The Penalty

by Mal Peet

  Faustino noted the word us. “Yes, a terrible business,” he said; then, in an attempt to change the subject, “May I buy you a drink? Or do you have to be somewhere?”

  “No, I have plenty of time. Thank you. A mixed juice, please.”

  Faustino turned to signal a waitress and found himself looking closely at an impressively muscled torso. It belonged to a great slab of a man holding a collecting tin. He tipped it, and coins slooshed.

  “For the paqueira display,” he said, smiling pleasantly.

  Faustino felt in his pocket for change, trying not to sigh.

  FAUSTINO SAW THE new stadium almost half an hour before he reached it. It gleamed above the industrial haze like some intergalactic research craft crouched on the surface of a gaseous planet. When the Estadio Flora signs began, he made a series of hair-raising, horn-blasting manoeuvres and got into the inside lane. From the top of the slip road the vastness of the stadium became apparent; it had to be, Faustino thought, at least the size of the Maracanã in Rio, or the Nou Camp in Barcelona. And Deportivo San Juan was only a middle-ranking club; where the hell had the money come from to build this place? Gilberto da Silva had deep pockets, but not that deep, surely. Did the old boy wake up in a cold financial sweat at nights? Probably not; the very rich are not like the rest of us. And even if he did, it was probably worth it to keep his wife onside. Faustino now noticed – it made him smile – that it wasn’t only the stadium that was named after her; the broad approach road he was now on was the Avenida Flora.

  He parked, as he’d been instructed, in the service area, realizing why this had been necessary. A large mob of reporters was gathered at the grandiose front entrance, the loggia. Two TV trucks with satellite dishes on their roofs, radio cars, a snack van doing good business. No, he wouldn’t want to shove through that lot, explaining to his so-called colleagues how come he could walk through those pearly gates when they couldn’t.

  The door had the number 116 on it. Faustino buzzed and then spoke into the intercom. A burly man in a DSJ sweatshirt checked his ID and led him along a narrow corridor which emerged onto the rear of the main reception area. Air conditioning like a pure mountain breeze. Waiting for the lift, Faustino enjoyed observing the sweaty pack of press hounds outside the smoked-glass doors. On the third floor he stood in the deserted VIP lounge, gazing out through its glass wall. The pitch below him was perfect, a lustrous two-tone carpet of green stripes. In the stand opposite, the black seats among the red formed DSJ in vast letters. The retractable roof soared above him, a great glass bat wing with steel sinews.

  “My God,” he said, aloud.

  A voice came from behind him. “Yeah. Kinda impressive, isn’t it?”

  Cesar Fabian, the DSJ physio, was a well-built, slightly paunchy man in his mid-fifties with cropped grey hair and deep creases in his forehead like cracks in baked earth. His handshake was surprisingly gentle, considering the size of his hands.

  “I thought it would be more pleasant to talk here, rather than in the poky hole they call my office.” He glanced at the unattended chrome and leather bar. “I guess I could find someone to make us some coffee.”

  “It’s okay,” Faustino said. “I’m fine.”

  The two men settled themselves into sternly modern armchairs. Faustino took his new and very expensive disc recorder from its case and laid it on the glass-topped table. Scowling at its tiny enigmatic buttons he said, “You happy to talk to this gizmo, Cesar? Basically, I’m looking for anecdotal stuff. You know, the kind of thing that’ll give me a picture of Gato when he first joined DSJ, when he came to live with you and your wife. What it was like having this kid from the jungle landed on you.”

  “Sure,” Fabian said. “Mind you, when you first phoned, I assumed you wanted to talk about the Brujito business.”

  Faustino sighed. “Yeah. It’s a hell of a story. I consider it extremely inconsiderate of the young man to pull this stunt while I’m otherwise engaged.”

  “Is that what you think it is? A stunt?”

  Faustino shrugged. “Reading between the lines, that’s what most of my esteemed colleagues seem to think. Are they wrong?”

  “Yeah,” Fabian said with emphasis. “They’re wrong. I’m ninety-nine per cent certain of that. The kid doesn’t do stunts. Not off the pitch, anyway. He’s not like that.”

  There was a suppressed heat in Fabian’s voice. Faustino sat back from the recorder.

  “What is he like, Cesar? You know him well?”

  “Well enough to know that his disappearance isn’t some kinda scam or him throwing a moody. He’s a straight up-and-down kid. Quiet, kinda shy. A country boy. No big ego thing about him at all. All the superstar crap in the media hardly touched him.”

  Faustino raised an eyebrow. “Really? All the girls and the partying and—”

  “Garbage,” Fabian said, almost angrily. “Absolute bullshit. Just the tabloids and idiot TV stations doing what they always do. The kid’s only just eighteen, for Chrissake. And he’s religious.”

  “Is he? What, devout Catholic, you mean?”

  Fabian grunted softly, tilting his head. “Well, you know. That crazy upcountry stuff … but it kinda blends into regular religion, yeah. Whatever, he’s serious about it. Like, before a big game there’s this pai he needs to talk to—”

  “Pai?”

