I parked opposite Lumbs Dairy by the Drury Lane Library, the rain coming down cold, grey, and heavy.
“
Radio off.
I sat in the car smoking, watching the empty milk floats return home.
Just gone eleven-thirty.
I jogged down past the prison and on to the building site, the Foster’s Construction sign rattling under the rain.
I pushed open the tarpaulin door of an unfinished house, the radio playing
Three big men, stinking and smoking.
“Fuck, not you again,” said one big man with a sandwich in his mouth and flask of tea in his hand.
I said, “I’m looking for Jimmy Ashworth.”
“He’s not here, is he,” said another big man with the back of his NCB donkey jacket to me.
“What about Terry Jones?”
“He’s not here either,” said the donkey jacket to the grins of the other two men.
“Do you know where they are?”
“No,” said the sandwich man.
“What about your Gaffer, is he about?”
“Just not your lucky day is it.”
“Thanks,” I said, thinking choke on it you thick fucking twat.
“Don’t mention it,” sandwich man smiled as I went back out.
I turned up the collar of my jacket and stuck my hands and bandages deep into my pockets. Down there, with Paul’s Ronson lighter and the odd pennies, I found a feather in my pocket.
I walked through the piles of cheap bricks and the half-built houses towards Devil’s Ditch, thinking of that last school photograph of Clare, with her nervous pretty smile, stuck on to the black and white shots on my Redbeck walls.
I looked up, the feather in my fingers.
Jimmy Ashworth was stumbling and running across the wasteland towards me, big red spots of blood dropping from his nose and his scalp on to his skinny white chest.
“What the fuck’s going on?” I shouted.
He slowed to a walk as he drew near me, pretending like nothing was up.
“What happened to you?”
“Just piss off, will you.”
In the distance, Terry Jones was coming up behind Jimmy from Devil’s Ditch.
I grabbed Jimmy’s arm. “What did he say to you?”
He tried to twist free, screaming, “Get off me!”
I grabbed the other arm of his jacket. “You’d seen her before, hadn’t you?”
“Fuck off!”
Terry Jones had broken into a jog, waving at us.
“You told Michael Myshkih about her, didn’t you?”
“Fuck off,” shouted Jimmy, twisting out of his jacket and shirt, breaking into a run.
I span round, rugby tackling him into the mud.
He fell into the mud beneath me.
I had him pinned down, shouting, “Where had you fucking seen her?”
“Fuck off!” Jimmy Ashworth was screaming, looking up past me into a big grey sky that was pissing down all over his muddy, bloody face.
“Tell me where you’d fucking seen her.”
“No.”
I slapped my bandaged hand across his face, pain shooting up my arm into my heart, yelling, “Tell me!”
“Get the fuck off him,” said Terry Jones, pulling me backwards by the collar of my jacket.
“Fuck off,” I said, my arms flailing and lashing out at Terry Jones.
Jimmy Ashworth, breaking free from my legs, got to his feet and ran bare-chested towards the houses, the rain, the mud, and the blood running down his naked back.
“Jimmy!” I shouted, wrestling with Terry Jones.
“Leave it fucking be,” hissed Jones.
Over by the houses, the three big men had come out and were laughing at Jimmy as he sprinted past them.
“He’d fucking seen her before.”
“Leave it!”
Jimmy Ashworth kept on running.
The three big men stopped laughing and started walking over towards me and Terry Jones.
He released me, whispering, “You best piss off.”
“I’m going to fucking have you, Jones.”
Terry Jones picked up Jimmy Ashworth’s shirt and jacket. “Then you’re wasting your time.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he smiled sadly.
I turned and walked away towards Devil’s Ditch, wiping the mud from my hands on to my trousers.
I heard a shout and looked round to see Terry Jones, his arms up, shepherding the three big men back towards the half-built houses.
There was no sign of Jimmy Ashworth.
I stood on the lip of the Ditch, looking down at the rusted prams and bicycles, the cookers and the fridges, thinking all of modern life is here and so was Clare Kemplay, aged ten.
My fingers black with dirt, I took the small white feather from my pocket.
At Devil’s Ditch, I looked up into the big black sky and put the small white feather to my pale pink lips thinking, if only it hadn’t been her.
The Strafford Arms, the Bullring, Wakefield.
The dead centre of Wakefield, the Friday before Christmas.
Mud Man, up the stairs and through the door.
“It’s all right Grace, he’s with me,” said Box to the woman behind the bar.
Derek Box and Paul at the bar, whiskys and cigars in their hands.
There was Elvis on the jukebox.
Just Derek, Paul, Grace, Elvis, and me.
Box got up from his stool and walked across the room to a table in the window.
“You look like shit. What the fuck happened to you?”
I sat down opposite Box, my back to Paul and the door, looking out on a wet Wakefield.
“I went down Devil’s Ditch.”
“I thought they’d got someone for that?”
“So did I.”
“Some things are best left,” said Derek Box, examining the end of his cigar.
“Like Councillor Shaw?”
Box relit his cigar. “Did you see him?”
“Yeah.”
Paul put a whisky and a pint in front of me.
I tipped the whisky into my pint.
