by Danny Rhodes
‘No.’
‘What about the gate?’
‘No. I’ve no need to be out there. I store my bike in the passageway. That’s all.’
‘Right. And how long have you lived here?’
‘A few months. Since January.’
‘Nice place,’ says the other one, says Mayhew. ‘I could do with a place like this myself. How much?’
‘£400.’
‘For a room?’
‘For the whole thing.’
‘Got a bathroom?’
‘Of course.’
‘Can I have a look? I like a bathroom.’
‘Down the hall,’ says Finchy. ‘I’ll show you.’
‘No need,’ says Mayhew. ‘I’ll find it.’
Mr Notebook hovering about the place, while Mr Moustache waffles on about the benefits of a bath over a shower from somewhere deep within the flat. Somewhere deep within ‘his’ flat.
‘The first pub. What did you say its name was again?’ Mr Notebook adds, pen poised.
You know fucking damn well what its name is.
‘The Bell. Everybody’s favourite.’
Mr Notebook scribbles away.
‘Were you there last Friday, then?’
Finchy shakes his head.
‘Blokes at the PO say you’re there every weekend.’
Fucking tossers.
‘I stayed in,’ he says.
‘On a Friday. A young lad like you.’
No. I went to an all-nighter. I took a fucking E, possibly two. I might have fucked an American bird from the college but I don’t think I did. I can’t remember a thing about Friday. Not a fucking thing except waking up at the bottom of the stairs in a fucking heap. And legs. I remember legs.
‘I was knackered. I wanted to watch the game in peace.’
‘What game would that be?’
He raised his eyebrows.
‘Liverpool Arsenal…’
‘Right,’ says Mr Moustache. ‘Classic.’
Finchy nods in silence.
‘You’re a fan then?’
He stares at them blankly.
‘Of football,’
He nods.
‘I’m a Forest fan,’ he says, to clarify, to set the fuckers straight.
Mr Notebook grits his teeth.
Mr Moustache grits his teeth.
‘So you stayed in, on your own, all evening?’ asks Mr Moustache.
‘Yep.’
A lie. A barefaced lie.
‘No girlfriend?’
‘Not at the minute.’
‘Right. Because…’
‘We broke up.’
‘You’re not still seeing her?’
‘Sometimes. She comes over. It’s complicated.’
Does he look as guilty as he feels? Are they serious? Do they really suspect him of strangling a barmaid and dumping her semi-naked body in a patch of undergrowth beside a kiddies’ playground? Do they really suspect him of that?
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
‘Blokes at the PO say you arrived at work looking like shit last Saturday.’
‘I told you. I was knackered.’
‘Looked like you’d had no sleep.’
‘I slept. I slept too long. That was the problem.’
Mr Moustache reappears.
‘How many bedrooms?’
‘Eh?’
‘This place? How many?’
Mr Moustache, still going on about the fucking flat, about the benefits of a two-bed, one-hundred-year-old shell in some dark side street of some floundering town.
‘Two,’ says Finchy. ‘Both upstairs.’
‘Just you?’
‘No. There’s my flatmate.’
‘Was he in last Friday?’
‘No. He works at the supermarket.’
Raised eyebrows at that little fucking detail.
‘Nights,’ he says.
‘On weekends?’
‘He does all sorts.’
‘Nights?’
‘Nights.’
‘Rough hours?’
‘Nine till six, something like that.’
Mr Moustache looks at Mr Notebook, then he looks at the stairs
‘Right.’
More fucking scribbling as they climb the second flight of stairs, to the landing, the little space outside the bedrooms. One door open, one door closed.
‘Is he in?’
‘I think so. I don’t know. I haven’t looked.’
‘And this is your room?’
He nods.
‘May I?’
He nods again, thinking ‘No, you fucking can’t, you moustached cunt. Why the fuck would you want to?’
‘Not en-suite then.’
‘Er, no.’
