Nineteen Seventy-Four (29 page)

Boxes of them.

Schoolgirl photographs, head-shots of wide white smiles and big blue eyes, yellow hair and pink skin.

And then I saw it all again.

Black and white shots of Jeanette and Susan, dirty knees pulled up in corners, tiny hands-across shut eyes, big white flashes filling up the room.

The adult smiles and the child’s eyes, dirty knees in angel suits, tiny hands across bloody holes, big white laughs filling up the room.

I saw a man in a paper crown and nothing else, fucking little girls underground.

I saw his wife stitching angel suits, kissing them better.

I saw a halfwit Polack boy, stealing photos and developing more.

I saw men building houses, watching little girls playing out across the road, taking their photos and making their notes, building new houses next to the old.

And then I was staring down at George Marsh again, the Gaffer, dying in agony on his bed of dead red roses.

“
George Marsh. Very nice man
.”

But it wasn’t enough.

I saw Johnny Kelly, a hammer in his hand, a job half done.

It still wasn’t enough.

I saw a man wrapped in paper and plans, consumed by dark visions of angels, drawing houses made out of swans, pleading for silence.

And it still wasn’t enough.

I saw the same man crouched down on his arches in a dim corner, screaming do this for me George, because I WANT MORE AND I WANT IT NOW.

I saw John Dawson.

And it was too much, much too much.

I fled from the room back down the tunnel, stooping then crawling, listening for water and the shaft to the shed, his screams filling the dark, their screams my head:

“
There was a lovely view before they put them new houses up
.”

I came to the ladder and pulled myself up, scraping my back on the lip to the light.

Up I went, up.

I
got to the top and hauled myself back into the shed.

She was still there, trussed on her belly and tied to the bench.

I lay on the plastic sacks, panting and sweating and running on fear.

She smiled at me, drool down her chin, piss on her tights.

I grabbed a knife from the bench and cut through the ropes.

I pushed her over to the shaft and pulled her head back by her perm, the knife at her throat.

“You’re going back down there.”

I turned her around and kicked her legs into the void.

“You can climb or fall. I don’t give a fuck.”

She put a foot upon a rung and began to climb down, her eyes on mine.

“Until death do you part,” I spat after her.

Her eyes shone up from the dark, not blinking.

I turned round, picked up the thick black rope, and swung the manhole cover back over the hole.

I grabbed a bag of cement and hauled it over on to the manhole, and then another, and another, and another.

Then I took bags of fertiliser and put them on top of the bags of cement.

I sat on the bags and felt my legs and feet go cold.

I got up and picked a padlock and a key off the work-bench.

I got up and went out of the shed. I closed the door and locked it with the padlock.

I ran down the field, throwing the key off into the mud.

The door to Number 16 was still ajar,
Crown Court
on the TV.

I went inside and took a shit.

I turned off the TV.

I sat on their sofa and thought about Paula.

Then I went through their rooms and all of their drawers.

I found a shotgun in the wardrobe and boxes of shells. I wrapped it in a bin bag and went out to the car. I put the shotgun and the shells in the boot of the Maxi.

I went back to the bungalow and had a last look around, then I locked the door and went down the path.

I stood by the wall and looked up at the black row of sheds, the rain on my face, me covered in mud.

I got in the car and drove away.

4 LUV
.

All for love.

Shangrila, raindrops falling from its gutters, crouched alone against the worn grey sky.

I parked behind another dirty hedge on another empty road and walked up another sad drive.

It was sleeting and I wondered again if it made a blind bit of difference to the giant orange fish in the pond and I knew George Marsh was suffering and that Don Foster must have suffered too and I didn’t know how that made me feel.

I wanted to go and see those big bright fish, but I kept on walking.

There were no cars in the drive, just two wet pints of milk sitting on the doorstep in a wire-frame basket.

I felt sick and scared.

I looked down.

I had a shotgun in my arms.

I pressed the doorbell and listened to the chimes echo through Shangrila, thinking of George Marsh’s bloody cock and Don Foster’s bloody knees.

There was no answer.

I pressed the doorbell again and started knocking with the butt of the gun.

Still no answer.

I tried the door.

It was open.

I went inside.

“Hello?”

The house was cold and almost quiet.

I stood in the hallway and said again, “Hello?”

There was a low hissing noise followed by a repeated dull click.

I turned left into a large white living room.

Above an unused fireplace there was an enlarged black and white photograph of a swan taking off from a lake.

She wasn’t alone:

On every table, on every shelf, on every windowsill, wooden swans, glass swans, and china swans.

Swans in flight, swans asleep, and two giant swans kissing, their necks and bills forming a big love-heart.

Two swans swimming.

Bingo.

Even down to the matchboxes above the empty fireplace.

I stood staring at the swans, listening to the hissing and the clicking.

The room was freezing.

I walked over to a big wooden box, leaving muddy footprints on the cream carpet. I put down the shotgun and lifted up the lid of the box and picked the needle off the record. It was Mahler.

Songs for Dead Children
.

I turned around suddenly, looking out across the lawn, thinking I could hear a car coming up the drive.

It was just the wind.

I went over to the window and stood looking down at the hedge.

There was something down there, something in the garden.

For a moment, I thought I could see a brown-haired gypsy girl sitting under the hedge, barefoot with twigs in her hair.

I closed my eyes, opened them, and she was gone.

I could hear a faint drumming sound.

I stepped back on to a deep cream rug, kicking a glass that was already lying on its side in a damp stain. I picked it up and placed it on a swan coaster on a glass coffee table, next to a newspaper.

It was today’s newspaper, my newspaper.

Two huge headlines, two days before Christmas:

RL STAR’S SISTER MURDERED.

COUNCILLOR RESIGNS.

