Football Crazy (21 page)

After checking up with the firm's solicitors Price discovered that it was quite within Screwer's rights to keep the players under lock and key, and without even charging them if he so desired, for a period of twenty four hours. Then, using the extra powers granted to those holding the rank of superintendent and above, he could detain the players for an additional thirty six hours, again without charging them. Thereafter, if and when he did charge them, they would still be held in custody until such time as they appeared before a Magistrates Court, up to another twenty four hours.

Altogether that came to a total of three and a half days, taking it into Thursday, and the team was due to play Brailsford Wanderers on Wednesday night. Even then there was no guarantee they would be released as Screwer had made it abundantly clear that he would vigorously oppose bail, and even if the Magistrates were disposed to allow the players bail he would demand that it be set at a very high price indeed. To quote the police chief, “Fucking millions!”

Price's friends and contacts were many and varied, but none unfortunately were in the upper echelons of the Police Force, or indeed in the lower echelons. He had always had a healthy distrust of policemen ever since, as an eight-year-old, he had discovered one on top of his mother on his parents bed after having been sent home from school early with toothache.

As a consequence of this he had never attempted to cultivate any friendships with our guardians of the law. Keep your nose clean and you will have nothing to worry about as far as the police are concerned, had been his dictum, a precept which had thus far stood him in good stead, although John Halliday Christie's lodger Timothy Evans might have argued against its efficacy.

Now he was wishing that he’d perhaps bought a few tickets for the Police Ball when that constable had come knocking on his door instead of telling him that he didn't go to dances and if he ever did it wouldn't be for the benefit of bent bloody rozzers. Consequentially there was no one in the Police Force with a higher authority than Screwer to whom he could turn to in his hour of need.

In desperation, and one would have to be truly desperate to adopt such a policy, he tried to enlist the help of his Member of Parliament. But Arnold Rutt MP, New Labour, had told him that while he had every sympathy, and that lessons had been learned, there was nothing he could do and it was time to move on. This was Rutt's standard answer to any plea put to him, but in this case he was right, there
was
nothing he could do, as Screwer was firmly within his rights.

After thinking back to his initial meeting with Screwer, Price had then telephoned the superintendent and, in an effort to twist his arm a little, had told him that after having had second thoughts he had decided to dispense with the high tech police facility and stables in the plans for the new stadium....unless that is Screwer could perhaps help him vis-à-vis releasing his footballers in time to turn out against Brailsford. Screwer had asked Price if he was trying to bribe him. Price had said no, but how did fifty grand in old notes in a plain brown envelope sound? Screwer had told him that he was talking to the wrong man.

Price didn’t doubt this. Screwer wasn't a bent copper. He was a warped copper. Which is something entirely different, and far more dangerous. And someone who would be a thorn in his side during the coming football season, of that Price was sure.

Thirty six hours after the players had been arrested they were still in custody and no nearer to being released than the moment they’d been jailed. With Screwer still having a further twenty four hours to play with before he had either to charge them or let them go there seemed little chance they would be released in time for the Brailsford match, or, given Screwer's threat to oppose bail, any other match for some considerable time. That they were released and that the match took place was entirely due to Sergeant Hawks.

“
Shame about the hooligan problem isn't it, sir,” he had said to Screwer.

“
What?” said Screwer, who was at that moment preoccupied with the thoughts of Mrs Screwer and how she had lost all interest in sex since going onto that bloody HRT crap.

“
The bastard hooligans, sir.” A good man, Hawks didn't like calling people bastards, but as he wished to appear to be on Screwer's side and was aware that Screwer absolutely loved calling people bastards, and also because he knew that Frogley didn't have any football hooligans and therefore he wasn't calling anyone a bastard really, he permitted himself to use the term on this occasion. He went on, “I mean they'll still be out there, won't they.” He searched for an expression that might appeal to Screwer. “Festering.”

The word had the desired effect on the superintendent, and all thoughts of Mrs Screwer's lack of libido were put on hold for the time being. However the police chief still didn't know what his sergeant was getting at. Of course they would still be out there festering, so what was new? He looked at Hawks impatiently. “Well spit it out then man, if I wanted to do riddles I'd buy a riddle book.”

“
Or set about trying to have The Riddler arrested,” thought Hawks, but he said, “I mean all right, we've got the football team safely under lock and key, so we've been able to put a
temporary
stop to the hooliganism; but even if the players get sent down for twelve months, as they should be, the club will just buy more players, and when that happens we'll have the hooligan problem back with us again. Locking the players up is just delaying the issue. Putting it off until a later date. Whereas if you were to release them, and let them play....?”

Screwer regarded his sergeant in a new light and rewarded him with a smile, which Hawks would rather have done without. “We'll make a copper out of you yet, Hawks,” he beamed.

“
Thank you, sir.”

“
Charge them all with affray and let them go. Crack them all one with a truncheon on the way out, bastards.”

Reflecting on it a week later, Hawks wondered what the eventual outcome would have been had he not interfered, had he let things run their course. But he couldn't say. All he could be sure of was that what happened wouldn't have happened. And that one of the things that wouldn't have happened was that the match between Frogley Town and Brailsford Wanderers would not have taken place when it did, whilst another was that there would not now be a countrywide search for Superintendent Screwer, still missing since the night of the fateful match.

“
I was very nearly famous” - Des Linesman

Stanley had been walking on air for two days. He could hardly have been happier had he been the man who had broke the bank at Monte Carlo and on the way home had tripped up and fallen into a bed of Claudia Schiffer's. His beloved football team had been released from prison, three valuable points were already in the bag with only one game played, and there was another home fixture to look forward to on Wednesday night! Was it possible for things to be better?

