Unhappy-Go-Lucky by Ian Pattison (Tindal Street Press 2013)

 

When people die, their memories die with them. But their memories are not their exclusive domain, encompassing as they must, the lives of others. Contained within our memorabilia, other people walk and speak, inhabiting our dreams and anecdotes. The only person one never sees in a memory is one’s self, since we are otherwise engaged, crouched behind our mental camera. Memories, therefore, are not only a personal but a social history. One of the things Vaughan had said to me that day on Byres Road was: ‘I wish I’d got it all down before she died.’ He was talking about his own mother. I’d heard that same utterance several times from different people. But why didn’t anyone ever take their own advice? The reason, in my case, was simple: who the hell ever listens to their mother? Like a Facebook home page, they talk in an ever-flowing, unedited stream of trivia, gossip, local news, repetition, received opinion, stale myth, whimsy and spite. To listen out for items of true interest amid the babble is to risk turning oneself into a crazed prospector panning for decades through murky silt in the hope of turning over a golden nugget or two.

I tried though.

I found out that in Tradeston Church, Kathleen Cairns had married Ivan Moss. The bride wore a white dress with matching white skin, patent black shoes and a discreetly visible foetus. Father looked dashing in his naval uniform with its braided cuffs and faint reek of engine oil. Father’s brother Rolf was granted shore leave to attend as best man. Father was overjoyed at the prospect of fatherhood.

'Are you sure it’s mine?’

‘Of course it’s yours,’ protested Mother. ‘Who else’s would it be?’

‘I was away for months, anything could’ve happened.’

‘That cuts both ways – do you want to swap separation stories?'

Father demurred. Though back on dry land, my guess was that he would have felt himself all at sea – things were changing too quickly, too decisively, for him to keep a telling grip on life’s rudder.

Mother was close to tears. Father tried to put her at her ease, with silken words.

‘If it’s backward, we can always bung it into an orphanage.’

Mother grew alarmed. ‘Why would it be backward?’

‘It’s a precaution. A first child’s either the pick of the bunch or the worst.’

‘You’re a middle child,’ observed Mother.

‘I know,’ mused Father, darkly.

The Guts by Roddy Doyle (Alfred A. Knopf 2013)

—You just said you loved it.

—Yeah. Because it’s shite.

—Ah, for fuck sake, listen. Nobody’s buyin’. The kids don’t think they have to.

—They download it for nothin’.

—Yeah, said Jimmy.—Exactly. My age group an’ a bit younger, we still buy. But they don’t buy much. An’ very little that’s new.

—Make a video.

—We’re goin’ to —

—A good one, said his da.—Make us laugh. Get your woman from the Rubberbandits video.

—You know the Rubberbandits?

—Of course I know the fuckin’ Rubberbandits.

The Rubberbandits were a pair of clever lads from Limerick who wore SuperValu bags over their heads, and rapped. Their song, ‘Horse Outside’, was the new national anthem. Jimmy hated them.

—More than eight million YouTube hits, said Jimmy.

—Twice as many as live in this poxy country, said his da.—It’s the way to go.

—But only about nine thousand bought the song, said Jimmy.

The misery in that statistic pleased him, all the noughts in the millions falling away – the state of the fuckin’ world.

Fire and Brimstone by Colin Bateman (Headline 2013)

He gave me a big smile and continued his work. After a bit, two female Seekers emerged from the bus, pristine now in their gowns and wimples but destined to be covered in coffee and juice and vomit as the night wore into early morning. One of them gave me a wide smile and said, 'I remember you!'

'Jane,' I said, 'how're you doing?'

'Fabulous/ she said. 'Can I get you a coffee . . . Andrew . . . wasn't it?'

'Orange juice,' 1 said, 'and you have a good memory.'

'I do . . . but then there was also something happened with you at Ballyferris . . . wasn't there?'

'Oh, yes,' I said. 'I got thrown out for sedition.'

She laughed and went to get the juice. When she came back with it, she asked how I'd been and if 1 was still in that bad place with my life, and I said no, everything was fine and dandy; I had just spotted the bus on the way home and wanted to call over and say hello and thank the New Seekers for their support, and her, in particular, for helping me.

'Ah, it was nothing. Sure, that's what we're here for.'

'Well,' I said, 'I appreciate it.'

I lifted the orange juice and drained it in one. 'Better be getting home,' I said, and handed her the glass.

'Good night, Andrew,' she said as she took it from me. 'And may God be with you.'

She gave me another smile and turned away.

'And may God be with you, Alison,' I said.

It stopped her in her tracks, but just for a moment. Then she continued on into the bus. 1 followed her progress along the inside to the small kitchen area. She began to wash the glass. She did not look towards me.

I smiled to myself and turned away.

