style="font-size:15px;"> “Leave it out,” snided Vinnie, only too pleased to refer the pressure and abuse back down the pecking order. “I was wearin’ a Chelsea shirt for fack’s sake!”
“It would make no difference to Bellson,” snapped McNowt. “How could he possibly tell one of your ridiculous tribes from another? There was one man in a football shirt in first class. He was looking for a man in a football shirt!”
“I s’pose it’s possible,” said Vinnie, furious with Bones for making him look stupid.
Bones, desperate to help Vinnie, spoke directly to McNowt for the first time in his life: “Erm … Mr McNowt. Couldn’t you get in touch with Bellson? It’d be simple enough to describe Danny Malone, or get a description of the bloke ‘e spoke to.”
McNowt turned his bleak gaze upon Bones, then after a few moments, he shook his head: “Emil Bellson is not the type of man you just pick up the phone and call. He is an intensely private individual. I can only await his occasional contacts … usually via intermediar-ies. I’ve never met him. I can’t contact him, and in any case, I have no desire to report failure.”
Once again, McNowt pressed his fingertips to his eyes and caressed away the burdens of his mission as another Mozart symphony reminded him of the delights that awaited in White Paradise.
“I suggest you find this Malone,” said McNowt. “On top of everything else, Bellson gave him something in Bangkok. Something which belongs to me. Something of extreme importance and value.”
A PORTAL FROM HEAVEN INTO PURGATORY
Sunday afternoon in a BT phone booth stinking of piss and dead fags, the international call signal chirruped in my ear as I idly fiddled with something in my pocket. There was a silence, then a sound like wind whistling through a long tunnel, then a ringing: “Hello?”
“Shona, it’s Eric.”
“Eric?”
“Eric Judd. We spent the last seven years together.”
“Oh … Eric. It’s three in the morning!”
I’d forgotten about the time difference, but the six pints I’d consumed in an Islington pub had convinced me that it was important to talk to Shona straight away.
“Shona, I’ve realised something important.”
“What’s that Eric? That 40-year-old goalkeepers are ten years too old?”
“No.”
What was that in my pocket?
“Well, what? What is so important that you have to wake me up at 3 o’clock on a Monday morning?”
I took a deep breath, and then I said it: “I love you, Shona.”
“What?”
“I love you. I’m coming home.”
A part of me was screaming inside. Do I? Do I really love her? What is love anyway? Having been rejected so profoundly by England, I just needed acceptance. I needed to be understood and surrounded by my own kind. But my declaration of love did not have quite the impact I’d expected.
“You don’t love me, Eric. If you loved me, you wouldn’t have run off to England on an Old Goat’s Chase.”
“I know … you’re right … I’m an idiot. But I’ve worked that out now. I realise now what’s important and I’m coming home.”
“Right.”
Desperate to get that tired sarcasm out of her voice, I said, “Have you looked at any houses yet … to buy?”
“Oh, yes I have,” she said, perking up a little. “I had a look at a place in Waitara. It’s not quite what I wanted, but it’s better than Hornsby.”
She proceeded to give the full rundown on the new house as I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small silver key with K242 inscribed on it.
I had never seen the key in my life.
I just stared at the key for a few moments and, playing back the tape in my head, I dimly recalled fingers probing at my pocket in the terminal at Bangkok, just before I threw up. That angry-looking fuckwit from first class had been there. It must have been him, but why had he given me a key?
“… and quite a good back yard,” finished Shona.
“Yeah, well, I’ll be tryin’ to get on a plane tomorrow, so I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” yawned Shona, the spark draining out of her voice again. “You’ll come home when you’re ready. You always have, you always will.”
* * *
Notwithstanding Shona’s lack of confidence in my prodigality, I managed to book a flight for the very next day (economy class - it occurred to me that Shona would appreciate me saving money), and it was with only the thinnest regret that I boarded the tube for Heathrow and started heading out over the teeming tenements and factories of South-West London, here and there punctuated by green oases with goalposts at either end.
An hour’s journey later and I heaved my swag out of the train and found myself battling once again the characteristic queues of international travel. The departures hall at Heathrow was the biggest in the world and it took me half an hour just to find the queue, let alone start waiting in it.
It’s probably my imagination but it seemed like the entire place was suffused in a morbid gloom, as though no-one really wanted to leave England. Like me, they were all being rejected and we stood silent like cattle in long lines - waiting to be processed.
After 45 minutes I was checked in - no window seat. And I wasn’t allowed into the Qantas Club this time, although that was just as well when you considered how dangerous it was.
The large double doorway into customs reared before me, like a portal from Heaven into purgatory. I swallowed the last scraps of my ambition and pride and strode towards my once and future life.
But just as I got to the door (and another queue) I saw a book shop and decided to avail myself of some reading matter (I had no more stomach for Sir Ally’s biography). And then, on a newspaper hoarding, I saw the seven words that changed everything:
DANNY MALONE NEAR DEATH AFTER HOME INVASION
THE INCONCEIVABLE FORCE MEETS THE UNDERSTANDABLE OBJECT
There are moments in our lives when, all of a sudden, entirely out of the blue, the planets line up. The inconceivable force meets the understandable object, and we see everything - our lives, our actions, our purpose - clearly. For one shining moment we shake our heads free of all our petty wants, needs and motivations and absolutely understand why we were put on this earth.
On some deep and visceral level, I knew this headline concerned me. I seemed to hear some kind of momentous, personal fanfare and I strolled in time towards the piles of newspapers and
