David Peace - GB84

Monday 31 December 1984 — Sunday 6 January 1985

The Jew hates even New Year. The Jew hates holidays. Full stop. The Jew hates all rest. Neil Fontaine hates New Year too. Holidays and all the rest now. But Neil needs time –

Time to make things right. Time to pay it all back.

The Jew asks Neil to drive him to Nottingham for New Year’s Eve. The Jew has organized a countdown party for the Board and his new toy, his embryonic new union. The Jew asks Neil to take this time to review the home security of the working miners. The Jew fears there might yet be one last wave of attacks and retribution to come –

For the Jew understands that scores are there to be settled –

Crimes punished. Justice exacted. Vengeance wrought —

Neil Fontaine jumps at the chance. The chances and the ghosts.

Neil leaves the Jew to his plots and his plans. His speeches and schemes.

Neil drives further North. There are speed restrictions on the M1 –

Snow and sleet. Fog and frost. Rain and ruin.

Neil Fontaine visits Wood Street police station, Wakefield, and Millgarth, Leeds. There are people who know him here. There are people who owe him here –

People consumed by this bloody strike. People consumed by this fucking war.

He chooses his questions carefully. He asks his questions ambiguously.

He hears horror stories about dead coppers. Hears rumours about missing men –

Philip Taylor. Adam Young. Detective Sergeant Paul Dixon –

David Johnson, a.k.a. the Mechanic.

Neil Fontaine drives further North again. He parks, watches and he waits again –

Parks, watches and he waits outside the home of Paul Dixon, Special Branch.

But Paul Dixon’s not coming home for New Year’s Eve. Not this New Year’s Eve. His daughter stands on her tiptoes at the window and looks out over the tops of the Christmas cards at the man in the Mercedes who is not her daddy –

Her mother pulls her away from the glass by her sleeve and she shouts and scolds.

Paul Dixon is not coming home.

There was no one on the desk when Malcolm walked out of the County. He rang the bell but no one came. He left his key with the long wooden handle on the register. He cut through Endsleigh Square onto Gower Street. He took a taxi to the station and the train to Birmingham New Street. No one on the gate when he came out of the station.

He walked down to the Rotunda. He looked for the pubs he had known –

The Mulberry Bush. The Tavern in the Town —

They were gone.

He called a private hire cab from a card in a phone box. The cab drove him out to Handsworth. It dropped him off and left him on the street. He walked among the blacks and the whites, the yellows and the browns, and he remembereddifferent times in different colours –

‘You want business, do you, love?’ she asked —

She was not so young. Not so black —

Malcolm nodded. Malcolm said, ‘Yes.’

‘Hand, French or full? ’ she asked. ‘Five, ten or thirty?’

Malcolm nodded again. Malcolm said, ‘Full.’

‘You got a car, have you, love?’ she asked.

Malcolm shook his head. Malcolm said, ‘No.’

‘Not to worry,’ she said. ‘Back to mine it is, then.’

Malcolm nodded. Malcolm said, ‘Thank you.’

‘Just round the corner,’ she said. ‘This way —’

Malcolm followed her round the back to the steps above a launderette.

‘Give us the thirty quid, then,’ she said by the door.

Malcolm gave her the money and she opened the door –

‘Age before beauty,’ she said.

The flat was dark. The electricity off.

‘Go through to the front,’ she said. ‘There’s light from the street.’

Malcolm went through to the front. To the light from the street —

Day and light. Light and shadow. Shadow and night –

‘Put this on,’ she said and handed him a condom.

Malcolm unbuttoned his coat and trousers. Pulled down his pants. Put it on.

‘Which way do you want it?’ she asked. ‘Religious or heathen?’

Malcolm nodded. Malcolm said, ‘Heathen.’

‘Thought you would,’ she said and took down her panties. Bent right over –

The wounds still weeping.

Malcolm walked with the dawn out to the old coke depot at Saltley Gate –

The Winter Palace, 1972.

Malcolm climbed up onto the roof of the municipal lavatory —

Close the Gates! Close the Gates! Close the Gates!

He listened as he looked to the horizon. The lost and empty horizon —

It was cold and almost time.

Malcolm climbed down from the roof. He stepped inside the toilets —

He removed his bandages. His dressings. He made the call.

Neil Fontaine makes his excuses. He leaves the Jew hungover in his Nottingham hotel. Neil Fontaine drives North again. First to Leeds. Then onto the York Road. Neil Fontaine turns off before Tadcaster. Neil Fontaine comes to the village of Towton –

Neil Fontaine knows this might be a set-up –

That is what they do. Set things up. This is what he does –

He parks at the end of the road. He watches the unlit bungalow –

He waits in a Yorkshire cul-de-sac. This is what Neil Fontaine does –

In the middle of the night he parks in the dark at the end of all roads –

The noises in his head. The holes in his heart. The pits in his belly —

This is what he has always done. Park, watch and wait –

But tonight the traps are empty. Tonight the bait just rotting on their teeth.

Neil Fontaine gets out of the car. Neil Fontaine makes his way over the fields. Neil Fontaine watches the back of the bungalow. Neil Fontaine waits for night again –

For the bungalow to fall dark. The bungalow to fall silent.

He climbs the fence. He drops into the garden. He watches and he waits –

The two dead crows lie upon the lawn, untouched –

The bungalow dark. The bungalow silent.

He crosses the lawn. He works on the French windows. He opens them –

Neil Fontaine enters the bungalow –

The place dark. The place silent.

He goes from room to room. Empty room to empty room –

The place stripped bare but for curtains and carpets, a sofa and a table.

David Johnson is not coming home either –

The trail cold. Dark and silent. The end dead –

Here in a Yorkshire cul-de-sac.

Neil Fontaine sits in the dark and the silence on David Johnson’s sofa –

He lights a cigarette. He inhales. He exhales –

Two steel knives on the glass table –

The severed head of their former wife between them.

*

The President had come out from behind his desk. The President had come out fighting. The President had spent his New Year on the picket lines. The President had spent New Year’s Day itself on the picket line outside Thorpe Marsh power station, near Doncaster. The President had smiled for the solitary camera crew from Germany –

‘The only difference between now and March 1984’, the President had told them, ‘is that we are more convinced and more confident of winning now than we were then.’

Then the Germans had gone home and left the President and Len alone –

Just the President and Len with their flasks and their mugs out in the cold.

No massed guard of pickets beside them. No halting the power supply –

No champagne breakfast in bed in Room 308 of the Hallam Towers Hotel