1983

‘My best friend.’

‘Did he talk to you about Clare?’

He nods.

‘What did he say?’

‘He said she was beautiful.’

‘Beautiful?’ you say. ‘She was bloody dead when he found her?’

Michael Myshkin shakes his head.

‘What?’

‘He’d seen her before.’

‘What? Where?’

‘When they built the houses.’

‘Which houses?’

‘In Morley.’

‘So Jimmy knew her?’

Michael Myshkin nods.

‘Did you?’

He shakes his head.

‘Michael,’ you say. ‘Did Jimmy kill her?’

He looks at you. He shakes his head again.

‘So who did?’

He is patting down his hair. He is blinking. He is smiling.

‘Who?’

Smiling and blinking and patting down his hair -

You bang the table hard with your hand: ‘Who?’

Michael Myshkin stares up at you -

Michael Myshkin says: ‘The Wolf?’

‘This wolf have a name, does he?’

He says: ‘Ask Jimmy.’

You open your carrier bag. You take out a Yorkshire Post -

There are two photographs on the front page.

You throw the paper across the table -

You lean forward.

You point at one of the photographs -

The photograph of a young man with long, lank hair.

Michael Myshkin looks down at the paper -

You say: ‘He’s dead.’

You point at the other photograph -

The photograph of a little girl with medium-length dark brown hair.

You say: ‘She’s missing.’

Michael Myshkin is still looking down at the paper -

You say: ‘The police said Jimmy took her. They caught him in Morley. They arrested him. They say he confessed. Then he hung himself.’

Michael Myshkin looks up at you -

There are tears down his cheeks.

Michael Myshkin says: ‘He’s back.’

‘Who?’

Michael Myshkin shakes his head.

‘Who?’

Michael Myshkin turns to the guard sat behind him. Michael Myshkin whispers: ‘I’d like to go back to my room now please.’

You are on your feet: ‘Who?’

The guard behind you has a hand on your shoulder -

‘Sit down -’

You are shouting: ‘Michael, who? Tell me fucking who?’

‘Sit down -’

Michael Myshkin is on his feet, his guard opening the other door -

‘Who?’

‘Sit down!’

Michael John Myshkin turns back -

Spittle on his chin, tears on his cheeks -

Turns back and screams: ‘The Wolf!’

Doors locked, you switch on the engine and the radio news and light a cigarette and then another and another:

‘Thatcher rejects TV battle with Frost; Foot finds Times headlines malicious; Hume concerned over Kent’s CND role; Hess holds key to Hitler’s Diary; eleven-year-old boy strangled by a swing-ball tennis game which wrapped around his neck…’

No Hazel -

Not here.

You switch off the radio and light another cigarette and listen to the rain fall on the roof of the car, eyes closed:

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck -

You open your eyes:

Fuck.

You feel sick again, your fingers burnt again.

You put out the cigarette and press the buttons in and out on the radio until you find some music:

Simple Minds.

‘Mrs Myshkin? It’s John Piggott.’

In a telephone box on Merseyside again, listening to Mrs Myshkin and the relentless sound of the hard rain on the roof -

‘Yes, he’s fine,’ you say.

The rain pouring down, the car lights on in the middle of a Sunday afternoon in May -

‘Where was Michael arrested?’

The kind of wet Sunday afternoon you used to spend in bus shelters, huddled around ten cigs and the readers’ wives, afraid -

‘You’re certain?’

Sitting in the bus shelter, listening to the rain fall on the corrugated roof, the world outside so sharp and full of pain, listening to the relentless sound of the hard rain on the roof and not wanting to go back home, dreading it -

‘I should have asked you before, but how did Clive McGuinness come to represent Michael?’

That vague fear even then -

‘One last question,’ you ask her. ‘Who did Michael call the Wolf?’

That fear real and here -

‘You’re certain?’

That fear again now -

She hangs up and you stand there, listening to the dial tone -

The dial tone and the relentless sound of the rain on the roof of the telephone box, not wanting to go home, dreading it -

The fear now:

Sunday 29 May 1983 -