Nineteen Seventy-Seven: The Red Riding Quartet, Book Two (8 page)

Steve Barton keeps moving, eyes closed, tears open, teeth clenched, the curses burning into his brain.
The clapping starts and I’m right there again but I’m thinking about Bobby and how Steve Barton must have been someone’s little boy not so long ago, with his trains and his cars and his hopes and his dreams and the food he liked and the food he didn’t but here he is now, a bouncer, a pimp, and a drug user, wanking into a white plastic cup from a coffee machine in front of fifteen white coppers.
And then, just as he picks up speed, Rudkin reaches down and pulls away the blanket, just as Barton’s dick spits up its come, just as Craven snaps a Polaroid and the claps break into a round of applause.
‘Detective Constable Ellis,’ says Oldman. ‘Take Mr Barton’s semen up to Professor Farley’
Everyone’s laughing.
‘And don’t be having a fucking sip,’ I add, everyone clapping, Ellis giving me his best hard-as-nails fuck-you-later face.
And Barton, Barton’s still in a ball, shaking and shaking, dry heaving big gulping sobs, the party over.
And just as it’s breaking up, I reach down, pick up the magazines and hand them to Craven.
‘I think these are yours,’ I say.
Craven takes them, eyes cold and dark and far away until he glances down at the covers and stops: ‘Fuck you get these?’
‘Your wife, why?’
The room’s all silent smiles, everyone hanging back to see what comes next.
‘Funny man, Fraser. Funny man.’ And Craven limps off, back to Vice.
I’m sat up in the canteen, wiped out.
Rudkin’s getting the coffees.
We’ve been told to wait while Prentice and Alderman question Barton, wait while the tests come back, which is a load of bollocks when we all know it isn’t him, wish it was, but know it’s not.
‘Could’ve taken a fucking blood test,’ says Rudkin, pissed off he’s not in on the questioning, staring to get the big fucking picture, those two words:
SPADE WORK.
‘What, going to scrape under your nails?’
‘You really are a funny man,’ he laughs as we heap sugar into our coffees, and lots of it.
I want to sleep but, if they let me loose, I’ve got so many fucking fences to mend.
‘What time is it?’ asks Rudkin, too tired to look at his own watch.
‘What am I? The speaking fucking clock?’
‘Speaking cock, more like.’
And we keep this up for about two minutes till we fade back into another one of them fucked-up knackered silences in which we hide.
‘We’re letting him go.’
Out of silence and back into the bright, bright lights of the police canteen, the world of Chief Superintendent Peter Noble.
‘Quel surprise,’ mutters Rudkin.
‘Not a B?’ I say.
‘O,’ says Noble.
I ask, ‘Get anything else from him?’
‘Not much. He was pimping her. Hadn’t seen her since the afternoon.’
‘Should’ve let us at him,’ spits Rudkin.
‘Well, now’s your chance. He’s waiting for you downstairs with DC Ellis.’
‘You don’t need us. Ellis can take him home.’
Noble takes a wad of fivers from his jacket and leans over and stuffs them inside Rudkin’s top pocket. ‘The Assistant Chief Constable wants you to take Mr Barton out and get him pissed, give him a good time. No hard feelings etc.’
‘Fuck,’ says Rudkin. ‘We’re up to our fucking eyes in work, Pete. We got all the stuff from Preston, then you put Bob on these fucking robberies. Now this. We haven’t got the time.’
I’m looking at the table top, the lights reflecting in the Formica.
Noble bends over and pats Rudkin’s top pocket. ‘Stop whining John and just do it.’
Rudkin waits till Noble’s out the door and then gives it, ‘Cunt. Fucking cunt.’
We stand up, stiff as a pair of wooden puppets.
Ellis is in the Rover, sat behind the wheel waiting.
Barton’s in the back in oversize trousers and a tiny jacket, dreadlocks against the window.
Rudkin gets in next to him. ‘Where to?’
I get in the front.
Barton’s just staring out the glass.
‘Come on, Steve. Where to?’
‘Home,’ he mumbles.
‘Home? You can’t go home now. It’s only three o’clock. Let’s all have a drink.’
Barton knows he’s no fucking choice.
Ellis starts the car and asks: ‘Where to then?’
‘Bradford. Manningham,’ says Rudkin.
‘Bradford it is,’ smiles Ellis as we pull out of Millgarth.
I close my eyes as he sticks the radio on.
I wake up as we get into Manningham, Wings on the radio, Barton silent as some black ghost in the back.
Ellis pulls up outside the New Adelphi.
Rudkin says, ‘What do you reckon, Steve?’
Steve says nowt.
‘Heard it’s all right,’ says Ellis and out we get.
