Nineteen Seventy-Four (28 page)

“No.”

“You were Jeanette’s fucking father, weren’t you?”

“No!”

“You were her father.”

His lips were moving, bubbles of bloody spit bursting on them.

I leant close into his face.

Behind me, she said, “George Marsh.”

I span round, reaching out and pulling her into us. “Say again.”

“George Marsh,” she whispered.

“What about him?”

“On the Dewsbury Road. It was George Marsh.”

“George Marsh?”

“One of Donny’s foremen.”

“
Under those beautiful new carpets, between the cracks and the stones
.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

I let go of them and stood up, the hall suddenly much bigger and lighter.

I closed my eyes.

I heard the hammer drop, Kelly’s teeth chattering, and then everything was small and dark again.

I went over to the phone and took out the telephone direc tory. I went to the Ms and the Marshes and found the G. Marshes. There was one in Netherton at 16 Maple Well Drive. The telephone number was 3657. I closed the directory.

I picked up a soft floral phonebook and turned to the Ms.

In fountain pen,
George 3657
.

Bingo.

I closed the book.

Johnny Kelly had his head in his hands.

Mrs Foster was staring up at me.

“
Under those beautiful new houses, between the cracks and the stones
.”

“How long did you know?”

The eagle eyes were back. “I didn’t,” she said.

“Liar.”

Mrs Patricia Foster swallowed, “What about us?”

“What about you?”

“What are you going to do with us?”

“Pray God forgives the fucking lot of you.”

I walked towards the front door and Donald Foster’s body. “Where are you going?”

“To finish it.”

Johnny Kelly looked up, bloody fingerprints on his face. “You’re too late.”

I left the door open.

“
Under those beautiful new carpets, between the cracks and the stones
.”

I drove Eraser’s Maxi back into Wakefield and out through Horbury, the rain beginning to sleet.

I sang along to Christmas songs on Radio 2 and changed to Radio 3 to avoid the News at Ten, listening to England lose the Ashes down under instead, shouting out my own news at ten:

Don Foster dead.

Two fucking killers, maybe three.

Me next?

Counting the killers.

Pushing the Maxi out Netherton way, the sleet now suddenly rain again.

Counting the dead.

Tasting gun metal, smelling my own shit.

Dogs barking, men screaming.

Paula dead.

There were things I had to do, things I must finish.

“
Under those beautiful new carpets, between the cracks and the stones
.”

I asked in Netherton Post Office and an old woman who didn’t work there told me where Maple Well Drive was.

Number 16 was a bungalow like the rest of the street, much like Enid Sheard’s, much like the Goldthorpe’s. A neat little garden with a low hedge and a bird table.

Whatever George Marsh had done, it hadn’t been here.

I opened the little black metal gate and walked up the path. I could see TV pictures through the nets.

I knocked on the glass door, the air making me gyp.

A chubby woman with grey permed hair and a tea-towel opened the door.

“Mrs Marsh?”

“Yes?”

“Mrs George Marsh?”

“Yes?”

I pushed the door hard back into her face.

“What the bloody hell?” She fell back on her arse into the house.

I barged in over the Wellington boots and the gardening shoes. “Where is he?”

She had the tea-towel over her face.

“Where is he?”

“I haven’t seen him.” She was trying to stand.

I slapped her hard across her face.

She fell back down.

“Where is he?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

The hard-faced bitch was wide-eyed, thinking about some tears.

I raised my hand again. “Where?”

“What did he do?” There was a gash above her eye and her lower lip was already swelling.

“You know.”

She smiled, a pinched little fucking smile.

“Tell me where.”

She lay there on top of the shoes and the umbrellas looking straight back up into my face, her dirty mouth in a half-open smile like we were thinking about having a fuck.

“Where?”

“The shed, up on the allotments.”

I knew then what I would find.

“Where is it?”

She was still smiling. She knew what I would find.

“Where?”

She raised up the tea-towel. “I can’t…”

“Show me,” I hissed, grabbing her by the arm.

