Nineteen Seventy-Four (23 page)

“Leave it!”

Jimmy Ashworth kept on running.

The three big men stopped laughing and started walking over towards me and Terry Jones.

He released me, whispering, “You best piss off.”

“I’m going to fucking have you, Jones.”

Terry Jones picked up Jimmy Ashworth’s shirt and jacket. “Then you’re wasting your time.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he smiled sadly.

I turned and walked away towards Devil’s Ditch, wiping the mud from my hands on to my trousers.

I heard a shout and looked round to see Terry Jones, his arms up, shepherding the three big men back towards the half-built houses.

There was no sign of Jimmy Ashworth.

I stood on the lip of the Ditch, looking down at the rusted prams and bicycles, the cookers and the fridges, thinking all of modern life is here and so was Clare Kemplay, aged ten.

My fingers black with dirt, I took the small white feather from my pocket.

At Devil’s Ditch, I looked up into the big black sky and put the small white feather to my pale pink lips thinking, if only it hadn’t been her.

The Strafford Arms, the Bullring, Wakefield.

The dead centre of Wakefield, the Friday before Christmas.

Mud Man, up the stairs and through the door.

Members only
.

“It’s all right Grace, he’s with me,” said Box to the woman behind the bar.

Derek Box and Paul at the bar, whiskys and cigars in their hands.

There was Elvis on the jukebox.

Just Derek, Paul, Grace, Elvis, and me.

Box got up from his stool and walked across the room to a table in the window.

“You look like shit. What the fuck happened to you?”

I sat down opposite Box, my back to Paul and the door, looking out on a wet Wakefield.

“I went down Devil’s Ditch.”

“I thought they’d got someone for that?”

“So did I.”

“Some things are best left,” said Derek Box, examining the end of his cigar.

“Like Councillor Shaw?”

Box relit his cigar. “Did you see him?”

“Yeah.”

Paul put a whisky and a pint in front of me.

I tipped the whisky into my pint.

“And?”

“And he’s probably talking to Donald Foster as we speak.”

“Good.”

“Good? Foster had Barry fucking killed.”

“Probably.”

“Probably?”

“Barry got ambitious.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Barry had his own agenda.”

“So what? Foster must be fucking insane. We can’t just let it go. We’ve got to do something about it.”

“He’s not insane,” said Box. “Just motivated.”

“You know him well or something?”

“We were in Kenya together.”

“Business?”

“Her Majesty’s business. We did our National fucking Service in the Highlands, protecting fat cunts like I am now, fighting the fucking Mau Maus.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. They’d come down from the hills like a tribe of bloody Red Indians, raping the women, cutting the cocks off the men, stringing them upon fence posts.”

“You’re joking?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

“No.”

“We weren’t angels, Mr Dunford. I was with Don Foster when we ambushed a fucking War Party. We shot them in the knees with .303s so we could have some fun.”

“Fuck.”

“Foster took his time. He taped the screams, the dogs barking, claimed it helped him sleep.”

I picked up Paul’s lighter from the table and lit a cigarette.

Paul brought over two more whiskys.

“It was war, Mr Dunford. Just like now.”

I picked up my glass.

Box was sweating as he drank, his eyes off deep in the dark.

“
A
year ago they were going to bring back rationing. Now we got inflation at fucking 25 per cent.”

I took a mouthful of whisky, drunk, scared, and bored. “What does that have to do with Don Foster or Barry?”

Box lit another cigar and sighed. “The trouble with your generation is that you know nowt. Why do you think the man with the boat beat the man with the pipe in ‘70?”

“Wilson was complacent.”

“Complacent my arse,” laughed Box.

“Go on then, you tell me.”

“Because likes of Cecil King, Norman Collins, Lord Renwick, Shawcross, Paul Chambers at ICI, Lockwood at EMI and McFadden at Shell, and others like them, they sat down and said enough was bloody enough.”

“So?”

“So these men have power; the power to build or break men.”

“What’s that got to do with Foster?”

“You’re not fucking listening to me! I’ll spell it out in your talk.”

“Please…”

“Power’s like glue. It sticks men like us together, keeps every thing in place.”

