White Lines

by Mel Stein

  The words sounded so out of character coming from Mark’s mouth that Halid reeled back in anger, once again clenching his fists into a ball.

  ‘Don’t hit me, Mo,’ Mark muttered without changing the expression of disgust on his face, ‘I tend to bruise easily.’

  The words had the desired effect. Halid jerked himself back to reality, accepted that he was a part of a masquerade of his own production, and simply turned his back on his erstwhile employee.

  Nick nudged Halid. ‘Well, at least we’ve found out what sort of actor he is.’ But Mark was no longer listening, he was already halfway across the room towards the triumphant Nathan Carr.

  ‘Is that offer of a job still on the table?’ Mark asked.

  ‘I don’t withdraw an offer until it’s been rejected. I don’t believe I ever heard you turning it down.’

  ‘I didn’t. When do I start?’

  ‘Don’t you want to discuss terms?’ Carr asked with a smile on his face.

  ‘Same as I was getting at Ball Park plus ten per cent. I’ll show you the contract so you know I’m telling you the truth. An appearance fee that we’ll agree every time I do a broadcast, double that basic amount if I’m the main commentator. One year rolling contract. How does that grab you for terms?’

  ‘Not bad for an ex-footballer. Don’t you guys always have agents?’

  ‘Not this guy. Pet hate. If I represent myself then I’ve only myself to blame if I sell myself short. And if I sell myself ten per cent short then I’m still breaking even by paying no commission.’ Mark paused and gathered his thoughts. Carr was no fool and he had to play this exactly right or else he could be in serious trouble. He didn’t think Carr was going to take lightly to industrial espionage. He decided to inject a little humour into the conversation. ‘I suppose my margin of error might be fifteen per cent or even twenty. Agents are getting greedier by the day.’

  ‘So what happened between you and my old friend Mo?’ Carr asked.

  ‘He used me and then he blamed me.’

  ‘Sounds par for the course.’ The woman standing beside Carr spoke for the first time and then extended her right hand towards Mark. He could not help but notice the long fingers, nails immaculately groomed, everything about her immaculate, the skin soft and cool beneath his fingers. She wore a Hermès scarf around her neck, a subtle bracelet, silver rather than gold, with a single charm, a bird in the same design as Carr’s ring. She, too, wore a ring, but only one, in delicate filigree silver, looking as if it might break if it were touched. The silver watch on her wrist had a strap with the same design. Everything about her suggested understated wealth, down to the green, perfectly cut business suit, that merely suggested the curvaceous figure that lay beneath.

  ‘Alissa, Alissa Bland,’ she said. ‘You may remember we met briefly at the reception after the Colombia match. I’ve enjoyed watching you on the box. We’re both fans, Nathan and I.’

  It was a platitude, yet the way she said it suggested to Mark that she really meant it. He’d liked her handshake as well; firm, inviting rather than repulsing contact. She looked at him steadily and for the first time he wondered whether he was doing the right thing by setting them up for his betrayal. Had Judas also thought he was doing the right thing? He’d reacted instinctively in crossing the floor, but now his instinct was telling him that whatever Nathan Carr might be, Alissa Bland was an honest woman. Hard, without doubt – he knew of her reputation – but honest nevertheless. It was probably too late to turn back, and if he started disbelieving Mo he would never carry this thing through. If Alissa Bland worked as closely with her chairman as he had been led to believe then he had to regard her as the enemy, had to tar her with the same brush as her chairman.

  ‘When are you booked to get back to England?’ Carr asked.

  ‘Tomorrow evening. I’m on the same flight as the rest of the Ball Park crew. I think they thought it would be a late night for them.’

  ‘Well, it will be for us; but we’re still flying back first thing in the morning. Got a lot on at the office anyway, even without everything that will flow from this. I’d like you to join us for dinner tonight. It’s by way of celebration. I’ve booked us a private room at the hotel. The chef knows he’s on a big bonus if he really turns it on. I’m not sure if you can use the phrase “pig out” in relation to food at the Dolder Grand, but we’re sure as hell going to try.’

