the sofa in my underpants and vest and picked up the phone.

“Is BJ there? It’s Eddie,” I whispered.

The ticking of the clock filled the room.

“What luck. It’s been too long,” whispered back BJ down the line.

“You know Derek Box?”

“Unfortunately that’s a pleasure I’ve yet to have.”

“Well he knows you and he knew Barry.”

“It’s a small world.”

“Yeah, and not a pretty one. He gave me some photos.”

“That’s nice.”

“Don’t piss around BJ. They’re photos of you sucking the cock of Councillor William Shaw.”

Silence. Just
Aladdin Sane
on high at the other end of the world.

I said, “Councillor Shaw is Barry’s Third Man, yeah?”

“Give the boy a prize.”

“Fuck off.”

The light went on.

Paula Garland was standing at the bottom of the stairs, her red cardigan barely covering her.

I smiled and mouthed apologies, the phone wet in my hand.

“What are you going to do?” said BJ down the line.

“I’m going to ask Councillor Shaw the questions Barry never got to ask.”

BJ whispered, “Don’t get involved in this.”

I was staring at Paula as I said, “Don’t get involved? I’m already involved. You’re one of the fucking bastards who got me involved.”

“You’re not involved with Derek Box, neither was Barry.”

“Not according to Derek Box.”

“This is between him and Donald Foster. It’s their fucking war, leave them to it.”

“You’ve changed your tune. What are you saying?”

Paula Garland was staring at me, pulling down the bottom of her cardigan.

I raised my eyes in apology.

“Fuck Derek Box. Burn the photos or keep them for yourself. Maybe you’ll find another use for them,” giggled BJ.

“Fuck off. This is serious.”

“Of course it’s fucking serious, Eddie. What did you think it was? Barry’s fucking dead and I couldn’t even go to his funeral cos I’m too fucking frightened.”

“You’re a lying little prick,” I hissed and hung up.

Paula Garland was still staring at me.

Me, the circles in my head.

“Eddie?”

I stood up, the leather sofa stinging the backs of my bare legs.

“Who was that?”

“No-one,” I said, pushing past her up the stairs.

“You can’t keep doing this to me,” she shouted after me.

I went into the bedroom and took a painkiller from my jacket pocket.

“You can’t keep cutting me out like this,” she said, coming up the stairs.

I picked up my trousers and put them on.

Paula Garland was standing in the bedroom doorway. “It’s my little girl that’s dead, my husband that killed himself, my brother that’s gone.”

I was struggling with the buttons of my shirt.

“You chose to get involved with this whole fucking bloody mess,” she whispered, tears falling on to the bedroom carpet.

My shirt buttons still undone, I put on my jacket.

“No-one made you.”

I pushed a dirty grey bandaged fist into her face and said, “What about this? What do you think this is?”

“The best thing that ever happened to you.”

“You shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why? What you going to do?”

We were stood in the doorway at the top of the stairs, sur rounded by silence and night, staring at each other.

“But you don’t care, do you Eddie?”

“Fuck off,” I cursed, down the stairs and out the door.

“You don’t really fucking care, do you?”

I sat frozen in the Viva, watching a dark purple Rover 2000 pull into the car park, a single black and white photograph in a manila envelope beside me.

The Rover parked in the furthest space from the entrance.

I sat and let him wait through the radio news, through the IRA ceasefire, through Michael John Myshkin’s continuing efforts to help the police with their enquiries, through sightings of Mr John Stonehouse MP in Cuba, and through Reggie Bosan-quet’s failing marriage.

No-one moved inside the Rover.

I lit another fucking cigarette and, just to show him who was the fucking boss, I sat through Petula’s
Little Drummer Boy
.

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 dash board 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.

“
Thai
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 hys terical, 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 Myshkih 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.”