1977

Ripped from that hell into this:

Shrieking: HE’S COMING, HE’S COMING, HE’S COMING.

Howling: Fuck you then you sleep.

Shrieking: HE’S COMING, HE’S COMING, HE’S COMING.

Howling: Kiss you then you wake.

Shrieking: HE’S COMING, HE’S COMING, HE’S COMING.

Ripped from that into this, this into that, and back to this:

The dawn, the rattle of the flap, the letter on the mat.

HE WAS HERE.

Back.

Part 3. God save the queen

The John Shark Show

Radio Leeds

Wednesday 8th June 1977

Chapter 11

Leeds.

Wednesday 8 June 1977.

It’s happening again:

When the two sevens clash…

Shot through another hot dawn to another ancient stage with her littered dead, from Soldier’s Field to here, it’s happening again.

Wednesday morning, doors wide open, the morning after the night before, the bunting tattered, the Union Jacks down.

Knuckles white and tight in prayer around the steering wheel, foot down.

The voices in my head, alive with death:

Wednesday morning – a jacket over her, her boots placed on her thighs, a pair of white panties left on one leg, a pink bra pushed up, her stomach and breasts hollowed out with a screwdriver, her skull caved in with a hammer.

Cars and vans screaming in from every direction, wailing:

Proceeding to Chapeltown.

I park, I pray, I make my deal:

Please God, dear God, please let her be safe, please let it be someone else and if she’s safe and someone else, I’ll let her be and go back to Louise and try again. Amen.

Me ditching Eric’s Granada round the back, following the sirens down across Chapeltown.

Chapeltown – our town for one year; the leafy street with its grand old house, the shabby little flat which we filled full of sex, hiding out from the rest of the world, the rest of my world.

And I turn the corner on to Reginald Street, the blue lights spinning silently, the waking dead on every doorstep with their bottles of milk and their open mouths, and I walk up past the Community Centre, past the uniforms, under the tape and through the gates, into the adventure playground, this the ancient stage where we the players move our wooden limbs and scratch our wooden heads with our wooden hands, and Ellis looks up and says, ‘Christ. The fuck…’

And they’re all here:

Oldman, Noble, Prentice, Alderman, and Farley; Rudkin sprinting across the playground towards me.

And I’m staring at the body on the floor under the jacket, cursing God and all his fucking angels, tasting blood and the end:

I can see black hair lying in the dirt.

Rudkin catches me, spins me round, and he’s saying, ‘The fuck you been, the fuck you been, the fuck you been,’ over and over, again and again.

And I’m staring at the body on the floor under the jacket, still cursing God and all his fucking angels, thinking:

There is no hell but this one.

Cursing all those false hells stuffed full of pretenders: those generals and their witches.

I can see black hair.

And Rudkin is staring into my eyes, my eyes past him, and I get free and I’m gone, away, across the playground, pushing Prentice and Alderman to the ground, dropping on to my knees, the jacket in my hands, the face between my Angers, the hair blood not black, the prayers answered, the deal made, and they’re pulling me off, shouting:

‘Get him fucking out of here.’

And Rudkin picks me up and leads me away into the path of a man in his dressing gown and pyjamas clutching a bottle of milk, walking across the playground towards us, f-a-t-h-e-r tattooed across his face, eyes closed to the horror and death, and he stares at us as he passes and we stop and we watch as he gets nearer and nearer, until he drops the bottle of milk and falls to the ground that killed his daughter and starts to dig through the hard-packed dirt, searching for an exit which a year from now he’ll find, dead in the same pyjamas, his broken heart unhealed, unmended, this unending.

My deal, my prayer; his hell.

Rudkin pushes my head down and into the back of the car and Ellis turns and is speaking to me but I can’t hear him.

And they take me in.

They put me in a cell, chuck in some clean clothes, and bring in breakfast.

‘Briefing’s in ten minutes,’ says Rudkin, sitting down opposite. ‘They want you there.’

‘Why?’

‘They know fuck all. We covered for you.’

‘You didn’t need to do that.’

‘I know, Mike kept saying.’

‘What happens now?’

Rudkin leans across the table, hands together. ‘She’s gone, go back to your family. They need you, she doesn’t.’

‘I broke into Eric Hall’s house, stole his car, beat him up.’

‘I know.’

‘You can’t cover that up.’

‘Word is they’re sending in Peter Hunter to do the number on Bradford Vice.’