Nineteen Seventy-Four (20 page)

“I’m sorry,” shouted Fraser against the wind.

“Piss off,” I said, taking my keys out.

Next to the Viva, two big men were stood talking by a deep red Jaguar. I unlocked my door, took the keys out, then opened it, all with my left hand. I leant inside the car, dumped the fucking book and the photos on the back seat, and put the keys in the ignition.

“Mr Dunford?” said the fat man in the brown cashmere coat, across the roof of the Viva.

“Yeah?”

“Fancy a spot of lunch?”

“What?”

The fat man smiled, rubbing his leather-gloved hands together. “I’ll treat you to lunch.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“Let’s just say, you won’t regret it.”

I looked back up the hill to the crematorium doorway.

Bill Hadden and Jack Whitehead were talking to Sergeant Fraser.

“All right,” I said, thinking fuck a Press Club wake.

“Do you know Karachi Social Club on Bradford Road?”

“No.”

“It’s next to Variety Club, just before you come into Batley.”

“Right.”

“Ten minutes?” said the fat man.

“I’ll just follow you.”

“Champion.”

Paki Town, the only colour left.

Black bricks and saris, brown boys playing cricket in the cold.

The Mosque and the Mill, make it Yorkshire 1974:

The Curry and the Cap.

Having lost the Jag at the last set of traffic lights, I pulled into the unsurfaced car park next to the Batley Variety Club and parked beside the deep red car.

Shirley Bassey was playing the Christmas Show next door and I could hear her band rehearsing as I picked my way through the dirty puddles, full of cigarette ends and crisp packets, to the strains of
Goldfinger
.

The Karachi Social Club was a detached three-storey building that had once been something to do with the rag trade.

I walked up the three stone steps to the restaurant, switched on the Philips Pocket Memo, and opened the door.

Inside, the Karachi Social Club was a cavernous red room with heavy floral wallpaper and the piped sounds of the East.

A tall Pakistani in a spotless white tunic showed me to the only table with customers.

The two fat men were sitting side by side, facing the door, two pairs of leather gloves before them.

The older man, the one who had invited me to lunch, stood up with an outstretched hand and said, “Derek Box.”

I shook hands across the table with my left hand and sat down looking at the younger man with the well-boxed face.

“This is Paul. He helps me,” said Derek Box.

Paul nodded but said nowt.

The waiter brought over a silver tray with thin popadums and pickles.

“We’ll all have the special, Sammy,” said Derek Box, breaking a popadum.

“Very good, Mr Box.”

Box smiled at me. “Hope you like your curry hot.”

“I’ve only had it once before,” I said.

“Well, you’re in for a right bloody treat then.”

I stared around the huge dim room with its heavy white tablecloths and thick silver cutlery.

“Here,” said Derek Box, spooning some pickles and yoghurt on to a popadum. “Pile a load of this on.”

I did as I was told.

“You know why I like this place?”

“No?” I said, wishing I hadn’t.

“Because it’s private. Just wogs and
us
.”

I picked up my sagging popadum in my left hand and shoved it into my mouth.

“That’s the way I like things,” said Box. “Private.”

The waiter returned with three pints of bitter.

“And the fucking grub’s not bad either, eh Sammy?” laughed Box.

“Thank you very much Mr Box,” said the waiter.

Paul smiled.

Derek Box raised his pint glass and said, “Cheers.”

Paul and I joined him and then drank.

I took out my cigarettes. Paul held out a heavy Ronson lighter for me.

“This is nice, eh?” said Derek Box.

I smiled. “Very civilised.”

“Aye. Not like that kind of shit there,” said Box, pointing at my grey bandaged hand on the white tablecloth.

I looked down at my hand and then back at Box.

He said, “I was a great admirer of your colleague’s work, Mr Dunford.”

“You knew him well?”

“Oh aye. We had a very special relationship.”

“Yeah?” I said, picking up my pint.

“Mmm. Mutually beneficial it was.”

