David Peace - 1983

‘Under the spreading chestnut tree -

The cold tap still running, still washing my hands -

‘In the tree, in her branches -

Washing and washing and washing my hands -

‘Where I sold you and you sold me -

The Owl -

‘I’ll see you in the tree -

Outside the bathroom I could still hear the woman’s muffled and terrible sobs, the shoebox here beside me on their pink and furry toilet mat, here amongst the smell of pine, piss and excrement -

‘In her branches.’

In their doorway, Mr Ridyard and I were looking up at the black clouds.

‘Do wonders for my allotment all that,’ he said.

‘Imagine so,’ I nodded as I held in my hands -

In my dirty hands -

His daughter’s little bones.

In their driveway, Mr Ridyard and I staring at the houses across the road.

‘Wonders,’ he shouted.

‘Yes,’ I whispered as I fell into the past -

Into the dark past -

The shadow of the Horns.

Monday 23 May 1983 -

D-17 :

‘If you put your money in a sock, Labour will nationalise socks, Mrs Thatcher tells Cardiff; Britain will have the most right-wing government in the Western World if the Conservatives are returned to power, says Mr Roy Jenkins…’

You switch off the radio and check the telephone and the door again.

Nothing.

You sit back down at your desk, the rain coming down your office window in grey walls of piss.

Not even ten o’clock .

Sally, the woman who works part-time Mondays and Thursdays, she’s off sick again because her youngest has the flu. That or she’s screwing Kevin or Carl or whoever it is this week. Doesn’t matter -

Four, five months later she’ll lose her job and you’ll lose the firm :

Divorce, Child Custody, Maintenance; the case-files going down as fast as the letters going out begging your clients to please, please settle their bills .

Fuck them -

Them and the depressing music and the grating jingles on the radio, the constant rain and the tepid wind, the mongrel dogs that bark all night and shit all day, the half-cooked food and the lukewarm teas, the shops full of things you don’t want on terms you can’t meet, the houses that are prisons and the prisons that are houses, the smell of paint to mask the smell of fear, the trains that never run on time to places that are all the same, the buses you are scared to catch and your car they always nick, the rubbish that blows in circles up and down the streets, the films in the dark and the walks in the park for a fumble and a fuck, a finger or a dick, the taste of beer to numb the fear, the television and the government, Sue Lawley and Maggie Thatcher, the Argies and the Falklands, the UDA and LUFC sprayed on your mother’s walls, the swastika and noose they hung above her door, the shit through her letterbox and the brick through her window, the anonymous calls and the dirty calls, the heavy breathing and the dial tone, the taunts of the children and the curses of their parents, the eyes filled with tears that sting not from the cold but the hurt, the lies they tell and the pain they bring, the loneliness and the ugliness, the stupidity and brutality, the endless and basal unkindness of every single person every single minute of every single hour of every single day of every single month of every single year of every single life -

You get up and switch the radio back on:

‘South Humberside Police are hoping that the ten-year anniversary of the disappearance of Christine Markham will jog someone’s memory to provide a clue in the search for the missing Scunthorpe girl who vanished on the day after her ninth birthday in May 1973. West Yorkshire Police meanwhile are continuing to question a local man about the disappearance of Morley schoolgirl Hazel Atkins twelve days…’

You turn the dial until you find a song:

The Best Years of Our Lives .

Just before twelve, you lock the office and go downstairs. You wave to the pretty girl called Jenny who works downstairs in Prontoprint.

There is no rain and there is no sun.

You cross Wood Street and cut through Tammy Hall Street, past Cateralls and your old office. You walk on to King Street and into the Inns of Court.

You sit and drink three pints of snakebite and eat a plate of gammon and chips. Tomorrow you’ll go up the College instead, sick to death of legal folk and all their legal talk:

‘Charged him, I heard,’ Steve from Clays is saying.

‘Charged him with what?’ laughs Derek from Cateralls. ‘Can’t charge him without a bloody body.’

‘Who says she’s fucking dead,’ says Tony from Gumersalls.

‘Me,’ grins Derek.

‘Motoring offences and asked the magistrate for an extension,’ says Steve.

‘Who’s his solicitor?’ asks Tony.

‘McGuinness,’ says Steve. ‘Who do you bloody think?’

You put down your knife and fork: ‘Who you talking about?’

‘Aye-up,’ shouts Derek. ‘It speaks.’

‘Who?’

‘Bloke they’re holding over that missing Morley lass,’ says Steve.

‘Hazel Atkins?’

They nod, food in their mouths, drinks in their hands.

You say: ‘Well, guess who I went to see last week?’

They shrug.

‘Michael Myshkin.’

They open their mouths.

‘The fuck for?’ says Steve.

‘His mother wants him to appeal.’

‘His mother? What about him?’

‘He says he didn’t do it.’

‘So he came to you?’ laughs Derek. ‘Pervert must love it in there.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘You’re never going to take it, are you?’ asks Tony.

You shake your head: ‘But I did recommend Derek.’

‘You better fucking not have done, you fat bastard.’

You wink as you stand up: ‘Told her, King of Hearts that Derek Smith.’

‘Fat cunt.’

‘King of Hearts.’

The telephone is ringing but by the time you’ve got the door open and had a piss and washed your face and hands and dried them, it’s stopped. You put the three office chairs together and lie down to sleep off the gammon and chips and three pints of snakebite.

Lord , I’ve pierced my skin again .

You are praying for a sleep without dreams when the phone starts up again.

Undone, you pick it up.

‘Have a seat,’ you say with a mouthful of Polo mints.

The grey-haired woman has bucked teeth. She sits down, clutching her best handbag. She is squinting into the rare sunlight she’s brought in with her.

‘It was nice of Mrs Myshkin to recommend me but, to be honest with you Mrs Ashworth, I…’

‘Least she could do,’ she says, the tears already coming.

‘Can I offer you a cup of tea?’

She shakes her head and opens her handbag. She takes out a handkerchief: ‘He didn’t do it, John. Not our Jimmy.’

You are suddenly struggling -

‘The man they give him,’ she says. ‘This man from Bradford, he’s telling Jimmy to confess. But he’s done nothing.’

Suddenly struggling with your own tears -

‘He’s a good boy, John.’

You put your hand up to stop her, to stop yourself, to ask: ‘McGuinness told him to confess?’

She nods.

‘Clive McGuinness?’

She nods again.

The desk is covered in letters and files:

Divorce, Child Custody, Maintenance -

The case-files and letters bathed in sunlight, the radio and the dogs silent, the constant rain and tepid wind gone -

For now.

The grey-haired woman with the bucked teeth and her best handbag is shaking her head and dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. It is the same handbag and handkerchief she had at the funeral, the same grey-haired woman who had shaken her head and dabbed her eyes as they’d burned your mother -