Own Goal

by Tom Palmer

  It was a risk, but not a big risk. If he got caught he could just say he was looking for his mum who was a friend of Salvatore Fo.

  Danny smiled and went in.

  For the first few seconds he waited for his eyes to adjust. The offices were dark and gloomy. The room he found himself in was small with a high ceiling, the fan he’d seen through the doorway whirring round. There were three desks. All posh and made out of polished wood. A huge vase of blue flowers dominated one end of the room. At the other end, the wall was taken up by a massive oil painting of a huge bald man in a uniform.

  Mussolini. The big, bald Italian dictator.

  Danny activated his iPhone camera as he walked into the centre of the room. This was all perfect for his report. The picture of Mussolini was a great start. He had read a lot about this man who had been an ally of Hitler.

  He snapped it.

  He also took a photograph of another picture on the wall. A large map of the world, with three or four countries coloured green. Danny knew what this was too. He had read a bit about the history of Italy. This was a picture of the Italian Empire.

  He started to wonder: why did Salvatore Fo have these pictures on the wall? Did they mean anything? What would he say about them in his school assignment?

  As he was thinking, he heard a burst of voices outside. Instinctively he ducked down behind the flowers to observe a group of Germans walking past the doors of the offices.

  Just tourists.

  Once they had gone, Danny walked to the far end of the room to a doorway. He glanced through it. A corridor. Two closed doors and a narrow stone staircase.

  Did he dare?

  Yes, he dared. He always dared. Even though he knew he shouldn’t be here and that he was taking an enormous risk.

  He opened the first door. Inside there were two more doors. Toilets.

  No need to go in there.

  The next door in the corridor was locked. There was nothing Danny could do about that. He was not going to break in. So he left that alone too.

  All that remained was the staircase. White-painted stone steps going up, Danny presumed, into the upper part of the arches in the building.

  He listened before going up the stairs.

  Nothing.

  There was no one around.

  Probably.

  But he still took each step carefully one by one, thanking his luck that the staircase was built from stone and not wood, so there were no telltale creaks.

  The door to the room at the top of the stairs was open.

  But the room was empty.

  Danny could tell that this was Fo’s personal office. There were several pictures of the Italian with very famous people. Danny recognized some of them. Nelson Mandela. Tony Blair. And one of Fo with Barack and Michelle Obama, the three of them looking slightly uneasy.

  He also knew immediately that he had to be careful. And quick. There was only one way into this room. The stairs. And that meant there was only one way out too.

  He did not want to get cut off.

  The desk on the far side was massive and took up half the space in the room. It was, Danny reflected, so big that it must have been made of an entire tree.

  Danny snapped photos as quickly as his iPhone would allow him to. He tried to get everything in. The pictures on the wall. Some of the papers on the desk: he could blow them up later to see if there was anything interesting there.

  He was about to leave when he noticed that one of the drawers in the desk was slightly open.

  He knew it was wrong to snoop, but he couldn’t help himself. He was a detective, after all.

  He knelt next to the drawer. There were some papers in there. And some other documents.

  He glanced through them quickly.

  Some were about football. Some not.

  One thick file was labelled ‘1973 European Cup Winners’ Cup Final’, written in Italian and English. A covering letter at the front of the file said, ‘Mr Fo – these papers demonstrate clearly that the referee of the 1973 European Cup Winners’ Cup Final was bribed to ensure AC Milan won and that the true winners that year should have been the English team, Leeds United.’ Danny photographed it. He would show it to Anton Holt. See what he had to say about it.

  Danny carried on leafing through a series of images.

  He flicked through them quickly, conscious he should be leaving soon to reduce his chances of being caught. And, as he did, he heard what he thought was another burst of thunder. Muffled because he was inside.

  In the drawer there were pictures of players, stadiums, things to do with Forza FC. Most of them very familiar to Danny.

  Nothing interesting.

  Danny stood up. He was going to leave now. He had gathered some interesting pictures to illustrate his school report.

  But then something flashed through his mind.

  One of the images in the drawer was very familiar. Too familiar.

  He knelt again next to the drawer.

  He heard a toilet flush. But it didn’t register with Danny immediately. He was too intent on the drawer and the image.

  He found what he was looking for quickly.

  And he almost fell backwards.

  It was the same image as the freeze-frame he had seen on TV during the City–Forza highlights last week. The one that had puzzled him, but that he had not been able to find a second time, however much he tried.

  SUPPORT FORZA FC.

  YOUR TEAM.

  YOUR SUCCESS.

  What was this? Why was the same image he had seen on TV in a drawer in the desk of the owner of Forza FC?

  Danny took his iPhone out, his hands trembling. He needed to get a picture of the image.

  As he did so, he heard a door bang.

  Then footsteps on the stairs.

  TRAPPED

  Listening to the footsteps get louder, Danny wondered if he should hide or just pretend he was lost. A boy who thought he was in another part of the museum, that was probably the best idea.

