by Adam Baron
He was getting up from a camp bed they must have brought in for him. A portable gas fire burnt at the foot of it. There was a small lamp beside him as well as an old TV set, the volume down almost to nothing. He made a lunge to his right, away from me, knocking over a dress dummy, sending a set of steel steps careening away behind him. All around him were racks of dresses, boxes piled to the ceiling. He was stumbling through to the front of the shop when I stopped him.
‘Jack,’ I said. ‘It’s me, Billy Rucker. Where the fuck are you going?’
* * *
The warehouse was musty and damp, the air laced with curry and something else, far away in the back of it, something I recognized without being able to place. When he’d calmed down, Jack sat on the bed and ran his hands back through his hair, taking long, even breaths. Jack’s hair didn’t look like it did in the Flex ads. Jack himself looked shocked, relieved.
‘Jesus,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Fucking hell.’
Even though there wasn’t much light I could see that Jack wasn’t looking his best. He hadn’t shaved in a week and he wasn’t the sort of man that suited. It wasn’t much of a disguise either. Jack’s eyes had the look of a caged animal that hasn’t got used to it yet and when he stretched his legs it increased the effect. I stood, leaning against an iron pillar.
The room was big but jam-packed, the dim light of the lamp creating myriad weird shadows from the crates, racks and mannequins. It was warm enough, near the fire. On the bed was one of those big, Afghan hats with flaps at the side, which I assumed Jack wore to cover his face completely. Sitting next to it was a fat paperback, open face down, only a few pages read. On the floor was a pair of old dumb-bells but my eyes left them immediately, fixing on something else. Next to them sat a big holdall, packed and ready. I wanted to know what was in it. Was it just clothes, a toothbrush? Or was there something else? A very big bundle of something else?
I took it all in. Being the fugitive, it wasn’t exactly glamorous.
Once Jack was breathing normally I looked down at him.
‘Your agent was murdered this morning,’ I told him.
How he reacted was important and I didn’t take my eyes off him. His look said he knew. But he just couldn’t believe it.
‘It was on this,’ he said, nodding at the small, black and white tube. ‘About an hour ago. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s me. Screwed!’
‘Did you do it?’
‘Fuck off.’
Jack stared at the set to the side of him, EastEnders just finishing.
‘What are you going to do?’ I asked. He didn’t answer me. ‘Jack.’ I spread my hands round the room. ‘There really isn’t any point to this, is there? Not any more. They won’t be calling you the Fugitive tomorrow, not after McKenna.’
Jack turned quickly, challenge in his eyes. ‘So what do you want me to do? Huh? Show up at the nearest nick and say Here I am, it’s your lucky day. Lock me up and throw away the key? I’m being stitched up. I have a life, Billy. I want it back.’
‘You won’t get it this way.’
‘No. No you’re probably right.’ The challenge that had burst out of him disappeared, replaced by a crushed disbelief. He looked stunned, finished, like a fighter being helped through the crowd after his second comeback. But like that fighter his mind was already looking for a space, an excuse, a way not to believe. ‘I’m not just going to let them do it to me. I’m not. Even this is better than the alternative. The food’s better, for one thing.’ A carton of chicken curry and rice sat on a packing case next to him. It looked tempting. I’d evidently disturbed him as he was halfway through it and he picked it up again. He took a few forkfuls then looked at me.
‘I don’t need to ask how you found me.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘I should have just told you. Tailing people, it’s your business, isn’t it?’
‘It would have been easier,’ I agreed. ‘I can’t do anything for you without knowing everything, without talking to you.’
‘I understand. I just thought… Okay then, now I have to trust you. Do you believe me, that I didn’t kill Alison, or McKenna?’
‘I can accept that for now. But they’re both connected to you. As far as I can see you have three choices. First, you could stay in hiding, for ever.’ I looked at the bag at his feet. ‘Two, face it. If you didn’t do it then your prints won’t be on the knife that killed Alison or on anything significant at McKenna’s, though there will probably be latents at both. You were placed at the scene of Alison’s murder but that doesn’t mean it was you. So you can give yourself up and hope.’
He was already shaking his head. ‘They can fucking find me. Even if I did get off I’d be finished, no one would believe me.’ I shrugged. ‘What’s the third?’
‘Help me find out who did it,’ I said. ‘Who’s doing this to you? We both thought it might be McKenna but now we have to think again.’
Jack nodded then shook his head. He told me once more to look at the list of people he was likely to have severely upset with his autobiography. His former manager, abetting syndicate. I asked him to go through his exact position at the club. All the time my eyes kept flitting back to the bag at his feet. I was wondering whether or not to tell him. Tell him that whoever had gone through Nicky’s floorboards could well have got him killed. After a while I could see his mind drifting.
‘How was she?’
I was still leaning against the pillar.
‘Louise?’
She slipped into my mind like she’d slipped into my arms.
‘Okay, I think. She’s under siege, she’s upset, she can’t really believe what’s happening, but she’s okay.’
‘Tommy?’
‘I don’t really know. Louise didn’t say either way, which means he must be all right. You miss him?’
‘I miss them both. I can’t believe…’ Jack let his words tail off into thoughts as he finished his curry. He shook his head. ‘You must think I’m a real prick.’
‘Why so?’
‘You’ve been in my house, yeah? You’ve seen my wife. My kid. You know what I’ve fucked up. You know what I’ve put in jeopardy for… Shit.’
Draper’s mind went even further away until a look of disbelief took hold of his features that he didn’t seem aware of.
‘You ever do anything like that? Just go off and fuck someone? When you loved the person you left behind? Love them and don’t want to lose them?’ I didn’t say anything. ‘I get so…’ He looked for the word then found it. ‘Drawn. Like a fish on a line. It makes me forget everything, nothing else seems to get in. And then I feel so stupid, afterwards. Until the next time.’ He gave a laugh. ‘And what no one, no one believes is that all I want is Louise. Sometimes I think that that can’t actually be true but it is. She’s all I want.’
‘She told me you phone her. I take it you’re careful.’
‘Yeah, of course. You might have, but the Old Bill won’t find me. You had inside knowledge. And you’re bright. I sit here, thinking about her, wondering if I’ll ever be with her again, like I was before.’
Draper looked up at me, wanting me to tell him everything would be all right. I wanted to get back to the point, and not only because I didn’t want to discuss Draper’s wife with him. I needed to know who he had told about Alison, who could have possibly known, apart from the girl herself, and McKenna. I also wanted to know his exact position at Orient, his contract, what it was like to play there. I was about to ask Jack, glad to have found him at last. The thoughts in my head were like an intricate game of snakes and ladders designed so you could never reach the end. I kept returning to Draper, just as Coombes had. And then my eyes went to his holdall again. I was trying to put my foot on another bottom rung when Jack stood up and turned away from me.
Jack walked over and dropped the food carton into a bin liner behind the TV. He let out a long breath, his hands on his hips, and stared into the darkness behind me. He shook his head, like an A-L
evel student in front of Einstein’s Field Equation. He turned round to the bed. He reached underneath it and pulled out a big watchman’s torch.
‘So. You think I should give myself up? That’s what I should do? I’d really have a chance?’
I nodded, surprised. He sounded serious. ‘Listen. If you didn’t kill McKenna they won’t be able to pinch you for it. They found a print at the scene but if you weren’t there, it won’t be yours, will it? As for Alison, I know they have time-of-death problems and there were no prints on the knife. I think you’d stand a good chance. If we get back to focusing on who might have been keeping tabs on you, we just might—’
‘You miserable fucking bastard.’
Jack swung the torch with both hands like an axe. It came down on the top of my head, above my left eye. I staggered backwards as my legs buckled like a sprung puppet, sending me down on one knee. The look of dumb surprise on my face must have been pretty comical but Draper wasn’t laughing. Did she tell him, did Louise tell him what had happened? I could hear her, getting her revenge on him. But then something came to me. Suddenly I could hear the door wrenching open behind me, a rush of cold. I was about to turn to the sound but I didn’t. Jack was bringing the torch down again. He’d heard them. It was why he’d stared behind me, why he’d gone for the torch. I managed to get my hands underneath his swing this time but it still took whatever was left in my legs and sent me down further, half backwards, half to the side, onto my elbow.
