“I don’t have a choice.”
“Of course you do.” Any sport requires dedication if you’re going to do it at a high level, but it’s the price of the ticket. “Why don’t you go back to the club?”
“There’s no point.”
“Why not? You can start again, work your way back up?”
“I can’t. I’m diabetic.”
Jordan put the drinks on the table.
“I was good, wasn’t I?” Shane said to Jordan. “A couple of years ago, I could really fight.”
Jordan nodded.
“It was going well. I was clearing up at junior level and I had a chance of making it as a pro. Bill was going to put me in touch with some people who could sort me out.”
“Burrows?”
He shook his head. “Proper boxing people. A proper manager.”
“But the diabetes stopped that?”
He nodded. “It’s not easy to fight professionally with it. It’s a big hassle and nobody would touch me now I’ve got it. I’m damaged goods.”
I sympathized with him. My rugby career had been ended by injury when I was barely out of my teens. “So you turned to unlicensed boxing?”
“It’s not illegal.”
“I know it’s not.”
“I’ve got debts to pay. I need to earn some money and all I know is how to fight. There’s no jobs about, anyway.”
Fair point. “How did you end up fighting for Burrows?”
“He runs all the unlicensed stuff in the area. Billy wasn’t able to help me any more, so I went to see Burrows, told him what my position was like. Said I needed the work.”
“And he signed you up?”
“He’s always looking for new fighters.”
I didn’t know much about unlicensed boxing but it was obviously going to be more dangerous. I knew I’d be wasting my breath. He needed to fight.
We drank up in silence. I suggested we go back to their flat.
“How did you end up fighting each other?” I asked. I’d moved the newspapers and cans until there was space to sit on the settee.
“Burrows told us we had to,” Jordan said.
Shane nodded. “Since we were kids. We practically live together like a married couple nowadays.”
I mulled it over and got down to business. “Why did you throw the fight, Jordan?”
Jordan looked terrified. “I didn’t throw no fight.”
“Burrows says you did.”
He looked at Shane. “I wouldn’t throw a fight, would I?”
“Course not. We’re proper fighters.”
“Why would Burrows tell me you’d thrown it?”
Jordan slumped back further into chair. “He’s mentioned it to me before. He said it was the only way I’d make some money because he was thinking of getting rid of me.”
“Why would he get rid of you?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. It’s his business.” He leant towards me. “You’ve got to tell him I didn’t throw the fight. I wouldn’t do that.”
I doubted Burrows would listen. I looked up as Billy walked into the flat. He unzipped his jacket and sat down with us. “I take it you’ve all got yourselves into a spot of bother?”
Billy sat there silently as I explained what had happened. And the overriding problem of Burrows.
“Throwing unlicensed fights?” Billy looked appalled, but I suspected not too surprised. “Is that what it’s come to? If you needed money, Jordan, you only had to ask. I would have found you something. I always need people at the gym. Anything so you didn’t have to mix it with the likes of Burrows.”
Both Shane and Jordan were shaking their heads. “We wouldn’t do that to you, Billy,” Shane said.
“I didn’t throw the fight,” Jordan repeated.
“Neither did I,” said Shane.
I looked at both of the fighters. “I believe you. Both of you.”
“What do you mean?” said Billy.
“Jordan didn’t throw the fight,” I said.
“Why is Burrows looking for him, then?” asked Billy.
“Because he knew Shane wouldn’t be far away. He’s the one Burrows really wants.”
We all turned to Shane. “I didn’t throw the fight.” He looked away from us. “I didn’t get the chance. I was supposed to go down in the third. It wasn’t meant to happen. I didn’t mean to put Jordan down.”
It would have been an unpleasant surprise for Burrows. An expensive one, seeing as he was the bookmaker and organizer. Shane was the one with the talent, the youth champion. I assumed most of the punters would have been betting on him winning. Maybe he wasn’t able to help himself. Maybe he got lucky. Either way, one punch was enough to bring the fight to an end. It could happen. I looked at Billy. “Can you sort this?”
He nodded. “I run a gym full of the city’s finest boxers. I can sort it.” He paused. “I could use some new equipment for the gym, though.”
I smiled and took the money I’d got from Burrows out of my pocket. Passed it to him. “Will that cover it?”
He counted it before putting it in his pocket. “Perfect. I guess sucker punches can come in many forms, Mr Geraghty.”
Top Hard
Stephen Booth
The lorry I’d been watching was a brand new Iveco with French registration plates. All tarted up with flags and air horns and rows of headlights, it was like the space shuttle had just landed in a layby on the A1.
I’d got myself a position no more than thirty yards away, slumped in the driver’s seat of a clapped-out four-year-old Escort that had last been driven by a clapped-out brewery rep. Or that was the way it looked, anyway. It was one o’clock on an ordinary Monday afternoon. And all I had to do was wait.
The trouble was, the lorry hadn’t been doing very much. So all I had to look at was a red and white sticker on the Escort’s dashboard thanking me for not smoking, and a little dangling plastic ball that told me what direction I was going in. I might have been facing the soft south, but at least I was nicotine free.
I already knew a few things about this French truck by now, of course. I’d counted its sixteen wheels and admired the size of its tail pipes. I’d seen the sleeping compartment behind the cab, which contained a little ten-inch colour telly, a fridge and even a microwave oven for warming up the driver’s morning croissant. I knew that its forty-foot trailer was packed full of leather jackets, jeans and denim shirts — all good stuff that’s really easy to shift. And I also knew that somebody was going to be really pissed off about that trailer very soon.
Well, it definitely looked like a solid job so far — good information, and a plan that might actually come together for once. And that’s saying something in this part of the world. So all I had to do was sit tight and wait for the action. Yeah, right. It’s funny how things can start out really good and solid in the morning, and then turn totally brown and runny by tea time. It’s one of my own little theories. I call it the Stones McClure Vindaloo Lunch Rule. It’s as if the bloke with the beard up there likes a bit of a joke now and then. And this was going to be one of his joke days. Well, I might just die laughing.
Meanwhile, sitting in a tatty motor was in danger of ruining my image — the Escort just wasn’t worth looking at. Well, that’s the point of it, I suppose. There were an incredible 85,000 miles on the clock of this thing, which proved it hadn’t been handled by a used car dealer recently. The floor seemed to be covered in empty sweet wrappers, the mouldy debris of a cheese sandwich, and dozens of screwed-up bits of pink and white tissue. The inside panels looked as though they’d been trampled by a gang of miners in pit boots. The cover had fallen off the fuse box, and a tangle of wires and coloured plastic hung out of it, for all the world as if I’d just botched a hot-wire job. The car smelled of stale beer, too. Maybe a pack of free samples had split open some time. Or maybe a brewery rep just goes around smelling like that. You can take low-profile a bit too far sometimes.