He tuts and scratches his knackers as he gets out the car, his mind made up.
I think my heart’s going to fucking burst.
I wait until Ellis is inside number 5, then I open the door and walk up the stairs.
The house is quiet and stinks of smoke and dope.
I tap on her door at the top of the stairs.
She comes to the door looking like a Red Indian, her dark hair and skin covered in a film of sweat, like she’s just been fucking and fucking for real.
The nights I’ve dreamt about her.
‘You can’t come in. I’m working.’
‘There’s been another.’
‘So?’
‘You can’t stay round here.’
‘So how about your place?’
‘Please,’ I whisper.
‘You going to make an honest woman of me, are you Mr Policeman?’ ‘I’m serious.’
‘So am I. I need money.’
I pull out notes, screwing them up in her face.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ I nod.
‘What about a ring, Prince Bobby?’
I sigh and start to speak.
‘One like you gave your wife.’
I look at the carpet, the stupid flowers and birds woven together under my feet.
I look up and Janice slaps me once.
‘Piss off, Bob.’
‘Fucking give him up!’
‘Piss off!’
Ellis pushes her head back, banging it against the wall. Tuck off!’
‘Come on, Karen,’ I say. ‘Just tell us where he is and we’re away.’
‘I don’t fucking know.’ She’s crying and I believe her.
We’ve been at this now for over six hours and DC Michael Ellis wouldn’t know the fucking truth if it walked up and smacked him in the gob, so he walks up to Karen Burns, white, twenty-three, convicted prostitute, drug addict, mother of two, and smacks her in the gob instead.
‘Easy Mike, easy,’ I hiss.
She falls away against her wallpaper, sobbing and angry.
Ellis tugs at his balls. He’s hot, fucked off, and bored and I know he wants to pull down her pants and give her one.
I say, ‘Half-time Mike?’
He sniffs and rolls his eyes and walks back down the hall.
The window’s open and the radio on. A hot Sunday in May and all you’d usually hear would be Bob fucking Marley, but not today. Just Jimmy Savile playing twenty-five years of Jubilee hits, as every cunt and his stash hide under their beds, waiting for the sirens to stop, the shit to end.
Karen lights a cig and looks up.
I say, ‘You do know Steve Barton?’
‘Yeah, unfortunately.’
‘But you’ve no idea where he is?’
‘If he’s any bloody sense, he’ll have legged it.’
‘Has he any bloody sense?’
‘Some.’
‘So where’d he leg it to?’
‘London. Bristol. I’ve no fucking idea.’
Karen’s flat stinks and I wonder where the kids are. Probably been taken off her again.
I say, ‘You reckon he did it?’
‘No.’
‘So give me a name and I’m out of here.’
‘Or what?’
‘Or I’ll go and get some fucking lunch and let my mate out there question you, and then I’ll come back and we’ll take you down Queens Street.’
She tuts, exhales, and says, ‘Who do you want?’
‘Anyone who likes a bit of strange. Anything odd.’
‘Anything odd?’ she laughs.
‘Anything.’
She stubs out the cigarette on a plastic tray of chips and curry sauce and gets up and takes an address book out of the knife drawer. The room now stinks of burning plastic.
‘Here,’ she says, tossing the little book over to me.
I scan the names, the numbers, the licence plates, the lies.
‘Give me someone.’
‘Under D. Dave. Drives a white Ford Cortina.’
‘What about him?’
‘No rubber, likes to stick it up your arse.’
‘So?’
‘He doesn’t say please.’
I take out my notebook, copy down the licence plate.
‘Heard he don’t always pay and all.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘There’s a taxi driver who likes to bite.’
‘We’ve heard.’
‘That’s your lot then.’
‘Thanks,’ I say and see myself out.
I drop the coins.
‘Joseph?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Fraser.’
‘Bobby the bobby. Just a matter of time I says, and see if it ain’t so.’
I am in the phone box two down from the Azad Rank, watching a couple of Paki kids bowling at each other. Ellis is sleeping off his Sunday lunch in the car: two cans of bitter and a fat cheese sandwich. There’s Sunday cricket on the radio, more heat forecast, birds singing, lilting bass and sax from a terrace.
It can’t last.
The man on the other end is Joseph Rose: Joe Rose, Jo Ro. Another Paki kid joins the game.
I say, ‘SPG are coming to take everyone away, and not to Zion.’
‘Fuck them.’
‘See you try,’ I laugh. ‘You got some names for me?’
Joseph Rose: part-time prophet, part-time petty thief, full-time Spencer Boy with draw to score and debts to pay, he says:
‘This be concerning Mrs Watts?’
‘In one.’
‘Your pirate won’t stay away, no?’
‘No. So?’
‘So people be spooked anyway’
‘By him?’
‘Nah, nah. The two sevens, man.’
Fuck, here we go. ‘Joseph, give me some fucking names.’
‘All I hear is the ladies say it’s Irish. Same as befores.’
The Irish.
‘Ken and Keith know anything?’
‘Same as I say’
As I hang up two black SPG transit vans fly down the street and I’m thinking, fuck the Spencer Boys:
HEAVY DUTY DISCIPLINE COMING DOWN.
It’s going up to eight and the car is getting smaller, light starting to fade. Across Leeds 7 bonfires are going up, and not fucking Jubilee Beacons. Me and Ellis are still sat off Spencer Place, doing fuck all but sweat and get on each other’s tits.
Nervous, like the whole fucking city:
Ellis stinks and we’ve got the windows down, smelling the wood and Rome burn, cat calls and yells upon the hot black air: the ones we’ve not pinched building barricades, putting out the milk bottles for later.
Edgy:
I’m thinking about giving Louise a ring, wondering if she’ll be back from the hospital, feeling bad about Little Bobby and yesterday, coming back to Janice and getting fucking stiff, and then it all comes down.
HARD:
Glass smashing, brakes slamming, a red car careering down the road, zig-zagging, its windscreen gone, hitting one kerb, flipping over at the foot of a lamppost.
‘Christ,’ shouts Ellis. ‘That’s Vice.’
We’re both out of the car, running across Spencer Place to the upturned motor.
I look up the street:
There’s a bonfire on a piece of wasteland at the top of the road illuminating a small gang of West Indians, black shadows dancing and whooping, thinking about finishing off what they’ve just started, sticking the boot in.
I stare into the black night, the barricades and bonfires, the high flames all loaded with pain:
A proud coon steps forward, all dreadlocks and Mau Mau attitude:
Come and have a go.
But I can already hear the sirens, the SPG, the Specials and Reserves, our sponsored fucking monsters let loose on the wind, and I turn back to the red car.
Ellis is bending down, talking to the two men upside-down inside.
‘They’re all right,’ he shouts to me.
‘Call an ambulance,’ I say. ‘I’ll stay with them until cavalry get here.’
‘Fucking niggers,’ says Ellis, running back to our car.
I get down on all fours and peer into the car.
It’s dark and at first I don’t recognise the men inside.
I say something like, ‘Don’t try and move. We’ll have you out in a minute.’
They nod and mumble.