She had been right there with me, right at the start, and I hadn't noticed. But a colleague of Jonathan's in Culchie's Corner had picked up the photo I'd left and remembered her from a rumpus in the bar when she was collecting for the New Seekers and someone pulled her headdress off. I had no idea how she had ended up with the Seekers, if the trauma of the Wellington Street massacre had caused her to turn to them or they had picked her up, broken or shot, from the street and then slowly brainwashed her, or, indeed, if she had simply been converted because she believed in Eve, just like thousands and thousands of others. Ultimately, it didn't matter. My job was done: I'd been paid handsomely, the puzzle was solved and Alison was alive and free to live that life as she saw fit.

Perfect.

As I walked away from the New Seeker bus, my phone began to ring.

'Well,' Sara asked breezily, 'what's happening?'

'Funny you should ask,' I said.

The Red Machine: Liverpool in the '80s: The Players' Stories by Simon Hughes (Mainstream Publishing 2013)

On one occasion, Bates’s ego got the better of him. In the tunnel at Stamford Bridge ahead of a match and with a loose ball at his feet, he asked former Liverpool left-back Joey Jones to tackle him. So Jones did, leaving Bates in a heap.

‘Joey was a tough lad,’ Spackman says. ‘He and Mickey Thomas were nutters. They drove down to London every other day for training from their home in North Wales. Every Monday morning, John Neal would come into the dressing-room and say, “Sorry, lads, training’s been put back an hour – Mickey and Joey are stuck on the motorway.”

‘Because Ken Bates wouldn’t pay for them to stay in a hotel, they’d sleep in the referee’s room at Stamford Bridge on a Friday night before a game. It was a big room with a TV and a sofa, but not the ideal place to sleep if you’re a footballer preparing for kick-off. They’d walk up the King’s Road on a Saturday morning for a fry-up then go back to the ground and wait for everybody else to arrive. It was a ridiculous arrangement.’

Stamford Bridge was hardly a place you’d wish to watch a game of football, never mind spend the night.

‘It was big but a bit of a dump,’ Spackman continues. ‘There was one huge stand, but the rest of the ground seemed so far away from the pitch because of the greyhound track. You needed 25,000 in there to create any sort of atmosphere. The pitch was terrible, too. I was used to a nice bowling-green surface at Bournemouth, but at Chelsea – a club then in the Second Division – the pitch was a dustbowl. It made it difficult to play pretty football. Over the years, that’s probably why Liverpool found it difficult going there.

(From the chapter, 'SOUTHERNER, Nigel Spackman')

The Rocky Road by Eamon Dunphy (Penguin Books 2013)

John F. Kennedy’s bid to become the first Catholic president of the United States was the big international story of 1960. His family links to Ireland ensured the passionate support of the Irish. He had won the Democratic nomination in July, just before I arrived in Manchester. Being firmly in the camp, I was surprised at English scepticism about Kennedy.

British reservations about Kennedy were not rooted in his religion: rather, they had to do with his father, Joe, who’d been US ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1940. Kennedy Sr was associated with appeasement, had sought meetings with Hitler, and forcefully resisted United States involvement in the war. He had been, like many Irish, on the wrong side of history, and that caused many in England to regard his son with suspicion, in some cases contempt.

For me and tens of millions of others around the world, Kennedy represented youth, vigour and hope for a better future, in which peace and justice would prevail over the darker forces his shifty opponent, Nixon, seemed to represent. Immersed in all of this, I was struck not only by the scepticism of the English chattering class but by the indifference of the people I was mixing with. They were watching a different movie.

Barry Fry was the person I spent most time with as I settled into my new life. Together we found new digs with Mrs Scott, a widow who shared a house with her sister in Sale, one of Manchester’s more salubrious suburbs. Mrs Scott’s spacious semi-detached house, on a tree-lined road, was a world away from the narrow, terraced streets in the shadow of Old Trafford where most digs were located. Nice though she was, Mrs Cropper had spent more money on bingo than on food. I’d felt my digs money was subsidizing her bingo habit. At Mrs Scott’s, the money stayed in the project: the food was first class, the television was state-of-the-art, and Barry and I had our own rooms.

Our accommodation sorted, we could concentrate on our football and our social lives. The latter mattered more to Barry than to me. Although no movie star, Barry was a ladies’ man. With his extrovert personality, his sharp sense of humour and his Cockney accent, he cut quite a swagger on the Manchester scene. He was actually a country bumpkin from Bedford, but when quizzed about his accent he would claim to be ‘from London, dahlin”. The fact that we were Manchester United players, regardless of how low-ranked, did no harm to our chances with the girls. On this issue Barry believed in full and early disclosure.

Our initial forays onto the city’s social scene took us to the Plaza ballroom on Oxford Road. Jimmy Savile was the manager. He had yet to become a national figure but, with his colourful gear and black Rolls-Royce, Jimmy was the Main Man in Manchester’s emerging scene. He had a club, the Three Coins, on Fountain Street around the corner from the Plaza. Rumours were already swirling around him, decades before his predilections became common knowledge. One day my girlfriend was lured back to his penthouse flat, which appeared to have only a bed as furniture, but she was canny enough to escape.