“You and Foster are…”

“We’re peas in a pod, me and him. We like to fuck and make a buck and we’re not right choosey how we do either. But he’s got too big for his fucking boots and now he’s cutting me out and it pisses me off.”

“So you use me and Barry to blackmail his mates?”

“We had a deal, me and Foster and another man. That other man is dead. They waited until he came back from Australia and took him as he came out of his mother’s flat in Blackpool. They bound his arms behind him with a towel and then wrapped him in twenty foot of tape from his shoulders to his hips. Then they stuffed him into the boot of his car and drove him on to Moors. When it was dawn, three men held him upright and a fourth thrust a knife into his heart five times.”

I was looking down into my whisky glass, the room slightly spinning.

“That was my brother they killed. He’d been back home one fucking day.”

“I’m sorry.”

“At the funeral, there was a card. No name, just said,
Three can keep a secret, if two are dead
.”

“I don’t want any part of this,” I said quietly.

Box nodded once at Paul sat over by the bar and said loudly, “It seems like we overestimated you, Mr Dunford.”

“I’m just a journalist.”

Paul came up behind me, a heavy hand on my shoulder.

“Then you’ll do as you’re told, Mr Dunford, and you’ll get your story. Leave the rest to us.”

I said again, “I don’t want to be part of this.”

Box cracked his knuckles and smiled. “Tough shit. You are a part of it.”

Paul picked me up by my collar.

“Now piss off!”

Mud Man on the run.

Back down Westgate.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Barry and Clare.

Little dead Clare Kemplay, kissed this boy and made him cry
.

Clare and Barry.

Dirty Barry, when he’d been good he’d been very, very good, when he’d been bad he’d been very, very bad
.

A policeman stood in a doorway, keeping out of the rain. Me, the urge to fall to my knees at his feet, praying he was a good man, and tell him the whole fucking sad story, to come in out of the rain.

But tell him what?

Tell him I was in over my head, covered in mud and drunk as fuck.

Mud Man, straight into Leeds, dirt cracking as I drove.

Mud Man, straight into the office bogs, caked in shit.

A clean face and one clean hand, a dirty suit and a black bandage, sitting down behind my desk at 3
PM
on Friday 20 December 1974.

“Nice suit, Eddie lad.”

“Fuck off, George.”

“Merry Christmas to you too.”

Messages and cards littered the desk; Sergeant Fraser calling twice that morning, Bill Hadden requesting my presence at my earliest convenience.

I slumped back in my chair, George Greaves farting to the applause of the few back from lunch.

I smiled and picked up the cards; three ‘from Down South, plus one with my name and office punched into plastic Dymo tape and stuck to the envelope.

On the other side of the office, Gaz was taking bets on the Newcastle-Leeds game.

I opened the envelope and pulled out the card with my teeth and my left hand.

“Do you want in, Eddie?” shouted Gaz.

On the front of the card was a cabin made of logs in the middle of a snow-covered forest.

“Ten bob on Lorimer,” I said, opening the card.

“Jack’s got him.”

Inside the card, over the Christmas message, were stuck two more strips of Dymo tape.

Quietly I said, “I’ll have Yorath then.”

Punched into the top plastic strip was:
KNOCK ON THE DOOR OF
…

“You what?”

Punched into the bottom plastic strip was:
FLAT 405, CITY

HEIGHTS
.

“Yorath,” I said, staring at the card. “Anyone I know?” I looked up.

Jack Whitehead said, “I just hope it’s from a woman.”

“What do you mean?”

“I heard you were hanging around with young boys,” smiled Jack.

I put the card inside my jacket pocket. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. With orange hair.”

“Who’d you hear that from then, Jack?”

“A little bird.”

“You stink of drink.”

“So do you.”

“It’s Christmas.”

“Not for much longer,” grinned Jack. “Boss wants to see you.”

“I know,” I said, not moving.

“He asked me to come and find you, make sure you didn’t get lost again.”

“Going to hold my hand?”

“You’re not my type.”

“Bollocks.”

“Fuck off, Jack. Listen.”

I pressed play again:

“
I couldn’t believe it was her. She looked so different, so white
.”