There’s day-old puke on the steps and inside the New Adelphi is a big old ballroom, high ceilings and flock wallpaper, the crowd mixed, stirred, and well fucking shaken and it’s not even four o’clock in the afternoon.
I’m shattered, shoulders down, head killing, the stripper not on again until six and they’re playing some reggae bollocks:
‘Your mother is wondering where you are …’
Rudkin turns to Steve and says, ‘See, right up your street.’
Steve just nods and we plonk him down in the corner under the stairs up to the balcony, me on one side, Rudkin on the other, Ellis at the bar.
The three of us sit there, saying nothing, scanning the ballroom, the black faces and the white.
‘Know anyone?’ asks Rudkin.
Barton shakes his head.
‘Good. Don’t want folk thinking you’re a bloody grass now do we?’
Ellis gets back with a tray of pints and shorts.
He hands Barton a large rum and coke. ‘Get that down you.’
‘Here Steve,’ laughs Rudkin. ‘You come here often?’
And we’re laughing, but not Steve.
It’s going to be a long time before he starts laughing again.
Ellis goes back to the bar and brings over more drinks, more rum and cokes, and we drink them and then back he goes.
And we sit there, the four of us, talking here and there, the endless reggae, the Paki cab drivers coming in and out, the slags falling about on the dancefloor, the old blokes with their dominoes, the rat-faced whites with their v-necked sweaters and no shirts, the fat-faced blacks nodding their heads to the music:
‘What do you see at night when you’re under the stars
Rudkin and Ellis have got their heads together, laughing at one of the women at the bar, the one sticking two fingers up at them.
‘Stay at home sister, stay at home
And Barton suddenly leans across to me, his hand on my arm, his eyes yellow, breath rank, and he says: ‘That shit about Kenny and Marie, that true?’
I look at him, his tight jacket and baggy trousers, seeing him back down in the Belly under that grey blanket, his hands moving, the magazines beside him.
‘You got to tell me. I know you’re tight with Kenny and Joe Ro. I ain’t going to do nothing, but I got to know.’
I take his hand off my arm and push it away, spitting in his face: ‘Fuck I care about your shit. You got bad information, boy’
And he sits back in his chair and Rudkin throws another cigarette at him and Ellis goes back to the bar and brings more drinks, more rum and cokes, and the reggae keeps on going:
‘Baby keep on running but you won’t get far
And when I next look at my watch it’s almost six and I want to be gone, gone like Steve who’s pissed now, head down on the table, dreadlocks in the ashtray.
The music stops, the microphone wails across the room, and a spotlight hits the heavy red curtains at the back of the stage.
Dancing Queen
starts up, the curtains go back, and there’s a flabby brunette in a sequined bikini standing there, eyes glazed, limbs slack.
‘Dumb fucking monkey’s going to miss the show,’ lisps Ellis, nodding at Barton as the woman jerks into some kind of life.
‘Mike, you’re fucking boring,’ hisses Rudkin and gets up and wanders off up the stairs to the balcony.
‘Fuck’s got into him?’
I say, ‘You got to learn to bloody read people.’
Mike starts up again, moaning, whining, injured.
‘Keep an eye on Sleeping Beauty,’ I say, following Rudkin upstairs.
He’s leaning over the balcony, staring down at the bleached stripper.
‘Good view,’ I say, elbows next to his.
All the blokes downstairs are facing the stage, women lolling about between them, one woman tossing peanuts in the air and catching them between her tits.
Rudkin swirls the whisky about in the bottom of his glass and says, ‘You know what it’s going to be like from now on, don’t you?’
Thinking,
here we fucking go
, saying, ‘No. What’s it going to be like?’
Rudkin keeps staring into the bottom of his glass. ‘He’ll keep killing them and we’ll keep finding them. Always behind, never in front.’
‘We’ll catch him,’ I say.
‘Yeah? How?’
‘Hard bloody work, patience, and he’ll fuck up. The usual way.’
‘The usual way? There’s no usual way here.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘No, I don’t. You seen this kind of thing before?’
I think of little girls and lost years and I say, ‘Similar.’
‘I don’t think you have.’
I can’t be arsed: ‘We’ll catch him.’
‘You’re a good man, Bob,’ he says and I wish he hadn’t because it’s been said before and it wasn’t true then and it’s even less true now, just fucking patronising.
So I say, ‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means what I say: you’re a good bloke, but all the fucking good blokes and all the hard work in the world isn’t going to catch this cunt.’
‘And what makes you so fucking certain?’
‘You read that
Murders and Assaults Upon Women in the North of England
shit?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And?’
‘We’ll catch him, John.’
‘The fuck we will. We haven’t got a clue, not a bloody one. This cunt, he looks back out the mirror at us and he’s laughing. He’s watching us and he’s pissing himself.’
