by Lee Stone
“My sister,” she said. “Look at her. This is what this place has done to her.”
Tyler cottoned on. He showed the cops the contents of the Filipino’s purse, still lying on the bar. Needles and spoons and little brown wraps. The cops shook their heads. They’d seen it a million times before.
Rachel looked down at the bar, horrified. She tried to talk, but her chest was cramping too tightly. She sounded incoherent. She sounded like a junkie.
“Cold fucking turkey,” the waitress shook her head too. “It breaks my heart, but God help me I will put her straight.”
Rachel’s legs went. She clawed at the bar to stay upright. Her hand landed on her phone. It was still lit up. But the ID on the screen was wrong. She hadn’t rung Neilson in her hour of need. She’d rung an Englishman who she’d never even met. Disaster. Even so, the phone was still lit up. Silently, Rachel prayed for the strength to talk. Nothing happened.
Five thousand miles away, Lockhart could hear Rachel’s slurred sounds. He knew exactly what was going on, but he could do nothing about it. She was hypothermic and confused. Raven was playing her, and she was losing.
At least Tyler’s days were numbered. Their conversation earlier had made it clear that he’d be coming to Woodridge. Coming for the money he’d stolen and coming to deal with Lockhart like he’d dealt with Barr. But Lockhart would be ready for him.
“We’ll have to take her in,” the cop who had been riding passenger was saying. “For possession, at least.”
There was no way that the waitress could let that happen. Not now. Not after everything that had happened in the cellar. The second cop was less scrupulous that the first and was stealing glances at her cleavage every time she looked away. She took a deep breath and watched him swallow, losing his train of thought for a moment.
“She’s my sister,” she implored. “If you take her in, she’ll deal inside and get hooked again. I won’t see her for a year, and when I do it’ll probably be at her funeral.”
She took in another gulp of air. The cop was swayed. It sounded melodramatic, but he’d seen it happen a lot in the last few years. Broken girls, devastated families. He looked at the pregnant waitress and her junkie sister. She’d be an auntie soon enough. Maybe that would keep her straight for a while at least.
The cops looked at each other, and then the one who had been driving said “Look, strictly speaking we didn’t find her in possession. What’s on the bar was on the bar when we walked in. It wasn’t in any of your possession, I guess.”
The waitress stepped forward and hugged the cop closest to her. Pressed her three lumps into him, to seal the deal. Rachel made an angry gurgling sound, but her lips were cracking and her tongue felt about six times bigger than normal. She could hear the Englishman saying something down the phone. Shouting, in fact. She slumped forward on the bar, covering the phone with her hair. Put her ear near enough to hear what he was saying.
The snow had whipped up outside Lockhart’s window so that he could hardly see the pub across the road. The flakes were heavy and mesmerizing, but his mind was sharp and his pulse was racing. The cops were leaving. They were leaving Rachel with Tyler. She’d be dead within an hour.
“Punch him” he was shouting down the phone. “Hit him now, before it’s too late. Rachel, this is your only chance, can you hear me?”
He was rooting for her, willing her to do it. He knew she could save herself if she had the strength. But she didn’t have any strength. Everything hurt and ached, and she looked up at Tyler with dread in her eyes. He was taught and muscular, not to mention enormous. She might as well hit a mountain for all the good it would do.
She lifted her head, but could still hear the voice shouting from five thousand miles away, encouraging her to sock him in the eye. Yeah, thanks for the advice, chump.
The younger cop had drained his mug and was already at the door. No arrests, no paperwork; job done. His partner was still frowning, wondering if he was making the right decision. He walked over to the bar and leaned over Rachel.
“Your sister is giving you a second chance here,” he said, nodding at the heroin on the bar. He took the two wraps and folded them into an official looking bag. Stuck them in his pocket. He put a hand on Rachel’s shoulder and wished her good luck. She tried to tell him. Tried desperately to explain that he was leaving her to be killed. Frozen, for God’s sake. She heard the Englishman’s tinny voice rattling the earpiece on her phone. The cop heard it too, leaned over with her. Tyler had noticed too. Lockhart was roaring now. Telling Rachel that she had to find the strength to hit him.
She looked at the cop, and she looked at the phone. And in her head, she apologized to Lockhart. He had worked out the one thing she could do to save herself. Her one chance to get free. He wasn’t telling her to hit Tyler. He was telling her to hit the cop.
She took every ounce of strength she had left in her frozen body. She forced herself up from the bar as hard as she could, ramming her head straight into the cop’s face. His lip bust. It was superficial, but it would count as battery. Assault on an officer. While he was working out the charges, Rachel clasped both of her hands together and swung hard at the cop again. His partner had turned around and was running back into the bar by now. Between then they wrestled Rachel White to the ground.
They cuffed her and marched her out of the bar, the older guy dabbing away at his bleeding lip. The second cop turned back as he reached the doorway with a smirk on his face. The whole episode had been kind of bizarre.
