Foul Play

by Tom Palmer

  Danny looked at the scene.

  Three men: three bins next to the door. That was easy.

  Black people-carrier: black night.

  He could just make out the registration. CPo4 FRC. CP: Car Park. Number of wheels on people-carrier: 04. FRC. Football. Rugby. Cricket.

  If the first man looked like a bouncer, the second looked like a banker. Danny stared at the third man, wanting to find some likeness for him that started with B, so he could remember it like a short rhyme. Bouncer. Banker. What?

  Danny watched him closely. Something about him seemed familiar. He was wearing a bulky coat. And was much younger than the other two. Not greatly older than Danny. There was something about the way he moved that reminded Danny of someone.

  Like other people, Danny could recognize people he knew from a distance as much from how they moved and walked, as by their faces and the colour of their hair. Say he saw a group of lads standing at the chip shop in the dinner break: even though everyone was dressed in the same school uniform, from two hundred metres he could tell if his best mate, Paul, was among them just by the way he shuffled along.

  Danny was wondering who this familiar figure was, when the man turned towards him. Danny saw his face in the dipped headlights.

  It was Sam Roberts. The Sam Roberts.

  He’d been right about him being familiar.

  Except Roberts had something over his eyes. A thin bandage? Or some trendy sunglasses? No, it was definitely a bandage.

  The headlights went off as Sam Roberts walked in front of them.

  Now Danny wished he had power in his night vision camera to film Sam Roberts. The best player at City. The best player in the league. He’d finished the season with thirty-four goals two weeks ago. He was on his way to play in the European Championships for England, where he could prove he was the best player in Europe. With Roberts in the team, England were second favourites to win the tournament.

  So what was he doing here at nearly four in the morning?

  Danny assumed Roberts had been injured. Something to do with his eyes, by the look of it. He remembered after his dad’s accident. A bandage across half his head. Roberts’s had been a thin bandage – just covering his eyes – but it looked bad. Why was he being taken into the stadium this late? Wouldn’t it make more sense to go straight to hospital?

  Danny watched the three men go into the stadium. The bouncer opened the door – there seemed to be more people inside. Two at least. Danny couldn’t be sure. Then Sam Roberts went in, led by the banker.

  The door into the stadium closed and Danny was left alone.

  What now?

  There was so much to think about.

  Danny was not worried about the burglars any more. They’d have come for him by now, if they’d wanted to.

  But he desperately wished he had his notebook. All the things he’d recorded in it, lost. And so much more he wanted to remember. The chase. What the burglar had said. The scene that he’d just witnessed outside City Stadium.

  The sky would begin to lighten soon. A grey twilight before the sun broke over the horizon and the air warmed up. Danny knew this time of day well after one or two other nights staking out electrical stores.

  The night had brought him more than he imagined it would. Enough to fill that notebook. He would go home via the twenty-four-hour petrol station, buy a new notebook and write everything down before his mum and dad got up.

  Then he had to decide what to do about what he had seen.

  The burglars he had on film: should he show the police now?

  And Roberts? He had to find out what was going on.

  Happy Families

  ‘You were up early.’

  Dad smiled as he came into the kitchen.

  It was medium-sized for a kitchen, with room for a small table and three white-box kitchen appliances. They’d had a new kitchen put in five years ago, but the chipboard kitchen units were already warped by water. And there were too many mugs. Mugs in cupboards. Mugs on mug hooks. Mugs on the mug tree. Danny’s dad weeded the mugs, threw away the older ones without telling his mum. But this just made room for the new ones his mum bought or was given as gifts.

  When he came in, Danny had been staring out of the window, watching cars on the main road. His dad was wearing a blue dressing gown tied at the waist, with brown pyjamas underneath. He was a tall man with a beard and a red complexion.

  Did he know Danny had been out most of the night?

