John Harvey - A Darker Shade of Blue

‘You telling me there are more?’

‘I don’t know yet. But I can find out.’

Helen laughed and pushed a hand back through her hair. ‘Tell you what, Will, when you do, let me know.’

He watched her walk, still laughing, back across the room.

Alan Silver’s house was pitched between Colston Bassett and Harby, on the western edge of the Vale of Belvoir. Nice country. Hunting country, when the time was right.

Malkin had driven past it several times, learning the lie of the land. Earlier that evening, the light fading, he had parked close by the canal and made his way across the fields. Now he was there again, close to midnight, tracing a path back between the trees.

Cold, he thought, pausing at a field end to glance up at the sky. Cold enough for snow.

At just about the time Malkin had made his first visit to Alan Silver’s house, Lorraine had been sitting with her feet up on the settee, watching television, one of those chat shows Will abhorred. Richard amp; Judy? Richard amp; Jane?

He was in the other room, leafing through the paper, when she called him.

‘Look. That man who shot the boy trying to burgle him. The one there was all the fuss about, remember?’

Will remembered.

‘He’s on now.’

As Will came into the room a black-and-white image of a young Alan Silver was on the screen. White suit, straw hat and cane.

‘My God!’ said Silver in mock surprise. ‘Was that me? I’d never have known.’

‘But that was how you started?’ said Richard. ‘A bit of a song-and-dance man.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘You don’t suppose,’ said Jane or Judy, ‘you could still do a few steps for us now?’

Sprightly for a man of his years, Silver sprang to his feet and did a little tap dance there and then. Jane or Judy marvelled and the studio audience broke into spontaneous applause.

‘Not bad for sixty-odd,’ Lorraine said.

Will said something non-committal and walked back out of the room.

Alan Silver plumped up his pillows and reached for the glass of water he kept beside the bed. He was tired; his legs ached. The show had gone well, though, he thought. Sparkled, that’s what he’d done. Sparkled. Still smiling, he switched out the bedside light. It wouldn’t take him long to get to sleep tonight.

A short while later he was wide awake.

Something had woken him but what?

A dream? A noise on the stairs?

Imagination, surely?

But no, there it was again.

Silver felt his skin turn cold.

It couldn’t be happening twice.

Carefully, he eased back the heavy covers and rolling on to his stomach, reached beneath the bed.

It wasn’t there. The bloody thing wasn’t there.

The bedroom door swung open and Silver, turning clumsily, jabbed on the light.

‘Looking for something?’ Malkin said, levelling the shotgun towards the centre of the bed.

The way it would usually be: Kiley would be in the pub enjoying a quiet drink when someone would walk over 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.