Singleton's Law

by Reginald Hill

  “Come in, Mr. Singleton,” he said.

  Whitey stepped inside and the second door slid shut behind him.

  The colour dominant in the carpets, curtains and upholstery was, forecastably, Wanderers blue, but the designs and materials had been chosen with some taste. Around the walls hung a multitude of pictures and a brief glance told Whitey that these were photographs of some of the great Midland teams of the past. In faded sepia was the Villa ‘Double’ side of 1897, proud and unsmiling, their shirts laced tight at the neck. Curiously the moustaches sported by most of them had become popular again and appeared in almost the same proportion in the Championship team of 1979. Present also were the West Bromwich Division Two side which won promotion and the Cup in 1931 and the Birmingham side they beat, while half a dozen action pictures demonstrated the skills of the great Wolves side of the fifties. And in a trophy case among a host of lesser cups and bowls, stood the Football Association Cup itself which had been held by Aston Villa at the time of the dissolution of the League.

  “Gentlemen,” said Chaucer. “May I introduce Mr. Whitey Singleton?”

  “Blest, Singleton,” said the man at the head of the table, large and solid still, though clearly in his sixties.

  “Sorry,” he added, glancing at his companions with a smile.

  For what? wondered Whitey. Being polite to a prisoner?

  Something about the big man was familiar though he couldn’t quite place it.

  “Take a seat,” said the big man.

  “Thanks,” said Whitey, sitting in the chair which had been placed ready for him at the foot of the table. Almost immediately he jumped up again and went across to the wall where he stared hard at one of the old photographs.

  “Billy Wildthorpe,” he said suddenly. He turned round. The big man had joined him. “You’re Billy Wildthorpe. I saw you play when I was a lad.”

  “Did you now?” said Wildthorpe delighted, clapping his hand on Whitey’s shoulder. “Did I have a good game?”

  “My dad,” answered Whitey slowly, “used to say you played football like a gorilla with a pound of mustard up its arse. But yes, the day I saw you, you had a good game.”

  Wildthorpe had played for the one club all his life and when his playing days were over it had seemed natural that he should stay with them and eventually become manager. By the time of the dissolution, he had become a figure as respected and revered as Busby in the sixties. For a while as the Four Clubs began to emerge from the anarchy which followed the great police strike of 1985, the names of Wildthorpe and others highly placed in football’s old hierarchy had received some prominence. But generally they had been figureheads only and when the politicians, the demagogues and the gangsters began to take over, one by one they had disappeared.

  But not completely, it seemed. Whitey looked slowly round the table, checking his memory for other familiar faces. These men wore no flamboyant Supporters colours, but dark anonymous business suits, rather out of date in their cut. A Board of Directors twenty years earlier must have looked very like this.

  Only one other face was at all familiar, a narrow, lined face, skin creased like grey flannel except for the shining smoothness of the completely bald head. But no name would come. Or rather at a very early stage of awareness, his mind rejected the only name that would come as making no sense, here and now.

  Wildthorpe led him back to his seat and stood over as he sat down.

  “Well, you know me, son. I won’t introduce you round the table, but these gents you see here are all Club Directors. We’ve been talking about you this morning. You were high up on the agenda. Does that surprise you? Well, never mind. You’ve had an exciting time since you came back, I gather. And you’ve been keeping some bad company, running around with a smelly pack of anarchist wankers. But Mr. Chaucer assures us that your connection with them was more accidental than idealogical, is that right, Mr. Chaucer? Such reffing strange words for a plain man to have to use.”

  It was like plunging back into time, sitting in front of the television on a Saturday night watching recorded highlights of a couple of games and listening to this voice dissecting a game, a player, or even a commentator, the whiles claiming that the speaker was a plain, simple man, easily duped.

  “Now, you’ve been writing a lot about this country and the Four Clubs in the past few years. Me, I’m not much of a reader, not since the sports pages went and that was just for laughs. So perhaps you could tell me in a few words, just so’s I’d have it from your mouth with no fear of misrepresentation, exactly what you’d like to see happen in this country?”