“No!”

I pulled her up on her feet.

“No!”

I swung the door back.

“No!”

I dragged her down the path, her scalp red raw beneath her tight grey perm.

“No!”

“Which way?” I said at the gate.

“No, no, no.”

“Which fucking way?” I tightened my grip.

She spun round, looking back and beyond the bungalow.

I pushed her through the gate and marched her round the back of Maple Well Drive.

There was an empty brown field behind the bungalows, rising steeply up into the dirty white sky. There was a gate in a wall and a tractor path and, where the field met the sky, I could see a row of black sheds.

“No!”

I pulled her off the road and pushed her up against the dry stone wall.

“No, no, no.”

“Shut your bloody mouth you fucking bitch.” I gripped her mouth in my left hand, making a fish head of her face.

She was shaking but there were no tears.

“Is he up there?”

She looked straight at me, then nodded once.

“If he isn’t, or if he hears us coming, I’m going to fucking do you, you understand?”

She was looking straight at me, again she nodded just once.

I let go of her mouth, make-up and lipstick on my fingers.

She stood against the stone wall, not moving.

I took her by the arm and pushed her through the gate.

She stared up at the black line of sheds.

“Move,” I said, shoving her in the back.

We started up the tractor path, its trenches full of black water, the air stinking of animal shit.

She stumbled, she fell, she got back up.

I looked back down at Netherton, the same as Ossett, the same as anywhere.

I saw its bungalows and terraces, its shops and its garage.

She stumbled, she fell, she got back up.

I saw it all.

I saw a white van bumping up this path, throwing its little cargo around in the back.

I saw a white van bumping back down, its little cargo silent and still.

I saw Mrs Marsh at her kitchen sink, that fucking tea-towel in her hand, watching that van coming and going.

She stumbled, she fell, she got back up.

We were almost at the top of the hill, almost at the sheds. They looked like a stone-age village, built from the mud.

“Which one’s his?”

She pointed to the end one, at a patchwork of tarpaulin and fertiliser sacks, corrugated iron and house bricks.

I went ahead, dragging her along behind me.

“This one,” I whispered, pointing at a black wooden door with a cement sack for a window.

She nodded.

“Open it.”

She pulled back the door.

I shoved her inside.

There was a work-bench and tools, bags of fertiliser and cement stacked up, plant pots and feed trays. Empty plastic sacks covered the floor.

It stank of the earth.

“Where is he?”

Mrs Marsh was giggling, the tea-towel up over her nose and mouth.

I spun round and punched her hard through the tea-towel.

She shrieked and howled and fell to her knees.

I grabbed some grey perm and dragged her over to the work bench, forcing her cheek into the wood.

“Ah, ha-ha-ha. Ah, ha-ha-ha.”

She was laughing and screaming, her whole body shaking, one hand flailing through the plastic sacks upon the floor, the other squeezing her skirt up into her cunt.

I picked up some kind of chisel or wallpaper scraper.

“Where is he?”

“Mmm, ha-ha-ha. Mmm, ha-ha-ha.”

Her screams were a hum, her giggles rationed.

“Where is he?” I put the chisel to her flabby throat.

“Ah, ha-ha-ha. Ah, ha-ha-ha.”

Again she began to kick out, thrashing through the plastic sacks with her knees and feet.

I looked down through the sacks and the bags and saw a piece of thick muddy rope.

I let go of her face and pushed her away.

I kicked away the sacks and found a manhole cover threaded through like a giant metal button with the dirty black rope.

I coiled the rope around my good and bad hands and pulled up the manhole cover, swinging it to the side.

Mrs Marsh was sat on her arse giggling under the bench, drumming her heels in hysterics.

I peered into the hole, into a narrow stone shaft with a metal ladder leading down into a faint light some fifty odd feet below.

It was some kind of drainage or Ventilation shaft to a mine.

“He down there?”

She drummed her feet up and down faster and faster, blood still running down from her nose into her mouth, suddenly spreading her legs and rubbing the tea-towel over the top of her tan tights and ruby red knickers.

