David Peace - 1983

Dick follows them out into the corridor.

I wait until they’re all out in the corridor. I lean across the table. I lift the lad’s head up. I look him in the eye. I tell him: ‘You didn’t really do it, did you, Michael?’

Michael Myshkin stares back. He doesn’t blink -

He shakes his enormous head.

‘But you know who did, don’t you, Michael?’

He looks at the table. He smoothes down his hair.

‘Who was it, Michael?’

He looks up -

There is blood on his face, tears on his cheek -

This fat and stupid moon in this black and cruel night;

He looks up. He blinks. He smiles. He laughs. He says: ‘The Wolf.’

They are waiting for me outside Room 4.

We walk back down the long, long corridor.

The two girls are still sat in Room 2.

They are wearing long skirts, tight sweaters and big shoes. They are about thirteen or fourteen years old.

‘Who are they?’ I ask Oldman.

‘These are two that first told us about Myshkin.’

I stand in the doorway of Room 2. I stare at them -

They have love bites on their necks.

‘One of them goes out with the lad that found the body,’ says Oldman.

‘Jimmy Ashworth?’

He nods: ‘Him and Myshkin live on same street out Fitzwilliam. He’s been driving Jimmy up and down to Morley to see her. They reckon he’s on some kind of pills to make his balls grow and his tits shrink. The lasses say he’s always whipping it out in churchyard. The one next to Morley Grange -’

‘Who pulled him?’

‘Girls went into Morley Station with their mams last night. Morley phoned it through. I sent John Rudkin up Fitzwilliam. He gets there. Myshkin’s done a runner. White Ford fucking Transit no less. Bob Craven and Bob Douglas spot him on the Doncaster Road. They chased him. They nicked him. Their collar.’

‘That’s it? A wank in the graveyard and he does a runner?’

George shakes his head.

‘What else you got?’

George hands me an envelope.

I open it -

A school photograph:

Blue-sky background -

Eyes and smile shining up in my face;

One pair of mongol eyes -

One crooked little smile:

Jeanette Garland .

‘It was in his wallet,’ says Oldman. ‘His fucking wallet.’

Ronald Angus stands between me and George Oldman. He already smells of whiskey. He puts an arm around each of our shoulders.

I try to move away.

Angus grips my shoulder. He says: ‘He did it, Maurice.’

I look at him.

‘You know it in your heart,’ he says.

I turn. I walk down the corridor -

‘In your heart,’ shouts Angus.

I walk past Room 1 -

Jimmy Ashworth still sat at the table, long lank hair everywhere. He is crying.

So am I -

In my heart .

Back upstairs they’re choosing Myshkin a solicitor, calling in Clive McGuinness and a thousand fucking favours, the talk now of Chivas Regal and press conferences, new tankards and trophies, like we’re some gang of monkeys who’ve just found their own arses without a fucking map, but I’m still wishing there’d been no amalgamation, no West Yorkshire fucking Metropolitan Police, wondering where the fuck the Badger is -

‘Maurice?’

Ronald Angus is looking at me -

My Chief Constable.

‘Pardon?’

‘I said, George will do the Press Conference if you’ve no objections.’

I stand up. I say: ‘None whatsoever.’

‘Where you off now?’ asks George.

‘Well, if you’ve no objections,’ I say. ‘I thought someone ought to go up the pervert’s house and get some fucking evidence. If that is you’ve no objections?’

Out of Wakefield and up the Doncaster Road, past the Redbeck -

Blue lights spinning, the sirens screaming like the undead but buried -

Screaming all the way into Fitzwilliam -

Dick shouting: ‘You remember him, yeah?’

Nodding -

‘You know who nicked him?’

Nodding -

‘You know who they got him for a solicitor?’

Nodding -

‘You think he did it?’

Foot down -

‘I fucking hope he did.’

Foot down, nodding.

One, two, three, four -

Five o’clock:

54 Newstead View, Fitzwilliam -

Three police cars and a van, parked angular -

Doors open, hammers out -

His mam and his dad at the front door in their nightclothes -

Dick knocking them to one side on to their tiny front lawn -

Shouting: ‘We have a warrant to -’

Old man Myshkin coughing his blood and guts up, her screaming -

I give her a slap. I push them both back inside -

‘Upstairs,’ I say to Dick and Jim Prentice -

Old man Myshkin, hands full of stringy blood trying to comfort his wife -

I push them down into their tatty old sofa. ‘Sit down and shut up!’

‘Where’s Michael?’ she’s crying. ‘What have you done to Michael?’

‘Boss,’ says Dick -

Dick and Jim are standing in the doorway:

Jim is holding up a huge drawing of a rat -

A rat with a crown and wings -

Swan bloody wings .

Dick with a box full of photographs -

Photographs of ten or twelve young girls -

The windows look inwards, the walls listen to your heart;

School photographs -

Where one thousand voices cry;

Eyes and smiles shining up in my face -

Inside;

Ten pairs of blue eyes -

Inside your scorched heart;

Ten sets of smiles -

There is a house;

That same blue-sky background -

A house with no door;

One pair of mongol eyes -

The earth scorched;

One crooked smile -

Heathen and always winter .

100 miles an hour out of Fitzwilliam and down into Castleford, the undead but buried spinning and howling -

Spinning and howling all the way into Castleford -

Dick shouting: ‘You tell Oldman where we’re going?’

Shaking my head -

‘You called Bill, didn’t you?’

Shaking my head -

‘You think we should call him?’

Shaking my head -

‘I fucking hope you know what you’re doing?’

Foot down, shaking.

Heathen and always winter -

The car slows down. It bumps over the rough ground. It stops.

I chuck Dick and Jim their black balaclavas: ‘Put them on when you get inside.’

I stuff my balaclava in my coat pocket.

I hand them a hammer each.

I put on my gloves. I pick up another hammer. I put it in my other pocket.

We get out of the car -

We’re at the back of a row of shops in the centre of Castleford.

‘Jim, go round the front to keep an eye out,’ I tell him.

He nods.

I pull down my balaclava. I turn to Dick: ‘You set?’

Dick nods.

They follow me along the back of the shops. I stop by the metal gate in the high wall with the broken glass set in the top. I look at Dick.

Dick nods.

He gives me a leg up and over the wall and the broken glass.

I land on the other side in the backyard of Jenkins Photo Studio:

There’s a light on upstairs, a hammer in my pocket -

A photograph.

I open the gate for Dick.

I pick up one of the metal dustbin lids. I drop it on the floor with a crash -

We stand flat against the wall in the shadows by the back door -

In the shadows by the back door, waiting -

The door stays shut, the light on upstairs.

I nod.

Dick picks up the metal dustbin. He hoists it up. He hurls it through the back window -

Glass and wood everywhere.

He pulls himself up on to the ledge. He shoulders in through the broken glass and splintered frame. He jumps down on the other side to open the back door -