Among the Thugs

by Bill Buford

  Is it possible that there was simply no police?

  Again we moved on. A bin was thrown through a car showroom window, and there was another loud crashing sound. A shop: its door was smashed. A clothing shop: its window was smashed, and one or two English supporters lingered to loot from the display.

  I looked behind me and I saw that a large vehicle had been overturned, and that further down the street flames were issuing from a building. I hadn’t seen any of that happen: I realized that there had been more than I had been able to take in. There was now the sound of sirens, many sirens, different kinds, coming from several directions.

  The city is ours, Sammy said, and he repeated the possessive, each time with greater intensity: It is ours, ours, ours.

  A police car appeared, its siren on—the first police car I had seen—and it stopped in front of the group, trying to cut it off. There was only one car. The officer threw open his door, but by the time he had got out the group had crossed the street. The officer shouted after us, helpless and angry, and then dropped back inside his car and chased us down, again cutting us off. Once again, the group, in the most civilized manner possible, crossed the street: well-behaved football supporters on their way back to their hotel, flames receding behind us. The officer returned to his car and drove after us, this time accelerating dangerously, once again cutting off the group, trying, it seemed to me, to knock down one of the supporters, who had to jump out of the way and who was then grabbed by the police officer and hurled against the bonnet, held there by his throat. The officer was very frustrated. He knew that this group was responsible for the damage he had seen; he knew, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the very lad whose throat was now in his grip had been personally responsible for mayhem of some categorically illegal kind; but the officer had not personally seen him do anything. He hadn’t personally seen the group do anything. He had not seen anyone commit a crime. He saw only the results. He kept the supporter pinned there, holding him by the throat, and then in disgust he let him go.

  A fire engine passed, an ambulance and finally the police—many police. They came from two directions. And once they started arriving, it seemed that they would never stop. There were vans and cars and motorcycles and paddy wagons. And still they came. The buildings were illuminated by their flashing blue lights. But the group of supporters from Manchester, governed by Sammy’s whispered commands, simply kept moving, slipping past the cars, dispersing when needing to disperse and then regrouping, turning this way, that way, crossing the street again, regrouping reversing, with Sammy’s greasy little lieutenants bringing up the rear, keeping everyone together. They were well-behaved fans of the sport of football. They were once again the law-abiding supporters they had always insisted to me that they were. And, thus, they snaked through the streets of the ancient city of Turin, making their orderly way back to their hotels, the police following behind, trying to keep up.

  ‘We did it,’ Sammy declared, as the group reached the railway station. ‘We took the city.’

  BETWEEN THE HOURS of one and two in the morning, the square was once again the interesting place to be. Many people were there.

  There were the Italians. Twelve hours before, these same Italians had been generous and accommodating: they had been confronted by a body of unkempt drunken foreigners who littered the streets, urinated into their fountains and stole from the tills of their cafés and shops, and yet they would not be offended. They laughed; they were amused. These were the antics of an island race; the English, as everybody knows, are a mad people.

  By the early hours of Thursday morning, the Italians had ceased being amused. I heard them as they approached the square, marching down the side-streets, chanting, or in their cars, holding down their horns, driving round the square, shouting angrily from their windows. The most frightening were the ones who were already here. I could see them but I couldn’t hear them. They stood, awesomely silent, in the centre of the square itself. I watched them from the entrance to my hotel—the supporters were inside at the bar—and I could make out their menacing silhouettes in the darkness. I was told that they had knives and bottles broken off at the neck and heavy sticks. They were waiting: at some point, the English would have to go home. The Italians were stretched from one end of the square to the other, row upon row. They didn’t move; no one among them was talking.

  There were others on the square as well. There was the army. I didn’t know when the troops had been called in.

  They had not been there earlier, when Sammy led us past the railway station—the police still trailing behind—and then into the hotel bar, which, I was surprised to discover, was already crowded with supporters. It was packed, and was humid and steamy and marked by a strong barnyard smell. I spotted Mick, sober now, who had spent several hours in jail, having inadvertently broken someone’s leg (in two places) during a disagreement, and was eager to learn of everything he had missed. I spotted Roy, who—such was the evening’s achievement—was talking not only like a normal human being but also in an animated and extrovert fashion: he was describing the run through the city to those who had not joined in. There was Tony—dressed elegantly for the evening—and Gurney, as repellent as ever. I was back among friends, and there was some comfort in that. The nine-year-olds must have gone to bed.

  There was little talk of the match and no evident regret that the team would not be playing in the final—the fortunes of Manchester United Football Club had been obscured by the larger concerns of the evening and how the Italians had ‘shat themselves’. There was a sense of closure to the evening, an end-of-a-good-day’s-work atmosphere.

  I got a beer and sat in a corner. The supporters were sprawled on the floor and propped against the walls, tending wounds, which, mainly to the hands, were bleeding and wrapped in T-shirts. Despite the exhaustion—the effort of wreaking mayhem on a major city was considerable—the gathering was alive, noisy with grunts and profanities. Their rudeness was their vitality, and these people were very rude; they were committed to rudeness, as though it were their moral banner. There were only two waitresses amid the four hundred or so supporters, and the women could not have had a worse working day. As one was delivering a tray of bottled lager—answering to the imperative of, ‘Oi, bitch, give us some beer’—a supporter pulled out his penis and wagged it in her face. Another one, paying, threw his money at her feet.

