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

he don’t give a fuck who sees this and he walks right up to Barton who’s trying to curl up into the tiniest little ball he can, whimpering like the tiny little dog he is, and Noble looks up just to make sure everyone is watching and just to make sure everyone knows he knows everyone is watching and he bends down and whispers something into Barton’s ear and then he picks him off the road by his dreadlocks, twisting them tight around his fist, pulling him on to the tips of his toes, the man’s cock and balls nothing in the dawn and Noble looks up at the windows and the twitching curtains of Marigold Street and he says calmly, ‘What is it with you fucking people? A woman gets to wear her guts for bloody earrings and you don’t lift a fucking finger. Didn’t we ask you nicely to tell us where this piece of shit was? Yeah? Did we come and turn all your shitty little houses upside down? Did we have you all down the Nick? No we fucking didn’t. But all the time you’re hiding him under the fucking bed, right under our bloody noses.’
A maria comes down the street and stops.
Uniforms open the back.
Noble spins Barton into the side of the van, bringing him round all bloody and reeling, and then he tips him into the back.
Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Noble turns and looks again at Marigold Street, at the empty windows, the still curtains.
‘Go on hide,’ he says. ‘Next time we don’t ask,’ and with a spit he jumps inside the van and is gone.
We head for the cars.
By the time we get to Millgarth, they’ve got Barton down in the Belly – the huge fucking hole of a cell right down in the gut, all strip lights and wash-down floors.
There’s about twelve or fifteen blokes standing around.
Steve Barton’s on the floor, still stark-bollock naked, shivering, shaking, shitting it.
We stand there, smoking, flicking ash here and there, Craven showing off his cuts and bruises, all black hate, the rest of us looking bored, waiting for the show.
And just as I’m thinking about Kenny D and wondering if I can sit through another nigger beating, Noble shoulders through the crowd and everyone breaks into a circle, leaving Barton and Noble in the centre, the Christian and the Lion.
Noble is holding a white plastic cup, the kind you get from the coffee machine upstairs.
He looks into it, looks at Barton, then tosses it on to the floor in front of him and says, ‘Come into that.’
Barton looks up, eyes all wide red streaks.
‘You heard,’ says Chief Superintendent Peter Noble. ‘Put your fucking jungle juice in that.’
Barton is here and there, searching the room for a friendly face, some kind of help, and for a brief second his eyes light on mine but finding nothing there they keep on going till they end up back on the white plastic cup in the centre of the room.
‘Fuck,’ he whispers, the fucked-up horror of his situation sinking into them dense black bones.
‘Get it hard,’ hisses Noble.
And then the slow handclap starts up and I’m right there, beating out the rhythm, banging out the time, as Barton slithers around in the smallest circle his body’ll let him, this way and that, twisting and turning, this way and that, no escape at all, that way or this, no escape.
Noble nods and the claps stop.
He bends down and cups Barton’s head in his hand:
‘Let me help you out, boy. Let’s imagine that dead woman of yours isn’t dead any more and it was all just some ugly dream. Yeah? Let’s get her all naked and hot, get her wet, yeah. Bet you could make her wet Steve, yeah? Bet you can get a right big cock on you when you want, can’t you Steve? Go on, show us what a big black cock you got. Show us how big you got it for Marie. Come on boy, don’t be shy. Among friends here, all lads together. Don’t want to have to put you in with some big fat babber-stabber from Armley, now do we? No need for that. Let’s just picture dear old Marie, hot and naked and waiting for that big old cock o’yours, stroking that big old bush of hers, getting it all big