Fan

by Danny Rhodes

  ‘I remember,’ said Doddy. ‘I remember you plodding up and down our path.’

  He wrapped up the rest of his kebab and chips, chucked it in a wheelie bin.

  ‘Didn’t some bloke in the nick own up to that one?’ asked Doddy.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I’m sure he fucking did. Some bloke already in for murdering women. Linked himself to a load of other cases.’

  Finchy grunted. Was it that simple, after all?

  ‘I didn’t hear about that,’ he said.

  They walked on, neither of them speaking.

  ‘I played fucking darts the night we got back from Hillsborough,’ said Doddy at last. ‘Just me and a couple of mates who don’t give a shit about football. Played darts and got pissed at me mam’s gaff. Played for hours. Normally me mam would have come down and caused a stink about us keeping her up but she didn’t. She left us to it.’

  ‘My parents heard it on the radio,’ he said.

  ‘Aye, well, our mam knew fuck all except that I was in Leppings Lane. Because I told her that morning. I showed her the fucking ticket. So she knew nothing about how I was until I walked through the door at nine in the evening. It didn’t cross my fucking mind to give her a ring. I was too spaced out. My error that. She’s just about forgiven me.’

  Doddy stopped walking, felt his back pocket for his darts.

  ‘I’m off this way,’ he said.

  ‘Right, mate,’ said Finchy. ‘I’m down there.’

  ‘Do yourself a favour,’ said Doddy. ‘Don’t get mired in it all because it could have been you. I bet there were days you were so close you didn’t realise it. At Upton Park for instance, somewhere like that. Crowds, mate. They go where they go. You think you can get out but you can’t. And you wanted Leppings Lane, remember? You thought it was only fair. A bloke died at Hillsborough because my forearm was pressed across his neck. I couldn’t fucking move it. I had no fucking option but to stand there and watch him fade away. Except I didn’t fucking watch. I looked up to the heavens and prayed I wouldn’t be next. When those cunts start on about bringing back terracing, think of the days you spent when you nearly had your own Leppings Lane. All those crowd surges. Forward and back. In Leppings Lane we all went forward but nobody went back. No fucker’s died since then, have they? That’s reason enough to keep things the way they are. If they don’t like it, nobody’s forcing them to go.’

  He turned away. Finchy could see the dim lights of BJs flat at the bottom of the road. He scoured the shadows for hidden figures. He thought about spending the night at BJ’s, cramped on the sofa amongst the detritus. He thought about Jen White’s bed. Not tonight. Not fucking tonight.

  He shook Doddy’s greasy hand.

  ‘I’ll see you about,’ he said.

  Doddy laughed.

  ‘I doubt it,’ he said. Then he said, ‘But do me a favour anyway. Keep your mouth shut about me. I prefer the mystery. It helps me get out of stuff I’m uncomfortable with.’

  ‘Will do,’ said Finchy. ‘If you’re ever down my way…’

  Doddy laughed again.

  ‘I won’t be,’ he said. ‘I never fucking go anywhere.’

  He turned down Cyril Street, an overweight shuffling figure, settled in his own unique solitude.

  Finchy headed down the hill. There were no figures in the shadows. He let himself into BJ’s place, took a beer from BJ’s fridge, propped himself on BJ’s sofa with the TV and pondered his next move. There were other scenarios for the murder of Tracey fucking Carlton than the stupid thing he’d been cooking in his brain. The water should have been clearer but somehow it was murkier. He realised he’d never be truly free of that one. There would only ever be things and his ability to cope with them, or not cope. As was the fucking way of the world.

  But they weren’t all infected with Hillsborough, because Doddy had said as much. He’d stood up to the thing and faced it down. He was doing okay, trotting on towards his own sunset.

  It didn’t have to be terminal.

  None of it had to be terminal.

  He fell asleep with a half-drunk bottle of beer nestled in his palm. Somewhere in the night he spilled the fucking thing. He woke to the stink of that, uncertain if he’d pissed himself, spent the first ten minutes of the next day trying to prise a piece of kebab meat free from his fucking teeth while BJ shuffled about the kitchen in his boxers like one of the walking dead.

