Nineteen Eighty by David Peace Page A

folk, drunk in the seclusion of the Midland Hotel, the castle of loot, an abbey to the anointed and self-appointed City Fathers, with their city mothers, wives and daughters, their secret lovers, whores and sons.
Without no one –
Through the black city streets to the place where the red carpet meets the street at the doors to the Midland, these gates of iron in these strong and lofty walls with no hint of ingress or egress, where all that is outside can never be in and to hell with it, damn it, for here inside are the bright lights, the purples and the gold, the servants and the servings, the musicians and the music, the dancers and the dance, the Masked Christmas Ball.
Without nothing –
Through the beauty and the beautiful, the security and the secure, the fat and the fat, we are led to our seats, Joan’s arm tightening inside my own, our masks in place, through the high double doors into the dim velvet sea and the palatial splendour of the Dining Room, her Gothic windows of stained glass, the thrown shadows of her lamps and candles, her ornaments and tapestries ceiling to floor, all heavy with the weight of wealth, the stains of class and brass and the deep blood colour of Christmas reds, of Herod and his kids.
Within dreams –
‘Something wicked this way comes,’ smiles Clement Smith, the Chief Constable raising his mask with a wink as our wives fall into the comfort of compliments.
I sit down next to him, shaking hands with an MP, a councillor, a millionaire and all their present wives, local Masons and Rotarians the table of them –
‘How goes the war?’ laughs Clive Birkenshaw, the councillor drunk on a punch as crimson as his face.
‘The hunt more like,’ says Donald Lees of the Greater Manchester Police Authority.
‘What?’ I say.
‘You’ve been over in Yorkshire after their Ripper?’
I nod, the laughter and the music too much.
‘Most apt,’ Lees carries on, leaning across the corpse of his wife. ‘Hunter in Ripper Hunt , said the Manchester Evening News.’
‘Apt,’ comes the echo around the tablecloth.
‘Any luck?’
I look down at my hand, shaking my head, and I bring the whiskey up to my lips and let it fall down my throat.
Joan and Clement Smith have changed seats so the wives can chat.
I take another mouthful.
Clement Smith orders more.
I’m exhausted –
The cigars already out, the dance-floor filling, time flying –
And then suddenly across the room I think I see Ronald Angus and Peter Noble on another table by the door but, when I look again, it isn’t –
Can’t have been and Leeds is just a dream –
A terrible dream –
Like the Ripper, their Ripper .
I sit back in my chair, letting the Velvet Sea wash over me, playing her tricks with the horizon; the wail of violins, the hoarse voice of Clement Smith deep in debate, his wife and mine making their way through the waves, off to powder their noses.
Then I feel a hand on mine –
I look down at a man crouched beside my chair: ‘Pardon?’
‘I said we have a mutual friend.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Helen,’ he grins, a short thin man with brown stained teeth.
‘Helen who?’
But he just winks: ‘From her Vice days. Tell her I said hello.’
‘What?’
But he’s wading away, back into the velvet sea, waving, back into her dance.
I interrupt Clement Smith: ‘Who was that?’
‘Who?’
‘That man, the one who was just at the table? Talking to me?’
Smith’s laughing: ‘Wearing his mask was he?’
‘No, but I can’t place him.’
He sits up slightly in his seat: ‘I didn’t see him. Sorry. Where is he?’
‘Doesn’t matter, just wondered who he was.’ I pick up a glass and drink some more, lost –
‘Peter?’
I look up from the drink: ‘Richard. Merry Christmas.’
‘If only,’ he says.
The man is tall and gaunt, pale as a ghost, the black mask in his hand and a blood-red shirt only accentuating his grim pallor, mumbling.
‘What?’
He asks: ‘We talk?’
I stand up, nodding, leaving my cigar in the ashtray, and follow Richard Dawson through the tables and out into the Lobby