Men from Boys

by John Harvey

  The addictions of some soccer players are well documented, the addiction and the cure. Paul Merson. Tony Adams. Stories of others running wild claim their moment in the news, then fade. But any manager worth his salt will know the peccadilloes of those he might sign: drugs, drink, gambling, having at least one of his team-mates watch as he snorts a line of cocaine from between the buttocks of a four hundred pounds an hour whore. You look at your need, your place in the table, assess the talent, weigh up the risk.

  When Tommy Duggan came to Charlton he was several thousand in debt to three different bookmakers and spent more time with his cell phone than he did on the training ground. Rumour had it, his share of his signing-on fee was lost on the back of a spavined three-year-old almost before the ink had dried on the page.

  Duggan went and Kiley stayed: but not for long.

  ‘Come on inside,’ Kiley said.

  Duggan shrugged off his leather coat and chose the one easy chair.

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘Thanks, two sugars, aye.’

  What the hell, Kiley was wondering, does Tommy Duggan want with me?

  ‘You’re not playing any more, Tom?’ Kiley asked, coming back into the room.

  ‘What do you think?’

  Watching Sky Sport in the pub, Kiley had sometimes glimpsed Duggan’s face, jostling for space among the other pundits ranged across the screen.

  ‘I had a season with Margate,’ Duggan said. ‘After I come back this last time from the States. Bastard’d shove me on for the last twenty minutes – “Get among ’em, Tommy, work the magic. Turn it round.”’ Duggan laughed. ‘Every time the ball ran near, there’d be some donkey anxious to kick the fuck out of me. All I could do to stay on my feet, never mind turn round.’

  He drank some tea.

  ‘Nearest I get to a game nowadays is coaching a bunch of kids over Whittington Park. Couple of evenings a week. That’s what I come round to see you about. Thought you might like to lend a hand. Close an’ all.’

  ‘Coaching?’

  ‘Why not? More than a dozen of them now. More than I can handle.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Thirteen, fourteen. Best of them play in this local league. Six-a-side. What d’you think? ’Less your evenings are all spoken for, of course.’

  Kiley shook his head. ‘Can’t remember the last time I kicked a ball.’

  ‘It’ll come back to you,’ Duggan said. ‘Like falling off a bike.’

  Kiley wasn’t sure if that was what he meant or not.

  There were eleven of them the first evening Kiley went along, all shapes and sizes. Two sets of dreadlocks and one turban. One of the black kids, round-faced, slightly pudgy in her Arsenal strip, was a girl. Esther.

  ‘I ain’t no mascot, you know,’ she said, after Duggan had introduced them. ‘I can run rings round this lot.’

  ‘My dad says he saw you play once,’ said a lad whose mum had ironed his David Beckham shirt straight from the wash. ‘He says you were crap.’

  ‘Your dad’d know crap right enough, wouldn’t he, Dean,’ Duggan said. ‘Living with you.’

  The rest laughed and Dean said, ‘Fuck off,’ but he was careful to say it under his breath.

  ‘Okay, let’s get started,’ Tommy Duggan said. ‘Let’s get warmed up.’

  After a few stretching exercises and a couple of circuits of the pitch, Duggan split them up into twos and threes practising basic ball skills, himself and Kiley moving between them, watching, offering advice.

  No more than twenty minutes or so of that and their faces were bright with sweat under the floodlights.

  ‘Now,’ Duggan said, ‘let’s do a little work on corners, attacking, defending, staying alert. Jack, why don’t you send a few over, give us the benefit of that sweet right foot.’

  Kiley was sweating like the rest, feeling his forty years. Either his tracksuit had shrunk or he’d put on more weight than he’d thought. The first corner was struck too hard and sailed over everyone’s heads, but after that he settled into something of a rhythm and was almost disappointed when Duggan called everyone together and divided them into teams.

  Like most youngsters they had a tendency to get drawn out of position and follow the ball, but some of the passing was thoughtful and neat, and only luck and some zealous defending prevented a hatful of goals. Dean, in his Beckham shirt, hand forever aloft demanding the ball, was clearly the most gifted but also the most likely to kick out in temper, complain loudly if he thought he’d been fouled.

  When he slid a pass through for Esther to run on to and score with a resounding drive, the best he could muster was ‘Jammy cow!’

  Game over, kids beginning to drift away, Duggan offered to buy Kiley a pint. There was a pub on the edge of the park that Kiley had not been into before.

  ‘So what did you think?’ Duggan asked. They were at a table near the open door.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘This evening, you enjoy it or what?’

  ‘Yeah, it was okay. They’re nice enough kids.’

  ‘Most of them.’

  Kiley nodded. The muscles in the backs of his legs were already beginning to ache.

  ‘You’ll come again, then?’

  ‘Why not? Not as if my social calendar’s exactly full.’

  ‘No girlfriend?’

  ‘Not just at present.’

  ‘But there was one?’

  ‘For a while, maybe.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Kiley shrugged and supped his beer. ‘You?’ he said.

  Duggan lit a cigarette. ‘The only women I meet are out for a good time and all they can get. Either that or else they’ve got three kids back home with the babysitter and they’re looking for someone to play dad.’

  ‘And you don’t fancy that?’

  ‘Would you?’

  Kiley wasn’t certain; there were days – not so many of them – when he thought he might. ‘No,’ he said.

  Without waiting to be asked, Duggan fetched two more pints. ‘Where d’you meet her anyway?’ he said. ‘This ex of yours.’

  ‘I was working,’ Kiley said. ‘Security. Down on the South Bank. She’d just come out from this Iranian movie.’

  ‘She’s Iranian?’

  ‘No. The film was Iranian. She’s English. Kate. Kate Keenan.’

  ‘Sounds Irish.’

  ‘Maybe. A generation or so back maybe.’

  ‘You’re cut up about it,’ Duggan said.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Duggan said, grinning. ‘You can tell.’

  Kate’s column in the Indi questioned the morality of making art out of underclass deprivation and serving it up as a spectacle for audiences affluent enough to afford dinner and the theatre, and then a taxi home to their three-quarters of a million plus houses in fashionable Islington and Notting Hill.

  Under Duggan’s watchful eye and with Kiley’s help, the six-a-side team won their next two games, Dean being sent off in the second for kicking out at an opponent in retaliation and then swearing at the referee.

  Margaret Hambling offered Kiley three days’ work checking up on a client who had been charged with benefit fraud over a period in excess of two years.

  ‘Come round my gaff, why don’t you?’ Tommy Duggan said one night after training. ‘See how the other half lives.’ And winked.

  Drained by two lots of child support, which he paid intermittently but whenever he could, Duggan had sold his detached house in Totteridge and bought a thirties semi-detached in East Finchley, half of which he rented out to an accountant struggling with his MBA.

  In the main room there were framed photographs of Duggan’s glory days on the walls and soiled grey carpet on the floor. Clothes lay across the backs of chairs, waiting to be washed or ironed. On a table near the window were a well-thumbed form book, the racing pages, several cheap ballpoints, a telephone.

  ‘Academic?’ said Kiley, questioningly.

  Duggan grinned. ‘Man’s
got to have a hobby.’

  He took Kiley to a Hungarian restaurant on the high street where they had cherry soup and goulash spiced with smoked paprika. A bottle of wine.

  ‘Good, uh?’ Duggan said, pushing away his plate.

  ‘Great,’ Kiley said. ‘What’s the pitch?’

  Duggan smiled with his eyes. ‘Just a small favour.’

  The casino was on a narrow street between Soho and Shaftesbury Avenue, passing trade not one of its concerns. Instead of a bouncer with overfed muscles, Kiley was greeted at the door by a silvered blonde in a tailored two-piece.

  ‘I’m here to see Mr Stephen.’

  ‘Certainly, sir. If you’ll come this way.’ Her slight accent was Scandinavian.

  Mr Stephen’s name wasn’t really Stephen. Not originally, at least. He had come to England from Malta in the late Fifties when the East End gangsters were starting to lose their grip on gambling and prostitution up West; had stood his ground and received the razor scars to prove it, though these had since been surgically removed. Now gambling was legal and he was a respectable businessman. Let the Albanians and the Turks fight the Yardies over heroin and crack cocaine, he had earned his share portfolio, his place in the sun.