  After the hospital, after the checks, after his meeting with the boss to discuss the dangers of tiredness, he wanders across the sorting office yard and into the everyday. His head is sore. His wrists are sore. His legs are trembling. He arrives back at the flat, climbs the stairs, goes to his room. The bed is unmade. It smells of perfume. It smells of sex. He tears off the bedding, opens the windows, sprays the place with deodorant. He puts the bedding in the washing machine and steps into the hall. He recalls the pheasant in the field, a beady eye looking him up and down. He stares into the mirror.

  After all of this, after all that has happened, he calls Jen.

  ‘It’s me,’ he says.

  ‘What do you want?’ says Jen.

  ‘To talk,’ he says. ‘To see how you are.’

  Nothing. Or a choked-back sob. It’s hard to tell, hard for him to hear.

  ‘Hello?’ he asks. ‘Hello?’

  There’s a disturbance on the other end of the line. Someone shouts.

  ‘You’re not talking to that wanker.’

  The phone falls silent.

  The phone falls dead.

  Saturday

  BJ out early, off on some labouring job, cash in hand, of course.

  ‘I’ll see you at the station. 12.04 train.’

  Finchy heard the door slam, lay in the half-light for a time staring at the ceiling, shifted on to his side and grabbed a couple more Forest programmes from the late eighties, flicked through them, searching, seeking, trying to link statistics on the page to events in his head. Some came easy, vivid pictures forming in his mind, a slide show, Psycho punching the air and giving it some after pummelling in a free-kick at home to Coventry, the lads piling together on the away terrace at Villa, marching across Stanley Park at dusk or through the decayed streets of a forlorn northern city; Manchester; Middlesbrough; Newcastle; it didn’t fucking matter which. Giving a fuck about nothing and nobody.

  Others slipped away, nothing but forgotten dates, dead moments, records of a life lived and disremembered.

  A well to fall into.

  He had to get up and out.

  He pulled on his jeans, headed through the front door and into town, recognising the onset of further melancholy, knowing the signals, hearing Doddy’s words in his head, trying with every sinew not to fall back into the fucking trap each and every time he dragged himself to the brink of safety.

  He found a greasy spoon off the High Street, ordered a full English, sat with his back to the wall watching the window, on the lookout for Jen’s brother and his cronies, not taking any chances, knowing he was taking a chance just by being there, by not fucking off back down south like they’d suggested, like BJ had suggested and Jen and every fucker else he’d come across on this mission to redemption. But he wanted to see Jen again, clear the last remaining dregs from the bottom of the glass, leave with a bit of dignity perhaps, a bit of fucking pride, despite everything.

  And it was no good just fucking sitting there. He swilled down the last of his toast with a mouthful of tepid tea and skulked across town, stopping off at a sports shop where he swapped his boots for a pair of Sambas, true survivors, black with three white stripes, better for running, better for being, better for everything. He chucked the battered boots in a bin, strolled through town to her street, milled about on the corner for a time, plucking up the courage, thinking about being ten years old and doing this sort of thing, riding up and down Canal Avenue on his fucking bike in a bid to catch a glimpse of the girl of his dreams through her mam’s net curtains. Sad, romantic little bastard. Now here he was, thirty-thre
e years old, daring himself to walk up to his ex-bird’s door, daring himself to have the courage of his fucking convictions. He sucked in a lungful of air, another and another, set off down the street with a swagger, his brand new Sambas flashing in the morning sunlight, trying to look the fucking man. But when he reached her door he lost his nerve, knowing that knocking on it might bring all hell raining down upon him.

  ‘She’s gone out, love.’

  He wheeled about, a cat on hot tiles, to see some woman calling in his direction from an upstairs window. She looked down at him and repeated what she’d already said.

  ‘About half an hour ago.’

  And then she added, ‘You’re not from the paper, are you?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Er, no,’ he said. ‘I’m not from the paper.’

  ‘Good,’ said the woman. ‘She doesn’t want to talk to anybody from the paper. It’s no bloody business of the paper…’

  The fucking paper?

