Read Online Nineteen Eighty by David Peace - Free Book Online

neck in all this?’
‘There’s nothing I can do, Richard. You’re under investigation.’
‘Because of you, I am.’
I’m walking away again, deaf to him –
But he has the last word, across the lobby and through the Dining Room doors, spinning me round, hissing into my face: ‘What are friends for, eh Pete?’
Walking away, walking away through the velvet sea, Joan talking to Linda Dawson, his wife –
The pair of them turning, smiling.
Him: ‘What are friends for, eh?’
Me taking her by the arm, through the darkness and the decay, pulling her away, away from the music and the blood –
‘What are friends for?’
Within nightmares .
The house is black.
I put the car in the garage and go inside.
Joan’s sitting on the settee in the dark, her coat still on.
I switch on the Christmas tree lights and sit down beside her.
‘What is it? What happened with Richard?’ she says. ‘He’s under investigation. To do with his business.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘No. But he thinks it’s something to do with his friendship with me, with us.’
‘What?’
‘Someone told him that’s why he’s under investigation.’
‘Who told him that?’
‘An ex-copper. You don’t know him.’
‘And is it right? Is that why he’s under investigation?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘What am I going to say to Linda?’
‘I don’t know but, until all this is cleared up, we’re going to have to be careful.’
She is nodding.
‘I’m sorry, love.’
She keeps nodding.
I can’t think of anything else to say, anything to make any of it any better.
I lean forward and pick the Evening News off the coffee table.
It doesn’t help:
Laureen’s Mum in Ripper Plea .
Dirty Protests .
Under the newspaper are some forms and a pamphlet –
Application forms to adopt.
‘What are these?’ I ask, picking them up.
Joan tries to take them from me: ‘Not now, love,’ she says. ‘Talk about it another time.’
‘A Vietnamese baby?’ I say, looking down at the cover of the pamphlet.
‘Not now, Peter,’ she says again, taking the papers from me as she goes upstairs.
Later in bed, I hug her and we try to have sex but I can’t –
And after, I say: ‘I think it’s a good idea.’
She doesn’t say anything –
And after that we lie in the double bed, staring up at the ceiling, apart –
On the dark stair –
She turns away on her side and I get up and put the radio on.
I get back into bed and lie there –
Awake, sweating and afraid –
Eyes wide –
On the dark stair –
The North after the bomb, machines the only survivors –
There were people on the TV singing hymns –
People on the TV singing hymns with no face –
People on the TV singing hymns with no face, no features –
And at my feet, they had her down on the floor at my feet, her hands behind her back, stripped and beaten, three of them raping her, sodomising her, taking their turns with a bottle and a chair, cutting her hair, pissing and shitting on her, making her suck them, making her suck me, ugly gulls circling overhead, screaming –
‘Sti rip sll iwl lik Hunter!’
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
Joan’s holding me, my heart beating, breaking.
‘What on earth were you dreaming about?’
I can feel come in my pyjamas.
‘Nothing,’ I say, thinking –
No more sleep, no more sleep, no more sleep .

cash all this and heaven too missing the news from nowhere what e was once alive e still am dead a complete wreck of a human being wearing a light green three quarter length coat with an imitation fur collar a turquoise blue jumper with a bright yellow tank top over it dark brown trousers and brown suede calf length boots found friday the twenty first of november nineteen seventy five one laceration to the back of her head caused by a hammer and extensive injuries to her head face body and legs caused by violent kicking and stamping on her left breast were bite marks which indicated a gap in the upper front teeth of the attacker there were no stab wounds in a deserted garage in preston in a row of six narrow garages each splattered with white graffiti the doors