Bleed Like Me by Cath Staincliffe (Bantam Press 2013)

Rachel was running. Running for her life. Air burning like acid in her chest, feet pounding the tarmac. Everything around her, the shops and passers-by, lampposts and railings, smudged, a blur of shape and colour.

She risked a glance behind, hair whipping in her eyes, almost losing her balance as one ankle buckled, and she saw the car was gaining. He was at the wheel, his face set with intent, eyes gleaming, mouth curved in a half-smile.

Running her down, running her to ground. For a moment, her legs stalled, numb, weak as string, before she took flight again. Arms slicing the air, throat parched, sweat cold across her skin and the thud of her heart ever louder in her ears. Then the roar as he gunned the engine, the screech as the car leapt towards her, close enough for her to smell burning oil and petrol fumes high in her throat. Dizzying.

The thump of impact. Hurling her forward, a bone-cracking crunch and Rachel fell, sprawling along the gutter and into the pavement’s edge, legs twisting the wrong way beneath her, skinning her chin and shoulder and the length of her forearms. Smacking her head against the kerbstone. A jolt that turned the world black and brought vomit scalding her gullet.

The engine cut out and then she heard his footsteps, the smack-smack of best Italian leather on the gritty stone.

She tried to draw away but was pinned, paralysed, and her attempt to shuffle brought scarlet pain licking through her hip. She tried to cry for help but her voice was frozen too and all the people had gone. She was alone with him.

‘Rachel,’ he said sadly, ‘Rachel, Rachel, what will I do with you?’

The Child Thief by Dan Smith (Pegasus Books 2013)

Once again I took the German pistol from its wooden case, but this time I set the case on the floor and checked the weapon. It was in good condition, and when I drew back the slide I could see it was loaded. I ran a fingertip around the red number nine and remembered how I had looked into the barrel of a similar weapon, in the days after we were betrayed by the Red Army.

In those days everything was tainted with one colour or another. Black, red, white, green. Every army gave itself a colour, as if they were teams preparing to meet for some purpose other than to murder each other. With the anarchist Black Army under Nestor Makhno, I had fought hard against General Wrangel’s White Army, eventually joining forces with the Red Army that I’d deserted just a few months before. In 1920, with our tenuous bond holding, the cavalry and infantry of the two armies pursued Wrangel south through Ukraine to the Crimea, but after our combined victory that winter, the Red Army renounced its agreement and broke the weak alliance between black and red. The communists were ruthless in their treatment, more so of those of us who’d once been among their number, and the palette was washed clean. The only colour that remained was red, and few of my brothers in arms escaped the executions.

Just days after Wrangel fled, Bolshevik communications were intercepted: orders for all members of Makhno’s organisation to be arrested. All staff and subordinate commanders were apprehended and executed. Makhno escaped, taking his soldiers, fleeing north into Ukraine and then disbanding, heading west for the places Lenin had signed over to the Polish.

I was with a small group of men who, like me, had no intention of leaving Ukraine. Natalia and I first met in my home town of Moscow, but she was from Ukraine, and when the war with Germany began, she returned to the village of Vyriv to raise our sons. So that’s where I intended to go – I had a wife and children I hardly knew and I wanted to make a new life with my family.

I and a few stragglers shed any sign of allegiance and headed north, hoping to find provisions in villages along the way, but at one settlement a small unit of Red Army soldiers had already been to requisition grain and food. The villagers had protested so the communists retaliated by burning them out of their homes. As we approached, we saw the smoke from the fires and chose to skirt around the area, but the reds had already left and we ran straight into them.

The communists were fuelled with the destruction and death they’d left behind, and they confronted us without fear. Their commander drew his pistol and nudged his horse forward so he could point it down at me, the barrel close to my face. I was younger and faster in those days. Battle-hardened and fearless. I reached out and took the pistol in my fist before the mounted soldier could fire. I pushed it aside, dragged the soldier from his horse and took the weapon from him. I shot the commander twice, pressing the pistol against his chest, and red and black emptied their weapons at each other until there was silence once more.

Two of my friends were killed in the fight, but when the rest of us left on horseback, taking the communists’ weapons, all five red soldiers lay dead.

Now I rested the pistol in my lap and stared at the flames. The room was filled with flickering orange light, the only sound was the crackling and snapping of the wood. The ticking of a clock.

‘What are you doing?’ Natalia asked, making me blink and rub my eyes.

‘Sitting,’ I said, looking up to see her standing in the doorway. ‘Remembering.’

She came in and eased into the chair opposite.

‘How long were you standing there?’ I asked.

‘Long enough. You going to tell me about it?’

I watched the fire reflected in her eyes. ‘He wasn’t alone. There were two children with him. A boy and a girl. Both dead.’

God Save The Kinks by Rob Jovanovic (Aurum Press 2013)

Raymond Douglas Davies was born 21 June 1944 and, with six older sisters to coo over him, was instantly the star of the show. The girls used to take turns walking around with him to try and get him to sleep, and would play the gramaphone to help him settle. But his position as baby of the family did not last long.

Shortly after the end of the war, Annie was pregnant again, and Ray's brother, David Russell Gordon Davies, arrived on 3 February 1947. 'Ray's probably resented me since he was three years old,' said Dave. 'I fucked it up for him. He was the baby of the family, the centre of attention for three years. Then I cam along and stole his thunder.'

Red or Dead by David Peace (Faber and Faber 2013)

After their late lunch, in the late afternoon. The directors of Leeds United Association Football Club were sitting in the boardroom at Elland Road, Leeds. The directors of Leeds United Association Football Club heard the footsteps in the corridor outside. The fast steps, the heavy steps. The knocks upon the door. Fast and heavy.

The chairman of Leeds United said, Come!

Bill Shankly opened the door. Bill Shankly stepped into the boardroom at Elland Road. Bill Shankly looked around the board room. From director to director. And Bill Shankly smiled –

My name is Bill Shankly. I am the manager of Liverpool Football Club. And I’m here to buy Jack Charlton.

The directors of Leeds United Association Football Club stared down the long table at Bill Shankly. And then their chairman asked, And how much would you be willing to pay for Charlton?

Fifteen thousand pounds, said Bill Shankly.

The directors of Leeds United Association Football Club shook their heads. And their chairman said, Charlton will cost you twenty thousand, Shankly. Twenty thousand pounds. And not a penny less.

How about eighteen thousand pounds, said Bill Shankly.

Twenty thousand pounds, Shankly.

Fine, said Bill Shankly. Twenty thousand pounds it is then. But I’ll need to make a telephone call.

The directors of Leeds United Association Football Club smiled. And their chairman said, Then make your call, Shankly.

After his early dinner, in the early evening. Tom Williams picked up the telephone in his hallway. And Tom Williams said, Yes?

Mr Williams? This is Bill Shankly.

Tom Williams said, Good evening, Mr Shankly. What can I –

I’m at Elland Road. At Leeds. And I have fantastic news. Unbelievable news! Leeds United will sell Jack Charlton to us. They will sell him. It’s unbelievable. It’s fantastic news!

Tom Williams said, I’m very glad to hear that, Mr Shankly. And so how much are they asking for Charlton?

Twenty thousand pounds. Just twenty thousand pounds, sir.

Tom Williams sighed. And Tom Williams said, But we sanctioned eighteen thousand pounds, Mr Shankly.

I know that. I know that, sir. But for two thousand pounds more, just two thousand pounds more, they will sell him. And then Jack Charlton will be a Liverpool player.

Tom Williams sighed again. And Tom Williams said, Mr Shankly, as you know, I have spoken with the other directors and I am afraid we can go no higher than eighteen thousand pounds. That is our final offer. Eighteen thousand pounds.

But I know they will not sell him for eighteen thousand pounds, Mr Williams. They are asking for twenty thousand pounds. Just another two thousand, Mr Williams …

Tom Williams said, But our offer is eighteen thousand pounds.

Mr Williams, I have watched Jack Charlton since he was in his teens. I have watched him many times. He plays with authority. He plays with courage. He will be the very backbone of Liverpool Football Club. The very backbone, Mr Williams. And all they want is another two grand. Another two grand and he’ll be ours. Ours …

Tom Williams said, I am sorry, Mr Shankly. It’s eighteen thousand pounds. That is our final offer. Goodbye, Mr Shankly.

After their brandies, with their cigars. The directors of Leeds United Association Football Club were sitting in the dining room at Elland Road. The directors of Leeds United Association Football Club heard the knock upon the door. Not so fast and not so heavy.

The chairman of Leeds United said, Come!

Bill Shankly opened the door. Bill Shankly stepped into the dining room. Bill Shankly looked around the table. From director to director. And Bill Shankly waited.

The chairman of Leeds United said, Well then, Shankly? What do you have to say for yourself?

Our offer is eighteen thousand pounds, said Bill Shankly.

Close the door on your way out, Shankly.

Ted Grant: Permanent Revolutionary by Alan Woods (Wellred Books 2013)

Before they left South Africa they had been given instructions on how to make contact with the French comrades. They were to walk along a famous boulevard (probably Boulevard du Montparnasse) and wait opposite a certain café. For about an hour they waited on the street with growing impatience. They were becoming anxious (was this the right café?) when finally their contact showed up. They were to meet Trotsky’s eldest son Leon Sedov and his partner Jeanne Martin, Erwin Wolff (who was subsequently murdered by the GPU in Spain), Pierre Frank, Erwin Bauer and Raymond Molinier.

