And just as it’s breaking up, I reach down, pick up the magazines and hand them to Craven.
‘I think these are yours,’ I say.
Craven takes them, eyes cold and dark and far away until he glances down at the covers and stops: ‘Fuck you get these?’
‘Your wife, why?’
The room’s all silent smiles, everyone hanging back to see what comes next.
‘Funny man, Fraser. Funny man.’ And Craven limps off, back to Vice.
I’m sat up in the canteen, wiped out.
Rudkin’s getting the coffees.
We’ve been told to wait while Prentice and Alderman question Barton, wait while the tests come back, which is a load of bollocks when we all know it isn’t him, wish it was, but know it’s not.
‘Could’ve taken a fucking blood test,’ says Rudkin, pissed off he’s not in on the questioning, staring to get the big fucking picture, those two words:
SPADE WORK.
‘What, going to scrape under your nails?’
‘You really are a funny man,’ he laughs as we heap sugar into our coffees, and lots of it.
I want to sleep but, if they let me loose, I’ve got so many fucking fences to mend.
‘What time is it?’ asks Rudkin, too tired to look at his own watch.
‘What am I? The speaking fucking clock?’
‘Speaking cock, more like.’
And we keep this up for about two minutes till we fade back into another one of them fucked-up knackered silences in which we hide.
‘We’re letting him go.’
Out of silence and back into the bright, bright lights of the police canteen, the world of Chief Superintendent Peter Noble.
‘Quel surprise,’ mutters Rudkin.
‘Not a B?’ I say.
‘O,’ says Noble.
I ask, ‘Get anything else from him?’
‘Not much. He was pimping her. Hadn’t seen her since the afternoon.’
‘Should’ve let us at him,’ spits Rudkin.
‘Well, now’s your chance. He’s waiting for you downstairs with DC Ellis.’
‘You don’t need us. Ellis can take him home.’
Noble takes a wad of fivers from his jacket and leans over and stuffs them inside Rudkin’s top pocket. ‘The Assistant Chief Constable wants you to take Mr Barton out and get him pissed, give him a good time. No hard feelings etc.’
‘Fuck,’ says Rudkin. ‘We’re up to our fucking eyes in work, Pete. We got all the stuff from Preston, then you put Bob on these fucking robberies. Now this. We haven’t got the time.’
I’m looking at the table top, the lights reflecting in the Formica.
Noble bends over and pats Rudkin’s top pocket. ‘Stop whining John and just do it.’
Rudkin waits till Noble’s out the door and then gives it, ‘Cunt. Fucking cunt.’
We stand up, stiff as a pair of wooden puppets.
Ellis is in the Rover, sat behind the wheel waiting.
Barton’s in the back in oversize trousers and a tiny jacket, dreadlocks against the window.
Rudkin gets in next to him. ‘Where to?’
I get in the front.
Barton’s just staring out the glass.
‘Come on, Steve. Where to?’
‘Home,’ he mumbles.
‘Home? You can’t go home now. It’s only three o’clock. Let’s all have a drink.’
Barton knows he’s no fucking choice.
Ellis starts the car and asks: ‘Where to then?’
‘Bradford. Manningham,’ says Rudkin.
‘Bradford it is,’ smiles Ellis as we pull out of Millgarth.
I close my eyes as he sticks the radio on.
I wake up as we get into Manningham, Wings on the radio, Barton silent as some black ghost in the back.
Ellis pulls up outside the New Adelphi.
Rudkin says, ‘What do you reckon, Steve?’
Steve says nowt.
‘Heard it’s all right,’ says Ellis and out we get.
There’s day-old puke on the steps and inside the New Adelphi is a big old ballroom, high ceilings and flock wallpaper, the crowd mixed, stirred, and well fucking shaken and it’s not even four o’clock in the afternoon.
I’m shattered, shoulders down, head killing, the stripper not on again until six and they’re playing some reggae bollocks:
Rudkin turns to Steve and says, ‘See, right up your street.’
Steve just nods and we plonk him down in the corner under the stairs up to the balcony, me on one side, Rudkin on the other, Ellis at the bar.
The three of us sit there, saying nothing, scanning the ballroom, the black faces and the white.
‘Know anyone?’ asks Rudkin.
Barton shakes his head.
‘Good. Don’t want folk thinking you’re a bloody grass now do we?’
Ellis gets back with a tray of pints and shorts.
He hands Barton a large rum and coke. ‘Get that down you.’
‘Here Steve,’ laughs Rudkin. ‘You come here often?’
And we’re laughing, but not Steve.
It’s going to be a long time before he starts laughing again.
Ellis goes back to the bar and brings over more drinks, more rum and cokes, and we drink them and then back he goes.
And we sit there, the four of us, talking here and there, the endless reggae, the Paki cab drivers coming in and out, the slags falling about on the dancefloor, the old blokes with their dominoes, the rat-faced whites with their v- necked sweaters and no shirts, the fat-faced blacks nodding their heads to the music:
Rudkin and Ellis have got their heads together, laughing at one of the women at the bar, the one sticking two fingers up at them.
And Barton suddenly leans across to me, his hand on my arm, his eyes yellow, breath rank, and he says: ‘That shit about Kenny and Marie, that true?’
I look at him, his tight jacket and baggy trousers, seeing him back down in the Belly under that grey blanket, his hands moving, the magazines beside him.
‘You got to tell me. I know you’re tight with Kenny and Joe Ro. I ain’t going to do nothing, but I got to know.’
I take his hand off my arm and push it away, spitting in his face: ‘Fuck I care about your shit. You got bad information, boy’
And he sits back in his chair and Rudkin throws another cigarette at him and Ellis goes back to the bar and brings more drinks, more rum and cokes, and the reggae keeps on going:
