Putting the Boot In

by Dan Kavanagh

  Saturday’s injuries had been light: one aggravated groin strain plus one slightly ricked knee.

  ‘Not bad for this stage of the season,’ commented Reg Palmer the physio. ‘Normally you get a lot of extra little tears and niggles, especially with the older players.’ He strapped a tension bandage on a midfielder’s knee. ‘All the injuries seem to be happening off the park for some reason.’

  Duffy hung around, waited until the two players had been patched up, and chatted away to Reg Palmer. He was a thin, wiry man of uncertain years and terrifying fitness. He had been at the club for thirty years. Seen it all. Managers come and go. Promotion, relegation, good players, bad players, pitches all over the country and injuries all over the body. Boardrooms come and go, yes, that too.

  ‘What was it like before Mr Prosser arrived?’

  ‘Oh, it was all right. Bit of a shambles; no one quite knew who was giving the orders. It’s a bit clearer under Mr Prosser.’

  ‘Has he made changes?’

  ‘Well, he brought Jimmy in, didn’t he? And it’s always nice having someone new, isn’t it? Full of enthusiasm, especially at first. Offered me all sorts of machines—you know, sonic whatsits, infra-red and all that. Happy to spend quite a bit on the physio room, if I wanted it. But I said No, I’ll stay with God’s two hands and my bag of tricks. Still, it was a nice offer.’

  ‘Does he—I don’t know—does he interfere much?’

  ‘Interfere? Not that I’ve noticed. One thing he does do is ring me every Sunday afternoon, four o’clock, without fail, and ask me exactly what lads I’ve got under treatment and how they’re getting on. Most chairmen would think they were a bit too grand for that, but not Mr Prosser. He may not get their names right, but he does ask after them.’

  ‘Is he popular?’

  ‘Yes, he’s popular. I mean, every club’s got to have a chairman, haven’t they? I’ve known quite a few, and I’ve known far worse. No, Mr Whatever-your-name-is,’ and Reg Palmer looked sternly at Duffy, ‘you won’t hear anything against Mr Prosser from me.’

  ‘I wasn’t asking, Mr Palmer. I just wondered. I was also wondering, if he’s an improvement on what went before, then why is the club doing worse?’

  ‘Well, he’s not picking the team, is he? He’s not picking and training the team.’

  Or maybe Duffy wasn’t looking to boot the ball hopefully upfield, see it catch a following wind and bounce over the opposing keeper’s head. Maybe he wasn’t looking to lean against a half-open door just in time to stop it shutting in his face. Maybe it wasn’t a matter of battling away, showing bags of character, and having guts hanging out of your ears. Maybe it was more like seeing a little chink in a wall, and inserting a chisel or a screwdriver or something, and giving it a little twist, and watching the whole wall tumble down. The whole front wall of a shopping centre, leisure complex and block of offices-cum-flats, with or without the addition of piazza, fountains, tubbed trees, lighthouse, pier, airport, racecourse or whatever.

  On the Monday morning he telephoned Hess House Holdings. This called for the posh voice.

  ‘Jeremy Silverlight here. Is Mr Magrudo going to be in today? It’s a touch urgent.’

  ‘Hold the line, sir, please.’

  Pause.

  ‘He should be here about two-thirty. Can I take any message?’

  ‘No, I’ll call again. Two-thirty, you said?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  At ten minutes past two he rang Hess House Holdings again and asked to be put through to Charlie Magrudo’s secretary. He didn’t know if Charlie had a secretary at Hess House, but that didn’t matter. The way these places operated, they usually made up a ‘secretary’ on the spot, especially if you sounded like money down the other end of the phone. They wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, Mr Magrudo hasn’t got a secretary, actually the firm’s not doing well enough for that, there is a girl somewhere who we think slept with Mr Magrudo—well, Charlie to all of us girls—but she’s down the corridor putting nail varnish on a run in her tights at the moment so I’ll get her to call you back when she’s finished.’ No, they wouldn’t say that. What they would say is this:

  ‘Trying to connect you.’

  And after a minute or so (perhaps the girl was putting nail varnish on a run in her tights):

  ‘Mr Magrudo’s office.’