  “Yeah, you know. Priest, shaman, whatever you wanna call it. Some old guy. It’s cool. Most footballers are superstitious, as you know. Have to put the left boot on first, can’t have anybody whistling in the changing room, that kinda thing. But apart from that the kid just loves to play football. It’s all he seems to think about. It’s not exactly normal, maybe not even completely healthy, but that’s how he is. There’s no way he’d be involved in some sort of … I dunno.”

  “Okay,” Faustino said. “That’s pretty much the conclusion I’d come to. So? The cops say it’s not a kidnap, which is the other obvious thing.”

  Fabian pulled the corners of his mouth down and exhaled through his nose.

  “The cops. Well… You know, the fact is that in this part of the world kidnapping’s the second most popular sport after football. Well, I exaggerate, but not much. It’s like you only have to be this famous” – he held up his thumb and forefinger, two millimetres apart – “to be kidnapped. Or your husband or your kid or whatever. Last month, some girl who reads the weather on the TV, for Chrissake, had to pay to get her daughter back. You know what? I sometimes worry about my wife. And I’m a nobody.”

  Faustino made a sympathetic face.

  “But,” Fabian added, “I’m not convinced it was a kidnap.”

  “Why not?”

  Fabian looked over his shoulder and then down at Faustino’s piece of Japanese technology.

  “That thing running, Paul?”

  “Er … no. The little orange light there? It’s meant to turn green when it’s recording. Why?”

  He had no need to ask, really. Obviously the da Silvas had imposed a vow of silence on their staff. That was one reason why the newspapers were running on the spot and the gaggle of reporters at DSJ’s front door had that look of peasants besieging a rich city. But Cesar Fabian clearly had something to get off his chest. And it was a fairly big chest.

  “Okay, Cesar. This is off the record. I’m not working on the story anyway. But how come you don’t think Brujito was kidnapped?”

  “In the first place,” Fabian said, “it’s gone on too long. These things are usually worked out, one way or another, in three or four days. And no one saw the kid being bundled into a van or anything. Know why? Because he wasn’t. He left the ground by the home-team entrance, alone. Two security guys saw him go. So did the CCTV cameras. They also filmed him walking away from the stadium, heading for the pedestrian bridge over the avenida.”

  “Did they? I didn’t see that anywhere in the papers.”

  “Yeah, well. I guess there are things Lord and Lady da Silva want kept quiet.”

  “Right. Which
is why you haven’t told me any of this.”

  “Exactly.”

  The two men sat in companionable silence for several moments. A maintenance man in a red jumpsuit walked through the lounge. When he had gone Faustino said, “I’m right in thinking you were in the dugout at that game, aren’t I? I mean, I’ve read the stories, watched the match on TV, but nothing much seemed to happen to the kid. Did you see anything?”

  “No, not really. We were all over Atlético from the start, as you know. I mean, it was a game we were certain to win. Atlético should never have got as far as the semi-final in the first place. Morientes, like any good manager, gave our guys a real heavy talking-to before the game about being overconfident, staying tight at the back, all of that. But we were going to win for sure. And when Brujito scored our second, just before half-time, we seemed to have it wrapped up.”

  “And at half-time,” Faustino asked, “in the changing room, Brujito was okay?”

  “Sure. Quiet, like he usually is, but happy. It was a lovely goal that he’d scored, and the other players were, you know, fluffing his hair and hugging him and all that stuff. And when the buzzer went he was straight up on his feet, running on the spot, couldn’t wait to get out for the second half, same as usual. Then, fifteen minutes or so in, he just seemed to lose it.”

  Faustino said, “The phrase I keep reading in the papers is that the boy ‘broke down’. Which usually means the player got some kind of injury out of nowhere, like a hamstring or something. Is that what happened?”

  “No. Definitely not. Brujito screwed up the penalty, and everyone in the dugout – everyone in the city – was gutted. But there didn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with the kid. It’s just that he’d stopped playing. Morientes substituted him a couple of minutes later, as you know, and when he came off I went up to him and put his warmer round his shoulders and said something like, ‘Are you hurting, are you okay?’ and he shook his head. But instead of sitting down on the bench he went straight off down the tunnel towards the changing room.”

  “What, like he was pissed off at being substituted?”

  “No,” Fabian said, “nothing like that. He just seemed sort of … dazed. Anyway, Morientes gave me a look, and I sent my assistant, Werner, to check the boy out. He says that when he went into the changing room Brujito was squatting in a corner, just staring into space. Werner tried to talk to him, said it was like talking to a dummy. ‘Vacant’ was the word he used. So he left him there and came back to the pitch.”

  “And you lost the game.”

  “Yep,” Fabian said. “Four–two. It was like when Brujito was subbed the heart went out of us. When the final whistle went it was like all hell broke loose. Plastic bottles, coins, God knows what showering down on us, booing like I’d never heard before. Sounded like about a million animals in an abattoir. We hustled the players off the pitch fast as we could, and when we got to the changing room Brujito had vanished. His kit was in a heap in the corner where Werner had left him. Looked like he’d evaporated out of it. And no one has seen him since.”