  He nodded, thanked her, walked away at a hundred fucking miles an hour. Or it felt like that. It fucking felt like that, marching down the street, his confidence crushed, not daring to look back in case they were lying in wait someplace, keeping his head down all the way to BJ’s, shitting himself until he got inside and locked the door behind him.

  The fucking paper?

  There was one on BJ’s doormat, local rag, free to everybody who didn’t want one. He picked it up to see the Big Fucker plastered on the front page, the big fucker with his nose spread across his face, Jen White’s brother too, both of them staring back at him sporting the solemn expressions of victimhood.

  He looked at the hastily compiled headline.

  VICTIM OF SAVAGE ATTACK. And underneath: Foreign Nationals Fear for Their Safety as Unprovoked Violence on Immigrants Escalates.

  Unprovoked bollocks.

  He pictured the editor a week from now, there with egg on his face when the police showed him the CCTV footage. He wondered if the editor gave a fuck.

  Doorbell at three in the afternoon. He crawls from his pit, opens the curtains, sucks in his prerequisite lungful of fresh air. No blue Sierra. He lets the air out. Jen? He feels the familiar stirrings, his cock swelling, and the immediate guilt surfacing along with these things.

  He shuffles down the stairs.

  It isn’t her, though. The outline’s wrong, the hair the wrong colour.

  Lisa. Jen’s sister.

  What the fuck does she want?

  He opens the door, flutterings of a different nature in his belly now, abruptly nervous, cock retreating.

  ‘Hi,’ she says. There’s no smile. He can hardly look her in the eyes.

  ‘Can I come in?’ she asks.

  ‘Sure,’ he says, feeling like a school kid, knowing what’s coming to him. He is, after all, the biggest bastard the world’s ever known.

  She sits on the yellow sofa in the living room, sits there waiting for him to plonk his arse down.

  ‘How’s life?’ he asks her.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘How are the wedding plans?’

  ‘They’re fine.’

  Because you two started this. You two with your whirlwind romance. Putting stuff in people’s heads, backing me into a fucking corner…

  ‘I’ve come about Jen,’ she says.

  There’s a turn-up for the books.

  ‘You’ve got to stop.’

  He almost comes out with them, his million excuses, almost plays through the routine, but she’s looking at him in a certain way, imploring him and he knows, he fucking knows.

  ‘I know,’ he says.

  ‘So why don’t you? This has been going on for weeks.’

  ‘She keeps turning up,’ he says.

  ‘Tell her to go away.’

  ‘I try,’ he says, thinking ‘I don’t fucking try one little bit. I fuck her and then ask her to leave when I’m spent.’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘She’s not coping,’ she says. ‘She may act like she is but she’s not.’

  ‘I know,’ he says.

  ‘Then why the fuck do you keep doing it?’

  He shrugs. He rubs his chin. He tries to look past her and out of the window but wherever he looks she’s staring back at him. She has a look in her eye, the protective, shielding gaze of the older sibling. It bores into him, stripping back the layers, exposing his fragile places.

  ‘Please stop,’ she says. ‘Please end it. For good.’

  ‘I will,’ he says.

  She gets to her feet then, makes her way past him and down the stairs, through the door, out into the street.

  ‘Do me a favour,’ he says to her. ‘If you think she’s going to come over…’

  ‘Fuck off,’ she says. ‘Why the fuck would I want to do you any favours?’

  And then she’s gone.

  He shuts the door, climbs the stairs, knowing she’s right, knowing he has to sort it once and for all. And then he wonders what it would be like to fuck Jen’s sister, if she’s that fucking cold under the fucking duvet, imagines bending her over the yellow sofa, greasing her up a bit and fucking her from behind, doing them both a fucking favour, the shit-scared bachelor, the inevitable wife.

  He trots upstairs to the landing, places his ear against his flatmate’s door, listens for signs of life. He silently opens the door, holds his fucking breath. His flatmate’s dead to the world. He creeps across the carpet to the pot of beans on the dresser, twists open the cap, steals a couple, twists the cap back on and retreats into the hallway.

  He’s not becoming addicted to the things.

