David Peace - 1977

‘No, no, no,’ he’s whimpering.

Noble stands up, Barton sobbing between his legs.

‘So you come, then you go.’

Steve Barton reaches for the cup and puts it over his shrivelled dick.

Fifteen white faces stare at the black man on the floor before us, a white plastic cup on his dick, his other hand shaking it, stopping it shrinking anymore.

There’s a shove in my back and there’s Oldman.

He looks at the scene before him, at the black man on the floor before him, a white plastic cup on his dick, his other hand shaking it.

Oldman looks at Noble.

Noble raises his eyes.

Oldman looks pissed off.

‘Get the black cunt some porn and get his fucking spunk down the lab,’ he says.

‘You heard him,’ shouts Noble at the man nearest the door, me.

Craven makes a move, but Noble points at me.

I’m down the corridor, up three flights of stairs and into Vice, Craven’s lair.

Dead, half of them back down in the Belly.

I pull open a cabinet: envelopes.

Next drawer the same.

And the next.

Thinking, this is fucking Vice, there ought to be some.

And then it hits me and I look back at the door, the thought right in front of me: JANICE.

Back into the cabinets, eyes every second second at the door, ears bleeding for the slightest footfall.

Ryan, Ryan, Ryan…

Nothing.

Nowt.

Nil.

I’m almost out the door before I remember the fucking porn.

I reach across the desks and pull open a drawer: two magazines, cheap and nasty, a fat blonde woman with a sun visor and her cunt wide open.

Spunk .

I grab them and go.

Back down into the Belly, the crowd parting, Barton still lying on the floor in a ball, still fucking crying, a blanket beside him.

I chuck the magazines down on the ground next to him.

He turns his head and pulls the grey blanket slowly across the concrete towards him.

‘Had an Aunty Margaret,’ Rudkin is saying. ‘Went by the name Mags. We all called her Nuddy for short.’

Titters and giggles.

‘Should get one of the women to do it for him,’ says someone else.

‘Do rest of us while she were down here.’

‘Long as she does me before Sambo.’

Noble kicks the magazine closer. ‘Get on with it.’

Barton lies on his side beneath the blanket, the magazine before him.

Ellis bends down and opens it.

Everyone laughs.

‘Go on, Mike,’ shouts Rudkin. ‘Give him a hand.’

Belly laughs in the Belly.

Barton’s started moving beneath the blanket.

More laughter.

‘Here, don’t forget the fucking cup,’ says Oldman. ‘Don’t want it all over the blanket.’

Steve Barton keeps moving, eyes closed, tears open, teeth clenched, the curses burning into his brain.

The clapping starts and I’m right there again but I’m thinking about Bobby and how Steve Barton must have been someone’s little boy not so long ago, with his trains and his cars and his hopes and his dreams and the food he liked and the food he didn’t but here he is now, a bouncer, a pimp, and a drug user, wanking into a white plastic cup from a coffee machine in front of fifteen white coppers.

And then, just as he picks up speed, Rudkin reaches down and pulls away the blanket, just as Barton’s dick spits up its come, just as Craven snaps a Polaroid and the claps break into a round of applause.

‘Detective Constable Ellis,’ says Oldman. ‘Take Mr Barton’s semen up to Professor Farley’

Everyone’s laughing.

‘And don’t be having a fucking sip,’ I add, everyone clapping, Ellis giving me his best hard-as-nails fuck-you-later face.

And Barton, Barton’s still in a ball, shaking and shaking, dry heaving big gulping sobs, the party over.

And just as it’s breaking up, I reach down, pick up the magazines and hand them to Craven.

‘I think these are yours,’ I say.

Craven takes them, eyes cold and dark and far away until he glances down at the covers and stops: ‘Fuck you get these?’

‘Your wife, why?’

The room’s all silent smiles, everyone hanging back to see what comes next.

‘Funny man, Fraser. Funny man.’ And Craven limps off, back to Vice.

I’m sat up in the canteen, wiped out.

Rudkin’s getting the coffees.

We’ve been told to wait while Prentice and Alderman question Barton, wait while the tests come back, which is a load of bollocks when we all know it isn’t him, wish it was, but know it’s not.

‘Could’ve taken a fucking blood test,’ says Rudkin, pissed off he’s not in on the questioning, staring to get the big fucking picture, those two words:

SPADE WORK.

‘What, going to scrape under your nails?’

‘You really are a funny man,’ he laughs as we heap sugar into our coffees, and lots of it.

I want to sleep but, if they let me loose, I’ve got so many fucking fences to mend.

‘What time is it?’ asks Rudkin, too tired to look at his own watch.

‘What am I? The speaking fucking clock?’

‘Speaking cock, more like.’

And we keep this up for about two minutes till we fade back into another one of them fucked-up knackered silences in which we hide.

‘We’re letting him go.’

Out of silence and back into the bright, bright lights of the police canteen, the world of Chief Superintendent Peter Noble.

‘Quel surprise,’ mutters Rudkin.

‘Not a B?’ I say.

‘O,’ says Noble.

I ask, ‘Get anything else from him?’

‘Not much. He was pimping her. Hadn’t seen her since the afternoon.’

‘Should’ve let us at him,’ spits Rudkin.

‘Well, now’s your chance. He’s waiting for you downstairs with DC Ellis.’

‘You don’t need us. Ellis can take him home.’

Noble takes a wad of fivers from his jacket and leans over and stuffs them inside Rudkin’s top pocket. ‘The Assistant Chief Constable wants you to take Mr Barton out and get him pissed, give him a good time. No hard feelings etc.’

‘Fuck,’ says Rudkin. ‘We’re up to our fucking eyes in work, Pete. We got all the stuff from Preston, then you put Bob on these fucking robberies. Now this. We haven’t got the time.’

I’m looking at the table top, the lights reflecting in the Formica.

Noble bends over and pats Rudkin’s top pocket. ‘Stop whining John and just do it.’

Rudkin waits till Noble’s out the door and then gives it, ‘Cunt. Fucking cunt.’

We stand up, stiff as a pair of wooden puppets.

Ellis is in the Rover, sat behind the wheel waiting.

Barton’s in the back in oversize trousers and a tiny jacket, dreadlocks against the window.

Rudkin gets in next to him. ‘Where to?’

I get in the front.

Barton’s just staring out the glass.

‘Come on, Steve. Where to?’

‘Home,’ he mumbles.

‘Home? You can’t go home now. It’s only three o’clock. Let’s all have a drink.’

Barton knows he’s no fucking choice.

Ellis starts the car and asks: ‘Where to then?’

‘Bradford. Manningham,’ says Rudkin.

‘Bradford it is,’ smiles Ellis as we pull out of Millgarth.

I close my eyes as he sticks the radio on.

I wake up as we get into Manningham, Wings on the radio, Barton silent as some black ghost in the back.

Ellis pulls up outside the New Adelphi.

Rudkin says, ‘What do you reckon, Steve?’

Steve says nowt.

‘Heard it’s all right,’ says Ellis and out we get.

There’s day-old puke on the steps and inside the New Adelphi is a big old ballroom, high ceilings and flock wallpaper, the crowd mixed, stirred, and well fucking shaken and it’s not even four o’clock in the afternoon.

I’m shattered, shoulders down, head killing, the stripper not on again until six and they’re playing some reggae bollocks: