Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(75)

Robbie wordlessly embraces him. Alfie calls, “Jimmy,” in that singsong voice Jamal and the boys always used to greet one another. One by one the lads step forward to shake his hand.

Alfie takes out an envelope, a wad of bulging notes. “For you.”

Jamal stares at them all. Sees the guilt on their faces. He shakes his head. “I don’t need that. I’m doing fine over there.”

“It’s legit,” one of the Ayoub cousins says.

“It’s clean, brother,” Robbie says. “For Noor’s kid. If they arrest little Violette, you make sure she’s got the best to take care of her.”

Jamal’s overwhelmed, not wanting to insult them with a refusal. So he mumbles a thanks and takes the envelope. Beyond his childhood circle he can see his coach. Even when Jamal was a kid, Bill looked ancient.

“He’s getting old and tired of the little tossers coming through, yeah,” Robbie says.

“Bigger tossers than us?” Jamal asks.

“If you want to meet tossers you should see some of the kids I’m teaching.”

Jamal makes his way towards Bill. It would be disrespectful to let the old guy come to him. He tries not to think of father figures because that will remind him of his own father, Louis. And what he did. But Bill had been a father figure. He was his coach since he was a kid. He came to Jamal’s house when he was six and told his parents their son had a gift. There are times in Calais when Jamal finds himself threatening the kids he coaches with words that came out of Bill’s mouth.

They don’t speak for a while. Just watch the younger lads warm up. Alfie is shouting out some inane advice and his brother is telling him to shut up.

“I thought they weren’t letting you back in,” Bill finally says.

Jamal shrugs. “They’ve changed the rules for a couple of days.”

Bill doesn’t ask why.

“Any of them good?” Jamal asks.

“Lazy lot. No one says they want to play football anymore. Everyone wants to be a star.”

“You used to say the exact same thing about us, boss.”

That seems to lighten the mood slightly.

“What are you doing with yourself over there?”

“Bit of this and that. Training some of the local kids.”

“Any of ’em good?”

“Doesn’t really matter. Most are migrants. They just disappear after a while.”

Bill blows his whistle and walks towards the players and Jamal follows. It’s the smell of the grass. The neighborhood. It’s watching Bill’s bandy legs as he walks. It’s remembering the nights Noor and Etienne would walk down to watch him practice, and how Layla would be trailing them because she had been after Davie Kennedy with a vengeance. How they’d go to the chippy on the way home.

When training is over, Jamal runs that field with his Brackenham lads and a bunch of fourteen-year-olds. He can feel the Tannous brothers at his heels, just like the old days. They were never able to catch him back then. Jamal had never been as invincible as he was at fourteen.

The younger lads approach to taunt Alfie, who’s lying on the ground panting.

“The boss says you was even better than Rooney,” one of them says to Jamal.

“Yeah, better-looking.”

And then it’s time to go, and without saying good-bye he turns to walk away. Because he knows he shouldn’t have come. Nostalgia is a weakness.

“Jimmy lad?”

The old guy is close behind. Jamal stops and waits.

“People around here talk more now,” Bill says in a low voice. “It’s not that they’ve forgotten the dead, but some people…some people say the coppers shouldn’t have gone for the whole family. Some’d bet their life you had nothing to do with it.”

“Would you?”

Bill’s eyes are watery with age and emotion. “My opinion’s not worth much.”

“It’s worth everything.”

The old guy gives a smile. “Then I’d bet my life.”



Layla is in her bedroom when he gets back. The door is open so he takes a step inside. There isn’t much in the room apart from the bed, a print on the wall, and a dresser, but it all speaks of class. The Bayat sisters always liked beautiful things and they can spot a bargain from across a marketplace. Jocelyn taught Layla to be frugal but to choose well, the approach she took when she chose Ali Shahbazi to marry. It was her only way out of the council estates. Layla’s way out was her brains.

She looks up from where she’s sitting on the bed. Her eyes are swollen, as if she’s been bawling all afternoon. Beside her is a cardboard box of stuff that she’s sorting through.

“Did you go down to Haversham Park?”

He nods. “No one speaks normally,” he says. “It’s always a whisper. Noor’s name. Etienne’s. Now Violette’s. They’ve all become a whisper. Am I one?”

“You’re the greatest whisper of them all,” she says. “It’s human nature. You make people feel good about their lives. Because whatever they’ve experienced, it can’t be worse than what happened to Jimmy Sarraf.”

“I don’t want my niece to be a whisper.”

He takes the envelope of money from his pocket and holds it up. “Alfie and the lads. Can you get it back to them somehow?”