“What did you say?”
Shaw reached over to close the door. “Nothing.”
I leant back into the car, holding the door open, shouting, “Just tell me what you fucking said.”
“I said he looks so different that’s all, paler.”
I slammed the door on him, tearing across the car park, thinking Jimmy James fucking Ashworth.
Ninety miles an hour.
One hand in the glove compartment, a bandage on the wheel, sifting through the pills and the maps, the rags and the fags.
The Sweet on the radio.
Nervous darts into the rearview mirror.
Finding the micro-cassette, yanking the Philips Pocket Memo out of my jacket, ripping one tape out, ramming another in.
Rewind.
Pressing play:
“It were like she’d rolled down or something.”
Forward.
Play: “I couldn’t believe it was her.”
Listen.
“She looked so different, so white.”
Stop.
Fitzwilliam.
69 Newstead View, TV lights on.
Ninety miles an hour, up the garden path.
Knock, knock, knock, knock.
“What do you want?” said Mrs Ashworth, trying to close the door on me.
A foot in the door, pushing it back.
“Here, you can’t just come barging into people’s houses.”
“Where is he?” I said, knocking past her into one of her saggy tits.
“He’s not here, is he. Here, come back!”
Up the stairs, banging open doors.
“I’m calling the police,” shouted Mrs Ashworth from the foot of the stairs.
“You do that, love,” I said, looking at an unmade bed and a Leeds United poster, smelling winter damp and teenage wank.
“I’m warning you,” she shouted.
“Where is he?” I said as I came back down the stairs.
“He’s at work, isn’t he.”
“Wakefield?”
“I don’t know. He never says.”
I looked at my father’s watch. “What time did he set off?”
“Van came at quarter to seven, same as always.”
“He’s mates with Michael Myshkin, isn’t he?”
Mrs Ashworth held the door open,her lips pursed.
“Mrs Ashworth, I know they’re friends.”
“Jimmy always felt bloody sorry for him. He’s like that, it’s his character.”
“Very touching, I’m sure,” I said, walking out the door.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” shouted Mrs Ashworth from the front step.
At the bottom of the path, I opened the garden gate and stared up the road at the burnt-out Number 54. “I hope your neighbours agree.”
“You’re always making something out of nothing, you people,” she screamed after me, slamming the front door shut.
Flat out down the Barnsley Road into Wakefield, glances in the rearview mirror.
Radio on.
Jimmy Young and the Archbishop of Canterbury debating Anal Rape and The Exorcist with the housebound of Britain.
“They should ban them both. Disgusting, that’s what they are.”
Through the Christmas lights and the first spits of rain, up past the County and Town Halls.
“Exorcism, as practised by the Church of England, is a deeply religious rite and not something to be entered into lightly. This film creates a totally false impression of exorcism.”
I parked opposite Lumbs Dairy by the Drury Lane Library, the rain coming down cold, grey, and heavy.
“If you take the guilt out of sex, you take guilt away from society and I do not think society could function without guilt.”
Radio off.
I sat in the car smoking, watching the empty milk floats return home.
Just gone eleven-thirty.
I jogged down past the prison and on to the building site, the Foster’s Construction sign rattling under the rain.
I pushed open the tarpaulin door of an unfinished house, the radio playing Tubular Bells.
Three big men, stinking and smoking.
“Fuck, not you again,” said one big man with a sandwich in his mouth and flask of tea in his hand.
I said, “I’m looking for Jimmy Ashworth.”
“He’s not here, is he,” said another big man with the back of his NCB donkey jacket to me.
“What about Terry Jones?”
“He’s not here either,” said the donkey jacket to the grins of the other two men.
“Do you know where they are?”
“No,” said the sandwich man.
“What about your Gaffer, is he about?”
“Just not your lucky day is it.”
“Thanks,” I said, thinking choke on it you thick fucking twat.
“Don’t mention it,” sandwich man smiled as I went back out.
I turned up the collar of my jacket and stuck my hands and bandages deep into my pockets. Down there, with Paul’s Ronson lighter and the odd pennies, I found a feather in my pocket.
I walked through the piles of cheap bricks and the half-built houses towards Devil’s Ditch, thinking of that last school photograph of Clare, with her nervous pretty smile, stuck on to the black and white shots on my Redbeck walls.
I looked up, the feather in my fingers.
Jimmy Ashworth was stumbling and running across the wasteland towards me, big red spots of blood dropping from his nose and his scalp on to his skinny white chest.
“What the fuck’s going on?” I shouted.
He slowed to a walk as he drew near me, pretending like nothing was up.
“What happened to you?”
“Just piss off, will you.”
In the distance, Terry Jones was coming up behind Jimmy from Devil’s Ditch.
I grabbed Jimmy’s arm. “What did he say to you?”
He tried to twist free, screaming, “Get off me!”
I grabbed the other arm of his jacket. “You’d seen her before, hadn’t you?”
“Fuck off!”
Terry Jones had broken into a jog, waving at us.
“You told Michael Myshkih about her, didn’t you?”
“Fuck off,” shouted Jimmy, twisting out of his jacket and shirt, breaking into a run.
I span round, rugby tackling him into the mud.
He fell into the mud beneath me.
I had him pinned down, shouting, “Where had you fucking seen her?”
“Fuck off!” Jimmy Ashworth was screaming, looking up past me into a big grey sky that was pissing down all over his muddy, bloody face.
“Tell me where you’d fucking seen her.”
“No.”
I slapped my bandaged hand across his face, pain shooting up my arm into my heart, yelling, “Tell me!”
“Get the fuck off him,” said Terry Jones, pulling me backwards by the collar of my jacket.
“Fuck off,” I said, my arms flailing and lashing out at Terry Jones.
Jimmy Ashworth, breaking free from my legs, got to his feet and ran bare-chested towards the houses, the rain, the mud, and the blood running down his naked back.
“Jimmy!” I shouted, wrestling with Terry Jones.
“Leave it fucking be,” hissed Jones.
Over by the houses, the three big men had come out and were laughing at Jimmy as he sprinted past them.
“He’d fucking seen her before.”
“Leave it!”
Jimmy Ashworth kept on running.
The three big men stopped laughing and started walking over towards me and Terry Jones.
He released me, whispering, “You best piss off.”
“I’m going to fucking have you, Jones.”
Terry Jones picked up Jimmy Ashworth’s shirt and jacket. “Then you’re wasting your time.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he smiled sadly.
I turned and walked away towards Devil’s Ditch, wiping the mud from my hands on to my trousers.
I heard a shout and looked round to see Terry Jones, his arms up, shepherding the three big men back towards the half-built houses.
There was no sign of Jimmy Ashworth.
I stood on the lip of the Ditch, looking down at the rusted prams and bicycles, the cookers and the fridges, thinking all of modern life is here and so was Clare Kemplay, aged ten.