  ‘Short notice,’ Mark said, then immediately regretted it. The less astute Carr thought him to be the better chance he had of getting his confidence.

  ‘I told you we were going to win. No point in being unprepared if you’re confident. Welcome aboard, Mark. It’s eight o’clock. Black tie.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I should come. Won’t the rest of your team think it odd? And I’m not sure if I want to rub Mo’s nose in it that much. He and the rest of them will still be around tonight.’

  ‘Your loyalty does you justice. But I know what Mo can do to people. He weaves his magic and everybody is under his spell. He makes you think he cares, he demands loyalty and says he gives it back, but you’ve seen the other side of him. He’s a bad loser, Mark. No room in any game for poor losers.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘I know so. I told you we’d win and we did. Have you got a dinner suit?’

  ‘Actually I have. Ball Park was also going to have a dinner party. Maybe they still will.’

  ‘It’ll be like a wake and ours is going to be a real celebration. I’ll leave your name at the door. And don’t worry. You won’t have to spend the evening with a bunch of strangers. We’re all one big happy family and I’ll make sure you have a seat between me and Alissa.’

  There was the briefest exchange of glances between the man and the woman, some kind of secret, silent language and Mark was aware that they inter-related as a couple even if there was nothing physical in the relationship. He did not know why he had agreed to step off the side of Ball Park’s boat into unknown waters, but now that he had done so he wondered whether or not he might be swimming for his life.

  CHAPTER 28

  Mark was beginning to dread flying. London–Bogota, Bogota–London, London–Zurich and now back to Heathrow again. And what then? What did Jet hold in store for him? In the cold light of day what he had done seemed remarkably stupid. How on earth did Halid think he was going to discover any deep, dark secrets just by commentating on matches? In fact he wasn’t too sure if he was even going to be commentating in the short term. The ESL would not come into being for a year or so, and Jet mainly showed highlights of league games. He’d done a few dubbed commentaries for Ball Park, without ever enjoying them. It was too easy to be wise after the event, too difficult to put any emotion into it when you knew exactly when the goals would be coming. The fact of the matter was he had no plan, did not even know what he was after or indeed whether there was anything there at all. Carr could simply have won fair and square. Yet he’d travelled down seemingly blind alleys before and sooner or later there was a turn, another turn, a curve and there you were out in the dazzling sunlight.

  He tried to doze on the plane, but his mind was too active and the stewardesses too solicitous, puzzled that of all the passengers in Swiss Air’s first class, he was the only one declining the endless champagne. For Carr and his associates it was just a continuation of where they had left off last night, or to be more accurate, that morning. Carr was treating Mark as a long lost brother, insisting that they sat together on the plane.

  ‘My old mate Mo’s travelling BA, I suppose?’

  Mark nodded.

  ‘Always one for flying the flag was Mo,’ Carr continued. ‘Wanted to be more English than the English. Not for me, I’m afraid. Everybody knows I’m Jewish. East End roots and all that. I’m not ashamed of it. Not that I bother with all that religious mumbo-jumbo, but being Jewish can open more doors than it closes. Me, I always like to fly first-class. If you can afford it then why not? BA only has Club on its European runs, so I don’t fly it. Sim
ple enough. Got the money, why not spend it? Why not?’

  He ended the sentence with a question addressed to himself, and Mark got the impression that he was only half talking to him, half reassuring himself that he truly was where he believed himself to be. An odd man, and yet so far Mark had no reason to understand the loathing that Mo clearly felt towards him. He could, however, sympathise with Carr’s emotions. Mo had stolen his wife. Mark had undergone the same experience with one of the Hertsmere players when he’d been at the peak of his drinking sessions. It had taken a long time to accept that his wife, the mother of his daughter, was sharing a bed with another man.

