My fingers black with dirt, I took the small white feather from my pocket.
At Devil’s Ditch, I looked up into the big black sky and put the small white feather to my pale pink lips thinking, if only it hadn’t been her.
The Strafford Arms, the Bullring, Wakefield.
The dead centre of Wakefield, the Friday before Christmas.
Mud Man, up the stairs and through the door.
Members only.
“It’s all right Grace, he’s with me,” said Box to the woman behind the bar.
Derek Box and Paul at the bar, whiskys and cigars in their hands.
There was Elvis on the jukebox.
Just Derek, Paul, Grace, Elvis, and me.
Box got up from his stool and walked across the room to a table in the window.
“You look like shit. What the fuck happened to you?”
I sat down opposite Box, my back to Paul and the door, looking out on a wet Wakefield.
“I went down Devil’s Ditch.”
“I thought they’d got someone for that?”
“So did I.”
“Some things are best left,” said Derek Box, examining the end of his cigar.
“Like Councillor Shaw?”
Box relit his cigar. “Did you see him?”
“Yeah.”
Paul put a whisky and a pint in front of me.
I tipped the whisky into my pint.
“And?”
“And he’s probably talking to Donald Foster as we speak.”
“Good.”
“Good? Foster had Barry fucking killed.”
“Probably.”
“Probably?”
“Barry got ambitious.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Barry had his own agenda.”
“So what? Foster must be fucking insane. We can’t just let it go. We’ve got to do something about it.”
“He’s not insane,” said Box. “Just motivated.”
“You know him well or something?”
“We were in Kenya together.”
“Business?”
“Her Majesty’s business. We did our National fucking Service in the Highlands, protecting fat cunts like I am now, fighting the fucking Mau Maus.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. They’d come down from the hills like a tribe of bloody Red Indians, raping the women, cutting the cocks off the men, stringing them upon fence posts.”
“You’re joking?”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
“No.”
“We weren’t angels, Mr Dunford. I was with Don Foster when we ambushed a fucking War Party. We shot them in the knees with.303s so we could have some fun.”
“Fuck.”
“Foster took his time. He taped the screams, the dogs barking, claimed it helped him sleep.”
I picked up Paul’s lighter from the table and lit a cigarette.
Paul brought over two more whiskys.
“It was war, Mr Dunford. Just like now.”
I picked up my glass.
Box was sweating as he drank, his eyes off deep in the dark.
“A year ago they were going to bring back rationing. Now we got inflation at fucking 25 per cent.”
I took a mouthful of whisky, drunk, scared, and bored. “What does that have to do with Don Foster or Barry?”
Box lit another cigar and sighed. “The trouble with your generation is that you know nowt. Why do you think the man with the boat beat the man with the pipe in ‘70?”
“Wilson was complacent.”
“Complacent my arse,” laughed Box.
“Go on then, you tell me.”
“Because likes of Cecil King, Norman Collins, Lord Renwick, Shawcross, Paul Chambers at ICI, Lockwood at EMI and McFadden at Shell, and others like them, they sat down and said enough was bloody enough.”
“So?”
“So these men have power; the power to build or break men.”
“What’s that got to do with Foster?”
“You’re not fucking listening to me! I’ll spell it out in your talk.”
“Please…”
“Power’s like glue. It sticks men like us together, keeps every thing in place.”
“You and Foster are…”
“We’re peas in a pod, me and him. We like to fuck and make a buck and we’re not right choosey how we do either. But he’s got too big for his fucking boots and now he’s cutting me out and it pisses me off.”
“So you use me and Barry to blackmail his mates?”
“We had a deal, me and Foster and another man. That other man is dead. They waited until he came back from Australia and took him as he came out of his mother’s flat in Blackpool. They bound his arms behind him with a towel and then wrapped him in twenty foot of tape from his shoulders to his hips. Then they stuffed him into the boot of his car and drove him on to Moors. When it was dawn, three men held him upright and a fourth thrust a knife into his heart five times.”
I was looking down into my whisky glass, the room slightly spinning.
“That was my brother they killed. He’d been back home one fucking day.”
“I’m sorry.”
“At the funeral, there was a card. No name, just said, Three can keep a secret, if two are dead.”
“I don’t want any part of this,” I said quietly.
Box nodded once at Paul sat over by the bar and said loudly, “It seems like we overestimated you, Mr Dunford.”
“I’m just a journalist.”
Paul came up behind me, a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“Then you’ll do as you’re told, Mr Dunford, and you’ll get your story. Leave the rest to us.”
I said again, “I don’t want to be part of this.”
Box cracked his knuckles and smiled. “Tough shit. You are a part of it.”
Paul picked me up by my collar.
“Now piss off!”
Mud Man on the run.
Back down Westgate.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Barry and Clare.
Little dead Clare Kemplay, kissed this boy and made him cry.
Clare and Barry.
Dirty Barry, when he’d been good he’d been very, very good, when he’d been bad he’d been very, very bad.
A policeman stood in a doorway, keeping out of the rain. Me, the urge to fall to my knees at his feet, praying he was a good man, and tell him the whole fucking sad story, to come in out of the rain.
But tell him what?
Tell him I was in over my head, covered in mud and drunk as fuck.
Mud Man, straight into Leeds, dirt cracking as I drove.
Mud Man, straight into the office bogs, caked in shit.
A clean face and one clean hand, a dirty suit and a black bandage, sitting down behind my desk at 3 PM on Friday 20 December 1974.
“Nice suit, Eddie lad.”
“Fuck off, George.”
“Merry Christmas to you too.”
Messages and cards littered the desk; Sergeant Fraser calling twice that morning, Bill Hadden requesting my presence at my earliest convenience.
I slumped back in my chair, George Greaves farting to the applause of the few back from lunch.
I smiled and picked up the cards; three ‘from Down South, plus one with my name and office punched into plastic Dymo tape and stuck to the envelope.
On the other side of the office, Gaz was taking bets on the Newcastle-Leeds game.
I opened the envelope and pulled out the card with my teeth and my left hand.
“Do you want in, Eddie?” shouted Gaz.
On the front of the card was a cabin made of logs in the middle of a snow-covered forest.
“Ten bob on Lorimer,” I said, opening the card.
“Jack’s got him.”
Inside the card, over the Christmas message, were stuck two more strips of Dymo tape.
Quietly I said, “I’ll have Yorath then.”
Punched into the top plastic strip was: KNOCK ON THE DOOR OF…
“You what?”
Punched into the bottom plastic strip was: FLAT 405, CITY
HEIGHTS .
“Yorath,” I said, staring at the card. “Anyone I know?” I looked up.
Jack Whitehead said, “I just hope it’s from a woman.”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard you were hanging around with young boys,” smiled Jack.
I put the card inside my jacket pocket. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. With orange hair.”
“Who’d you hear that from then, Jack?”
“A little bird.”
“You stink of drink.”
“So do you.”
“It’s Christmas.”
“Not for much longer,” grinned Jack. “Boss wants to see you.”
“I know,” I said, not moving.
“He asked me to come and find you, make sure you didn’t get lost again.”
“Going to hold my hand?”
“You’re not my type.”