by Kevin Brooks
And that’s when the alarm on my mobile went off.
40
Although I partly rationalised my decision to deal with the alarm on my own by telling myself that Mr Jago had enough to deal with at the moment as it was – arguing with the ref and Slade’s manager, dealing with Kendal’s injury – the truth was that I didn’t want him to know that the alarm had gone off. The thefts from the changing rooms was one of the things I’d spent so much time thinking about the night before, and after taking everything into consideration, I was pretty sure I knew who the culprit was. And if I was right, the situation was going to require delicate handling, which meant keeping Mr Jago as far away from it as possible. He couldn’t be delicate if his life depended on it.
As I got up and started heading for the changing rooms, Mosh called out after me, ‘Where you going, Trav?’
‘Changing rooms,’ I told him. ‘I forgot something.’
‘Jago’ll kill you if he comes back and finds you gone.’
I glanced over at the penalty area where the mass argument was still going on.
‘It looks like he’s going to be a while yet,’ I told Mosh. ‘I’ll be back before him.’
There was actually a good chance that I wouldn’t be back before Jago, and as I carried on towards the changing rooms, I realised that he was going to want to know why I hadn’t told him the alarm had gone off, and I’d better start thinking of a reason.
I was hoping that my theory about the thief was wrong, but when I got to the changing rooms and saw that the home dressing-room door was locked and there was no sign of Mr Wells anywhere, I pretty much knew I was right. I looked back at the football pitch. The ruckus was still going on. I reached up to the door lock and keyed in that day’s four-digit entry code (Jago had given it to me earlier on), then I opened the door and went inside.
I was right.
When I entered the dressing room, Mr Wells was standing by the row of coat hooks going through the pockets of someone’s jacket. His head snapped round as he heard me coming in, and for a fraction of a second he froze – his hand still in the jacket pocket, his eyes wide open in shock, his face visibly paling. I didn’t say anything, I just stood there staring at him. His eyes blinked rapidly as he took his hand out of the jacket and stepped away from the coat hooks, and he gave me a nervous smile.
‘Goodness me, Travis,’ he spluttered, ‘you gave me a real shock there for a second . . .’ He glanced anxiously at the jacket, then turned back to me. ‘I hope you don’t think I was . . . well, you know . . . you see, the thing is, I was just . . .’
It was painful to see him struggling to come up with an excuse, and when he looked down at the floor and let out a sigh of resignation, realising that it was hopeless, I was relieved that the charade was over.
‘I’m sorry, Travis,’ he said sadly, looking up at me. ‘I know you’re not a fool, and it’s unforgivable of me to treat you like one.’ He glanced over at the dressing-room door, then turned back to me. ‘I assume Mr Jago gave you the entry code?’
I nodded.
He said, ‘So I take it you’ve been working with him to catch the thief.’
I nodded again, then briefly told him about the motion sensors.
‘Ah, I see,’ he said. ‘I had a feeling Mr Jago was up to something. I just wasn’t sure what it was.’ He looked at me. ‘I think it’s probably best if I hand myself in to him after the match. Is that acceptable to you? Of course, it’s entirely up to you how you want to go about it, and I’ll happily go along with whatever you say. I just thought it might make it easier for you if I were to give myself up.’
‘You’re not a thief, are you?’ I said to him.
‘I’m sorry?’ he said, looking puzzled.
‘I mean, I know you’ve been stealing stuff from the changing rooms over the last few months . . .’
‘You know?’
‘I worked it out last night. I should have realised before, really. I mean, the thief wasn’t breaking in, so it had to be someone who knew the entry code, which narrowed it down to you, Mr Ayres, Mr Jago, or Kendal Price. Mr Jago and Kendal wouldn’t have hired me to look into the thefts if it was one of them, which left either you or Mr Ayres. And when we caught you in here the other day, and you told Mr Jago that you’d only come in because you thought you’d heard someone in here . . . well, it just wasn’t very convincing.’
