Читать книгу Galactic Keegan - Scott Innes - Страница 16

THE LIGHT BULB

‘Kev! So happy to see you!’

Gerry fired off a party popper right in my face; I winced and pushed him away.

‘Let’s try to keep some dignity, please,’ I scolded him.

Still, it felt absolutely fantastic to walk back into my old flat again. The black-and-white striped Newcastle United wallpaper, the weird damp smell that I couldn’t shift. I was home. Gerry had crudely put up some decorations around the walls and had hung a large banner that read GOOD LUCK, KEV! which I’m pretty sure he’d recycled from the time I went on Celebrity Mastermind in 2011. That was a catastrophe by the way – no one told me you were allowed to pass on a question, so when I didn’t know the answer to the first one I just sat there in silence for two minutes.

‘You look pretty good, considering,’ Gerry observed in a backhanded-compliment sort of way. ‘I thought you’d be all emaciated and have tattoos on your face and all that.’

‘I was only in for four days,’ I said – though it had felt like a lifetime. I couldn’t help wondering how this experience would change me, the psychological damage it might have inflicted on my personality. Would I ever be the same Kevin Keegan again?

‘There’s a buffet in the kitchen,’ Gerry said, leading me through.

‘Cracking,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you, honestly, I will love it if there are those battered prawns on sticks – love it.’

In the kitchen, to my surprise, were many more familiar faces. Alongside Barrington12 stood Rodway, who beamed as I came in. Squeezed in like sardines around the small table were all my lads – Gribble, Little Dunc, Wiggins, Nightingale and several more, including two or three whose names I’d never quite caught and was too embarrassed to ask. I was swelling with pride (and also from being a bit backed up after four stressful days in the clink). Standing in the corner holding a glass of wine was Gillian. I was astonished when she approached and gave me a peck on the cheek.

‘It’s so good to have you home,’ she said, smiling warmly. ‘I was horrified when I heard what had happened, I really was. I’d have come to visit you in there immediately, but I’ve been stuck in endless Council meetings. I repeatedly tried to call a vote to have your arrest rescinded given the flimsy evidence the General had on you, but he carries a lot of sway on the Council and boy, does he know it.’

I had to admit, I was rather surprised by this. The idea that Gillian had pulled out all the stops to try to secure my release… could that really be true? Or was she merely making excuses after the fact for her own inaction, to pretend that she had never doubted me?

‘Thank you for trying,’ I said eventually, still feeling dazed. ‘Hello, everyone.’

‘And so say all of us!’ said Gerry. Trust him to make me look a tit in front of them all.

‘Great to have you back, gaffer,’ Rodway said through a mouthful of caramel éclair. (It was a bit rude that they’d all cracked on with the buffet before I’d arrived, but I thought better of saying anything.) ‘Hasn’t Gillian done you proud with the spread?’

‘Gillian made all this?’ I asked, astonished. I reflected again on what she had said a few moments earlier. Maybe, just maybe, she really was on my side after all.

‘Hidden talents I guess!’ Rodway said. ‘We’re all just so glad to see you home.’

‘And you,’ I said, trying to blink back the tears that I could feel welling behind my eyes. ‘All of you. It’s fantastic to have your support at a time like this. My name’s been dragged through the mud this past week.’

‘I’d have loved to have seen the look on old Leigh’s face when you broke the news to him,’ Gerry said with a delighted cackle.

Leigh had turned a worrying shade of grey when I called him and Brody back in and put the blindingly obvious fact to him: if the attack on the Alliance arsenal the night before had been as a result of someone leaking those plans to the L’zuhl, how on Earth could it have possibly been me? The meeting in which Leigh and the Alliance had made their plans to move ships to Adelphi Six had been on Tuesday night. I’d been in the nick since lunchtime on Monday. I was exonerated. Leigh was completely unapologetic (apart from when he begrudgingly apologised to me as I was released) and looked more worried about the fact that his work in catching the spy would have to continue than about my own welfare. Typical. Always thinking about himself.

‘Serves them all right for making up this whole spy nonsense in the first place,’ Gerry said.

‘No, I’ve changed my mind on that part at least,’ I corrected him. ‘I did initially believe it was all a ruse, a plot to undermine the football club, but having heard what I did during my interrogation, I’m sure it’s the real deal. I’m just glad they can rule me out.’

‘Wow,’ said Gribble, my lanky centre-half, so tall that his hair was scraping the ceiling, his neck at an awkward angle. ‘Who would want to sell us out to the L’zuhl like that?’

‘Not me, that’s the main thing,’ I reiterated. Still, my realisation that the spy was real had somewhat dampened my mood. I’d been utterly convinced it was a ploy to get at me. Now I had to face up to the reality that my football club had in actuality been chucked on the scrapheap for legitimate reasons.

‘That really is it, then,’ Gerry said glumly, picking a strawberry from a cheesecake on the table. ‘If the spy is legit, we’re not getting our funding back.’

Later, as Gerry showed an appalled Gillian his taser battle scars, Rodway came over and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper.

‘Gaffer,’ he said. ‘Are we still on for… for the plan we discussed? About getting out of here to move to that new club? Once the lockdown is lifted, I mean.’

This was something to which I’d been giving a great deal of thought myself during my incarceration – and seeing my lads huddled in the kitchen of my tiny flat to welcome me home had only confirmed and vindicated the decision I had privately made. (A decision which, by the way, was in no way influenced by the fact that Moyesie’s team had secured an emphatic midweek win in Galactic League D during my time inside and his job was suddenly less precarious than it had been.)

‘Palangonia is our home, Rodway,’ I said. ‘We can’t walk away from what we’ve built here.’

‘But—’

‘I’ll admit I got carried away and perhaps spoke to you about it when I should have still been weighing up my options. But it’s the coward’s way out. We have to stay. We have to stand and fight.’

‘I do admire your dedication, Kevin, I really do,’ Gillian said, wandering over. ‘But while this spy is at large, there’s no prospect of the club’s funding being restored. And, as you’ve witnessed for yourself first-hand, the guards have nothing to go on. He, or she, is out there somewhere. But they clearly have no idea where to start looking. The bottom line is, short of you going out and finding that spy yourself, Palangonia FC is not coming back any time soon.’

In a flash, a light bulb was suddenly illuminated above my head.

‘That still playing up, is it?’ Gerry said, squinting at the ceiling. ‘Mine does that sometimes. I’ll see if I can get someone in to fix that for you.’

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Gillian, you’re a genius.’

‘Am I?’ she said, bemused. ‘That’s not exactly the tune you’ve been singing this past year, I must say.’

‘I’m going to save Palangonia FC. And if it helps win this stupid war at the same time, then so much the better.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ Gerry said blankly.

‘First thing tomorrow,’ I said, ‘I’m going out into the Compound. And I’m not coming back home until I catch that bloody spy myself.’