Final Whistle

by J Jackson Bentley

  Once back in the house the events of the past few days overwhelmed me. I found myself close to tears without apparent reason. I was afraid that I was losing my mind. I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Sara did what she could but I couldn’t shake off the feeling of total despondency that gripped me. I had a feeling that Sara had something to tell me but she didn’t say anything and I couldn’t be bothered to ask. I found out, however, at four o’ clock that afternoon.

  ************

  The front door rattled on its hinges and I knew that Tanya was back from school. I stood up just in time to catch my tearful and sobbing daughter in my arms.

  “Dad. Oh, dad. I don’t want to go. Please tell them that I can stay.” Tears stained her young face. Larry, Vicki’s ex husband and Tanya’s biological father, appeared at the door and I began to get the picture. In that millisecond of understanding what was left of my heart was ripped out.

  Larry was embarrassed as he explained that social services had wanted to put Tanya into care for the time being. They had threatened to get a child care order and place her in a council home until it was determined whether she was safe at home with a drug dealing step father. Larry told me that he knew I was innocent and he promised to help me clear my name, but in the meantime Tanya would be better off staying with him. I gave in. The alternative was a children’s home and I couldn’t live with the thought of that. But I wondered how long I would survive without her at home.

  I had never seen Larry cry until he had to drag his eldest Tanya out to his car, screaming and in utter distress. I tried to contain myself but every plea she uttered seemed to carry an accusation and it cut me to the quick. When Larry’s car disappeared I trudged back into the house. There were no tears, no sorrow, no anything.

  I emerged from a diazepam haze three days later. I didn’t want to die, I just didn’t care either way. I was out of football, my wife had cheated on me, I was an alleged drug runner and my daughter had been taken away and there was no sign of her return. Sara had moved in, temporarily, but I could see that she was losing heart. Eventually we decided that she should leave me alone for a few days, to work things out, and then she would return and possibly stay over at the weekend. After she had gone I knew that it was the wrong thing to do but I hadn’t the heart to call and tell her so.

  Whisky had never been a favourite drink of mine and I grimaced as I threw a large glassful down my throat. The Highland malt warmed me despite the unaccustomed taste. Half a bottle later I wasn’t noticing the taste anymore. The next afternoon I awoke in the armchair stiff and sore headed. My mouth tasted foul and I was thirsty. The bottles by the chair were empty and so I went into the kitchen. The answerphone was flashing but I ignored it. I drank copious amounts of water but my mouth was still dry and my head throbbed. I had slept in a drunken stupor for fifteen hours, according to the kitchen clock. I caught sight of myself in the hall mirror as I passed. My hair was lank, my eyes sunken and I had two days growth of beard. I was almost unrecognisable. Somewhere deep inside a remnant of self respect floated to the surface as I observed the whisky stains on my formerly white bathrobe.

  I was still looking when someone knocked at the door. I opened it and there was a sad looking little boy standing outside. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with my self pity and self disgust I would have recognised him as the autograph hunter from across the street. I looked at him and he spluttered.

  “Mr Carter, my dad ripped my poster of you off the wall yesterday.” The little boy’s lip began to quiver.

  “Why? I asked.

  “Because he said you were a loser and a drug dealer, but you’re not, are you, Mr Carter? You’re not?” He waited for me to deny the charge. I had to search deep inside myself for an answer. He was right, I was no drug dealer, it wasn’t my fault I was injured.

  “You tell your dad that he’s wrong. He’s listening to the wrong people.” The boy smiled bravely.

  “Come back next week and I’ll replace your poster. OK?” The boy nodded and went on his way.

  ************

  It was Saturday morning and I had been busy. After flushing the anti depressants down the toilet and clearing all the alcohol I owned out of the house I relaxed in a warm bath. My head was clear now and I planned my next move. Somehow the drug allegations and the photos were linked. Someone was messing with my brain. If the drug allegations were false then why should the photos be real? Chris Smith, his two goons and Sportsec were entangled in this mess. I was sure that they were behind the photos and poor Eddie’s allegations. I needed answers and I needed them fast.

  After a haircut and shave at Sweeney’s Barber shop in town I jumped in the car and headed for Larry’s house out in the country. I rang Sara at home and apologised for my behaviour. She was understanding and I was grateful. When I told her what I had in mind she agreed to meet me at Larry’s house.

  As I pulled into the drive Tanya came out to meet me. She had two little ones around her feet. I lifted little Emma up into my arms and blew loudly on her neck. She giggled. I carried Emma into the house with my arm around Tanya’s waist. Larry shouted to me from his studio. I kissed Tanya on her brow and told her we would soon be together again and went to see my late wife’s ex husband.

  In a survey of one hundred members of the public for one of the popular TV quiz shows, Larry was top of the list with over sixty people giving his name when asked ‘Name a famous photographer’. His studio was littered with photos of his wife, Vicki and other famous models. His work was moody, enigmatic and always black and white. We talked for a while and I told him what I wanted him to do. When Sara arrived we got straight down to it, once Sara had declined Larry’s invitation to model for him.

