1977

I woke, my head against the window, and looked at my watch.

I picked up my briefcase and locked myself in the toilet. I sat on the rocking bog and took out the porno mag. Spunk.

Clare Strachan in all her bloody glory.

Hard again, I checked the address and went back to my seat and the half-eaten cheese sandwich.

From Stalybridge into Manchester I tried to put all of Wilson’s shit together, re-reading Oldman’s memo, wondering what the fuck Fraser could have done, knowing suspensions could be anything these days:

Back-handers and one-handers, dodgy overtime and faked expenses, sloppy paperwork, no paperwork.

John bloody Rudkin leading Mr fucking Clean astray.

Clueless, I went back to the window, the rain and the factories, the local horror movies, remembering the photographs of death camps my uncle had brought back from the war.

I’d been fifteen when that war ended and now, in 1977, I was sat on a train, head against the black glass, the bloody rain, the fucking North, wondering if this one ever would.

I was thinking of Martin Laws and The Exorcist when we pulled into Victoria.

In the station, straight to a telephone:

‘Anything?’

‘Nothing.’

Out of Victoria, up to Oldham Street.

270 Oldham Street, dark and rain-stained, rotting black bin bags heaped up outside, MJM Publishing sat on the third floor.

I stood at the foot of the stairs and shook down my raincoat.

Soaked through, I walked up the stairs.

I banged on the double doors and went inside.

It was a big office, full of low furniture, almost empty, a door to another office at the back.

A woman sat at a desk near the back door, a bag, typing.

I stood at the low counter by the door and coughed.

‘Yes?’ she said, not looking up.

‘I’d like to talk to the proprietor please?’

‘The what?’

‘The owner.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Jack Williams.’

She shrugged and picked up the old telephone on her desk: ‘There’s a man here wants to see the owner. Name’s Jack Williams.’

She sat there, nodding, then covered the mouthpiece and said, ‘What do you want?’

‘Business.’

‘Business,’ she repeated, nodded again, and asked, ‘What kind of business?’

‘Orders.’

‘Orders,’ she said, nodded one last time, and then hung up.

‘What?’ I said.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Leave your name and number and he’ll call you back.’

‘But I’ve come all way over from Leeds.’

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘Bloody hell,’ I said.

‘Yep,’ she said.

‘Can I at least have his name?’

‘Lord High and Bloody Mighty,’ she said, ripping the piece of paper out of the typewriter.

I went for it: ‘Don’t know how you can work for a bloke like that.’

‘I don’t intend to for much longer.’

‘You out of here then?’

She stopped pretending to work and smiled, ‘Week next Friday.’

‘Good on you.’

‘I hope so.’

I said, ‘You want to earn yourself a couple of quid for your retirement?’

‘My retirement? You’re no spring chicken yourself, you cheeky sod.’

‘A couple of quid to tide you over?’

‘Only a couple?’

‘Twenty?’

She came over to the front of the office, a little smile. ‘So who are you really?’

‘A business rival, shall we say?’

‘Say what you bloody well want for twenty quid.’

‘So you’ll help me out?’

She glanced round at the door to the back office and winked, ‘Depends what you want me to do, doesn’t it?’

‘You know your magazine Spunk?’

She rolled her eyes again, pursed her lips, and nodded.

‘You keep lists of the models?’

‘The models!’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Addresses, phone numbers?’

‘Probably, if they went through the books but, believe me, I doubt they all did.’

‘If you could get us names and anything else on models that’d be great.’

‘What you want them for?’

I glanced at the back office and said, ‘Look, I sold a job lot of old Spunks to Amsterdam. Got a bloody bomb for them. If your Lordship is too busy to earn himself a cut, then I’ll see if I can’t set myself up.’

‘Twenty quid?’

‘Twenty quid.’

She said, ‘I can’t do it now.’

I looked at my watch. ‘What time you finished?’

‘Five.’

‘Bottom of stairs at five?’

‘Twenty quid?’

‘Twenty quid.’

‘See you then.’

I stood in a red telephone box in the middle of Piccadilly Bus Station and dialled.

‘It’s me.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Still in Manchester.’

‘What time you coming home?’

‘Soon as I can.’

‘I’ll wear something pretty then.’

Outside, the rain kept falling, the red box leaking.

I’d been here before, this very box, twenty-five years before, my fiancйe and I, waiting for the bus to Altrincham to see her Aunt, a new ring on her finger, the wedding but one week away.