Local Legend

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Local Legend Page 17

by Trembling, Paul;


  “You’re missing the point. The thing is, Sam, there are not that many like it around – and there’s a few people who know I’ve got it.”

  “Ah. So it can be traced back to you, you mean? Right. I admit that hadn’t occurred to me. But it doesn’t change anything. Not at the moment, anyway. We still can’t go and get it.”

  “True.”

  “So where do we go? Back home?”

  I thought about it. The idea was attractive: I was ready for a proper cup of tea and a nap, and Sandy would be home eventually. And how would that conversation go? “How was your day, dear? Sam and I have had an interesting time. Met Adi, would you believe? He gave me a bomb… Oh, and I found out something interesting about Sam as well.”

  I wasn’t ready for that. Not until I could at least answer all the questions.

  “No,” I decided. “Not home. Corsten.”

  Sam turned and stared at me. “Corsten? To see Adi? Do you really think that’s a good idea, Dad? Bearing in mind that he just tried to blow you up.”

  “The bomb was meant for Lonza, not me. I think.”

  “So you were just collateral? Does that make it OK? What sort of mate sends his oldest friend off with a bomb anyway?”

  I met his gaze. “I don’t know. That’s why I need to go and talk to him.”

  Sam turned away, stared out of the windscreen for a moment.

  “If it was your friend, would you just leave it at that?” I asked. “Or would you want to… discuss it?”

  After a moment, Sam nodded. “Fair enough. Let’s do that.” He started up and pulled out of the lay-by.

  From where we were, the direct route to Corsten led through some narrow lanes and typical English countryside. Gently rolling hills, woods and copses, green fields studded with cattle, old grey churches, and picturesque little cottages. Nothing dramatic, but in the late afternoon sunshine, nothing could be more peaceful and calming.

  The contrast with the rest of the day was so intense that it seemed unreal. Those things couldn’t possibly have happened.

  We found ourselves stuck behind a tractor belching black diesel fumes, which added some balance to the perfect scenery. Slowed to a crawl, Sam took the opportunity to resume conversation.

  “Dad, I’ve been meaning to ask – what did Adi mean? The last thing he said to me, to ask you why he left?”

  “Oh. That.”

  “Thing is, Dad, I thought you must know more about that than you’re saying. Every time the subject comes up, you go quiet.”

  “Do I? Well, yes. I do. Thing is I… I suppose I feel guilty about it. Sort of.”

  “It’s a good day for revealing secrets.”

  “Right.” And actually, that wasn’t a bad idea. I needed to tell someone. I’d been holding on to it for too long.

  I closed my eyes, shut out the summer afternoon, and thought back to a slightly dingy bar several years ago.

  “Adi and I used to meet up every Thursday night at the Empress, an old pub near the Castle. A run-down place, but it was convenient. We’d have a couple of drinks and talk things over. Football things, that is. How last Saturday’s game went, how the next one might go, who was playing well, who wasn’t performing. That sort of stuff. Adi used me as a sort of sounding board, to bounce ideas and opinions off – especially the ones he couldn’t talk to anyone else about. I soaked it up, and made a note of things I could use when I was writing up the next game.

  “We’d had that routine going for years. But this particular time, Adi turned up a bit late and very morose. The Vale had had a bad run recently – in the last five games they’d drawn four and lost one. Which wasn’t a complete disaster, but for Adi, going that long without a win was close to it.

  “Turned out it was more than that, though. ‘Did you hear?’ he said as soon as he saw me. No preliminaries like ‘Hello, Graham’.

  “‘Did I hear what?’

  “‘Desmond Farcourt has been named European Manager of the Year!’

  “‘Ah, that,’ I said. Of course I’d heard about it. It was my job to hear about things like that. But I was hoping that Adi hadn’t.”

  “Desmond Farcourt? I’ve heard that name,” Sam put in. The tractor turned into a farmyard, but the narrow lanes didn’t allow for much acceleration. Sam moved up a gear, but had to drop down again as we came to a steep climbing turn.