  But instinct told him to hide.

  He dived under the desk. And because it was such a big desk there was plenty of room to conceal himself.

  Once hidden, he concentrated on calming his breathing down. The shock of hearing someone coming up the steps had made him breathless. His breathing was noisy.

  Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Once. Twice. A third time.

  Danny managed to quieten himself just before a pair of smart trousers and men’s shiny brown shoes appeared in his view. He could only see whoever it was that had entered from the waist down.

  But it wasn’t the shoes or the trousers that threw Danny. It was the gun the man was holding. And the fact that it wasn’t just any gun, certainly not a pistol you might expect a security guard in Italy to be carrying. It was a semi-automatic machine gun. The kind Danny had seen the police at Milan airport carrying. A serious weapon.

  The next question that came into Danny’s head was: why? Why would a museum, an old house, need guards with machine guns?

  Maybe it was normal in Italy. He couldn’t be sure. He didn’t know enough about the country. But it didn’t feel right. It seemed so out of place.

  Danny listened as a double crack of thunder sounded in the mountains above the villa.

  And then his mind started working on full power.

  The gun.

  The image in the desk. The same one he’d seen on the TV.

  Support Forza FC. Your team. Your success.

  The pictures in the gallery downstairs.

  What he knew about subliminal art.

  And what had Fo said? One day I think … how do you say? … I hope you will change your mind.

  Danny knew that he had stumbled across something big. Something dangerous. It was a gut feeling. And he always trusted his gut feelings.

  He watched as th
e man with the gun came closer to the desk. He heard him pick up a phone and gabble something in Italian. Then he put the phone down and moved away.

  Danny recognized only the last word. Catenacio. Danny understood that word. It meant chained – or locked. An Italian style of football was named after it. He’d read about it in a book. The defence was meant to be locked like a door.

  Was the gunman about to lock the door?

  Now Danny had to make another choice.

  Stay here and possibly – probably – get locked in.

  Or run now, taking the guard so much by surprise that he wouldn’t have time to use his gun.

  Danny got up on to his toes and hunched under the desk like a sprinter in the blocks.

  Somehow he had got himself into a situation that could be seriously dangerous for him.

  This wasn’t right. He had to get away. Quickly.

  This was it.

  The man with the gun was still standing in the middle of the room, his feet pointing away from the door. Danny realized that this could win him time. The second or second-and-a-half that the man needed to turn around was all Danny needed to get himself halfway down the stairs.

  He didn’t wait to think it through any more. This was his chance.

  Danny exploded from under the desk.

  When he reached the door to the steps he heard the Italian man react.

  First a shout. Then a metallic click.

  The gun.

  As Danny pounded down the narrow staircase he half expected to be stopped by the feeling of hot metal hitting his back, followed by the sound of gunfire.

  But the two sounds he could hear were pounding footsteps and shouting.

  He put them out of his mind so that he could focus on getting away, sprinting through the main office room, knocking the whirring fan over, to the alarm of a young woman with long brown hair who had been gazing into a mirror. The woman screamed, making Danny pick up his pace.

  And now he was outside. In the light. In the fresh air.

  At least they can’t shoot me here, he thought. There’ll be too many people around.

  He hammered across the lawn, heading towards the statues and the stone banisters on the edge of the lake.

  That was when he started to panic.

  Danny had been chased several times before. Sometimes, like this, by armed men. Because he was fast he had always got away, running along a track, on a path by a river, up a road.

  But he had just realized that there was no way in by road here.

  And no way in meant there was no way out.

  Except by boat.

  But there was no boat.

  Danny stopped at the foot of the hill, caught in the shadow of the statue he had seen Fo standing beside earlier. He looked behind him.

  Two men were coming down the hill.

  But they weren’t running. They were walking. That was because they knew that Danny had no way out.

  Just like the man approaching from his left and the man approaching from his right would know.

  Danny was surrounded.

  He looked up towards the café terrace to see if his mum was there. But she wasn’t.

  A sudden rain shower had begun to fall. It was a storm. Thunder was ripping down the lake now. Danny couldn’t see any of the mountaintops. Rain clouds obscured them all. He couldn’t even see the other side of the lake.

  As a result, all the other sightseers had made a dash for the house – and the café.

  Danny was on his own with the four men coming towards him.

  What now?

  He turned to the water. He had to make a choice. Allow himself to be caught? Or go over the wall?

  DROWNING

  Danny climbed over the stone banister and looked down.

  It was a twenty-metre drop. He’d never dived that far before. There were rocks scattered in the water below. And it was rough now that the weather had turned, big waves hitting the edge of the mountainside. He could barely distinguish the rocks from the waves.

  But he had no choice.

  No choice at all.

  The four men had stopped. They looked hesitant. As if they were trying to work out if the boy they had caught trespassing meant to jump – or if they could catch him without much trouble.

  Danny shifted his footing.