  ‘Jeremy Silverlight. I gather Mr Magrudo’s going to be with you shortly.’

  ‘Yes, he’s expected.’

  ‘It isn’t actually Charlie I want to get hold of. Well, I wouldn’t mind a word, but that can wait. It’s Mel Prosser. He’s a devil to track down. His office thought he might be on his way to Hess House with Charlie. Do you know about that?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘Hmm. Look, sorry to be a pest, but perhaps you could check Charlie’s book and see if he’s expecting Mel this afternoon?’

  Pause.

  ‘There’s nothing in the book, sir. Though of course that doesn’t necessarily mean that …’ She sounded helpful as well as helpless.

  ‘No, of course. Actually, I wouldn’t put it past Mel to tell his office he was going to see Charlie when he was actually going somewhere else. He’s more than a touch crafty, our Mel. Still, I don’t want to bore you with the ins and outs of how old Mel Prosser carries on business. We could be here all night.’ The rambling was deliberate, and the question it provoked was more or less forced.

  ‘How can I help you, sir?’

  ‘Look, I’m not going out of my tiny, I hope. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but Charlie does see quite a lot of Mel, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. He’s always round. Well, not always, but he’s been round a lot lately. He just sort of drops in. That’s why we don’t really put him in the book.’

  If there is a book, thought Duffy.

  ‘Well if he does turn up, could you ask him to give me a bell on 205 3637. You’ve got the name?’

  ‘Silverlight, yes sir.’

  ‘I mean, don’t bother if he doesn’t turn up this afternoon. I can catch him at home in the evening.’

  Phew. Being a bit posh down the phone always took it out of Duffy. And at the same time he felt a little surge of satisfaction. Is that the chink in the wall? And if so, which way do I turn the chisel?

  Ten minutes later, the phone went. Duffy jumped, almost expecting it to be Melvyn Prosser. In a way, he wished he’d left his real number, just for a laugh.

  ‘Watch the birdie.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Click, click, watch the birdie.’

  ‘Oh, hello Geoff. Sorry, wasn’t concentrating.’

  ‘You should have warned me about the lenses.’

  ‘Geoff, I thought you were best left to work that out for yourself.’

  ‘Well, you could have given me some idea. I mean, I needed at least the 200 and probably the 400, and there I was stuck with a piddly little 35 to 80 zoom on and I just had to decide, well do I shoot or do I change and I thought anything was better than nothing so I shot.’

  ‘I think that was the right decision.’

  ‘So I’ve got you some earlies, anyway, and I know the answer is not to have just the one camera body but three. I suppose in a way I’m as much to blame as you.’

  ‘I’ll be right round, Geoff.’

  ‘Well, I warn you, I had some trouble blowing them up. And if you’d told me the flats faced west …’

  ‘I’m truly sorry.’ Sometimes Duffy thought that Geoff was even more of a worrier than he was.

  The photos, of course, were almost perfect, just what Duffy had asked for. They showed a girl with blonde hair emerging from a block of flats, looking around her, and setting off down the street. Pity about the dark glasses. He didn’t know what sort of shape Maggie Coleman was in, but he always thought wearing dark glasses was the stupidest way of trying to go unnoticed. It just made you look like some Cabinet Minister’s moll, or a star witness in a divorce case. ‘And here, leaving her block of flats near Twyford Av
enue, Acton, we see Maggie Coleman, the doctor’s wife accused of administering a lethal dose of weedkiller to her husband, who has just been flown back to England by the Spanish authorities after vacationing in Marbella with Pedro the handyman.’

  As against that, the glasses did make it harder to see what her face was like. Duffy spread out the photos and stared at them.

  ‘Oh, and I did get this one, but I didn’t really have time to focus, and with all that business of the lenses …’

  It was a sharp, well-focused picture of Maggie Coleman raising her glasses. You still couldn’t see her eyes, because they were cast down, looking at something out of shot; but it was exactly the sort of photo Duffy wanted.

  ‘I just got it in time. Lucky I changed the lens first, before I followed her. And then, even so, it was pure chance that I parked where I could see between a couple of vans. She took off the glasses to see if some fruit was ripe in the greengrocer’s.’

