David Peace - 1974

“What have you got for me?”

“Not so bloody much,” said Fraser, opening the notebook.

“His confession?”

“Not verbatim.”

“Details?”

“There aren’t any.”

“What’s he said about Jeanette Garland?”

“He’s copped for it. That’s it.”

“Susan Ridyard?”

“Same.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah,” said Sergeant Eraser.

“You think he did them?”

“He’s the one confessing.”

“He say where he did all these things?”

“His Underground Kingdom.”

“He’s not all there.”

“Who is?” sighed Fraser.

In the green car, by the brown field, under the white sky, I said, “Is that it?”

Sergeant Fraser looked down at the notebook in his hands and said, “Mandy Wymer.”

“Fuck.”

“Neighbour found her yesterday about 9 AM She had been raped, scalped, and hung with wire from a light fitting.”

“Scalped?”

“Like Indians do.”

“Fuck.”

“They’re keeping that from your lot,” smiled Fraser.

“Scalped,” I whispered.

“Cats had had a go too. Real horror show stuff.”

“Fuck.”

“Your ex-boss turned you in,” said Fraser and closed the notebook.

“They think I fucking did it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You’re a journalist.”

“So?”

“So they think you might know who did it.”

“Why me?”

“Because you must have been one of the last fucking people to see her alive, that’s why.”

“Fuck.”

“She mention her husband?”

“She didn’t say anything.”

Sergeant Fraser flicked open the notebook again. “Neighbours have told us that Miss Wymer was involved in some kind of argument on Tuesday afternoon. According to your former employer, that must have been either just before or just after she saw you.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

Sergeant Fraser looked me in the eye and closed his notebook again.

He said, “I think you’re lying.”

“Why would I?”

“I don’t know, force of habit?”

I turned and looked out over the dead brown hedge at the dead brown field with its dead brown tree.

“What did she say about Clare Kemplay?” said Fraser quietly.

“Nothing much.”

“Like what?”

“You think there’s a link?”

“Obviously.”

“How?” I said, my dry mouth cracking, my wet heart thumping.

“Fuck, how do you think they’re linked? She was working the cases.”

“Noble and his lot are denying it.”

“So what? We all know she was.”

“And?”

“And then there’s always you.”

“Me? What about me?”

“The missing link.”

“And that makes it all somehow connected?”

“You tell me?”

I said, “You should’ve been a bloody journalist.”

“You too,” hissed Fraser.

“Fuck off,” I said, starting the car.

“Everything’s connected,” said Sergeant Fraser.

I checked the rearview mirror twice and pulled out.

At the junction of the B6134 and the A655, Fraser said, “Midnight?”

I nodded and pulled up alongside the Maxi on the forecourt of the empty garage.

“Make it Morley,” said Sergeant Fraser, picking up the carrier bag as he got out.

“Yeah. Why not?”

One card left to play, I checked the rearview mirror as I pulled away.

City Heights, Leeds.

I locked the car under white skies going grey with their threats of rain and never snow, thinking it must be all right round here in the summer.

Clean sixties high-rise: flaking yellow and sky-blue paint work, railings beginning to rust.

Climbing the stairs to the fourth floor, the slap of a ball against a wall, children’s shrieks upon the wind, I was thinking of The Beatles and their album covers, of cleanliness, of Godli ness, and children.

On the fourth floor, I walked along the open passageway, past steamed-up kitchen windows and muffled radios, until I came to the yellow door marked 405.

I knocked on the door of Flat 405, City Heights, Leeds, and waited.

After a moment, I pressed the doorbell too.

Nothing.

I bent down and lifted up the metal flap of the letterbox.

Warmth watered my eyes and I could hear the sounds of horse racing on a TV.

“Excuse me!” I yelled into the letterbox.

The racing died.

“Excuse me!”

Eyeball back to the letterbox; I spy a pair of white towelling socks, coming this way.

“I know you’re in there,” I said, standing up.

“What do you want?” said a man’s voice.

“I just want a word.”

“What about?”

Playing the last card in my last hand, I said to the door, “Your sister.”

A key turned and the yellow door opened.

“What about her?” said Johnny Kelly.

“Snap,” I said, holding up my bandaged right hand.

Johnny Kelly, blue jeans and sweater, a broken wrist and beaten Irish face, said again, “What about her?”

“You should get in touch with her. She’s worried about you.”

“And who the fuck are you?”

“Edward Dunford.”

“Do I know you?”

“No.”

“How’d you know I was here?”

I took the Christmas card from my pocket and handed it to him. “Merry Christmas.”

“Stupid bitch,” said Kelly, opening it and staring at the two plastic strips of Dymo tape.

“Can I come in?”

Johnny Kelly turned back into the flat and I followed him down a narrow hall, past a bathroom and a bedroom, and into the living room.

Kelly sat down in a vinyl armchair, clutching his wrist.

I sat on the matching settee facing a colour TV full of horses silently jumping fences, my back to another winter afternoon in Leeds.

Above the gas fire a Polynesian girl was smiling in various shades of orange and brown, a flower in her hair, and I was thinking of brown-haired gypsy girls and roses where roses were never meant to go.

The half-time scores were coming up under the horses: Leeds were losing at Newcastle.

“Paula all right is she?”

“What do you think?” I said, nodding at the open paper on the Formica coffee table.

Johnny Kelly leant forward, peering at the print. “You’re from the fucking papers, aren’t you?”

“I know your Paul.”

“It were you who fucking wrote that shit, weren’t it?” said Kelly, leaning back.

“I didn’t write that.”

“But you’re from the fucking Post? ”

“Not now, no.”

“Fuck,” said Kelly, shaking his head.

“Listen, I’m not going to say anything.”

“Right,” smiled Kelly.

“Just tell us what happened and I promise I’ll say nothing.”

Johnny Kelly stood up. “You’re a fucking journalist.”

“Not any more.”

“I don’t fucking believe you,” said Kelly.

“All right, say I am. I could just write any old shit anyway.”

“Usually do.”

“Right, so just talk to me.”

Johnny Kelly was behind me, looking out of the huge cold window at the huge cold city.

“If you’re not a journalist any more, why you here?”

“I’m here to try and help Paula.”

Johnny Kelly sat back down in the vinyl armchair, rubbing his wrist, and smiled. “Not another.”

The room was darkening, the gas fire brightening.

I said, “How’d it happen?”

“Car accident.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Kelly.

“You were driving?”

“She was.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think?”

“Mrs Patricia Foster?”

“Bingo.”

“What happened?”

“We’d been away and were on our way back…”

“When was this?”

“Last Friday night.”