  The blonde handed Kiley over to a brunette who led him to a small lift at the far side of the main gaming room. There was no background music, no voice raised above the faint whirring of roulette wheels, the hushed sounds of money being made and lost.

  Kiley was glad he’d decided to wear his suit, not just his suit but his suit and tie.

  ‘Have you visited our casino before?’ the brunette asked him.

  ‘I’m afraid not, no.’

  One of her eyes was brown and the other a greyish green.

  When he stepped out of the lift there was an X-ray machine, the kind you walk through in airports; Kiley handed the brunette his keys and small change, and she gave them back to him at the other side.

  ‘Mr Kiley for Mr Stephen,’ she said to the man at the end of the short corridor.

  The man barely nodded; doors were opened and closed. Stephen’s inner sanctum was lined with books on two sides, mostly leather-bound; screens along one wall afforded high-angle views of the casino’s interior. Stephen himself sat behind a desk, compact, his face the colour of walnut, bald head shining as if he had been recently buffed.

  A few days before, Kiley had spoken to one of his contacts at Scotland Yard, a sergeant when he and Kiley had served together, now a detective superintendent.

  ‘The casino’s a front,’ the superintendent told him. ‘Prestige. He doesn’t lose money on it exactly, but with all those overheads, that area, he’d make more selling the site. It’s the betting shops that fetch in the money, one hundred and twenty nation wide. That and the fact he keeps a tight ship.’

  ‘Can you get me in to see him?’ Kiley had asked.

  ‘Probably. But nothing more. We’ve no leverage, Jack, I’m sorry.’

  Now Kiley waited for Stephen to acknowledge him, which he did with a small gesture of a manicured hand, no suggestion that Kiley should take a seat.

  ‘Tommy Duggan,’ Kiley said. ‘He owes you money. Not a lot in your terms, maybe, but . . .’ Kiley stopped and waited, then went on, ‘He says he’s been threatened. Not that you’d know about that directly, not your concern, but I imagine if you wanted you could get it stopped.’

  Stephen looked at him through eyes that had seen more than Kiley, far more, and survived.

  ‘Do you follow soccer at all, Mr Stephen?’ Kiley asked.

  No response.

  ‘With some players it’s speed, with others it’s power, sheer force. Then there are those who can put their foot on the ball, look up and in that second see the perfect pass and have the skill to make it, inch perfect, thirty, forty yards crossfield.’

  Something moved behind the older man’s eyes. ‘Liam Brady,’ he said. ‘Rodney Marsh.’

  ‘Right,’ said Kiley. ‘Hoddle. LeTissier. Tommy, too. On his day Tommy was that good.’

  Stephen held Kiley’s gaze for a moment longer, then slipped his wristwatch free and placed it on the desk between them. ‘Your Tommy Duggan, he owes close to one hundred thousand pounds. Each time the hands of that watch move round, he owes more.’ He picked up the watch and weighed it in the palm of his hand. ‘You tell him if he makes payments, regular, if the debt does not increase, I will be patient. Bide my time. But if he loses more . . .’

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ Kiley said.

  Stephen set the watch back on his wrist. ‘Do you gamble, Mr Kiley?’

  Kiley shook his head.

  ‘In gambling, there is only one winner. In the end.’

  ‘Thanks for your time,’ Kiley said.

  Almost imperceptibly Stephen nodded and his eyes returned their focus to the screens on the wall.

  ‘Good evening, sir,’ said the brunette in the lift. ‘Good evening, sir,’ said the blonde. ‘Be sure to come again.’

  ‘Jack, you’re a prince,’ Duggan said, when Kiley recounted the conversation.

  Kiley wasn’t certain what, if anything, he’d achieved.

  ‘Room for manoeuvre, that’s what you’ve got me. Pressure off. Time to recoup, study the field.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Jack. Nothing rash.’

  There was a message from Kate on his answerphone. ‘Perhaps I was a little hasty. How about a drink, Wednesday evening?’

  Wednesday was soccer training. Kiley called back and made it Thursday. The wine bar at Highbury Corner was only a short walk from Kate’s house; from there it was only two flights of stairs to her bed.

