Gareth Dawson Series Box Set

by Nathan Burrows

  The policeman started flicking through photographs of young men, all taken from CCTV still images. The photographs started melting into each other as Jimmy’s concentration drifted. The copper might as well have been showing the stewards pictures of the youngster who’d tried it on with Jimmy at the cemetery. The “rascals” all looked very similar, anyway. Young, angry, mostly white, and trying their best to look intimidating. Just like Jimmy’s would-be mugger, and not too different to how Jimmy looked forty years ago.

  Jimmy frowned as he slipped his hands into his trouser pockets. Inside the one with his lighter was a small plastic thing. He pulled it out, realising that it was the thumb drive that he’d found in Milly’s drawer. He’d completely forgotten about it since the police visit and hadn’t worn the trousers since. Good job he’d not thrown them in the wash, Jimmy thought. Turning it over in his hands, he re-read the text on the side of the USB drive.

  Norfolk Photography Services. A web address was etched in smaller letters underneath the title.

  Sliding his phone from his other pocket and trying to hide it from the policeman at the front of the room, Jimmy tapped in the web address and waited as a small circle rotated on the screen. A moment later, a message popped up to tell him he wasn’t connected to the internet. Hardly surprising, he thought, as he was sitting underneath a large football stadium. He fiddled with his phone, trying to find an open wi-fi network, but no joy.

  While the policeman droned on at the front of the room, Jimmy started wondering if he should have come to the football at all. He wasn’t feeling brilliant, and what had happened at the cemetery that morning was playing on his mind. Rushing for the bus hadn’t helped either, nor did the heat in the room. Jimmy realised he’d not stopped sweating since he’d got on the bloody bus earlier. The back of his head felt tight. It wasn’t a headache, not really, but he wished he’d taken a few paracetamols earlier.

  Finally, the policeman finished his presentation by asking if there were questions—there never were—and the occupants of the room all got to their feet. Jimmy watched Robbie pushing his way through the other stewards towards him.

  ‘You alright, mate?’ Robbie asked when he reached Jimmy. ‘You’re looking a bit peaky.’

  ‘Busy morning,’ Jimmy replied, not wanting to go into any detail. ‘Come on, let’s get some air. The food vans should be outside by now.’ He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. ‘I could do with some scoff and a cuppa.’

  ‘Sounds like a great plan,’ Robbie replied.

  They spent the next hour standing around outside the stadium, watching as the crowd for the match started to arrive. The fans had been trickling in since Jimmy and Robbie had sat on a wall outside the stadium, eating pulled pork rolls from a catering van parked near the away end. Jimmy had only had a couple of bites of his, but Robbie hadn’t seemed to notice. In the distance, Jimmy could hear singing and knew that the away fans’ coaches had discharged their passengers. The Norwich crowd wouldn’t find their voice until kick off, but away fans were always more vocal. Sure enough, ten minutes later, the Burnley fans started to arrive in numbers.

  The stewards had some wide-ranging powers for a bunch of random blokes who were paid twenty quid in cash per game. They could stop and search anyone they wanted, even deny them entry to the ground as long as they had a good enough reason to. Robbie was searching through bags, while Jimmy stopped any young lads to search them for weapons. To their left, a bored looking policeman cast his eyes over the crowd, and for a second Jimmy wished he’d paid more attention to the policeman at the briefing.

  Over the years, Jimmy had found all sorts of things people wanted to smuggle into the ground. Snooker balls in socks, a retractable baton or two, and even a couple of nasty looking knives. Much more common was alcohol though, and that was what he concentrated on more. There was a bin for bottles and cans behind the crowd barriers, and any contraband went in there. It was normally full by the end of the game, and it got taken to the stewards crew room for ‘disposal’ by the section heads. They poured anything that was opened away, while the section heads liberated anything that was still sealed. Jimmy didn’t mind, nor it seemed did anyone else. One of the perks of being slightly higher up the stewards’ pecking order, apparently.

  ‘Alright, mate?’ Jimmy said to a young man walking towards the entrance. ‘I’m going to search you, if that’s okay?’ It would have to be okay, because if the fan said no, he wasn’t coming in.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, really?’ the lad replied in a thick northern accent. ‘I haven’t got nothing.’