Actually it was Stanley's turn to work the 2-10 shift that week but as usual when work clashed with a football fixture he had arranged to change his shift with his opposite number on the Bone Pulveriser, Albert Humphries. It had been a close run thing this time however, Stanley reflected, as he made his way to the police station.

“
I know I'd promised to swap shifts with thee Stanley,” Albert had said, “but I have to visit t' wife in hospital.”

Stanley was devastated. “But....but that means I won't be able to see t' Town if tha doesn't swap with me, Albert.”

His work mate commiserated with him was adamant. “I know that, Stanley, and I'm sorry, I really am. But I have to go, it's t' wife.”

“
But they're my whole life, t' Town, Albert,” Stanley pleaded.

“
Sorry Stanley. If it were anybody else but t' wife....”

Stanley started to cry. It wasn't an act. If he had thought that by crying it would have helped his case by the merest fraction he would have wept buckets. But he didn't, he started to cry simply because he couldn't help himself. It worked.

“
Oh what the hell,” Albert said. “Go on. I'll send her some grapes and a cowheel in instead.”

His attendance at the match now back on course the only thing to darken Stanley's horizons was that Fentonbottom was still missing. Stanley had searched high and low for his dog, especially high, as the last time Fentonbottom had done a runner, oddly enough also when his master had been painting, Stanley had found him hiding in the cave near the top of Dad Tor, the highest of the range of moorland hills just to the north of Frogley.

Recalling this, the cave was where Stanley had started his search, but all he had found on this occasion was a condom still in its wrapper, a Mars bar and an unopened can of Coca-Cola, neatly together behind a small boulder, as if stashed there by some boy who planned to visit the cave with a girl who would do anything for a Mars bar and a Coca-Cola.

Having no use for neither condoms nor Coca Cola, on the grounds of lack of opportunity with regard to the former and a respect for his stomach with regard to the latter, Stanley had left them there, eaten the Mars bar and continued his search.

But nowhere he had looked thus far had yielded Fentonbottom. Which is why he was now on the way to the police station, to see if the local constabulary could help him in his search. After all there were enough of them, judging by the number of policemen there had been at the match last Saturday. It would give them something to do, for they'd had precious little to do at the match.

Some might say that to hire an open-top bus in which to tour the town centre after winning just one match was a little over the top, but Big Donny Donnelly, thanks to having been schooled in such matters by The Psychiatry of Football with a foreword by Ron Atkinson, knew otherwise.

“
I'm giving the lads a taste of the feeling of what it will be like for them when they've pulled off the big one,” he explained to a surprised George Fearnley, who had joined Donny outside the stadium on leaving his office to find out what all the merriment was about. “So they’ll be able to take it in their stride when it actually happens later in the season.”

“
Hence one of the players holding aloft a cardboard cut-out of the FA Cup,” the club secretary observed.

“
Well obviously,” said Donny. “Then, having got that feeling into their systems, they won't want to let it go, have it taken away from them if you like; so come the first round of the FA Cup they will go out there and fight hammer and nail.”

“
A bit like they're doing now, you mean,” said George.

“
What?”

George pointed to the top deck of the bus where several of the players were fighting for the seats on the front row. Donny grimaced and shouted to them. “Hey, cut that out you lot!”

“
Who should be at the front, Boss?” called Briggs, then, without waiting for an answer: “Me, shouldn't I.”

“
Why yow more than anybody else, Briggsy?” demanded Stock.

“
Because I’m up front in the team, ain’t I,” said Briggs. “So it stands to reason I should be up front on the coach.”

“
Not my reason it doesn’t,” said Moggs, “That would put me at the back and I’m as entitled to be at the front as much as anybody, the way I performed.”

Parks chimed in with his two pennyworth. “If anybody should be at the front it should be me, it was me who scored the goal.”

Parks, after having eventually been caught by his team mates and suffering the same fate with his hair as the rest of them, had initially vowed never to go out in public again without the advantage of a hat. However now that he didn't stand out from them so much, by virtue of his affected hairstyle, the rest of the players' attitude towards him had softened a little. For one thing they had stopped calling him Stephanie. And for another they didn't seem to dislike him quite so much as they previously had. Especially so after he’d had scored the winning goal against Grimely.

Added to that, on the evening of the match Parks had found out that good looks aren't everything, especially to nubile young Frogley Town fans who only hours earlier had seen you score the winning goal, as he’d had no difficulty at all scoring again with three of them, or at least would have scored with them had he been able to get an erection. Consequentially he had quickly become more tolerant of his new hairstyle.

Crooks too thought he had a strong claim to be on the front row of the bus. “I passed the ball to Parksy when he scored, Boss,” he called to Donny, “A great through ball, so I'm as entitled to be at the front as much as anybody.”

“
And I passed the ball to Crooksy, Boss,” said Cook, “So I am.”

“
You're a bliddy liar Cooky, it was me who passed it to Crooksy!” said Jimmy 'Floyd' Cragg.

Donny, regarding them hands on hips, had had enough. “Can you hear yourselves?” he said. “Can you? Just listen to yourselves, you're like a gang of kids.” He mimicked them. “'I should be at the front', 'No you shouldn't, I should be at the front.’ You're a
team
for God’s sake
.
Football is a
team
game. You're all in this together. It doesn't matter
who's
at the front!”

The players went quiet, a few of them shamefaced at their behaviour. Donny regarded them like a teacher who has just regained control of a class of ten-year-olds, and said, “That's better. That’s more like it.”