White Lines

by Mel Stein

  Ferrera was demonstrating his skills as Mark and Patti walked from the car park towards the first team training pitch. He was firing the ball in to Greg Sergovich, the Slav goalie who had been in the country long before the other foreign imports and who now spoke English with such a Cockney accent that only his name served as a reminder that he had not been born within the sound of Bow Bells. Time after time the Colombian beat the Slav, hitting the ball cleanly into the corner of the net, his precision shooting just escaping the keeper’s outstretched hands. There was a mechanical quality about the shooting, one ball in, another rolled to him by an apprentice, cracked in, another ball rolled. Then, just for a second, Ferrera’s eyes lifted and he caught a glimpse of Mark, standing some fifty yards away. He froze completely, his foot drawn back for the shot, looking for all the world like a victim at Pompeii, covered in ash for ever. Finally he completed the shot and Sergovich dived to his left and caught the ball in triumph.

  ‘That’s fifty quid you owe me, Nito,’ Greg called out, reminding him of the bet they had made that the goalkeeper would not make one save out of the first twenty efforts driven at him. But Ferrera wasn’t listening, Ferrera was staring at Mark as if he had seen a ghost and in that moment Mark knew that was exactly what Ferrera had expected him to be. And if that were the case then he must also know who it was who had tried to kill him.

  Ferrera had collected himself together and, ignoring Greg’s taunts, ignoring the fresh ball that was rolled to where he should have been, he walked towards Mark with the air of a gunfighter about to shoot down the new sheriff in town. Patti squeezed Mark’s hand.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’ she asked as he kept his eyes on the approaching figure.

  ‘I’m not sure I need to tell you. I think you’re about to find out for yourself,’ he said calmly. It was not often a man came face to face with somebody who he felt had been involved in an attempt to kill him. Ferrera was within a few feet of him now. He could not possibly be armed, yet such was the menacing expression on his face that Mark’s hand automatically went to his pocket in a vain hope that he might find something with which to defend himself.

  Ferrera stood perfectly still, bunching his fists as if trying to decide whether to hit the Englishman or walk away. In fact he did neither, merely adopting the scornful tone of a man who had knowledge that others did not.

  ‘So, Mark Rossetti has more than one life. But perhaps he has only two lives and we will make no mistake next time.’

  It was said with such a heavy accent, that Patti could only see the absurdity of the threat not its danger.

  ‘Let me go and call Rob Davies,’ Patti urged, still not fully understanding what was happening, but starting to realise that it was something serious. Mark shook his head.

  ‘I can handle this, don’t worry.’

  Patti still began to move towards the car and her phone, but Ferrera grabbed her arm.

  ‘Listen to your man,’ he said, his grip tightening painfully on the muscle between the forearm and the upper limb. In the distance Ray Fowler’s voice rose and fell as, totally oblivious to the little drama being played out behind him, he cracked the whip on the rest of his squad.

  ‘Tell me about it Juanito, just you and me. Let her go. Don’t worry. She won’t call anybody. And, even if she did, you’ve not committed any crime here.’

  He had no idea of the extradition arrangements between Britain and Colombia, but he just hoped that they would not be uppermost in Ferrera’s mind. There was an arrogance about the man which he had thought would serve him well as a footballer. Now he believed that could be turned to equally good use as a way of extracting information. The player released his grip on Patti’s arm, and although she was in pain she was not prepared to give him the satisfaction of rubbing it. She turned to Mark.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’

  ‘I’m sure. There’s not a lot he can do in full sight of the Hertsmere first team.’

  She looked back only once, to satisfy herself that the two men were merely talking, and then obediently made her way back to the car.

  CHAPTER 48

  Mark Rossetti was on the move again, this time on his own. He had listened to Ferrera for almost half an hour, listened to his story, his boasting, his conviction that he was above the law in England. The thing was that he was probably right. He could hardly believe that even Rob Davies could piece together a case based solely upon one look of knowledge and a confession made to just one other man, a confession made more out of conceit than guilt.

  His time with Ferrera had not been within his schedule, but now he was back on track with more questions than answers, with other stops on his journey to uncover the whole truth. The tentacles of the story were clawing at other players in the game, other players in his own life. He was beginning to believe that he had been looking in the wrong places, at the wrong people, that he should have been looking inward at himself as an unknowing catalyst for everything.

  He was not able to leave things tidily behind him. Ferrera had told him he was leaving the country, that he would simply tell Fowler that he could not settle here and he was missing his home and family. He did not care if he could not play. Eventually somebody might buy him and get Hertsmere some of their money back.

  ‘It is not too bad for them. They have only paid half of the money. If I want to I have enough money to buy my contract myself. I am a rich man at home, I am a powerful man.’

  ‘I thought Branco was the power man in Bogota.’

  Ferrera spat at the mention of the name.

  ‘Branco. It is always Branco. I am not scared of him. Now Escobar, he was a man to fear and admire.’

  ‘But Escobar’s dead,’ Mark said, pushing the conversation along, scared that at any moment the man might clam up on him.

