A diary.
There had been a diary.
I pulled the room apart, the six of them whirling and wailing in murderous cacophony, books in the air, tapes on the floor, cuttings to the wind, fingers in my ears, their hands across my eyes, their lies, my books, his lies, my tapes, her lies, my cuttings, her fucking diary:
The telephone was ringing.
Radio Leeds
Monday 6th June 1977
Chapter 9
Fuck Oldman.
Fuck Noble.
Fuck Rudkin.
Fuck Ellis.
Fuck Donny Fairclough.
Fuck the fucking Ripper.
Fuck Louise.
Fuck them all.
She’s gone:
I’m gone
In a hell.
Battering down doors, battering down people, kicking in doors, kicking in people, searching for her, searching for me.
In a hell of fireworks.
I’m out of her room and back across the hall, through the door, Keith gone, Karen looking up from the bed with a ‘not again, the fuck…’ and I pull her from the bed, across the floor, just a pair of pink knickers, tits out, shouting into her face, ‘She’s gone, taken her stuff, where she go?’ and she’s under me, hands across her face because I’m slapping the shit out of her because if anyone knows where Janice is it’s Karen Burns, white, twenty-three, convicted prostitute, drug addict, mother of two, and I slap her again and then I look down at her bleeding lips and nose, the bloody smears on her chin and neck, her tits and arms, and I pull off her pink knickers and drag her back to the bed and pull open my trousers and push it into her and she’s not even struggling, just shifting my weight on the bed so I come out and now she’s looking up at me and I slap her again and turn her over and she starts struggling, saying we don’t need to do it like this but I just push her face down into the dirty sheet and bring my cock up and stick it in her arse and she’s screaming and it’s hurting me but I keep going until I come and fall back on to the floor and she’s lying there on the bed, semen and blood running down her thighs, her arse in my face, and I get up and do it again and this time it doesn’t hurt and she’s quiet and then I come and go.
In a hell of fireworks, she’s gone.
I’m lying on the floor of the phone box, it’s dark outside except for the bonfires and street lights, the fireworks and the headlights, the big Chapeltown trees bending over me, the owls in the trees with their wide, wide fucking round eyes, and I’m cursing Maurice fucking Jobson, Uncle Maurice, the Owl, my guardian angel, with his
In a hell of fireworks, she’s gone and I’m alone.
‘The fuck…’
I’ve got Joe fucking Rose by his throat, heavy smoke across the room, mattress against the window, two sevens painted on every surface, the dumb stoned fucking chimpanzee shitting his pants.
‘I’ll kill you.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘So tell me…’
He’s shaking, white-ball-eyes to the ceiling, stuttering: ‘Janice?’
‘Tell me.’
‘I don’t know where she is, man. I swear.’
I’ve got my fingers up his nose, my keys to those big brown eyes of his.
‘Please man, I swear.’
‘I will kill you.’
‘I know it man, I know it.’
‘So tell me.’
‘Tell you what? I don’t know where she is.’
‘You know she’s gone?’
‘Every fucker does.’
‘So tell me something no fucker knows.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like who was pimping her?’
‘Who was pimping her? You’re joking right?’
‘Do I look like I’m fucking joking?’
‘Eric, man.’
‘Eric Hall?’
‘You didn’t know?’
‘She was his grass.’
‘Fuck that. He was pimping her.’
‘You’re lying to me Joe.’
‘You didn’t fucking know?’
I grip his throat.
‘I swear it, man. Eric Hall was pimping her. Ask anyone.’
I stare into those big brown eyes, those big brown blind eyes of his and wonder.
‘Look, she’ll be back,’ he’s saying. ‘Like a boomerang, like the lot of them.’
I let go and he drops to the floor.
I walk towards what’s left of the door, all shattered wood and splattered sevens.
‘Cept the ones your Captain Jack gets,’ he’s still saying. ‘Cept the ones that pirate takes.’
‘You call me, Joe. The second you hear the slightest thing, you call me.’