  ‘Does it look like her?’ Duffy asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, would you say it was a good likeness?’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, if I’d known you wanted Lord Snowdon …’

  ‘Sorry, Geoff. Sorry. They’re terrific, they’re just what I wanted.’

  ‘They may be just what you wanted, but they’re not terrific. Technically, they’re pretty much in the Third Division.’

  It was always a bit like this with Geoff. He didn’t care whether he was photographing a politician’s moll, or a child murderer, or even some girl in the street that you fancied. He was only interested in whether he should have stopped down a bit more, or whether there was enough density in the negative. Look, Geoff, here’s a picture of the entire Royal Family with no clothes on. I think they should have lit it more from the side, Duffy, and that crop is terrible.

  ‘Thanks, Geoff. See you Sunday?’

  ‘We’re playing away.’

  ‘So we are. Sorry.’

  Duffy went first to the Albion, since that was where Brendan had picked Maggie up, or vice versa, depending on whether you were a policeman or one of the rare Athletic fans on his side. The barman who couldn’t remember Brendan Domingo couldn’t remember Maggie Coleman either. No; well, anyway, she can’t be a regular, because I remember the regulars. But she was with a regular: she was with Brendan Domingo. Who’s he? Brendan Domingo, he’s the footballer I was in here asking about a couple of weeks ago, asking about the fellow in a mackintosh he’d been drinking with. Oh, the coloured fellow? That’s right. No, he hasn’t been back here since. What, the man in the mackintosh? No, the coloured fellow, the Brendan fellow, he hasn’t been back since you first came and asked me about him. Why, he done something or something?

  Hopeless. Duffy drove to the Athletic ground, waited until training was over, asked Jimmy Lister’s permission, which he granted reluctantly, and showed the photos to the lads.

  ‘That’s her? The one who did Bren?’

  ‘The one Bren did, you mean.’

  ‘Tasty.’

  ‘Wouldn’t mind a bit.’

  ‘Worth a year or two behind bars.’

  ‘Always knew Brendan could pull them.’

  ‘Where’s she live, Duffy? You got her address?’

  In a way, Duffy wasn’t surprised. Footballers were very sentimental, but they were also pretty tough. They had to be to get through. Footballers in the first team couldn’t afford to think about footballers who weren’t in the first team. Healthy footballers couldn’t afford to think about footballers whose legs had been broken, whose backs had given way, whose tendons had snapped. Footballers in form couldn’t afford to think about footballers who had lost their form. Being a first-team player meant not being a lot of other things—like someone sitting in a purple chair with his leg up, or someone sitting in a cell with a bucket in the corner—and you couldn’t let those other things get on top of you.

  Kennie Hunt was the only one who thought there was something vaguely familiar about Maggie Coleman.

  ‘Can’t remember her, eh, Kennie? You can’t have forgotten all the lucky ones.’

  ‘I think I’ve seen someone like her.’

  ‘Kennie just wants to keep the picture. Fancy her a bit, do you Kennie?’

  ‘Any idea where you might have seen her?’ asked Duffy.

  ‘All the same in the dark to you, aren’t they, Kennie?’

  ‘Not sure. Maybe down at The Knight Spot.’

  ‘Give him the picture, Mr Duffy, that’s what he’s after.’

  ‘Hang on to one of these. See if it helps you remember.’

  ‘That’s what he wanted. Here, give us another look, Kennie.’

  Duffy drove to The Knight Spot and rang the bell. Fat Frankie was no doubt still sleeping off his lagers, but Vince was there, in early, doing the books. Yes? Oh, any friend of Jimmy’s, any friend of the Athletic. Vince was as worried as anyone about the chances of Athletic going down to the Fourth at the end of the season. Third Division footballers were OK, I mean close your eyes and they were almost in the Second Division, and that’s class. But Fourth Division? Come to my wonderful fashionable West London club and gaze upon a special table of wallies who managed to get themselves relegated at the end of last season? Girls, get yourself picked up by the cream of the Fourth Division! It didn’t sound much of a selling point to Vince.