He smiled. ‘I’m not a very good liar, am I?’
‘I just don’t get it,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I mean, you’re not a thief, are you? You’re a decent man. What on earth possessed you to start stealing things?’
‘That’s a good question, Travis. And I wish I knew the answer.’ He sat down wearily on a bench. ‘I suppose a psychoanalyst might say that I’m somehow trying to compensate for the guilt I feel about my son’s death, or that I’m subconsciously punishing myself by acting out his wrongdoing, his thieving, that indirectly led to his death.’
‘Do you think that’s why you’re doing it?’ I asked.
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ he said emptily. ‘It was just something that took hold of me . . . something I felt I had to do. I took no pleasure from it. It gave me no comfort. All it did was make me despise myself even more.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps that was why I did it. . .’
‘You told me once that grief is something that gets inside you,’ I reminded him. ‘Something that’s you, but not you. And whatever it wants you to do, there’s nothing you can do to stop it.’
He looked at me. ‘Did I say that?’
I nodded.
‘Well,’ he said, without a trace of bitterness in his voice, ‘there might not have been anything I could do to stop myself stealing, but you’ve certainly put a stop to it.’
A distant roar went up from outside then, the sound of the crowd cheering and whooping. Mr Wells glanced at me and raised his eyebrows.
‘Slade had a penalty,’ I explained. ‘That was either the home crowd cheering because they didn’t score, or the Slade supporters celebrating because they did.’
Mr Wells just nodded. He wasn’t particularly interested in football, and I don’t think he really cared who won the game.
‘So,’ he said, ‘do we agree it’s best if I confess to Mr Jago myself?’
‘He doesn’t have to know,’ I said.
Mr Wells furrowed his brow. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’
‘You’re a good teacher,’ I told him. ‘You actually care about the kids you teach. If you own up to the thieving, that’s the end of your career, isn’t it?’
‘And so it should be.’
‘Yeah, but what’s the point? No one gains from you being sacked. You lose your job, and you’ll never get another teaching job, and the school loses a good teacher.’
‘I stole from my students,’ he said firmly. ‘That’s unpardonable.’
‘You didn’t hurt anyone, did you?’
‘Well, no, but—’
‘Give yourself another chance,’ I told him. ‘I can forget it if you can. If it ever happens again, I’ll obviously have to turn you in. But if you promise to stop, that’s good enough for me.’
‘What about Mr Jago?’
A voice suddenly boomed from the doorway. ‘What about Mr Jago?’
We both turned and saw Jago standing there, hands on hips, glowering at us.
‘The sensor went off by mistake,’ I told him, thinking rapidly, wondering how much he’d overheard. ‘I came straight over when the alarm went off and told Mr Wells I needed something from the dressing room. He didn’t want to let me in, not after the last false alarm, but I told him it was really important. He was just worried what you’d think about him letting me in.’ I glanced at Mr Wells. ‘Isn’t that right, Mr Wells?’
‘Uh, yes . . .’ he said, looking at Jago. ‘I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing or not.’
Jago glared at me. ‘He knows about the sensors?’
Damn, I thought. I’d forgotten that Mr Wells w
asn’t supposed to know about them. ‘The one in here started making a crackling noise,’ I told Jago. ‘There’s something wrong with it. That’s why it went off in error. Mr Wells thought there was something wrong with the air-freshener and he was going to take a look at it. He was bound to find the sensor, so I thought I might as well tell him about it.’
‘You could have let me in on it, John,’ Mr Wells said to Jago, playing along with the lie. ‘You could have trusted me, you know.’
Jago sniffed. ‘It wasn’t a matter of trust, Ralph. We just thought that the fewer people who knew about it the better, that’s all.’
I sighed quietly to myself, pretty sure now that Jago hadn’t heard what we were talking about and that he’d swallowed my story.
