“Hi,” he said, breathily, and jutted his hand towards Sean, who shook it. “Danny Chant,” he said. “I’m the unlucky bugger who loses all blow-job privileges as of tomorrow.”
“Sean Redman,” Sean said, smiling. He winked at Nicky Preece, who crossed him off a checklist that was fastened to a clipboard. Jamie Marshall, the guy who had joined the demolition squad on the same day as Sean, was stretching on the touchline. He lifted a hand in greeting. Robbie Deakin looked the part, lean and agile, running in short bursts and violently changing direction.
“Ignore Robbie,” Nicky said. “He does triathlete stuff, so he doesn’t count. Everyone will be knackered after ten minutes. He can run after the ball when it goes out. Drinks like a fucking jessie. He might last an hour on the park, but he’ll be the first one home tonight.”
Nicky introduced him to others whose names would be little more than a vomit-coated gargle by the end of the day. He paid scant attention to the Johns and Steves and Trevors, nodding and smiling and shaking hands. As they were taking up their positions on the pitch, Sean having been asked to utilise his “sweet left foot” in midfield, he saw Tim Enever sloping across the park, in danger of being swept away with the gusty wind, like the crisp packets and the dead leaves. He was dressed in a huge coat with a hood that, if it was deployed, would completely envelop his head. His legs were stork-like beneath the bottom of the coat, wrapped in the usual skin-tight black denim.
The football match lasted for as long as the fair weather. In that time, Sean managed to make a few impressive passes and tackles and his team went a goal up. He was starting to enjoy himself when the light failed quickly. Sopping from a cloudburst after about a quarter of an hour, Danny Chant called out, “Cocks to this, boys!” and legged it towards the changing rooms.
Back inside, socks downed, lolling on the benches as the steam from the showers mingled with the smoke from the gaspers, Sean gratefully accepted a bottle of Grolsch from a coolbox. Naked, misshapen men drifted through the steam, swearing and laughing, necking beer. One of them looked straight at Sean, swearing as he told some staggish tale of find ’em, fuck ’em, forget ’em, and then disappeared into the befogged showers. But the face lingered.
“Shit,” Sean said, softly. He knew the face but he couldn’t place it. He leaned over and put his face in his hands. A name suggested itself to him.
Sean righted himself, and took another swig from his bottle. Had he, Sean, changed much, since coming up north? A haircut, the loss of a few pounds, a bit more pink to his cheeks? He hoped so. He hoped there was enough of an alteration to prevent Eddie Futcher – the first person Sean arrested during his stint in the police force – from recognising him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: MYDDLETON LANE
IT WAS HARD getting up the next day. But Sean had a little trick when things seemed to get too much for him. He thought about Naomi, and how she couldn’t get up, as much as she would have liked to. In these moments, rising from bed became ridiculously easy.
How much had he consumed the previous night? He pondered that while he showered and shaved, scrubbing the excesses from his skin, though he didn’t really want to put an amount to it. It was a lot. That was enough. A bruise had enveloped most of his left knee, another formed a blue grin across his chest where one of the boys had elbowed him during the football match. His eyes looked back at him from the mirror: someone else’s eyes, too small, too wet, red-rimmed. He chugged back a pint of Alka-Seltzer and went in search of coffee.
Outside he bought a newspaper and ducked through the doorway of Charlie’s, a small greasy spoon that was about to go out of service now that the hospital across the road was opening its own cafe. He ordered a full English, whispering in the hope that his stomach wouldn’t hear what was coming to it, and settled down with the crossword. He couldn’t do any of the clues. He couldn’t eat his breakfast when it came. He thought of Naomi and the third de Fleche building. He thought of Emma. And found, once he’d started, that he couldn’t stop.
He took out his mobile phone. Punched in some numbers.
“Come and have lunch with me,” he said, and then: “Cancel it. Come and see me instead. At the Swan. In Winwick. Take you ten minutes to drive out here. Come. Please. One o’clock.”
The rest of the morning stretched out in front of him, too many empty hours, too much bad booze in his veins. He sat back in his split plastic chair and stared at the traffic swooping under the railway bridge. He ordered more coffee and let it happen to him, every greasy, grizzly minute.
How had he got through that nightmare? It was bad enough trying to dodge Eddie, but there had been one outlandish,
“Do you know,” Sean said, “I think maybe you’re right. Mullered as I am, it might just do me the world of good to get some ale inside me and have some fun for a change.”
It had proved to be only a slightly better alternative to facing up to Futcher and risking his being exposed as an ex-cop. Punishing wasn’t the word. There hadn’t yet been a word invented to describe the hell Danny’s stag night visited upon him and, judging by the appearance of some of them come midnight, his companions too.
After the football, relocating to the Cheshire Cheese for a restorative first pint, it was put forward that the logical progression for the day was to walk to town, dropping in at the pubs on the way, and then head in the opposite direction, stopping off for a few lanes at the bowling alley, then turn back into town for the evening slog, a curry, and on to a club.
Sean did all that, and the last thing he remembered before the alcohol took him over and plotted its autopilot course for the evening, was how pleasant it was, really, to be legless in daylight. Tim Enever hung on the coat-tails of the pack, drinking orange juice and eating endless packets of prawn cocktail-flavoured crisps. He refereed during an impromptu pool tournament at the Lord Rodney. He got up at Tempo, a fun-pub with more video screens than punters, and sang an excruciating version of “All Time High” on the karaoke that shut up the entire pub and brought the manager downstairs to ask if it was possible that Danny Chant’s party could leave “before freakboy scared everyone away”.
Sean remembered speaking to Tim, as well as Robbie – before he made his excuses – and Nicky Preece, but he couldn’t remember what it was they had talked about. All he could picture was Tim’s owlish eyes rotating in his head and spilling their rheum and Nicky with his arms around him, calling him his “Wonderwall” and asking if he was planning on knocking himself in with his lump hammer.
He had pretty much dismissed all suspicions of the boys being in with Vernon Lord at all, or having anything to do with Naomi’s death.
Two a.m., he had been sitting with Danny Chant and some guy called Norman who Sean was adamant had only just turned up but who, according to Danny, had been there from the very start.
“And you were dancing with him, Redders, in the club.”
They were sitting on a fence overlooking a bowling green belonging to a social club. A bottle of port nobody could remember buying was doing the rounds. As was a cold doner kebab. Danny’s eyes were doing figures of eight.
“I pity the poor sod who’s getting married,” he said. “You’ll never catch me at that game.” Then he leaned over to vomit gracefully in the rhododendron bush, slipped and was asleep before he hit the deck.
“I need to take a piss,” Sean said, and leapt down from the wall, landing a foot either side of Danny Chant’s head. Norman raised the port bottle in acknowledgement.
“Don’t mind me,” he said, taking a swig.
Sean staggered deep into the trees, enjoying the gentle striping of wet twigs against his face. The canal emerged through the knot of branches, coils of reflected white light mixing into the treacly water. Something
