1977

DID THE POLICE AND THE POST KNOW?

I sat on the low wall, bile in my mouth, blood on my hands, crying.

This is why people die.

This is why people.

This is why.

The John Shark Show

Radio Leeds

Tuesday 14th June 1977

Chapter 18

I open my eyes and say:

‘I didn’t do it.’

And John Piggott, my solicitor, stubs out his cigarette and says, ‘Bob, Bob, I know you didn’t.’

‘So get me fucking out of here.’

I close my eyes and say:

‘But I didn’t do it.’

And John Piggott, my solicitor, a year younger and five stone fatter, says, ‘Bob, Bob, I know.’

‘So why the fuck do I have to report to Wood Street bloody Nick every fucking morning?’

‘Bob, Bob, let’s just take it and get you out of here.’

‘But this means they can just pick me up any fucking time they want, haul me back in here.’

‘Bob, Bob, they can anyway. You know that.’

‘But they’re not going to charge me?’

‘No.’

‘Just suspend me without pay and have me report in every fucking morning until they find a way to fit me up?’

‘Yes.’

The Sergeant on the desk, Sergeant Wilson, he hands me my watch and the coins from my trousers.

‘Don’t be buying no tickets to Rio now.’

I say, ‘I didn’t do it.’

‘No-one said you did,’ he smiles.

‘So keep it fucking shut, Sergeant.’

And I walk away, John Piggott holding the door open for me.

But Wilson calls after me:

‘Don’t forget: ten o’clock, tomorrow, Wood Street.’

In the car park, the empty car park, John Piggott unlocks the car door.

‘Take a deep breath,’ he says, doing just that.

I get into the car and we go, Hot Chocolate on the radio again.

John Piggott pulls up on Tammy Hall Street, Wakefield, just across from the Wood Street Police Station.

‘I’ve just to nip in and get something,’ he says and heads into the old building and up the stairs to his first-floor office.

I sit in the car, the rain on the windscreen, the radio playing, Janice dead, and I feel like I’ve been here before.

She was pregnant.

In a dream, in a vision, in a buried memory, I don’t know which or where, but I know I’ve been here before.

And it was yours.

‘Where to?’ asks Piggott as he gets back in.

‘The Redbeck,’ I say.

‘On the Doncaster Road?’

‘Yeah.’

She lay down beside me on the floor of Room 27 and I felt grey, finished.

I close my eyes and she’s under them, waiting.

She stood before me, her cracked skull and punctured lungs, pregnant, suffocated.

I open my eyes and rinse cold water over my face, down my neck, grey, finished.

John Piggott comes in with two teas and a chip sandwich.

It stinks out the room, the sandwich.

‘Fuck is this place?’ he asks, eyes this way and that.

‘Just somewhere.’

‘How long you had it?’

‘It’s not really mine.’

‘But you got the key?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Must cost a bloody fortune.’

‘It’s for a friend.’

‘Who?’

‘That journalist, Eddie Dunford.’

‘Fuck off?’

‘No.’

I stepped out of the old lift and on to the landing.

I walked down the corridor, the threadbare carpet, the dirty walls, the smell.

I came to a door and stopped.

Room 77.

I wake and Piggott’s still sleeping, wedged under the sink. I count coins and head out into the rain, collar up.

In the lobby, under the on/off strip lighting, I dial.

‘Speak to Jack Whitehead, please?’

‘One moment.’

In the lobby, under the on/off lighting, I wait, everything gone quiet.

‘Jack Whitehead speaking.’

‘This is Robert Fraser.’

‘Where are you?’

‘The Redbeck Motel, just outside Wakefield on the Doncaster Road.’

‘I know it.’

‘I need to see you.’

‘Likewise.’

‘When?’

‘Give us half an hour?’

‘Room 27. Round the back.’