by Philip Kerr
But for the three hundred pound shoes on my feet I hoped I looked like anyone else in that neighbourhood, which is to say jobless (40 per cent of young people in Sevran are unemployed, or so I’d learned on the internet), African (that was easy for me), tired (that was also easy after my night of passion with Bella) and poor (36 per cent of people in Sevran are below the poverty line). Back in 2005, after three weeks of rioting that ended in a government-imposed state of emergency, there had been talk of a Marshall Plan for the banlieues, but there was little or no sign of any money having been spent here. And it wasn’t difficult to see the evidence of people barely scraping by, and sometimes not at all. The graffiti said it all: SANS ESPOIR, which means ‘without hope’, and I couldn’t have disagreed with that. But for the graffiti I could have been in any London sink estate. Surrounded by 1970s neo-brutalist blocks of flats resembling monochrome Rubik’s cubes, it was the sort of area where they could easily have filmed the French version of films like Harry Brown or Attack the Block and a whole world away from the eighth where Bella’s apartment was situated.
The Algerian guy in the butcher’s shop directed me to the Lidl supermarket, and next to it a recreation area with a rusting Christmas tree sculpture and a plastic football pitch with markings that were barely visible. A boy of about fourteen wearing a cheap tracksuit was standing there with an Adidas Smart Ball under his foot which told me something. These balls cost about 175 euros and it suggested that I might at least be close to the place where Jérôme Dumas had spread some of his cash around; that amount of money was a fortune in a dump like Sevran.
‘I’m looking for the Alain Savary Sports Centre,’ I said.
The boy, who looked to be of Middle Eastern origin, pointed at a low-level concrete square, covered in graffiti, that resembled the police station in Assault on Precinct 13.
‘Be careful,’ he said.
I walked down a slope and around the building to a security glass front door. Already I could hear loud music – it was NTM’s Paris Sous les Bombes – and smell the skunk. Inside the sports centre there was little sign of sport, just graffiti and a few posters of more French rappers. I wandered into a dressing room where the music was coming from. I knew it was a dressing room because there were lockers although I suspected that none of them contained so much as an old football sock. A gang of youths was grouped there and, seeing me, one of them got off a plastic chair and came to me with a baggy of white powder already in his hand, expecting that I was there to buy drugs.
‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘It’s information I’m looking for.’
‘Are you a cop?’
I grinned. ‘Fuck off.’
I sat down on the edge of a Formica table and surveyed the gang who were mostly black, and in their teens, but no less intimidating for all that. But kids are like computers; you give them shit, you get shit back. So I wasn’t intimidated; besides, I always feel comfortable in a dressing room. I looked around me. It was hard to see what Jérôme Dumas could have spent money on in here.
‘No, I work for Paris Saint-Germain,’ I said. ‘The football club. I take it you’ve heard of them.’
‘If you’re scouting for talent, we’re it, Dad.’
‘Yeah, give us a fucking ball and we’ll show you a trick or two.’
‘No, I’m not scouting.’
‘You’re a bit old to be a footballer, Dad.’
‘You’re right. I’m too old now. But I used to play. For Arsenal.’
‘Arsenal’s a good club. Thierry Henry. Sylvain Wiltord.’
‘Arsène Wenger. He’s a good manager.’
I nodded. ‘Know them all.’
‘What’s your name, Dad?’
‘Scott Manson.’
‘Never heard of you.’
‘Yeah, well, my career was tragically cut short, wasn’t it?’
‘Got injured, did you?’
‘Nope. I went to prison. I was banged up for something I didn’t do.’
‘They all say that, Dad,’ said the gang’s apparent leader. He was a handsome boy wearing a PSG hoody tied around his waist and a Dries Van Noten T-shirt. At least I thought it was Dries Van Noten; the satin ‘D’ patch had been torn off but I was pretty sure I’d seen Jérôme Dumas wearing the same T-shirt in a picture that Bella had shown me in her own portfolio.
‘True,’ I said.
‘How long for?’