I reached under the bench and dragged her out by her ankles. I pulled her over on to her stomach and sat astride her arse.

“Ah, ha-ha-ha. Ah, ha-ha-ha.”

I reached up and took some rope from the bench. I hooked it round her neck and then ran it down round her wrists, finally knotting it twice round the leg of the bench.

Mrs Marsh had pissed herself.

I looked back down the shaft, turned round and put one foot into the dark.

I eased myself down into the shaft, the metal ladder cold and wet, the brick walls slippery against my sides.

Down I went, ten feet down.

I could hear the faint sound of running water beneath Mrs Marsh’s shrieks and screams.

Down I went, twenty feet down.

A circle of grey light and madness above.

Down I went, thirty feet down, the laughter and the cries dying with the descent.

I could sense water below, picturing mine shafts sunk with black water and open-mouthed bodies.

Down I went towards the light, not looking up, certain only that I was just going down.

Suddenly one of the sides to the shaft was gone and I was there in the light.

I twisted round, looking into the yellow mouth of a hori zontal passage leading off to my right.

I went a little way further down and then turned, putting my elbows on to the mouth of the hole.

I pulled myself up into the light and crawled on to the shelf. The light was bright, the tunnel narrow and stretching off.

Unable to stand, I forced my belly and elbows across the rough bricks, along the passage towards the source of the light.

I was sweating and tired and dying to stand.

I kept on crawling, thinking of feet and then miles, all dis tance lost.

Suddenly the ceiling went up and I got to my knees, shuffling along, thinking of mountains of dirt piled on top of my head, until my knees and shins were raw and rebelled.

I could hear things moving in the dim light, mice or rats, children’s feet.

I put out my hand into the shale and the slime and brought back a shoe; a child’s sandal.

I lay on the bricks in the dust and the dirt and fought back the tears, stuck with the shoe, unable to throw it, unable to leave it.

I stood in a stoop and began to move again, banging my back on girders and beams, making a yard here, a foot there.

And then the air changed and the sound of water was gone and I could smell death and hear her moaning.

The ceiling went up again and there were more wooden beams to bang my head on and then I turned a corner at an old fall of rock and there I was.

I stood upright in the mouth of a big tunnel in the glare of ten Davy lamps, panting and sweating and thirsty as fuck, trying to take it all in.

Santa’s bloody grotto.

I dropped the shoe, tears streaking through my dirty face.

The tunnel had been bricked up about fifteen feet ahead, the bricks painted blue with white clouds, the floor covered in sacking and white feathers.

Against the two side walls were ten or so thin mirrors all lined up in a row.

Christmas tree angels and fairies and stars hung from the beams, all shining in the glow of the lamps.

There were boxes and there were bags, there were clothes and there were tools.

There were cameras and there were lights, there were tape recorders and there were tapes.

And, beneath the blue wall at the end of the room, lying under some bloody sacking, there was George Marsh.

On a bed of dead red roses.

I walked across the blanket of feathers towards him.

He turned into the light, his eyes holes, his mouth open, his face a mask of red and black blood.

Marsh opened and closed his mouth, bubbles of blood bursting and popping, the howl of a dying dog coming up from within the pit of his belly.

I bent down and looked into the holes from where his eyes had once seen, into the mouth from where his tongue had once spoken, and spat a little piece of me.

I stood up and pulled back the sacking.

George Marsh was naked and dying.

His torso was purple, green, and black, smeared with shit, mud, and blood, burnt.

His cock and balls were gone, flaps of loose skin and pooled blood.

He was twitching and reached up to me, his little finger and thumb all he had left.

I stood up, kicking the blanket back at him.

He lay there with his head raised, praying for an end, the low moan of a man calling for death filling the cavern.

I went to the bags and to the boxes, tipping them over, spilling out clothes and tinsel, baubles and knives, paper crowns and giant needles, looking for books, looking for words.

I found pictures.