1974

“The money,” I laughed. “Always the money.”

“They want in. Do you want figures, dates?” Shaw was hys terical, shielding his face.

“I don’t give a fuck about your shitty little backhanders, about your weak fucking cement and all your dodgy fucking deals, but I want to hear you say it.”

“Say what? What do you want me to say?”

“Names. Just say their fucking names!”

“Foster, Donald Richard Foster. Is that who want?”

“Go on.”

“John Dawson.”

“That’s it?”

“Of them that matter.”

“And who wants in?”

Ever so slowly and quietly Shaw said, “You’re a bloody journalist aren’t you?”

A feeling, a gut feeling.

“Have you ever met a man called Barry Gannon?”

“No,” screamed Shaw, banging his forehead down into the steering wheel.

“You’re a fucking liar. When was it?”

Shaw lay against the steering wheel, shaking.

Suddenly sirens wailed through Wakefield.

I froze, my belly and balls tight.

The sirens faded.

“I didn’t know he was a journalist,” whispered Shaw.

I swallowed and said, “When?”

“Just twice.”

“When?”

“Last month sometime and then a week ago, last Friday.”

“And you told Foster?”

“I had to. It couldn’t go on, it just couldn’t.”

“What did he say?”

Shaw looked up, the whites of his eyes red. “Who?”

“Foster.”

“He said he’d deal with it.”

I stared out across the car park at the London train arriving, thinking of seaview flats and Southern girls.

“He’s dead.”

“I know,” whispered Shaw. “What are you going to do?”

I picked a dog hair off my tongue and opened the passenger door.

The Councillor had the photograph in his hands, holding it out towards me.

“Keep it, it’s you,” I said, getting out.

“He looks so white,” said William Shaw, alone in his expensive motor, staring at the photograph.

“What did you say?”

Shaw reached over to close the door. “Nothing.”

I leant back into the car, holding the door open, shouting, “Just tell me what you fucking said.”

“I said he looks so different that’s all, paler.”

I slammed the door on him, tearing across the car park, thinking Jimmy James fucking Ashworth.

Ninety miles an hour.

One hand in the glove compartment, a bandage on the wheel, sifting through the pills and the maps, the rags and the fags.

The Sweet on the radio.

Nervous darts into the rearview mirror.

Finding the micro-cassette, yanking the Philips Pocket Memo out of my jacket, ripping one tape out, ramming another in.

Rewind.

Pressing play:

“It were like she’d rolled down or something.”

Forward.

Play: “I couldn’t believe it was her.”

Listen.

“She looked so different, so white.”

Stop.

Fitzwilliam.

69 Newstead View, TV lights on.

Ninety miles an hour, up the garden path.

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

“What do you want?” said Mrs Ashworth, trying to close the door on me.

A foot in the door, pushing it back.

“Here, you can’t just come barging into people’s houses.”

“Where is he?” I said, knocking past her into one of her saggy tits.

“He’s not here, is he. Here, come back!”

Up the stairs, banging open doors.

“I’m calling the police,” shouted Mrs Ashworth from the foot of the stairs.

“You do that, love,” I said, looking at an unmade bed and a Leeds United poster, smelling winter damp and teenage wank.

“I’m warning you,” she shouted.

“Where is he?” I said as I came back down the stairs.

“He’s at work, isn’t he.”

“Wakefield?”

“I don’t know. He never says.”

I looked at my father’s watch. “What time did he set off?”

“Van came at quarter to seven, same as always.”

“He’s mates with Michael Myshkin, isn’t he?”

Mrs Ashworth held the door open,her lips pursed.

“Mrs Ashworth, I know they’re friends.”

“Jimmy always felt bloody sorry for him. He’s like that, it’s his character.”

“Very touching, I’m sure,” I said, walking out the door.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” shouted Mrs Ashworth from the front step.

At the bottom of the path, I opened the garden gate and stared up the road at the burnt-out Number 54. “I hope your neighbours agree.”

“You’re always making something out of nothing, you people,” she screamed after me, slamming the front door shut.

Flat out down the Barnsley Road into Wakefield, glances in the rearview mirror.

Radio on.

Jimmy Young and the Archbishop of Canterbury debating Anal Rape and The Exorcist with the housebound of Britain.

“They should ban them both. Disgusting, that’s what they are.”

Through the Christmas lights and the first spits of rain, up past the County and Town Halls.

“Exorcism, as practised by the Church of England, is a deeply religious rite and not something to