  ‘Something on your mind, Jack?’

  There was and then there wasn’t. Only later, his head resting in the cleft between Kate’s bare calf and thigh, did it come back to him.

  ‘He’ll carry on gambling, won’t he?’ Kate said, when she had finished listening.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘It’s an illness, Jack, a disease. If he won’t get proper help, professional help, there’s nothing you can do.’

  He turned over and she stroked his back and when he closed his eyes he was almost immediately asleep. In a short while she would wake him and send him home, but for now she was comfortable, replete. Maybe, she was thinking, it was time for another piece on gambling in her column.

  Duggan had returned from his second spell in the States with a ponytail and a fondness for Old Crow over ice and down home butt-dirty country music, bluegrass and pedal-steel and tales of love gone wrong. Nothing flash, no rhinestones, the real thing.

  Back in England, the ponytail lasted until the first time he watched Seaman run out at Highbury and realised how affected it looked; he toned down his new-found love of bourbon but still listened to the music whenever he could. In a music store off Upper Street, less than a week ago, he’d picked up a CD by Townes Van Zandt, A Far Cry from Dead. Country blues with a twist.

  Sometimes I don’t know where this dirty road is taking me

  Sometimes I can’t even see the reason why

  I guess I’ll keep on gamblin’, lots of booze and lots of ramblin’

  It’s easier than just a-waitin’ round to die

  Playing it was like pushing your tongue against an abscessed tooth.

  He had seen Van Zandt in London in ’ninety-seven, one of the last gigs he ever played. Standing sweating in the Borderline, a crowded little basement club off Charing Cross Road, he had watched as Van Zandt, pale and thin and shaking, had begun song after song, only to stop, mid-verse, forgetting the words, hearing another tune. His fingers failed to grip the neck of the guitar, he could scarcely balance on the stool. Embarrassed, upset voices in the crowd began to call out, telling him to take a break, rest, telling him it was okay, but still he stumbled on. Dying before their eyes.

  Two days before, Duggan had placed the first instalment of his payback money on a four-horse accumulator and, on the small betting shop screen, watched the favourite come through on the inside in the final race and leav
e his horse stranded short of the line.

  Flicking the remote, he played the song again.

  The money from the recording, some of it at least, would go to Van Zandt’s widow and their kids. Duggan hadn’t seen either his daughter or his two sons in years; he didn’t even know where one of the boys was.

  There were some cans of lager in the fridge, the tail end of a bottle of scotch; when he’d finished those he put on his coat and followed the familiar path to the Bald-Faced Stag.

  Ten minutes short of closing, a motorbike pulled up outside the pub. Without removing his helmet, the pillion rider jumped off and went inside. Duggan was standing at the bar, drink in hand, staring up aimlessly at the TV. The pillion rider pulled an automatic pistol from inside his leather jacket, shot Duggan twice in the head at close range and left.

  Duggan was dead before he hit the floor.

  Several evenings later Kiley called the kids around him behind one of the goals. In the yellowing light, their breath floated grey and clear. He talked to them about Tommy Duggan, about the times he had seen him play; he told them how much Duggan wanted them to do well. One or two had tears in their eyes, others scuffed their feet in the ground and looked away.

  ‘Who cares?’ Dean said when Kiley had finished. ‘He was never any bloody good anyway.’

  Without deliberation, without meaning to, Kiley hit him: an open-handed slap across the face which jolted the boy’s head back and round.

  ‘You bastard! You fuckin’ bastard!’

  There were tears on his face now and the marks left by Kiley’s hand stood out livid on his cheek.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kiley said. Some part of him felt numb, shocked by what he’d done.

  ‘Fuck you!’ the boy said and turned on his heel for home.

  Dean lived in one of the flats that bordered Wedmore Street, close by the park. The man who answered the door was wearing jeans and a fraying Motorhead T-shirt, and didn’t look too happy to be pulled away from whatever was playing, over-loud, on the TV.

  ‘I’m Jack Kiley,’ Kiley said.

  ‘You hit my boy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve got some balls, showing up round here.’

  ‘I wanted to explain, apologise.’