  The supporters did not have a developed aptitude for meeting new people. They did not like people, apart from themselves. In fact, they didn’t like anything—much. I reflected on the values at the heart of their community. I composed a list.

  Likes:

  Lager in pint glasses.

  Lager in two-litre bottles.

  The Queen.

  The Falkland Islands.

  Manchester United Football Club.

  Margaret Thatcher.

  Goals.

  Rolex watches.

  War movies.

  The Catholic Church.

  Expensive jumpers.

  Being abroad.

  Sausages.

  Lots of money.

  Themselves.

  That was the most important item: they liked themselves; them and their mates.

  The list of dislikes, I decided, was straightforward. It was (over and above Tottenham Hotspur) the following: the rest of the world.

  The rest of the world is a big place, and its essential inhabitant is the stranger. The supporters did not like the stranger. The stranger—shopkeepers, employees of the London Underground or British Rail, old men in your way on the escalator, people asking for directions, someone trying to get your vote, bus-conductors, waitresses, members of the Labour Party, people in the seat next to you, simply people in the way—was detestable. And there was no stranger more strange, and therefore no stranger more detestable, than the foreigner. The foreigner was the one they really hated (it was not admissible that they, being from England and now in Italy, might have been foreigners). The problem with foreigners
was this: they were incomplete. For some reason, foreigners had never quite climbed all the way up the evolutionary ladder; there was a little less of the foreigner—especially foreigners of a dark complexion, not to mention foreigners of a dark complexion who were also trying to sell you something. They were the worst.

  And then something calamitous occurred: the hotel ran out of beer.

  It was the middle of the night, and the hotel had been emptied of its stocks of alcohol. No beer? The news was greeted with an incredulity that exceeded anything expressed so far. No hotel, no match tickets, no match: these were nothing compared to the announcement that there was no beer. With the news, everyone—the maimed, the drunk, the comatose—rose to his feet and charged the bar. This looked bad. The hotel manager appeared, conciliatory, offering orange juice. This made things worse.

  As they surged forward, I dropped back. It would be safer, I thought, outside. And that was when I realized that the troops had been called in.

  I had no choice but to notice the troops because the moment I stepped out one of them blocked my way with an automatic rifle, turned me round and marched me to the wall. The troops must have been gathering for some time. The carabinieri had failed; the riot police had failed; now it was the army’s turn. I suspect there were only about a hundred troops, but they represented an altogether different order of control: suddenly we were in a NATO exercise. The soldiers were wearing camouflage-green infantry uniforms and big heavy black shiny boots and carrying very authoritative-looking guns. They also had fifteen armoured personnel carriers and a tank. The tank was on the other side of the square, pointing in our direction. This was not a comfortable idea. I have had a gun barrel pointed at me, and I didn’t like it. I had never been at the end of a barrel of a tank, although it was probably because the barrel of the tank was pointed in our direction that the Italians on the square remained on the square.

  I thought I would stay put for a while—the wall where I had been placed offered a reasonable vantage point from which to view events—and so I missed the expressions on the faces of the four hundred or so supporters as they turned from the counter of the bar they had been pounding and faced an army colonel flanked by eager soldiers with automatic weapons. The colonel ordered that the bar be vacated, and more soldiers rushed in—they were incapable of walking—and pushed everyone into a single file line.

  Mr Wicks arrived.

  I had expected him. He had been chasing around the city to bring us a little surprise—he left it in the back seat of his car—but knew everything that had taken place in the meanwhile. He knew what had happened after the match, about the angry Italians waiting in the dark, that the army had been called in, and even what the Italian newspapers were going to say in the morning—he had seen them.

  Mr Wicks: I had grown fond of him and his faith in humanity. He had such high hopes for what had come out of the airplane in the morning. And now: he wasn’t angry or upset; he was resigned.

  ‘You lot,’ Mr Wicks said, shaking his head. ‘You lot really did it this time.’

  The first armoured personnel carrier pulled up. It was a peculiar-looking contraption—something between a farm tractor and a World War Two tank, camouflaged for the tropical rain forest. A hatch opened, a small thing in the front, and out popped a soldier. He, too, was one of the eager ones and, on gaining his feet, he sprinted to the colonel standing by the hotel entrance. It was only then that I understood why these strange combat vehicles were needed. Only a few English supporters were staying at this particular hotel. Most were elsewhere—somewhere on the other side of the square; somewhere, that is, on the other side of the Italians waiting in the dark. One of the evening’s ironies had revealed itself: the Italian authorities were about to provide an armed escort to ensure that the United supporters got to their hotels without being maimed by angry locals out for revenge. The Italian army had been called out to convey the English to their beds, in groups of five, huddled inside an armoured personnel carrier.