  Danny had been sitting at the table for over an hour, scribbling in his new notebook, trying not to forget anything. He had used the memory tricks to recall the black people-carrier, the three men, the car’s registration number. Now he was imagining he was there again, trying to capture every detail, the burglar, the Portakabins, Sam Roberts. If he could remember smells and sounds and even the cold air, it would trigger other memories. He’d heard a crime writer say that once on TV. Use your five senses.

  ‘I had a bit of homework to do,’ Danny said, realizing his dad was waiting for an answer.

  Since his dad had lost his sight, Danny had always tried to be straight with him, but today he was anxious. So he lied.

  He regretted it immediately.

  ‘You should have done it last night, Danny. Then you could have relaxed. You sound tired.’

  Danny didn’t say anything. Dad took the teapot, weighed it in his hands and went to the sink to empty the old teabags out of it.

  Danny felt guilt at his small lie. He remembered the day he came home from school. Six years ago. The door had opened as he came up the garden path. And he’d been surprised to see his granddad.

  ‘Your dad’s in hospital,’ he’d said. ‘He’s had an accident. On the job.’

  Danny remembered his granddad’s words and the sound of his voice, as if it were only yesterday.

  ‘In a fire?’ Danny said. His father had been a fireman.

  ‘I don’t know,’ his granddad had said. ‘There was some sort of explosion. That’s all your mum’s been able to tell me.’

  ‘Is he going to be OK?’ Danny had said.

  Granddad’s reaction had stayed with him forever. He’d opened his mouth, but had been unable to speak, so he’d just shrugged. Dad could have died that night.

  ‘Is everything OK? Danny?’ Dad’s voice brought him back from his memories.

  ‘Fine, Dad. Yeah.’

  Dad said nothing. He continued to chop the apple he’d already peeled and cut in half.

  Danny’s mum came into the kitchen. She was dressed in a smart black jacket and skirt with a light blue blouse open at the neck. Her hair was brown and shoulder length. Shiny and neat. She was about to go to work.

  ‘Emily’s still in the bathroom,’ Mum said. ‘I have to go in ten minutes.’

  ‘Do you want me to call her?’

  ‘No. It’ll only wind her up. I’ll give her five minutes.’ Mum turned to Danny. ‘You were awake early, Dan.’

  ‘Homework,’ Danny said, stuffing his notebook into his school bag, an army surplus backpack.

  ‘Industrious lad,’ Dad said.

  ‘Good,’ said Mum, distracted, tipping muesli into a bowl and saying, ‘Thanks, love,’ when Danny’s dad dropped chopped apple over it as she poured on milk.

  They all went quiet as they heard Emily coming down the stairs. Seven thumps as she took the steps two at a time.

  Emily was two years older than Danny. Sixteen. Going on six. There had been times when they had got on. When they were younger. He remembered holidays, birthdays. But now it was harder. The problem was she was so unpredictable. One minute she’d be kind and lovely to him; and the next she’d be horrible. Now she was in year twelve at school she lorded it over Danny, finding ways to embarrass him. And when she had her gang of mates round, they would make him feel like he was just a kid.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t bang on the door while I’m in the bathroom, Mum,’ Emily said, pushing the kitchen door open so it ricocheted against the side of the worktop. S
he was an inch taller than Danny. Her hair was dark and straight. She wore a white shirt. Her eyes were black with make-up. Her nose was pierced, displaying a tiny diamond. Most of Danny’s mates fancied her.

  ‘It was getting late,’ Mum said.

  ‘It annoys me.’

  ‘So does you making me late for work, love.’

  Emily took a Frosties box and shook some into a bowl. The milk she poured hit the spoon and splashed across the table.

  Danny laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Emily shot at him, narrowing her eyes.

  ‘Nothing.’ Danny grinned.

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s funny, Danny,’ his sister said. ‘You mooning around Charlotte Duncan at school. That’s what’s really funny.’

  Danny’s mum carried on eating. His dad measured tea out into three mugs. Danny looked at the table. He felt his cheeks go red and a fierce heat in his head.

