David Peace - 1974

“What do you mean, what you know?”

“Because I know everything’s connected and he’s the link.”

“Link to what? What are you talking about?” Paula Garland was scratching at her forearms.

“Donald Foster knows you and Johnny, and Clare Kemplay’s body was found on one of his building sites in Wakefield.”

“That’s it?”

“He’s the link between Jeanette and Clare.”

Paula Garland was white and shaking, tearing at the skin on her arms. “You think Donald Foster killed that little girl and took my Jeanette from me?”

“I’m not saying, that, but he knows.”

“Knows what?”

I was on my feet, my bandages flailing, shouting, “There’s a man out there and he’s taking and raping and murdering little girls and he’ll take and rape and murder again and nobody is going to stop him because nobody really fucking cares.”

“I care.”

“I know you care, but they don’t. They just care about their little lies and their money.”

Paula Garland flew from the chair, kissing my mouth, kissing my eyes, kissing my ears, holding me tight, saying over and over, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

My left hand clutched at the bones in her spine, my right hand dangling numb, pawing at her skirt, the piece of red cotton thread catching on my bandage.

“Not here,” said Paula and gently picked up my white right hand, leading me up the steep, steep stairs.

There were three doors at the top of the stairs, two closed and a bathroom door ajar. Two tacked on plastic door plates: Mummy & Daddy’s Room and Jeanette’s Room .

We fell through the Mummy & Daddy door, Paula kissing me harder and harder, talking faster and faster:

“You care and you believe. You don’t know how much that means to me. It’s been so long since someone cared.”

We were on the bed, the light from the landing making warm shadows of the wardrobe and the dressing table.

“You know how many times I still wake up and think, I must make Jeanette’s breakfast, I must wake her up?”

I was on top, kissing back, the sound of shoes hitting the bedroom floor.

“I just want to be able to sleep and wake up like everybody else.”

She sat up and took off her yellow and green and brown striped cardigan. I tried to lean on my right hand, pulling at the little flower buttons of her blouse with my left.

“It used to be so important to me, you know, that nobody ever forgot her, that nobody ever spoke about her like she was dead or in the past.”

My left hand was pulling down the zip of her skirt, her own hand on my fly.

“We weren’t happy, you know, Geoff and me. But after we had Jeanette, it was like it was all worth it.”

My mouth tasted of salt water, her tears and words a hard and ceaseless rain.

“Even then though, even when she was just a baby, I’d lie awake at night and wonder what I’d do if anything happened to her, seeing her dead; lying awake, seeing her dead.”

She was squeezing my cock too tight, my hand inside her knickers.

“Usually hit by a car or a lorry, just lying there in the street in her little red coat.”

I was kissing her tits, moving across her stomach, running from her words and her kisses, down to her cunt.

“And sometimes I’d see her strangled, raped and murdered, and I’d run to her room and I’d wake her up and I’d hug her and hug her and hug her.”

She was running her fingers through my hair, picking scabs loose, my blood beneath her nails.

“And then when she never came home, everything I’d imagined, all those terrible things, it had all come true.”

My hand was burning, her voice white noise.

“It had all come true.”

Me, cock hard and fast inside her dead room.

Her, cries and whispers in the dark.

“We bury our dead alive, don’t we?”

I was pulling at her nipple.

“Under stones, under grass.”

Biting at the lobe of her ear.

“We hear them everyday.”

Sucking her lower lip.

“They talk to us.”

Squeezing her hip bones.

“They’re asking us why, why, why?”

Me, faster and faster.

“I hear her everyday.”

Faster.

“Asking me why?”

Faster.

“Why?”

Dry sore skin on dry sore skin.

“Why?”

I was thinking of Mary Goldthorpe, of her silk knickers and her stockings.

“She knocks on this door and she wants to know why?”

Faster.

“She wants to know why?”

My dry edges against her dry edges.

“I can hear her saying, why Mummy?”

I was thinking of Mandy Wymer, her country skirt riding up.

“Why?”

Fast.

Dry-Thinking of the wrong Garland.

Spent.

“I can’t be alone again.”

My cock dry and sore, I was listening to her talking through the dark.

“They took her from me. Then Geoff, he…”

My eyes open, thinking of double-barrelled shotguns, of Geoff Garland and Graham Goldthorpe, of bloody patterns.

“He was a coward.”

Passing headlights drew shadows across the ceiling and I wondered if Geoff had blown his brains out in this house, in this room, or someplace else.

She was saying, “The ring always felt loose anyway.”

I was lying in a widow and a mother’s bed, thinking of Kathryn Taylor and screwing up my eyes so it was like I wasn’t really here.

“And now Johnny.”

I’d counted only two bedrooms and a bathroom. I wondered where Paula Garland’s brother slept, if Johnny slept in Jeanette’s room.

“I can’t live like this any more.”

I was gently stroking my own right arm, her pillow whispers lapping me up, on the verges of sleep.

It was the night before Christmas. There was a new cabin made of logs in the middle of a dark wood, candles burning yellow in the windows. I was walking through the wood, light snow underfoot, heading home. On the cabin porch I stamped my boots loose of snow and opened the heavy wooden door. A fire was burning in the hearth and the room was filled with the smell of good cooking. Under a perfect Christmas tree, there were boxes of beautifully wrapped presents. I went into the bedroom and saw her. She was lying under a home made quilt, her golden hair splayed across the gingham pillows, her eyes closed. I sat down on the edge of the bed, unbuttoning my clothes. I slid quietly under the quilt, nuzzling up to her. She was cold and she was wet. I felt for her arms and legs. I sat up, ripping back the quilt and blankets, everything red. Only her head and her chest, open at the seams, her arms and legs lost. I fell through the blankets, her heart dropping to the floor with a dull thud. I picked it up with a bandaged hand, dust and feathers stuck in the blood. I pressed the dirty heart against her breast, stroking her golden locks. The hair came loose in my hand, sliding from her scalp, leaving me lying on a bed all covered in feathers and blood, the night before Christmas, someone knocking at the door .

“What was that?” I was wide awake.

Paula Garland was getting out of bed. “It’s the phone.”

She picked up her yellow and green and brown cardigan, putting it on as she went downstairs with her arse showing, the colours doing nothing for her.

I lay on the bed, listening to the scratchings of mice or birds in the roof.

After two or three minutes I sat up in the bed, got up and dressed, and went downstairs.

Mrs Paula Garland was rocking back and forth in the off-white leather armchair, clutching Jeanette’s school photograph.

“What is it? What’s happened?”

“It was our Paul.,.”

“What? What’s wrong?” I was thinking shit, shit, shit; visions of cars crashed and windscreens bloodied.

“The police…”