“Where is it?”
She was still smiling. She knew what I would find.
“Where?”
She raised up the tea-towel. “I can’t…”
“Show me,” I hissed, grabbing her by the arm.
“No!”
I pulled her up on her feet.
“No!”
I swung the door back.
“No!”
I dragged her down the path, her scalp red raw beneath her tight grey perm.
“No!”
“Which way?” I said at the gate.
“No, no, no.”
“Which fucking way?” I tightened my grip.
She spun round, looking back and beyond the bungalow.
I pushed her through the gate and marched her round the back of Maple Well Drive.
There was an empty brown field behind the bungalows, rising steeply up into the dirty white sky. There was a gate in a wall and a tractor path and, where the field met the sky, I could see a row of black sheds.
“No!”
I pulled her off the road and pushed her up against the dry stone wall.
“No, no, no.”
“Shut your bloody mouth you fucking bitch.” I gripped her mouth in my left hand, making a fish head of her face.
She was shaking but there were no tears.
“Is he up there?”
She looked straight at me, then nodded once.
“If he isn’t, or if he hears us coming, I’m going to fucking do you, you understand?”
She was looking straight at me, again she nodded just once.
I let go of her mouth, make-up and lipstick on my fingers.
She stood against the stone wall, not moving.
I took her by the arm and pushed her through the gate.
She stared up at the black line of sheds.
“Move,” I said, shoving her in the back.
We started up the tractor path, its trenches full of black water, the air stinking of animal shit.
She stumbled, she fell, she got back up.
I looked back down at Netherton, the same as Ossett, the same as anywhere.
I saw its bungalows and terraces, its shops and its garage.
She stumbled, she fell, she got back up.
I saw it all.
I saw a white van bumping up this path, throwing its little cargo around in the back.
I saw a white van bumping back down, its little cargo silent and still.
I saw Mrs Marsh at her kitchen sink, that fucking tea-towel in her hand, watching that van coming and going.
She stumbled, she fell, she got back up.
We were almost at the top of the hill, almost at the sheds. They looked like a stone-age village, built from the mud.
“Which one’s his?”
She pointed to the end one, at a patchwork of tarpaulin and fertiliser sacks, corrugated iron and house bricks.
I went ahead, dragging her along behind me.
“This one,” I whispered, pointing at a black wooden door with a cement sack for a window.
She nodded.
“Open it.”
She pulled back the door.
I shoved her inside.
There was a work-bench and tools, bags of fertiliser and cement stacked up, plant pots and feed trays. Empty plastic sacks covered the floor.
It stank of the earth.
“Where is he?”
Mrs Marsh was giggling, the tea-towel up over her nose and mouth.
I spun round and punched her hard through the tea-towel.
She shrieked and howled and fell to her knees.
I grabbed some grey perm and dragged her over to the work bench, forcing her cheek into the wood.
“Ah, ha-ha-ha. Ah, ha-ha-ha.”
She was laughing and screaming, her whole body shaking, one hand flailing through the plastic sacks upon the floor, the other squeezing her skirt up into her cunt.
I picked up some kind of chisel or wallpaper scraper.
“Where is he?”
“Mmm, ha-ha-ha. Mmm, ha-ha-ha.”
Her screams were a hum, her giggles rationed.
“Where is he?” I put the chisel to her flabby throat.
“Ah, ha-ha-ha. Ah, ha-ha-ha.”
Again she began to kick out, thrashing through the plastic sacks with her knees and feet.
I looked down through the sacks and the bags and saw a piece of thick muddy rope.
I let go of her face and pushed her away.
I kicked away the sacks and found a manhole cover threaded through like a giant metal button with the dirty black rope.
I coiled the rope around my good and bad hands and pulled up the manhole cover, swinging it to the side.
Mrs Marsh was sat on her arse giggling under the bench, drumming her heels in hysterics.
I peered into the hole, into a narrow stone shaft with a metal ladder leading down into a faint light some fifty odd feet below.
It was some kind of drainage or Ventilation shaft to a mine.
“He down there?”
She drummed her feet up and down faster and faster, blood still running down from her nose into her mouth, suddenly spreading her legs and rubbing the tea-towel over the top of her tan tights and ruby red knickers.
I reached under the bench and dragged her out by her ankles. I pulled her over on to her stomach and sat astride her arse.
“Ah, ha-ha-ha. Ah, ha-ha-ha.”
I reached up and took some rope from the bench. I hooked it round her neck and then ran it down round her wrists, finally knotting it twice round the leg of the bench.
Mrs Marsh had pissed herself.
I looked back down the shaft, turned round and put one foot into the dark.
I eased myself down into the shaft, the metal ladder cold and wet, the brick walls slippery against my sides.
Down I went, ten feet down.
I could hear the faint sound of running water beneath Mrs Marsh’s shrieks and screams.
Down I went, twenty feet down.
A circle of grey light and madness above.