  Wildthorpe finished, stuck his left index finger in his ear in a gesture that hadn’t changed in thirty years and screwed it around as he regarded Whitey expectantly.

  Whitey tried to collect his thoughts, but a cold fear, worse than anything he had yet felt, was frosting his mind. He felt certain he knew now what was happening to him. These were the insidiously gentle and reasonable beginnings of high-level psycho-yuss. The path that lay ahead led out of this comfortable room to a public place, a hall or even a stadium, where eventually—after perhaps ten hours, perhaps a hundred and ten—he would see the error of his ways and make a public admission. If his resistance proved strong, he might at some point be shown the promise of pain, as Hydrangea had been shown the fire, as the prisoners of the Inquisition were shown the instruments. But the control would be stronger and the final result even more certain. The only possible source of help was King and the Jays and their only concern now seemed to be to get close enough to kill him.

  “You may start, Mr. Singleton,” said Wildthorpe mildly.

  Reff it! thought Whitey yawning widely and convulsively. He might in the end cringe and qualify and contradict and recant, but while he was in control, before fatigue and fear had bent his mind, he would speak his mind.

  “I’ll spell it out simply enough for even a very plain man to understand,” he said, looking straight at Wildthorpe. “If a society erects an ideal and works towards it, that’s civilization. If a society takes the basic common denominators of human behaviour and uses these as its framework, that’s barbarism. The Four Clubs system is barbaric. It represents the nadir of the long slide into chaos which began in 1914.”

  “Nadir,” interrupted Wildthorpe. “That’s the lowest point, isn’t it?”

  Whitey nodded.

  “But how can this be the lowest point, son? I mean, wouldn’t we all be pulling your fingernails off and sticking electrodes into your balls if this were the lowest point?”

  A threat, thought Whitey. An obvious threat. He felt unable to answer, but Wildthorpe hadn’t finished in any case.

  “No. Surely if there was a slide, and I don’t dispute it, I’ve lived longer than you, son, and seen worse things, if there was a slide, surely the Clubs have halted it? Surely because of the Clubs things have levelled off? Far from being the nadir, the Clubs were the turning point, the saviours of society!”

  He sat back triumphantly.

  “No,” said Whitey, finding his voice. “No. The establishment of the Clubs was something new, not just a point on the slide. Even a downhill movement still leaves you in relation to the heights. Rome in its decadence is still on a different plane of human existence from that inhabited by the barbarians. What the Clubs have done is publicly deny the ideal. They have accepted the common denominators of greed, lust, the rule of force, and by accepting, encouraged them. They have made evil their good, injustice their law, indulgence their morality. They are the antithesis of civilization!”

  He paused. He had been shouting and the reverberations of his words drummed momentarily round the room.

  “Well,” said Wildthorpe, “I don’t know about the others, but you’ve lost me. Was that the kind of thing you wrote in your articles? If it was, I’m very glad I didn’t try to read them.”

  “In fact,” said Chaucer smoothly, “if I’m not mistaken, Mr. Singleton was quoting directly from one of his recent pieces at the end.�
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  “Quoting himself?” said Wildthorpe. “Well, that’s novel. We used to have a Prime Minister who was for ever doing that. Lot of good it did him in the finish. Right, son. You’ve described what you think the disease is. What do you suggest as the cure?”

  Whitey was discovering that there was a certain pleasure to be derived out of burning boats and bridges. If a man is going to be condemned, he himself might as well speak the words which will damn him.

  “It’s simple,” he said. “First the dissolution of the Four Clubs and all that they stand for in terms of regional government and loyalties. Next, a return to central government and the rule of law. When this happens, the rest is detail. Like the re-establishment of our education system, the cleaning up of our towns both literally and metaphorically. Oh, and I mustn’t forget to mention, the trial and punishment of those criminal elements who have taken advantage of the chaos of the last decade for their personal gain.”

  He glared righteously down the double line of men seated before him, focussing on the expressionless face of Wildthorpe who had resumed his place at the other end of the table.

