There's Only One Danny Garvey, page 25
His fist connects with my jaw. He may have broken it, and perhaps his own knuckles. The crack reverberates around the cold, empty shower room. We both moan in pain.
‘How the fuck d’ye think ye got intae the first team here in the first place?’
I don’t answer. Don’t want to know it. This thing he’s desperate to tell me.
‘What d’ye mean?’ I mumble, barely audible, tears forming. Eyes watering.
I’m ashamed of the things I’ve been put through, I’m ashamed of the person I am.
But he tells me.
—I did the two of them a favour. Danny got his shot in the first team. Wouldn’t have happened otherwise. He was only fifteen, for fuck’s sake. Deek Henderson got a warning. I gave him the chance to sort out his fucking weirdo behaviour. I could easily have gone to the cops and reported him. But that’s not what we do here. We deal with our own. Nobody runs to the police. And everybody liked Deek Henderson, especially Higgy. I didn’t blackmail him. If any of that ‘touching up the young boys’ shite had continued with my brother, I wouldn’t have needed to go to anyone else for help. That’s something I’d have dealt with. I’d have battered seven shades of fuck out of the cunt myself. It wasn’t my fault that he couldn’t live with himself. I didn’t lock the bastard in a garage and switch his motor’s engine on. Henderson fucking did those things himself.
‘Ye want more money?’ I splutter. I can’t think of anything else to hurt him with. ‘“Ah better fucken have some for ye” … That it, Raymond?’
—He thinks this is about money. He always thinks I’m after money. I’m not. He’s spiralling out of control again. And when that happens, I always take the fall for it. Not this time. I can’t go back there.
His damaged honour over Nancy is a sideshow; an avenue to justify the violence. The mobility is returning to my jaw. It can’t be broken. Isn’t diminishing the pain though.
‘Ah don’t have any more … so why no’ just fuck right off, Raymond?’
—Any more of what?
He lifts me up by the collar. Both hands holding me in place. Getting ready to smash his forehead into my face.
‘Danny?’ It’s Higgy. He comes into the room and the look on his face is one of horror. I see it before Raymond. My brother turns. Drops me.
‘An’ as for you … ya auld cunt!’ he says. The focus of anger temporarily shifts.
‘Raymond! What the bloody hell are ye doin’ here, son?’
I watch my brother push the old man backwards. He staggers over an upstand in the tiling and tilts over. He goes down in instalments. His head cracks off a sink. Higgy’s down, his body folded in half like a discarded ventriloquist’s dummy. Harry Doyle, who’s followed him in, barrels into Raymond. His squat, army-honed physique is a match for my brother’s taller, leaner frame. Raymond is too open. Too wired. Harry Doyle thumps him into the dressing-room door, which comes off its hinges.
As Harry tends to Higgy, Raymond slopes out. He’s a lost cause, corrupt and futile. This won’t be the last I see of him. It won’t end until he’s back inside, or dead. Even if Nancy and Damo and I disappear, as Doreen and her once did, he won’t stop looking for us.
We take Higgy to hospital in a taxi. His head wound will need stitches, and lots of them. Fragments are returning to me, prompted by Harry Doyle. We won easily. Five–nil. The team playing some excellent stuff. Sharp movement and high percentages of possession. The only black spot came in the first half. Billy Gilmour was carried off injured. Knowing that I wouldn’t answer the phone, Higgy and Harry Doyle were returning to The Barn to let me know the good news that Gilmour hadn’t suffered ankle ligament damage, as first feared.
I finally get home around 11.00 pm. The taxis to and from Crosshouse Hospital were charged to Kidd’s Carpets’ accounts, since I didn’t have the thirty pounds on me. Higgy has been kept in for observation. He’ll eat better there and that might explain his contentment at being told of his inpatient status.
I need to clear my head. Thoughts of ways to get back at my brother have been building for days. Tonight’s drama tipped the scales. I bought some cigarettes. I light one and the fog clears a bit. I’m tempted by whisky but resist, for now. Even though I’ve stopped taking the pills, it’ll still unsettle my stomach.
