1977

‘I hope not.’

‘I’ll try and get over.’

‘Bet you will.’

She hangs up.

I look at the bleached floor, at the bootmarks and the dirt, the shadows and the light.

I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know where to go.

The John Shark Show

Radio Leeds

Monday 30th May 1977

Chapter 2

Ancient English shitty city? How can this ancient English shitty city be here! The well-known massive grey chimney of its oldest mill? How can that be here! There is no spike of rusty iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real prospect. What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up? Maybe it is set up by the Queen’s orders for the impaling of a horde of Commonwealth robbers, one by one. It is so, for the cymbals clash, and the Queen goes by to her palace in long procession. Ten thousand swords flash in the sunlight, and thrice ten thousand dancing girls strew flowers. Then follow white elephants caparisoned in red, white and blue, infinite in number and attendants. Still, the chimney rises in the background, where it cannot be, and still no writhing figure is on the grim spike. Stay! Is the chimney so low a thing as the rusty spike on the top of a post of an old bedstead that has tumbled all awry. Stay! I am twenty-five years and more, the bells chime in jubilation. Stay.

The telephone was ringing.

I knew it was Bill. And I knew what he wanted from me.

I stretched across the other brown pillow, the old yellow novels, the strewn grey ashes, and I said:

‘Whitehead residence.’

‘There’s been another one. I need you here.’

I put down the telephone and lay back in the shallow ditch I’d dug myself among the sheets and the blankets.

I stared up at the ceiling, the ornate brocade around the light, the chipped paint and the cracked veins.

And I thought about her and I thought about him as St Anne pealed the dawn.

The telephone was ringing again, but I’d closed my eyes.

I woke in a rapist sweat from dreams I prayed were not my own. Outside trees hung in the heat, moping in willow pose, the river black as a lacquer box, the moon and stars cut from drapes up above, peeping down into my dark heart:

The World’s Forgotten Boy.

I hauled my tried bag from Dickens to the chest of drawers, across the threadbare flooring, pausing before the mirror and the lonely bones that filled the shabby suit in which I slept, in which I dreamt, in which I hid my hide.

Love you, love you, love you.

I sat before the chest of drawers upon a stool I made in college and took a sip of Scotland and pondered Dickens and his Edwin, me and mine, and all that’s thine:

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

I sang and hummed along:

One Day My Prince Will Come, or was it, If I’d Have Known You Were Coming I’d Have Baked A Cake?

The lies we speak and the ones we don’t:

Carol, Carol, Carol.

Such a wonderful person:

All wanked out on my bathroom floor, on my back, feeling for the toilet paper.

I wiped the come off my belly and squeezed the tissues into a ball, trying to shut them out.

The Temptations of St Jack.

Again the dream.

Again the dead woman.

Again the verdict and the sentence come.

Again, it was happening all over again.

I woke on my floor on my knees by my bed, hands together thanking Jesus Christ My Saviour that I was not the killer of my dreams, that he was alive and he forgave me, that I had not murdered her.

The letterbox rattled.

Children’s voices sang through the flap:

Junky Jack, Druggy Jack, Fuck You Jack Shitehead.

I couldn’t tell if it was morning or afternoon or whether they were just another gang of truants sent to stake my nerves out in the sun for the ants.

I rolled over and went back to Edwin Drood and waited for someone to come and take me a little bit away from all this.

The telephone was ringing again.

Someone to save my soul.

‘You OK? You know what time it is?’

Time? I didn’t even know what fucking year it was, but I nodded and said, ‘Couldn’t get out of bed.’

‘Right. Well, at least you’re here. Small mercies, etc’

You’d think I’d have missed it, the hustle/bustle/tussle etc of the office, the sounds and the smells, but I hated it, dreaded it. Hated and dreaded it like I’d hated and dreaded the corridors and classrooms of school, their sounds and their smells.

I was shaking.

‘Been drinking?’

‘About forty years.’

Bill Hadden smiled.

He knew I owed him, knew he was calling in his debts. Looking down at my hands, I couldn’t quite think why.

The prices we pay, the debts we incur.

And all on the never-never.

I looked up and said, ‘When did they find her?’

‘Yesterday morning.’

‘I’ve missed the press conference then?’

Bill smiled again. ‘You wish.’

I sighed.

‘They issued a statement last night, but they’ve held the meet over until eleven this morning.’

I looked at my watch.

It had stopped.

‘What time is it?’

‘Ten,’ he grinned.