David Peace - 1974

“And that’s you?”

Derek Box stood up. “To the victor, the spoils.”

The waiter returned with a silver bowl of ice-cream.

Paul helped Derek Box into his cashmere coat.

“Tomorrow lunchtime, upstairs in Strafford Arms.”

He squeezed my shoulder tightly as he went out.

I stared down at the ice-cream in front of me, sitting in the middle of the black and white photographs.

“Enjoy your ice-cream,” shouted Derek Box from the door.

I stared at the cocks and the balls, at the hands and the tongues, the spit and the spunk.

I pushed the ice-cream away.

A one-coin call at the top of Hanging Heaton, the stink of curry on the receiver.

No answer.

Out the door, a fart in my stride.

The one-armed driver on the road to Fitzwilliam, the radio on low:

Michael John Myshkin leading on the local two o’clock, the IRA Christmas ceasefire on the national.

I glanced at the envelope on the passenger seat and pulled over.

Two minutes later and the one-armed driver was back on the road, the manila sins of Councillor William Shaw hidden beneath the passenger seat.

I checked the rearview mirror.

Almost dark and not yet three.

Newstead View revisited.

Back amongst the ponies and the dogs, the rust and plaggy bags.

I drove slowly along the dark street.

TV lights on in Number 69.

I parked in front of what was left of 54.

The pack had been to the terrace, feasting and fighting, leaving three black eyes where the windows had been.

Hang the Pervert and LUFC were written in dripping white paint above the front window.

A brown front door lay amongst a forest of chopped and charred sticks of furniture, kicked and severed in the middle of a tiny lawn strewn with a family’s tat.

Two dogs chased their arses in and out of the Myshkin family’s home.

I picked my way up the garden path, over the headless lamps and slashed cushions, nervously past a dog wrestling with a giant stuffed panda, and through the splintered doorway.

There was the smell of smoke and the sound of running water.

A metal dustbin sat on a sea of broken glass in the centre of a wrecked front room. There was no television or stereo, just the spaces where they’d been and a plastic Christmas tree bent in two. No presents or cards.

I stepped over a pile of human shit on the bottom step and went up the sodden stairs.

All the taps in the bathroom were on full, the bath over flowing.

The toilet and the sink had both been kicked in and shattered, flooding the blue carpet. There was runny yellow diarrhoea down the outside of the bath and NF sprayed in red above it.

I turned off the taps and pushed up the sleeve of my left arm with my bandages. I stuck my left hand into the ice-cold brown water and felt for the plug. My hand brushed against something solid at the bottom of the bath.

There was something in the bath.

My one good hand froze, then quickly I pulled the plug and my hand straight out together.

I stood staring at the draining water, drying my hand on my trousers, a dark shape forming beneath the shitty brown water.

I stuck both hands under my armpits and screwed up my eyes.

There was a blue leather Slazenger sports bag in the bottom of the bath.

It was zipped up and on its side.

Fuck it, leave it, you don’t want to know.

Mouth dry, I crouched down and flicked the bag upright.

The bag felt heavy.

The last of the water ran down the plughole, leaving just a shit-stained sludge, a nail brush, and the blue leather Slazenger bag.

Fuck it, leave it, you don’t want to know.

I used the bandaged hand to steady the bag and began to unzip it with my left.

The zip jammed.

Fuck it.

It jammed again.

Leave it.

The fresh stench of shit.

You don’t want to know.

Fur, I could see fur.

A fat dead tabby cat.

A twisted spine and an open mouth.

A blue collar and a name tag I wouldn’t touch.

Memories of pet funerals, Archie and Socks buried back in the Wesley Street garden.

Fuck it, leave it, but you bloody asked.

Out on the landing, two more doors.

The bigger bedroom, the one on the left with the two twin beds, stank of piss and old smoke. The mattresses had been pulled off and the clothes piled on them. There were scorch marks up the wall.

Again sprayed in red, Wogs Out, Fuck the Proves .

I walked across the landing to another cheap plastic plate that said, Michael’s Room .

Michael John Myshkin’s room was no bigger than a cell.

The single bed had been tipped on its side, the curtains pulled from their rail, the window cracked by the falling ward robe. Posters torn from the walls, having taken strips of the magnolia wallpaper with them as they went, lay on a floor strewn with American and English comics, sketch pads and crayons.

I picked up a copy of The Hulk . The pages were wet and reeked of piss. I let it fall and used my foot to sift through the piles of comics and pieces of paper.

Beneath a book about Kung-Fu, a sketch book looked intact. I bent down and nicked it open.

A full page cover of a comic stared back up at me. It had been hand-drawn in felt-tip pen and crayon:

Rat Man, Prince or Pest?

By Michael J. Myshkin .

In a childish hand, a giant rat with human hands and feet was sitting on a throne in a crown, surrounded by hundreds of smaller rats.

Rat Man was grinning, saying, “ Men are not our judges. We judge men! ”

Above the Rat Man logo, in biro, was written:

Issue 4, 5p, MJM Comics.

I turned to the first page.

In six panels, the Rat People asked Rat Man, their Prince, to go above ground and save the earth from the humans.

On page two, Rat Man was above ground being chased by soldiers.

By page three, Rat Man had escaped.

He’d sprouted wings.

Fucking swan’s wings.

I stuffed the sketch pad comic inside my jacket and closed the door on Michael’s Room.

I walked down the stairs, banging and children’s voices coming from the front door.

A ten-year-old boy in a green sweater with three yellow stars was stood on a dining room chair, balanced on the front step, hammering a nail into the frame above the door.

His three friends were egging him on, one of them holding a washing-line noose in his dirty little hands.

“What you doing?” said one of the boys as I came down the stairs.

“Yeah, who are you?” said another.

I looked pissed off and official and said, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” said the boy with the hammer, jumping from the chair.

The boy with the noose said, “You police?”

“No.”

“We can do what we want then,” said the boy with the hammer.

I took out some coins and said, “Where’s his family?”

“Pissed off,” said one.

“Not coming back and all, if they know what’s good for them,” said the boy with the hammer.

I shook the coins and said, “Father’s a cripple?”

“Yeah,” they laughed, making spastic wheezing noises.

“What about his Mam?”

“She’s a fucking evil witch, she is,” said the boy with the washing-line.

“She work?”

“She’s a cleaner at school.”

“Which one?”

“Fitz Junior on main road.”

I moved the chair out of the doorway and walked down the path, looking at the dark quiet terraces on either side.

“You going to give us some brass?” the youngest boy shouted after me.

“No.”

The boy with the hammer put the chair back, took the line from his friend, stood on the chair, and hung the noose from the nail.

“What’s that for?” I asked, unlocking the Viva.