I change my shoes and head back out for a run. My skull feels like it’s being slowly crushed in a vice. Tightening and squeezing until there’s no more give. The blackness envelopes the village. I see no-one. How many times before could you tell I didn’t care? When you turned your back on me, I knew we’d get nowhere.
I’m clinging to this. I just need to find the right way to get her and the wee man away from him for good. I get back to Higgy’s place with no immediate memory of the previous hour. Like someone robotically driving a car across the country on characterless roads and having no ability to recall any defining moment of their journey. I do feel calmer though when I turn the key in the lock.
I’m in bed barely an hour when the irritating mobile phone rings. Rather than ignoring it, I get up and look for it. It could be a worrying update from the hospital, or more threatening abuse from my brother. It is neither. It’s a distraught Anne Macdonald. She’s phoning me to tell me that The Barn is on fire.
We’re in Anne’s car, staring across at the smoking Barn. I don’t know how we got here. In fact, I have little recollection of the last few days. There are too many things happening. Too many sequences of activity that I can’t control. And they are all colliding into each other. I know it’s the morning of the cup final, but I can’t seem to focus on the match ahead.
Danny, there was somebody in the building, says Anne. The firemen don’t know if he started it or not. But he’s in a bad way. This is really terrible.
‘Fuck sake, Anne. Ah think Raymond did this.’
There isn’t as much damage as I expected. The structure and the fabric of the building is intact. A fire engine is still attending, and an ambulance has just left the scene. Siren on, alerting the remainder of the villagers who didn’t already know. Scud Meikle could still be saved, the poor bastard.
Collateral damage, unfortunately. A small crowd is assembling on the pitch. Villagers, supporters of the club mostly. Even from this distance, I recognise most of them from the terracing or from The King’s Arms.
My parents don’t know yet. They were at a business dinner overnight at the Turnberry Hotel.
‘Maybe ye should head down there. Tell yer da face tae face, like. Maybe that’s better than hearin’ it over the phone, or fae somebody else,’ I suggest.
Perhaps. I need to find out a bit more about the extent of the damage first, I think, she says. I’m going over to speak to the police now. Are you coming?
‘No,’ I say, too firmly.
You’re the club’s manager, though, she says. She seems angry with me. I don’t like it. Take some responsibility, Danny. My head hurts when she says this.
‘That’s no’ fair,’ I protest. I didn’t sign up for this. My responsibility is for the results. For the team’s performance. It’s a fucking part-time job. I’m running a second-division junior outfit from Ayrshire, not drilling the Galacticos at the fucking Bernabeu.
She’s out the car. Impatiently waiting for me.
‘Anne, get back in,’ I say. ‘Please!’
She does. What is it? She grabs my shoulder. Danny tell me! What do you know about this?
‘Ah’m sure my brother started this fire. Ah don’t know what tae do about it.’ I have my head in my hands. She may think I’m about to cry, but the sheer weight of it is suddenly sapping my neck muscles. I’m losing control. I thump the steering wheel repeatedly with my forehead, only stopping when I accidently hit the horn. It draws attention. Anne puts her hand on the back of my neck. She calms me.
Anne starts the VW’s engine. It reverses, and we drive off.
I don’t know how we got here. But we’re back, at Ayr’s Low Green, looking out over the calming water at Arran away in the distance.
‘We had a fight,’ I tell her. ‘Ah thought he was gonnae kill me. He cannae stand it that Nancy’s wi’ me now.’
Are you sure you can trust her, Danny? She says this as if she has information that I’m not privy to. I give her an odd look before nodding. You have to tell someone. It doesn’t matter that he’s your brother. If it was him who started the fire, he might’ve killed somebody.
‘I can’t go tae the police, Anne. Ah just cannae. It’d destroy Higgy. Ah’ve got tae get through this final. For him.’ I’m pleading with her. ‘Only another day, an’ then it’s over.’
I’m annoyed at her. I needed her support. I’ve supported her all these years. I’ve given her the future everyone else denied her. Louise-Anne Macdonald … missing presumed dead. But I knew she wasn’t. I was the only one who still believed she was safe. Living a different life – a happier life somewhere else with people that cared about her. What kind of friend takes someone else’s side? I need some air. I also need a drink. I tell her to wait in the car for me. She was driving, but it’s me with the keys in my hand.