‘Long enough for it to end any hopes I might have had of a winner’s medal.’
‘From what I hear nothing’s changed at Arsenal.’
‘Yeah, it’s been a while since anyone there got a winner’s medal for anything.’
I let that one go. An FA Cup means less than it did of old, even to those who win it.
‘I remember,’ said the leader. ‘You raped that chick, didn’t you?’
‘They said I did. But I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s all. The police thought I looked good for it and fitted me up.’
‘Yeah, we all know how that works.’
‘So what brings you down here?’
‘Like I say, I’m working for PSG now. I’m what you might call a fixer. I’m a guy they call on when they want something sorted. On account of the fact that a lot of footballers are just bad boys. Just like you. Right now I’m looking for Jérôme Dumas. They sent a fuck-up to find a fuck-up, you might say. Dumas didn’t turn up for training and they told me to check out all his usual haunts, see if I can’t find him. His lady told me he used to spend money on this sports centre. Although I really can’t see the evidence of that.’
The leader laughed. ‘He used to come here all right. Only it wasn’t to spend money on this fucking sports centre.’
Everyone thought that was funny.
Easy does it, I thought. Best not be too direct about this. They might be chary of dropping him in it.
‘Look, I won’t ask what he got up to when he was here. It’s none of my business. But we’re worried something might have happened to the guy. That maybe he’s done himself in. Gone on a bender. Lost more than a weekend, you might say. So when was the last time you saw him?’
‘Couple of weeks before Christmas.’
‘It’s no big secret what he did when he came here to Sevran-Beaudottes, man,’ said the leader. ‘He used to buy his weed and blow from us.’
‘I never figured him as the type to put stuff up his nose,’ I said.
‘The blow was for his ladies. You know, to get them in the mood for love, right? All he did was smoke a little bit of weed and hang out. He liked to talk politics. Like maybe he wanted to be one himself one day. He wanted to hear what we had to say about all kinds of shit. He didn’t just want to talk the talk, he wanted to walk the walk, too. I guess you could say he liked to pretend he was down with us. Which was cool because he was generous. Brought us clothes and trainers from fashion shoots he’d been on. Cash, too. Jérôme gave us money for all kinds of shit. He might have suggested that we use it to buy sports kit and shit like that but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. For one thing, who would come here to play us who wasn’t soft in the head?’
‘So what did you spend it on? The cash he gave you?’
‘Food and drink. More weed. More blow. And more than that, we couldn’t possibly say. Now and again we used to arrange a big party and he’d come around and have a good time. One time he bought us all dinner at the local rotisserie. I really think he thought he could make a difference.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘Nah. Take more than a footballer with a conscience to fix things round here.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Hey, how about some free tickets?’ said the gang leader.
I smiled. ‘I was wondering when you’d remember to ask.’ I put five tickets on the table. ‘Those are for the Champions League match against Chelsea on the seventeenth.’
‘No way.’
I took out a couple of fifties and tossed them on the table.
‘And get some dinner on me, right?’
I walked back the way I’d come. Only this time the kid with the smart football was playing keepy-uppy. And I stopped to watch him.
I’d seen some great freestylers in my time. There’s an English guy called Dan Magness who’s probably the best in the world and has taught the likes of Messi and Ronaldo a thing or two. He’s known as the Keepy-Uppy King. But of course just because you can keep the ball in the air doesn’t make you a great footballer. There’s a big difference between a player and a performer. Being part of a team means letting someone else have a turn with the ball. I was at one club where the youth side had hired a good freestyler and he always took one touch too many. But this kid was good. In fact he was outstanding. And when you see someone as good as this kid was, it’s like watching an art.
