Stranglehold (6 page)

Charlie Kemp liked crowds, especially when they were somewhat in awe of him, as they were at the football club. Crowds were good for business, and they offered all kinds of possibilities to a resourceful entrepreneur. Staffing, for instance: he had recruited the two men he had just used in Bristol here, watching their performance as weekend bouncers for a little while first.

And crowds could become customers. You could sell all kinds of things to crowds, provided you could get the supply. Some of them could be very profitable indeed.

There were other exciting possibilities, too. Girls came here, in a compelling variety of shapes and sizes. With the lights low and the music turned high in the evenings, the place had an excitement and a glamour which disguised its tawdriness from them. After a few drinks, with the presence of fit young men around them – Kemp encouraged the players to mingle here, except on the nights before matches – girls, even women, found this a place of heady excitement.

And Charlie, though officially without an interest in the
Roosters
Social Club, controlled all this. Everyone understood that. And especially the women, whose judgement was not generally clouded by the latest successes or failures on the football field. Power was the great aphrodisiac; Charles Kemp had heard that, and stored it away. He took care to make his power apparent as he moved among the crowded tables of the
Roosters.

Many of the girls liked his bluff, no-nonsense style, and he was good at spotting the ones who did. He knew very little about women, but in the heady, artificial world of the
Roosters
at night, a world where sweat and cheap scent seemed equally at home, neither they nor he were aware of that fact. Charlie thought he could ‘spot a goer', and some of the girls were flattered enough by the attentions of the man the sports pages called ‘Mr Oldford' to foster that impression for him.

Charles Kemp had an overweight, unexciting wife at home. They had separate rooms, and he ventured into hers less and less frequently. He thought that in his own way he was fond of her still, but he never investigated those feelings, not being of a reflective nature. She was wheeled out, bejewelled and expensively coiffured, on the occasions when it was necessary to show such a partner. She did not let him down at Ladies' Nights at the Lodge, or at the charity balls where they danced carefully at arm's length and conversed with the respectable burghers of the town. She was one of his badges of respectability.

In the little private suite at the
Roosters
to which he kept the key, Charlie Kemp indulged in urgent and violent couplings of a different kind. They sometimes frightened the girls involved, and they revealed to him a part of his own nature which he had thought safely suppressed. But these girls were there to be used: didn't they come to him of their own free will? Besides, they got money, and sometimes employment: Kemp's extensive range of enterprises could often provide that.

Indeed, he had been preparing in the last few months to offer lucrative employment to a selection of the girls he watched in the
Roosters.
There was money in sex, if it was properly organized. Even some of the punters who came here were prepared to pay for it. Not as many as in Bristol or Birmingham, but enough.

The town was growing, and the oldest trade would grow with it. It was one of Kemp's principles that one should be in on the ground floor with new developments. A little of the organization he was good at would pay rich dividends to himself as well as to the girls.

And he could always indulge his darker side with them. That would be a bonus.

Kemp went into the hospitality suite on the first floor of the building; it had a door at one end which opened straight into the directors' box in the main stand, but that was kept locked, except on match days. Behind a small door on the opposite wall of the room, the Secretary of Oldford FC had his office. He was an employee of the football club, not Kemp's; the man was clear enough about that, but as with other things around the club, the distinction was blurred in other people's minds.

Beside the Secretary's door, there was a neat box with three lights, designed to light up when the button beside them was pressed and the man inside responded. They said ‘Engaged', ‘Wait' and ‘Enter', and lit up when the Secretary pressed the appropriate button on his desk.

Kemp opened the door abruptly without knocking. ‘'Afternoon, Jack,' he said. ‘Has Vic Knowles confirmed his visit?'

If John Castle was disturbed by the manner of the Chairman's arrival in his office, he gave no sign of it. ‘He rang about half an hour ago, from his car phone. He should be here in a few minutes, now.' Unlike other people around the place, he never called the Chairman ‘sir'. It was one of his tiny assertions of independence.

