Nineteen Seventy-Four (8 page)

Part 2

Whispering grass

Chapter 4

16 December 1974.

B
rakes went. He goes straight into the back of the van. Bang!” Gilman smashed his fist into his open palm.

“Van was carrying windows wasn’t it?” whispered New Face, sitting down next to Tom.

“Aye. I heard one of the panes severed his fucking head,” said Another New Face behind us.

We all said, “Fuck.”

Wakefield Police Station, Wood Street, Wakefield.

Business as usual:

A dead mate and a dead little girl.

I looked at my father’s watch on the worst rainy day and Monday of them all.

It was almost ten.

We’d met up in the Parthenon at the top of Westgate, downed coffee and toast and watched the windows steam up and the rain come down.

Talking Barry.

At nine-thirty we’d run through the rain with rival papers on our heads, up to Wood Street Nick and Round 3.

Gilman, Tom, and me; two rows back and not giving a fuck. Nationals down the front. Familiar faces from before giving it to me cold. Me not giving a fuck. Or not much of one, any road.

“What the fuck was he doing in Morley?” said Gilman again, shaking his head from side to side.

“You know Barry, probably looking for Lucky,” smiled Tom from Bradford.

A big hand into my shoulder. “Drunk as a fucking skunk is what I heard.”

Everyone turning round.

Jack fucking Whitehead sitting directly behind me.

“Fuck off,” I said weakly, not turning round.

“And a good morning to you Scoop.” Whisky breath on the back of my neck.

“Morning Jack,” said Tom from Bradford.

“Missed quite a eulogy this morning. Not a dry pair in the office after Bill had finished. Quite moving it was.”

Tom said, “Really? That’s…”

Jack Whitehead leant forward into my ear, but didn’t lower his voice. “Could have saved yourself a journey too, Scoop.”

Me, eyes front. “What?”

“Mr Hadden wants you back at base, Scoop. Like pronto. Asap. Etc.”

I could feel Jack’s smile behind me, boring into the back of my head.

I stood up, not looking at Gilman or Tom. “I’ll go and phone him.”

“You do that. Oh, and Scoop?”

I turned round, looking down at Jack in his seat.

“The police are looking for you.”

“What?”

“You were drinking with Barry, I heard.”

“Piss off.”

“Star witness. How many did you have?”

“Fuck off.”

“Yep,” winked Jack, looking around the crowded room. “Looks like you’re in just the right place at the right time. For once.”

I pushed past Tom, moving as fast as I could to the end of the row.

“Oh, and Scoop?”

I didn’t want to turn round. I didn’t want to look at that fucking grin again. I didn’t want to say, “What?”

“Congratulations.”

“What?” I said again, trapped against the legs of hacks and chairs.

“What the Lord taketh with one hand, he giveth with the other.”

I was the only person in the room standing who wasn’t a technician or a copper, the only one saying, “What?”

“The pitter-patter of tiny feet and all that?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

The whole room was looking from me to Jack and back.

Jack put his hands behind his head and gave the floor his best stage laugh. “Don’t tell me I’ve scooped Scoop?”

The room was smiling with Jack.

“Your girlfriend, Dunston?”

“Dunford,” I said, involuntarily.

“Whatever,” said Jack.

“What about her?”

“Told Stephanie she’s feeling a little under the weather this morning. But that it’s just something she’ll have to get used to.”

“You’re fucking joking?” said Tom from Bradford.

Gilman was looking at the floor, shaking his head from side to side.

I just stood there, Edward Dunford, North of England Red Face, the eyes of the room on me, National and Local.

“So?” I said lamely.

“Going to make an honest woman of her, I hope?”

“Honest! What the fuck would you know about honest?”

“Temper, temper.”

“Fuck off.” I started to edge along the row. It took an age to get there. Just long enough for Jack to get another laugh.

“I don’t know, young people these days.”

The whole room was smirking and tittering along.

“I think Mrs Whitehouse has got a point.”

The whole room giggling with Jack.

“The Permissive fucking Society, that’s what it is. Me, I’m with Keith Joseph. Sterilise the fucking lot of them!”