  Larry took the photos from the envelope and looked at them closely. When he got to the fifth picture he grinned.

  “Clever bastards,” he muttered as he slipped the print under an old epidioscope. When he switched on the lamp a small portion of the picture was projected onto the whitewashed wall. It still hurt me to look at Vicki smiling, whilst astride another man. Larry walked over to the enlarged image.

  “Look at this,” he pointed at Vicki’s face. I couldn’t see anything in particular and said so.

  “It’s the light,” he said as if all would become clear.

  “What about the light?” Sara asked.

  “It’s all wrong.” We still couldn’t see what he was getting at and so he explained.

  “Look at the shadows from the man’s arms.” He pointed at the dark shadows on Vicki’s body cast by the upraised hands that were cupping her breasts. “The light is clearly shining from above. About here.” He held his hand high in the air to demonstrate. “Now look at Vicki’s face.” There was no discernible shadow. “The reason for the absence of a shadow under the nose or chin is simply that Vicki’s face wasn’t shot at the same time as the rest of the photo, or in the same place.”

  “You mean its a fake?” I desperately wanted to believe it. Larry flipped a switch and the magnification increased. Vicki’s face was larger but less focused.

  “Look at the eyes.” There were two white spots in each eye. “Dual catchlights. We use them to give life to a model’s eyes when the lighting is a little flat.” I wondered what relevance this had but he answered my unspoken question before I could articulate it. “Catchlights are a studio effect. This image of Vicki’s face has been lifted from a studio shot.”

  Larry walked over to an untidy pile of magazines and rummaged through them. After a moment he cried, “Gotcha!” Sara and I looked on as he laid an old copy of Vanity Fair magazine on the table. Vicki stared up at us from the glossy cover. There was no doubt about it, it was the same shot.

  Larry was excited by the result of his amateur detective work and I was greatly relieved. It transpired that Larry had been suspicious from the outset. As he explained, of all the photos only one showed any portion of Vicki’s face and then it was face on. Even the blonde girl’s buttocks and breasts had been deli
berately obscured to prevent us from comparing them with our intimate memories of Vicki. What really maddened me was that someone had hired a slim blonde lookalike to impersonate Vicki in my own house. Larry was just about to switch of the scope when I saw something I hadn’t noticed on the original print. I approached the screen to take a closer look.

  What I saw made things a lot clearer.

  The object glinting in the sun directly behind Vicki’s head in the picture was a trophy. To be precise it was my player of the year award. An honour I was awarded a year after Vicki’s death. The dates on the prints had been deliberately chosen to sicken and discourage me. I found that unforgivable.

  ************

  If I had taken the time to think things through I would have realised that the photos were fake. There was the player of the year award staring me in the face, for starters. But even if Vicki had been involved with someone else and, even if they had somehow been photographed naked without their knowledge, surely something would have come to light three years ago. After all, Vicki was a famous model, we were forever in the papers. It was too much of a coincidence for photos like these to come into the possession of my blackmailers just when they needed them to warn me off. I must have been stupid.

  I felt guilty for allowing myself to think badly of Vicki. I should have trusted her. I expressed my regret to Sara, as we sat in my kitchen eating pizza. She brushed my cheek with the back of her fingers. She was understanding.

  “Alex, you’ve been through such a lot recently. One of your friends is dead, murdered, and another is fighting for his life. You’ve had been threatened, deceived and badly injured on the football field, your future has been thrown into turmoil. When those photos arrived you were depressed and I can’t say I’m surprised. In fact I’d be amazed if you hadn’t been. Unfortunately, when people are depressed they don’t think rationally, they make poor decisions. And that is all this was, a poor decision. Vicki always loved you, you just lost sight of that for a while. Now you have to put the whole episode behind you. Someone is pulling your strings and I think we both know why. Let’s try to work out what we can do about it.”

  It had come as no surprise to Sara that the photos were fakes. She had already worked out that they were another part of the campaign to dishearten and discredit me. Her theory was that the drugs had been stashed on the same day the photographs were taken. But when and by whom? That was the question in our minds when we went to see Cynthia, my next door neighbour.

  ************

  Cynthia was devastated. The thought that she may have innocently let someone into my house to plant drugs upset her deeply. I told her not to worry about it and asked her who had been in the house whilst I was away on holiday.

  “Only the swimming pool man,” she said in response, before quickly adding. “but I’m sure it couldn’t have been him. He was such a nice man.” Cynthia was such a warm hearted woman that she found it difficult to speak badly of anyone. At my behest she told me what had happened and I made a note of her comments.

  Apparently the pool man had driven into my driveway in a plain white van, possibly a Ford Transit, quite new she thought, but she didn’t get the number. When she went to enquire as to what he was doing he explained he was there to chlorinate the pool and service the pumps. He showed her a works order and his ‘Poolwise’ ID card. Being a trusting soul she let him in and showed him to the pool. After donning a white mask he asked her if she would mind leaving him to do the chemical dosing as he didn’t want her being affected by the fumes. Cynthia left him to his task and went back home. Around two hours later he returned the house keys and thanked her.

