David Peace - 1977

Louise and Bobby in one hospital, me in another, the wrong one .

Calling Millgarth:

Less than zero -

Craven picking up, no sign of Noble or Rudkin, all them slips full of tips and no-one to work through them. Craven hanging up, seeing him limping back to Vice, thinking they must have invented it just for him and that fucking sneer .

Nine and it doesn’t look like Mr Ronald Prendergast will be saying much, just drooling and looking like warmed-over-death-in-waiting, me praying and praying that he hangs on so it won’t turn into a double-murder and knowing now, knowing now how much I want this:

Prostitute Murder Squad .

And knowing now, knowing now why:

Janice .

Two hours later all my prayers pay off, answered:

‘Sergeant Fraser, would Sergeant Fraser please come to reception.’

Down the corridor, out of Intensive Care, back into Intensive Hell – Rudkin in Leeds, calling me home: ‘We found Barton.’

Foot down into town, the whole of Millgarth humming, buzzing, burning. The Midnight Briefing:

BRING HIM IN.

The radio spits into life: ‘Right, now,’ cackles Noble’s voice across the night: Thursday 2 June 1977.

Ellis is howling, ‘Thank fucking Christ for that.’

And we’re out the car and walking across Marigold Street, Chapeltown, Leeds.

Rudkin, Ellis, and me:

A shotgun, a sledgehammer, and an axe.

Up the top end of the terrace I can see Craven’s boys coming down the street, the rest of them round the back.

We’ve got the front door.

Ellis raises the sledgehammer.

Rudkin looks at his watch.

We wait.

4 a.m.

Big John gives Ellis the nod.

Tick-tock, no need to knock:

He heaves it up over his head and yells, ‘Rise and fucking shine you black bastard,’ and brings it crashing down into the green door and there’s splinters everywhere, and he pulls it out and does it again and then Rudkin sticks the boot in and in we go, me shitting it in case the fucking shotgun goes off, but half cracking up when we see one of Prentice’s lads with his fat arse stuck in the fucking kitchen window, neither in nor out and us with the jump up the stairs where Steve Barton, Mr Sleepyhead himself, is standing in his blackest birthday suit, rubbing his gollylocks and scratching his knackers and shitting them, all in the five seconds it takes him to clock me and my fucking axe as I hit the stairs screaming at the dumb cunt, Rudkin and Ellis and the two barrels of the shotgun right behind me, giving full fucking voice to the four hours we’ve been sat in that car, sat in that unmarked pitch of hell, no phone, no Janice, no nothing, sat waiting for the bloody word, and I wind Barton straight off so he doubles over and topples down the stairs straight into Rudkin and Ellis who help him on his way with a kick and a punch and then they’re back down there after him cos they don’t want Prentice or Craven to beat them to it, and I’d be right behind them but Barton’s cousin or his aunty or his mother or whatever part of his huge extended fucking tribe’s been sheltering him, they go and put their head out the door of one of the bedrooms and I give her a quick squeeze on the tit and grab a feel of her cunt and push her back inside the bedroom where a baby’s started crying and the woman’s too scared to go to it cos she’s too busy flunking about hiding, thinking she’s going to get raped, which is what I want her to think so she’ll stay in the room and leave us be, but I want her to shut that bloody baby up, to stop it sounding like Bobby and making me hate it and hate her and hate Bobby and hate Louise and hate everyone in this whole fucking world except Janice, but mainly because it’s making me hate me.

I slam the door.

Back down the stairs they’ve got Barton outside, naked in the road, lights going on up and down the street, doors opening and then there’s Noble, Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Noble standing there, bold as the fucking brass he is, standing in the middle of the street like he owns the place, hands on his hips like he don’t give a fuck who sees this and he walks right up to Barton who’s trying to curl up into the tiniest little ball he can, whimpering like the tiny little dog he is, and Noble looks up just to make sure everyone is watching and just to make sure everyone knows he knows everyone is watching and he bends down and whispers something into Barton’s ear and then he picks him off the road by his dreadlocks, twisting them tight around his fist, pulling him on to the tips of his toes, the man’s cock and balls nothing in the dawn and Noble looks up at the windows and the twitching curtains of Marigold Street and he says calmly, ‘What is it with you fucking people? A woman gets to wear her guts for bloody earrings and you don’t lift a fucking finger. Didn’t we ask you nicely to tell us where this piece of shit was? Yeah? Did we come and turn all your shitty little houses upside down? Did we have you all down the Nick? No we fucking didn’t. But all the time you’re hiding him under the fucking bed, right under our bloody noses.’

