“Mm, yeah.”
“Such a waste.”
“Yeah,” I said, the lights catching the beads of sweat in Derek Box’s fair hairline.
“Seems a pity to let it go unfinished, so much of it unpub lished, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. I mean, I don’t know…”
Paul held out the Ronson for me.
I inhaled deeply and tried to flex the grip of my right hand. It hurt like fuck.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what are you working on at the moment, Mr Dunford?”
“The Clare Kemplay murder.”
“Appalling,” sighed Derek Box. “Bloody appalling. There aren’t words. And?”
“That’s about it.”
“Really? Then you’re not continuing your late friend’s crusade?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“I was led to believe you were in receipt of the great man’s files.”
“Who told you that?”
“I’m not a grass, Mr Dunford.”
“I know, I’m not saying you are.”
“I hear things and I know people who hear things.”
I looked down at a forkful of rice lying cold upon my plate. “Who?”
“Do you ever drink in the Strafford Arms?”
“In Wakefield?”
“Aye,” smiled Box.
“No. I can’t say that I do.”
“Well, maybe you should. See, upstairs is a private club, bit like your own Press Club. A place where a businessman such as myself and an officer of the law can get together in a less formal setting. Let our hair down, so to speak.”
I suddenly saw myself on the back seat of my own car, the black upholstery wet with blood, a tall man with a beard driving and humming along to Rod Stewart.
“You all right?” said Derek Box.
I shook my head. “I’m not interested.”
“You will be,” winked Box, his eyes small and lashless, straight from the Deep.
“I don’t think so.”
“Give it to him, Paul.”
Paul reached down under the table and brought out a thin manila envelope, tossing it across the dirty plates and empty pints.
“Open it,” Box dared me.
I picked up the manila envelope and stuck my left hand inside, feeling the familiar sheen of glossy enlargements.
I looked across the white tablecloth at Derek Box and Paul, visions of little girls wearing black and white wings stitched into skin swimming through the lunchtime bitter.
“Take a fucking look.”
I held the envelope down with my grey bandages and slowly removed the photographs with my left. I pushed back the plates and the bowls and laid out the three enlarged black and white photographs.
Two men naked.
Derek Box was grinning, a slash for a smile.
“I hear you’re a bit of a cunt man, Mr Dunford. So I apologise for the vile content of these snaps.”
I moved each picture apart.
Barry James Anderson, sucking the cock and licking the balls of an old man.
I said, “Who is it?”
“Well, how the mighty have fallen,” sighed Derek Box.
“They’re not very clear.”
“I think you’ll find they’re clear enough to Councillor and former Alderman William Shaw, brother of the more famous Robert Shaw, should you ever wish to present him with a couple of snaps for his family album.”
The old body came into focus, the flabby belly and the skinny ribs, the white hairs and the moles.
“Bill Shaw?”
“I’m afraid so,” smiled Box.
Christ.
William Shaw, Chairman of the new Wakefield Metropolitan District Council and the West Yorkshire Police Authority, a former regional organiser of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, representing that union on the National Executive Com mittee of the Labour Party.
I stared at the swollen testicles, the silhouettes of the knotted veins in his cock, the grey pubic hairs.
William Shaw, brother of the more famous Robert.
Robert Shaw, the Home Office Minister of State and the man widely tipped Most Likely to Succeed.
Councillor Shaw, the Man Most Likely to Suck.
Fuck.
Councillor Shaw as Barry’s Third Man?
Dawsongate.
I said, “Barry knew?”
“Aye. But he lacked the tools, so to speak.”
“You want me to blackmail Shaw with these?”
“Blackmail’s not the word I had in mind.”
“What word had you in mind?”
“Persuade.”
“Persuade him to do what?”
“Persuade the Councillor that he should bare his soul of all his public wrongdoings, safe in the knowledge that his private life shall remain exactly that.”
“Why?”
“The Great British Public get the kind of truth they deserve.”
“And?”
“And we,” winked Box. “We get what we want.”
“No.”
“Then you’re not the man I thought you were.”
I looked down at the black and white photographs lying on the white tablecloth.
“And what kind of man was that?” I asked.
“A brave one.”
“You call these brave?” I said, pushing the photographs away with my grey right hand.
“In these times, yes I do.”
I took a cigarette from my pack and Paul reached across the table with the Ronson.
I said, “He’s not married is he?”
“Makes no odds,” smiled Box.
The waiter came back carrying an empty tray. “Ice-cream, Mr Box?”
Box waved his cigar in my direction. “Just one for my friend here.”
“Very good, Mr Box.” The waiter began piling the dirty plates and glasses on to the silver tray, leaving only the ashtray and the three photographs.
Derek Box ground out his cigar in the ashtray and leant across the table.
“This country’s at war, Mr Dunford. The government and the unions, the Left and the Right, the rich and the poor. Then you got your Paddys, your wogs, your niggers, the puffs and the perverts, even the bloody women; they’re all out for what they can get. Soon there’ll be nowt left for the working white man.”
“And that’s you?”
Derek Box stood up. “To the victor, the spoils.”
The waiter returned with a silver bowl of ice-cream.
Paul helped Derek Box into his cashmere coat.
“Tomorrow lunchtime, upstairs in Strafford Arms.”
He squeezed my shoulder tightly as he went out.
I stared down at the ice-cream in front of me, sitting in the middle of the black and white photographs.
“Enjoy your ice-cream,” shouted Derek Box from the door.
I stared at the cocks and the balls, at the hands and the tongues, the spit and the spunk.
I pushed the ice-cream away.
A one-coin call at the top of Hanging Heaton, the stink of curry on the receiver.
No answer.
Out the door, a fart in my stride.
The one-armed driver on the road to Fitzwilliam, the radio on low:
Michael John Myshkin leading on the local two o’clock, the IRA Christmas ceasefire on the national.
I glanced at the envelope on the passenger seat and pulled over.
Two minutes later and the one-armed driver was back on the road, the manila sins of Councillor William Shaw hidden beneath the passenger seat.
I checked the rearview mirror.
Almost dark and not yet three.
Newstead View revisited.
Back amongst the ponies and the dogs, the rust and plaggy bags.
I drove slowly along the dark street.
TV lights on in Number 69.
I parked in front of what was left of 54.
The pack had been to the terrace, feasting and fighting, leaving three black eyes where the windows had been.
Hang the Pervert and LUFC were written in dripping white paint above the front window.
A brown front door lay amongst a forest of chopped and charred sticks of furniture, kicked and severed in the middle of a tiny lawn strewn with a family’s tat.
Two dogs chased their arses in and out of the Myshkin family’s home.