  It was a stand-off.

  Nobody moved.

  Then Danny felt his iPhone buzz in his pocket.

  It would probably be a text from his dad. A reply.

  If he jumped into the lake now he would never get to read what his dad had texted. And his phone would be ruined.

  And then another thought occurred to Danny. The image he had photographed in Fo’s office. He would lose that if he jumped into the water. And he felt sure that it was important.

  He put his hand into his pocket, gripping his iPhone.

  Suddenly, as if they could anticipate Danny’s next move, two of the men started to move towards him. And they were both grinning. Like they were enjoying themselves. They knew that, in the driving rain, there was no one else about, or watching what was going on.

  Discreetly, without being observed, Danny pulled his phone out and placed it on a ledge on the outside of the banister, making sure it was in a dry place, where the rain would not reach.

  Then he launched himself into the water.

  Danny could not think for the next few seconds.

  First, he felt himself falling through the air. Then hitting the water. He had meant to land like he’d seen the Olympic diver Tom Daley land once, his feet meeting the water as if he was standing upright.

  But it didn’t quite work out like that.

  Suddenly he was underwater and it was dark. Danny instinctively took a breath and his mouth filled with water. He felt his lungs explode with pain.

  For a few seconds he didn’t know what was up and what was down – or if he was drowning.

  He could only feel panic and the thrashing of his limbs.

  But that wasn’t working.

  So, rather than struggle, he stopped moving. He figured he would float to the surface if he did that. So long as he kept his mouth shut and didn’t breathe in again.

  It was a risk. But it felt right.

  Within seconds he was on the surface.

  He breathed in now. The air was beautiful. But he still wasn’t quite sure where he was.

  The lake was black and choppy. Waves pushed themselves over his head. And he noticed small explosions on the surface of the water. At first he feared they were bullets coming from the guards, but he realized quickly that they were just huge raindrops.

  Now he had to decide what to do next.

  He looked up to where he thought the villa was – where the men would no doubt be looking down at him.

  But the rain was so heavy now that he could only make out the vague shape of the balcony. He couldn’t see the men. So he assumed that, if he could not see them, they would not be able to see him.

  That was good.

  Hoping he was right, Danny started to swim. First to the edge of the rocks that he had seen from above. He grabbed one, waiting to get his breath back.

  He was safe. Sort of.

  But now he had to work out his next move.

  Go back into the villa – making out he’d been soaked by the rain, not the lake – to see his mum?

  Swim back across the water to the hotel?

  Stay here?

  He wasn’t sure. He was still confused by the fall and by being in the water. If he went back into the villa anything could happen. There was no guarantee he would be safe.

  And his mum was expecting that he might go back to the hotel.

  He would swim across to the hotel.

  That was the best thing to do.

  Danny looked across the water. It was a little clearer out towards the hotel.<
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  He knew he could do the distance. He loved swimming. He’d swum a lot in Lake Ullswater when he was younger, with his sister.

  But what about his iPhone?

  Danny looked up towards the villa and the balcony. There was a sheer rock face between him and where he had concealed his iPhone. There was no way he could climb that now. Especially as the four men would probably still be looking out for him.

  That was a problem. A serious problem.

  And then Danny started to feel cold. Really cold. He could feel a chill running through him.

  He decided he could not get the phone now. He would have to come back tonight. After dark. It was the only way.

  So Danny Harte released himself from the rock he was clinging on to, submerging himself back into the water of the lake. And he started to swim.

  DINNER WITH MUM

  ‘So how did you get back?’

  Mum was quizzing Danny about the afternoon. And what he’d been up to.

  They were having dinner in the hotel. The sun had come out again so they had decided to sit on the restaurant’s terrace.

  The hotel was fifty metres up the side of the mountain, but still next to the lake. You could see across the water to the small town on the other side. And to Salvatore Fo’s villa.

  Danny glanced at the villa, trying to focus in on the spot where he’d stowed his iPhone.

  ‘I swam,’ Danny answered.

  ‘What? You swam?’

  Danny saw no point in lying about that. So long as his mum didn’t know about his other adventures – particularly the guns – why not tell her some truth?

  ‘I went down to the water and it looked nice,’ Danny said.

  ‘Danny, that was dangerous. I wish … You could …’

  ‘I kept to the edge,’ Danny went on. ‘I was never more than ten metres from land. I thought it would be fun. And I only swam for a bit. A family in a rowing boat gave me a lift back to the hotel.’ He hated lying to his mum, but at least the last part was true.

  Mum shook her head. Danny could sense she wanted to tell him off, but was restraining herself. To keep the peace, Danny thought.

  A waiter arrived at the table. Danny fiddled with the silver cutlery, his Coca-Cola glass and his napkin while Mum ordered – in Italian – for both of them. He watched his mum. He had to admit that Italy had had a good influence on her. The lines that had been bunching around her eyes had almost disappeared, like her face was relaxing.