‘Fuck off. You got a point to make, make it.’
Rudkin looks up from his glass, shadows heavy across his face, big black tears in pitch black eyes, a man who keeps a cricket bat by his front door, just in case, and this man he takes hold of my arm and he says, ‘That shit in Preston, that bollocks is nothing to do with what we got here.’
My heart’s beating fast, stomach twisted tight, the man still staring into me, still holding me, still scaring me.
‘The blood groups,’ I say. ‘They’re the same.’
‘It’s bollocks, Bob. Something’s going on and I don’t know what the fuck it is and I don’t want to know what the fuck it is but we’re right in the fucking middle of it and I’ll tell you this: it’s going to fuck up your life if you let it.’
What’s to fuck up
, I’m thinking but I let him go on.
‘You don’t know them, Bob,’ he’s saying. ‘I know them. I know the kind of shit they’ll try and pull. Specially for their own.’
I stare down at the stage, at the tops of the stripper’s flaccid white titties, the men at the bar bored already.
I say, ‘One minute you’re telling me not to be afraid, the next minute we might as well jack it in. Which is it, John?’
Rudkin looks at me and shakes his head, half smiling, then walks off back down the stairs, leaving me wanting to punch the arrogant twat.
I stare back down at the stripper’s tits, look at my watch, and decide to get the fuck out of here.
Downstairs Rudkin’s thinking the same, kicking Barton awake, ignoring Ellis and all his apologies.
Barton staggers to his feet and Rudkin takes what’s left of the fivers and stuffs them inside Barton’s tight little jacket.
I look at the stripper gathering up her bikini from the floor of the stage, her arse fat with spots and I look at the bar and the faces of the dead, wondering if he’s here, here with us now, and then I’m back at the table, nowhere left to look.
And Barton’s standing there, coming round, still filled full of rum, and he takes the notes out of his jacket and tosses them on to the table.
‘Keep them,’ he says. ‘Keep them for the next one.’ And he turns and walks out.
‘Thought we were supposed to let him get his dick sucked,’ laughs Ellis.
I pick up one of the rums and drain it.
Ellis, suddenly scared his whole evening’ll fall about his ears and we’ll leave him, sighs, ‘Fuck we going to do now?’
‘Do what you fucking want,’ says Rudkin, going over to the bar, walking into people, looking for a fight to make him feel better.
‘Where you going?’ shouts Ellis as I head for the door.
‘Home,’ I say.
‘Yeah, right,’ he’s saying as I push through the double doors and escape.
I’m in the back of a cab, crawling out of Bradford with the windows down, my eyes dropping, heart heavy, brain in flames:
Got to see Janice, got to see Bobby, got to see Louise, and I’ve got to see her Dad
.
Four murdered whores, maybe more
.
Shotguns in Hanging Heaton, shotguns in Skipton, shotguns in Doncaster, shotguns up Selby way
.
Four murdered whores, maybe more
.
My son and my wife, her father’s days numbered
.
Janice, my lover, tormentor, my own private whore in my own numbered days
.
‘Here OK?’
‘Cheers,’ and I pay him.
I walk up the stairs, suddenly thinking,
help me, I’m dying here
.
On her landing thinking,
you don’t answer the door, I’m dead
.
I knock once thinking,
help me, I don’t want to die here on your stair
.
She comes to the door and smiles, hair damp, her skin browner than before.
The radio’s on inside.
‘Can I come in?’
Her smile broadens, ‘You’re a policeman. You can do what you want.’
‘I hope so,’ I say and we kiss hard; hard kisses to forgive and forget all that went before and is yet to come.
We hit the bed, my hands all over her, trying to get deeper inside her, her nails in my back, getting deeper inside me.
I pull off her jeans, kick off her shoes, death all gone.
And we fuck, then we fuck again, and she kisses me and sucks me until I fuck her one last time and we fall asleep to Rod on the radio.
I wake as she’s coming out of the bathroom, just a t-shirt and knickers.
‘You going out?’ I ask.
‘Got to,’ she says.
‘Don’t.’
‘Told you, I got to.’
I get out of bed and start to dress.
She starts putting on her make-up in front of the mirror.
I ask her: ‘It doesn’t worry you at all?’
‘What?’
‘These fucking murders?’
‘What? You mean because I’m a prostitute?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Like your wife, she’s no need to worry?’
‘She doesn’t walk the streets of bloody Chapeltown at two in the morning, does she?’
‘Lucky bitch. Probably got herself a nice husband to keep her off the streets with his big fat salary …’
I’ve got my wallet open. ‘You want money, I’ll give you fucking money’
‘It’s not the money, Bob. It’s not the fucking money. How many more times?’