  ‘And one day Branco may be dead, perhaps sooner than he thinks. Escobar’s only enemies were the politicians and those policemen who did not understand how good he was for our country. Branco wins his friends with the power of the gun, but he cannot win respect that way.’

  ‘I take it you don’t like Riccardo Branco.’

  Ferrera sat down on his haunches and then sprawled his long frame out on the grass. To the casual observer he was just resting from his morning’s exhaustions, chatting to an old friend before he recovered his breath and returned to the fray.

  ‘I despise Branco. He thinks he command me, but I command respect. He claims to be the owner of the club I played for, and so he claims to own me, but he is wrong.’

  ‘So it was Branco who negotiated the terms for your sale.’

  ‘He did what I told him to do,’ Ferrera said both boastfully and implausibly.

  ‘But why should you want to come to England? I don’t understand.’

  Ferrera smiled and even as he did so it clicked into place in Mark’s mind. Patti had told him in the car that Branco had owned half of Jet. Ferrera might not like Branco but that did not necessarily mean that the drug baron did not think the footballer competent. If he needed somebody to keep an eye on his business interests in England, then by shifting Ferrera across the water he could kill two birds with one stone. But what were Branco’s interests in England and did they start and end with Jet? He doubted it. It was all becoming so much clearer. Patti had inadvertently started it all with her quest on behalf of her old schoolfriend. Christ knew how she had even heard the name of Branco. Some kind of Chinese whisper had brought it spiralling down from the higher echelons of the organisation to a pathetic user. So Patti had asked the questions. The mistake they made was in trying to ascertain which question it was that had so shaken Branco’s complacency that he had begun a personal campaign to discredit Patti.

  There had been no single question. The interest of an English journalist had been enough. After that he had to find out whether or not his English organisation was in any danger. So Patti had had to be taken out of the game and he’d done that neatly enough by not only discrediting her, bu
t by thinking he had made sure she wouldn’t return to Bogota. And then, he, Mark had come back blundering into the dark and threatening to knock over something of value as he stumbled about. In a way he had represented a greater threat than Patti, not merely because he was a man but presumably they knew he was not without connections. So they’d decided he must die, but the only thing was that over fifty innocent people had to die with him to make it look like an unfortunate accident, so that nobody would come probing into the incident. If there was proved to be sabotage of the plane nobody would think that the gringo aboard was the intended victim. There had to be a Colombian or Brazilian on board who was a possible target.

  Ferrera seemed to be almost asleep, his eyes half closed, an irritating smile playing around his mouth, as he had clearly convinced himself that Mark accepted his inviolability. There had to be something Mark could do. He would call Luis, tell him everything, tell him to get Salazar involved, a man who would fight for all that was good in the rotten and corrupt city of Bogota.

  Maybe Patti was right, maybe they should simply pass over what they knew to Rob Davies and leave him to deal with his Colombian opposite number to try and bring the guilty men to justice. Yet he could hardly conceive that anything he had been told would really tilt the balance over there on to the side of the angels. The poisoned water ran too deep to be cleansed by what Mark knew.

  As if Ferrera were reading his mind, he spoke again, relaxed and defiant, his head resting back on his arms, a man at peace with himself in the autumn sunshine.

  ‘Yes, I shall go home, and you, Mark, will do nothing, because I believe you are a man who is too haunted by the ghosts of his own past to be able to control his future. I have done nothing wrong here and if you do pluck up courage to try and do anything then take Nabil Halid as a warning. He was lucky. Perhaps you have exhausted your luck.’

  That was what had thrown Mark off balance. Until then he could not see any connection between what was happening within the Halid family and the death and destruction that was coming from Colombia. As he drove he could not see it now either.

  He had not returned to Patti’s car, but instead had slipped round to the small office in what was little more than a hut at the training ground. If Sinclair completed his construction of the new stadium, as now seemed inevitable, then there would be a culture shock for the players as they moved into their luxurious new surroundings adjacent to the stadium and commercial complex. He’d called a cab to get him back to Hampstead where he’d left his own car outside the Burrow and written a brief note of apology which he’d left on Patti’s table. She’d been exposed to enough risk and he felt confident that, despite the lack of sleep, he could finish this whole thing off on his own. She’d want to kill him for not being there at the death, and all he could hope for was that the most expensive bouquet of flowers in the world would eventually calm her down. He permitted himself a wry smile at the choice of words in his mind. At the death. There had been enough deaths. What he was doing he hoped would ensure there were no more.

  He could feel the adrenaline coursing through his body as he headed out to his next destination. Broxbourne lay to the north of London, beyond the M25, sufficiently far up the A10 to be considered country by those who could afford to buy the expensive houses which littered the town and its surrounding areas. It had become a popular place for footballers to live. At one time half the Tottenham squad had snapped up anything going in the neighbourhood and now to live next door to a famous player, ex-player or indeed, manager or ex-manager was no longer a novelty.

  He found the house he was looking for without difficulty, parked a little way down the road from its main entrance and sat and waited for some sign of life. He was getting accustomed to waiting outside houses. He had switched his recharged mobile off before he started out on his journey, but now he brought it back to life with a press of a button just to check for messages. There were four. First of all Rob Davies.

