A sporting Parable

Our investigator’s recent snooker analogy speaks volumes. I knew when I saw his calling card ID image (thin moustache, trilby, mean gaze, fingers ready to snap at the bar staff, but not for drinks – for answers…) that he was well acquainted with the smoky green baize world of snooker halls. My own experiences from Denver to Duluth and from Stirling to Saltburn are enough to know the worth of the snooker hall as a breeding ground for rumour, off-the-record conjecture, and discourse with unknown strangers, associates, hoods, old boys, local figures, crooks… The balls chime like bells and then vanish. The cannon, the swerve… The amount of investigator’s notes written in blue chalk is testament to the worth of the pool hall. I once got into a frame of doubles with Johnny the Shark. Gone was the hard man image – at the table he was a pussy cat – all talk. Sweet talk at that.

I recall one snooker hall incident – struggling to see the table through clouds of cigar smoke, I went to the wrong table. Setup was roughly as remembered – reds opened but not fully – most still in a huddle behind the pink like nervous sheep. Cue ball up top resting somewhere near the D. No clear lines for a pot. I went to play a nestle shot into the pack, nice and gentle – leave it sitting in amongst those infantrymen. Up steps a stranger. I’m bent down by now lining up. Cigar haze too, remember. ‘Yunno Jack’, the stranger says, ‘I say we spring it Saturday next.’ I glance up at said stranger. ‘I say not,’ I tell him, in a gravely voice. ‘Never do on a Saturday night what you can throw on a Friday. Twice the recovery time, see.’ Stranger looks at the balls. I have a change of heart, play the ball glancing off corner red to return back up top again. Get lucky – it settles behind the brown nice and tight. I walk back into the fog. Find my double rum, and then find my table. Play the same shot all cocky on my own green, only mess it up this time and sink the white in the corner hole. My associate laughs. It’s always more rewarding impressing strangers anyway. Friends already know what you can do.

A week later I read the paper to see the local bank got hit for a few rows of noughts on a Friday evening. I feel proud to have masterminded it, but don’t hand myself in.