Local Legend Read online

  “You know him, then?” I prompted.

  “Not personally, but over in the States he’s real big in business. Some sorts of business.” He put a distinct emphasis on “some”, and gave me a knowing look. “Sort of like your guy is in soccer, I guess: if you know the game, you know the name.”

  “What sort of business? Sports, perhaps?”

  “Sure, sports. Lot of other things as well. He’s one of these wheeler-dealer guys, always got a whole lot of things going on at once, you know?”

  He glanced around, then leaned forward and spoke more quietly. “Word is, though, that a lot of those deals are – what’s the word you use over here? Dodgy?”

  “You mean dodgy as in borderline illegal?”

  “That’s right. That sort of dodgy. Not that he’s ever been convicted or anything, so don’t repeat it. But they say he’s connected.”

  “Connected?”

  “Yeah! You know. Like he’s connected with the Mob.”

  The Mob. Gangsters, organized crime, Godfathers. I looked at him, incredulous. That sort of stuff happens in films. Not in commonplace little hotel bars in England.

  “You’re kidding me. The Mob? Really?”

  He nodded vigorously. “That’s what I’ve heard. All that money he does his dealing with – it’s Mafia money, and he’s their top laundry guy.”

  I stared at him, then shook my head. “Well, I must be wrong then. I mean – the Mafia? That wouldn’t be Adi. Couldn’t be. Sorry, my mistake.”

  I went back out through reception, nodding to the Vale fan, who was still behind the counter.

  “Any luck?” he asked.

  “No, it wasn’t him. Just looked very much like him, that’s all.”

  He shook his head, sorrowfully. “Pity. It would have been something, to have Adi Varney here.”

  “It would indeed,” I agreed. “Thanks for your help, anyway.”

  I headed back to the marquee and the wedding reception, amazed yet again by the affection that local people still had for Adi, even after all these years. I wished it had been him. There was so much I wanted – needed – to say. But I was now quite sure that it couldn’t have been. Adi, mixed up with the Mafia? One hundred per cent not.

  Well, ninety-nine per cent not, anyway.

  That odd one per cent was going to get me into trouble.

  CHAPTER 2

  “They say it’s not about winning or losing, but about playing the game. B***s! It’s all about winning!”

  Adi Varney, quoted in Adi Varney – A True Legend by Graham Deeson

  Sandy agreed with me. “That couldn’t have been Adi,” she said firmly. “Goodness knows he had his faults, but the Mafia? Definitely not him.”

  Once my excitement had died down, my natural British embarrassment at a case of mistaken identity had kicked in and I felt a strong need to apologize to someone. Lacking any suitable candidates for my remorse, I had turned to the family and told Sandra and Sam about it as we drove home.

  As I drove home, to be precise, since I was the designated driver for the evening and consequently hadn’t had a sip of anything stronger than fruit juice. Apart from the champagne toasts, of course. Not that Sandra was a heavy drinker, but she’d managed about three glasses of wine (by her admission). And, slightly to my surprise, Sam didn’t seem to have had much more than that, even though he was now sitting in the back with his eyes closed.

  But not asleep, it seemed. “Yes, but it’s been what – seven years since you last saw him? People can change in seven years.”

  Sandy shook her head. “Not that much. Not Adi. Don’t forget that this was the man who supported half the charities in town. I can’t believe that he’d get mixed up with crime. And in any case, if he was back in the UK he’d have got in touch with you, Graham.”

  I shook my head. “Perhaps not. We had a bit of a falling out, just before he left.”

  “I know. But ‘a bit of a falling out’ doesn’t count for much against a lifetime of friendship. You two were so close I sometimes felt jealous!”

  I chuckled. “Hey, we were just good friends – nothing for you to worry about!”

  What I didn’t say was that it had been more than just ‘a bit of a falling out’. A lot more.

  “Do you remember him, Sam?” I asked, shifting the conversation.