A maria comes down the street and stops.

Uniforms open the back.

Noble spins Barton into the side of the van, bringing him round all bloody and reeling, and then he tips him into the back.

Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Noble turns and looks again at Marigold Street, at the empty windows, the still curtains.

‘Go on hide,’ he says. ‘Next time we don’t ask,’ and with a spit he jumps inside the van and is gone.

We head for the cars.

By the time we get to Millgarth, they’ve got Barton down in the Belly – the huge fucking hole of a cell right down in the gut, all strip lights and wash-down floors.

There’s about twelve or fifteen blokes standing around.

Steve Barton’s on the floor, still stark-bollock naked, shivering, shaking, shitting it.

We stand there, smoking, flicking ash here and there, Craven showing off his cuts and bruises, all black hate, the rest of us looking bored, waiting for the show.

And just as I’m thinking about Kenny D and wondering if I can sit through another nigger beating, Noble shoulders through the crowd and everyone breaks into a circle, leaving Barton and Noble in the centre, the Christian and the Lion.

Noble is holding a white plastic cup, the kind you get from the coffee machine upstairs.

He looks into it, looks at Barton, then tosses it on to the floor in front of him and says, ‘Come into that.’

Barton looks up, eyes all wide red streaks.

‘You heard,’ says Chief Superintendent Peter Noble. ‘Put your fucking jungle juice in that.’

Barton is here and there, searching the room for a friendly face, some kind of help, and for a brief second his eyes light on mine but finding nothing there they keep on going till they end up back on the white plastic cup in the centre of the room.

‘Fuck,’ he whispers, the fucked-up horror of his situation sinking into them dense black bones.

‘Get it hard,’ hisses Noble.

And then the slow handclap starts up and I’m right there, beating out the rhythm, banging out the time, as Barton slithers around in the smallest circle his body’ll let him, this way and that, twisting and turning, this way and that, no escape at all, that way or this, no escape.

Noble nods and the claps stop.

He bends down and cups Barton’s head in his hand:

‘Let me help you out, boy. Let’s imagine that dead woman of yours isn’t dead any more and it was all just some ugly dream. Yeah? Let’s get her all naked and hot, get her wet, yeah. Bet you could make her wet Steve, yeah? Bet you can get a right big cock on you when you want, can’t you Steve? Go on, show us what a big black cock you got. Show us how big you got it for Marie. Come on boy, don’t be shy. Among friends here, all lads together. Don’t want to have to put you in with some big fat babber-stabber from Armley, now do we? No need for that. Let’s just picture dear old Marie, hot and naked and waiting for that big old cock o’yours, stroking that big old bush of hers, getting it all big and pink and hanging out like a little fat juicy cherry, just waiting for you. Ooh. Ooh. What’s that? A drop of the good stuff slipping out, sneaking off. Come on Steve, she’s not dead, you didn’t kill her, she’s here and she’s hot and she’s waiting for you to stick that big old cock of yours inside and give her a good seeing to, a right good time. Come on, get it hard. Come on, she’s all wet and waiting, begging for it, flipping on to her belly, her fat little fingers right up her juicy chute, wondering where the fuck you are when she needs you. Where’s Stevie, she’s thinking, and then the door opens and in comes a big black dick, but it isn’t you is it Stevie? It isn’t your big black dick, is it? Well, well, if it isn’t your old mucker Kenny D and he’s looking at her all wet and naked and lying there with her fingers up her cos you’re nowhere to be seen and so he whips it out and puts it in and out, in and out, in and out, till she’s got it running down her legs and then here you come and you clock him and her, your woman and your mate making the old beast with two backs and you’re pissed off aren’t you Steve? Pissed off and who wouldn’t be? Him with his big black cock up your white woman, your white woman who should be out earning your cash not fucking around with your mate giving it away for nowt. Makes you sick, just fucking sick eh? Your mate and your woman. Hard to take, eh? That’s what happened, isn’t it Steve? And you had to get her back, pay her back big time didn’t you Stevie, didn’t you?’