MORE THAN a GAME

by Sylvester Young

  With the exception of Nestor and Desmond, hardly any of the team mentioned Danny Rankin either, even though he had spent part of a season playing for Sabina Park Rangers. He had talent, so much so that Arsenal had signed him as an apprentice, but he had no discipline and they let him go after a few months. And even Horace McIntosh, who was normally the most tolerant of coaches, had been driven to tell Danny that there was no longer a place for him in his team. Danny had just shrugged his shoulders and told Horace he didn’t care. One of the reasons behind Danny Rankin’s apparent indifference to the premature halt of his football career was that he did not need it to get him lots of money and a big expensive car. From an early age he had followed in the criminal footsteps of his two older brothers and his interest in football had waned.

  As Buckshot put away his tools and locked up for the night he was still arguing with himself about whether he could believe a word Sergeant Boyd had told him. As a matter of policy it was always best if cops were never believed, whatever they said. He thought then that he would not go calling to number 67 Franchise House – but he would hang around the car park outside the tower block for an hour before training just to see if there was any sign of her.

  Marcia Yuell felt as though she had been on a journey down a dark pit: everything had seemed to be going wrong from the evening she had accepted a lift from Mervyn Palmer in his brand new Austin Princess. There had been many times when she had thought about why she had ever gone with him, but she hadn’t come up with any clear answer. But a lot of things hadn’t been clear to Marcia since the day when, as a fifteen-year-old, her mother’s boyfriend Lynton had come to her bedroom. Nine months later she was having his baby, while her mother cussed both her as a harlot and the ‘wukless bwoy’ Marcia had been seeing at the time. The most Curtis and Marcia had ever got up to was a long snog in the back row of the cinema and she never did get around to telling her mom the real identity of Tania’s father. Deep down inside of her she had been feeling worthless at the very moment that Mervyn had pulled up in his car.

  But things began to change when Mark telephoned her the previous evening. He said he had just finished playing football with his brother and wanted to come and see her because he had some important news. As she waited for Mark to turn up she rang Lorna again just to confirm what she should say to him. ‘Don’t sell yourself cheap, those days are over, Marcia,’ Lorna had said.

  There was a strange look on Mark’s face as he arrived at her flat. Marcia thought he seemed excited and afraid all at once. She had been ready to tell him she was finishing with him – on her terms – but before she could say anything he began to tell her of his secret savings plan. He said he had been saving from his first week at work and even Rachel did not know about it. It was linked with some financial index thing, shares or something, but the most important thing was he now had twenty thousand pounds that was soon going to be forty grand. Marcia was silently calculating and increasing her demands when he said he wanted to spend the money on a house for them.

  ‘W-What?’ she stuttered.

  ‘I want me, you an’ Tania to have a nice house, so we can live like a proper family.’

  ‘But you have a family, Mark.’

  ‘But I don’t love Rachel, you know that, an’ I never loved Rachel, all I ever wanted was to live with you … But I was too young, too immature to say wha’ I really wanted. I got married because I put other people’s feelin’s before mine, an’ yours, but I’m not doin’ that any more, Marcia. I see this money as a gift from God, like He’s tellin’ me He understood that I made a mistake an’ now He’s givin’ me a second chance. Once Nestor an’ Desmond give me back my money we’re goin’ to look for a house.’

  Until he mentioned Nestor and Desmond, Marcia had felt her spirit soar. But in a strange way what Mark had said about the money was not that important, it was what he had been thinking of doing for her that mattered. Up until then she had made out that besides Tania, she could only love the things money could buy. But now it was different because she felt that Mark really loved her – and she would love him back. He had to get home so they kissed and said they would talk some more at the YMCA the following evening. She closed the door behind him trying to think if she’d ever been happier.

  The JA City netball team were looking as crisp as usual but only about half the squad of Sabina Park Rangers had turned up to ogle at them through the chain link fence that ran the perimeter of the court. Horace McIntosh turned to his captain, Norman Longmore, for some answers. He started off by asking about Audley Robinson.

