Fiddle City

by Dan Kavanagh

  ‘Charlie Magrudo? Charlie Magrudo’s as clean as a whistle. Someone must have been having you on. Pillar of the Rotary Club, and all that.’

  ‘So I’m discovering,’ said Duffy. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m the chief crime reporter.’

  Ken Marriott was quite keen on Duffy’s tip-off about the Layton Road residents, and promised he wouldn’t let on where the story had come from. Duffy suggested that Ken try to find out if anyone was bankrolling the residents, and added that he had been down there already to ask a few questions; he hoped this didn’t affect Ken’s chance of getting a good story.

  ‘Don’t you worry, old son. I’ll get them eating out of my hand. It’s surprising how people open up when you tell them you’re a journalist.’

  ‘I didn’t find that,’ said Duffy.

  ‘But you aren’t a journalist,’ Ken pointed out.

  ‘That’s true enough. But you see, I thought the residents mightn’t want to talk to me …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘So I said I was you.’

  When Duffy got back to his flat there was a message on his answering machine to ring Jimmy Lister. The manager suggested that if Duffy was free he might like to come over to the ground in the next ninety seconds or so.

  ‘Duffy,’ said Jimmy as he showed him into his office, ‘meet Brendan Domingo.’

  ‘Hi. I hear you’re the rising star.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you. Nah, it’s all about teamwork really. Get the right set of lads around you and that’s what counts.’ Brendan looked at the floor. He was large and heavily muscled; though born in Britain, he had very little chance of joining the Red White and Blue Movement. Duffy thought his loyalty to the other players in the Athletic team rather touching. Jimmy Lister had already passed on to Duffy Melvyn Prosser’s supportive opinion about his eleven players: this team’s a dog, the chairman had said.

  ‘No, if anyone’s going to save our necks, it’ll be Brendan,’ said Jimmy Lister.

  ‘Thanks, Boss,’ said Brendan Domingo, still looking at the carpet.

  ‘I gather some of the yobboes are booing you,’ said Duffy.

  ‘Yeah. Not very bright of them, is it?’ replied Brendan, looking up at Duffy for the first time. Looking up, and then looking down: there was a good seven inches between their heights.

  ‘Does it bother you?’

  ‘Nah,’ said Brendan. ‘The first time it happened, the very first time, I thought, why don’t I just pick up the ball and walk off the pitch? Then I thought, why give them the satisfaction? Second time, I thought, here we go again, and I got rid of the ball a bit quickish. Third time I thought, no that’s what they wanted me to do last time, so I showed them a couple of tricks and hit the post from about twenty-five yards.’ Brendan was smiling now, and at ease.

  ‘Tell Duffy what you told me.’

  ‘Well, there’s not much to tell really. I was in this pub and there was a geezer there and I think he was trying to fix me.’

  ‘Fix you?’

  ‘Yeah, you know, give me a few hundred quid or something. Not that we got around to money after I showed him I wasn’t interested.’

  ‘Tell me from the beginning. All the details you can remember.’

  ‘Well, like I said, I was in this pub—‘

  ‘The Albion,’ put in Jimmy Lister.

  ‘—the Albion, right, having a beer and a couple of pies after training, and this fellow comes up. Watched me from the terraces, he says, could he buy me the other half, he says. As I was drinking pints—sorry about that, Boss—I said don’t mind if you do. So we started talking about the team, and the results, and this and that, and he finally got around to saying that he had a proposition to put to me. If he hadn’t said it was a proposition I probably wouldn’t have noticed, he did it really clever.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Well, he said I was the star of the team, blush, blush, and how what would happen if Athletic got relegated, and I said we weren’t going to get relegated, we’re going to stay up. So he said he liked my attitude, and he said he expected other people would like it too. I ask him what he means, and he says, well look, son, you’re under contract, aren’t you, two years, three years, five? I tell him three more to go. Well, he says, look at it this way, if Athletic save themselves from relegation, then obviously you’re going to carry on in the team, aren’t you? Course I am, I say. But, he says, suppose some terrible tragedy occurs and you do all go down the toilet, then what’s going to happen? The club needs some cash, and the obvious thing to do is to sell their gifted striker. Meaning me. Well, apparently, the word’s out on me, he says, people are interested. Nice little Second Division outfit up North, he says. Mid-table, very safe. Couple of years there and I’d be ready for the move into the First Division. So that, he says, is how he sees my career. Choice between another three years slogging along in the basement of the Third Division, or a quick bye-bye and off like a rocket for Brendan. I said I still wasn’t getting him, and that’s when he said it.’

