to him or intercept him on his way to the bar. ‘Excuse me, but aren’t you that bloke…’ And then it would start and Kiley would nod and grin and hear it all again, some blurred version of it anyway, before signing whatever scrap of paper was within reach and shaking hands. ‘Always wondered what happened to you.’
Jack Kiley at forty. A tall man with a barely discernible limp as he carried his pint of Worthington back to his corner table. The face fuller now, the hair as thick, though touched with grey; the eyes a safer shade of blue. His body softer, but not soft, some fifteen pounds heavier than when he came from nowhere to score that hat-trick in extra time. The FA Cup quarter final, 1989.
‘Hey, aren’t you…?’
Kiley had been a police officer at the time, a detective in the Met, CID. Seven years in. He’d never stopped playing soccer since he was a kid. Turned out for the force, of course he did. And as an amateur, without contract, for a string of semi-pro clubs, Kidderminster Harriers, Canvey Island, Gravesend. When Stevenage Borough in the Conference came in for him, needing cover for an injured striker, an understanding detective superintendent cleared Kiley’s rota for most Saturdays in the season, only for him to spend the best part of each game on the bench, waiting to be thrown on in the dying stages — ‘Go get ’em, Jack. Show ‘em what you can do.’ — Kiley clogging through the churned-up mud in search of an equalising goal.
Each year the Cup threw up its giant killer, a team from the lower reaches riding their luck and ground advantage to harry and chase the top pros with their fancy boots and trophy wives, each earning more in a month than Kiley’s team would graft in a brace of years. And in ’89 it was Stevenage, a home draw against the Villa promising them a place in the last four. One all at the end of the ninety and five minutes into extra time, Kiley, frustrated and cold inside his tracksuit, got the call. ‘Go get ‘em, Jack.’
With his first touch he played the ball straight into the path of the opposing centre half, the second slid beneath his boot and skidded out of touch; his third, a rising shot struck full off the meat of the right boot on the run, swerved high and wide past the goalie’s outstretched hand and Kiley’s side were in the lead, nineteen minutes to go.
Five minutes later Villa drew level, and then, from the midst of a nine-man goal-mouth melee, Kiley toe-poked the ball blindly over the line.
Kiley’s marker, who’d already been trying to kick six shades of shit out of him, clattered against him as they headed back towards the centre circle. ‘Don’t think that makes you fucking clever. ’Cause you’re not, you’re fuckin’ shite!’ And as the ball arced away towards the left wing, unobserved, he elbowed Kiley in the kidneys and left him face down in the dirt.
Which is why Kiley was unmarked, moments later, when the ball came ballooning towards him out of the Villa defence, Kiley thirty yards from goal, open space in front of him and he met it on the half-volley, sweet like driving a passing shot down the line on Centre Court, or pulling a six head-high to the boundary at Lord’s, that rare and perfect combination of technique and relaxation, and he knew, even before the roar of the crowd or the sight of his own players cartwheeling in pleasure, that he had scored.
At the final whistle, with the home crowd chanting his name, his marker sought him out, and with a toothless grin, threw an arm around his shoulder. ‘No hard feelings, eh?’ And when Kiley looked back at him, ‘Swap shirts, then? What d’you say?’
Kiley nodded and waited till the player had lifted his arms above his head. And punched him once, a short right to the ribs that dropped the man, breathless, to his knees.
The referee red-carded him for that, which meant Kiley was ineligible for the semi-final, which they lost seven-one to Liverpool, a necessary corrective to their uppity behaviour. In professional soccer, each giant-killer — so valuable for filling column inches and the turnstiles both — is only allowed so many sacrificial giants.
For Kiley, though, fame lingered on, his hat-trick the stuff of innumerable sports-show repeats, and it was no surprise when someone offered him the chance to turn professional a few months short of his twenty-ninth birthday. The manager of Charlton Athletic had something of a reputation for making silk purses from sow’s ears, turning grit into gold. And Kiley knew it was the only chance he would get. With too few second thoughts, he resigned from the Met.
Most of his first season was spent in the reserves or on the bench: in all he made just three first team starts, scoring once. The following summer he trained hard, determined; played in all three pre-season friendlies, looking sharp; in the first league game he hit a volley from twenty-five yards that slammed against the bar, and narrowly missed with a diving header inside the box. The second game, away, he was stretching for a ball that was never really his when the tackle came in, two-footed, late, and broke his leg. Some legs, young legs, mend. After two operations, rest, light training, lots of physio, Kiley called it a day. The club were more generous than many, the insurance settlement better than he might have hoped. For months he did little or nothing, left books half-read, watched afternoon movies, moped. Considered a civilian job with the Met. Then a former colleague from the force offered him work with the security firm he was running. ‘No uniform, Jack. No bullshit. Just wear a suit, look large and smile.’ For the best part of three years, he was a paid bodyguard to B-list celebrities, obscure overseas royals, sports personalities and their hangers-on.
At Wimbledon, Kiley found himself sharing overpriced strawberries and champagne with Adrian Costain, a sports agent he’d brushed up against a few times in his soccer days, and when Costain rang him a week later with the offer of some private work, he thought, why not?
So here he was, ten years down the line from his twenty-five minutes of fame, a private investigator with an office, a computer, pager, fax and phone; a small but growing clientele, a backlog of successfully resolved, mostly sports-associated cases.
Jack Kiley, whatever happened to him?
Well, now you know.
Kiley was alone in his office, August third. Two rooms above a bookshop in Belsize Park. A bathroom he shared with the financial consultant whose office was on the upper floor.
‘So what d’you think?’ Kate had asked him the first time they’d looked round. ‘Perfect, no?’ Kate having been tipped off by her friend, Lauren, who managed the shop below.
‘Perfect, maybe. But rents in this part of London… There’s no way I could afford it.’
‘Jack!’
‘It’s all I can do to keep up with the payments on the flat.’
‘Then let it go.’
‘What?’
‘The flat, let it go.’
Kiley had stared around. ‘And live here?’
‘No, fool. Move in with me.’
So now Kiley’s name was there in neat lettering, upper and lower case, on the glass of the outer door. The office chair behind the glass-topped desk was angled round, suggesting his secretary had just popped out and would be back. As she might, were she to exist. In her stead, there was Irena, a young Romanian who waited on tables across the street, and two mornings a week did Kiley’s filing for him, a little basic word processing, talked to him of the squares and avenues of Bucharest, excursions to the Black Sea, of storks that nested by the sides of country roads.
In Kiley’s inner sanctum were a smaller desk, oak-faced, an easy chair, a couch on which he sometimes napped, a radio, a TV whose screen he could span with one outstretched hand. There was a plant, jasmine, tiny white flowers amongst a plethora of glossed green leaves; a barely troubled bottle of single malt; a framed print Kate had presented him with when he moved in: two broad bands of cream resting across a field of mottled grey, the lines between hand-drawn and slightly wavering.
‘It’ll grow on you,’ she’d said.
He was still waiting.
The phone chirruped and he lifted it to his ear.
‘Busy, Jack?’ Costain’s voice was two-thirds marketing, one-third market stall.
‘That depends.’
‘Victoria Clarke.’
‘What about her?’
‘Get yourself down to Queen’s. Forty-five minutes to an hour from now, she should be towelling down.’
