David Peace - 1977

‘Yeah, right,’ he’s saying as I push through the double doors and escape.

I’m in the back of a cab, crawling out of Bradford with the windows down, my eyes dropping, heart heavy, brain in flames:

Got to see Janice, got to see Bobby, got to see Louise, and I’ve got to see her Dad .

Four murdered whores, maybe more .

Shotguns in Hanging Heaton, shotguns in Skipton, shotguns in Doncaster, shotguns up Selby way .

Four murdered whores, maybe more .

My son and my wife, her father’s days numbered .

Janice, my lover, tormentor, my own private whore in my own numbered days .

‘Here OK?’

‘Cheers,’ and I pay him.

I walk up the stairs, suddenly thinking, help me, I’m dying here .

On her landing thinking, you don’t answer the door, I’m dead .

I knock once thinking, help me, I don’t want to die here on your stair .

She comes to the door and smiles, hair damp, her skin browner than before.

The radio’s on inside.

‘Can I come in?’

Her smile broadens, ‘You’re a policeman. You can do what you want.’

‘I hope so,’ I say and we kiss hard; hard kisses to forgive and forget all that went before and is yet to come.

We hit the bed, my hands all over her, trying to get deeper inside her, her nails in my back, getting deeper inside me.

I pull off her jeans, kick off her shoes, death all gone.

And we fuck, then we fuck again, and she kisses me and sucks me until I fuck her one last time and we fall asleep to Rod on the radio.

I wake as she’s coming out of the bathroom, just a t-shirt and knickers.

‘You going out?’ I ask.

‘Got to,’ she says.

‘Don’t.’

‘Told you, I got to.’

I get out of bed and start to dress.

She starts putting on her make-up in front of the mirror.

I ask her: ‘It doesn’t worry you at all?’

‘What?’

‘These fucking murders?’

‘What? You mean because I’m a prostitute?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Like your wife, she’s no need to worry?’

‘She doesn’t walk the streets of bloody Chapeltown at two in the morning, does she?’

‘Lucky bitch. Probably got herself a nice husband to keep her off the streets with his big fat salary…’

I’ve got my wallet open. ‘You want money, I’ll give you fucking money’

‘It’s not the money, Bob. It’s not the fucking money. How many more times?’

She’s standing in the middle of the room, under the paper lampshade, her hairbrush in her hand.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

She goes to the drawer and puts on some kind of black PVC top and a short denim skirt, the kind that buttons up the front.

My eyes are stinging, filling.

She looks so fucking beautiful and I don’t know how any of this happened, where we came in.

I say, ‘You don’t need to do this.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Why?’

‘Please. Don’t start.’

‘Don’t start? It never stops.’

‘It can stop any time you want.’

‘No, it can’t.’

‘Just don’t come around any more.’

‘I’ll leave her.’

‘You’ll leave your wife and baby for a Chapeltown scrubber, a whore? I don’t think so.’

‘You’re not a whore.’

‘Yes, I am. I’m a dirty little fucking whore, a woman who fucks men for money, who sucks for money on her knees in parks and cars, who’ll have at least ten blokes tonight if I’m lucky, so don’t pretend I’m not.’

‘I’ll leave her.’

‘Shut up, Bob. Shut up,’ and she’s gone, the sound of the door ringing through the room.

And I sit down on the edge of the bed and I cry.

I walk the streets down to St James.

Visiting time is almost up, people filing out, their duty done.

I take the lift up to the ward and walk down the corridor, past the overlit rooms of the nearly dead with their shaven heads and sunken faces, their sallow skin and cold, cold hands.

No air, only heat.

No dark, only light.

Another night in Dachau.

And I’m thinking, never sleep, never sleep .

Louise is gone and her father almost, eyes closed and alone.

A nurse comes by and smiles and I smile back.

‘Just missed them,’ she says.

‘Thanks,’ I nod.

‘Hasn’t half got your eyes, your lad,’ she laughs.

I nod and turn back to her father.

I sit down beside his bed, beside the packets of drugs, the drips and the tubes, and I’m thinking of Janice, there beside the half-dead body of my wife’s father, hard at the thought of another woman, of a Chapeltown whore, and while he’s on his back dying, she’s on her knees sucking, bleeding me.

I look up.

Bill’s looking at me, bloodshot and watery, trying to place me, seeking answers and truth.

A hand reaches through the bars on the side of the bed and he opens his mouth, cracked and dry, and I lean closer.

‘I don’t want to die,’ he whispers. ‘I don’t want to die.’

I pull away, away from his striped pyjamas and terrible breath, away from his coming threats and ramblings.

He tries to sit up but the restraints work and he can only raise his head. ‘Robert! Robert! Don’t leave me here, take me home!’

I’m on my feet, looking for the nurse.

‘I’ll tell her! I’ll tell her,’ he’s screaming.

But there’s no-one, only me.

I open the door, the house dark.

I pick the evening paper up off the mat.

Bobby’s little blue anorak is hanging from a peg.

I switch on the kitchen light and sit down at the table.

I want to go upstairs and see him but I’m afraid she’ll be awake, waiting.

So there I sit under the kitchen light, alone, just thinking.

Under the kitchen light, late into the night, pacing cancer wards, cradling Bobby, parked in a car; these are the places where I do my thinking, beside the dirty dishes and my father-in-law, looking at my son’s scribbles on the fridge door and the crumbs under the toaster, thinking.

I look at my watch, almost midnight.

I sit there, my head in my hands as they sleep upstairs, a broken Jubilee mug on the draining board, in the middle of my family, thinking about HER.

Thinking, this is where I came in:

I’d heard of her, heard the others talk about her, knew she used to tip some Bradford copper called Hall the odd word for a blind eye, but I’d never seen her, never seen her until 4 November last year .

Mischief Night .

I’d picked her up for soliciting near the Gaiety, drunk and weaving, trying to flag down lorries, dragged her down to Millgarth only to be driving her home five minutes later, the laughter loud and long in my ears, thinking fuck ’em.

I’d been married five years and I had one son, almost a year then, and wanted another .

But what I got was the fuck of my life in the back of an unmarked police car and my first taste of her, licked off her lips, off her nipples, out of her cunt, out of her arse, off the lids of her eyes, off the tips of her hair .

And that night I went home to Louise and Bobby and watched them sleeping, the cot squeezed in beside our bed .

I’d had a bath to wash her off but ended up drinking down the water just to taste her again .

And later that night I’d woken up screaming that Bobby was dead, rushing to the cot, checking he was still breathing, the sweat stinking the room out, then lying in the bath again, hard, wanking .

And it never stopped :

From that night on I thought about her every second, flying through arrest sheets, asking questions I shouldn’t, combing the streets, pulling files, knowing one wrong word and the whole thing’d come tumbling down .