David Peace - 1977

‘Your mother is wondering where you are…’

Rudkin turns to Steve and says, ‘See, right up your street.’

Steve just nods and we plonk him down in the corner under the stairs up to the balcony, me on one side, Rudkin on the other, Ellis at the bar.

The three of us sit there, saying nothing, scanning the ballroom, the black faces and the white.

‘Know anyone?’ asks Rudkin.

Barton shakes his head.

‘Good. Don’t want folk thinking you’re a bloody grass now do we?’

Ellis gets back with a tray of pints and shorts.

He hands Barton a large rum and coke. ‘Get that down you.’

‘Here Steve,’ laughs Rudkin. ‘You come here often?’

And we’re laughing, but not Steve.

It’s going to be a long time before he starts laughing again.

Ellis goes back to the bar and brings over more drinks, more rum and cokes, and we drink them and then back he goes.

And we sit there, the four of us, talking here and there, the endless reggae, the Paki cab drivers coming in and out, the slags falling about on the dancefloor, the old blokes with their dominoes, the rat-faced whites with their v-necked sweaters and no shirts, the fat-faced blacks nodding their heads to the music:

‘What do you see at night when you’re under the stars

Rudkin and Ellis have got their heads together, laughing at one of the women at the bar, the one sticking two fingers up at them.

‘Stay at home sister, stay at home

And Barton suddenly leans across to me, his hand on my arm, his eyes yellow, breath rank, and he says: ‘That shit about Kenny and Marie, that true?’

I look at him, his tight jacket and baggy trousers, seeing him back down in the Belly under that grey blanket, his hands moving, the magazines beside him.

‘You got to tell me. I know you’re tight with Kenny and Joe Ro. I ain’t going to do nothing, but I got to know.’

I take his hand off my arm and push it away, spitting in his face: ‘Fuck I care about your shit. You got bad information, boy’

And he sits back in his chair and Rudkin throws another cigarette at him and Ellis goes back to the bar and brings more drinks, more rum and cokes, and the reggae keeps on going:

‘Baby keep on running but you won’t get far

And when I next look at my watch it’s almost six and I want to be gone, gone like Steve who’s pissed now, head down on the table, dreadlocks in the ashtray.

The music stops, the microphone wails across the room, and a spotlight hits the heavy red curtains at the back of the stage.

Dancing Queen starts up, the curtains go back, and there’s a flabby brunette in a sequined bikini standing there, eyes glazed, limbs slack.

‘Dumb fucking monkey’s going to miss the show,’ lisps Ellis, nodding at Barton as the woman jerks into some kind of life.

‘Mike, you’re fucking boring,’ hisses Rudkin and gets up and wanders off up the stairs to the balcony.

‘Fuck’s got into him?’

I say, ‘You got to learn to bloody read people.’

Mike starts up again, moaning, whining, injured.

‘Keep an eye on Sleeping Beauty,’ I say, following Rudkin upstairs.

He’s leaning over the balcony, staring down at the bleached stripper.

‘Good view,’ I say, elbows next to his.

All the blokes downstairs are facing the stage, women lolling about between them, one woman tossing peanuts in the air and catching them between her tits.

Rudkin swirls the whisky about in the bottom of his glass and says, ‘You know what it’s going to be like from now on, don’t you?’

Thinking, here we fucking go , saying, ‘No. What’s it going to be like?’

Rudkin keeps staring into the bottom of his glass. ‘He’ll keep killing them and we’ll keep finding them. Always behind, never in front.’

‘We’ll catch him,’ I say.

‘Yeah? How?’

‘Hard bloody work, patience, and he’ll fuck up. The usual way.’

‘The usual way? There’s no usual way here.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘No, I don’t. You seen this kind of thing before?’

I think of little girls and lost years and I say, ‘Similar.’

‘I don’t think you have.’

I can’t be arsed: ‘We’ll catch him.’

‘You’re a good man, Bob,’ he says and I wish he hadn’t because it’s been said before and it wasn’t true then and it’s even less true now, just fucking patronising.

So I say, ‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means what I say: you’re a good bloke, but all the fucking good blokes and all the hard work in the world isn’t going to catch this cunt.’

‘And what makes you so fucking certain?’

‘You read that Murders and Assaults Upon Women in the North of England shit?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And?’

‘We’ll catch him, John.’

‘The fuck we will. We haven’t got a clue, not a bloody one. This cunt, he looks back out the mirror at us and he’s laughing. He’s watching us and he’s pissing himself.’

‘Fuck off. You got a point to make, make it.’

Rudkin looks up from his glass, shadows heavy across his face, big black tears in pitch black eyes, a man who keeps a cricket bat by his front door, just in case, and this man he takes hold of my arm and he says, ‘That shit in Preston, that bollocks is nothing to do with what we got here.’

My heart’s beating fast, stomach twisted tight, the man still staring into me, still holding me, still scaring me.

‘The blood groups,’ I say. ‘They’re the same.’

‘It’s bollocks, Bob. Something’s going on and I don’t know what the fuck it is and I don’t want to know what the fuck it is but we’re right in the fucking middle of it and I’ll tell you this: it’s going to fuck up your life if you let it.’

What’s to fuck up , I’m thinking but I let him go on.

‘You don’t know them, Bob,’ he’s saying. ‘I know them. I know the kind of shit they’ll try and pull. Specially for their own.’

I stare down at the stage, at the tops of the stripper’s flaccid white titties, the men at the bar bored already.

I say, ‘One minute you’re telling me not to be afraid, the next minute we might as well jack it in. Which is it, John?’

Rudkin looks at me and shakes his head, half smiling, then walks off back down the stairs, leaving me wanting to punch the arrogant twat.

I stare back down at the stripper’s tits, look at my watch, and decide to get the fuck out of here.

Downstairs Rudkin’s thinking the same, kicking Barton awake, ignoring Ellis and all his apologies.

Barton staggers to his feet and Rudkin takes what’s left of the fivers and stuffs them inside Barton’s tight little jacket.

I look at the stripper gathering up her bikini from the floor of the stage, her arse fat with spots and I look at the bar and the faces of the dead, wondering if he’s here, here with us now, and then I’m back at the table, nowhere left to look.

And Barton’s standing there, coming round, still filled full of rum, and he takes the notes out of his jacket and tosses them on to the table.

‘Keep them,’ he says. ‘Keep them for the next one.’ And he turns and walks out.

‘Thought we were supposed to let him get his dick sucked,’ laughs Ellis.

I pick up one of the rums and drain it.

Ellis, suddenly scared his whole evening’ll fall about his ears and we’ll leave him, sighs, ‘Fuck we going to do now?’

‘Do what you fucking want,’ says Rudkin, going over to the bar, walking into people, looking for a fight to make him feel better.

‘Where you going?’ shouts Ellis as I head for the door.

‘Home,’ I say.