Nineteen Eighty-three

by David Peace

  ‘Fuck off,’ she spits and picks up the phone. ‘I’m calling –’

  ‘Calling who?’ you laugh. ‘Your solicitor?’

  You snatch the phone out of her hands. You rip the cord out of the wall.

  ‘What do you want?’

  You grab her hair. You tip her head back.

  ‘You’re hurting me!’

  ‘You set Michael up. You set Jimmy up.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No!’

  You wrap the telephone cord around the tops of her arms.

  ‘Please …’

  You pull it tight.

  ‘It’s not what it looks like,’ she is saying. ‘Not what you think.’

  You knot it. You push her through into the front room. You throw her on the floor. You draw the curtains. You switch the TV off. You light a cigarette.

  ‘John,’ she says. ‘Please, listen to me …’

  You are stood over her.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she whispers. ‘But you’re wrong.’

  You shake your head. ‘You called Jimmy.’

  ‘No –’

  ‘You told me you did.’

  ‘No –’

  ‘He came to meet you.’

  ‘No –’

  ‘The police were waiting for him.’

  ‘No –’

  ‘You planned it with McGuinness.’

  ‘No –’

  ‘You set him up.’

  ‘No –’

  ‘You set Jimmy up just like you set Michael Myshkin up.’

  ‘No –’

  ‘You had to, because it was you who told the police about Michael. It was you who said he exposed himself. You who said he’d been wanking in the graveyard.’

  ‘It’s –’

  ‘You were one of the girls they were going to call.’

  ‘I –’

  You look down at her.

  She nods.

  You shake your head.

  She looks away.

  ‘How could you?’ you say. ‘How fucking could you?’

  She looks up at you.

  You look away.

  ‘It was during summer holidays. Jimmy was working on the new houses. Michael used to pick him up from work in his van every night. We used to see them mucking around in churchyard. We started talking to them, me and some of the others. Michael could get us booze and cigs from off-licence. Used to all get pissed. Just mucking about in churchyard. I started to go out with Jimmy. But Michael was always about because of his van and fact he could get us the booze and stuff. Jimmy used to say Michael had never had a girlfriend. Never been kissed or anything. Jimmy was dead rotten to him. Just used him. Teased him. Bullied him. Made Michael try and get off with some of the lasses or Jimmy would pay some of lasses to get off with Michael. It was fucking cruel, I know. But Michael wasn’t bothered. He wasn’t interested. He had eyes –’

  You look down at her.

  ‘He only had eyes for one girl.’

  ‘No,’ you say.

  ‘He went on about her all the time.’

  ‘No –’

  ‘How he could save her.’

  ‘No –’

  ‘He had a photo –’

  ‘How –’

  ‘From his work.’

  ‘No –’

  ‘All the time –’

  ‘No –’

  ‘He’d look at it all the time –’

  ‘No –’

  ‘For hours.’

  ‘No –’

  ‘He talked to it.’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘It’s the truth –’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘It’s the truth, John!’

  ‘Fuck off!’ you shout. ‘You ever actually see them together, did you?’

  She looks up at you. She shakes her head.

  ‘Rumours. Innuendo. Circumstantial fucking –’

  ‘Not Clare,’ she whispers.

  You look at her.

  ‘Jeanette.’

  You close the door. You walk down the drive. Back down Springfield Avenue. You turn on to Victoria Road. You go back down the road towards the graveyard, the Church and the school. You cross the road. You take out your car keys. You unlock the car door. You open it –

  ‘Help me,’ she says –

  A ten-year-old girl with medium-length dark brown hair and brown eyes, wearing light brown corduroy trousers, a dark blue sweater embroidered with the letter H, and a red quilted sleeveless jacket, holding a black drawstring gym bag –

  ‘We’re in –’

  You fall backwards into the road –

  An election van brakes –

  A woman drops her shopping –

  You lie in the road in a ball –

  The rain falling through the dark quiet trees –

  The rain in your bandages, the rain in your bruises –

  A man shouts: ‘Somebody call the police!’

  You pull into the car park behind the Redbeck Café and Motel –

  The Viva is gone –

  Hazel too.

  You park. You wait. You watch –

  You watch the row of deserted rooms –

  Their boarded glass, their padlocked doors.

  You get out. You lock the car door. You walk across the car park –

  That depressed, coarse car park –

  Puddles of rain water and motor oil underfoot.

  You walk across the rough ground to the bogs round the side –

  They reek. The tiled floor covered in old, black piss. The mirror broken and the light smashed. The sink stained with brown water from a busted tap. There is one cubicle without a door, the toilet inside without a seat. The whole room engrossed in a thousand different inks and words of –

  Hate.

  Always hate, always –

  Fear –

  Fear and hate, hate and fear;

  You’ve been here before –

  Now you’re back for more –

  Always back to here;

  This the place –

  The place you never left:

  Never left the motel room of a forgotten café on a tedious road in a barren place; the place you’ve been for the last six years –

  Stolen wine/stolen time.