  ‘No reason why I can’t search you, then,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Arms up. I’m sure you’ve been through this before.’ The away fan groaned as he lifted his arms out to his sides.

  When he got to the young man’s coat pocket, Jimmy felt a couple of suspicious items rattling, so he opened the flap and looked inside. At the bottom of the pocket were a couple of small smoke grenades, no doubt full of the same colour smoke as the football kit the away fan was wearing.

  ‘Turn around,’ Jimmy said, spinning the young man so that the pocket with the grenades in was facing away from the policeman. He slipped his hand inside the pocket and grabbed them. ‘I’m going to have to confiscate these, son.’ The away fan looked resigned and swore under his breath. Jimmy didn’t catch what he said but figured it probably wasn’t complimentary. ‘Or I could call that copper over, and he’d probably nick you for attempting to enter. Best case, a football banning order. Worst case, three months in nick. What do you think?’

  ‘They’re all yours, mate,’ the youngster said, managing a smile in Jimmy’s direction as he slipped the smoke grenades into his own pocket. There was a special bin for fireworks and smoke bombs a few hundred yards away, so when Jimmy next went that way, he could dump them there.

  Jimmy leaned in to the away fan and whispered in his ear.

  ‘Next time, shove them down the front of your pants. We’re not allowed to search you there, nor would we want to.’ A broad grin spread across the young man’s face as Jimmy continued. ‘Just hope they don’t go off before you get into the ground.’

  ‘Nice one fella,’ the fan replied. ‘You’re alright, you are. Up the Clarets, yeah?’

  ‘Maybe, we’ll see,’ Jimmy said. ‘Enjoy the match.’ The youngster walked off with a swagger as Jimmy watched him. Weapons or booze was one thing, but a smoke bomb? Jimmy knew that the fire officer and probably most of the stewards would disagree with him, but he wasn’t about to spoil the young lad’s day over a bloody smoke bomb. Hopefully, Burnley would lose and that would spoil it for him, anyway.

  Ten minutes into the match, Norwich were winning by a single goal. Jimmy stood at his appointed spot in between the most vocal section of the home fans and the away fans. A couple of times, Jimmy looked at the away crowd to see if he could spot the lad from earlier, but he couldn’t make him out.

  Jimmy wiped his hands on his trousers for the second or third time in as many minutes. He was still sweating even though it was cold, and he could feel a trickle of sweat making its way between his shoulder blades. In the last couple of minutes, he’d noticed a slight tremble in his fingertips, and the band across the back of his head was getting tighter. He looked over at the players on the pitch, wishing for the first time since he’d been a steward he wasn’t here. He should be at home, finding Milly. Seeing what was on that memory drive, doing some research on Facebook. Anything but watching a bloody football match.

  He belched and then grimaced as a hot trickle of bile made its way into the back of his throat. For a horrible second, he thought he would be sick in front of the best part of twenty-five thousand football fans, but the feeling passed. The trembling was getting worse though, and he could feel his knees shake.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Jimmy heard a muffled voice say. He looked to see a policeman, the same one who had been standing next to him outside the ground, looking at him with concern. ‘You’ve gone white as a sheet.’ The copper reached out and took
Jimmy’s elbow just as he stumbled slightly on his feet. Jimmy shook his head as he heard the policeman calling out to someone. Everything had gone blurry. He belched again, realising that his stomach felt distended as if he’d had a belly full of beer. Except he hadn’t.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Jimmy said. ‘Honestly, I’m fine.’

  ‘You don’t look it,’ the policeman said. He pulled Jimmy’s arm gently just as he felt another hand on his other elbow. ‘Come on, this way. Think you need to sit down somewhere.’

  Jimmy let himself be led into the passage that led back underneath the stands. He shook his head again, trying to focus on whoever had his other elbow. At first, Jimmy thought it was another policeman, but as he squinted he could just make out the writing on the other man’s uniform. St John Ambulance.

  He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, wondering why his legs didn’t feel like they belonged to him any more. The two men led him towards a set of double doors with the words ‘Medical Centre’ on them in large white letters. That was when everything started to go sideways, and black. The last thing he remembered was the policeman shouting something as he tightened his grip on Jimmy’s arm and lowered him to the floor.