  ‘What, exactly.’ Duffy leaned forward.

  ‘He said that the gentlemen he represented would be more than a bit willing to give a little up front on their investment. On their gifted striker. Meaning me.’

  ‘Very nice,’ said Duffy.

  ‘Not very nice is what I thought,’ said Brendan.

  ‘No, I meant clever.’

  ‘Yeah, well it wasn’t that clever, was it, cause I told him to hop off.’

  ‘Now, Brendan, tell me exactly what this fellow looked like.’

  ‘Oh man, I can’t do that. You know, he was sort of average.’

  ‘Old young, big little, well-dressed scruffy?’

  ‘Sort of pretty small; sorry, I mean about your height; oldish—fifty I suppose; thinnish, quite neat, had a mackintosh. But I told him to hop off so he did.’

  ‘How did he talk?’

  ‘Normal. I mean he didn’t have a stammer or anything.’

  ‘Colour of his eyes?’

  ‘Man, I don’t look at things like that.’

  ‘Hair?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, like, he had some. He wasn’t bald. Look, I’m sorry I don’t remember him better. I was eating my pies. And anyway, you know what they say.’ He looked up a little mischievously, as if not sure whether to voice his thought. ‘All you white folks look the same.’

  That evening, Duffy sat in the van with Danny Matson outside The Knight Spot gazing at another collection of white folks who all looked the same. They all looked the same because they all weren’t the one person Duffy and Danny were looking for. There were short girls, tall girls, old girls, young girls, girls with cleavage down to their waists and girls as mysteriously shrouded as the car that stood in Mr Joyce’s cul-de-sac; but there was no Denise amongst them.

  After a couple of hours’ waiting, Duffy decided that she might possibly have gone in before they’d arrived. He set off for the entrance to The Knight Spot bearing in his head Danny’s less than full description: Denise, dark hair, black dress, showing quite a bit of flesh, dances close to you, hangs around, chases off the other girls, leaves with you, waits while you get the motor, then scarpers. Well, someone was bound to recognize who he was talking about from that, weren’t they?

  But there was a problem getting into The Knight Spot that evening. The problem was Fat Frankie. Fat Frankie pointed out to Duffy that he wasn’t properly dressed for West London’s premier club. Fat Frankie pointed out that he wasn’t wearing a tie. Fat Frankie said he was the scruffiest bugger who’d tried to get in all evening. When Duffy wanted to remonstrate, Fat Frankie took a lager can and scrunched it up in his great big fist. This impressed Duffy because the lager can was full at the time. What’s more, the pressure of Fat Frankie’s attentions made the ring-pull burst, and a certain amount of Carling Black Label landed on Duffy’s denim jacket. Fat Frankie pointed out that Duffy looked even scruffier now. Duffy wanted to
point out to Fat Frankie that he looked like a council rubbish dump; but he took the wiser course of silence. When he got back to the van, Danny said, ‘My leg hurts.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Duffy. ‘The day’s been a dog, anyway. I’ll run you home.’

  Saturday was match day. Bradford City at home. Duffy rang Jimmy Lister, and apologized for bothering him, but had he had any more thoughts on who might be trying to poach Brendan Domingo, assuming that the attempted bribery had something behind it? Jimmy said he had a short list of three nice little mid-table Second Division outfits up North, and that he’d get on to them first thing on Monday. He knew one of the managers involved, and thought he might get a straight answer.

  ‘But the trouble is, Duffy, when it comes to poaching players, no one obeys the rules. I mean there are decent clubs with decent managers who are still prepared to give a third party a pretty loose budget and turn a blind eye as long as he delivers the goods. We’re not talking First Division and six-figure transfers here. We’re talking little deals between clubs who are feeling the pinch and can’t pay top wages; if some third party persuades a certain player that he’d be happier off with you than where he is, then you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t thank the party concerned.’

  ‘Yeah, I see that.’

  ‘Coming to the match?’

  ‘Wouldn’t miss it.’ The first match Athletic had played since Duffy started sharing Jimmy Lister’s pay-cheque.

  ‘Do you want to see it from the directors’ box?’ The directors’ box was a rectangle of faintly padded seats in the main stand. ‘I’ll be a bit busy myself. Or I could bung you a ticket at one of the turnstiles.’

  ‘Thanks. No, I’ll go down the Layton Road end. I’ll give you a wave. No I won’t, you’ll be able to pick me out easy. I’ll be the one cheering Brendan Domingo.’