Paris was now the centre of the International Left Opposition, the place where the celebrated Bulletin of the Opposition was produced by Leon Sedov. Ted and Sid stayed there about a fortnight before departing for England. They had a long discussion with Leon Sedov, mainly about the situation in France. Trotsky had suggested that the Trotskyists should enter the Socialist Party (the SFIO). This was known as “the French turn”; although in reality, Trotsky had already proposed something similar for Britain. Molinier, Frank and the others were against entry and later Trotsky broke with them. This was to become a common feature among the so-called Trotskyists, and not only in France.

Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin (Orion Books 2013)

‘The time you phoned him, did you try a bribe?’

‘Didn’t think it would work. I mean, he’d have taken the cash but then come back for more.’

‘In other words, you’d never have been free of him?’

‘Right.’

‘An admission that doesn’t really help your case.’ Rebus paused. ‘What is it he had, Stefan? What could he tell Macari and her team? I’ve been through the custody ledger and there’s half a page missing from the week before Saunders killed Merchant. It got me thinking – could there be something Saunders knew? He comes to you, tells you he’ll do a deal – forget all about it if you get him off next time he’s arrested. You couldn’t know he was going to bludgeon some poor sod to death, so you shook hands on it.’

‘The hearse is arriving,’ Gilmour said, nodding in the direction of the gates. A slow-moving procession of vehicles, the engines almost silent. Wreaths shrouding the coffin, allowing only glimpses of gleaming brass handles, varnished pale wood. In the car behind, the Justice Minister’s widow and son. The First Minister and his deputy had re-emerged from the chapel and were flanking the door, hands clasped as if in prayer, heads bowed.

‘Nothing to say, Stefan?’ Rebus whispered into his neighbour’s ear. Gilmour’s jaw was jutting as he watched the vehicles pull to a halt. The First Minister offered his condolences to the widow, along with a peck on the cheek. She was dressed in black, and wore sunglasses which obscured half her face.

‘Only that you’re making a mistake, John. Sounds very much as if you’ve decided you’re not part of the Saints any more.’

‘Let me tell you something, Stefan. I spoke to Porkbelly and he was all for letting Frazer take the rap for that gun, same as you just did. Seems to me you’ll shit on anyone to save your own necks.’

‘Maybe you think you’re clean, but you’re not,’ Gilmour retorted. ‘You knew we hung on to that gun – why didn’t you take it to the bosses at the time? Remember Interview Room B, that time I walked in and you had your hands around a suspect’s throat? I forget the name now, but it’ll come back to me if necessary. The drugs we planted on that barman we didn’t like? The prossies we let off after an hour in the holding cell, once they’d slipped us a few quid or a promise? The restaurant tabs that never arrived at the end of a meal? Two hundred cigarettes here, a case of malt there . . . The stories we could tell, eh?’

Gilmour’s eyes were boring into Rebus’s.

‘I took the fall, John,’ he went on. ‘And I did it for all of us. Remember that, when you’ve got the tin-opener poised above the can marked “worms”.’

The Guts by Roddy Doyle (Jonathan Cape 2013)

—It wasn't too bad so?

—No, said Jimmy.—No.

—Great.

—Not so far anyway.

—Fingers crossed so.

—Yeah, said Jimmy.—Yeah. When were yeh born?

—Jesus, said his da.—1941. I think. Yeah, 1941. Why?

—Was there much talk about the Eucharistic Congress when you were a kid?

—God, yeah - Jesus. Big time.

—Wha' was it?

—Big mass, all sorts of processions.

—No pope.

—No, said Jimmy Sr.—No. A raft o' fuckin' cardinals. My parents talked about it all the time. I think it was kind o' like 1990, for their generation.

—Wha' d'yeh mean?

—Well, 1990 was unbelievable - remember?

—I do, yeah.

—It was just the football to start with. But then, when it took off. The penalty shoot-out an' tha'. The country was never the same again. It was the beginnin' of the boom.

—D'yeh think?

—Yeah - I do. I mean, I had tha' chipper van at the time. With Bimbo, d'you remember?

—Yeah.

—An' it was a bit of a disaster, tha'. But I was never unemployed again - after Italia '90. I wouldn't let myself be. I was always doin' somethin', even before the buildin' took off. Because - an' this is true. We felt great about ourselves. For years after. An' tha' only changed a few years back. Now we're useless cunts again.

—Thanks for the analysis.

—Fuck off. You asked.

—An' 1932 was like tha', was it?

—Yeah, said Jimmy's da.—A bit. The country was only ten years old, remember. An' dirt poor. Then, like, the man in the flat next door to my mother's gets a radio - a big fuckin' deal. An' everyone bails in to hear it. She always spoke about hearin' your man, John McCormack, singin' live on the wireless. At the mass. Like he was Sinatra or - I don't know - some huge star today. The Bublé fucker or someone. My father said it was like the whole world was listenin' to somethin' tha' was happenin' here in Dublin. An' it probably was as well. Why did you ask

Jimmy told him.

