I look at my watch:
Nine going on ten.
I stand up, I sit down, I stand up again -
Going down the corridor, looking for Angus or Noble, about to tum the corner when I hear two voices round the bend -
Two voices that stop me dead:
Craven: ‘I’m not going to be the fucking goat, no fucking way that’s going to happen and you can tell him that from me.’
Alderman: ‘It won’t come to that.’
Craven: ‘Better fucking hadn’t. Because there’s none of that all for one and one for all bollocks if it does. It’s Bob for Bob.’
Alderman: ‘Is that a threat? Is that what you want me to tell him?’
Craven: ‘It’s out of hand, that’s all I’m saying.’
Alderman: ‘We’ve seen worse, we both have. You know we have.’
Craven: ‘Yeah, and that’s what I’m telling you: there’s always been a goat and it isn’t going to be me.’
I walk backwards a few paces and then head forward, loud as I can, round the corner -
They both freeze, Alderman and Craven.
‘Gentlemen?’ I say.
‘Fuck off,’ spits Alderman and pushes past me down the corridor -
I ask: ‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘Bad day,’ says Craven.
‘Aren’t they all,’ I nod and hand him the
He looks down at the headline and the photograph of the burnt-out newsagents on the Bradford Road, looks at it and says: ‘I saw it.’
‘So who is it?’
‘Who is what?’
‘The body?’
‘Fuck knows,’ shrugs Craven, handing me back the paper.
‘You know who owned the place?’
‘Couldn’t give a shit,’ he says and walks off the way Alderman went.
I stand there, paper in my hand in the corridor, their corridor.
After a few moments, I knock on Noble’s door -
There’s no answer -
No-one home.
I park the Saab under the dark arches and walk back up to the Griffin, the carrier bag full of
I walk straight into the bar, but there’s no-one there, no-one I know.
I go upstairs and I knock on Helen Marshall’s door -
Then Murphy’s -
Mac’s -
Mike Hillman’s -
Furious, I go back downstairs and have one whiskey in the bar and decide to head back to RDNews because I’ve got nowhere else to go and I can’t sleep until I get the post-mortem on the body, my back killing me anyway, although I’m fucked if I know how I’m going to get the post-mortem, and I’m heading out the front door of the Griffin when the smug little man from behind the desk says:
‘Mr Hunter?’
And I stop and I say: ‘Yep?’
‘Message for you.’
‘Thank you,’ I say and he hands me a crumpled old manila-brown envelope and I open it and-
chest saying see how you tear me see the monstrous punishment you still breathing looking at the dead see if you find suffering equal to this lumpy bundle covered in blankets on the bed in the silence of a flat after death the repeated knocking on the door transmission seven received at three ten PM on friday the twenty seventh of January nineteen seventy eight in a world where people do not care cast aside by those so cruel and treated like a mule unloved is to miss the love that all parents should give yet they cast you aside put you out of their minds they put you in care there is no love there yet the staff really care or they would not be there yet why was it me lord why me lonely and unloved in a timber yard off great northern street huddersfield why me last seen alive on tuesday the twenty fourth of January nineteen seventy eight where loneliness is to go outside and get into a white corsair for a quick five pounds to go outside to the lumber yard on great northern street in the black and dirty snow the viaduct overhead the liverpool leeds hull trains passing by lonely and unloved the taxi rank the black bricks the black wood the black damp the tip damp the derelict school damp the tripe works and abandoned houses damp the canal and the cattle market bloody and damp where the snow will not settle where people do not care the public toilets a countryside of pain and ugly anguish where you fall down in despair falling to your knees in prayer asking god to rescue you from this cruel snare but no one comes no one comes but him in his white corsair with his five pounds for a quick one amongst the wood the timber and the lumber in a world where people do not care e was lured into the deepest hole and e undid my trousers and wait he said he had to urinate and got out of the car and when he came back he asked me to get out and get into the back so we could have sexual intercourse and it was then he hit me and at first e thought it was with his hand and e said there is no need for that you do not even need to pay but he hit me again and it was not his hand but a hammer and he hit me again then e dragged me by my hair into a far corner of the yard and e was not moaning but e was not dead and e could not take my eyes off of him he said do not make any noise and you will be all right then he took off my panties and had intercourse with me and e lay there with him on top of me unloved and when he had finished intercourse he took out a knife and he stabbed me six times in my heart and chest stripped me threw all my clothes and things about and put my body into a narrow space between a stack of wood and a disused garage and covered me with a sheet of asbestos then he went home the next morning a driver found my black bloodstained panties and he hung them on the door to give the lads a bit of a laugh they also saw the bloodstains in the mud and on the polythene but they thought nothing of it because all sorts of things went on at night in the wood yard and they left me between the stack of wood and the disused garage in this countryside of pain and ugly anguish and still e wait for them to come and find me on friday e was a missing person so they gave the alsatian police dog my black bloodstained panties to sniff and within ten minutes the alsatian had found me between the stack of wood and the disused garage found me with my sweater and my bra pushed up and just a pair of socks left on it was three ten PM on friday the twenty seventh of January nineteen seventy eight and they say there is no greater pain than to remember in our present grief past happiness but e will tell you the greatest pain is to remember in our present grief past grief and only grief
Chapter 14
Five hours later and half the Manchester Police force are round my house but I’m still sat in Noble’s bloody office waiting for Chief Constable Ronald Angus to show his face, standing up and sitting down, on and off the phone to Joan, standing up and sitting down, Noble and Prentice and the rest of them in and out.
‘Sit down, Peter,’ says Angus as he comes in, patting me on the back.
