‘But whatever comes from the earth returns to the earth -
Tries to stop you -
‘So the ungodly go from curse to destruction.’
Stop you -
D-1 .
Chapter 60
He walks up path. He knocks on door.
‘It’s not locked,’ I shout downstairs.
He opens door. He steps inside.
‘Up here.’
He turns. He starts to walk upstairs. He reaches top of stairs. He stops.
Door is on its side, blocking his path.
He can see my mother lying on floor of back bedroom.
He climbs over door -
I turn -
Turn from out of front bedroom -
I thrust knife though his coat -
Through his coat, deep into his belly:
‘Hello,’ I say.
I pull knife out. I push it back in -
Back in, up and under his ribs.
‘Hello from back seat hard on last bus home, one that got away and lived to tell tale, from Barry Gannon and Eddie Dunford, Derek Box and his mate Paul, from my mate Clare and her sister Grace, Billy Bell and his spilt pint, from John Dawson and his brother Richard, Donald Foster and Johnny Kelly, from Pat they fucked and left behind, Jeanette Garland and her mum Paula, from Susan Ridyard and Clare Kemplay, Hazel Atkins and every missing child in this whole fucking world, from Graham Goldthorpe and his murdered Mary, Janice Ryan and Bad Bobby Fraser, from Eric Hall and his wife Libby, Peter Hunter and Evil Ken Drury, from Steve Barton and his brother Clive, Keith Lee and Kenny D, from Two Sevens and Joseph Rose, Ronnie Angus and George Oldman, from lovely Bill Shaw and Blind Old Walter, poor Jack Whitehead and Ka Su Peng, from Strafford Public House and Griffin hotel, Millgarth and Wood Street nicks, from Gaiety and both St Marys, motorways and car parks, from parks and toilets, idle rich and unemployed, from Maggie Thatcher and Michael Foot, from SWP and National Front, IRA and UDA, from M &S and C &A, Tesco and Co-op and every shopping centre in this wounded, wounded land, from shit they sell and shit we buy, my old mum and Queen sodding Mum, from kids with no mum and mums with no kid, Black Panther and Yorkshire Ripper, from Liddle Towers and Blair Peach, black bodies in Calder and ones in Aire, from all dead meat and my dead friends, pubs and clubs, from gutters and stars, local tips and old slag heaps, from ladies of night and boys in bogs, headlights and brake-lights, high life and low, from mucky mags and dirty vids, silent pits and page three tits, from Nazis and Witches, West Yorkshire coppers and their bent mates, from all little shits and things we get to see, dead bodies piled up in first-floor bars, stink of shotguns mixed with beer, sirens that howl for ten long years bloodstained with fear, from one that got away, un-lucky one, from Dachau to Belsen, Auschwitz to Preston, from Wakefield to Leeds, Stanley Royd and fucking North, from West bloody Riding and Red Riding Hood, final solution and wrath of God, from Church of Abandoned Christ and her twenty-two disciples, Michael Williams and Jack’s wife Carol, from pictures and tapes, murders and rapes, from whispers and rumours, cancers and tumours, from badgers and owls, wolves and swans -’
I twist knife:
‘This is for all things you made me do, for all things you had me see, for every cock I’ve ever sucked and every night I’ve never slept, for voices in my head and silence of night, for hole in my head and scars on my back, words on my chest, for boy I was and them boys that saw, Michael Myshkin and Jimmy Ash, fat Johnny Piggott and his brother Pete, Leonard Marsh and his dad George, for every little lad you ever fucked and all their dads who liked to watch, with their cameras in their hands and their cocks in my arse, your tongue in my mouth and your lies in my ear, loving you loving me, his nails in my hands and yours in my head, for that knife in my heart and this one in you -’
‘Goodbye Dragon,’ I spit -
I pull knife back out again and -
With one last kiss -
I let him fall -
Backwards -
Down -
Stairs.
Bare-chested and soaked in blood -
I turn. I see myself in bathroom mirror:
Hole in my head -
Stumps in my back -
Seven letters on my chest:
One Love.
‘Barry!’ she is screaming. ‘Barry!’
I follow him downstairs to front door -
I open it.
Maurice is coming up garden path.
I strike a match.
He stops. He stares.
I let it fall -
Our house starts to burn.
I step over dead body of Martin Laws -
Into red rain, white floodlights and police lights blue.
My shoes gone, I walk barefoot into garden.
Head bobbed and wreathed, I drop knife and raise shotgun.
Chapter 61
There were no sirens, only silence -
No lights, only darkness.
We parked under Millgarth. I did not go upstairs -
Angus would be waiting:
More crimes and more lies, more lies and more crimes.
I walked through the market. I walked through the dawn -
Thursday 9 June 1983.
I cut through the backstreets. I ran up the Headrow.
I turned on to Cookridge Street.
I opened the door into the Church of Saint Anne.
I staggered down the side aisle.
I fell before the Pietа.
I took off my terrible glasses. I closed my tired eyes.
I prayed:
‘Lord, I do not understand my own actions.
I know that nothing good dwells within me, in my flesh.
I do not do what I want, but I do the very things that I hate.
I can will what is right but I cannot do it.
I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
When I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.
Wretched and damned man that I am!
Will you rescue me from this body of death?’
I opened my eyes. I looked up at Christ -
The wounded, dead Christ.
I was crying as I stood -
I was crying as I turned to go -
I was crying when I saw him.
He was sat among the Stations. His head shaved -
He was dressed in white, bleeding from his hands and his feet.
There were children sat around him -
Little girls and little boys.
‘Jack?’
He smiled at me.
‘Jack?’
He stared through me.
‘What?’ I cried. ‘What can you see?’
He was smiling. He was staring at the Pietа-
‘How can you still fucking believe?’ I shouted. ‘After all the things you’ve seen?’
‘It’s the things I’ve not seen,’ he said.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘During an eclipse there is no sun,’ he smiled. ‘Only darkness.’
‘I don’t -’
‘The sun is still there,’ he said. ‘You just can’t see it.’
‘I -’
‘But in your heart you know the sun will shine again, don’t you?’
I nodded.
‘Faith,’ he whispered -
‘The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’
I turned again to the Pietа. I turned back to the wounded Christ -
No other name.
There was a hand squeezing mine -
A ten-year-old girl with blue eyes and long straight fair hair, wearing an orange waterproof kagool, a dark blue turtleneck sweater, pale blue denim trousers with a distinctive eagle motif on the back left pocket and red Wellington boots, holding a plastic Co-op carrier bag in her other hand.
I looked down at my hand in hers -
There were no bruises on the backs of my hands.
‘He was not abandoned,’ smiled Clare. ‘He is loved.’