  “You should have done. One of the big names in European football, and a contemporary of Adi’s. They both got their first England caps in the same year – same game, in fact – but apart from that they were chalk and cheese. Different social backgrounds, different approaches to the game, different all round. Adi couldn’t stand him. Said he was a rich kid who was all about publicity and nothing about skill. Des Farcourt called Adi a kick-and-rush leg-hacker who’d never really got out of the slums.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yes, and it went downhill from there. Got to the point where they couldn’t play on the same team together, so they were both dropped from the England squad at one point. Which didn’t exactly pour oil on the water, as you can imagine.”

  “But Adi got back in, didn’t he?”

  “Eventually. Des was a bit older than him, and retired early – at the top of his game, mind, but Adi called him a quitter. However, that gave Adi the chance to get back in the England squad, which he did just in time for that friendly with Sweden and the end of his playing career.

  “They both moved into management. Adi at The Vale, of course. Des went into Europe, though – he’d always had good contacts there, had played a season on loan to one of the big clubs. He started in Italy, did well, moved to France, and did even better. So, eventually, European Manager of the Year.”

  The road levelled out on top of a ridge, with sunlit fields falling away to either side, a chequerboard of deep green with patches of brilliant yellow oilseed rape. Sam accelerated.

  “I can see how that would have upset Adi.”

  “More than just upset. I didn’t realize it at first, but he was angry – deep-down furious. I found out later that he’d already had a few to drink, up in the club bar with Johnnie Muldoon. He could hold his booze pretty well, it took a lot to make him really drunk, but alcohol chipped away at his inhibitions.

  “It wasn’t unusual for him to have a moan about how well someone else was doing. I could usually cheer him up by reminding him of all he’d done, so that was the tactic I followed this time.

  “‘European Manager of the Year?’ I said. ‘What’s that, Adi, compared with what you’ve done here? You’ve built The Vale up from nothing – your playing, your managing – and everyone knows it. There’s not a club in the world that owes more to one man, and not a town in the world that knows who its hero is like this town does. Heck, the whole country knows it. There isn’t a team in the UK that doesn’t wish they had an Adi Varney! European Manager of the Year – that’s nothing. You, you’re a legend, Adi!’

  “But it wasn’t working. Adi was just staring into his glass. Glaring, actually, and I wasn’t sure that he’d even heard me. Then he started swearing. Of course, Adi always did have a fine command of the vernacular, but he usually kept it under control, especially in public. And with me. But this time, he just let it all out.

  “In amongst the bad language, what he was saying was that The Vale was a nothing little team, the town was a dead-end nowhere place, and nothing he’d ever done here meant anything at all.

  “I tried to calm him down. Fortunately, the place was pretty quiet, and there was nobody too close, but all the same, people were looking. And if it got out that Adi Varney had bad-mouthed his own team and his town – well, that would make a few headlines that I wouldn’t like to read. But he didn’t care. He just went on about what he could have done and who he could have been if he hadn’t been ‘shackled’ – his word – to this place and this team. Only he put it more colourfully: the town was the bottom of the sewer and the team was what floated in it. More or less.”

  “Ouch! Th
at was a bit strong,” said Sam.

  “You should have heard the original. But he hadn’t finished. He’d told me more than once about all the offers he’d had from other teams, both as a player and a manager. Heck, he told everyone. He was quite proud about how many people had wanted him – and that he’d turned them all down to stay with The Vale. In the early days, he’d even had to fight his own manager, who thought that the transfer fee would have been worth more than Adi himself. But he was always ready to tell anyone who’d listen that he was a local lad, through and through.

  “Well, now he was putting a different slant on it. He was telling me that if he’d taken up some of those offers, it was him who would be European Manager of the Year, and it would have been him who did this and that… Anything he’d achieved with The Vale, he would have done ten times more and ten times better if he’d left.