The bed a mess. His postie uniform heaped on the chair. The room stinking of sweat and farts and day sleep. Teacup on the stereo, tea stains, a few scattered biscuit crumbs.
‘Did we get you up?’
‘It’s the early mornings,’ he said.
‘What time do you start work then?’
‘Half five, something like that. Depends on the job.’
‘Rather you than me,’ says Mr Moustache. ‘I’m all tucked up then.’
He turns to Mr Notebook. ‘Aren’t you?’
I bet you fucking are. Tucked up together. You moustached bastard.
‘And you deliver to Hope Close?’
He nods.
‘You said there was nothing in the bushes when you cycled past?’
‘I didn’t see a … I didn’t see anything. No.’
‘So there might have been something there but you didn’t see it?’
‘There might have been. I don’t know.’
Silence.
‘That row of houses. That’s where your round starts, isn’t it? By the kiddies’ swings?’
Finchy nods.
‘I can’t remember what number was first that day. I might have skipped a few. I wish I hadn’t … you know … to save those kids from…’
Mr Moustache tries the door to his flatmate’s room. It’s locked. He knocks. There’s no answer.
‘He must have gone out,’ says Mr Moustache. ‘Isn’t that a pity?’
They descend the stairs again, head to the living room, to the yellow fucking sofa.
‘It was free,’ he says, to explain.
‘Nice,’ says Mr Moustache.
No, it fucking isn’t. It’s a fucking embarrassment.
Three blokes. One yellow sofa. Mr Notebook endlessly scribbling. Over the same ground as before. White skin. White legs. Always striding. Always purposeful. In a fucking rush. Bar job to bar job.
The Bell and the Crown.
The Crown and the Bell.
Blokes bored of their wives. Drinkers. Smokers. Dirty bastards.
‘These men…’ says the one with the notepad.
Dirty drink-addled bastards.
He looks up, puzzled.
‘When we chatted at the depot. The men you mentioned…’
‘Common knowledge,’ he says. ‘I don’t know any details.’
‘Only she lived with her boyfriend. You know that?’
He shrugs.
‘Rumours, then,’ he says. ‘Blokes talking in the canteen. The blokes are always talking. You must know yourself. Nothing but rumours…’
‘These were ex-boyfriends?’
‘I don’t know. Yes. Probably. Like I said, it’s mostly just talk and rumour. Bravado. You know.’
The cunt knows but he isn’t saying anything.
‘You mentioned some names.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘Arnie Burrows?’
‘So I heard. Maybe. Ages ago.’
‘Ages?’
‘A year.’
‘A year. Not ages then. What about Bob Harris?’
‘Nobber? Definitely a rumour. He’s got kids. And he’s been ill.’
‘We heard. Heart attack at his age. You wonder how these things happen.’
T
he fucking kings of inference.
Nobber Harris. The Crown, before a late, after an early. Each visit totting up.
Veins hardening. Liver shrinking.
Pint upon pint. Fag upon fag.
‘And the other?’
‘Some bloke who left the depot. I don’t remember his name.’
Another silence. Just the pen, scribbling.
‘So you didn’t go out Friday?’
‘No.’
‘You stayed in and did what?’
He shrugs.
‘Watched TV?’
‘I’m asking you.’
‘I think so.’
‘Anything good on.’
‘I don’t remember.’
Porn in the corner, stacked under the newspapers, if they care to take a peek.
Tell them about the American bird. Just fucking tell them.
Tell them what? Tell them he walked her back to the college. Tell them he’s no idea what her name is. Tell them she’s fucked off back to the States already. Fucking convenient that. Tell them he wandered back through town in the early hours, that he doesn’t remember how he got home or what the fuck he did on the way. Tell them about the legs? Tell them those things?
‘You didn’t go out on Friday and you didn’t see anything on Saturday morning?’
‘No.’
‘And you can’t throw any light on these boyfriends?’
‘Only what I’ve told you. But not boyfriends. Just rumour.’
‘Well then. Thanks for having us.’
