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
“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
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
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
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?”
Chapter 8
Dawn on Friday 20 December 1974.
Hate Week.
Awake on the floor of Room 27, covered in the ripped-up snow of a hundred sheets of red penned lists.
Lists, I’d been writing lists since I’d left Paula’s. A big fat red felt-tip pen in my left hand, circles in my head, scrawling illegible lists across the backs of sheets of wallpaper.
Lists of names.
Lists of dates.
Lists of places.
Lists of girls.
Lists of boys.
Lists of the corrupt, the corrupted, and the corruptible.
Lists of the police.