  Norman had already been told by another of Audley’s brothers that he had decided he could no longer play for Sabina Park Rangers, or to be more precise, no longer play for Horace McIntosh. Norman didn’t think it was up to him to tell Horace and said, ‘Me see im brotha Tyrone an’ him seh that Audley busy, someting to do wid Devon. Visitin an’ ting.’

  ‘Any sign-a Donovan?’

  ‘No, sah. Me ’ear im dealin wid some political ting now. Him busy too.’ Horace took a deep breath to try and relieve the feeling of tension within his chest. He took some comfort from the fact that Mark and Ian Beckford had turned up, particularly Ian as he had another trial with Aston Villa the following evening. Surprisingly, Nestor Riley had turned up again with his kit: it was if he sensed that he might be playing in the final yet, albeit under another name.

  The final whistle of the netball game had just blown when there was an unexpected appearance in the midst of the netball players. Mervyn Palmer had staggered onto the court. He looked drunk and he looked vexed. ‘hEverbody, heverybody, me want all-a unno to listen to wha’ me ’ave to seh.’ He looked at his son Desmond and scraped his tongue on the edges of his false teeth as if just the sight of him had put a bad taste in his mouth. ‘A blasted teef is amongst unno, someone who teef mi money.’ He turned to stare at Marcia Yuell and raised a gnarled finger. ‘See ’er? She went to bed wid me de odda week fe two hundred pound, plus a tenner for ’er taxi fare ’ome. Den she come to mi yard last week lookin’ fe more. Man, she couldn’t wait to see mi new waterbed an’ when me went to mi bat’room to ready miself to nice ’er hup again she teefed mi money.’ He stepped towards her and steadied himself before he went on, ‘You is a damn prostitute an’ a damn teef an’ me want heveryone to know it – an’ me want mi money back!’

  All Marcia could think of was not that everyone was listening – only that Mark was. As Mervyn pushed his face into hers she stepped back, to make a little space, before she delivered a left uppercut followed by a right cross. Mervyn’s dentures flew across the court before his head hit the ground with a thud. She looked around for Mark to shout out that Mervyn had been lying but he had gone. She ran out of the court shouting out his name only to catch sight of his Hillman Hunter speeding away.

  24

  Nestor and Desmond had asked Steve Patel how the deal was proceeding. At first he kept his answers to a single syllable. ‘Good,’ he said. They then asked him when there would be news and he told them ‘soon.’ To the question about when he would take delivery of the heroin Steve thought that rather than repeating himself he would respond with two syllables. ‘Tonight,’ he said.

  Since Nestor and Desmond had handed over the money to the two Scousers there had been a growing suspicion between the three of them. It was because of Nestor and Desmond’s dishonesty that Steve had hired them in the first place and he expected them to attempt some sort of double-cross as it was in their nature. But deep-seated prejudice also played its part. Steve’s father had often told him that black people, wherever they were from, were a race of lazy thieves. He could make the odd exception – unless they were either from Jamaica or Nigeria, for without doubt, dishonesty was a genetic trait as far as those few million people were concerned. For their part, Nestor and Desmond figured that Steve would try and skank them in some way, because he was a coolie whose family ran a chain of shops. To them and their friends the poor coolie was all right but the coolie with money
would bottle the steam from his piss if he thought it would make him money – and then look for some way to overcharge or sneakily reduce the amount of steam in the bottle. According to Nestor and Desmond, Steve was a member of this breed, or, more precisely, this caste of coolie.

  The plan Cecil and Bryce had come up with was simple: Nestor and Desmond were to go everywhere with Steve Patel and once they had got their hands on the million they were to ring and let them know they were on their way back to Wolverhampton. Cecil and Bryce would do the rest but it was for their own good that Nestor and Desmond did not know exactly what the ‘rest’ entailed.

  But naturally, the thought of one million pounds made Nestor and Desmond suspect Cecil and Bryce of double-dealing. The three hundred grand promised as their cut was now not enough: if they were to keep their promises and double people’s money they would have to shell out something in the region of one hundred and eighty thousand pounds, or as Nestor had put it ‘rasclart pounds’. That would leave them a ‘nonsense’ sixty grand each. It got them wondering what would happen if they skanked Cecil and Bryce and, by implication, everyone else who had put in money. They could never return to Wolverhampton – but the place was a shit-hole anyway – and they would have a half a million each. Half a million or sixty grand: just where was the argument for not pulling the biggest skank of their lives?