  ‘Right.’

  Duffy made himself a cup of strong coffee before phoning Ken Marriott.

  ‘Maggot, it’s Duffy.’

  ‘Duffy? Pull the other one. I’d know that voice anywhere. Isn’t it that cub reporter on the Chronicle? What’s his name, Marriott?’

  ‘Sorry about that. Hope I didn’t drop you in it.’

  ‘Nothing I couldn’t handle.’ Maggot was sounding pleased with himself. ‘No, I just went along the street apologizing for the extreme ineptitude of the cub we’d foolishly sent along to talk to them. Mr Bullivant was less than impressed by your journalistic skills, I’m afraid, Duffy.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ He’d better let Maggot say his say on this one. It was only fair.

  ‘Said you didn’t take a single note. Big fat pad, nice new biro, didn’t take a single bloody note.’

  ‘I thought that’s the way journalists normally behaved, Maggot.’

  ‘Cheeky. No, Mr Bullivant was very unimpressed. But fortunately I was able to reassure him that your working days at the Chronicle were definitely numbered. He said you looked as if you needed a sharp dose of unemployment.’

  ‘Was Mr Bullivant a PT instructor by any chance?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I just thought he looked like one.’

  ‘Duffy, just thinking isn’t good enough if you’re to continue your brilliant career all the way to the pinnacles of Fleet Street. No, Mr Bullivant is not a PT instructor. He’s a retired plasterer who does faith healing and osteopathy in his spare time.’

  ‘How’d you find that out?’

  ‘I asked him, Duffy, I chatted him up and asked him.’

  But if Maggot had found out about Mr Bullivant’s employment record and skill with stiff joints, he hadn’t been able to add much to the small pile of Duffy’s knowledge. Number 48 still wouldn’t unchain the door; number 57 revealed a rather unforthcoming husband of the pinafored Lucky Numbers player; while Mr Bullivant disclosed no less, and no more, than he’d disclosed to Duffy.

  ‘They could be genuine, you know, Duffy. I mean, I thought they were genuine. Those yobboes can be pretty unsavoury when the fancy takes them.’

  ‘I’m not denying that, Maggot, I’m just thinking perhaps there’s a Santa Claus somewhere slipping them some advice, and most of all some cash.’

  ‘There’s a lot of money in home osteopathy and faith healing. Especially if you don’t declare it.’

  Perhaps. Duffy didn’t think that was the answer. And besides, would number 57 think of suing the club over the yobboes when the son of the house turned out to be a prize yobbo himself?

  At opening time Duffy went to the Albion and bought the barman a drink. Sure, he worked here every lunchtime. Yes, and yesterday lunchtime. Littlish fellow, fiftyish, neat, mackintosh? No, don’t remember him. He wouldn’t have been a regular. How do you know? Well, the regulars are the ones I remember, and the ones I don’t remember aren’t regular. Simple. Anyway, Duffy went on, this bloke in the mac was with Brendan Domingo. Who? Brendan Domingo, big fellow, very muscular, dark skin. Oh, you mean, coloured fellow? Yes, that’s Brendan Domingo. Oh that’s Brendan Domingo, is it? No, don’t remember him, he can’t be a regular. Who is Brendan Domingo anyway? Tell you this for nothing, all these coloured chaps look alike to me. Cheers!

  Rather than face the Albion’s lukewarm meat pies, Duffy went home for a summer’s lunch. There’d been a lot more brown bread and yoghurt around Duffy’s kitchen lately. Duffy was worried about getting fat. Duffy was also worried about not having enough to eat and losing his strength. So he had the brown bread and the yoghurt for stopping getting fat; and he had some streaky bacon, cheese and a bottle of Guinness for making him not lose his strength. That was about the right balance. After lunch he felt his neck and his armpits; then undid his trousers and dabbled in his groin. The trouble was, there seemed to be little lumps everywhere. Maybe his lymph nodes were really getting out of hand. Maybe he only had a couple of hours to live. That night sweat he’d had felt a real killer. It had even, as he recalled, given him hallucinations about other parts of his body.

  By a bit of lawyer’s know-how, the club had managed to delay its courtroom confrontation with the Layton Road residents for a few days. Even so, this might be the last time the yobboes would stomp down the street, Duffy thought, as he joined the crowd. There seemed to be quite a few policemen around; a couple even standing right outside Mr Bullivant’s house. Perhaps the club had made a few suggestions to the coppers, and a special ablutions watch was being kept on number 37.