The whole room laughed out loud.

One hundred years later I got to the end of the row and the aisle.

Jack Whitehead shouted, “And don’t forget to turn yourself in.”

The whole room erupted.

I pushed past the wink-wink coppers and the nudge-nudge technicians and got to the back of the room.

I wanted to curl up and die.

There was a bang.

The whole room went dead.

The side door down the front slammed shut.

I turned around.

Detective Chief Superintendent George Oldman and two other men in suits entered.

I turned my red face for one last look.

Oldman had aged another hundred years.

“Thank you for coming gentlemen. We’re going to keep this very brief as you all know where we’d rather be. The gentleman on my right is Dr Courts, the Home Office pathologist who conducted the post-mortem. On my left is Detective Superin tendent Noble who, along with myself, will be leading the hunt for the killer or killers of little Clare Kemplay.”

Detective Superintendent Noble was looking straight at me.

I knew what was coming and I’d had enough of it to last me a lifetime.

I turned away through the double doors.

“They’re saying Barry was drunk?”

Rain ran down the inside of the phonebox making a pool around my shoes. I stared through the dirty glass at the yellow lights of the Wood Street Nick across the road.

Hadden on the other end sounded gutted. “That’s what the police are saying.”

I fumbled through my pockets. “It’s what Jack’s saying as well.”

I stood in the puddle, my shoes taking in water, juggling a box of matches, a cigarette, and the receiver.

“When you coming back to the office?”

I got the cigarette lit. “This afternoon sometime.”

A pause and then, “I need to speak to you.”

“Of course.”

A longer pause and then, finally, “What happened yesterday, Eddie?”

“I got to see Enid Sheard. She’s only got a bleeding key to Goldthorpe’s house.”

Hadden, many more than ten miles away, said, “Really?”

“Yeah, but I need some photos. Can you get Richard or Norman to meet me there?”

“When?”

I checked my father’s watch. “About twelve. And maybe it’d be best if one of them brought the money.”

“How much?”

I stared down Wood Street, past the Police Station, as black clouds made an evening of the morning.

I inhaled deeply, a small pain in my chest. “Greedy bitch wants two hundred.”

Silence.

Later, “Eddie, what happened yesterday?”

“What?”

“With Mrs Dawson? What happened?”

“I never saw her.”

Hadden, anger in his voice, said, “But I asked you specifically…”

“I stayed in the car.”

“But I asked you…”

“I know, I know. Barry thought I’d make her too nervous.” I dropped my cigarette in the puddle at my feet and almost believed myself.

Hadden, down the line, suspicious: “Really?”

The cigarette hissed in the dirty water. “Yeah.”

“What time will you be back?”

“Sometime between two and three.”

“I need to see you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

I hung up.

I watched as Gilly and Tom and the rest of the pack came running out of the Nick, jackets over their heads, making for their cars and offices with their warm yellow lights.

I pulled my jacket up over my head and got ready to make a run for it.

Thirty minutes later and the Viva stank of bacon.

I wound down the window and stared down Brunt Street, Castleford.

My fingers felt greasy from the sandwich.

The light was on in the front room of number 11, reflecting in the wet black pavement outside.

I took a mouthful of hot sweet tea.

The light went off and the red door opened.

Paula Garland came out of the house under a flowered umbrella. She locked the door and walked up the street towards the Viva.

I wound up the window and slid down in my seat. I could hear her tall brown boots approaching. I closed my eyes and swallowed and wondered what the fuck I’d say.

The boots came and went on the other side of the street.

I sat up and looked out of the back window.

The brown boots, the beige raincoat, and the flowered umbrella turned the corner and disappeared.

Barry Cannon had once said something like, “All great buildings resemble crimes.”

In 1970, according to the notes Hadden had given me, John Dawson had designed and built Shangrila to the acclaim of both the architectural community and the general public. Television, newspapers, and magazines had all been invited inside to witness the equally lavish interior in dutiful double-page spreads. The cost of the enormous bungalow had been estimated at being in excess of half a million pounds, a present from Britain’s most successful postwar architect to his wife on the occasion of their Silver Wedding anniversary. Named after the mythical city in Marjorie Dawson’s favourite film,
Lost Horizon
, Shangrila had captured the imagination of the Great British Public.