  With business so slack, Horace had spent the morning ringing around to find out what had happened to his players and to issue a warning that those who did not turn up for training on Thursday would not be considered for the final. Mostly, he spoke to the same women he had talked to previously. They had told Horace already that the guys he was after were completely wukless.

  He rang Audley Robinson at his place of work and was told he was too busy to come to the phone. He called back a little later and said he would wait on the line until Audley was free. It was almost ten minutes before Audley picked up the phone. Horace could hear nothing but a little static. ‘Audley?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It Horace. Me was jus’ wonderin’ ’ow Devon is gettin' on.’ More static and then, ‘Him not good.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Him still on dialysis. The ’ospital reckons him will need a transplant.’

  ‘Sorry to ’ear dat, man. Look, I’ve been ringin’ aroun’ de guys dem an’ threatenin’ not to pick dem fe de final if dem nah show on Thursday. Jus to let you know me unnerstan why you can’t mek it an’ jus to say dat it don’t apply to you, jus come to YM on Saturday mornin’, nine o’clock, okay?’

  ‘Nah, it’s not okay.’

  ‘You can’t mek it Saturday?’

  ‘Nah, Horace, I ain’t mekin it Saturday or any other day ’cause I’m finished playin for your team. This Devon situation ’as put me under some heavy-duty pressure an’ none-a mi family want me to ’ave anyting to do wid you or your team ’cause you did wrong, man. You was wrong to bring him outta the police station.’

  ‘But, look, Audley, it’s a disease Devon ’ave, who was to know?’

  ‘The police still beat him an’ you got him out before the doctor could get there.’

  ‘But there would-a been a riot, a lot more people would-a got ’urt.’

  ‘You mean ’urt like Devon? There’s a lotta tings I thought about tellin you, Horace, some bad words come to my mind. But because part of me still thinks you were actin outta best intentions, I’m jus goin’ to leave it at that I’m never playin’ for Sabina Park, or any team to do wid you, ever again.’

  Figuring there was nothing more he could say, Horace gently put down the phone.

  Unsurprisingly, Mervyn Palmer did not turn up at the barber shop on Wednesday morning. It wasn’t just because of the embarrassing beating he had taken from Marcia – he also had an appointment at the magistrates’ court on a charge of being drunk and disorderly. Dressed in his shabbiest clothes, he gave the bench a humble apology and told them of his unemployed status. They in turn gave him a forty- pound fine to be paid at five pounds per week seeing as he was a hardship case. Mervyn complained this would leave him very short and after much deliberation it was reduced to a weekly payment of only two pounds per week.

  He left the courts grumbling about the lack of justice but was soon back to thinking about the missing six grand. Marcia Yuell worked at the checkout of a low-cost supermarket across town, and he made up his mind to see her right away, cuss her and let her employers know they were employing a thief. There was no way he was going to let the matter rest, the broken set of dentures that now sat in a glass in his kitchen were a reminder of a shameful defeat that would vex him every time he saw them.

  Before going into the supermarket, Mervyn set his (sore) jaw determinedly. He had intended to get a basket and buy a few groceries and then take his turn at Marcia’s checkout, but as soon as he saw her, his rage overtook him. ‘Teef! Teef! Dat ooman teef mi money! See ’er, she a damn teef!’ Marcia froze in fear. The security guard, unfortunately for Mervyn, thought that by the way he was dressed he must be a tramp, probably drunk on meths. And even more unfortunately for Mervyn, the security guard was a man of frustrated ambitions. He had wanted to be a policeman but failed the entrance exam; he then became a bailiff and then just a guy who drove an armoured wages truck. He fantasised that if had been given the opportunity, he would have foiled a gang of armed robbers, received a bravery award and perhaps made the front page of the Express and Star. However, his dreams of glory thwarted, he had ended up wrestling with women who had tins of food they hadn’t paid for in their shopping bags. He had waited for a chance like this one for seventeen whole months. Mervyn never saw him coming. He had just fixed his dentures so he could give Marcia Yuell the cussing of her young life when an arm came around his neck and squeezed his windpipe. Mervyn felt his feet leave the floor as blurring images began to spin. He pulled at the arm in a desperate attempt to take in air.

