‘We’ll catch him, John.’
‘The fuck we will. We haven’t got a clue, not a bloody one. This cunt, he looks back out the mirror at us and he’s laughing. He’s watching us and he’s pissing himself.’
‘Fuck off. You got a point to make, make it.’
Rudkin looks up from his glass, shadows heavy across his face, big black tears in pitch black eyes, a man who keeps a cricket bat by his front door, just in case, and this man he takes hold of my arm and he says, ‘That shit in Preston, that bollocks is nothing to do with what we got here.’
My heart’s beating fast, stomach twisted tight, the man still staring into me, still holding me, still scaring me.
‘The blood groups,’ I say. ‘They’re the same.’
‘It’s bollocks, Bob. Something’s going on and I don’t know what the fuck it is and I don’t want to know what the fuck it is but we’re right in the fucking middle of it and I’ll tell you this: it’s going to fuck up your life if you let it.’
What’s to fuck up, I’m thinking but I let him go on.
‘You don’t know them, Bob,’ he’s saying. ‘I know them. I know the kind of shit they’ll try and pull. Specially for their own.’
I stare down at the stage, at the tops of the stripper’s flaccid white titties, the men at the bar bored already.
I say, ‘One minute you’re telling me not to be afraid, the next minute we might as well jack it in. Which is it, John?’
Rudkin looks at me and shakes his head, half smiling, then walks off back down the stairs, leaving me wanting to punch the arrogant twat.
I stare back down at the stripper’s tits, look at my watch, and decide to get the fuck out of here.
Downstairs Rudkin’s thinking the same, kicking Barton awake, ignoring Ellis and all his apologies.
Barton staggers to his feet and Rudkin takes what’s left of the fivers and stuffs them inside Barton’s tight little jacket.
I look at the stripper gathering up her bikini from the floor of the stage, her arse fat with spots and I look at the bar and the faces of the dead, wondering if he’s here, here with us now, and then I’m back at the table, nowhere left to look.
And Barton’s standing there, coming round, still filled full of rum, and he takes the notes out of his jacket and tosses them on to the table.
‘Keep them,’ he says. ‘Keep them for the next one.’ And he turns and walks out.
‘Thought we were supposed to let him get his dick sucked,’ laughs Ellis.
I pick up one of the rums and drain it.
Ellis, suddenly scared his whole evening’ll fall about his ears and we’ll leave him, sighs, ‘Fuck we going to do now?’
‘Do what you fucking want,’ says Rudkin, going over to the bar, walking into people, looking for a fight to make him feel better.
‘Where you going?’ shouts Ellis as I head for the door.
‘Home,’ I say.
‘Yeah, right,’ he’s saying as I push through the double doors and escape.
I’m in the back of a cab, crawling out of Bradford with the windows down, my eyes dropping, heart heavy, brain in flames:
Got to see Janice, got to see Bobby, got to see Louise, and I’ve got to see her Dad.
Four murdered whores, maybe more.
Shotguns in Hanging Heaton, shotguns in Skipton, shotguns in Doncaster, shotguns up Selby way.
Four murdered whores, maybe more.
My son and my wife, her father’s days numbered.
Janice, my lover, tormentor, my own private whore in my own numbered days.
‘Here OK?’
‘Cheers,’ and I pay him.
I walk up the stairs, suddenly thinking, help me, I’m dying here.
On her landing thinking, you don’t answer the door, I’m dead.
I knock once thinking, help me, I don’t want to die here on your stair.
She comes to the door and smiles, hair damp, her skin browner than before.
The radio’s on inside.
‘Can I come in?’
Her smile broadens, ‘You’re a policeman. You can do what you want.’
‘I hope so,’ I say and we kiss hard; hard kisses to forgive and forget all that went before and is yet to come.
We hit the bed, my hands all over her, trying to get deeper inside her, her nails in my back, getting deeper inside me.
I pull off her jeans, kick off her shoes, death all gone.
And we fuck, then we fuck again, and she kisses me and sucks me until I fuck her one last time and we fall asleep to Rod on the radio.
I wake as she’s coming out of the bathroom, just a t-shirt and knickers.
‘You going out?’ I ask.
‘Got to,’ she says.
‘Don’t.’
‘Told you, I got to.’
I get out of bed and start to dress.
She starts putting on her make-up in front of the mirror.
I ask her: ‘It doesn’t worry you at all?’
‘What?’
‘These fucking murders?’
‘What? You mean because I’m a prostitute?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Like your wife, she’s no need to worry?’
‘She doesn’t walk the streets of bloody Chapeltown at two in the morning, does she?’
‘Lucky bitch. Probably got herself a nice husband to keep her off the streets with his big fat salary…’
I’ve got my wallet open. ‘You want money, I’ll give you fucking money’
‘It’s not the money, Bob. It’s not the fucking money. How many more times?’
She’s standing in the middle of the room, under the paper lampshade, her hairbrush in her hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
She goes to the drawer and puts on some kind of black PVC top and a short denim skirt, the kind that buttons up the front.
My eyes are stinging, filling.
She looks so fucking beautiful and I don’t know how any of this happened, where we came in.
I say, ‘You don’t need to do this.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Why?’
‘Please. Don’t start.’
‘Don’t start? It never stops.’
‘It can stop any time you want.’
‘No, it can’t.’
‘Just don’t come around any more.’
‘I’ll leave her.’
‘You’ll leave your wife and baby for a Chapeltown scrubber, a whore? I don’t think so.’
‘You’re not a whore.’
‘Yes, I am. I’m a dirty little fucking whore, a woman who fucks men for money, who sucks for money on her knees in parks and cars, who’ll have at least ten blokes tonight if I’m lucky, so don’t pretend I’m not.’
‘I’ll leave her.’
‘Shut up, Bob. Shut up,’ and she’s gone, the sound of the door ringing through the room.
And I sit down on the edge of the bed and I cry.
I walk the streets down to St James.
Visiting time is almost up, people filing out, their duty done.
I take the lift up to the ward and walk down the corridor, past the overlit rooms of the nearly dead with their shaven heads and sunken faces, their sallow skin and cold, cold hands.
No air, only heat.
No dark, only light.
Another night in Dachau.
And I’m thinking, never sleep, never sleep.
Louise is gone and her father almost, eyes closed and alone.
A nurse comes by and smiles and I smile back.
‘Just missed them,’ she says.
‘Thanks,’ I nod.
‘Hasn’t half got your eyes, your lad,’ she laughs.
I nod and turn back to her father.
I sit down beside his bed, beside the packets of drugs, the drips and the tubes, and I’m thinking of Janice, there beside the half-dead body of my wife’s father, hard at the thought of another woman, of a Chapeltown whore, and while he’s on his back dying, she’s on her knees sucking, bleeding me.
I look up.
Bill’s looking at me, bloodshot and watery, trying to place me, seeking answers and truth.