The newsagent is well stocked with the Saturday papers. Most of the nationals are still running with the extraordinary aftermath of a momentous general election landslide victory for the Labour Party under Tony Blair. His smile beams out from most of the front covers. He comes across as a cooler Bill Clinton. A politician who says he likes Oasis and The Smiths and The Jam and actually means it. I didn’t vote. Didn’t really see the point, given my own future plans, but if I had, I’d have voted for New Labour. And not just because I now know they won; that had been anticipated. No, because Blair seems to be offering hope of a new beginning, and sometimes that’s all any of us crave after a depression, isn’t it?
I pick up some sweets. A few wee things for Damo. A can of Irn-Bru, and the Kilmarnock Standard. Just to check if there’s anything further from Sandy Buchanan.
There is.
‘Ye buyin’ that, son … or just checkin’ if yer bingo numbers are up?’
‘Aye … aye, sorry.’ I hand over the money and head outside to read Sandy’s report.
Missing Ayrshire child, Louise-Anne Macdonald ‘most likely’ died in a tragic accident near to where she disappeared in 1972.
Little Louise, from Barshaw Village, was five years old when she went missing. Fears that she had been abducted sparked one of the largest police operations in Scottish history.
Fragments of a distinctive toy believed to have been in Louise’s possession at the time were found during recent fresh searches in the grounds of a farmhouse on the edge of Barshaw Woods. A spokesman for Strathclyde Police said that the force was pursuing a new line of inquiry, which suggested that the little girl was most likely killed accidentally.
The spokesman confirmed that the force remained committed to the investigation to provide closure for Louise’s remaining family. He stressed that the case remained open.
Detective Constable Bob Palmer, who is leading this new stage of the inquiry, said: ‘During the course of the inquiries we have made over the last year, we have closed off several theories about what happened to Louise. Some of these have been circulating speculatively for over twenty years.
‘My team and I know that a number of items of heavy machinery were used to clear building land in the renovation of a series of farmhouse outbuildings on 4th May 1972.
‘We are investigating the possibility that young Louise died as a result of an accident at the farm, which is near to her grandparents’ house, where she was last seen playing.’
It is believed that a workman, operating a large digger at the time, may have been responsible for the young girl’s death. It is also believed that the unidentified man had been assisting police with their inquiries until he passed away in hospital in March this year.
A team of forensic specialists, archaeologists and rescue professionals have spent the last month excavating the site. The remnants of the doll found at the site has been shown to little Lou’s grandmother, Alice Reid, and she has confirmed it had been in her granddaughter’s possession around the time she went missing.
This Sunday marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Louise-Anne Macdonald’s disappearance.
By the time I reach the car, she is gone. Missing. She won’t be coming back. And I’m alone again.
The Ayrshire Cup Final, 1997. Barshaw is deserted. Buses organised by The King’s Arms left for Townhead Park at 10.00 am. People are looking for me. In no particular order: Higgy, Raymond, Billy the Kidd, Harry Doyle, Sandy Buchanan, Tony McIntosh, the police.
All have left urgent messages for me on this annoying piece of plastic. All stressing that I should turn myself in for starting the fire at The Barn. Fuck it. Time to move on. Tony McIntosh is the only one I reply to. He doesn’t give a fuck about my problems; he has enough of his own:
‘Boss, ah’m sorry. Ah cannae make the final. It’s Ellen,’ his message says. His voice is breaking. ‘She’s in the hospital. Tried tae dae away wi’ herself. She cannae cope wi’ the weans.’ I hear him sighing on the recording. As if trying to compose himself. ‘Dunno if ah’m gonnae be back. Tell the boys good luck fae me, will ye?’
Poor fucker. His name has been shite around the village. After his wife’s public pitch intervention, it’s been widely assumed he’s been playing away. He looks the type. But then appearances are often deceiving.