Kemp noticed the fact, but for the moment it suited him to ignore it. ‘Good. I think it would be a good idea if you had a word with the groundsman, Jack. He's cutting the grass on the pitch pretty short, and there's no sign of rain. If we have to water it during this hosepipe ban, we'll have the usual busy bodies writing to the
Echo.
'

It was a direction that Castle should be absent when Vic Knowles met the Chairman, and both of them knew it. The Secretary didn't like what was going on, but he knew he could do nothing about it. He nodded, made a face-saving remark about the newly seeded goalmouths, and went downstairs and out into the sunshine. That at any rate felt something of a relief.

Kemp looked after him for a moment with a grin, then made a small redisposition of the furniture in the hospitality suite in preparation for his visitor. In ten minutes, he and Vic Knowles sat opposite each other in big leather armchairs, the atmosphere consciously informal, the Chairman a little more at ease in these familiar surroundings than his visitor.

Knowles sat too far forward to be comfortable in the low armchair. He had a heavily lined face, which made him look older than his forty-four years, and rather prominent front teeth. He had never been handsome, but in his better moments he carried the air of a cheerful Jack-the-lad adventurer. This was not one of those moments.

‘So you think you might be interested?' Kemp looked at Knowles across the top of his glass with a conspiratorial smile: this was still a secret between them. ‘Do help yourself to water, by the way. I take it neat.'

Knowles reached forward awkwardly to the jug on the low table between them, taking the few seconds to try to size his man up. He had met a considerable number of football club chairmen in his day, and they were not a breed he trusted. But in his profession they were a necessary evil, one you had to live with.

‘I'm interested, yes. It would be a bit of a comedown for me, of course, going outside the league, Mr Kemp, but –'

‘Charlie, please. We don't need the formalities, at least in private. We find these silly distinctions get in the way of efficiency at Oldford.' He waved a vague and benign hand to indicate the rest of the extensive premises which made up Oldford FC. There would be time enough to make his withdrawals when he had netted his man. ‘And don't forget we shall soon be in the league. You'll be impressed with our set-up.'

Vic Knowles had heard that one before, but he had more sense than to say so. He couldn't afford to admit it here, but he needed the money; it was an effort to seem as relaxed as he hoped he appeared. He needed to clear his gambling debts; last week he had even pawned the gold watch he had been presented with after a Cup triumph in his heyday of management. He said, ‘Well, I'm open to offers, Charlie. I'm considering one or two proposals at the moment, but ...'

‘Open to offers, yes.' Kemp weighed the phrase. He took a sip of the whisky he had hardly touched, and smiled into his cut-glass tumbler, letting Knowles know that he knew the score. ‘I think you'll find ours interesting.'

Ten years ago, Vic Knowles had been one of the biggest names in football management, a gifted but not exceptional player who had made it through the ranks of more gifted footballers to become manager of a big first division team. He had been interviewed often on television then, fingering the lapels of the colourful suits which he had bought as the accoutrements of success, squandering the increasingly generous appearance and interview fees on booze and gambling.

They had been heady days, tarnished eventually by a too-public affair with a player's wife and a fight in a motorway cafe in front of hundreds of delighted fans. He had moved around the divisions since then, steadily downwards and with varying degrees of success. He did not often last more than a year; initially, he brought discipline to clubs, but he was too careless a martinet for his control to endure in an era of player power.

He had been unemployed since a third division club terminated his contract in April, and Kemp knew all about it. He had taken care to have Knowles's financial background investigated before he approached him through an intermediary. The man must be desperate now. But he was still news, still a big name to land, for a club like Oldford.

And he would be Charlie Kemp's man, if he came. Another coup for Charlie: he could see the
Echo
headlines in his mind's eye already. ‘You'd need to move into the area,' he told Knowles. He noticed that the man had already finished his drink, but he did not pour him another one.