Briefly.

My father used to say, “If you want to know the artist, look at the art.”

He was usually talking about Stanley Matthews or Don Bradman when he said it.

I vaguely recalled my father and mother taking a special Sunday drive over to Castleford in the Viva. I pictured them making the run over, talking a little bit but mainly listening to the radio. They had probably parked at the bottom of the drive, peering up at Shangrila through the car window. Had they brought sandwiches and a flask? I hoped to fuck they hadn’t. No, they’d probably popped into Lumbs for an ice-cream on the way back to Ossett. I saw my parents sitting in their parked car on the Barnsley Road, eating their ice-creams in silence.

When they got back home my father must have sat down to write his critique of Shangrila. He’d have been to see Town the day before, if they were at home, and he’d have written about that before giving his two-penneth on Shangrila and Mr John Dawson.

In 1970, Fleet Street still a year off, I was in my seaview flat in Brighton, skimming the weekly letter from up North which Southern girls called Anna or Sophie found so very endearing, throwing the half-read letter in the bin, thanking fuck The Beatles had come from Liverpool and not Lambeth.

In 1974 I sat in the same car at the bottom of the same drive and stared up through the rain at the same big bleached white bungalow, wishing to God I’d read my father’s two-penneth on Shangrila and Mr John Dawson.

I opened the door, pulled my jacket over my head, and wondered why the fuck I’d come this way at all.

There were two cars in the drive, a Rover and a Jaguar, but no-one was answering the door.

I pressed the chimes again and looked out over the garden, across the rain on the pond, to the Viva parked back down on the road. I thought I could make out two or three giant bright orange goldfish in the pond. I wondered if they liked the rain, if it made any difference to their lives at all.

I turned back to give the chimes one last go and found myself face to face with the unkind face of a heavy-set man, tanned and dressed for golf.

“Is Mrs Dawson home by any chance?”

“No,” said the man.

“Do you know when she might be back?”

“No.”

“Do you know where I might be able to reach her?”

“No.”

“Is Mr Dawson at home?”

“No.”

I vaguely placed the face. “Well, I won’t keep you then Mr Foster. Thank you for your help.”

I turned and walked away.

Halfway down the drive I looked back and caught the twitch of a curtain. I turned right on to the lawn and walked across the soft grass to the pond. The raindrops were making beautiful patterns on the surface. Down below the bright orange fish were still.

I turned and stared back at Shangrila in the rain. The curved white tiers looked like a rack of oyster shells or the Sydney fucking Opera House. And then I remembered my father’s two-penneth about Shangrila and Mr John Dawson:

Shangrila looked like a sleeping swan
.

Noon, Willman Close, Pontefract.

Knuckles rapped on the steamed-up window of the Viva. Back to earth with a bump, I wound down the window.

Paul Kelly leant into the car. “What about Barry? Fucking hell, eh?” He was out of breath and didn’t have an umbrella.

I said, “Yeah.”

“Heard his head came right off.”

“That’s what they’re saying.”

“What a way to go. And in fucking Morley, eh?”

“Yeah, I know.”

Paul Kelly grinned, “It stinks in here, man. What the fuck you been doing?”

“I had a bacon sandwich. Mind yourself,” I said as I wound the window back up, though not all the way, and got out.

Fuck.

Paul Kelly, photographer. Cousin of the more famous John and sister Paula.

The rain was coming down even harder, with it all my fucking paranoia:

Why Kelly and not Dicky or Norm?

Why today?

Coincidence?

“Which one is it?”

“Eh?” I said, locking the car door, pulling my jacket over my hea_d.

“The Goldthorpe’s?” Kelly was looking at the bungalows. “Which one is it?”

“Number 6.” We walked across the Close to the houses at the end.

Kelly took a huge fucking Japanese camera out of his bag. “The old bag’s in 5 then?”

“Yeah. Did Hadden give you the money for her?”

“Yeah,” said Kelly, stuffing the camera inside his jacket.

“How much?”