‘Anyway, look,’ he said to me, ‘forget about the bloody sensors for now, we need you back on the bench. Nicky Beale’s gone off with a hamstring injury and we’re running out of players.’ He looked at Mr Wells. ‘You might as well stay in here for the rest of the match. We’ll sort out the sensors afterwards.’
‘Right,’ Mr Wells said. He turned to me then and looked me straight in the eye. ‘Thank you, Travis.’
‘No problem,’ I told him.
‘Come on, then,’ Jago said to me. ‘Let’s get a move on.’
As I followed Mr Jago out of the dressing room and we started heading across the playing fields, I wondered briefly what was going to happen when he and Kendal realised that the thefts from the changing rooms had stopped. That was if Mr Wells did stop, of course, but I was pretty sure he would. So I’d know why the thieving had stopped, and so would Mr Wells, but all Jago and Kendal would know was that it wasn’t happening any more. The question was, would they simply be relieved that we didn’t have a thief any longer – no more potential embarrassment for the school – and would they be happy to leave it at that, or would they still carry on looking for answers? Who was the thief? Why had they stopped? Had we scared them off for good? Or were they just biding their time until things cooled down again?
I also found myself wondering what Jago and Kendal would think of me when they realised the thieving had ceased. Would they think I’d done a good job in frightening off the thief, or would they think I’d failed because I hadn’t actually caught them?
I glanced at Mr Jago – striding along ahead of me like a crazed sergeant major, his eyes fixed manically on the match up ahead – and I thought to myself, Look at him, he’s half out of his mind. What do you care what he thinks or does about anything?
‘Did Slade score from the penalty?’ I asked casually, trotting up behind him.
He grinned. ‘Wilson got too clever. He tried to send our goalie the wrong way and then dink it down the middle, but he slipped on his run up and completely fluffed his shot. The ball barely reached the goal line.’
‘So we’re still winning?’
‘Yep.’ Jago glanced at his watch. ‘Ten minutes to go. Plus added time.’
Just as he finished speaking, I looked up and saw Quade Wilson with the ball at his feet on the edge of our penalty area. Four Kell Cross defenders were in front of him, and the nearest Slade players – one to his left, another to his right – were both closely marked. Quade didn’t seem to have any options. But then he took a step back, rolled the ball under his right foot, flipped it up into the air, and with virtually no back lift at all, volleyed it with the outside of his left foot. The ball swerved up and over the four defenders and curled into the net like a guided missile, and the Slade supporters went berserk.
Mr Jago let out a string of four-letter words, and when I looked at him – a bit taken aback by his language, to be honest – his face wasn’t just red with anger, it was almost purple.
Yep, I thought, he’s definitely at least half out of his mind.
I was going to ask him if he still thought Quade Wilson was ‘too clever’, but I thought if I did he’d probably explode, so I decided to keep my mouth shut.
Kell Cross 1, Slade 1.
Nine minutes and fifty seconds to go. Plus added time.
41
With Kendal having been sent off, we were down to ten men now, and we were basically playing four at the back and five in midfield, with all the midfielders taking up defensive positions. As well as Nicky Beale going off with a hamstring injury, we’d also lost our best attacking midfielder (ankle strain) and our right back (suspected concussion). Mosh Akram had gone on in place of the midfielder, and our substitute left back was playing at right back. Although the substitution rules for the Twin Town Cup tournament allowed for more subs than normal games (up to six from a squad of twenty-three), Mr Jago had decided in his wisdom that we didn’t need a squad of twenty-three, and that five substitutes on the bench was more than enough. So now there were only two of us left: me and a kid called Paul Ryman. Ryman was an out-and-out goal poacher. A short, slightly chubby kid, he wasn’t much good at anything except scoring goals. He couldn’t pass the ball, couldn’t dribble, couldn’t tackle, and he was absolutely useless in the air. But put him in the six-yard box and he was almost guaranteed to get you a goal. Unfortunately for him, a goal poacher was the last thing we needed right now. All we were doing was trying desperately to hold on to the draw.