‘And thanks for showing me around the place. Just what I’m looking for.’
Right. Sure.
Down the stairs, to the door. The clocks in the shop chiming the hour. The dozens of clocks. He watches them climb into their blue Sierra, watches them sitting there, talking, Mr Moustache at the wheel, Mr Notebook scribbling into his little black book. He closes the door and climbs the stairs to the kitchen, sticks the kettle on. His flatmate appears in the doorway, hair lank, eyes bloodshot, skin as white as a corpse.
‘Good fucking job they didn’t see you,’ says Finchy. ‘They’d have arrested me for your murder instead.’
‘Was that the fucking police? I thought it was the fucking police.’
‘CID,’ says Finchy.
The kettle’s coming to the boil, steam clouding the window.
‘Fuck,’ says his flatmate. ‘Fuck me.’
He turns and heads in the direction of the bathroom then he turns around again.
‘Are they coming back?’
‘I hope not.’
‘Right. Because I’ve got a pot of beans on my fucking stereo.’
‘I thought you were going to bury them.’
‘Not much point now, eh? They’ll be digging up out back looking for clues.’
Finchy chucks a tea bag in a mug and pours in the water, the steam licking at his face, tiny splashes scalding the backs of his hands. Then he repeats the process for his flatmate because what else are friends for? He drifts across the hall to the lounge, rests the mug on the fireplace and drops down on to the sofa. They have to get a new one. Fuck me do they. And they need to get rid of the porn and the fucking pills. They most definitely need to get rid of the fucking pills.
His flatmate reappears, the mug of tea in his grip.
‘Is this for me?’ he asks.
Finchy nods.
‘Cheers,’ says his flatmate.
‘Listen,’ says Finchy. ‘If they come back, if they ever ask you, there was no fucking American college bird. When you left for work I was settled on the sofa in front of the telly. When you got home I was not paralytic on the stairs. Do you understand?’
‘You want me to lie to the police in a murder investigation?’
Finchy nods again.
‘In that case,’ says his flatmate. ‘There are no pills. There were never any pills, not here, not at the all-nighter, nowhere.’
‘They don’t know about the all-nighter,’ says Finchy.
‘Fuck me,’ says his flatmate. ‘You really are on thin fucking ice.’
Friday
He hauled his suit and sports bag down the avenue to BJ’s.
‘I’ve the one bedroom,’ said BJ. ‘You’re fucked if you think you’re kipping in there. You can have the big sofa until the weekend and then we’re done.’
The big sofa in BJ’s living room. The big sofa nestled between stacked ‘twenty packs’ of lager and boxes of football programmes amassed over twenty aggravated years.
For fuck’s sake.
He milled about the place, waiting for evening. He took the season ticket out of his back pocket, turned it over in his fingers, put it back. He wondered if he could do this thing, drag back the years like this, expose himself to the new while mired in the old.
Could he do it?
Could he really fucking do it?
He had to do it.
He had to.
He passed the old pub at five, the old pub where so many nights started, moved on up the High Street, the Guildhall and the green, the trees shedding their leaves in the bitter wind, darkness coming on.
Ever-repeating patterns.
To the corner, the PO yard, the iron gates, vans parked up on the ramp, strangers in those vans, strangers on the ramp, just a single smoker there, shuffling his feet to keep warm, the bright lights of the sorting office beyond the clear plastic doors, men gathered at the sorting table, blurred misshapen men pushing barrows in one direction and then the other, feeling it, smelling it, connecting with it, and yet separated from it. No longer a part of it.
Somebody else.
He was somebody else.
The long ascent to the station, the lights bright and harsh on the platform. He felt a stirring in the air, a distant tremble. A train came hurtling through, heading north, buffeting him, rocking him on his heels, creating its own vacuum.
Everything was a vacuum.
