After the final whistle blew and the stadium erupted in joy, above the strains of ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’, Peters’ fellow supporter stretched an outreached hand.
‘I’m Kyle, amigo. From Stratford via East Belfast.’
‘My name’s Doug, nice to meet you Kyle,’ Peters replied staring into the man’s face to search for any flicker of menace of which there appeared to be none.
‘I’ve not seen you this season. Do you live away?’ Kyle asked.
‘No, just work and that. I do shifts sometimes on Saturdays usually when the Hammers are at home. Trust my luck. What about you? Are you over regular?’
‘Over? I live here now,’ Kyle said pulling something out from the tartan interior of his blue Harrington.
He then proudly held up a plastic card that looked like it could be shoved into an ATM for cash.
‘I’m a season ticket holder. Have been these last four years chum. Funny enough that seat you’re sitting on is always up for grabs. You meet different people sitting on it all the time. The other week there was a fellah from southern Ireland beside me. Really lovely guy. He even invited me over to their West Ham supporters club annual piss up in Dublin in April,’ Kyle said smiling at Peters.
By now Peters had already read the name printed on the claret coloured card: ‘Kyle Williamson’.
‘Here, Doug mate fancy a pint in the Boleyn Tavern after the match. There are a few top boys from around here that I know. You’re old enough to remember the Inter City Firm. They’ve got some tales to tell,’ Kyle said evidently trying to impress Peters with tales from his old hooligan chums reminiscing forever over their exploits in the 80s.
He stood up and shook Kyle’s hand in secret relief that this over-friendly, over-eager exile from Belfast was just that and not an avenger sent over to hunt down, stalk and slay an undercover assassin who had killed a woman nearly two decades before.
Peters was truthful for the first time this evening with Kyle, ‘I’m sorry mate but I’d like to sit here for a wee while on my own. This used to be where my dad sat. He was a Hammer for all his life in England. Saw Moore, Hurst and Peters play in the 60s. Just want to think about him here in what was his favourite place in the world.’
The skinhead with flecks of grey stubble on each side of his temple and green jagged teeth smiled back generously at Peters.
‘No bother Doug. I understand. My ‘oul boy passed away over a year ago and I wasn’t even allowed back for his funeral. Bastard UVF said if I returned to Belfast they would shoot me dead.’
‘I’m so sorry about that Kyle,’ Peters responded almost in a whisper as faint cries of ‘We all follow the West Ham’ from the last of the stragglers echoed around Upton Park.
He did sit in silence and think about his father once the Belfast exile had left for a pint with the ICF veterans in the Boleyn. He did recall how Kurt used to huddle up in winter in his sheep skin jacket; how his father would grimace and moan when the team started playing defensively, barking out in his Sudeten German accent, ‘The ball goes forward, that is not the Vest Ham vay!’ His father’s protests often provoked a couple of ‘shat up Kraut’ mutterings from behind but most of the faithful knew old Kurt and respected him for his record in the war.
His other ‘father’ over in Berlin came to mind too, the one whom he had got his ‘real’ son back from the vortex of addiction. All Peters had done was talk to Paul a few times when he was lucid and persuade him to go back to Stannheim’s house, and seek out rehab. Paul had simply needed to hear that from someone else instead of his father. His mother’s death and his father’s ‘marriage’ to his other family in the Kottbusser Strasse station alongside bad company must have been factors in propelling Paul into the dark place, Peters imagined. Now they were reunited once more and at least that was something for Peters to hold onto. Because Stannheim and him would soon face an inquisition over what happened to Hans Joachim Streich on the steps of the Treptower Soviet war memorial when Peters returned to Berlin. At least the old man had Paul by his side, maybe even throughout the ordeal to come, Peters dared to hope.
Outside the stadium Peters also thought about his new found friend Kyle whom he had mistaken for his executioner. Kyle had crossed the same paramilitary group Peters’ life had become entangled with long ago. Kyle had been banished across the sea forever, not even allowed back to bury his father. Peters meantime would always have to look over his shoulder despite ceasefires and peace process back in Ireland.
As his feet crunched over half drunk beer tins and squelched down yellow styrofoam containers with half eaten burgers and unconsumed piles of curried chips, Peters found a quiet spot before the Upton Park station to spool back through his text messages that evening, all the way back to those intriguing words of Heike Nummann sent from her mobile on the beach at San Sebastian. He worried about her on this assignment where she would be mixing with other dangerous men, using their thirst for vengeance over their decapitated ETA comrades that Peters’ team had fished out of the Havel, to get closer to the truth about Yanaev.
Peters was about to compose a reply to Heike but just as he started to depress the buttons to send her his love, Peters remembered that it was one stop west to Plaistow station, that he would be going underground once more and that down in the earth that that other woman who would appear to him again. Even on the train as it descended into the darkness, when he closed his eyes he would still see her sitting in front of him. A leather motor cycle jacket decorated with studs and the faintest outline of an Anarchy symbol on it. Her helmet at her side on the Tube’s red leather upholstery, one side of her revealing soft olive skin, oval shaped brown eyes and a heart shaped face, the other a mess of gore, blood and bone.
The Swinging Detective Page 36