I want to push the door back hard into her face. I want to slap her. To punch her. Kick her. Beat her.
‘Is everything all right?’ asks a man from the doorway to the kitchen -
A tall man in black, his hat in his hands -
A priest.
I smile. I say: ‘Thank you for your time, Mrs Marsh.’
She nods.
I turn. I walk away, back down the garden path.
Back at the gate, I turn again -
Mrs Marsh has closed her front door, but there’s that shadow again -
Behind the nets in the front room -
Two shadows.
I walk back down Maple Well Drive -
Back to the car.
I get in and I wait -
I wait and I watch -
I wait.
I watch.
Chapter 44
You sleep in the car. You wake in the car. You sleep in the car. You wake in the car -
You check the rearview mirror. Then the wing -
The passenger seat is empty.
The doors are locked. The windows closed. The car smells. You switch on the engine. You switch on the windscreen wipers. You switch on the radio:
‘Latest opinion polls have the Conservatives still 15% ahead of Labour; Mrs Thatcher accuses SDP leaders of lacking guts; Britain faces a 1929-style economic crash within two years whatever party wins, according to Ken Livingstone; Michael Foot speaks at a Hyde Park rally attended by 15,000 people at the end of the People’s March for Jobs…’
You switch everything off.
You can hear church bells, the traffic and the rain:
It is Sunday 5 June 1983 -
D-4 .
You are parked below the City Heights flats, Leeds.
Halfway to the tower block, you turn back to check the car is locked. Then you walk across the car park. You climb the stairs to the fourth floor. You read the walls as you go:
Wogs Out, Leeds, NF, Leeds, Kill a Paki, Leeds.
You think of your mother. You don’t stop. You turn one corner and there’s something dead in a plastic bag. Your father. You don’t stop. You turn the next and there’s a pile of human shit. Fitzwilliam. You don’t stop. You are walking in another man’s shoes, thinking of lost children -
Hazel.
On the fourth floor you go along the open passageway, the bitter wind ripping your face raw until there are tears in your eyes. You quicken past broken windows and paint-splattered doors -
Doors banging in the wind, in the rain;
New tears in your old eyes, the lights are already going on across Leeds -
But not here -
Not here before a door marked Pervert.
You knock on the door of Flat 405, City Heights, Leeds.
You wait.
You listen to the smash of glass and the scream of a child down below, the brakes of an empty bus and an hysterical voice on a radio in another flat -
The church bells gone.
You press the doorbell -
It’s broken.
You bend down. You lift up the metal flap of another letterbox. You smell staleness. You hear the sounds of a TV.
‘Excuse me!’ you yell into the hole.
The TV dies.
‘Excuse me!’
Through the letterbox, you can see a pair of dirty white socks pacing about inside.
You knock on the door again. You shout: ‘I know you’re in there.’
‘What do you want?’
You stand up. You say to the door: ‘I just want a word.’
‘What about?’
‘Your sister and her daughter.’
The latch turns. The door branded Pervert opens.
‘What about them?’ says Johnny Kelly -
The Man who had Everything;
‘What about them?’ he says again -
The Man who had Everything -
In a tight pair of jeans and a sweater with no shirt, his hair long and unwashed, his face fat and unshaven;
‘They’re dead,’ he says.
‘I know,’ you say. ‘That’s why I’m here.’
‘Fuck off,’ he hisses.
‘No.’
Johnny Kelly steps forward. He pokes you in the chest. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’
‘My name is John Piggott,’ you reply. ‘I’m a solicitor.’
‘I’ve got no fucking money,’ he says. ‘If that’s what you’re after.’
‘No,’ you say. ‘That’s not what I’m after.’
‘So what are you after?’
‘The truth.’
He swallows. He closes his eyes. He opens them. He looks past you at the grey and black sky. He hears the glass smash and the child’s screams, the brakes and the voices. He sees the dead and the shit -
‘About what?’ he says.
‘The truth about your Paula and her Jeanette. About Susan Ridyard and Clare Kemplay. About Michael Myshkin and Jimmy Ashworth. About -’
The dead and the shit -
The tears old and new -
The windows and the doors branded Pervert -
‘About Hazel Atkins,’ you say.
‘What makes you think I know anything?’
‘It was just a hunch,’ you shrug.
‘You fucking psychic, are you?’ he says, closing the door.
You put your right foot forward between the door and the frame. You stop him.
‘Fuck off!’ he shouts. ‘I don’t know anything.’
You push the door back in his face. You say: ‘Is that right? Well, you know all those names, don’t you?’
And Johnny Kelly -
The Man who had Everything -
Johnny Kelly looks down at his dirty white socks. He nods. He whispers words you cannot hear -
‘You what?’ you say.
‘They’re dead,’ he says again, looking up -
The tears old and new -
The tears in both your eyes -
‘All of them,’ he says. ‘Dead.’
‘Not quite,’ you say.
He looks down again at his dirty white socks.
‘You going to let me in?’ you say.
Johnny Kelly turns. He walks back into his flat, the door open.
You follow him down a narrow hall into the living room.
Kelly sits down in an old and scarred vinyl armchair, racing papers and a plate of uneaten and dried-up baked beans at his feet -
An empty bottle of HP stood on its head -
He has his face in his hands.
You sit on the matching settee, a colour TV showing The World at War.
Above the unlit gas-fire and its plastic-surround, a Polynesian girl is smiling in various shades of orange and brown, a tear in her hair and one corner missing, the walls running with damp.
You sit and you think of faces running with tears -
Think of the missing -
Of Hazel.
Next door a dog is barking and barking and barking.
Johnny Kelly looks up. He says: ‘It never goes away.’
You nod.
‘So what do you want to know?’
‘Everything,’ you whisper.
You drive from Leeds back into Wakefield. You do not put the radio on. You repeat as you drive:
Everybody knows; everybody knows; everybody knows -
Everybody knows and -
It is about four o’clock in the afternoon with the sun never shining and the hard, relentless, endless fucking drizzle of a dull, dark, soundless fucking Sunday running down the windscreen of the car.
You check the rearview mirror. Then the wing.
You park up on the pavement of a quiet dim lane in front of tall wet walls:
Trinity View, Wood Lane, Sandal -
The posh part of Wakefield; the garage owners and the builders, the self-made men with their self-made piles, their double drives and deductible lives, the ones who never pay their bills and always dodge their taxes -
Self-satisfied and shielded, gilded against the coming war -
Against John Piggott.
You walk up the long drive towards Trinity View, past the neat lawn with its tainted, plastic ornaments and stagnant, plagued pond.