  Piss on your bandages and down your trousers, you walk out of the toilets and along the row, past the broken windows and the graffiti, the mountains of rubbish and the birds and the rats that feast here, walking towards the door –

  The door to one room in a row of disused motel rooms –

  The door banging in the wind, in the rain –

  You stop before the door:

  Room 27 –

  The place you’ve been for the last six years.

  You pull open the door –

  The room is dark and cold.

  You step inside –

  The remains of a devoured mattress against the window;

  No light here –

  No words upon the wall, no photographs –

  Nothing but pain.

  You walk across the floor –

  Shattered furniture and splintered wood underfoot;

  Walk across the floor to stand before the wall.

  You take the photograph from your pocket –

  A photograph made of paper, cut from paper, dirty paper;

  You take the photograph and you stick it on the wall.

  You sit down upon the base of the bed –

  The relentless sound of the rain on the window and the door;

  The door banging in the wind and the rain.

  You close your eyes –

  The Fear here –

  The place you never left;

  The dogs barking –

  The Wolf at the door.

  Chapter 39

  It’s Christmas and I’m coming up hill, swaying, bags in my hand. Plastic bags, carrier bags, Tesco bags. A train passes and I bark, stand in middle of road and bark at
train. I am a complete wreck of a human being wearing a light green three-quarter-length coat with an imitation fur collar, a turquoise blue jumper with a bright yellow tank top over it and dark brown trousers and brown suede calf-length boots. I turn left and see a row of six deserted narrow garages up ahead, each splattered with white graffiti and their doors showing remnants of green paint, last door banging in wind, in rain. I hold open door and I step inside. It is small, about twelve feet square, and there is sweet smell of perfumed soap, of cider, of Durex. There are packing cases for tables, piles of wood and other rubbish. In every other space there are bottles; sherry bottles, bottles of spirits, beer bottles, bottles of chemicals, all empty. A man’s pilot coat doubles as a curtain over window, only one, looking out on nothing. A fierce fire has been burning in grate and ashes disclose remains of clothing. On wall opposite door is written Fisherman’s Widow in wet red paint. I hear door open behind me and I turn around and I’m –

  In same room, always same room; ginger beer, stale bread, ashes in grate. I’m in white, turning black right down to my nails, hauling a marble-topped washstand to block door, falling about too tired to stand, collapsed in a broken backed chair, spinning I make no sense, words in my mouth, pictures in my head, they make no sense, lost in my own room, like I’ve had a big fall, broken, and no one can put me together again, messages: no-one receiving, decoding, translating.

  ‘What shall we do for rent?’ I sing.

  Just messages from my room, trapped between living and dead, a marble-topped washstand before my door. But not for long, not now. Just a room and a girl in white turning black right down to my nails and holes in my head, just a girl, hearing footsteps on cobbles outside.

  Just a girl –

  Just a girl on my knees and he’s come out of me. Now he’s angry. I try to turn but he’s got me by my hair, punching me casually once, twice, and I’m telling him there’s no need for that, scrambling to give him his money back, and then he’s got it up my arse, but I’m thinking at least it’ll be over then, and he’s back kissing my shoulders, pulling my black bra off, smiling at this fat cow’s flabby arms, and taking a big, big bite out of underside of my left tit, and I can’t not scream and I know I shouldn’t because now he’s going to have to shut me up and I’m crying because I know it’s over, that they’ve found me, that this is how it ends, that I’ll never see my daughters again, not now, not ever.

  *

  BJ wake up, sweating:

  It is Saturday 27 December 1980.

  BJ lie in bed and watch rain and lights and cracks in ceiling.

  There’s someone at door –

  (Always someone at door) –

  Someone knocking on door: ‘Phone.’

  ‘Ta,’ BJ say. ‘Ta very much.’

  It is Saturday 27 December 1980 –

  BJ back in Preston –

  St Mary’s Hostel:

  Blood and Fire etched in stone above door.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you call him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘You know where.’

  ‘You’ve got the picture?’

  ‘I’ve got picture.’

  BJ hang up and stand in institutional corridor. BJ’s eyes black and lips raw, nose broken and hand bandaged. These green and cream walls defaced with insults and with numbers.

  BJ staring at sevens, but they mean nothing now –

  Not now in 1980 –

  Now is time of sixes:

  Six six sixes –

  Illuminated.

  BJ go back up steep stairs and walk down narrow corridor to room at end.

  Door is open.

  BJ go inside.

  It is cold in here.

  Light doesn’t work.

  BJ sit at table by window.

  It is raining outside.

  There are pools of water forming on windowsill.

  A train goes past.

  A dog barks.

  The window shakes –

  Rattles.

  BJ wish BJ were dead.

  Chapter 40

  Saturday 14 December 1974:

  100 miles an hour –

  North up the motorway:

  Never leave home, never leave home, never fucking leave home ever –

  Through the night, screaming:

  Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

  8.15 a.m.

  Millgarth, Leeds:

  Up the stairs to my old office –

  ‘He in?’ I say to Julie, my old secretary –

  Julie on her feet: ‘He’s in a meeting.’

  ‘Who with?’ I say, not waiting –

  ‘Journalist from the Post.’

  Fingers on the handle: ‘Jack?’

  ‘No.’

  I let go of the handle.

  ‘You’ll have to wait,’ she says.

  ‘I can’t.’

  She nods. She picks up the phone on her desk. She presses a button.

  I hear his phone buzz on the other side of the door.

  ‘Thanks, love,’ I say.

  She smiles. She says: ‘How’s Bishopgarth?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I was in London until three o’clock this morning.’

  ‘Mr Oldman knows you’re back?’

  ‘If he’s any bloody brains, he does.’

  She shakes her head. She says: ‘Won’t you sit down.’

  I look at my watch. ‘I can’t.’

  She picks up the phone again. She presses the button. The phone buzzes on the other side of the door.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say again.

  The door opens a fraction. George is talking to someone inside. I hear him say: ‘You do your digging and I’ll do mine.’

  I look at my watch.

  I hear George laugh, hear him say: ‘Bismarck said a journalist was a man who’d missed his calling. Maybe you should have been a copper, Dunstan?’

  I look at my watch again.

  Julie presses the button. She keeps her finger on it.

  George Oldman opens the door wide. He leads out a young man –

  A young man I’ve never seen before.

  ‘Not a word,’ George is telling him. ‘Not a bloody word.’

  George lets go of the young man’s hand.

  The man walks off.

  George Oldman turns to me. He’s pissed off.

  ‘Maurice,’ he says with a sigh. ‘Thought we’d have seen you sooner.’

  ‘I was in London at the conference,’ I say. ‘Nobody told me. Nobody called.’

  ‘Somebody must have –’

  ‘I sleep with the fucking radio on, George.’

  He smiles. ‘What about them psychic contacts of yours?’

  I ignore him. I walk past him into my old office.

  He follows me inside.

  I shut the door. I want to take my seat behind my desk. I don’t –

  He does. He says: ‘It’s Leeds, Maurice.’

  ‘Jeanette Garland wasn’t. Susan Ridyard wasn’t.’

  ‘You’re as bad as that bloody journalist,’ he spits –

  ‘I’m not alone for once then?’

  ‘Early days, Maurice, you know that,’ he says. ‘Early days.’

  I shake my head. I say: ‘It’s been over five years, George.’

  ‘Look in long run, it doesn’t bloody matter who –’

  ‘Long run?’ I laugh. ‘I’m the fucking long run, George. Not you.’

  He sighs. He rubs his eyes. He looks at me across my old desk –

  His eyes empty. His hands shaking. He says: ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything.’

  He picks up a file off the desk. He flings it across at me. It lands on the floor. ‘There you go,’ he says.

  I pick it up. I open it. I look at the photograph –

  Clare Kemplay.

  ‘Was there anything else?’ he sighs.
r />   I look up at him sat behind my desk. I tell him: ‘I want in.’

  ‘Talk to Angus,’ he says. ‘His call, not mine.’

  ‘George –’

  He stands up. ‘I’ve got a fucking press conference in five minutes.’

  The Conference Room, Millgarth Police Station, Leeds.

  I stand at the back. I wait. I watch the faces –

  Looking for the man who’d been upstairs with George.

  There’s a nudge to my ribs. I turn around –

  ‘Jack,’ I say. ‘Just the man I wanted.’

  ‘That’s what all the girls say,’ grins Jack, fresh whiskey on his breath.

  ‘Thought it was someone else from the Post on this one?’

  Jack laughs. He points down the front: ‘You mean him?’

  The young man from upstairs is talking and laughing with the rest of the pack –

  Hounds, the lot of them.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Scoop,’ laughs Jack.

  ‘Very funny, Jack,’ I sigh. ‘His fucking name please?’

  ‘Edward Dunford, North of England Crime Correspondent.’

  ‘Thought that were you?’

  Jack rolls his red eyes. ‘Crime Reporter of the Year, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘And I can see why,’ I say. I look at my watch:

  Nine.

  Down the front the side door opens:

  Everyone quiet as Dick Alderman, Jim Prentice, and Oldman troop out.

  ‘Here,’ whispers Jack. ‘Your Mandy got any messages for us, has she?’

  ‘Fuck off,’ I hiss and leave him to it –

  The whole bloody lot of them.

  I go up the stairs and along the corridor –

  Lots of nods and handshakes and pats on the back as I go.

  In the Leeds half of the Incident Room, a familiar face:

  John Rudkin in a bright orange tie –

  ‘Boss,’ he says. ‘They let you out then?’

  ‘Day release.’

  ‘How are you?’ he asks.

  ‘Who can say?’

  He nods –

  Both staring across at the enlarged photograph of another missing schoolgirl –

  Trapped in the claws of Time –

  Tacked up on the far wall between a map of Morley dotted with pins and flags and a blackboard covered in chalk letters and numbers, her physical measurements and a description of her clothing –

  Orange waterproof kagool; dark blue turtleneck sweater; pale blue denim trousers with eagle motif on back left pocket; red Wellington boots –

  A telephone is ringing:

  Somewhere on the other side of the room someone picks it up. They shout something to Rudkin. John picks up the one on his desk. He listens. He looks up at me –