  “That it?” the man now asked.

  “That’ll do for starters,” said Whitey.

  “You should have gone into Parliament,” said Wildthorpe. “While you could, that is.”

  A small ripple of laughter washed round the table.

  “Well, now we know where you stand,” continued the big man. “So, let’s get it straight, you see as the country’s first and greatest need re-unification. That is, the Clubs shedding their power and a return to some form of centralization?”

  “Not some form. A specific form,” interjected Whitey. “A Wanderers’ conquest of the rest of the country would be no good.”

  “No, I see that. But if there were a treaty between the Clubs, a voluntary association, you’d be willing to support this as a first step?”

  Where the hell is all this leading? wondered Whitey. He could still see nothing but the jeering crowds and the broken mind at the end of it, but the route was proving even more circuitous than he had imagined.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” he answered. “A small step, but the right direction.”

  “Good,” said Wildthorpe leaning back and smiling expansively. “Then, with your agreement gentlemen, I think we may now invite Mr. Singleton into our confidence.”

  There was a pause. Then the bald head on Wildthorpe’s left inclined slightly and started a tremor of assent running round the table like a feu de joie.

  “Right,” said Wildthorpe. “We’re not here to argue a case for the Four Clubs, Mr. Singleton, though I could easily do so, never doubt that. But it may be they’ve served their purpose. Their main disadvantage is an economic one. Great Britain, as was, is still a member of the Common Market, at least on paper. Mind you, they’ve been debating what to do about us for ten years now, but they’ve never got round to expelling us. But things are getting tight.”

  Whitey could well imagine it. He had travelled widely on the Continent in the past few years and knew that irritation with Britain’s internal affairs and their effect on Europe as a whole was reaching unbearable proportions. There was a large Colony of former British political leaders now living a curious half-life in Brussels and they were constantly on the alert for chances to exacerbate matters. The expulsion of Britain from the European Community was a very real threat. Some extremists even muttered about annexation, but Whitey discounted this. Expulsion was the real danger. With all former Commonwealth ties now completely severed and transatlantic relations the worst ever, separation from Europe would mean death.

  “Some of us, ones not without influence, reckon the time has come for the country to be reunified. In fact, in a sense,” added Wildthorpe looking round the table with a grin, “it’s never really been divided.”

  Hobhouse! thought Whitey. The block was down now and the name slipped through quite easily. The bald-headed man was Henry Hobhouse, whose career with London clubs had paralleled Wildthorpe’s in the Midlands. Obviously the parallels had continued into the world of politics and Hobhouse now occupied a corresponding position in the Athletic hierarchy. No wonder Wildthorpe had apologized for saying ‘Blest’!

  The others too. No names came, though some younger faces were now emerging from the middle-aged blanks which confronted him. United and City must be here too, he had no doubt.

  “So,” he said, “the old Association still exists.”

  “Exactly!” said Wildthorpe. “It was always like this, even in the old days. The lads would knock hell out of each other on the park and the supporters would have a punch-up on the terraces, but that didn’t stop you having a drink and a friendly chat with old mates in the director’s room.”

  “The only thing is, Mr. Wildthorpe,” observed Whitey grimly, “it stopped being a game a long time ago.”

  “It did. Longer than you think, son,” answered Wildthorpe.

  “In fact I sometimes wonder if it ever really was a game. Anyway, the point is, things are getting moving once more. And you’ve just happened to drop in at the right time. You might be able to do us, and incidentally yourself, a bit of good.”

  “What had you in mind?” asked Whitey.

  “Simple. We need a voice that will be listened to. Not just diplomatically, anyone can make that kind of noise. But publicly, so that the people we’re dealing with can feel their own voters breathing down their necks.”

  “You mean, you want a P.R. man?” asked Whitey mockingly.

  “That’s it. You think about it a moment.”

  “And the alternative?”

  Wildthorpe spread his arms and shrugged in an uncharacteristically exotic gesture.