—An' you came up with that idea, did yeh?

—I did, said Jimmy.—Yeah.

—It's a winner.

—D'yeh think?

—Fuckin' sure. If you do it properly.

—I will.

—Oh, I know, said his da.—D'you remember my cousin Norman?

—No, said Jimmy.—I don't think so.

—He'd be your cousin as well, I suppose. Second cousin, or first cousin twice removed or tha' shite. Anyway, he has a huge collection of old 78s an' stuff.

Autobiography by Morrissey (Penguin Classics 2013)

Johnny Marr was born in Ardwick in a Victorian dwelling not dissimilar to my own. Blocked in by dye works and engineering works, timber yards and iron foundries, the Ardwick of the Avis Bunnage era was an area of seasoned street fighters such as the Little Forty Gang, whose dapper style was well known when there was nothing nice to rest the eye on. Johnny was also of Irish parents, who would eventually inch their way south of the city center (for north is not the road that anyone ever travels). In 1982, Johnny appears at Kings Road immaculately be-quiffed and almost carried away by his own zest to make meaningful music. He reminds me of Tom Bell in Payroll, an early 1960s film set in Newcastle yet minus one single Geordie accent. Johnny despairs of things as they are and wants to change them, even if, beneath the grit and growl, his favorite group of all-time is Pentangle.

‘We’ve met before, y’know,’ he says, ‘I’m glad you don’t remember.’

Ooh, but I do.

It had been in the foyer of the Ardwick Apollo, where Patti Smith had displayed her radiant stallions gradually lapping into seahorses nervousness. I stood in conversation with Philip Towman (another Wythenshawe musicologist), when Johnny first shoved his face in, and he said, ‘You’ve got a funny voice.’ The comment contained an oblique confession, which said: you don’t talk as shockingly bad as I do. In fact, Johnny later confessed that prior to meeting me he had pronounced the word ‘guitar’ without the t, so Ardwick-mangled the parlance. I couldn’t imagine how this would be possible, or how he could be understood. I am shaken when I hear Johnny play guitar, because he is quite obviously gifted and almost unnaturally multi-talented. Since he shows an exact perspective on all things, I can’t help but wonder: What is he doing here with me? Formulating writing systems and mapping out how best to blend our dual natures – here, against the hiss of the paraffin lamp, and me wrapped in the sanctity of an enormous overcoat acquired in a Denver charity shop for $5. Why has Johnny not already sprayed his mark – elsewhere, with others less scarred and less complicated than I am? It seemed to me that Johnny had enough spark and determination to push his way in amongst Manchester’s headhunters – yet here he was, with someone whose natural bearing discouraged openness. Stranger still, we get on very well. It is a matter of finding yourself in possession of the one vital facet that the other lacks, but needs.

Nine Inches: Stories by Tom Perrotta (St. Martin's Press 2013)

Sixth period was endless. Vicki stood by the Smart Board, listening to herself drone on about the formula for calculating the volume of a cylinder, but all she could think about was Jessica Grasso, the heavy girl sitting near the back right corner of the room, watching her with a polite, seemingly neutral expression. It was almost as if Jessica grew larger with each passing moment, as if she ­were being inflated by some invisible pump, expanding like a parade float until she filled the entire room. 

She hates me, Vicki thought, and this knowledge was somehow both sickening and exciting at the same time. But you ­wouldn’t know it from looking at her.

Vicki hadn’t known it herself until last night, when she read what the girl had written about her on grademyteacher.com. She had stumbled upon the post while conducting a routine self-­google, exercising a little due diligence so she didn’t get blindsided like her old friend and former colleague Anna Shamsky, a happily married mother of three who’d lost her job over some twenty-­year-­old topless photos that had appeared without her knowledge on a website called Memoirs-­of-­a-Stud.com. The site was the brainchild of an ex-­boyfriend of hers — ­a guy she hadn’t thought about since college — ­who had decided in a fit of midlife bravado that the world needed to know a little bit about every woman he’d ever slept with”

(From 'Grade My Teacher'.) 

Lillian & Dash by Sam Toperoff (Other Press 2013)

Hazel Scott had been deemed uncooperative; she named no one. She was now performing in Paris. Others testified freely and the Committee publicly applauded their cooperation. These were the more widely acknowledged Weasels. Hammett kept the distinction between victim and Weasel very clear; he always had sympathy for human weakness. To Lillian anyone who gave a name for any reason whatsoever was pure Weasel.

All of this is old hat now, relegated to a brief, unfortunate period of American history by most historians, but certainly not by the Committee’s victims. The damage done was far more widespread than history records; it devastated many thousands of un-American American lives. Hammett addressed the situation in a speech he gave at Cooper Union on “The Cop and the Criminal,” ostensibly a talk about his approach to the detective story, but in fact a public defiance of what the Committee was doing to America. Hammett was no longer an effective public speaker.

