David Peace - 1974

“Is he out?” said Claret.

“Yep,” said Red.

Bowie gave way to Lulu or Ferula or Sandy or Cilia, The Little Drummer Boy washing over me, as Christmas lights became prison lights and the car bumped over the waste ground of Foster’s Construction.

“Here?”

“Why not.”

The car stopped, the Little Drummer Boy gone.

Claret got out and held up the driver’s seat as Red tipped me out on to the ground.

“He’s fucking gone, Mick.”

“Aye. Sorry, like.”

I lay face down between them, playing dead.

“What we supposed to do? Just leave him?”

“Fuck no.”

“What then?”

“Have some fun.”

“Not tonight Mick, I can’t be arsed with it.”

“Just a bit, eh?”

They took an arm each and dragged me across the ground, bringing my trousers down to my knees.

“In here?”

“Aye.”

They pulled me through the tarpaulin and across the wooden floor of a half-built house, splinters and nails ripping through my knees.

They sat me on a chair and bound my hands behind my back, pulling off my trousers over my shoes.

“Go bring car over here and put lights on.”

“Someone’ll see us.”

“Like who?”

I heard one of them go out and the other one come in close. He put his hand down inside my underpants.

“I hear you like a bit of cunt,” Red said, squeezing my balls.

I heard the engine of the car and the room was suddenly filled with white light and Kung-Fu Fighting .

“Let’s get it over with,” said Claret.

“Joe Bugner!” said a punch to the gut.

“Coon Conteh!” said another.

“George fucking Foreman,” said one across the jaw.

“The Ali Shuffle,” a pause, me waiting, then one from the left, one from the right.

“Bruce fucking Lee!”

I went flying back on the chair on to the ground, my chest fucked.

“Fucking puff,” said Claret, bending down and spitting into my face.

“We should fucking bury the cunt.”

Claret was laughing, “Best not mess with George’s foun dations.”

“I hate these fucking brainy bastards.”

“Leave him. Let’s go.”

“That it?”

“Fuck it, let’s just get back.”

“Take his car?”

“Get a taxi on Westgate.”

“Fucking hell.”

A kick in the back of the head. A foot upon my right hand. Lights out.

The cold woke me.

Everything was pitch-black with purple borders.

I kicked the chair away and pulled my hands out of the binding.

I sat up in my underpants on the wooden floor, my head loose, my body raw.

I reached across the floor and pulled my trousers to me. They were wet and stank of another man’s piss.

I put them on over my shoes.

Slowly, I stood up.

I fell back down once and then walked out of the half-built house.

The car was sitting in the dark, doors shut.

I tried both doors.

Locked.

I picked up a broken brick, walked round to the passenger window and put the brick through it.

I put my hand inside and pulled up the lock.

I opened the door, picked up the brick and battered in the lock on the glove compartment.

I pulled out map books and damp cloths and a spare key.

I went round to the driver’s side, opened the door and got in.

I sat in the car, staring at the dark empty houses, remem bering the best game I’d been to with my father.

Huddersfield were playing Everton. Town got a free kick on the edge of the Everton area. Vie Metcalfe steps up, bends the ball round the wall, Jimmy Glazzard heads it in. Goal. Referee disallows it, forget why, says take it again. Metcalfe steps up again, bends the ball round the wall, Glazzard heads it in. Goal, the whole crowd in fucking stitches.

· fucking 2.

“Press’ll have a field day. Bloody bury them,” laughed my father.

I started the engine and drove back to Ossett.

In the drive at Wesley Street, I looked at my father’s watch.

It was fucking gone.

Must have been about three or so.

Fuck, I thought as I opened the back door. There was a light on in the back room.

Fuck, I ought to at least say hello. Get it over with.

She was in her rocking chair, dressed but asleep.

I closed the door and went up the stairs, one at a time.

I lay on the bed in my piss-stinking clothes, looking at the poster of Peter Lorimer in the dark, thinking it would’ve broken my Dad’s heart.

Ninety miles an hour.

Sunday 22 December 1974.

At five in the morning, ten policemen led by Detective Super intendent Noble broke down the door of my mother’s house with sledgehammers, slapped her across the face when she came out into the hall and pushed her back inside the room, ran up the stairs with shotguns, dragged me from my bed, pulling my hair out in clumps, kicked me down the stairs, punching me as I landed, and dragged me out the door and across the tarmac and into the back of a black van.

They slammed the doors and drove away.

In the back of the van they beat me unconscious, then slapped me across the face and urinated on me until I came round.

When the van stopped, Detective Superintendent Noble opened the back door and pulled me out by my hair, spinning me across the rear car park of Wakefield Police Station, Wood Street.

Two uniformed officers then pulled me by my feet up the stone steps and inside the Police Station, where the corridors were all lined with black bodies, punching and kicking and spitting on me as they dragged me by my heels again and again, up and down, up and down, the yellow corridors.

They took photographs, stripped me, cut the bandage off my right hand, took more photographs, and fingerprinted me.

A Paki doctor shone a torch into my eye, wiped a spatula round my mouth, and scraped under my nails.

They took me naked into a ten by six interrogation room with white lights and no windows, sat me down behind a table and handcuffed my hands behind my back.

Then they left me alone.

Sometime later they opened the door and threw a bucket of piss and shit across my face.

Then they left me alone again.

Sometime later they opened the door and hosed me down with ice water until I fell over on the chair.

Then they left me alone, lying on the floor, handcuffed to the chair.

I could hear screams from another room.

The screaming went on for what seemed like an hour, and then stopped.

Silence.

I lay on the floor and listened to the humming of the lights.

Sometime later the door opened and two big men in good suits came in carrying chairs.

They unlocked the handcuffs and picked up the chair.

One of the men had sideburns and a moustache and was about forty. The other man had fine sandy hair and his breath smelt of puke.

Sandy said: “Sit down and put your palms flat upon the desk.”

I sat down and did as I was told.

Sandy tossed the handcuffs to Moustache and sat down opposite me.

Moustache walked around the room behind me, playing with the handcuffs.

I looked down at my right hand, flat upon the table, four fingers made one, a hundred shades of yellow and red.

Moustache sat down and stared at me, putting the handcuffs on his fist like a knuckle-duster.

Suddenly he jumped up and brought the handcuffed fist down on top of my right hand.

I screamed.

“Put your hands back.”

I put them on the table.

“Flat.”

I tried to lay them down flat.

“Nasty.”

“You should get that seen to.”

Moustache was sitting down opposite me, smiling.

Sandy got up and went out of the room.