Putting the Boot In

by Dan Kavanagh

  He woke up suddenly. He was still curled close to Carol, but two things were different from when he’d gone to sleep. Two things had happened. He was sweating, that was the first thing. He touched his forehead with his fingers and thought, That, Duffy, is sweat. That is a night sweat.

  The second thing which had happened was that he had an erection. He didn’t believe this either, but a check with the same fingertips confirmed the fact. That, Duffy, he said to himself, is a hard cock. Remember? The first one to come out of hiding for years. With Carol, that is.

  There must be some explanation. Perhaps the two surprises were connected. Perhaps his cock was just a lymph node, and it was swollen now because he was going to die in a year or two of this terrible disease. But even so, that was definitely a hard cock.

  Thank Christ Carol was asleep.

  The next day was one of legwork and small chores. Bits and pieces stuff. He began by dropping round at Danny Matson’s digs to invite him down to The Knight Spot that evening. Danny Matson didn’t get many invitations, and even a few hours sitting in an old van was better than nothing.

  ‘They found my wallet, by the way. The coppers did.’

  ‘Oh yes? What did they take?’

  ‘Money. Credit card. There wasn’t much else. Lucky I didn’t have my Trevor Brooking photo in it. They might have taken that.’

  ‘Mmm, they might.’ Especially if they’d been Barnsley fans. ‘How’s the leg?’

  ‘Still there.’

  ‘Keep laughing.’

  Then it was back to Layton Road, doing the houses in the opposite order.

  At number 57 Mrs Davis answered the door again in her pinafore.

  ‘Oh Wayne,’ she called out on seeing Duffy, ‘it’s that fellow from the Chronicle again.’ Suddenly she had disappeared and a skinhead in braces took her place. He pushed his face close to Duffy’s: either he had bad eyes, or he liked to greet visitors with a head-butt.

  ‘Bugger off, you. You right upset me mam with all that talk of winning the Lucky Numbers.’

  ‘Is your dad in? No, all right, forget it,’ Duffy added hurriedly, as the skinhead visibly pondered the need for hostile action.

  At number 48 Arthur still wasn’t in, and the voice behind the chain gave him even less time than before.

  At number 37 Mr Bullivant bounced to the door.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Bullivant, it’s me again.’

  ‘I can see that, laddie.’

  ‘It’s just a couple more questions the office wanted me to check out with you.’

  ‘Well, check them out then,’ said Mr Bullivant, sneering at the phrase.

  ‘Er, how long would you say this trouble’s been going on?’

  ‘Since the day they built the ground.’

  ‘But it’s got worse in the last—what? three years? one year? three months?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes, which, Mr Bullivant?’

  ‘Yes all three.’

  ‘I see. Now, Mr Bullivant, assuming you win your injunction, that might not necessarily be the end of the matter. The club could appeal. How far are you prepared to go with this action?’

  ‘As far as we have to.’

  ‘All the way, you mean.’

  ‘As I said.’

  ‘Mr Bullivant, is the street behind you on this one?’

  ‘No it’s right in front of me, silly bugger. Yes of course it is.’

  ‘Have they—had a whip-round for you?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Well, it could cost you a lot of money. If the club fought it all the way.’

  ‘That’s our business. Whose side are you on?’

  ‘I’m just trying to find out what’s happening. Mr Bullivant, I wondered if perhaps you had a sponsor.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, is there someone who’s sympathetic to what you’re doing and who’s said he’ll cover any expenses you may incur by bringing this action?’

  ‘I wouldn’t tell you if there was.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t you?’

  ‘Are you what they call a cub reporter?’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose I am.’

  ‘Thought so. Still haven’t written a word in your notebook in two visits. No wonder there’s so many lies in the bloody papers. Good day to you.’

  Home; and then a call to Ken Marriott. Could Duffy drop by the Chronicle to give him the story? Sure. And in exchange, could Ken wangle him into the newspaper’s library for ten minutes or so? No problem.

  At the Chronicle the ‘library’ turned out to be a false room built into the open-plan office by setting up four walls of filing cabinets from floor to ceiling. Ken found him the file on Charlie Magrudo and left him alone with it.

  There were about a dozen items altogether, covering fifteen years. Each had been cut out and glued to a sheet of foolscap paper. Apart from one substantial profile, most of the items were small, LOCAL BUSINESSMAN DONATES SUNSHINE COACH TO VARIETY CLUB and NEW SUPERMARKET TO BE BUILT ON SCHEDULE, PROMISES CONTRACTOR: that sort of thing. From the clippings, Duffy assembled a picture of a hard-working, home-loving, socially aware, charitable, generous and concerned local businessman who was equally loyal to his employees, his family, the Church and the Rotary Club. From time to time other journalists wandered in to use the library. One looked over Duffy’s shoulder.

  ‘Charlie Magrudo, eh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why are you interested in him?’

  ‘Oh, he’s trying to get a contract up in Islington, and we’d heard he wasn’t the cleanest thing that ever drew breath.’

  ‘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 the
ir 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?