‘That's no problem. If the deal's right,' said Knowles. He tried to appear laid back – that was the phrase the media still used about him, and he tried to live up to the image – but he found himself swigging automatically at a glass that was already empty.

‘We could probably rent you a club house, if it would help.' That would put the new manager more firmly in his power; especially as the said house was owned not by the club but by one Charles Kemp.

Knowles tried not to show his relief. ‘It would be a help, I think. In the early stages. Until I sorted things out.'

‘That's if we can agree a deal.' Kemp sipped reflectively from the inch of whisky which still occupied the bottom of his tumbler. ‘You would be responsible for the team, of course, and for all disciplinary matters.'

Knowles went into the spiel he had used before on such occasions and found effective. ‘I think my track record speaks for itself as far as that goes, Charlie. I've managed the best, and got the best out of them.'

Kemp smiled as he might have done at the naïvety of a child. ‘Past glories, Vic, past glories. In football, you're as good as your last match. You've been around long enough to know that.'

He produced the clichés with a grave air, as though he were offering a new wisdom upon a troubled scene, and Knowles found himself nodding agreement before he realized that he was making a concession. ‘I can handle the team, have no fears about that. Now –'

‘I believe you can, or I wouldn't be talking to you, Vic. We'll pay you fifteen thousand.'

‘Oh, but I couldn't possibly –'

‘And we'll settle your extensive gambling debts.'

The sentence hit Knowles like a blow in the solar plexus. He settled back in his chair, trying to take the deep breaths which were necessary if he was to speak evenly. Kemp decided that he should have a drink, now that he had been softened up. He reached across with the bottle and poured a generous measure, then moved the jug of water two inches nearer to Knowles. ‘You will give us an IOU for the amount of those debts, which will be torn up provided that you stay with us for at least a year.'

Vic said weakly, ‘I don't think I can live on fifteen thousand a year. I've got responsibilities, you see. Since my divorce –'

‘You'll live on it all right, if you cut out your gambling. To assist you in that, our local bookmakers have agreed to inform the club of any ... investments you attempt to make with them.' He knew the man could still bet with the big firms, but the threat was all he wanted at this moment.

Knowles scratched desperately for an argument. ‘But surely some of the players will be on more than me.'

‘None of the players will earn more than the manager. We have some promising lads, but they're all part-timers here. Will be until they get into the league. However, they're on a big bonus if we get into the Vauxhall Conference at the end of next season, and so will you be, Vic. We believe in payment by results here.'

A few minutes later it was settled. Kemp conceded what it was not within his powers to deny, that Knowles could keep the fees from any radio and television interviews he was asked to do during the season. They wouldn't bring in much, but the man still had delusions of grandeur. Kemp didn't mind that; they could still be useful equipment in a business which lived on the dreams of supporters. He had the big-name manager he needed to put Oldford FC still more firmly upon the map.

It was not until the deal was agreed that Knowles raised his single, faint, moral scruple. ‘What about Trevor Jameson?'

Jameson was the existing manager, the one who would have to step aside to make way for Knowles, an honest, anxious man with a flair for football coaching and none for words. ‘Leave him to me, Vic. He's on the Costa del Sol at the moment, I believe. Shame to spoil his holiday; I'll see him when he gets back. He's almost at the end of his contract, anyway.'

Kemp saw Knowles to the door, then watched from the window of the landing outside as the new manager of Oldford FC drove away his Sierra from the almost deserted ground. Then he went back into the hospitality suite and locked away the bottle. He sat for a moment in the big armchair he had occupied for the interview, turning his glass of whisky through his fingers with satisfaction. He had got his man, and cheaper than he had expected. Research, they called it on the telly. Well, he had researched his man; and it had paid off again.

He began to think of the wording of the press release. He thought he would break the news to them before local radio. It was always good to have the newshawks under an obligation. At this hour of the day and in the close season, this place was blessedly quiet, and he enjoyed that.