  “I was starting to get annoyed with his ranting. But all the same, I should have thought a bit more before I answered him.

  “‘Well, why didn’t you go, then?’ I asked. ‘There was nothing stopping you!’

  “People had said that to him in the past, and that’s when he’d stop and smile and come out with his line about being a local boy. But not this time. Instead he turned and glared at me.

  “‘You know why I didn’t go!’ he said (with expletives). ‘How could I, after Davy?’

  “And I just looked at him for a moment. I was stunned. ‘Davy?’ I asked him. ‘What’s Davy got to do with it?’

  “‘Davy’s got everything to do with it!’ he told me. ‘You left him and saved me! So how could I leave? With you always telling everybody that The Vale needed me, that the town needed me? You needed me. You built your little career on me. Adi Varney, the local boy, your best pal – that’s what made you, Graham. I made you! I reckon you knew just what you were doing when you grabbed me and let your brother go! Well, it worked out all right, didn’t it? You got what you wanted, you got your sports page and your headlines. You saved me and I’ve paid and paid ever since. I’m still paying for it; still paying what I owe you for your brother!’

  “He’d said often enough before that I’d built my career on his – but always as a joke. I thought it was a joke. But in any case, there was a lot of truth in it and I’d never denied that. Knowing Adi, having the inside track on the local golden boy, had certainly been a big help. But I’d never known before that he resented it. And I’d never heard this stuff about Davy.”

  Sam shook his head. “So – Adi had it in his head that you’d deliberately chosen to save him and let your brother go?” He braked as we came off the ridge and began descending through woods on the other side.

  “Yes. That’s exactly what he thought. That’s what he’d been thinking for the past thirty-something years. That’s why he’d stayed with The Vale – not because he was committed to his roots, but because he felt he owed me for my brother, and because I wanted him to stay.

  “But I only worked that out afterwards. At the time, I just didn’t get it. It was too much to take on board all at once. I just sat there gaping at him, until I finally found my voice. And then I said the stupidest thing I’ve ever said.

  “‘That’s not how it was, Adi,’ I told him. ‘I didn’t know who it was I grabbed. I didn’t know it was you and not Davy until afterwards.’

  “It took a while for that to sink in. I could see the look in his eyes change.

  “‘You’re telling me that it was an accident? That you would have saved Davy if you could have? That you would have saved him and let me go?’

  “‘No, not like that,’ I told him. ‘I didn’t have chance to decide. I just caught hold of someone.’

  “Adi wasn’t shouting any more. He was whispering if anything, and he’d even stopped swearing.

  “‘And you never told me? All these years, you let me think you chose me over your brother?’

  “I tried to tell him I hadn’t known that he thought that, that; I’d never deliberately deceived him. But it was too late. He wasn’t listening any more. Instead he just got up and started for the door. I went after him. Followed him outside.

  “‘Adi, wait. Let me explain!’ I said, but he ignored me. So I grabbed him by the shoulder, and he turned round and laid into me with his stick.”

  “That brass-handled one?”

  “The very same. Hit me right above the eye with the first blow, and I didn’t remember much about things after that. But he must have gone on hitting me, because when I came round in hospital I had multiple bruises all over.”

  I shook my head, thinking about it. Thinking about waking up and realizing what Adi had done to me. Trying to understand why.

  “I always knew that Adi had a temper. He’d never let it go at me before. Verbally, perhaps, but never like that. But what I told him – I think I kicked away the foundations of his life. I suppose that must have hurt. I suppose that would spark anyone’s temper…

  “The police wanted to know who’d done it. I told them that I hadn’t seen them properly. And I told your mum the same thing. Which I’m not proud about. But I just couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone. Not what Adi had done, not what he had said… I just couldn’t do it, Sam.”

  We drove on in silence for a few minutes. The road was still descending, coming down from the ridge through thick woodland. It was very dark in the shadows after the bright sunlight.

  “So what did you do, Dad?” Sam asked.