  Chapter 14

  Jimmy lay on the uncomfortable hospital trolley and listened to the frantic sounds of the emergency department beyond the curtains of his cubicle. Somewhere in the distance a woman was crying, and if the man he thought was with her was shouting at her, she would not stop anytime soon. Every few seconds, he could see people walking past him through the small gap in the blue paper curtains.

  He looked up at the intravenous bag that hung on a pole attached to his trolley. Every couple of seconds, a fat drop of the liquid would splash into its small chamber and then, presumably, make its way down the tube and into his body through the needle in his arm.

  The flustered young male doctor who’d seen Jimmy about an hour after the ambulance deposited him in a cubicle had ordered a bunch of tests, and Jimmy had been prodded, stuck, examined and had even been offered a finger in his back passage, which he’d politely declined. Jimmy had been given a bag of intravenous fluid which had gone through in about thirty minutes, and then it had been changed for another bag which wasn’t going through as fast. Jimmy wasn’t sure what was in the bag, but he was feeling one hundred percent better.

  When he’d arrived at the hospital, he’d been feeling sick, but that could have been the way the ambulance driver was hammering along. Jimmy got the impression that he didn’t get the chance to drive it often and was making the most of it. At least the nausea had disappeared now.

  Whether it was the intravenous fluids, Jimmy didn’t know, but he was bursting for a pee. He waited until he saw someone passing by his curtains and then called out to them.

  ‘Sorry, excuse me?’ He thought he’d missed them for a moment, but a second later, the curtains flew back and Jimmy saw a familiar head of untamed red hair. It was the student nurse from the neurology outpatients department.

  ‘Hello,’ she said in a bright voice. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ Jimmy wracked his brains for her name. It began with an ‘A’, that much he remembered, but she was too far away for him to read her name badge.

  ‘Hi, yes. You were working in the outpatients department. I’m sorry, but I can’t remember your name.’

  ‘Angela,’ she replied. Jimmy cursed under his breath. Of course it was.

  ‘From County Meath, aren’t you?’ Her smile broadened as he said this.

  ‘Yeah, that’ll be me.’ She walked across, still smiling, and stood next to his trolley. ‘What are you doing in here, then?’

  ‘Went all weird at the football,’ he replied. ‘I’m feeling much better now, though. Erm, I was wondering, I’m desperate for a pee. Am I allowed to go to the toilet?’

  ‘Hang on a sec, let me just check with someone.’ Angela left the cubicle, but returned a short time later. ‘The Charge Nurse says that’s fine, but I’m to go with you.’

  ‘To the toilet?’

  ‘As far as the toilet,’ she replied. ‘I’ll wait outside, though. If I hear a big thump, I’ll know you’ve fainted again. Swing your legs round and just sit on the edge for a moment. I’ll have to take the cannula in your arm out first.’

  Jimmy sat in silence as Angela fussed with the needle which turned out not to be a needle at all, but a plastic tube.

  ‘I thought you were a student nurse?’ he asked her. According to her badge, she was a health care assistant. The scrubs she was wearing were a different colour. The last time Jimmy had seen her, they’d been green with white stripes. The ones she had on now were pale blue.

  ‘I am,’ Angela replied. ‘I’m still on placement in outpatients, but I’m desperate for the money, so I’m moonlighting.’ Jimmy thought about his own job on the lorries. Technically, he’d been moonlighting at the football but in his case, it wasn’t for the money. ‘Bloody student loans. They’re killing me.’ Angela’s smile slipped for a second, but was soon back again. Leaving him with a small piece of gauze taped to his arm, Angela took off her disposable gloves and let down the cot-sides on the trolley.

  ‘Just sit on the edge for a moment,’ she told him. While he waited, for what he wasn’t sure, he looked at Angela. She really was a very good-looking young woman, almost model-like, but he wasn’t about to say anything to her along those lines. ‘How’re you feeling?’ she asked him a moment later.

  ‘Like I really, really need to pee?’

  ‘No, silly,’ she giggled and her red hair bobbed. ‘I mean, do you feel faint or dizzy?’