  The pictures? Well, we get a lot of girls in here. The thing about girls is, I don’t really notice them unless they don’t fit in somehow. You know, if they’re too classy or too trampy. Otherwise, they all look the same. It must be the hair or something—you know, if they all dress the same and have the same hair, you can’t tell them apart. Unless it’s just that I’m getting old. It could be that. This one, for instance, this one you’re showing me, she’s very familiar. She is? Yes, she’s very familiar because she looks like a thousand other girls. Not too trampy, not too classy. I wouldn’t know her even if I’d passed the time of day with her a dozen times. I simply wouldn’t know. Do you think Athletic have got any chance of staying up?

  The trouble was, Duffy hadn’t any idea where the best places to ask were. He didn’t want to get too close to Twyford Avenue in case it got back to the coppers that someone whose credentials weren’t exactly kosher was asking about Maggie Coleman. But if he stayed away from Twyford Avenue, where did he look? She’d met Brendan in the Albion, but that didn’t necessarily mean she liked pubs. Even so, he tried the Bell and Clapper, the Rising Sun and the Duke of Cambridge. No go. Then he tried Benny’s, where for a change they remembered Brendan, but where they had never seen the girl before. Then, as a long shot, he tried The Palm Tree, where a couple of sleepy West Indians shook their heads, and at the name of Brendan Domingo said, Brendan Domingo? Haven’t seen him for a year or so, used to be a bit of a regular, gone to stay with the white folks since he’s got so famous. Even if he does live just round the corner, he still prefers the company of the white folks.

  So Duffy went just round the corner to see the white folks; or at least to see one of them—Danny Matson. As he walked into the tiny room with the purple chair, Duffy felt a bit depressed. Danny was still there, foot up, as cheerful as he could be, and pleased to see Duffy; but it was still depressing somehow. Depressing because here was a footballer who wasn’t playing football. Duffy recalled the feelings of the Athletic players when shown Maggie Coleman’s photo. Make a joke of it, lads, something like this could happen to you. Anything could go wrong at any time, remember that. Stay fit, play well, don’t get into any trouble, and with a bit of luck you might stay off the scrap-heap until you are thirty-five. But there are a whole lot of junior scrap-heaps all the way along the line to thirty-five. Duffy couldn’t understand why footballers didn’t worry a lot more than they did. Or perhaps worrying was another thing that was bad for you: if you worried, you ended up on the worriers’ scrap-heap, the scrap-heap kept specially for the indecisive footballer who dishes himself by thinking too much. Maybe you could only get to the top and stay a
t the top by having certain strong traits—single-mindedness, tenacity, cruelty—and cutting everything else out.

  ‘This is a joke, Duffy?’ said Danny Matson, looking serious.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘This is a joke? You are pulling the one with bells on?’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘This is the girl big Bren is supposed to have raped?’

  ‘Yup. Maggie Coleman.’

  ‘Oh. Maggie Coleman, eh? She told me she was called Denise.’

  The trouble with putting a chisel into a wall and twisting is, of course, that the whole blade might break off. And that could be a great waste of time.

  ‘Mr Prosser?’

  ‘Oh. Still with us Mr Duffy?’

  ‘Wondered if I could have a word.’

  ‘That usually means more than one. How long do you want.’

  ‘Ten minutes?’ Duffy really wanted twenty or thirty.

  ‘That usually means twenty or thirty.’ Prosser smiled. ‘If you can find your own way back from North London you’d better come in the car with me.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Turn round.’

  Duffy turned round.

  ‘Lift your feet.’

  Duffy raised first one foot, then the other, displaying the soles of his shoes to Mr Prosser.

  ‘Right. Fine. Hop in. Only you can’t be too careful, what with all the dogshit around nowadays.’ Duffy rather liked Melvyn Prosser. Well, approved of, perhaps he meant. Well, sympathized with, perhaps. Well, recognized another neurotic when he saw one, that was nearest the truth.

  ‘Drink?’ Melvyn said, while Duffy was still awed by the amount of room in the back of the Corniche. As big as a hotel suite. Certainly as big as Danny Matson’s room. Lovely carpet—I’d make them wipe their feet too. Gold upholstery. Telephone. Little control panel with buttons at Mr Prosser’s elbow. Lovely. ‘You don’t get one of these in our society without treading on a few toes’—that’s what Prosser had said. Whose toes?

  ‘Tonic water, please. Lovely motor.’