  “Who – Uncle Adi? Yes, sort of. He used to be round ours a lot when I was a kid. What I most remember about him was that walking stick he used, with the brass dog’s head. He used to make growling noises and push it at me, and I’d pretend to run away.”

  “Walking stick! Of course!” I thumped the steering wheel hard, and the car swerved slightly.

  “Careful, Graham!” Sandy looked at me in alarm. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Sorry. It’s OK, I just realized. That couldn’t have been Adi in the bar. He didn’t have his walking stick!”

  “Well, it’s a good thing the roads aren’t busy. Try not to have another revelation, or we’ll end up in the ditch!”

  “He might have had surgery, got his leg fixed so he didn’t need the stick?” Sam suggested. “Was he limping at all?”

  I thought about it, running the scene through my mind. “Yes. Perhaps. I only got a brief glimpse of him walking, when he left the bar, but he may have had a slight limp. But it would have had to have been some pretty good surgery for him to manage without the stick. That leg was badly damaged – he did well to get about on it at all.”

  “Collision with a goalpost, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right. At Wembley, of all places. An international against Sweden – just a friendly, and England were winning 3–1, but of course Adi was still pushing for another goal. There was a corner, the goalie fumbled a catch – bit of a scramble round the goalmouth and then the ball was running loose, across the front of goal. Adi got to it just before it went out of play, somehow managed to slot it in from a ridiculous angle, but then he couldn’t stop himself. Full tilt into the goalpost, rammed it with his knee.”

  “Ouch! That must have hurt.”

  “Shattered his kneecap. That was 1995 – a month after you were born. He was only thirty-two then, could have had years left on the field, but it was the end of his playing career. Absolute tragedy.”

  “And just for a friendly that they were winning anyway?”

  I nodded. We’d reached the end of our road. I signalled and made the turn. “Yes. Bitterly ironic. But also so typical of Adi. He’d never approach a game, any game, with the attitude that it wasn’t important. Winning was important, and not just winning but crushing the other team if possible. Off the pitch he was charming. Considerate, even. Well, he could be, at any rate. But get him out there, in the game, and he was never anything less than totally focused, utterly committed to coming out on top.”

  I pulled into our drive and switched the car off. “You know, when I went to see him in hospital after that game, the first thing he said was, ‘4–1, mate! We hammered them! And I got that last one in, didn’t I?’ He knew that his leg was completely smashed up, that he was finished as a player – but the last kick of his career had been a goal, in a winning game. That was important to him.”

  “Almost better than being able to play again,” Sam said. Not asking. Understanding.

  “Almost.”

  “Sounds crazy.”

  “He was crazy,” said Sandra. “In some ways. Football ways.”

  “That’s what made him great,” I suggested.

  Sandy opened her door. “Well, in any case, I think we can agree that whoever you saw, it wasn’t him. Let’s get inside. I don’t want to sit on the drive and talk football all night. Had enough of that in the past!”

  We went round the back and in through the kitchen. The front door had been out of action for a while last year, and we’d got into the habit of using the back. The damage was all made good now, but we still avoided using the front entrance.

  Brodie hauled himself out of his basket and came to me
et us with a wagging tail and a head thrust out for fussing. That was another reason for not using the front door. If Brodie heard anyone there he’d hide in his basket and howl. Dogs have good memories for important things, such as people setting fire to the house.

  The memory made me run my hands over my head. Most of my hair had grown back, but I had a permanent bald patch at the front now. It wasn’t noticeable as long as I kept the rest cut short, or so I liked to think.

  “I’m glad to get this thing off at last,” said Sandra, removing her blonde wig. “It really starts to itch after a while. I’m sure it’s not supposed to, but it does.”

  I felt a now familiar twist in my gut as I looked at her. Plastic surgery had done all it could, and it was a lot, but she would never have her own hair again: there was too much scar tissue on her head. She had been through a far worse fire than I had, and had suffered accordingly. That deep-down pain I felt wasn’t just from seeing what she had suffered; it was from remembering how close I’d been to losing her altogether.