  There was one problem: few English supporters knew where they were staying.

  In her way, Jackie had been trying to tell the supporters where they were staying since we arrived in Turin. The colonel by her side reassured her that this time none of them would slip away. Jackie, satisfied, gathered together the papers on her clipboard and proceeded to call out the names—loudly, clearly, imperiously—one by one. On hearing his name, each supporter was instructed to step forward and was then rushed away by two soldiers to a waiting armoured personnel carrier. The first vehicle was filled and drove off. And then the second. By the third vehicle, the supporters were well into one of their chants, urging the Pope to get fucked, but Jackie was not to be deterred. Jackie was in control at last.

  Mr Wicks, meanwhile, had returned from his car, having fetched his surprise. It was Mr Robert Boss.

  I was disappointed. I had got used to the idea that Bobby Boss didn’t exist; that he had been invented by the supporters, an elaborate laundering operation that allowed them to buy tickets, book hotels, even hire guides like Jackie so that they could then go about the business of doing what that they had been banned from doing.

  But there he was: a fact, the man himself.

  He was short, dumpy and balding, and wearing a white linen suit that would have flattered a man many times thinner. Although the evening had grown cool, Bobby Boss was perspiring heavily, and his suit, which was tight behind the arms, was sticking heavily to his back. His forehead was damp and clammy, and his skin had the quality of wet synthetic underpants.

  Mr Wicks turned out to be something of a detective and had tracked down Bobby Boss in Turin’s most expensive restaurant—it was, Mr Wicks had concluded, Mr Robert Boss’s business to know where to find quality—and pulled him away before he could finish his meal. This was, I was told, the first time that Bobby Boss had seen the people on one of his package tours. It had not been Bobby Boss’s intention ever to see them; it was only his affection for pasta that had compelled him at the last minute to join the trip. The decision was being regretted; Bobby Boss did not look happy.

  Everybody there wanted to ask him questions. They were trying to make him accountable for the damage and the injuries and the embarrassment. I wanted to ask him questions as well and decided that I would phone him when I returned. In my eyes, Bobby Boss was nothing less than evil, a wide-boy of working-class sport, a cowboy on the make, one of the little men who sells you more seats than he has to offer, wants more cash than there are receipts to show for it, an expert in securing a bit of this, a bit of that. Why had he told people there would be seats when there weren’t even tickets? I wanted to ask. Why, when the United supporters were banned, had he sold them a package to Turin? But when I phoned, I got the steady tone of a disconnected line. I tried Directory Enquiries. There was no Bobby Boss Travel Agency. I looked in the phone book for Bobby Boss, B. Boss, Robert Boss, R. Boss and tried each one. Bobby Boss, I concluded, had packed up and was into something else.

  Jackie was reaching the end of her list, and the last armoured vehicle had rolled up to the front of the hotel. The Italians across the square had grown impatient: they would be heading home soon. The colonel had ordered his soldiers into formation. And Bobby Boss—his trousers clinging to the skin along the back of his thighs—was engaged in an intense conversation with Mr Wicks. I don’t know how he had done it but Bobby Boss had shifted the scrutiny away from himself. He was selling again; he was offering Mr Wicks a discount on a package tour to the next World Cup. He was prepared to throw in the hotel at no extra cost. Bobby Boss was trying very hard to get Mr Wicks to like him. But Mr Wicks was not buying.

  The next morning, Mick was first to show up at the square. It was safe now—no soldiers or avenging mobs of Italians—and the atmosphere was distinctly subdued: the morning after the night before. By the time I arrived, Mick was well into an eight-litre bottle of red wine. I have since seen eight-litre bottles of wine—they are called Methuselahs—but I hadn’t seen one at the t
ime. It was gigantic and unwieldy but, according to Mick, extremely good value. You had to admire his strength; his stomach must have been made of bricks.

  I spotted Clayton. He had not brought a change of clothing and was wrestling with the same pair of trousers, now colourfully stained. I hadn’t seen him the night before: having passed out early in the afternoon, he had missed the match and had woken up this morning inside a cardboard box.

  By eleven o’clock, most of the supporters had surfaced, and it was evident that, although our flight back was early in the afternoon, the day was not going to be very different from the one before. This was a prospect that was difficult to contemplate, but the fact was everyone had had a head start. The quantity of alcohol already in the bloodstream before anyone started drinking again was considerable: a few hours’ sleep wasn’t about to undo yesterday’s good work. And by the time the supporters reached the airport, they were spectacularly drunk—again. They came crashing out of the coaches, tripping over each other, singing loudly, zig-zagging as they roared into the terminal.

  I was tired. I had seen enough. But I didn’t have a choice: I was going to see more.

  When we finally got outside the terminal, one of the supporters passed out. He had just about reached the bus that was to take us to the plane when he dropped to his knees and fell on to his face, unconscious. The temptation must have been to leave him there. It didn’t seem sensible that, in his state, he should be allowed to fly: he was bound to get sick; he might have been very ill. None of this was as dangerous as allowing him to remain behind. Four soldiers lifted him up and heaved him on to the bus.