  ‘Nope,’ he replied. ‘The only thing I can feel is my bladder.’

  ‘Up you get, then,’ Angela said. ‘Just take it slowly and say if you feel weird.’

  As they were walking to the toilet, Angela holding on to Jimmy’s upper arm with delicate fingers topped with pale blue nail polish that matched her scrubs, the doors to the waiting room opened, and Robbie walked through.

  ‘Bloody hell, mate,’ Robbie said with a smile. ‘I’ve been out there for ages waiting for you. You’re not dead then?’

  ‘Not just yet,’ Jimmy replied with a grimace. He really needed to get to the toilet. ‘How did Norwich get on?’

  ‘Won two nil. Great second half,’ Robbie said. ‘Shame you missed it. Second goal was a screamer into the top corner from the new Bosnian signing. Goalie had no chance.’

  ‘Sorry, mate.’

  ‘Are you going to introduce me to your friend, then?’ Robbie asked, nodding at Angela with an expression that Jimmy didn’t particularly like.

  ‘Angela, this is Robbie,’ Jimmy said. ‘Robbie, this is Angela.’

  ‘I can’t believe you, Jimmy. Even when you’re sick, you’re still after the ladies.’ To Jimmy’s surprise, Angela’s fair skinned cheeks reddened at Robbie’s comment.

  Twenty minutes later, Jimmy had officially been discharged. The young doctor had returned, clutching a bunch of paperwork in his hands, and told him that whatever had made him so unwell, it wasn’t serious. No, the doctor said, it probably wasn’t anything to do with the aneurysm, but it could be. A faint, probably, or perhaps a panic attack of some sort. Jimmy wasn’t convinced it was either, but he wasn’t a doctor. His next appointment in outpatients would be brought forward just to be on the safe side, though. As the doctor was leaving the cubicle, Angela breezed back in.

  ‘You all set then, Jimmy?’ she asked him. He nodded in reply and got to his feet. ‘How are you getting home?’

  ‘Robbie’s waiting for me outside,’ Jimmy replied. ‘He’s going to give me a lift home.’

  ‘You make sure you take it easy for a few days. When’s your next appointment in outpatients?’

  ‘I’m not sure. The doc said he would bring it forward.’

  ‘I’ll double check, make sure that happens,’ Angela said with a smile. ‘Is your daughter coming with you to the next one?’ Jimmy’s heart thudded for a few seconds at the mention of Milly, but it soon su
bsided.

  ‘It depends when it is,’ he replied. Angela’s smile slipped again, and Jimmy realised that she must have picked up on something. ‘I’ll ask her when I see her later,’ he continued, trying to act as normally as he could. From the slight frown that appeared on Angela’s face, she’d not bought it in the slightest.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, looping her arm through his just like Hannah used to do when they first started going out together. ‘I’ll walk you to the waiting room, make sure you get there in one piece.’

  ‘Bloody hell, mate,’ Robbie exclaimed as they walked out of the waiting room and into the fresh air. ‘That nurse is bloody stunning. She’d be pure filth in the sack, don’t you think? I bet she goes like a steam train when she–’

  ‘Robbie,’ Jimmy said with a bark, cutting him off. ’Shut it. Don’t be rude.’ He turned to see Robbie looking at him, open-mouthed.

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jimmy replied. ‘I don’t want you talking about her like that.’ Robbie closed his mouth and opened it again, before deciding to keep his thoughts to himself.

  They walked on in silence, Jimmy appreciating the fresh air after being cooped up in the hospital for so long. Robbie didn’t say another word, but Jimmy started to feel bad about being so abrupt.

  ‘I’m sorry, Robbie,’ he said as they approached Robbie’s car. ‘I know her, kind of. That’s why I was so short with you. Alright?’ Robbie looked at him with a smile.

  ‘How does a bloke like you,’ he said, ‘know a girl like that?’ Because she works in a neurology clinic, Jimmy thought, and I’m one of her customers.

  ’She was working in the hospital the last time I came up,’ Jimmy replied. ‘I met her then. She’s a lovely little thing.’ Who is one of the few people who know I’m dying.