“Bollocks,” said Jack again. “He’s talking about the photo graphs in the papers, on TV.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Her face was everywhere.”

“Ashworth knows more than that.”

“Myshkin fucking confessed.”

“That means fuck all and you know it.”

Bill Hadden sat behind his desk, his glasses halfway down his nose, stroking his beard and saying nowt.

“You should see all the shit they took from the little pervert’s room.”

“Like what?”

“Photos of little girls, boxes of them.”

I looked at Hadden and said, “Myshkin didn’t do it.”

He said slowly, “But why make a scapegoat of him?”

“Why do you think? Tradition.”

“Thirty years,” said Jack. “Thirty years and I know firemen never lie and coppers often do. But not this time.”

“They know he didn’t do it and you know he didn’t.”

“He did it. He coughed.”

“So fucking what?”

“You ever heard the word forensic?”

“That’s bullshit. They’ve got nothing.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said Hadden, leaning forward in his chair. “It seems like we’ve had this conversation before.”

“Exactly,” muttered Jack.

“No, before I believed Myshkin did it, but…”

Hadden raised his hands. “Edward, please.”

“Sorry,” I said, staring at the cards on his desk.

He said, “When are they going to remand him again?”

“First thing Monday,” said Jack.

“More charges?”

“He’s already coughed to Jeanette Garland and that Rochdale lass…”

“Susan Ridyard,” I said.

“But I’ve heard there’s more in offing.”

I said, “He said owt about where the bodies are?”

“Your back garden, Scoop.”

“Right then,” said Hadden, being Dad. “Edward, you have that background piece on Myshkin ready for Monday. Jack, you do the remand.”

“Will do, Chief,” said Jack, getting up.

“Nice piece on those two coppers,” nodded Hadden, ever the proud father.

“Thanks. Nice blokes, I’ve known them a while,” said Jack at the door.

Hadden said, “See you tomorrow night, Jack.”

“Yep. See you Scoop,” laughed Jack as he left.

“Bye.” I was on my feet, still looking at the cards on Hadden’s desk.

“Sit down for a moment, will you,” said Hadden, standing up.

I sat back down.

“Edward, I want you to take the rest of the month off.”

“What?”

Hadden had his back to me, staring out at the dark sky.

“I don’t understand,” I said, understanding him exactly, focusing on one small card tucked in amongst the rest.

“I don’t want you coming into the office like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like this,” he said, turning and pointing at me.

“I was on a building site this morning, getting the story.”

“What story?”

“Clare Kemplay.”

“It’s over.”

I stared at the desk, at that one card, at another cabin made of logs in the middle of another snow-covered forest.

“Take the rest of the month off. Get that hand seen to,” said Hadden, sitting back down.

I stood up. “You still want that Myshkin piece?”

“Yeah, of course. Type it up and give it to Jack.”

I opened the door, last ditch, thinking fuck ‘em all:

“Do you know the Fosters?”

Hadden didn’t look up from his desk.

“Councillor William Shaw?”

He looked up. “I’m sorry, Edward. Really I am.”

“Don’t be. You’re right,” I said. “I need help.”

At my desk for the last time, thinking take it fucking national, sweeping the whole bloody table-top into a dirty old Co-op carrier bag, not giving a fuck who knew I was gone.

Jack fucking Whitehead slapped an
Evening News
on to the empty desk, beaming, “Something to remember us by.”

I looked up at Jack, counting backwards.

The office silent, all eyes on me.

Jack Whitehead right back in my face, not blinking.

I looked down at the folded paper, the banner headline:

WE SALUTE YOU.

“Turn it over.”

A telephone was ringing on the other side of the office, no-one answering it.

I turned over the bottom half of the paper to a photograph of two uniformed coppers shaking hands with Chief Constable Angus.

Two uniformed coppers, naked:

A tall one with a beard, a short one without.

I stared down at the paper, at the photograph, at the words beneath the photograph:

Chief Constable Angus congratulates Sergeant Bob Craven and PC Bob Douglas on a job well done.

“They are outstanding police officers who have our heartfelt thanks.”