Nineteen Seventy-Seven: The Red Riding Quartet, Book Two by David Peace Page A

happened.’
The room was dark, the sun gone.
‘Did you see him?’
‘Well, they reckon I did. Couple of minutes before it happened, some bloke passed me and said something like, “Weather’s letting us down,” and just kept going. Police reckoned it could have been him because he never came forward like.’
‘Did you say anything back?’
‘No, just kept going.’
‘But you saw his face?’
‘Yeah, I saw his face.’
She had her eyes closed, her hands locked together between her knees.
I sat there in her front room, another wicket down, like he was there on the sofa next to me, a big smile, a hand on my knee, a last laugh amongst the furniture.
She opened her eyes wide, staring past me.
‘You OK?’
‘He was well-dressed and smelt of soap. Had a neat beard and moustache. Looked Italian or Greek you know, like one of them good-looking waiters.’
He was stroking his beard, grinning .
‘He have an accent?’
‘Local.’
‘Tall?’
‘Nowt special. Could have been wearing boots and all, them Cuban type.’
He was shaking his head .
‘And so he walked past you and …’
She closed her eyes again and said slowly, ‘And then couple of minutes later he hit me and that was that.’
He winked once and was gone again .
She leant forward and pulled her blonde hair flat across the top of her head.
‘Go on, feel it,’ she said.
I reached across another room to touch the top of another head, through another set of damaged black roots, another huge and hollow crater.
I traced around the edges of the indentation, the smoothness beneath the hair.
‘You want to see my scars?’
‘OK.’
She stood up and pulled up her thin sweater, revealing broad red strokes across a flabby pale stomach.
They looked like giant medieval leeches, bleeding her.
‘You can touch them if you want,’ she said, stepping closer and taking my hand.
She ran my finger across the deepest scar, my throat dry and cock hard.
She held my finger in the deepest point.
After a minute she said, ‘We can go upstairs if you want.’
I coughed and moved back. ‘I don’t think …’
‘Married?’
‘No. Not …’
She pulled down her sweater. ‘You just don’t fancy me, right?’
‘It’s not that.’
‘Don’t worry, love. There’s not many that do these days. Attacked by that fucking maniac and known all over cos of her black fellers, that’s me. Only fucks I get are from darkies and weirdos.’
‘That why you asked me?’
‘No,’ she smiled. ‘I like you, don’t I.’
Collapsed in my car, picking through the fish and the chips, the ones that got away .
I looked at my watch.
It was time to go.
Underneath the arches, those dark, dark arches: Swinegate.
We’d said we’d meet at five, five while the light was still with us.
I parked down the bottom end but I could already see him, at the other end, up by the Scarborough Hotel, still wearing that hat and coat, despite the weather, to spite the weather, still carrying that case, just like the last time:
Sunday 26 January 1975 .
‘Reverend Laws,’ I said, my hand in my pocket.
‘Jack,’ he smiled. ‘It’s been too long,’
‘Not long enough.’
‘Jack, Jack. Always the same, always so sad.’
I was thinking, not here, not in the street .
I said, ‘Can we go somewhere. Somewhere quiet?’
He nodded at the big black building looming over the Scarborough, ‘The Griffin?’
‘Why not.’
The Reverend Martin Laws led the way, walking ahead in his stoop, a giant too big for this world or the next, his grey hair protruding from under his hat, licking the collar of his coat. He turned to hurry me along, through the passers-by, past the shops, between the cars, under the scaffolding and into the dim lobby of the Griffin.
He waved at some seats in the far corner, two high-backed chairs under an unlit lamp, and I nodded.
We sat down and he took off his hat, placing it on his lap, his case at his calves.
He smiled at me again, through his long grey stubble and his dirty yellow skin, an old newspaper, just like mine.
He smelt of fish.
A Turkish waiter approached.
‘Mehmet,’ said