“Hello?”
I dropped the coin in the box. “It’s me.”
“What do you want?”
Through the double glass doors, the pool room was dead^
“To say I’m sorry.”
“What did they do to you?”
I looked round at the brown lobby chairs, looking for the old woman.
“Nothing.”
“One of them slapped me, you know.”
I could feel my eyes stinging.
“In my own house, Edward!”
“I’m sorry.”
She was crying. I could hear my sister’s voice in the back ground. She was shouting at my mother. I stared at the names and the promises, the threats and the numbers, scribbled by the payphone.
“Please come home.”
“I can’t.”
“Edward!”
“I’m really sorry, Mum.”
“Please!”
“I love you.”
I hung up.
I picked the receiver up again, tried to dial Kathryn’s number, couldn’t remember it, hung up again, and ran back through the rain to Room 27.
The sky above was big and blue without a cloud.
She was outside in the street, pulling a red cardigan tight around her, smiling.
Her hair was blonde and blowing in the breeze.
She reached out towards me, putting her arms around my neck and shoulders.
“I’m no angel,” she whispered into my hair.
We kissed, her tongue hard against mine.
I moved my hands down her back, crushing our bodies closer together.
The wind whipped my face with her hair.
She broke off our kiss as I came;
I woke on the floor with come in my pants.
Down to my underpants at the sink of my Redbeck room, luke warm grey water slopping down my chest and on to the floor, wanting to go home but not wishing to be anyone’s son, photo graphs of daughters smiling in the mirror.
Crosslegged on the floor of my Redbeck room, unravelling the black bandages around my hand, stopping just short of the mess and the flesh, ripping another sheet with my teeth and binding my hand with the strips, worse wounds grinning from the wall above.
Back in my muddy clothes at the door of my Redbeck room, swallowing pills and lighting cigarettes, wanting to sleep but not wishing to dream, thinking this’ll be the day that I die, pictures of Paula waving bye-bye.
Chapter 12
1. AM, Tuesday 24 December 1974.
Christmas bloody Eve.
I drove down the Barnsley Road into Wakefield, homes switching off their Christmas lights,
I had the shotgun in the boot of the car.
I crossed the Calder, went up past the market, and into the Bullring, the Cathedral trapped in the black sky up above.
Everything was dead.
I parked outside a shoe shop.
I opened the boot.
I took the shotgun out of the black bin-bag.
I loaded the gun in the boot of the car.
I put some more shells in my pocket.
I took the shotgun out of the boot.
I closed the boot of the car.
I walked across the Bullring.
On the first floor of the Stafford the lights were on, down stairs everything dark.
I opened the door and went up the stairs one at a time.
They were at the bar, whiskys and cigars all round:
Derek Box and Paul, Sergeant Craven and PC Douglas.
Barry James Anderson, his face black and blue, dancing alone in the corner.
I had a hand on the barrel, a finger on the trigger.
They looked up.
“Fucking hell,” said Paul.
“Drop the gun,” said one of the coppers.
Derek Box smiled, “Evening, Eddie.”
I told him what he already knew. “You killed Mandy Wymer?”
Box turned and took a big pull on a fat cigar. “Is that right?”
“And Donald Foster?”
“So?”
“I want to know why.”
“Ever the journalist. Take a wild bloody guess, Scoop.”
“Over a fucking shopping centre?”
“Yeah, over a fucking shopping centre.”
“What the fuck did Mandy Wymer have to do with a shop ping centre?”
“You want me to spell it out?”
“Yeah, spell it out.”
“No architect, no shopping centre.”
“So she knew?”
He was laughing, “Fuck knows.”
I saw little dead girls and brand new shopping schemes, scalped dead women and the rain off your head.
I said, “You enjoyed it.”
“I told you from the start, we’d all get what we wanted.”
“Which was?”
“Revenge and money, the perfect combination.”
“I didn’t want revenge.”
“You wanted fame,” hissed Box. “It’s the same.”