“Even your tits won’t save your sister from those charges,” he said to the waitress. Then he seemed to remember that Tyler was in the room and he stopped smirking. He nodded at the giant and mentioned something about due respect, before heading outside and joining his partner in the cruiser. Engine on, siren on, lights on. And they drove Rachel White to safety.
Tyler had one hand on the shotgun behind the bar. He would have blasted the smirk off the cop’s face if he didn’t have more pressing issues to deal with. He glared at Rachel White’s cell phone and snatched it up off the bar.
“I’m coming for you,” he growled at Lockhart.
“I’m waiting,” Lockhart replied.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Woodridge, English Cotswolds.
“Come back to what you know, take everything real slow.”
- Embrace
It was five hours later that the footballer and his agent arrived in Woodridge. Lockhart was watching the clock. The snow was still falling, and he was surprised they had made it up the hill. It must have been a struggle. Lockhart was glad to see their car pull up outside the cottage, though. It would be a welcome distraction.
The footballer thought the place looked pretty. The houses were all old and worn. The place was in the middle of nowhere and there was a blizzard on. It was like stepping bank a hundred years; Ivy-clad walls protected well established gardens, and the roads were not used much judging by the condition of the pure white snow the agent’s car was plowing through.
The footballer thought it was a strange place to have a meeting, but his agent reassured him that sometimes it was good to get away from prying eyes. The footballer remembered the hill they’d just struggled up. Only the most kamikaze paparazzi would have followed them in this weather.
The player’s contract prevented him from talking to other football clubs, so conversations about his career had to happen in places where the media wouldn’t be snooping. Somewhere like Woodridge. The agent had told him that if the meeting went well, he could be on a plane to Asia by the evening. But the whole thing was shrouded in mystery and it wasn’t until they arrived at the house that the two men found out what the deal involved.
The house itself was tiny. The footballer lived in a mansion in the North of England, and he couldn’t understand why a man who was apparently far richer than him would live in an unassuming cottage in a village in the middle of nowhere. The perimeter was protected by a traditional stone wall which was about th
ree feet high. Immediately behind the wall were thick evergreen bushes which hid the modest lawn from prying eyes.
Beyond the evergreens, the short approach to the house was immaculate. Everything that poked up above the carpet of snow was manicured. A girl from the village was busying herself in a greenhouse as the footballer’s BMW came to a halt in front of the house. There was a path in the snow where the girl had walked between the main house and the greenhouse. The wind was up and the snow was starting to drift.
The cottage originally belonged to the manor house next door. Four hundred years ago it had been sharply hewn from local stone, but time and weather had smoothed its edges and softened its color.
At the end of the driveway, the BMW parked up outside the cottage. The footballer and his agent stepped out into the snow and looked around. Despite its age, the cottage was in good order. The chimney was billowing smoke and the smell of burned firewood hung in the air. A man appeared on the road back beyond the stone wall, followed by the sound of muffled hooves. He was leading two horses; it was too treacherous for riding. They peered over the evergreens, their nostrils steaming in the cold air. Soon enough they lost interest, and they continued to plod along behind the man as he led them to their stables on the edge of the village. The footballer felt like he had stepped back a couple of centuries.
It was too cold to stand around. The glow from the windows matched the smoke from the chimney. There was a roaring fire going inside the place and the windows cast an orange light over the monochrome garden. Next to the greenhouse the footballer spotted a huge wood store with a forest full of cut and chopped logs ready to be thrown onto an impressive fire at the heart of the house. The agent was about to bang on the solid oak door when it opened.
Heat rushed out to greet them, and a confident looking man who was standing in the doorway. It was Lockhart. He looked tanned and relaxed as he greeted the player and his agent. He shook their hands and ushered them inside. He asked them about the intricacies of their journey through the narrow lanes in the snow.
The footballer had been right; there was a blazing fire going in the main room in the house. Lockhart invited them to sit, and they all took seats in front of the fire.
The meeting didn’t take very long. Lockhart asked the footballer if he would be interested in a trip to Turkmenistan. The agent went through the process of explaining that the footballer had a very good contract and was happy at his club. He mentioned that the fans loved the player and that he had no reason to leave. All the same, he didn’t rule out the trip.
“There is no rich sheik at the other end of the flight,” Lockhart told him, “and I am not asking you to leave your club.”
Despite their protestation moments earlier, both the agent and the player looked crestfallen. Why the hell had they battled through the snow to meet some guy in a tiny cottage if he wasn’t offering him a lucrative new deal?
“What I want to know,” Lockhart continued, “is whether you’ve thought about what you’re going to do when you finish playing football?”
The footballer thought about little else. He filled his days training hard, eating well, scoring goals, being chased by the press and mixing with the glamorati. But at night he lay awake thinking about the inevitable end of his playing career. It terrorized him the way other men worry about being shoved in a box and buried under six feet of earth.
He figured he had two seasons left to play at top level before his legs started to give up. Beyond that his life was a blank. Since he was fourteen years old, his days had been mapped out by agents and managers and chairmen and coaches. In two years, he would have to fill his days for himself. People wouldn’t want his autograph. People wouldn’t stare at him in bars anymore. He had no idea what he would be doing in two years' time, and that scared the hell out of him.