  It’s nothing so serious.

  Of course it fucking isn’t.

  He was crashed on the sofa letting his brekky settle when the doorbell went. He stiffened, held his breath, waited. The doorbell sounded again. He rolled off the sofa and crawled across the carpet to the hall, poked his head around the corner.

  Not the fucking police.

  Through the frosted glass he could see a solitary figure, bulky but not shaped like the big fucker. Not police either. Still he waited, keeping out of sight. But the figure at the door didn’t move, just stood there, pressed the doorbell again. It wasn’t trouble, it couldn’t be. Those fuckers weren’t exactly schooled in patience.

  He got to his feet and shuffled to the door.

  ‘Hello?’ he shouted through the glass.

  ‘Post, mate.’

  A familiar voice.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘There’s a letter box. Use that.’

  ‘Needs a signature, mate.’

  He inched the door open to find Spence there, a Jiffy bag in his hand.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ said Spence.

  ‘Who are you,’ said Finchy. ‘PC fucking Plod?’

  ‘North Hotel not grand enough for you?’

  ‘It’s my mate’s place,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ said Spence.

  ‘He’s not in.’

  Finchy reached for the Jiffy bag. Spence pulled it away.

  ‘Right,’ said Spence. ‘You’ll have to give him this then. Otherwise I might get in trouble.’

  Spence passed him a card. ‘He’ll have to collect it,’ he said.

  ‘Fuck me,’ said Finchy. ‘Since when were you so particular?’

  ‘It’s more than my job’s worth,’ said Spence, grinning. Then he turned to go.

  ‘Wait,’ said Finchy.

  ‘I can’t hang about,’ said Spence. ‘I’m late already.’

  ‘Late for what?’

  ‘Late back,’ he said. ‘They don’t give out docket like the old days.’

  ‘I wanted to ask you a few things,’ said Finchy. ‘That stuff we were talking about the other day.’

  Spence sucked in the air through his teeth. Just like old times.

  ‘What about a pint when I’m done?’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Finchy. ‘I’m trying to keep my head down.’

  ‘I heard. Be
ating up innocent foreign workers.’ He winked. ‘How about it, though? Somewhere quiet?’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘The Social? It’s members only. Safe as houses. No fucker even knows it exists.’

  Finchy hesitated.

  ‘Up to you…’ said Spence.

  ‘Okay,’ said Finchy. ‘How long?’

  ‘Give me an hour,’ said Spence. ‘I’ll meet you out front.’

  Thursday morning. He’s at the frame when Spence slips alongside him, the same fucking look on his face as always, the same mischief in his mind.

  ‘There’s been another.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Housewife. Indoors this time.’

  ‘Where?’

  Spence reaches out an arm, extends a finger, places the finger on the frame.

  ‘Just … there.’

  ‘Longwood?’

  ‘Longwood.’

  ‘You’re fucking kidding.’

  ‘I wish I was. Strangled. Yesterday morning.’

  Robbie Box appears at the frame. Robbie Box and his policeman’s voice.

  ‘Could you confirm your whereabouts at 10.00 hours yesterday?’

  Blokes laughing now. Blokes coming to life. Robbie and Spence. A class double act at taking the piss in front of their adoring public.

  Cunts.

  Blokes heckling, chuckling to themselves, chuckling to each other.

  He’s been working the walk all week, on holiday rota. Highwood. Westwood. Long fucking wood. Him and the bike. One house and then the next. Jewels of dew on late summer lawns. The previous day a bastard. Two full bags of mail. A long fucking morning on a route he’s still getting to know. Nothing out of the ordinary, though. Nothing suspicious. But what were the chances? Forty-eight fucking walks, him two for two.

  Robbie at his shoulder, sensing a bite.

  ‘Did you deliver to 61? Did you try to deliver a package? Did you take your little package to 61?’

  Spence on one side, Robbie on the other. Him piggy in the fucking middle. He tries to picture 61 Longwood. No fucking good. They’re all the fucking same up there, big fuck-off four-bedroom detached places, black tarmac drives, double garages.

  Lawns and flowers.

  Flowers and lawns.