Lillian made herself inconspicuous at the fringe of the audience. A cold sober Hammett began:

Let’s get this straight from the start. The cop is paid by the state. The state gives him his badge, his gun, his billy club, and permission to use them, his uniform, and, if he’s lucky, a police car to drive around in. His job is to protect the law-abiding public from criminals. So far, so good. There are times, however, when the crooks and the cops and the state are indistinguishable from one another, when they are all mixed together and aligned against the interests and guaranteed rights of those same law-abiding citizens.

We are in one of those times now. Those of you who may have had the ill fortune to have stumbled upon my Red Harvest or even The Glass Key probably know that I have dealt with just this sort of corrupt situation before in fiction. In both cases—I must tell you Red Harvest was based on a real miners’ strike in Montana in which the company, the cops, and the government ganged up on the miners—in both cases my lone detective character is successful in combating the corrupt cops and turning the tide. Remember, though, that’s just what happens in novels. In Montana, the bums mopped up the miners.

Lillian noticed Hammett’s hand begin to tremble. He needed a drink. No way for her to get him one. He sipped some water.

In America today the cops and the crooks and, of course, the judges and the pols are all in cahoots again. It happens periodically, usually around union busting time, which for them is all the time. They like to send very dramatic, unmistakable messages. What else is this preposterous Committee deciding who is American and who is not, but a shot across the bow? Sometimes the legal criminality even reaches the level of political murder.

For a moment Lillian thought he might talk about Jerry Waxman. She held her breath.

What else was Vanzetti and Sacco if not precisely that? These new thugs dressed up as Congressional cops are surely nothing new. They crawl out of the woodwork whenever they have the chance. But every time they appear, we must each become detectives and reveal that they are really the crooks and not the cops.

Lillian scanned the crowd and picked out four men at least she was sure were government agents. Two were taking notes. She also recognized a legit guy from the Times, a gal from the Trib.

If I was trying to turn this current mess into a detective story, I’d see it as an old-fashioned protection racket. I’d set it in Mom and Pop’s grocery store. Gunsels come in and want fifty bucks a week to keep trouble away. Pop tells them he’s never had any trouble. They smash his front window. That’ll be fifty bucks. Pop goes to the police. They’ll watch his store when the thugs return, but they can’t promise anything more. Next week the gunsels return for their fifty; a cop watches from across the street while the thugs break the other front window. The cop across the street smiles.

So what’s to be done? And who is there to do it? Certainly not the likes of Nick Charles. He’s too tipsy for the task. He and Nora hobnob in the wrong social circles. A society murder is one thing. The protection racket is a very dirty, roll-up-your-sleeves business. Sam Spade? I don’t think so. There are no beautiful dames involved and no big money to be made in a Mom and Pop grocery. No, the guy I need—the guy we need—is the Op. He’s far tougher than either one of the others and breaking up this protection racket’s going to take a bear of a man, a courageous brute. That’s the Op. He’s also a working stiff, and for me that counts for an awful lot when it comes to a matter of integrity.

As Hammett continued, his quiver became more pronounced. Lillian wanted to hold him, steady his hand. Hammett was never at his best in front of an audience, but he accepted this engagement as a necessary first skirmish in what he knew was now to be a long, difficult battle with the U.S. government. During the question period after his talk he really began to come apart, but he knew to keep his answers brief and somewhat cryptic. He needed a drink badly now, something the cops in the crowd could not miss. Hellman loved her Hammett very much at that moment.

In the cab uptown she took his hand and offered him a flask. He accepted it gratefully with a growl and a slow smile. Traffic was heavy. They didn’t talk. He continued to shake, so she held his arm hard with both hands and tried to absorb his tremor.

They were almost at Columbus Circle when he said, “I could have done it better. But I had to take the first shot. I want them to know I’m ready.”

“We’re ready.”

“My guess is they’ll do me first. You’re the bigger fish to fry.”

“I beg your pardon.” She made a pronounced huffy face and then smiled. “I hope that’s not how they see it. But I’m ready for them too.”

The Red Road by Denise Mina (Orion Books 2013)

Morrow shrugged and looked up at the flats. The body was gone and that was good. A body was always a distraction at a murder scene. It tended to draw the eye and evoke sparks of empathy, or, for Morrow at least, distracting ponderings on why she wasn't feeling empathy. The site was so spectacular, it would be hard enough to focus on details.

The Red Road flats were twenty-seven storeys tall, five hundred yards wide and being stripped for demolition. All the walls, the casing and especially the windows were being removed before the explosives were set, to avoid a glass storm. They couldn't get into the scene of the murder before this  morning: without health and safety paperwork she couldn't even pass through the protective fencing. Morrow didn't like heights terribly much.