“I wanted to talk to you because I have an opportunity for you,” Lockhart continued.
Suddenly there was a loud banging on the window. Lockhart looked up at the window, ready to react. It would take Tyler another twelve hours to get to Woodridge, even if he had set off as soon at he’d put the phone down. And Lockhart knew that when he arrived in Woodridge, all the villagers would send him to the manor house next door. It was much too early for Tyler to be knocking.
He could have sent someone else to do his work. So, when there was a bang at the window, Lockhart was up like a flash. As soon as he saw it was the girl from the greenhouse, he relaxed. She was staring through the window, her eyes transfixed on the footballer. Lockhart smiled and went to let her in.
“I just came to let you know that I’m off for the night,” she said. She sounded distracted and kept looking over Lockhart’s shoulder. She told him she’d have trouble getting back tomorrow if the snow continued, but she didn’t seem to be concentrating much on what she was saying.
“Don’t worry,” Lockhart told her. “There’s not much growing in this snow, so don’t break your neck getting up here tomorrow.”
She headed back out into the snow, hood and scarf protecting her from the cold. But before she headed off down the path, she turned around and stole one more glance over Lockhart’s shoulder to the man behind.
“Here,” she said, lowering her voice. “Is that who I think it is?”
“Depends who you think it is” Lockhart chuckled and watched as she trotted off down that path, bewildered. No doubt there would be some stories in the pub tonight. He closed the door on the cold and returned to the footballer and his agent.
“What do you know about Turkmenistan?” he asked them. The agent knew nothing, but the footballer answered.
“South of Russia, I think. Near Afghanistan.”
The agent shot him a suspicious look.
“Hey, I’m not just saying that because they sound similar.”
The agent laughed and held his hands up as he apologized.
“They’re outside of Europe anyway,” continued the footballer. “Why are you asking?”
Lockhart explained his journey through Turkmenistan and his chance meeting with the young boy called Nazar. He told the footballer how he’d nearly run him over because he was playing in the street. Then he explained how Rosalina, his mother, had encouraged him to play football as a way of improving his education. She made him count his kicks in English, Lockhart remembered.
The agent wasn’t looking too interested in the story, but the footballer asked how many keep-ups the boy could do. Lockhart explained that Nazar had been on the verge of beating his own record when he almost got run over. The footballer laughed.
“My dad used to go crazy at me for playing in the street,” he said. “I loved it though. I never felt so free.”
“How about setting up schools for kids who play football in the street?”
“Soccer schools?” asked the footballer. He liked the idea. It would be something worthwhile to do after he retired from top flight soccer. Something with a bit of soul, rather than a few years of gradually sliding down the lower leagues until he got fat and fell out of love with the game.
“Well, schools where they teach a bit of soccer and a bit of everything else,” Lockhart said. “Like Rosalina wanted for Nazar.”
The footballer’s agent interjected, his brow slightly furrowed.
“How much are you asking us to invest?” he asked.
“Just time,” Lockhart replied, watching the footballer’s response.
“My client’s time is precious,” the agent replied.
The footballer said nothing.
“Of course it is,” Lockhart agreed. “For the next year, at least.”
A cloud passed across the footballer’s face. Two more years, and then what? He had more money than he would ever need, but life had to be about more than money. He was a shrewd man with a big heart, and he knew that his career boiled down to a cabinet full of trinkets. He had won more medals than most, but what did that mean? What would he leave behind?
“Don’t you think it’s amazing,” Lockhart interrup
ted his thoughts, “that somewhere in the middle of the desert in a country you’ve never even heard of, there’s a kid called Nazar wearing a shirt with your name on the back of it?”
The footballer thought about it earnestly. He didn’t think it was amazing. He just thought it was good marketing. But he understood what Lockhart meant. He was being offered an opportunity to help people. He was being offered a purpose.
“So, you’ll pay to build some sort of academy, and I’ll help set it up and publicize it?”
“More than help publicize it. I’d like people to think of them as your academies. We can name them after you, if you like?”
The footballer liked it a lot. He liked the idea of training kids, and inspiring them. Helping them to respect themselves and to work hard. He liked the idea of not withering away once his contract expired.
“You said academies?” the footballer noted. “How many?”
“The first two would be in Turkmenistan” Lockhart told him. Of course, he wanted to build some in Afghanistan in time, but there was no need to worry the footballer with that just yet.
The footballer thought about it. He liked the idea, and he liked Lockhart. Lockhart was an easy man to trust. He seemed inspiring.
“What if I put in half?” he asked suddenly. His agent coughed.
Lockhart smiled gratefully. He told the footballer that he could put in as much or as little money as he liked. He reached forward and shook his hand.
“I’m afraid that there is no way in which you should see that handshake as legally binding” the agent told Lockhart, glaring at his client as though he should know better.
“Well, you can definitely consider it morally binding” the footballer smiled, as though he had just taken his first step away from a world that the agent would never escape. Then Lockhart made a final request.