Jack was standing over me. Another blow like that would do real damage. But I couldn’t move. I had trouble holding my hands up again. A mist descended and I could only just make out Draper through it. Then he flashed clear. He was turning away from me. I watched as he ran towards his bed, past his bag. He didn’t stop to take it. He ran over the bed as if it wasn’t there, sending the novel bouncing up from it before coming down shut. I watched Draper’s back as he carved a path to the front, the way he’d gone before, pulling over clothes rails in his wake. I tried to call him but an aftershock of pain burst inside my temple like a grenade.
It all must have happened in a second. I managed to turn my eyes to the left. An open door, rain cutting in from the night. Two pairs of legs coming towards me. I tried to get my hands up again. The legs got longer and longer until two bodies joined them, shimmering like a mirage, two faces pulling in and out of focus. I felt sick. I saw the two shapes begin to lean down towards me but they never got there. They receded down a dark pulsating tunnel without moving their legs, their arms, anything at all.
They got smaller and smaller and smaller.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A lilting, jogging motion woke me. I was in the back of a car, my head on my chest. There were people close in on either side of me. An iron hand inside my head took hold of my brain and squeezed. I went away again, I don’t know how long. Then I could smell expensive leather upholstery beyond smoke and damp clothing. I could feel the car moving. Another hand, weaker this time. I was ready for it and I stayed. I kept my eyes shut and listened for voices, pretending I was still out. There were none, just a radio tuned into Five Live. A football match was beginning. The crowd sounded like desperate flies buzzing inside a forgotten bait box.
I drifted in and out until the sensation was replaced by something else. Simple, understandable pain. The car moved on, slowing, turning. I didn’t know where I was, who I was with. I could feel my hood, crumpled and wet against the back of my head. I thought of my Recco system, pulsing radar signals out to anyone who would be searching for me. I couldn’t think of anyone. I had just opened my eyes a touch to see what I could see, when something strange happened. The sounds of the crowd on Five Live spread out, moving beyond the radio. I thought it must have just been my head, now throbbing like the crossbar after a Stuart Pierce penalty. But the noise persisted, getting slowly louder. Wider. Then the car came to a halt and there was a rattling sound. I opened my eyes wide to see a set of gates draw back, gates with a crest emblazoned with four words bold above them. Four big words.
Leyton Orient Football Club.
The car stopped round the back. They got me out and shook me awake. I’d been in a Jag, a black Jag. I tried to get my bearings, checking for ways out, the nearest police. I couldn’t see anyone. They were all inside the ground, a rising, swarming sound to my left. I was still pretty groggy. My head rushed as I was taken hold of and walked towards the sound, a low, swooping bass now, then beneath a sign that told me it welcomed Home Supporters. I didn’t feel welcome. Neither of the men looked at me. I thought about a stumble, then a feint to the right followed by a sprint. There was no way. They knew the place, and they hadn’t been hammered over the head by a footballer who thought he’d been sold out. I let them take me along, trying to pretend I was worse off than I was, just in case.
I was flanked by two men, one the chauffeur I’d seen out at Wanstead Flats. My arms were held as we bypassed the turnstiles and turned to a large gate that was opened by two orange-coated stewards who both nodded and stood aside. The gates shut behind us. I asked where I was being taken but didn’t get an answer. I was helped up two flights of stairs inside a concrete shell, the noise coming from above my head now, intensifying with each step, accompanied by our shuffling footsteps like a jazz drummer using the brushes to back a wailing horn. We were joined by the smell of hotdogs, cigarettes and instant coffee all drifting around us in the cold damp air. The stairs were dark, I held my head down to make sure I hit the steps. But then we emerged at the top of the stand, the noise going up one last, important notch and I stopped. A brilliant floodlit pitch emerged below us, making me blink, sending my head reeling. It was amazingly light, full of scurrying figures. Again, arms took hold of me. They were tight under my armpits but they needn’t have bothered. A break for it? I wouldn’t have made ten feet.