“In what way?”

“Well, I’m in the fortunate position to be able to occasionally pass on information that comes my way.”

“What kind of information?”

Derek Box put down his pint and stared at me.

“I’m no grass, Mr Dunford.”

“I know.”

“I’m no angel either, but I am a businessman.”

I took a big gob full of beer and then quietly I asked him, “What kind of businessman?”

He smiled. “Motor cars, though I have ambitions towards the building trade, I make no bones about it.”

“What kind of ambitions?”

“Thwarted ones,” laughed Derek Box. “At moment.”

“So how did you and Barry…”

“As I say, I’m no angel and I’ve never pretended otherwise. However, mere are men in this country, in this county, who have a bit too much of the pie for my liking.”

“The construction pie?”

“Aye.”

“So you were giving Barry information about certain people and their activities in the building world?”

“Aye. Barry showed a particular interest in, as you say, the activities of certain gentlemen.”

The waiter returned with three plates of yellow rice and three bowls of deep red sauce. He laid a dish and a plate in front of each of us.

Paul picked up his bowl and upended it over the plate of rice, mixing it all in together.

The waiter said, “Would you like nans, Mr Box?”

“Aye, Sammy. And another round.”

“Very good, Mr Box.”

I took the spoon from my curry bowl and let a small amount slide on to the rice.

“Get stuck in, lad. We don’t stand on ceremony here.”

I took a forkful of curry and rice, felt the fire in my mouth, and drained my pint.

After a minute, I said, “Yeah, that’s all right that is.”

“All right? It’s fucking delicious is what it is,” laughed Box with an open red mouth.

Paul nodded, breaking into a matching curry grin.

I took another forkful of curry and rice, watching the two fat men edging nearer to their plates with every mouthful.

I remembered Derek Box, or at least I remembered the stories people used to tell about Derek Box and his brothers.

I took a mouthful of yellow rice, looking over to the kitchen door for the next pint.

I remembered the stories of the Box Brothers practising their high-speed getaways down Field Lane, how kids would come down and watch them on a Sunday morning, how Derek was always the driver and Raymond and Eric were always the ones jumping in and out of the cars as they sped up and down Church Street.

The waiter returned with another silver tray of beer and three flat nan breads.

I remembered the Box Brothers getting sent down for robbing the Edinburgh Mail Train, how they claimed they’d been fitted up, how Eric had died inside just weeks before their release, how Raymond had moved to Canada or Australia, and how Derek had tried to enlist for Vietnam.

Derek and Paul were ripping their nans apart and wiping their bowls clean.

“Here,” said Derek Box, tossing me half a nan.

Having finished, he smiled, lit a cigar, and edged his chair back from the table. He took a big pull off his cigar, examined the end, exhaled and said, “Were you an admirer of Barry’s work?”

“Mm, yeah.”

“Such a waste.”

“Yeah,” I said, the lights catching the beads of sweat in Derek Box’s fair hairline.

“Seems a pity to let it go unfinished, so much of it unpub lished, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t know…”

Paul held out the Ronson for me.

I inhaled deeply and tried to flex the grip of my right hand. It hurt like fuck.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what are you working on at the moment, Mr Dunford?”

“The Clare Kemplay murder.”

“Appalling,” sighed Derek Box. “Bloody appalling. There aren’t words. And?”

“That’s about it.”

“Really? Then you’re not continuing your late friend’s crusade?”

“What makes you ask that?”

“I was led to believe you were in receipt of the great man’s files.”

“Who told you that?”

“I’m not a grass, Mr Dunford.”

“I know, I’m not saying you are.”

“I hear things and I know people who hear things.”

I looked down at a forkful of rice lying cold upon my plate. “Who?”

“Do you ever drink in the Strafford Arms?”

“In Wakefield?”

“Aye,” smiled Box.

“No. I can’t say that I do.”

