“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
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, “
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:
The rain on the windscreen, the moon stolen.
Cut to the chase:
I knew a man who knew a man.
“
Angels as devils, devils as angels.
The bones of the thing:
ACT LIKE NOTHING’S WRONG.
I watched my mother sleeping in her chair and tried to tie it all together.
Not here.
Up the stairs, emptying carrier bags and envelopes, scattering files and photographs across my bed.
Not here.
I scooped the whole bloody lot into one big black bin-sack, stuffing my pockets with my father’s pins and needles.
Not here.
Back down the stairs, a kiss upon my mother’s brow, and out the door.
Not here.-
Foot down, screaming through the Ossett dawn.
Not here.
Chapter 5
Dawn at the Redbeck Cafe and Motel, Tuesday 17 December 1974.
I’d driven all night and then come back here, as though it all came back here.
I paid two weeks up front and got what I paid for:
Room 27 was round the back, two bikers on one side and a woman and her four kids on the other. There was no phone, toilet, or TV. But two quid a night got me a view of the car park, a double bed, a wardrobe, a desk, a sink, and no questions.
I double-locked the door and drew the damp curtains. I stripped the bed and tacked the heaviest sheet over the curtains and then propped the mattress up against the sheet. I picked up a used johnny and stuffed it inside a half- eaten packet of crisps.
I went back out to the car, stopping for a piss in
I stood there pissing, not sure if it was Tuesday or Wed nesday, knowing this was as close as I could get. I shook it off and kicked open the cubicle door, knowing there’d be nothing but a melting yellow turd and puffter graffiti.
I went round the front to the cafe and bought two large black coffees with loads of sugar in dirty styrofoam cups. I opened the boot of the Viva and took the black bin-sack and the black coffees back to Room 27.
I double-locked the door again, drank down one of the coffees, emptied the bin-sack over the wooden base of the bed and went to work.
Barry Cannon’s files and envelopes were by name. I laid them out alphabetically on one half of the bed and then went through Hadden’s thick manila envelope, stuffing the sheets of paper into Barry’s relevant files.