I watched some top-class deception myself only an hour earlier. From behind a hedge, at the bottom of her street, I saw Nancy. I watched her stand on her front step, looking left and right, before opening the door behind her to let my brother slip past her. He came out. She said something I couldn’t hear. He went back towards her and kissed her. And she kissed him back. He’s shaved that fucking beard off. As if that’s all it would take. This doesn’t completely surprise me. Anne Macdonald always said she was one for the watching. I should’ve listened to her.
A heart that’s left at home becomes a heart of stone.
I’d refused to see it; what was right in front of my face. I’ve been used by both of them. He’s a cunt, she’s a duplicitous bitch. They deserve each other. Damo is the only one left; the only one who’s honest and true and innocent. The only one I can still save. I jump back into my car, where I’ve spent the last forty-eight hours, hiding out in the shadows like I was a bloody fugitive. It still smells of petrol from the can in the boot, but I’ll get it cleaned on the way to Cumnock, where the final is being held. I’ll buy one of those perfumed hanging-card air-fresheners for the long journey north. My possessions – a bag of clothes and the records, mainly – are on the back seat. So is the box of memories that Libby maintained in my honour. With that retrieved, I have nothing connecting me to Barshaw.
Higgy will be fine, especially if we win today. He’ll die happy. The club too will survive. Attendances are up, the sponsorship deal with the Texan’s hotel chain will see the fire damage repaired and, most likely, a new interior fit-out that upgrades the frozen changing rooms, sorts the dilapidated plumbing, replaces the horrendously gauche carpets.
Harry Doyle will become the new team manager. He deserves it. If I’m honest, the drilling of this squad into one capable of lifting a regional cup is down to him. I understand tactics and formations, but so much of the junior game is about having the strength and stamina to out-muscle your opponents. He has imbued that army attitude into them. Even the skilful ones like young Gilmour – who’ll surely be playing at a higher level next season – now compete with a fair degree of dig.
Raymond and Nancy will grow older; chained to this joyless village environment, chaperoned by vengeful old Doreen, hating each other more with every passing year. Him, yo-yo-ing backwards and forwards from spells in Barlinnie, getting caught running ‘errands’ for his boss, Rocco Quinn. Her, forever a doormat.
Fuck them. I’ve washed my hands of the lot of them. Apart from one last act of salvation, I’m done.
The capacity of the ground – home to the beaten semi-finalists, Cumnock Juniors – is three thousand. There must be more than that here today. The small stand is packed, and the grass banks around the other three sides are teeming with the black and gold of Auchinleck Talbot. There are smatterings of red and white in two corners but the Barshaw fans are outnumbered by about ten to one. It’s the type of beautiful sunny day that, even in Ayrshire, makes you believe that anything is possible. Especially new beginnings.
The tannoy sounds, and, to add to my sense of dislocation, it seems to be a playing a song directed at me. A rough, bouncy song, and then a gentle female voice wafts above the crowd:
‘Oh Danny boy, Danny boy, Danny boy.
I get knocked down, but I get up again, you are never gonna keep me down.’
And those surrounding me sing my name. Egging me on.
‘Oh Danny boy, Danny boy, Danny boy.’
From my place, hidden amongst the Talbot supporters, I can see Damo’s space helmet. He’s in his normal position just right of the dugouts. Higgy is beside him, and so too is my brother.
—He’s here. I fucking know it. He’s unhinged. I need to find him before the police do. I can’t save him this time but if he hands himself in, he might have a better chance. Despite everything he’s done, he’s still blood.
Harry Doyle has set the team up well, I see. He’s using a formation we talked about many times. It’s essentially 5-3-1-1. Defensive, admittedly, but designed to frustrate them, to keep us in it as far as the third quarter, and to give us a slugger’s chance. Absorbing everything they can throw at us and then landing a late counter-attack when it’s too late for them to come back. All good on paper, but then, as the great ones know, the game isn’t played on paper. Nevertheless, with Billy Gilmour out injured, he’s done what I’d have done. Good luck to them. I desperately want them to win. I say ‘them’, because it already feels like I’ve left. Not my choice of course, but that’s the way it is. No regrets. No looking back. Too late for that now.