Because it got dark around four o’clock, and the school didn’t have any floodlights, there was no extra time scheduled for the Twin Town Cup Final. The rules were that if the score was level at full-time, the match would go straight to a penalty shoot-out. And that was our only hope. If Slade scored again now, the chances of us getting an equaliser were virtually non-existent. But if we could just hold on for another five minutes . . . well, anything can happen in a penalty shoot-out.
‘CONCENTRATE, KELL CROSS!’ Jago was shouting. ‘KEEP YOUR DISCIPLINE, DON’T LOSE YOUR CONCENTRATION NOW!’
‘It’d be a lot easier to concentrate if he didn’t keep shouting at them all the time,’ Paul Ryman said to me.
‘Maybe you should go over and point that out to him,’ I suggested.
Paul grinned.
I held my breath as another Slade corner kick came looping into our box. Their big centre back leapt into the air and met it with a thudding header that looked for a moment as if it was going into the top corner of the goal, but at the last second our goalie – Richie King – flew across the goal and tipped it over the bar for another corner.
I glanced at my mobile. It was almost three thirteen. There were two minutes of normal time to go, but the sending off and the resultant scuffle must have taken up at least ten minutes, if not longer, so if the ref was keeping time properly, there should be at least ten minutes’ added time.
As Slade got ready to take the corner, I quickly switched to the tracker screen on my mobile. The green dot was moving quickly now, speeding away from Slade Lane. It looked like Dee Dee had left the estate and was driving (or being driven) into town. It was far too early for him to be going straight to his five o’clock meeting with Ronnie Bull, and I just hoped he was leaving now because he was going somewhere else before his meeting. If he wasn’t, if he was leaving now because he was meeting Bull somewhere else, somewhere that was going to take him an hour and forty-five minutes to get to, there was no way I was going to be able to follow him.
‘What’s that?’ Paul Ryman said, leaning over to look at my mobile. ‘Is it some kind of game?’
‘Uh, yeah, kind of,’ I told him, quickly closing the screen.
‘I’d put it away if I were you,’ he said. ‘If Jago catches you messing around on your mobile now, he’ll flip his lid.’
I put my phone in my tracksuit pocket and turned my attention back to the game. The corner kick had just been taken, and as it swung into the six-yard box, Richie King shoved his way through the crowd of jostling players, leapt into the air, and caught it with both hands.
‘WELL DONE, RICHIE!’ Jago called out. ‘NOW HOLD IT! HOLD IT! PLAY IT SHORT!’
Clutching the ball to his chest, Richie looked round, trying to find someone who was free.
With the advantage of an extra man though, Slade had everyone marked. Richie began to panic, realising that if he didn’t get rid of the ball soon, he might give away a free kick or get booked for wasting time. So instead of playing it short, he just booted it as far as he could upfield. It bounced once, just over the halfway line, and went straight to Slade’s centre back.
‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING?’ Jago yelled. ‘I SAID HOLD IT!’
Slade launched another attack, which ended with Mosh Akram tackling Slade’s right-winger and putting the ball out for a throw-in. A Slade player hurried over to get the ball, and Mosh casually kicked it away. The ref booked him.
Slade launched another attack.
Then another, and another, and another . . .
We defended like demons – keeping ten men behind the ball, tackling hard, throwing bodies all over the place, clearing shots off the line. We committed fouls, we wasted time, and on the rare occasions when we did get the ball, we didn’t even think about using it, we just took it into the corner and kept it there for as long as possible. Our supporters started whistling for full-time after about two minutes of added time, and after another few minutes Mr Jago began haranguing the referee.
‘COME ON, REF! HOW MUCH LONGER? BLOW YOUR WHISTLE!’
The ref just ignored him, but as the period of added time got closer to ten minutes, he started glancing at his watch and looking across at his assistants. The home crowd were really going crazy now, whistling and jeering, berating the ref, but despite all the pressure, he still didn’t blow his whistle.