  ‘Rossetti, if you don’t call me I’m going to issue a warrant for your arrest so help me. And if you think I don’t have any charges well, how about impeding police inquiries, withholding information? And if I feel particularly malevolent I’ll throw in aiding and abetting for good measure.’ Davies’s welsh accent became more pronounced whenever he got excited and he was excited now, excited and angry. Mark decided it might be a good idea to let him cool down before he made any contact. From the tone of Patti’s voice it would be an even better idea to let her temper abate.

  ‘You bastard. I’m sitting here like an idiot still watching a bunch of footballers kick their balls about. And that’s exactly what I intend to do to you when I see you. If I ever want to see you again. And, by the way, I don’t know what you said to Ferrera, but he had a blazing row with Ray Fowler and then took off like a bat out of hell. There’s the usual gaggle of sports journos down here and they couldn’t have failed to notice.’

  The second message was even more succinct.

  ‘I’m at the Burrow. I’m in the process of utilising the clothes you’ve left here to polish the flat. If you want to treat me like the little woman then I don’t see why I can’t be domestic and use the first thing that comes to hand. And as you’re not here to wipe the floor with, then I’m using anything of yours I can lay my hands on. If I lose out on this story then I’ll create a better one. Journalist kills ex-footballer. Call me.’

  Then, finally, the familiar tones of Luis,

  ‘Mark, my friend I think you are avoiding me, I have to talk to you. I am so glad that you got back to England safely. I have important news.’

  He began to flip through his filofax for Luis’ number. Patti would have to stay mad with him. If he called she’d get him to tell her where he was, what he intended to do and then she’d be in hot pursuit. The same applied to Rob Davies. But if he delivered to him what he thought he could then Rob might feel slightly better.

  He looked into his mirror to see if there were any movement in the house, but it was as still and silent as when he had first arrived. The property itself was a detached house built in the popular mock-Tudor style of the thirties. He counted the windows and worked out there had to be at least five bedrooms and that was only at the front. He wondered how much it cost to buy a property like that and how much more it cost to maintain it. He knew the man who owned it had made money, but had he made that much money? Ever since Dr Guerra had told him what had occurred after the international match in Bogota he had been wondering how much it had been worth. If the information he had was right, then this house and its maintenance costs gave him a good idea.

  He found Luis’ number and began to dial. He had just got to the last digit when he hesitated. Incredibly enough for someone who had flown through the night, who had been through the sort of traumas he had experienced, he was thinking more clearly than at any time in the last seventy-two hours. When he had called Luis to tell him he was not coming back that night, but staying over in Rio, he had intended to leave him a message of apology. Luis should have been at the airport to meet him. That was what he said he was going to do. And if he wasn’t there then he must have known he wasn’t going to arrive, and the only way he could have known that was if somebody had told him that the plane was going to crash. Looking back, Luis had been too good to be true, a man who had become his best friend in a matter of hours, a man who knew everybody in Bogota, who could open locked doors. A man who could arrange flights, a man who travelled around South America, who had said he had just returned from Brazil. Who had actually sent Mark to Brazil? What had been the purpose of that? Was that just to ensure that the doctor toed the line, that at any time they could betray him because quite simply he had taken the thirty pieces of silver and was in their power. Or was the intention all along to send him to his death? He remembered how easily Luis had found Patti in Bogota, her rescue. Had that too be stage-managed to gain their confidence? Quite clearly the doctor had been a worry to them. He wasn’t a natural criminal as he’d demonstrated when Mark had
touched his conscience with news of the deaths in the crash. Who could tell what forces had made him do what he had done? In a way Mark hoped he had fled far beyond the reaches of Branco and his mob, if indeed there was such a place. He was one of the more decent individuals Mark had met in this whole mess.

  He felt certain he was right, but he needed to make one more call to be sure. Again he turned to his list of numbers. Indeed he had the business card of the man he was about to call. The phone was answered in Spanish but he knew the receptionist could speak English.

  ‘May I speak with Señor Salazar?’ he asked.

  ‘He is busy in a meeting. He cannot be disturbed. Who shall I say has called?’

  ‘Please tell him I am calling on behalf of Riccardo Branco and that it is important,’ Mark said.

  The tone of the girl’s voice changed.

  ‘Of course, I will see if he will speak with you.’

  There was a pause, just enough time for the message to be relayed and then he heard Salazar’s voice at the other end of the line and the greeting, the receptionist’s familiarity with the Branco name, told him all he needed to know. He cut off and thumped his fist down on the dashboard of the car so hard that the stationary vehicle actually rocked from side to side. Once again he’d been taken for a ride by somebody he had trusted. Only this would be different from the last time, this time he knew enough to be satisfied that not only was he in the driving seat, but there would be no crashes on the way. He didn’t really care if Ferrera fled the country, apart from the loss to Hertsmere. But then if it all worked out according to plan he’d get Barry Reed back in their side before too long and that would certainly soften the blow. He was realistic enough to realise that there was little he could do about Branco from this side of the Atlantic. All he could hope for was that Rob could find an honest cop sufficiently high up the ladder in Bogota who’d be prepared to take on the forces of darkness.