The Damned Utd by David Peace (easy readers txt) 📕

are never out of the local papers. Never off the local telly –

‘It’s him or me,’ you tell the board. The press. The fans. ‘Him or me.’

Mr Ernest Ord, millionaire chairman of Hartlepools United, resigns –

Your first coup. Your first blood –

1–0.

* * *

I shower, bathe and dress alone. Except for my youngest lad. Then down the corridors, round the corners, back to the office, his office, to wait for Jimmy; Jimmy taking fucking for ever. I look at my watch. It’s not there. I look in my pockets. But it’s bloody gone –

Maurice Lindley puts his head round the door. No knock –

Maurice Lindley, assistant manager of Leeds United, right-hand man to the Don, another one of the Don’s backroom boys along with Les Cocker and Syd Owen, Bob English and Cyril Partridge, another one that the Don left behind …

Maurice Lindley puts a thick file marked Top Secret down on that desk, his desk. Maurice says, ‘Thought you’d be wanting to see this.’

Maurice Lindley, football’s master spy, in his trench coat and his disguises.

I look down at that file on that desk. Top Secret. I ask him, ‘What the hell is it?’

‘Dossier on Huddersfield Town,’ says Maurice. ‘The bloody works.’

‘You’re joking?’ I ask him. ‘It’s a bloody testimonial. A fucking friendly.’

‘No such thing,’ says Maurice. ‘Not round here. Don didn’t believe in friendlies. Don believed in winning every game we played. Don believed –’

There’s a knock on the office door. My youngest lad looks up from his pens –

‘Who is it?’ I shout.

‘It’s me, Boss,’ says Jimmy. ‘I got it.’

I get up from that bloody chair. From behind that fucking desk.

Jimmy comes in, brown parcel in his hands. He passes it to me. ‘There you go.’

‘What about the petrol?’ I ask him.

‘It’s in the boot of the car.’

‘Good man,’ I say and unwrap the brown paper parcel –

I unwrap the parcel and I take out an axe –

‘Stand well back,’ I tell them all. ‘Look out, Maurice!’

And I swing that axe down into that desk, his desk, Don’s desk…

I swing it down and then up, up and then back down again –

Into his desk and his chair. Into his photos and his files …

Again and again and again.

Then I stop and I stand in the centre of what’s left of that office, panting and sweating like a big fat black fucking dog. Maurice Lindley gone. Jean Reid too. Jimmy bloody Gordon and my youngest little lad flat against one wall –

I’m a dynamite-dealer, waiting to blow the place to Kingdom Cum …

Then Jimmy and my youngest help me gather up all the pieces of the desk and the chair, all the photos and the files, all the bloody dossiers and every other fucking thing in that office, and we take it all outside and pile it up in the far corner of the car park, and then I go to the boot of Jimmy’s car and take out the Castrol and pour it all over the pile, then I light a cigarette and take a couple of drags before I throw it on the pile and watch it all bloody burn –

To Kingdom fucking Cum –

Burn. Burn. Burn.

* * *

You saved Hartlepools from re-election in your first season. Now you have taken them to eighth in your second. You have also had a third child, a girl –

But these are not the things you will remember about Hartlepools United.

You don’t hear this story until ten years later, but it haunts you; it haunts you here and it haunts you now –

Ernest Ord turned up at Peter Taylor’s door in his Rolls-Royce and he told Peter, ‘I’ve come to give you a warning. Your mate has finished me and one day he’ll do the same to you. Mark my words, Taylor. You mark my words.’

Haunts you here. Haunts you now.

Day Three

I have been in the shadows here, in the corridors and round the corners. I have been in the wings, with the crows and with the dogs. Heart racing and legs shaking. My tongue still, my mouth closed. Ears back and eyes open. Under grey skies –

I have kept my own counsel …

No kids with me today. Not today. Today there are things to do. Things to say. Not things for kids to hear. For kids to see. Under grey skies –

Until today; Friday 2 August 1974.

The first team traipse down the embankment from the training ground to the car park, their studs across the tarmac. The team stand around the black cinders in the far corner of the car park. Their hands on their hips, their names on their backs, they move their boots through the white ash. Under grey skies –

‘Players’lounge,’ I tell them. ‘Ten minutes.’

* * *

Two families by the seaside. The Royal Hotel, Scarborough. Oh, you do like to be beside the seaside. You are happy here, with your ice cream and your deckchair. Your wife and your three kids. You are a home bird and a happy bird now. The fear of unemployment and the need to booze, both are gone for now. Evil Ernest Ord has been vanquished and Hartlepools have finished eighth from the top this season –

There is a new roof upon the stand. Thanks to you. Modern floodlights too –

It is 1967 and things are on the up. You are happy here, but Peter is not –

Your very best pal. Your right hand. Your shadow …

Restless and jealous, his ear to the ground and his lips to the phone –

The bucket-and-sponge man on £24 a week –

‘Look, we took Hartlepools only as a stepping stone to something better, and now that something has come along. You know yourself that