David Peace - 1983

‘Not if -’

‘If what? They’re fucking watching us!’

‘So what else we going to do?’ BJ cry. ‘Meet him?’

‘What he wants.’

‘Fuck off,’ BJ sob. ‘It’s a fucking trap.’

‘I don’t give a shit,’ she shouts. ‘I’ll not keep running all my fucking life.’

‘They’ll kill us.’

‘Good,’ she mutters.

BJ under covers. BJ hiding. BJ weeping.

There’s a knock on door -

BJ out from covers. Clare staring at door.

‘Clare?’ comes a man’s voice. ‘It’s me.’

‘Fuck, it’s only Roger,’ whispers Clare. ‘Let him in.’

BJ get out of her bed. BJ open her door. BJ let Roger Kennedy in. BJ go down corridor. BJ get in a cold bed. BJ lie under covers. BJ peep up at cracks in ceiling.

BJ wonder what mum is doing today -

Today is BJ’s seventeenth birthday.

BJ start to cry again.

BJ walk to other end of corridor. BJ knock on door.

‘Come in.’

BJ step into Old Walter’s room.

It’s still raining outside. It’s still cold inside.

Walter Kendall is sat at a table by only window. He is cutting something out of a newspaper. He sticks it into an old red exercise book.

‘You’re late,’ he smiles.

‘I’m sorry.’

He closes book: ‘How’s my Clare today?’

‘Busy.’

He laughs. He comes across his tiny room to sit beside BJ on bed.

Outside a train goes past. Window shakes.

‘Your eyes are red,’ he says and takes BJ’s hand. ‘What is it?’

‘They’ve found us.’

He lets go of BJ’s hand. He turns BJ’s face into his: ‘How could they have?’

‘Be her kids,’ BJ say.

‘How?’

‘When you all went to Blackpool.’

‘But how?’

BJ pull away from his grip: ‘If they were watching her kids in Glasgow, they could have easy followed her Suzie when she brought them down.’

‘But that was August. Why wait till now?’

‘Fuck knows.’

‘What you going to do?’

‘Clare wants to meet them.’

‘No?’

‘Yes.’

‘You can’t let her,’ he says.

‘I can’t stop her.’

‘They’ll kill her.’

‘I know.’

‘Kill you both,’ he says.

BJ nod.

‘What did she say?’

‘Good.’

BJ lying in Walter’s arms, BJ’s head on his chest, listening to his heart. BJ remembering when mum and BJ drank a whole bottle of dandelion and burdock and ate two big boxes of chocolates for BJ’s seventh birthday. BJ wondering if she remembers it too, but -

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 .

BJ wake up. BJ sweating. BJ crying -

Walter gone.

BJ run down corridor. BJ push open her door -

Clare is lying on her bed in Walter’s arms. Her eyes closed -

Walter is stroking her hair -

Pair of them covered in sweat. Pair of them covered in tears.

‘What happened?’

‘Bad dream,’ whispers Walter.

‘Same dream?’

Walter nods.

‘Did you look?’

Walter raises her sweater and bra, more words there written in blood:

Help me, I am in hell .

It is dawn:

Thursday 20 November 1975.

We walk the hills for a third day in our black cloaks with our big sticks and our police dogs called Nigger and Shep, Ringo and Sambo, searching for the scene of a crime, walking the hills for the third day in our black cloaks with our big sticks until day becomes night and we return to our wives called Joan and Patricia, Judith and Margaret, to laughter and telephones ringing through the rooms, meals being cooked, served and eaten, to our children called Robert and Clare, Paul and Hazel, to their feet upon the stairs and the slam of a ball against a bat or a wall, the pop of a cap gun and a burst balloon, to our houses in Harrogate and Wetherby, Sandal and West Bretton, our houses safe and far from harm and -

Here.

Until the next day when we return to walk the hills for a fourth day in our black cloaks with our big sticks and our police dogs called Nigger and Shep, Ringo and Sambo, searching for the scene of the crime, the next day and the next, walking the hills in our black cloaks with our big sticks until days become night, one endless night and we’ve got no wives called Joan or Patricia, Judith or Margaret, no children called Robert or Clare, Paul or Hazel, only our black cloaks and our big sticks, our dogs called Nigger and Shep, Ringo and Sambo, our houses in Harrogate and Wetherby, Sandal and West Bretton, our houses big and empty and -

Full of nothing, nothing but -

Here.

Brotherton House, Leeds -

Walter Heywood, George Oldman, Dick Alderman, Jim Prentice, Bill and me.

‘Come on, George,’ smiles Walter Heywood, the Chief Constable. ‘Bloody kid can’t just vanish into thin air, can she?’

‘What it looks like,’ says Oldman and holds up today’s paper -

Tuesday 15 July 1969:

Girl Vanishes, Fourth Day, All-out Hunt -

By Jack Whitehead, Crime Reporter.

‘Cars?’ asks the Chief Constable.

Oldman nods: ‘Crestas, Farinas, Consuls, Corsairs, Zephyrs, Cambridges and Oxfords. You name it, we’ve had a bloody sighting.’

‘What next then?’ asks the Chief.

‘Door-to-door again, outbuildings -’

Bill cutting Oldman off: ‘Me and Maurice are off back up Castleford, talk to them builders again, maybe call in on Don Foster himself.’

Heywood nodding -

George Oldman: ‘Don’t let us keep you then, Bill.’

Morning sunlight on the windscreen -

Bill dozing, me driving -

The radio on:

Troops into Derry;

GPO Strike cuts TV;

Last day of the Test .

The A639 through Woodlesford and Oulton, Methley and Allerton Bywater, following the Aire back into Castleford -

The radio on:

Elvis -

Lulu -

Cliff .

Coming into town, policemen and their cars, women gathered on the corners in their headscarves, children tight to their apron strings, the ambulance at the top end of Brunt Street, still waiting -

I park and wake Bill: ‘We’re here.’

We get out and nod to the uniform outside number 11, the curtains still drawn -

Bill lights up as we cross the road to the half-built semis, the tarpaulin still flapping in the breeze -

Cross the road to the sign that reads:

Foster’s Construction .

‘Knock-knock,’ says Bill as he pushes aside the tarpaulin and we step inside one of the partial houses.

Two men stop their hammering and look up, their mouths full of nails.

‘Sorry to bother you, lads,’ smiles Bill. ‘Can we have a word?’

They let the nails drop from their mouths and one of them, the older one, says: ‘We give statements yesterday.’

Bill sniffs. Bill stares. Bill says: ‘I know.’

The older man looks at the younger one and shakes his head. They shrug and stand up.