“Well, maybe you should. See, upstairs is a private club, bit like your own Press Club. A place where a businessman such as myself and an officer of the law can get together in a less formal setting. Let our hair down, so to speak.”

I suddenly saw myself on the back seat of my own car, the black upholstery wet with blood, a tall man with a beard driving and humming along to Rod Stewart.

“You all right?” said Derek Box.

I shook my head. “I’m not interested.”

“You will be,” winked Box, his eyes small and lashless, straight from the Deep.

“I don’t think so.”

“Give it to him, Paul.”

Paul reached down under the table and brought out a thin manila envelope, tossing it across the dirty plates and empty pints.

“Open it,” Box dared me.

I picked up the manila envelope and stuck my left hand inside, feeling the familiar sheen of glossy enlargements.

I looked across the white tablecloth at Derek Box and Paul, visions of little girls wearing black and white wings stitched into skin swimming through the lunchtime bitter.

“Take a fucking look.”

I held the envelope down with my grey bandages and slowly removed the photographs with my left. I pushed back the plates and the bowls and laid out the three enlarged black and white photographs.

Two men naked.

Derek Box was grinning, a slash for a smile.

“I hear you’re a bit of a cunt man, Mr Dunford. So I apologise for the vile content of these snaps.”

I moved each picture apart.

Barry James Anderson, sucking the cock and licking the balls of an old man.

I said, “Who is it?”

“Well, how the mighty have fallen,” sighed Derek Box.

“They’re not very clear.”

“I think you’ll find they’re clear enough to Councillor and former Alderman William Shaw, brother of the more famous Robert Shaw, should you ever wish to present him with a couple of snaps for his family album.”

The old body came into focus, the flabby belly and the skinny ribs, the white hairs and the moles.

“Bill Shaw?”

“I’m afraid so,” smiled Box.

Christ.

William Shaw, Chairman of the new Wakefield Metropolitan District Council and the West Yorkshire Police Authority, a former regional organiser of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, representing that union on the National Executive Com mittee of the Labour Party.

I stared at the swollen testicles, the silhouettes of the knotted veins in his cock, the grey pubic hairs.

William Shaw, brother of the more famous Robert.

Robert Shaw, the Home Office Minister of State and the man widely tipped Most Likely to Succeed.

Councillor Shaw, the Man Most Likely to Suck.

Fuck.

Councillor Shaw as Barry’s Third Man?

Dawsongate
.

I
said, “Barry knew?”

“Aye. But he lacked the tools, so to speak.”

“You want me to blackmail Shaw with these?”

“Blackmail’s not the word I had in mind.”

“What word had you in mind?”

“Persuade.”

“Persuade him to do what?”

“Persuade the Councillor that he should bare his soul of all his public wrongdoings, safe in the knowledge that his private life shall remain exactly that.”

“Why?”

“The Great British Public get the kind of truth they deserve.”

“And?”

“And we,” winked Box. “We get what we want.”

“No.”

“Then you’re not the man I thought you were.”

I looked down at the black and white photographs lying on the white tablecloth.

“And what kind of man was that?” I asked.

“A brave one.”

“You call these brave?” I said, pushing the photographs away with my grey right hand.

“In these times, yes I do.”

I
took a cigarette from my pack and Paul reached across the table with the Ronson.

I said, “He’s not married is he?”

“Makes no odds,” smiled Box.

The waiter came back carrying an empty tray. “Ice-cream, Mr Box?”

Box waved his cigar in my direction. “Just one for my friend here.”

“Very good, Mr Box.” The waiter began piling the dirty plates and glasses on to the silver tray, leaving only the ashtray and the three photographs.

Derek Box ground out his cigar in the ashtray and leant across the table.

“This country’s at war, Mr Dunford. The government and the unions, the Left and the Right, the rich and the poor. Then you got your Paddys, your wogs, your niggers, the puffs and the perverts, even the bloody women; they’re all out for what they can get. Soon there’ll be nowt left for the working white man.”

“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.