  “Perhaps it’s just psychological, Mum. It’s all in – on! – your head!”

  “It’s a pity that you didn’t pick up a sense of humour on your travels, Sam!” she retorted – but with a smile. It was good to see that banter going on between them. When he’d first come back home, Sandra had been painfully cautious in everything she said or did, afraid that with the slightest wrong word she would lose him again. It had taken a while for us to get used to being a family once more.

  “Oh, I picked up several senses of humour! Want to hear a joke in Chinese?”

  “No thanks! I’m going straight up to bed. I’m shattered.” She yawned, to prove the point. “Coming, love?”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m not quite ready yet. My head’s buzzing over this Adi thing. I’ll be up in a bit.”

  “OK. Don’t wake me when you do! Goodnight.”

  I went through into the converted garage we used as an office, fired up my laptop, and clicked on the “Adi” shortcut.

  “Is this the book you’ve been working on, then? The Adi Varney bio?” Sam came in with two mugs, and set one down next to me while peering over my shoulder. “Thought you might like a cuppa.”

  “Thanks.” I took a cautious sip. I’m fussy about my tea – it has to be just the right strength and just the right amount of milk. Usually I make my own, but Sam had it spot on in the first week he was home. “It’s not really a book, not yet. Just a dumping ground for all the background information I’ve accumulated, plus some sample chapters, random memories, quotes, notes, etc.”

  “I’d have thought you’d got further than that, Dad! You’ve been working on this for a while.”

  I nodded. “A few years. Or all my life, perhaps! It’s the structure I can’t get right. I’ve got so much information about Adi that I can’t work out how to organize it.”

  “Wood and trees?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What are you going to call it? Have you got that far at least?”

  I chuckled, and opened up the “Titles” file. “What do you think?”

  “Ah. Still thinking about that, then.” There were at least twenty possibilities listed. “What’s the shortlist?”

  “That is the shortlist! What do you think? I want something that’s catchy but informative.”

  “Well, not ‘The Adi Varney Story’, for a start. Sounds like a made-for-TV bio of someone nobody ever heard of. And ‘The Truth About Adi’ – no, that’s a newspaper exposé headline. ‘The Legend of The Vale’ – that works better. I like that word ‘legend’, but only the locals will know what ‘The Vale’ is. Otherwise, it sounds like a fantasy novel.”

  I nodded. “It’s a work in progress, and I value the input. But what I wanted to do just now was to look at the photos, try to work out why I was so sure that it was Adi I saw.”

  I brought up the image files and opened the first one.

  “This is the earliest picture I have of him. Earliest one of me, for that matter.”

  A slightly blurry black-and-white shot, the main subject was two ten-year-old boys and a football. One of them – the one with his foot on the ball – had a long, thin face and a frown. His companion was a bit shorter, with a roundish face, reddish hair, and a cheeky smile. Slightly behind the other boys was a younger lad, looking up at them with an earnest expression.

  “I remember you showed me this before. Scruffy little urchins!” commented Sam.

  “Show some respect,” I admonished. “That’s your old man there with the ball.”

  “And Adi with you? Shouldn’t he have the ball?”

  “Oh, he didn’t mind me having it for the photo. Because it was my dad with the camera, after all. And Adi could take it off me any time he wanted, which we both knew. In fact, he’d probably just said so, which is why I’m frowning and he’s grinning. Dad was mad at me for spoiling the picture with ‘a face like a wet weekend’!”

  “He should have taken another one, then.”

  “Do you have any idea of the price of film in those days? You lads nowadays, with your fancy digital gear, shooting off a dozen shots of the same thing, you’ve no idea! It was an Instamatic, Dad had only just got it, and he made that first film last six months!”

  “And the kid photobombing you? That’s Uncle David, isn’t it?”

  I didn’t answer immediately. Just looked at the little fellow.

  “Yes. The only photograph we have of him. He died not long afterwards.”