  ‘You should see him, Mum …’

  ‘Stop it, Emily. You’re not being fair. If you want a lift to school, you’d better come now. Are you coming, Danny?’

  ‘I’m walking,’ Danny said. ‘Thanks.’

  He didn’t want to share a car with his sister. Nor arrive at school with her.

  He looked at Emily.

  She was grinning at him like she’d scored a victory.

  Danny was bursting to blurt out that he had seen her smoking two days before. Mum and Dad would go mad with her. He put two fingers to lips and mimicked smoking.

  She narrowed her eyes again, but Danny could tell she was worried.

  Danny nodded and raised his eyebrows so only she could see, and left the room.

  Charlotte Duncan

  Danny walked across the park to get to school.

  The park was huge: half wooded, half open grasslands. When he was younger, he used to cycle through it with his mates, wearing away a track with his tyres, a circuit through woods and along the river that could be done in under twenty minutes on a dry day. He walked across the fields, skirting the woods, his shoes darkening as they collected dew from the grass. He didn’t care that his feet were beginning to get wet; they’d dry at school.

  Danny was thinking about what his sister had said about Charlotte Duncan. Yes, he fancied her. She’d been top in his league of which girls he fancied at school since the day she joined in year eight. His fantasy was that one day he’d meet her walking across this park, maybe with a dog, and the dog would be running free, or drowning in the river. At which point he’d jump in, save it and take it back to her. Then she’d like him.

  Danny walked briskly through the park, coming out at the main gates, past the tennis courts towards a row of posh houses he had to walk round before getting into the estate where his school was. One of the posh houses belonged to the City chairman, Sir Richard Gawthorpe. Danny loved walking past his house. And his slick red Mercedes.

  Sir Richard had been born and bred right here and had never moved away. He was a City man. That’s what he prided himself on. And Danny felt just the same. He never wanted to leave this place. He loved it. Sir Richard had started a small business, developing his father’s rag-and-bone round and now it was the region’s biggest scrap dealer. Skips and trucks across the city bore his name. As did the high walls of his scrapyard near City Stadium. Danny could still remember the day Sir Richard had been to his school to talk in assembly. He’d spoken about having an ambition and doing everything you could to realize it. He talked about giving something back to the place you came from. That was why he’d bought the football club ten years ago from a white-bearded old man who had driven it into the ground. Since Sir Richard had taken over, the club had been promoted to the Premiership, played in Europe for the first time in thirty years and had its first full internationals in the team for a generation. He’d also created the academy that had scouted and developed Sam Roberts.

  Danny worshipped Sir Richard.

  He looked over the high garden wall draped with ivy, up at the windows and their net curtains. He’d never seen Sir Richard in there, never seen anything move inside the house, but he hoped one day he would. Maybe he’d meet him in the street. Say good morning. The closest he’d got so far was seeing him fill his Mercedes with petrol at the garage down the road. And the visit to his school assembly.

  Danny carried on, crossing the ring road, walking uphill through the estate where most of the kids from his school came from. He kept his eyes straight ahead.

  The wind had dropped and he took off his blazer. It was June. Soon he wouldn’t have to drag the blazer to and from school with him. Soon he wouldn’t have to go to school for six weeks. He couldn’t wait.

  In maths, Danny felt more tired than he’d ever felt before. Last night was catching up with him. Sitting here in the light of day, it didn’t seem quite real. He could have easily imagined it was just a story he’d read in one of his dad’s books, if it wasn’t for the scratches on his arms to remind him of the fence he’d come through.

  Danny didn’t like maths. It was boring. He tried to imagine what use equations and pie charts could ever be in real life. Parallel equations. Logarithms. Trigonometry. It didn’t make sense to him.

  He had once suggested to the teacher that they should do football league tables, fantasy football and the Opta footballers’ indexes. He understood them. But someone had groaned behind him and he’d never mentioned it again.

