1983

And rested not:

The days of affliction prevented me.

I went mourning without the sun:

I stood up,

And I cried in the congregation.

I am a brother to dragons,

And a companion to owls.

My skin is black upon me,

And my bones are burned with heat.

My harp also is turned to mourning,

And my organ into the voice of them that weep.

Back in the car on Great George Street, you rummage around in the bags until you find Jimmy’s wallet. You take it out. You open it. You find the fiver, his driving licence, the stamps to the value of twenty-five pence -

Not the Mass card -

It isn’t there.

But tucked inside the split silken lining is a photograph -

A photograph of a girl:

Not Tessa.

It’s a photograph cut from a newspaper -

A cutting:

Hazel.

Chapter 33

Dawn or fucking near enough -

Sunday 12 June 1977 -

(You better paint your face) -

Banging on Joe’s door: ‘Open fucking door!’

‘Who is it?’

BJ hiss: ‘We’re fucking late!’

Locks slide, keys turn/new locks, new keys -

BJ: over right shoulder/over left -

(Hair in his face, he is dressed in the black of the corner of my eye) -

Him: wide white eyes at crack -

(Here is your friend again) -

Paranoid looks to left/paranoid looks to right -

(Me, my face, my eye) -

BJ push open door into this private little Chapeltown hellhole:

Joe’s mate Steve Barton on mattress and angry: ‘You the late boy, not me.’

BJ: ‘You fucking ready?’

Steve: ‘Been waiting for you.’

‘Things to do.’

‘No shit,’ nods Steve. ‘You get them done, them things?’

‘Fuck off with him,’ says Joe.

‘You fuck off,’ he spits.

BJ: ‘Fuck is with you two?’

‘Bad night.’

‘Aren’t they all?’

Joe is shaking his head: ‘Word is Janice be dead.’

‘Janice Ryan?’

He nods.

‘Fuck that,’ BJ say. ‘She’s protected, double I hear.’

He snorts: ‘Aren’t we all?’

Steve: ‘First Marie -’

BJ: ‘Stop man, stop right there.’

‘Be out of hand, I say.’

BJ turn to Steve: ‘Then this is your fucking payback, man.’

‘Be that Pirate,’ whispers Joe.

‘Fuck her,’ BJ say. ‘Fuck him.’

No-one speaks.

‘We going or what?’

No-one moves.

BJ ask them again, check them two-times: ‘You up for this?’

Joe, he doesn’t smile, just says again: ‘Show me mine enemy.’

BJ turn to Steve: ‘Payback time?’

He shrugs and gets up off mattress, tracing sevens on walls and sevens on door, sevens on ceiling and sevens on floor -

All them pretty little sevens, dressed up in red, dressed up in gold and green:

Them two sevens -

Joe stagger-dancing out door, his voice of thunder still chanting: ‘War in the East, war in the West; War in the North, war in the South; Crazy Joe get them out…’

Steve: ‘Heavy Manners.’

Heavy fucking Manners -

COMING DOWN.

Three young men sitting in a stolen Cortina:

(Down we slide, further) -

Steve Barton, Joe Rose, and BJ -

(On Satan’s side) -

Edgy with cause/edgy with reason -

(Treacherous times) -

BJ look at BJ’s watch:

Seven twenty-five, nineteen seventy-seven.

BJ nod.

Everybody gets out of car.

Everybody walk across Gledhill Road, Morley.

Everybody pull on their masks.

BJ knock on back door.

Everybody wait -

Wait, wait, wait:

The key turns.

The door opens.