  Marcia looked on as a man with a Teddy-boy haircut ran to the assistance of the guard and took hold of Mervyn’s feet. His frantic writhing put the man and the guard off balance and the three of them collapsed to the floor in a heap. Except for the grunts of the men doing the restraining, there was no other sound out of them until the guard asked Mervyn to tap his arm if he was going to be co-operative and do exactly what was asked of him. The tap never came; the guard squeezed a little harder and repeated his question. Marcia stared into Mervyn’s eyes, hating him for how he had destroyed her chance at happiness with Mark. She put down a bag of frozen peas and left her till. She went closer; her eyes fixed on Mervyn’s contorted face. The grunts had ceased, and the place was completely quiet as Marcia became quite still and shouted out that Mervyn was dead.

  Except that he wasn’t dead – not yet. The guard and the aged Teddy-boy scrambled to their feet and looked down in disbelief at the still form that was face-down on the ground. A woman pushed her way forward from one of the queues and shouted for someone to ring for an ambulance while she turned Mervyn over and began to give mouth-to-mouth. She kept the resuscitation going until the ambulance arrived. Marcia had looked on in disgust that, once the woman had removed his dentures, she had pressed her lips against Mervyn’s; she was in awe that she would do such a thing for a perfect stranger. She thought that if the woman had known him for the man he was, she would have probably let him die. Marcia would have. The police arrived with the ambulance and took away the Teddy-boy and the security man, who was mumbling that the tramp had fought like a madman and had seemed to possess superhuman strength. As a group of cops began to take statements from everyone present, one of them shouted out to ask if there was anyone in the shop who knew the man who had been taken to hospital. Marcia thought it would be for the best if she kept her mouth shut. Mervyn Palmer had already caused her enough trouble.

  25

  Mervyn Ewart Gladstone Palmer shuffled off his battered mortal coil as he was driven away in the ambulance. It was a testament to his actual, rather than his imagined popularity, that it would be almost two
weeks before anyone missed him. This was partly due to the police’s mishandling of the affair, or, depending on your view, their brilliant strategy. At first they had a problem with identification, even though they had only recently taken Mervyn’s fingerprints. But in a time before computerisation, matching prints was a laborious and time-consuming affair. Secondly, there was the fact he was a black man who had been killed by two white men. It was judged that the atmosphere in the town was just too combustible to put out an immediate appeal for his identity by providing a full and frank description of the man they had laid out in the hospital morgue. Those who knew where Marcia worked and knew of the punch-up she’d had with Mervyn immediately put two and two together. Word soon filtered back to the cops who then confronted Marcia with what they had heard. She admitted she had known it was Mervyn Palmer but had been too scared to identify him in case it led to repercussions for her. The police’s response was to say that they would handle how the news would be broken and that she should not discuss the incident with anyone.

  In an exercise of news management, the police left it until Mervyn had been dead for a week before they first put out that a security guard had saved the life of a young black woman at the checkout. Personal safety issues meant the security guard and the customer who had intervened could not be named but a chief superintendent said he had recommended both men for bravery awards. It was only the following day that the woman’s assailant was identified as a ‘West Indian, probably in his late fifties’. Once his name was finally publicised there followed a brief campaign of character assassination but even those who had known him best admitted that Mervyn had provided the press with most of the bullets. It started off with a story that followed in the tradition of the British press identifying an ‘undeserving winner’ – a figure who popped up in the media every few years. All of them had obviously made some pact with Satan and would eventually – and rightly – come to no good. The newspapers were almost gleeful in their accounts that only an hour before he died the ‘Wolverhampton pools winner’ (who would be henceforth known as ‘pools man’ in subsequent headlines) had duped magistrates by claiming he was close to destitution. More than once it was remarked that it was ironic that the clothes he had worn to court in his attempt to procure leniency would only a short while later lead him to be identified as a deranged vagrant. Any public sympathy that may have been around for Mervyn evaporated after that. More importantly, as far as the cops were concerned, and despite the best attempts of some political activists, there would be no protests, nor riots, over the death of Mervyn Palmer.