  After maths, he walked down the corridor with Paul. The corridor was packed with people pushing against each other as they walked in opposite directions. Paul supported City too. If they weren’t playing in a game, they talked about City in between lessons and over lunchtime.

  Recently Danny had thought about asking Paul if he’d like to come down to the law courts with him one day, but he wasn’t sure if Paul would think it was strange, so he kept it to himself.

  ‘Did you hear the thing on Five Live this morning?’ Paul said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a press conference at City this morning. Something about Roberts.’

  ‘Sam Roberts?’ Danny said.

  ‘No, Julia Roberts, stupid,’ Paul said. ‘They reckon he might be injured. That’s what they said on the radio. That he might miss the European Championships.’

  ‘What?’ Danny said. His mind was back on last night and seeing Roberts going into the stadium at four in the morning. Maybe he was receiving treatment, then. It had to be his eyes. Danny felt like telling Paul, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure he could tell anyone. Not yet. Something about it didn’t feel right.

  There were twenty-two days to go before the European Championship finals. With Roberts, England was one of the favourites; he’d scored fifteen of their last eighteen goals. Without Roberts, they had no chance. That’s why Radio 5 was so interested. The press conference could mean only one thing: an announcement that Roberts wasn’t playing. Surely? So why did they need a press conference? Maybe he was all right, but, if he was, why had he been taken into the stadium in the middle of the night?

  Danny had to know.

  ‘Do you want to go?’ Danny said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The press conference. I bet we could get in.’

  ‘It’s at eleven. In an hour. Double chemistry, remember?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Danny was half joking. He’d never knocked off school. He knew the lads who did knock off. They went drinking at each other’s houses. Shoplifting. Danny wasn’t into all that. But today was different.

  Paul said something back to Danny. But Danny didn’t hear him.

  Then he felt Paul nudge him, trying to get a response.

  But Danny had seen Charlotte Duncan coming the other way. And Charlotte Duncan was grinning.

  Danny looked at her. She had brown hair that settled on her lower neck and shoulders. Her cheeks were slightly pink. Her eyes blue. Her skin was lightly tanned, like she’d been on a sunbed or an early summer holiday. She made the school uniform look good. She wore her tie short and l
oose, her top two buttons undone. Danny glanced at her, then looked away. Sometimes it was too much to look at her.

  Charlotte had two friends with her: Sally Graham and a girl whose name Danny didn’t know. Sally was holding out a piece of paper. To Danny.

  Danny watched the three girls coming towards him and, as he took the slip of paper, he caught a mocking look in Sally Graham’s eyes. Then laughter from the three girls as they passed by.

  ‘What’s that?’ Paul said.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘It’s a note. What does it say?’

  Paul led Danny into the boys’ toilets. There were two year sevens there, but they cleared off as soon as they saw Paul and Danny.

  The toilet smelled of urine and disinfectant. Light streamed in through the windows three metres above the row of twelve urinals. There was also a smell of paint, where the caretaker had painted over the latest graffiti.

  ‘Read it. Does she fancy you? Look at your hands. They’re shaking like mad.’

  Danny unfolded the piece of paper. It was a sheet torn out of an exercise book.

  Your sister says you fancy Charlotte.

  Do you think she’d want your face

  anywhere near hers?

  Go and boil your head!

  ‘That’s sick,’ Paul said.

  Danny said nothing. He crumpled the note and threw it on the floor, then changed his mind, picked it up and stuffed it in his pocket. He felt angry and confused and ashamed all at once. His stomach ached so much he thought he might have to sit down on the floor. He couldn’t look at Paul. Nor speak.

  He had to get away.

  ‘Come on. We have to go to the science block,’ Paul said.

  ‘I’m not going,’ Danny muttered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going to the press conference instead. I’m not staying here. I’m never coming back. I hate it.’

  ‘They’re just having a laugh, Danny. They’ll feel bad about it now.’

  ‘No, they won’t.’ Danny looked at Paul. ‘Seriously. I’m going. Are you coming?’