The trick to good keepy-uppy is to avoid the toes and drop the ball on the laces. It’s the way I was taught to do it. That and keeping the ball close to your body. But that’s just the start. I love playing keepy-uppy myself because it’s a hell of a workout. When I was younger and fitter and playing twice a week my best was about ten minutes but I think Dan Magness once did twenty-six hours using just his feet, legs, shoulders and head, which is incredible. He’s good but he wasn’t a patch on this kid. How do I know that? I don’t for sure. But I’m almost certain that Magness hasn’t perfected the art of keeping the ball up in the air – I swear this is true – with his eyes closed. Or sprinting while juggling the ball on his knees and head. It seemed that there wasn’t anything this kid couldn’t do with a ball. It was like watching someone toy with gravity and make a monkey out of it.
What was more he did it all with such an economy of movement that he made it look really easy, which is the first principle of sporting excellence. Make it look simple.
‘How old are you, kid?’
He stopped the ball under his foot and put his hands in the pockets of his tracksuit trousers. ‘Fifteen.’
‘Does the smart ball make it any easier?’
‘No,’ said the kid. ‘The battery runs out after about two thousand kicks. But that’s better than nothing when you’ve got no one to play with. My mum bought me it, for Christmas.’
‘What about those guys in the club?’ I asked. ‘Can’t you get a kick about with them?’
He laughed and then looked away for a moment. He was about six feet tall, with dark eyes and a long face; he was handsome in an adolescent way, but none of that interested me so much as the fact that there was a black yarmulke pinned to the back of his black-haired head, which was how I hadn’t noticed it before. The kid was Jewish.
‘The sports club isn’t for anyone interested in football,’ he said. ‘And anyway, my mum told me to keep away from those guys. They’re dangerous. That’s why I told you to be careful, man. Someone was shot around here just a few weeks ago.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Not that they would ever play with me.’
‘Why not?’
The kid shrugged.
‘Because they’re Muslims and I’m a Jew. From the Lebanon. Jews aren’t very popular around here.’
‘I see. Are you in any kind of team at all?’
‘I was back home. But not since we got here to Paris.’
‘Do you want to be?’
‘More than anything.’ With his toe he flicked the ball in the air the way someone else might have shrugged or rubbed his own chin. ‘I just took up freestyling to fill in a bit, and work on my skills, until I could find someone to play with. But that’s not so easy around here, like I say. Since the Israelis started bombing Gaza it’s not so easy being a Jew in Paris.’
‘From what I’ve read, son, it was never easy being a Jew in Paris.’
‘Really?’
‘Do you ever read L’Equipe?’
‘All the time.’
‘The people who started that paper, back in the 1890s, were anti-Semitic. There was this Jew, a military officer called Captain Dreyfus who was wrongly accused of being a spy and sent to prison on Devil’s Island. Back in the day there was another sports newspaper that was for Dreyfus. But L’Equipe was formed by a bunch of businessmen and anti-Semites who thought Dreyfus was guilty. Even though he’d been fitted up for it.’
‘How do you know about it?’
‘Let’s just say that reading about miscarriages of justice used to be a special interest of mine.’
‘Shit. I’ll never read it again.’
‘No need. It isn’t like that now. It’s just football, not politics. I don’t think anyone even remembers poor old Dreyfus these days.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Tell me, how long have you been doing freestyle?’
‘About six months.’
‘Six months? Jesus.’
There was a box of matches in the pocket of Dumas’s Belstaff jacket. I tossed it to him. ‘See what you can do with those.’
The kid caught the box of matches and frowned.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Play with the box of matches instead of the ball.’
‘Oh.’
The weight shifts around inside a box of matches which makes it more difficult to juggle than a tennis ball or an orange which would have been the usual way to distinguish someone who was good from someone who was really talented.
He managed several minutes until I told him to stop. I was already thinking about giving Pierre Hélan – an old mate of mine who worked at the French Football Federation’s national academy at Clairefontaine – a call. Because despite all the bollocks in football – the diving, the mind games, the stupid money – I realised that there was a big part of me that still believed in the romance of the game. Surely every manager thinks that one day he’s going to do a Bob Bishop and discover the next George Best. Why not me? I asked myself, especially now that some of the spark had gone out of my own managerial career. I think I’ve found you a genius, Bishop had telegrammed Manchester United’s manager, Matt Busby. I figured my eye was no less sharp for talent than anyone’s.