  Cynthia was as helpful as she could be but her description of the man was, at best, vague. Sara and I sat in the garden and considered the information we had gathered. The phone call to Poolwise was a formality.

  No, they hadn’t serviced my pool, but they could fit me in Monday of next week, they said helpfully. It now seemed likely that the white transit had been used to bring the drugs and the two swimmers to the house. Presumably the pool man was the photographer. At the very least this had to cast doubt on my arrest for possession of cocaine.

  There’s one thing that puzzles me, though,” I said, thinking out loud.

  “What’s that then, Alex?” Sara asked.

  “What would the pool man have done if Cynthia hadn’t opened the door for him?”

  “Picked the lock, perhaps,” Sara replied, rather obviously.

  Just then there was a knock on the door. It was Cynthia.

  “Alex. I have just remembered something about the pool man,” she said as she stepped into the hallway. “He had a strong Liverpool accent.”

  After Cynthia had gone Sara asked, “Tweedledee or Tweedledum?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “But it’s almost certain to be one of them. I think we need to borrow a decent camera, don’t you?”

  ************

  For the second time in a month we sat in Sara’s car observing the Sportsec car park. Just before nine the fourtrack pulled into the car park and our two friends emerged into the warm sunshine. The motordrive whirred as I held down the shutter release. In the minute it took them to get from the car to the door I had shot thirty six digital images. The Nikon camera with its five hundred millimetre mirror lens had virtually filled the viewfinder with their faces. I hoped that the new digital camera had recorded what I had seen through the lens.

  After reviewing the pictures on the camera’s built in screen we drove back to the house. A number of the pictures were blurred but of the thirty six at least fifteen were sharp and detailed. Cynthia was elated as she cried,

  “That’s him, Alex. That’s the pool man.”

  “I’m glad you rang, Alex.” The voice on the other end of the phone was that of Mark Lister- Ward. “I have something to tell you. Meet me here at five this evening.”

  At exactly five that evening I sat down at the assistant chief constable’s conference table. Opposite me was Lister- Ward himself and the detective who had charged me with possession. At their request I told them about the pool man, carefully avoiding mention of the nude photo session in my lounge, and showed them the pictures that Sara and I had taken that morning, showing Tweedledee and Tweedledum. I went on to explain that Cynthia would confirm my story. When I finished speaking Lister- Ward turned his head and looked at the detective sitting beside him. The younger man spoke.

  “We were about to drop the charges anyway,” he said, hesitantly.

  “Why? Wasn’t it cocaine after all?”

  “Oh, it was cocaine right enough. But we had cause to reconsider some of the other evidence.” I was bemused and so I asked him to explain. “Well, apart from the prints of an over enthusiastic uniformed PC, there wasn’t a single fingerprint anywhere on the bag, the instruments or anything. Everything had been wiped clean.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would that help me?” I asked.

  “Don’t you see, Alex?” Lister- Ward said. “If you had hidden the drugs you wouldn’t have expected them to be found, so why bother wiping your prints off?” The detective picked up from his boss.

  “Exactly. I knew that you had some dealings with the chief and so I came to him with my suspicions. He told me that your involvement in ‘Ballgame’ made you a prime target for a frame up and so I had a few words with our informant, Eddie Winston.”

  “What did he say?” I was curious to know what my erstwhile friend had said this time.

  “He said nothing at first, but when I reminded him that he would have to give evidence in court he caved in. He said that he had been out of his head on drugs when he made the accusations and that he didn’t even remember fingering you. I didn’t believe a word of it but the chief asked me to leave it there for the time being.” I looked at Lister- Ward. He said simply,

  “Eddie Winston is on the list, Alex. He is number forty one on the database you lifted from Smith’s computer.”

  ************

>   I was at the newsagents shop at six o’ clock the next morning. I picked up the first tabloid I came to and turned over to the back page.

  “SORRY, ALEX”

  The banner headline was big and bold. A press release from Eddie Winston’s agent had cleared me of supplying his client with drugs. He said that his client had been confused and disoriented at the press conference and that as soon as Eddie recovered he would apologise personally and publicly for any distress he had caused. The story went on to confirm that the police had dropped all charges against me and that they accepted my explanation that the drugs found in the house had been maliciously concealed by an intruder bearing a grudge.

  I hadn’t realised just how many people had my phone number. By lunchtime I’d taken dozens of calls from friends and family, all pleased that I had cleared my name. They all made a point of noting that they hadn’t believed the story in the first place and that they knew that it was only a matter of time before the police came to their senses.

  Above all, I was picking Tanya up after school and she was coming back home. Stella called from America and cried through a ten minute call. I couldn’t understand a word she said but I knew exactly what she meant to say. Apart from my bad leg, and the ensuing court case, life was good again. I rang Sara and asked her out to a celebration dinner and she agreed. Feeling pleased with myself I settled down to watch the Cricket on TV.

  I had only been sitting down a moment when from nowhere a hand was clamped over my mouth and I was lifted bodily from my chair.