  “Oh, yeah, of course. That’s…” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, Dad.”

  “It was a long time ago. Let’s see something more up to date!”

  I flicked through images of Adi in his playing days, and got on to his post-injury career. A head and shoulders profile of him, frowning. Taken with a zoom lens, nothing else in shot, but I knew he’d been in the home-team dugout when it was taken. “That’s the day he became manager of The Vale… heck, he does look just like the person I saw!”

  “It’s still ten years ago,” Sam pointed out. “What’s the most recent image you have?”

  I scrolled through the thumbnails. “How about this? It’s a clip from local TV news, just after the last game Adi went to as manager. The last Vale game he ever went to, as far as I know. He’d just announced his resignation – right out of the blue in a post-game press conference. The TV crew followed him out.”

  I opened the file, and the video began running. A shaky, confused shot as the cameraman followed the female reporter through a car park. Ahead of them, a figure came into view. Walking with the aid of a stick.

  “I see what you mean about the limp,” said Sam. “It really was bad, wasn’t it?”

  They caught up with him as he reached his car, a bright red Jag. He half turned, looked at them over his shoulder, and I hit the pause button.

  You could still see the child in the man. He had the same round face. The red hair was now a few shades darker and speckled with white, but complemented by a moustache in the same colour. But there was no smile now. Instead, he looked angry.

  “Smartened himself up a bit, since he was a kid.”

  I shifted my attention from his face to his clothing, and felt suddenly chilled.

  “Dad?”

  “That jacket he’s wearing. There’s a story to it.”

  I sat back and rubbed my eyes. “When Adi was recovering from his injury – well, it was obvious he’d never play again, but The Vale couldn’t lose him. So they made him assistant manager. Then, when old Danny Travis retired, he naturally became manager.

  “As assistant manager, Adi turned up to games in his tracksuit. Which looked a bit out of place next to Danny, who was always very smartly turned out. Beau Dan, they called him. Dan the Dandy.

  “So on his last day as manager, Danny produced this tweed jacket.”

  “That tweed jacket?” Sam asked, indicating the picture on the screen.

  “The very same. Real Harris tweed, top brand, best
part of two hundred quid’s worth, I’d say. ‘Here,’ said Danny. ‘I think this is you, Adi.’

  “And everyone around stopped what they were doing, to see how Adi would react. Him and Danny hadn’t always seen eye-to-eye; there had been some strong words exchanged behind the scenes now and then. And Adi never liked being told what to do. So it could have gone downhill fast from that point.

  “But Dan had chosen his moment well. Just after the game – which we won, by the way – with a lot of people present, and reporters… me, for one! Adi looked round, taking note of who was there and who was watching, which was just about everybody. Then he smiled, and took the jacket. Shook Danny’s hand, made an impromptu speech about hoping to maintain the values that Danny had established for the club, on and off the pitch, and how this jacket would help. Applause, cheers, photos, etc.

  “Adi wore that jacket to every single game he attended as manager.”

  “Good thing that tweed’s hard wearing, then!”

  “Probably why Dan chose it.” I ran the video a few frames forward. Adi turned and faced the camera full-on. “You see that button? The top one?”

  Against the brown fabric, it was clear that the top button was lighter than the one beneath it.

  “One Saturday, when there was a particularly big game on – Cup tie, against Chelsea, I think – Adi was running late and found that there was a button missing off the jacket. His wife was out, but Adi bustled around, found the needles and threads, and a box of buttons. Couldn’t find one that matched for colour, but he got the closest in size and shape, and put that on. With enough thread to tie up a battleship, his wife told me afterwards, but he decided it was good enough and of course, refused to have it changed. So that became part of his image, something else that was distinctively Adi.”

  “So why did you look so shocked when you saw it?”

  “Because I suddenly realized – the person in the bar was wearing that jacket.”

  “Wow.” Sam leaned forward, staring intently at the picture. “Could you see the button?”