  “I sent him messages. I thought that if I could just talk to him when he was a bit calmer, we could get it all sorted out. But he didn’t answer.

  “I hoped to catch up with him at the next Vale game, but I was still in hospital. That knock on the head had them worried. I was having trouble with my eyesight for a while. So I sent him more messages. Left some with other people as well, saying I was sorry I’d have to miss it but I hoped it went well and that we could talk again afterwards. I hoped that if it went well, he’d cool down, get in touch, and we could put things right.

  “It did go well, in fact – 2–1 against the league leaders. I watched it on TV, in the hospital. And I watched Adi announce that he was leaving, and I watched that interview in the car park afterwards.

  “I couldn’t believe it. I sat with my phone in my hand, just staring at it. For hours. Expecting him to call. Expecting him to visit. When Sandy came to see me, she took the phone off me, but I was still waiting for him. For days.

  “I never saw him again. Not until today, that is.”

  We were coming into a village now. Corsten. Not quite the sleepy little village that I’d imagined. Someone had built a big housing estate round the original centre: streets of identical semis that managed to look both modern and shabby at the same time. There was a shopping area as well, with a supermarket, a charity shop, and a full range of fast-food and takeaway places.

  The old village was tucked away behind all this, a leftover from the past. Village green, village pub, parish church, all looking a bit out of place and bewildered by the new neighbours. A side road off the green took us past a row of cottages, beyond the end of which was a detached building in an overgrown garden. Two storeys, old and looking a bit shabby, verging on dilapidated at the edges. A barely legible wooden sign by the broken gate read Mill House.

  It had probably been a long time since an actual mill had stood here, but when Sam turned off the engine we could hear the river gushing and splashing somewhere in the background. A side road – well, more of a track – went down past the house, presumably leading to the yard where Casey had taken us before.

  My phone rang as we sat looking at the house. I pulled it out, wondering if it was Sandra, wondering what I would say if it was. I had no idea how to even begin to tell her about my day.

  But the screen was showing me Declan. I certainly wasn’t going to try explaining things to him just now, so I declined the call. When it rang again I switched it off. I didn’t want any interruptions when I talked to Adi.

  “Dad, this cou
ld be dangerous,” Sam said.

  “Trust me, I won’t be accepting any more packages.”

  I got out, pushed aside the remains of the gate, and marched up to the front door.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Adi isn’t all that bothered about the money. He likes it, of course – who doesn’t? – but the important thing for him is that he’s from the back streets of nowhere, and everybody knows his name.”

  Karen Varney, TV interview

  There was no bell, but there was a very tarnished brass knocker. I lifted it, but on the first bang the door swung open.

  “Unlocked?” Sam said from behind me. “That’s strange. I’d have expected Casey at least to be more security conscious.”

  “Adi?” I called out. There was no answer. “Adi?” I tried again, louder. “Anybody home? It’s Graham and Sam. We need to talk.”

  The silence persisted. Sam and I looked at each other, and then Sam took out the pistol he’d taken from Lonza’s house. I didn’t like the way he did that so naturally.

  “Just precautionary,” he said, and pushed past me to enter first.

  The corridor beyond was similar to the one at the back, except that someone had made a start on cleaning it up. Same black and white tiles, but the broken ones had been removed. There had been pictures on the walls here, but they’d been taken down and stacked at the end, leaving their shadows on the faded wallpaper. It still smelt of damp and musty neglect.

  Sam tried a door on the left, looked in.

  “Kitchen,” he said. “Empty.”

  He went to another door, further down and on the opposite side, and pushed it open.

  “Oh,” he said, and suddenly his alert state seemed to go up a notch. He raised the gun to a ready position and dropped into a crouch.

  “Get down and stay here!”

  He dived through the door.

  “Sam?” I asked. I was crouching down, as I’d been told. “Sam – what’s going on?”

  He came back out, standing upright, gun still in hand but not pointing anywhere. There was a peculiar expression on his face.

 

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