  “What do you want me to do? Make threats so that you can refuse indignantly? Or perhaps so you can accept reluctantly? No. You just choose, Mr. Singleton, Take your time. We’re due for some coffee now.”

  He nodded at Chaucer who rose, went to the door and spoke into a microphone. A few seconds later the door slid open and a girl, eye-catchingly dressed in a bright blue cat-suit, pushed in a wheeled trolley laden with coffee. Whitey noticed that many of the men at the table had turned away, probably to minimize the risk of recognition. Not that it was high, these were not well-known faces. But it wouldn’t be diplomatic to let the ordinary Club supporter know that City, Athletic and United men were being entertained in Wanderers Heights.

  “Thank you, love,” said Wildthorpe. “We’ll serve ourselves.”

  The girl nodded. She was really very attractive if perhaps just a trifle over-made-up. She was in the process of lifting a large coffee-pot. Suddenly there flashed in Whitey’s mind a picture of Hydrangea walking down the aisle of the jet, carrying a coffee tray before her. This girl was very different from Hydrangea, taller, slimmer, brown-eyed. But the same sense of something wrong was prodding at his stomach.

  Their eyes met. He was certain he’d seen her before. But where? And what did it matter?

  She put the coffee-pot down and began to open the drawer on the trolley in which cutlery was kept.

  In a shower. Even as the answer came to Whitey he was leaping forward. In a shower scrubbing purple dye off his body. Her hand came out of the drawer with a gun in it. The trolley was a barrier between them. He hurled himself at it as she fired, missing. The trolley caught her in the midriff and she doubled up firing twice more, wildly, desperately. Coffee cups showered to the floor, shattering against each other. Chaucer stepped forward now and chopped the girl twice beneath the ear with the edge of his hand. She fell backwards without a sound.

  Whitey picked himself off the floor and examined himself for damage. Nothing, except a great weariness which seemed to start somewhere behind his eyes and spread inexorably through the whole of his body. Looking round, he saw that the girl’s bullets had not been entirely in vain. The glass of the Cabinet holding the F. A. Cup had been shattered and the cup itself had a jagged hole pierced through it. And Hobhouse, the man from Athletic, w
as nursing a badly bleeding left fore-arm and looking greyer than ever.

  Wildthorpe was on his feet, his face twisted in anger.

  “Is this it, then, Singleton? Is she one of the representatives of your civilized ideals? Is this the kind of progress you want?”

  He thinks she was after him, thought Whitey. He’s got a right to be angry.

  He met Chaucer’s gaze. The Manager raised his eyebrows quizzically.

  He knows, thought Whitey. And knowing that, he knows there’s only one thing I can decide.

  He returned to his seat and absurdly began to wonder how that nice, safe, conventional war in the Sudan was going.

  Nixon Lectures : Fifth Series

  Documentary Material

  2 (g) Sir Benjamin Coster’s diary (Goth and Vandell, New York; 1991) Entry for March 6, 1987.

  To Downing Street this morning. P.M. looking very weary, whether with affairs of state or screwing that little Welsh thing in the Treasury is hard to say.

  “Benjie,” he said, “it’s nonleague. The reffers are blowing time on me.”

  I remarked I was sorry to hear him succumbing to these attacks on our language, but he ignored me.

  “They’ve got regional government, they control all their own wealth and industry, but they want complete autonomy with it. The bloody law changes between Luton and Leicester, did you know that? I get no support here either. That lump of lard in the Home Office couldn’t piss holes in a snowdrift. I only put him in the job because they told me he’d get cancer and would be dead in the year. For Christ’s sake, Benjie. You own half of Fleet Street. You’ve got your finger on the nation’s pulse. What shall I do?”

  “Dissolve Parliament,” I said. “Otherwise you may find it dissolving around you.”

  Afterwards to the Club, reflecting how thin a boundary there is between incompetence and idiocy. At the Club a truly terrible state of affairs. The servants had withdrawn their labour and locked themselves in the bar from which they emerged only to hurl glasses and drunken abuse at the Committee. The police had been notified hours earlier but had replied they did not think it an emergency which warranted breaking their strike!