Two faces, two sets of dark newsprint eyes staring up at me.

Two stories, by Jack fucking Whitehead and George Greaves.

I picked up the paper, sat down on a big cream sofa, and read the news:

The body of Mrs Paula Garland was found by police at her Castle-ford home early Sunday morning, after neighbours reported hearing screams.

Mrs Garland, thirty-two, was the sister of Wakefield Trinity forward Johnny Kelly. In 1969, Mrs Garland’s daughter Jeanette, aged eight, disappeared on her way home from school and, despite a massive police hunt, has never been found. Two years later, in 1971, Mrs Garland’s husband Geoff committed suicide.

Police sources told this correspondent that they are treating Mrs Garland’s death as murder and a number of people are believed to be helping police with their enquiries. A news conference has been sched uled for early Monday morning.

Johnny Kelly, twenty-eight, was unavailable for comment.

The dark newsprint eyes, Paula not smiling, looking already dead.

William Shaw, the Labour leader and Chairman of the new Wake-field Metropolitan District Council, resigned on Sunday in a move that shocked the city.

In a brief statement, Shaw, fifty-eight, cited increasing ill-health as the reason behind his decision.

Shaw, the older brother of the Home Office Minister of State Robert Shaw, entered Labour politics through the Transport and General Workers’ Union. He rose to be a regional organiser and repre sented the T.G.W.U. on the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party.

A former Alderman and active for many years in West Riding politics, Shaw was, however, a leading advocate of Local Government reform and had been a member of the Redcliffe Maud Committee.

Shaw’s election as Chairman of the first Wakefield Metropolitan District Council had been widely welcomed as ensuring a smooth transition during the changeover from the old West Riding.

Local Government sources, last night, expressed consternation and dismay at the timing of Mr Shaw’s resignation.

Mr Shaw is also Acting Chairman of the West Yorkshire Police Authority and it is unclear as to whether he will continue.

Home Office Minister of State Robert Shaw was unavailable for comment on his brother’s resignation. Mr Shaw himself is believed to be staying with friends in France.

Two more dark newsprint eyes, Shaw not smiling, looking already dead.

Oh fucking boy.

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

And I’d got mine.

I put down the paper and closed my eyes.

I saw them at their typewriters, Jack and George, stinking of Scotch, knowing their secrets, telling their lies.

I saw Hadden, reading their lies, knowing their secrets, pouring their Scotch.

I wanted to sleep for a thousand years, to wake up when their like were gone, when I didn’t have their dirty black ink on my fingers, in my blood.

But the fucking house wouldn’t let me be, the typewriter keys mixing with that faint drumming noise, chattering in my ears, deafening my skull and bones.

I opened my eyes. On the sofa next to me were huge rolled-up papers, architect’s plans.

I laid one out across the glass coffee table, over Paula and Shaw.

It was for a shopping centre, The Swan Centre.

To be built at the Hunslet and Beeston exit of the M1.

I closed my eyes again, my little gypsy girl standing in her ring of fire.

“
Because of the fucking money
.”

The Swan Centre:

Shaw, Dawson, Foster.

The Box Brothers wanting in.

Foster fucking with the Boxes.

Shaw and Dawson putting their various pleasures before business.

Foster as Ringmaster, trying to keep the fucking circus on the road.

Everybody out of their league, their tree, whatever.

Everybody fucked.

“
Because of the fucking money
.”

I stood up and walked out of the living room, into a cold and light expensive kitchen.

A tap was running into an empty stainless steel sink. I turned it off.

I could still hear the drumming.

There was a door to the back garden and another to the garage.

The drumming was coming from behind the second door.

I tried to open the door but it wouldn’t.

From under the door I saw four slight trickles of water.

I tried the door again and it still wouldn’t open.

I flew out the back door and ran round to the front of the house.

There were no windows built into the garage.

I tried to open the double garage doors but they wouldn’t.

I went back inside through the front door.

A ring of keys was hanging by another from inside the keyhole.

I took the keys back into the kitchen and the drumming.

I tried the biggest, the smallest, and another.

The lock turned.

I opened the door and swallowed exhaust fumes.

Fuck.

A Jaguar, engine running, sat alone in the dark on the far side of the double garage.

Fuck.

I grabbed a kitchen chair and wedged the door open, kicking away a pile of damp tea-towels.

I ran across the garage, the light from the kitchen shining on two people in the front seat and a hosepipe running from the exhaust into a back window.

The car radio was on loud, Elton belting out
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
.

I ripped the hose and more wet towels out of the exhaust pipe and tried the driver’s door.

Locked.

I ran round to the passenger door, opened it and caught a lung full of carbon monoxide and Mrs Marjorie Dawson, still looking like my mother, a bloody crimson freezer bag wrapped round her head, as she fell into my knees.

I tried to push her back upright, leaning across the body to turn off the ignition.

John Dawson was slumped against the steering wheel, another freezer bag over his head, his hands bound before him.

“
Here we go again. Reckless talk costs lives
.”

They were both blue and dead.

Fuck.

I switched off the ignition and Elton and sat back on the garage floor, bringing Mrs Dawson with me, her head in the bag in my lap, the two of us staring up at her husband.

The architect
.

John Dawson, at last and too late, a face in a plastic freezer bag.

John bloody Dawson, ever the ghost and now for real, a ghost in a plastic freezer bag.

John fucking Dawson, just his works remaining, looming and haunting, leaving me as robbed and fucked as the rest of them; robbed of the chance to ever know and fucked of the hope it might bring, sat there before him with his wife in my arms, desperate to raise the dead for just one second, desperate to raise the dead for just one word.

Silence.

I raised Mrs Dawson as gently as I could back into the Jaguar, propping her up against her husband, their freezer bag heads slumped together in more, more, fucking silence.