There were plenty of people around but nobody noticed my discomfort except for my two guides. They were all looking the other way, down at the action. I was sat in the back of the stand. Once again the two men joined me, one either side. Neither of them was as big as the Maltese guy I’d seen in Nicky’s but I soon realized that size isn’t really important: when the chauffeur opened his coat to show me the square butt of an automatic I nodded respectfully. Neither of the two men spoke, preferring just to stare straight ahead and wait. I wasn’t in a very creative mood so I did the same, until my head began to throb again and I held it in my hands, looking down at the grey concrete beneath my seat.
I shivered with the cold and pulled my coat round me. I took several deep breaths and my mind became a little clearer with each one. I breathed deep into my haziness until all of it had broken up, like a dam down a fast river. I made myself think. What had I got myself into, how could I get out of it? While I was outside, surely I was okay? I looked up, ahead of me. The stand I was sitting in was along one side of the ground – I was looking down at the office buildings I had entered on my last visit there. Above the offices a row of glass boxes were lit up to reveal seated figures, protected from the noise and the cold. Above them was a modern stand with bright blue plastic seating and clean steel supports. Another stand to my left was similarly new while the one it faced behind the opposite goal was thirty years old at least. A small clutch of away supporters huddled together in the rain. I looked around me. The stand I was in was half full, most of the fans down near the front. It was a covered stand and for this I was very grateful as a driving rain lashed down on the players like a flight of javelins, lit by the angry phosphorescence of the floods. The pitch was neon bright, green as a Subutteo table.
In spite of the rain I was surprised to see that the ground was about two-thirds full. The benefits, I assumed, of a promotion battle and a dead model. I sat for five minutes, breathing damp and chips and smoke and hope on the cold night air, staring at the spectacle before me as my head straightened. The swell of the crowd filled it, cut by the voices of the players on the pitch. They were the same men I’d seen only yesterday, in the centre
circle. I tried to pick out some faces but I found it hard, and not because of my state of mind. They all looked different. Now they were a team. They ran and chased, harried for each other, each of them serious, focused. They carried the hopes of what looked like about eight thousand people with them. Were they the same men? I remembered looking back at them having their photos taken, beyond to the empty rows of plastic seats, the shabby advertising hoardings, the stained concrete terraces, all empty. I was reminded of Sal’s gym. This was another place that needed life and energy. But unlike the gym, which relied on people taking part, this place needed spectators; shouting, singing, stamping their feet, swearing, straining, urging. Without them, these guys were just so many men standing around in cheap suits and fake gold jewellery like so many second-hand Porsche dealers. With that image in my mind it seemed very bizarre that these thousands of people should come here, putting their faith in them every week, especially on a piss miserable night like this.
My eyes went to the people in front of me, all leaned forward in their seats, stamping, chanting, and to the stand to my left, united in song about their heroes. Again I saw the players, the nippy teenager in his elder brother’s suit, fussing with his tie chain. It struck me that football was a self-sustaining prophecy, a god created by its worshippers, endlessly feeding on one thing and one thing only: their desire for it to exist. Yesterday it looked like the spell was broken. But now the magic was back. In the lower divisions the magic wasn’t so strong – you could see the rabbit going into the hat, the silk scarf poking out the end of the sleeve. People like Janner had to keep it alive. It was a tough job, with the competition from television and the big boys poaching his would-be stars when their contracts ended, nicking the club’s fan base from right under its nose, enticing kids from within earshot of the ground to support teams in towns they’d probably never ever go to. I realized what a bonus someone like Draper was to a place like this, like Tom Cruise doing Rep in Wakefield. Because in spite of everything, his arrogance, his ambition, Jack Draper had just exactly what the people surrounding me came to that football ground for.