He watched the single light diminishing, made his way over the bridge to the isolated platform linking West to East, insular Midland towns to coastal resorts for one week of respite. He found himself a seat, waited, stared across the tracks, beyond the sidings, beyond the remnants of scrub to the housing development. Warm light crept from the windows of the new houses and spilled on to the station yard.
The old and the new.
A remnant of one, an infiltrator of the other.
The train was quiet, just a handful of people, too early yet for the Forest faithful, too soon after tea. He watched the lights of the old town slip past, studied the unaltered profile, stared once again at the brightly lit church, felt the drag of the long left-hand bend as the train turned in its westward arc. And then there was nothing much at all outside the window except black fields, the ribbon lights of the trunk road in the distance, the glow of the next town beyond the flat horizon, the quiet rocking of the train in motion.
And a thousand memories.
The city station. Busy. Him against the tide, taking his time, more uncertain of himself with each step. Meadow Lane masked in darkness, the black river, silent, toiling, the flood-lights of the City Ground aglow, forming a washed-out reflection on the water. He stopped and stared from afar, feeling it now, the fluttering in his belly, the first signal that it all still remained, coiled deep inside of him, deep in the gut. A part of him really, of his inner workings, the fragments that shaped him. He wondered how he’d ever come to doubt that, to forget it, to live without it.
But he had, for fifteen years.
He walked down the steps and along the river path, up behind the Trent end, no longer a squat fucking shed but a great hulking two-tiered structure teetering on the riverbank. He took the ticket out of his wallet, felt it in his fingers, folded it back in place.
Precious fucking cargo.
He walked a circuit of the ground, seeing what else had changed and what had not, took himself off behind the Bridgford end, picturing the old open terrace, the waves of sound drifting away, the packed away end w
hen United visited in 85 and 86, the day the scoreboard became a perch, the floodlight a climbing frame, United crammed on top of each other, making room where they could find it, throbbing and surging, him watching from the Trent end, watching the visiting end fill to overspill, the stewards opening the adjacent pen, the United hordes growing like bacteria in a fucking petri dish. He’d fallen in love with it all in that moment, become energised by the electricity building around him, energy that charged his days and nights for much of his teenage years.
It was all just yesterday, a fleeting moment ago.
He moved on until he was stood beneath the Executive Stand, got to thinking about the lower tier, of season-ticket Saturdays, of the lads together all in a row, close to pitch side, close to the away end.
Friends and enemies.
Enemies and friends.
And then a different feeling engulfed him, the sense of something dying, of something taking its final painful breath, of 96 final breaths.
And Tracey Carlton. And Janet Allen. Two more sets of final breaths.
Soon he was back where he started, on the bank beside the river, looking up at the Trent end, looking back towards the bridge, dark shapes crossing the water, hunched silhouettes against the headlights and tail lights, becoming clumps, becoming a throbbing mass at the turnstiles, the newly fledged creature revealing itself.
It was cold and he was feeling it. He drifted back along the riverbank against the flow of the water and the flow of the gathering crowds, bought a tea from a burger van, crossed the bridge to the far bank and sat himself down, sensing something missing, a void that couldn’t be filled.
Or was it terror? Was that the thing turning his stomach inside out?
He sat on a wall, arse on cold stone, looking at the Trent end brightly lit against the night, and he saw the Trent end as it used to be. He was fourteen again, paying his £1.50, pushing through the turnstile, feeling the cold metal against his stomach, turning right, to the end of the terrace and the corner flag, moving along the front of each pen, ducking and diving from pen to pen, to the middle section behind the goal, moving towards the pulsing heart of the beast, attaching himself, singing and singing and singing, swaying, rocking, raising his hands, singling out each player, greeting each one in turn.
Players and fans.
Fans and players.
Feeling the ebb and flow of the game, its beat, being part of the game, part of the ninety minutes, riding each wave and surge of energy that came down upon him from above, riding it forwards and riding it backwards, him and the boys filled up with adrenalin, with living something that was not the old town, something none of their fucking mates lived, knowing a secret world, the simple joy of being part of something bigger than themselves.