Nineteen Seventy-Seven: The Red Riding Quartet, Book Two Read Online Free Page A

drawers upon a stool I made in college and took a sip of Scotland and pondered Dickens and his Edwin, me and mine, and all that’s thine:
Eddie, Eddie, Eddie .
I sang and hummed along:
One Day My Prince Will Come , or was it, If I’d Have Known You Were Coming I’d Have Baked A Cake?
The lies we speak and the ones we don’t:
Carol, Carol, Carol .
Such a wonderful person:
All wanked out on my bathroom floor, on my back, feeling for the toilet paper.
I wiped the come off my belly and squeezed the tissues into a ball, trying to shut them out.
The Temptations of St Jack.
Again the dream.
Again the dead woman.
Again the verdict and the sentence come.
Again, it was happening all over again.
I woke on my floor on my knees by my bed, hands together thanking Jesus Christ My Saviour that I was not the killer of my dreams, that he was alive and he forgave me, that I had not murdered her.
The letterbox rattled.
Children’s voices sang through the flap:
Junky Jack, Druggy Jack, Fuck You Jack Shitehead .
I couldn’t tell if it was morning or afternoon or whether they were just another gang of truants sent to stake my nerves out in the sun for the ants.
I rolled over and went back to Edwin Drood and waited for someone to come and take me a little bit away from all this.
The telephone was ringing again.
Someone to save my soul .
‘You OK? You know what time it is?’
Time? I didn’t even know what fucking year it was, but I nodded and said, ‘Couldn’t get out of bed.’
‘Right. Well, at least you’re here. Small mercies, etc’
You’d think I’d have missed it, the hustle/bustle/tussle etc of the office, the sounds and the smells, but I hated it, dreaded it. Hated and dreaded it like I’d hated and dreaded the corridors and classrooms of school, their sounds and their smells.
I was shaking.
‘Been drinking?’
‘About forty years.’
Bill Hadden smiled.
He knew I owed him, knew he was calling in his debts. Looking down at my hands, I couldn’t quite think why.
The prices we pay, the debts we incur .
And all on the never-never .
I looked up and said, ‘When did they find her?’
‘Yesterday morning.’
‘I’ve missed the press conference then?’
Bill smiled again. ‘You wish.’
I sighed.
‘They issued a statement last night, but they’ve held the meet over until eleven this morning.’
I looked at my watch.
It had stopped.
‘What time is it?’
‘Ten,’ he grinned.
I took a taxi from the Yorkshire Post building over to the Kirkgate Market and sat in a gutter in the low morning sun with all the other dumb angels, trying to get it together. But the crotch of the trousers of my suit stank and there was dandruff all over my collar and I couldn’t get the tune of The Little Drummer Boy out of my mind and I was surrounded by pubs, all closed for another hour, and there were tears in my eyes, terrible tears that didn’t stop for quarter of an hour.
‘Well look what the bloody cat dragged in.’
Sergeant Wilson was still on the desk, taking me back.
‘Samuel,’ I nodded.
‘How long’s it been?’ he whistled.
‘Not long enough.’
He was laughing, ‘You here for the press conference?’
‘Not for the bloody good of my health, am I?’
‘Jack Whitehead? Good health? Never.’ He pointed upstairs. ‘You know the way’
‘Unfortunately’
It was not as busy as I thought it would be and I didn’t recognise anyone.
I lit a cigarette and sat at the back.
There were a lot of chairs down at the front and a WPC was putting out about ten glasses of water and I wondered if she’d let me have one, but I knew she wouldn’t.
The room started to fill with men who looked like footballers and a couple of women and for a moment I thought one of them was Kathryn, but when she turned round she wasn’t.
I lit another cigarette.
A door opened down the front and out came the police, damp suits and ties, red necks and faces, no sleep.
The room was suddenly full, the air gone.
It was Monday 30 May 1977.
I was back.
Thanks, Jack .
George Oldman, in the middle of the table, began:
‘Thank