  Just inside the ground the coppers were searching everyone who was young, male and not obviously in a wheelchair. Anyone wearing big boots was taken aside and had his toes introduced to a constable’s heel. Just checking for steel toecaps. Sir. The police took away everything that could be thrown, everything that could be drunk, and everything that could be used for sticking into someone else. No metal combs, no beer cans, full or empty; no, you won’t be needing that set of darts this afternoon, lad, come and collect it afterwards. A mound of potentially lethal junk was piled behind the police lines. Lots of stuff got smuggled in all the same—that was why they had a WPC searching the occasional tough girl who dared to stand at the Layton Road end—but at least this caught some of the heavier ammunition. If the coppers didn’t search every single yobbo every single time, they’d be bringing in Armalites and assembling do-it-yourself bazooka kits on the terraces before you knew where you were.

  Past the police lines and the ground began to display its smells and sounds and sights. A hamburger stall stood near the entrance to the toilets: the two smells not cancelling one another but mixing together into a richer, denser brew. The screechy public address system churned out pop records which the club secretary—who preferred Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass himself—imagined that the better class of customer wished to hear. Programme sellers in booths labelled PROGRAMMES bellowed ‘PROGRAMMES!’, to help anyone partially sighted who might be in the vicinity. Fans rushed past as if their favourite place on the terracing was about to be stolen, even though the ground held fifteen thousand and the expected attendance was two and a half. A
man dressed in the club’s blue-and-white waved a board of rosettes and badges, but was meeting some dogged consumer resistance.

  A light drizzle was beginning to fall as Duffy made his way up the couple of dozen concrete steps leading to the terraces. The Layton Road end was also known as the Piggeries end, for some forgotten historical reason; though in recent years the nickname had become appropriate again with the arrival of the yobboes. From time to time they would acknowledge the fact with a jolly chant of ‘ATH-LE-TIC-OINK-OINK-OINK.’

  Up on the terraces, away from the smells and the programme sellers, even a run-down little ground like this had its charm. There it was, all laid out: the bright pitch, the fresh markings, the nice rectangular goals. Apart from a few advertisement hoardings, you couldn’t see anything that wasn’t to do with the game. Just the pitch, the terraces, the fans; beyond, only the sky and the floodlights rearing up at the four corners of the ground. Duffy felt excited.

  He took a position half-way up the Piggeries terrace and a bit to the left, where he could watch both the game and the yobboes without too much trouble. The exchange of pleasantries between the Athletic fans at this end and the Bradford fans at the other had already begun, ‘ATH-LE-TIC’—‘SHIT’—‘ATH-LE-TIC’—‘SHIT’—‘ATH-LE-TIC’—‘SHIT’. And then, a bit later, the welcoming reply: ‘CIIIII-TY’—‘SHIT’—‘CIIIII-TY’—‘SHIT’—‘CIIIII-TY’—‘SHIT.’

  After a while, both sets of fans began to tire of this. The City supporters, whose club occupied a safe position in the top ten of the Division, decided to predict Athletic’s fate come the end of the season, ‘GOING DOWN GOING DOWN GOING DOWN’ they chanted, ‘GOING DOWN GOING DOWN GOING DOW-OW-N.’ The Layton Roaders couldn’t think up any immediate riposte, but after a while they sketched a lively self-portrait for the City fans, ‘WE ARE THE ANIMALS—OINK OINK OINK. WE ARE THE ANIMALS—OINK OINK OINK. WE ARE …’ and so on until the two sides trotted out. The public address cheerfully cut off Cilia Black in mid-phrase and began running through the teams. Each Athletic name was dutifully cheered by the home fans and booed by the away fans; all except that of Brendan Domingo, which was booed by both sets of fans. Duffy noticed that Brendan didn’t even pause in his warm-up. He carried on nonchalantly laying the ball off to a chunky midfielder, sprinting a few yards and taking a return pass. I’d move on, mate, if I were you, thought Duffy. Nice little Second Division outfit somewhere. They might even have another black player in the side. Not that you probably need the company; it just makes it harder for the animals when they find they’re booing almost one-fifth of their own side. Duffy had two solutions for Brendan and Jimmy Lister and Melvyn Prosser. One: sell Brendan, make the club a few bob, advance the player’s career and get him into a less unsavoury outfit (though this, he recalled, was exactly what someone seemed to be trying to do already). Two: keep Brendan, sell the other ten players, and buy ten new black players. That would sort the Piggeries end out; it might be just a bit too much for their poor brains to handle.