  He’d not enjoyed the previous evening, largely because it was no fun being one of the few sober people with a load of drunken celebrants. He’d longed to be in his bed from eleven onwards, wondering how he could have ever been locked into the twilight zone of alcohol.

  Nathan Carr had not got drunk though. He could either take his drink or else made a very good show of pretending to drink along with the rest of the party. Mark did not see him decline a refill all night, but then he did not see his glass empty either. It was another piece of the jigsaw, and although Mark was already having regrets about the whole charade there was still a part of him, the investigative part, that wanted to know Carr a little better.

  Alissa Bland had made no such pretence of holding back on the booze. Mark could not help but recall the last time he’d been alone with a woman who’d had more than a little to drink. He felt, no, he knew, he’d made an enemy of Jenny Cooper and he didn’t want a repeat performance with a woman with whom he’d be working so closely. She was close to him all evening, with her low-cut dress and expensive perfume and it made him nervous.

  For years he had no woman in his life except for the constant nagging of his ex-wife, then Patti had arrived from nowhere and now he had two women showing an interest in him in the space of a couple of weeks. He couldn’t believe that he’d become more desirable, but perhaps he was just sending out messages that he could not control.

  ‘Tell me about yourself,’ Alissa said, her eyes holding his until he was forced to look away on the pretext of adjusting his napkin. There was just a hint of grey in her blonde hair, a few lines about her eyes, a tightness at the neck and although she was still a highly attractive woman she was under pressure in holding back the inexorable tide of time. She had to be over forty, but whatever his thoughts he always returned to her eyes, which were at once those of an innocent teenager and as old as Eve, flickering with life and with knowledge.

  To his surprise he had told her all about himself; not all, of course, but more than he had told Patti in the time they’d been together. He told her about the false charges against him that had cut short his footballing career, he told her about the battle with drink, the break-up of his marriage, the temporary loss of his child. He told her about his old landlord, Leo Schneider, and the money he’d been left. He told her about Italy and Russia, about his dicing with death and he’d told her about Patti and her problems in Colombia.

  She had a real talent for listening, prompting him at the right moment, showing an interest when he thought he might be boring her, asking the right questions and waiting patiently for the answers. And all the time she was drinking steadily as if encouraging him to believe that her defences were down, that anything and everything he might say would be forgotten in the morning.

  On the plane, he wondered if he’d said too much, if Carr had deliberately placed her next to him to ascertain whether or not his motives for crossing the floor were, indeed, genuine. Or perhaps to go even further and see what it was that made Mark Rossetti tick. As the evening wore on she had not come on to him strongly, and there was never any suggestion that he might be obliged to sleep with her; yet as he fell into bed for the few hours sleep he could grab before he had to leave for the airport, it did occur to him that if he had asked she would not have said no. But he knew he had done the right thing by excusing himself at two a.m. Normally he would not have dreamed of phoning Patti in the middle of the night, but as she seemed to have done little but sleep since her return he hoped that she’d take the call instead of allowing her answerphone to pick up the message. She’d phoned him at ten as promised and had actually said she’d be waiting for his call. Tonight, she was his life-line to normality. She represented the real world, although the reality of calling a woman who was out on bail accused of drug-smuggling offences in Colombia was more fantastic than the rest of his present situation. To his relief she actually answered the phone at the third ring. Her voice was sleepy, but perfectly lucid.

  ‘Hi, it’s me.’

  ‘So I gather. It was always going to be you or a dirty phone call at this unearthly hour.’

  ‘Even a heavy breather wouldn’t want to risk your wrath.’

  ‘Have you called just to throw insults or is it important?’

  ‘It’s important.’

  ‘So tell me.’

  ‘I love you.’

  It sounded lame, melodramatic, and Mark knew from past experience that from here on in it could go either way.

  ‘I love you too. I’m glad you called. I’m missing you. I’m sorry about how I’ve been, both before and after Bogota. You must be crazy to want to hang on in there.’