Early in her career Morrow had policed the crowd when the high flats in the Gorbals were demolished. The officers had to stand with their backs to the show, watching the crowd for three or so hours. People brought food, drinks, things to sit on. The fevered atmosphere was unsettling. Morrow watched the crowd swell and grow boisterous, scanning for drunks and trouble and pickpockets. Over the afternoon she listened as people tried to explain away their excitement. It's a bit of history, they said, history of the city. But that didn't satisfy, it didn't explain the buzz of anticipation running through the crowd so they began to falsify complaints against the high flats: we had damp, my auntie died there, I saw a man go out a window. Excuses, because they knew there was something venal about their lip-licking excitement. It was a modern public hanging. They were there to see something bigger than them die, to participate in an irreversible act of destruction.

Bedsit Disco Queen: How I grew up and tried to be a pop star by Tracey Thorn (Virago Press 2013)

I had never met anyone quite like Ben before. He was on the one hand simply posher than anyone I was used to, while at the same time less conventional and suburban through having grown up in a bohemian household. His dad had been a jazz musician and big-band leader, his mother an actress-turned-journalist and he was the fifth child in the house, the other four being half-brothers and a half-sister from his mother’s first marriage. Though three months younger than me, he had somehow managed to cram in a year off between school and university, during which time he had worked as a groundsman at a sports club, mowing lawns and marking out pitches. He seemed older than me, infinitely more self-confident and assured (which he wasn’t), and at first, after he interrupted a lecturer to correct a mistake the poor man had just made in his introduction to Beckett, I mistook him for an intellectual (which he certainly wasn’t). The displacement of the desk by the record player in his room should have alerted me to that fact, but it took me a while to realise that all he cared about was music, and it wasn’t until I noticed he was choosing his courses purely on the basis of which ones required the least reading that I finally let go of my initial misapprehension that he was cleverer than me.

So we would never share a passion for reading long Victorian novels, but at least he liked Vic Godard. As for the rest of his record collection, well, it reflected the fact that punk itself had largely passed him by. There were no Sex Pistols or Clash records. The band who really first inspired him was Joy Division, followed by other archetypal post-punks like Magazine, Wire, This Heat. Along with these bands Ben had records by people I had barely even heard of: Eno, Kevin Coyne, Robert Wyatt and Captain Beefheart. In 1977 Johnny Rotten had famously broadcast a show on Capital Radio where he played his eclectic record collection. Many of the records he had played were also in Ben’s collection, alongside Public Image Ltd’s Metal Box. Then there were things like Neil Young’s Decade, and John Martyn’s Island albums, Solid Air and One World, all records Ben loved for their emptiness and sonic open spaces. A sprinkling of soul – Stevie Wonder, George Benson, Chic, Earth Wind and Fire. And jazz, of course, via his dad – Roland Kirk, Bill Evans, Clifford Brown. Not much pop, though. No Undertones, Buzzcocks or Orange Juice. Ben had more albums than me, but fewer singles. I thought that might need addressing.

He had played guitar in a couple of bands during 1979 and 1980. First, the startlingly named Fléau Moderne (French, apparently, for ‘modern scourge’), who dressed in grey sweatshirts and digital watches to look like David Byrne, except for the lead singer who was allowed to get away with wearing make-up and red trousers. They played one triumphant gig in front of an audience of two hundred and fifty at a church hall in Twickenham, at the end of which the drummer performed the customary salute of throwing his drumsticks into the crowd, only to have one thrown back and catch him in the eye as he left the stage. The local rivalry inspired by this gig was such that another nearby school formed a band called Macabre.

In 1980 Ben met Mike Alway at Snoopy’s, the club in Richmond where Mike promoted gigs, and asked if he could do a solo slot there one night.

‘Sure,’ said Mike, ‘what do you sound like?’

‘I sound like The Durutti Column with songs,’ said Ben, and on the strength of this Mike offered him a slot supporting the then unknown Thompson Twins, in ten days’ time. At this point Ben had never played a solo live set, or recorded anything, or in fact even written any songs. Surely this was audacity gone mad? But remember, the DIY ethos, still firmly entrenched, suggested that you could and should do anything you wanted, so he simply went home, wrote ten songs in ten days and did the gig. Performing under the name of The Low Countries (possibly to avoid identification, should it all go horribly wrong) he stood up with an electric guitar, a cassette player playing pre-recorded drum-machine patterns and sang desolate, atmospheric songs with titles like ‘Communion’, ‘A Darkness So Deep’, and ‘Ice’. It wasn’t hard to spot the Joy Division influence, and it all sounds about as far removed from the Marine Girls as you could possibly imagine. But the common strand came from the philosophy of the moment, which embraced more or less anything as long as it wasn’t hoary old rock music. Both of us were making quiet, minimalist music but within the context of rock-gig venues, where playing at low volume was in itself a confrontational thing to do. Music journalist Simon Reynolds quotes Stuart Moxham of Young Marble Giants replying to a heckler, who demanded some rock ’n’ roll, with the words: ‘Anyone can do that. They’re doing it all over town. But we want to do this.’