‘You’re good.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Really good. And believe me I know.’
‘You in the game then?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘What you doing around here?’
‘I’m supposed to be looking for Jérôme Dumas. He’s gone walkabout. I heard he used to come down here sometimes. PSG have hired me to track him down. Like one of those dogs in Périgord that sniffs the ground for a white truffle.’
‘Yeah, those things are really valuable, aren’t they?’
‘S’right. They can fetch as much as fifteen thousand bucks a kilo. The big ones have gone for more than three hundred thousand dollars.’ Was this Jewish boy the equivalent of one of those rare white truffles? I asked myself. ‘Anyway, Dumas – he didn’t report for training and they’re a bit worried something has happened to him.’
The kid nodded. ‘Yeah. I seen him once or twice. He was a good player when he was with Monaco. But since he joined PSG he seems to have lost his mojo.’
‘More importantly, did he ever see you?’
‘No. The fact is, I didn’t like to show him my skills.’
‘Why the hell not?’
‘Come on. You’ve met those guys in the club. That’s why. Like I told you, my mum told me to keep away from them because they’re into drugs and lots of bad stuff. I figured that probably included Jérôme Dumas. On account of the fact that they sold him drugs. I don’t take drugs. He used to come out of that club room down there with a spliff still in his mouth.’
‘A bit of weed and some blow.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s not the crime of the century. Even in football.’
‘Maybe so. But he also got a gun off them. And that’s not cool.’
‘Do you know that or did someone tell you?’
‘Someone told me. But I know it, too.’
‘How do you know it?’
‘Look, I’m here on this pitch a lot. Someti
mes all day. I see things happening around here. I keep away from those guys and they leave me alone but in return I’m supposed to use this burner if the cops show up.’ He took out an old mobile telephone and showed it to me. ‘Not that they’d hear it ringing, given that their music is so loud.’
‘Yeah, I noticed.’
He shrugged. ‘You didn’t look like a cop.’
‘I’m not. I work in football. I used to manage a club in London, but right now I’m freelancing. Keep telling me about the gun.’
‘Only that Dumas wasn’t the first guy who came around here looking for a gun. And whenever those guys sell a gun they hand it over in a cream-coloured enamelware lunch box. To hide the fact that it’s a gun. But everyone around here knows what’s in those boxes. It isn’t some guy’s baguette. And I didn’t come all the way from the Lebanon to get shot here in Paris.’
‘Good point.’ I looked for my watch and then remembered where it was.
‘Want to go and get a cup of coffee?’
‘Sure.’
‘What’s your name, son?’
‘John Ben Zakkai.’
‘And by the way, what was the name of the guy who was shot here? The one you were talking about earlier?’
‘Mathieu Soulié.’
12
As soon as I was back the Plaza I called Mandel.
‘How good are your connections with the police?’ I asked.
‘Good.’
‘I need you to find out all you can about a murder that took place a few weeks ago. The victim was called Soulié, Mathieu Soulié.’
‘Might I ask why?’
‘It’s probably nothing.’
Then I changed my clothes and went out to lunch.
Paolo Gentile had flown in from Italy aboard his own private jet for our meeting at Arpège, which is possibly the best restaurant in France if you’re a vegetarian like he was. The French aren’t much given to vegetarianism but when they do it, it’s the best. A stone’s throw from Invalides, the place in the Rue de Varenne is nothing much to look at – certainly not from the outside – and there are few clues as to the eye-watering expense of the tasting menu which, at 365 euros a person, is a lot for a few bags of leeks and potatoes. But Gentile, a vegetarian who always ate there when he was in Paris, was an advert for his diet; in his handmade Brioni suits he looked more like a prosperous Geneva banker than someone who worked in football – although maybe a word like ‘work’ was stretching it. And he was less principled than he could have been. Anyway, he’d done well for someone who’d once owned a nightclub on the Via Valtellina in Milan.