  ‘Didn’t you know all footballers are crazy?’

  ‘I thought it was only goalkeepers.’

  ‘No, they’re just crazier than the rest.’

  ‘Did you call just to tell me you loved me?’ she asked with a yawn.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Liar. I know you, Rossetti, you’ve something else on your mind.’

  ‘I have, but you’re not here to allow me to put it into action.’

  ‘I’m the one with the blarney. Or is this the romantic Italian side of you that’s finally coming out of the closet?’

  There was a silence.

  ‘I hope you’re not paying for this call, Mark, because if you are you’re not getting your money’s worth. Come clean. I can hear you smiling down the line.’

  ‘I’m not smiling, Patti, believe me. I think I’ve done something stupid.’

  ‘That makes a change. If it’s really stupid, then it probably makes us even. So what did you do? Put your shoes on the wrong feet? Arrange to meet some Colombian drug baron in the wee small hours of the morning and not turn up?’

  ‘’Probably worse than that. I’ve just agreed to work for Nathan Carr at Jet.’

  ‘Wow. That beats Colombian drug barons.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘So they say, Mark, so they say.’

  ‘Can you always believe what people say?’ Mark asked, seeking some comfort.

  ‘Most of the time most of the people are right. Take a long spoon if you’re eating with him.’

  ‘I already have and the cutlery was standard size.’

  ‘Watch out for the indigestion, then. Can I go back to sleep now or are we rehearsing for a telethon?’

  ‘One more question,’ he said, reluctant to end the conversation. When she was in this sort of mood it gave him a warm glow just to hear her voice.

  ‘Do you know anything about his first lieutenant, Alissa Bland?’

  ‘I can find out. Carr himself has always been newsworthy, that’s why I know about the company. I’d have to ask somebody who writes regular business pieces. Can it wait until you get back?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Why are you so interested in Miss Bland? It is Miss, I assume.’

  ‘I sat next to her at dinner.’

  ‘Oh yes, the meal with the standard cutlery. Did you shag her?’

  He could tell by the lightness of her tone that she knew he hadn’t, but he answered anyway.

  ‘If I had then she’d still be here.’

  ‘How do I know she’s not.’

  ‘You’ll have to trust me. I’d hardly be asking about her if she were still in the bed.’

  ‘It could have been a quickie.’

  ‘I don’t
think Alissa Bland is the sort of woman who’d appreciate a quickie.’

  ‘You never know. She might quite like a bit of rough trade. Appearances can be deceptive. I do, otherwise I’d never have got involved with you. Anyway, got to go now. The bloke in the bed’s getting impatient. I love you, Mark.’ And then she put down the phone before he could say another word, and, indeed, there was little more to say.

  He still wondered what she might come up with about Alissa. He doubted his own judgment when it came to people. He’d been wrong too many times before, yet in this case, the research he’d asked Patti to carry out made him feel a little guilty. He glanced at the woman seated across the aisle from him on the plane. She was working on her laptop, concentrating on the information on the screen, oblivious to her surroundings. And what about Nathan Carr? He had tended to take Halid’s warning with a pinch of salt. He had good reason to bear a grudge. But Patti was different. She was a journalist. She knew people, had cold, hard facts at her fingertips to help her differentiate the good from the bad. On a rating system her reaction to Carr had been five-star bad.

  For the last time he wondered if he could change his mind. He could tell Carr he was getting married, that he wanted to work for no one. He could wish Mo good luck and leave the pair of them to get on with their lives whilst he got on with his. He could sort out Patti, make sure she was cleared and then really settle down with her for once and for all. His life had been in two separate compartments for too long. He could shut one down for ever and devote his time to living in the one that contained the person for whom he cared most of all. Yet something told him that wasn’t a real option any more, that life would not be that simple. He had to see this particular drama through to the end and, truth to tell, he could not contain his curiosity as to how it would all pan out.

  CHAPTER 29