‘What time is it?’ asks Rudkin, too tired to look at his own watch.
‘What am I? The speaking fucking clock?’
‘Speaking cock, more like.’
And we keep this up for about two minutes till we fade back into another one of them fucked-up knackered silences in which we hide.
‘We’re letting him go.’
Out of silence and back into the bright, bright lights of the police canteen, the world of Chief Superintendent Peter Noble.
‘Quel surprise,’ mutters Rudkin.
‘Not a B?’ I say.
‘O,’ says Noble.
I ask, ‘Get anything else from him?’
‘Not much. He was pimping her. Hadn’t seen her since the afternoon.’
‘Should’ve let us at him,’ spits Rudkin.
‘Well, now’s your chance. He’s waiting for you downstairs with DC Ellis.’
‘You don’t need us. Ellis can take him home.’
Noble takes a wad of fivers from his jacket and leans over and stuffs them inside Rudkin’s top pocket. ‘The Assistant Chief Constable wants you to take Mr Barton out and get him pissed, give him a good time. No hard feelings etc.’
‘Fuck,’ says Rudkin. ‘We’re up to our fucking eyes in work, Pete. We got all the stuff from Preston, then you put Bob on these fucking robberies. Now this. We haven’t got the time.’
I’m looking at the table top, the lights reflecting in the Formica.
Noble bends over and pats Rudkin’s top pocket. ‘Stop whining John and just do it.’
Rudkin waits till Noble’s out the door and then gives it, ‘Cunt. Fucking cunt.’
We stand up, stiff as a pair of wooden puppets.
Ellis is in the Rover, sat behind the wheel waiting.
Barton’s in the back in oversize trousers and a tiny jacket, dreadlocks against the window.
Rudkin gets in next to him. ‘Where to?’
I get in the front.
Barton’s just staring out the glass.
‘Come on, Steve. Where to?’
‘Home,’ he mumbles.
‘Home? You can’t go home now. It’s only three o’clock. Let’s all have a drink.’
Barton knows he’s no fucking choice.
Ellis starts the car and asks: ‘Where to then?’
‘Bradford. Manningham,’ says Rudkin.
‘Bradford it is,’ smiles Ellis as we pull out of Millgarth.
I close my eyes as he sticks the radio on.
I wake up as we get into Manningham, Wings on the radio, Barton silent as some black ghost in the back.
Ellis pulls up outside the New Adelphi.
Rudkin says, ‘What do you reckon, Steve?’
Steve says nowt.
‘Heard it’s all right,’ says Ellis and out we get.
There’s day-old puke on the steps and inside the New Adelphi is a big old ballroom, high ceilings and flock wallpaper, the crowd mixed, stirred, and well fucking shaken and it’s not even four o’clock in the afternoon.
I’m shattered, shoulders down, head killing, the stripper not on again until six and they’re playing some reggae bollocks:
‘Your mother is wondering where you are…’
Rudkin turns to Steve and says, ‘See, right up your street.’
Steve just nods and we plonk him down in the corner under the stairs up to the balcony, me on one side, Rudkin on the other, Ellis at the bar.
The three of us sit there, saying nothing, scanning the ballroom, the black faces and the white.
‘Know anyone?’ asks Rudkin.
Barton shakes his head.
‘Good. Don’t want folk thinking you’re a bloody grass now do we?’
Ellis gets back with a tray of pints and shorts.
He hands Barton a large rum and coke. ‘Get that down you.’
‘Here Steve,’ laughs Rudkin. ‘You come here often?’
And we’re laughing, but not Steve.
It’s going to be a long time before he starts laughing again.
Ellis goes back to the bar and brings over more drinks, more rum and cokes, and we drink them and then back he goes.
And we sit there, the four of us, talking here and there, the endless reggae, the Paki cab drivers coming in and out, the slags falling about on the dancefloor, the old blokes with their dominoes, the rat-faced whites with their v-necked sweaters and no shirts, the fat-faced blacks nodding their heads to the music:
‘What do you see at night when you’re under the stars
Rudkin and Ellis have got their heads together, laughing at one of the women at the bar, the one sticking two fingers up at them.
‘Stay at home sister, stay at home
And Barton suddenly leans across to me, his hand on my arm, his eyes yellow, breath rank, and he says: ‘That shit about Kenny and Marie, that true?’
I look at him, his tight jacket and baggy trousers, seeing him back down in the Belly under that grey blanket, his hands moving, the magazines beside him.
‘You got to tell me. I know you’re tight with Kenny and Joe Ro. I ain’t going to do nothing, but I got to know.’
I take his hand off my arm and push it away, spitting in his face: ‘Fuck I care about your shit. You got bad information, boy’
And he sits back in his chair and Rudkin throws another cigarette at him and Ellis goes back to the bar and brings more drinks, more rum and cokes, and the reggae keeps on going:
‘Baby keep on running but you won’t get far
And when I next look at my watch it’s almost six and I want to be gone, gone like Steve who’s pissed now, head down on the table, dreadlocks in the ashtray.
The music stops, the microphone wails across the room, and a spotlight hits the heavy red curtains at the back of the stage.
Dancing Queen starts up, the curtains go back, and there’s a flabby brunette in a sequined bikini standing there, eyes glazed, limbs slack.
‘Dumb fucking monkey’s going to miss the show,’ lisps Ellis, nodding at Barton as the woman jerks into some kind of life.
‘Mike, you’re fucking boring,’ hisses Rudkin and gets up and wanders off up the stairs to the balcony.
‘Fuck’s got into him?’
I say, ‘You got to learn to bloody read people.’
Mike starts up again, moaning, whining, injured.
‘Keep an eye on Sleeping Beauty,’ I say, following Rudkin upstairs.
He’s leaning over the balcony, staring down at the bleached stripper.
‘Good view,’ I say, elbows next to his.
All the blokes downstairs are facing the stage, women lolling about between them, one woman tossing peanuts in the air and catching them between her tits.
Rudkin swirls the whisky about in the bottom of his glass and says, ‘You know what it’s going to be like from now on, don’t you?’
Thinking, here we fucking go, saying, ‘No. What’s it going to be like?’
Rudkin keeps staring into the bottom of his glass. ‘He’ll keep killing them and we’ll keep finding them. Always behind, never in front.’
‘We’ll catch him,’ I say.
‘Yeah? How?’
‘Hard bloody work, patience, and he’ll fuck up. The usual way.’
‘The usual way? There’s no usual way here.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘No, I don’t. You seen this kind of thing before?’
I think of little girls and lost years and I say, ‘Similar.’
‘I don’t think you have.’
I can’t be arsed: ‘We’ll catch him.’
‘You’re a good man, Bob,’ he says and I wish he hadn’t because it’s been said before and it wasn’t true then and it’s even less true now, just fucking patronising.
So I say, ‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means what I say: you’re a good bloke, but all the fucking good blokes and all the hard work in the world isn’t going to catch this cunt.’
‘And what makes you so fucking certain?’
‘You read that Murders and Assaults Upon Women in the North of England shit?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And?’