  Faustino rested his chin on his folded hands, thinking. When he looked up he caught Fabian glancing at his watch.

  “Yeah, okay, Cesar. Thanks.” He poked experimentally at the recorder and the minuscule light turned green.

  “So then, the business in hand. El Gato.”

  “Gato, yeah. Jeez, I tell you what, Paul: I wish we had him now.” Fabian aimed a thumb up at the stadium roof. “Gilberto da Silva spent twenty million on that thing, to keep the rain off. He shoulda spent it on players. Our defence leaks like a damn sieve. Which reminds me.” He reached into a pocket and took out a long slim envelope. “Present for you. Two tickets for Sunday’s game. Directors’ box. We’re playing Espirito Santo, so at least there’ll be one decent side on the pitch.”

  THE CLIMATE CONTROL in the hire car wasn’t up to the job, and when Faustino got to his hotel he went up to his room, stripped to his underwear and stood akimbo in front of the air-conditioning unit for several minutes. Then he sat on the bed and began to play back his conversation with Cesar Fabian about El Gato. After ninety seconds he turned the machine off and stared at the far wall for a while. Then he reached for his phone. Maximo Salez’s answering machine gave a mobile number. At the third attempt, Faustino got a response from it.

  “Yeah?”

  “Maximo? This is Paul Faustino.”

  “My God! Maestro! What have I done to deserve this honour?”

  “You tell me. Max, listen. I want to talk to you. Where are you?”

  “Er, I’m in a meeting at the moment, but…”

  Yes, Faustino thought, a meeting between your mouth and a beer. The background to Salez’s voice was other voices and pole-dancer music.

  “Okay, so how about an hour from now? I’ll come to the office.”

  “What? You mean you’re in San Juan?”

  “I’m afraid so. And Max, do you have a video of the DSJ–Atlético semi-final? I’d like to watch it.”

  Maximo Salez was a thin, nervy man with poor skin and a taste for loud shirts. His writing was, usually, a mechanical recitation of jargon and clichés; but every now and again it would erupt, like a tropical flower after rain, into drunkenly poetic passages of description which La Nación’s sports editor would ruthlessly delete. He greeted Faustino with an ironic bow which failed to conceal his anxiety.

  “Excuse the mess in here,” he said. “Things are a little hectic right now. Pull that chair over.”

  His office was a miserable little hutch separated from the reception area by a glass wall. Salez clattered the venetian blind closed and the light turned grey. He sat himself down on a swivel chair that had seen better days and supported better men.

  “Well, Paul. This is an unexpected treat. I didn’t know you were here in the Deep North. I thought you were on leave.”

  Faustino took his time lighting a cigarette. When he considered that Salez had suffered enough he said, “I am. Relax, Maximo. You look like you’ve got piles. I haven’t come up here to take over the Brujito story.”

  “Ah. Well, naturally I thought—”

  “Although, of course, I am interested.”

  “Right,” Salez said. “Of course. It’s a helluva thing. If you’ve got any thoughts—”

  “I read your piece in yesterday’s edition. You seemed to buy the kidnap story.”

  “Well—”

  “And within hours of your filing the piece the police dismissed it as a hoax. At a news conference.”

  “Listen, that don’t mean a thing. I mean, if the boy has been kidnapped, the cops would deny it, wouldn’t they? They wouldn’t want us all over them like a rash while they were negotiating or whatever. Besides, Paul, you can’t believe a word the police say, not in this city. They’re all as bent as a dog’s back leg. Believe me, I know.”

  Faustino’s expression did not suggest that he believed anything. Or anyone. Especially Max Salez.

  “What about the idea that the kid had some sort of nervous breakdown, couldn’t take the pressure, maybe?”

  Salez stuck his bottom lip out and shook his head. “Nah. I don’t buy it. Seems to me he doesn’t have any nerves. Either that or he’s too thick to know where they are. Hard to tell which.”

  Faustino reflected, not for the first time, that stupidity and complacency were a very unpleasing combination. Especially in a so-called journalist.

  “So you’re stuck with the kidnap theory.”

  “Well, hey, I’m not stuck with it, Paul. I mean, young Señor de Barros is a very valuable piece of property. You know what DSJ paid for him? When he was sixteen years old? Nothing. A signing-on fee. Enough for a month’s supply of candy. And what d’you reckon he’s worth now? Ten million? Fifteen? If he was for sale, of course. Which as far as I know he isn’t.”

  Faustino nodded slowly, as if Salez had just shared a rare and important snippet of information. He stubbed his cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray. While d
oing so he said, “Did you know that Brujito left the ground unaccompanied? That he just walked out of the home-team entrance like he normally would?”

  Salez blinked. “Who says?”

  “A reliable source.”

  “Right,” Salez said, and clammed up.

  “You know what, Maximo? You’re a very lucky man. I’d part with a few teeth to be covering a story like this. I’d be out on the street chasing up every lowlife I knew who might have heard even half a whisper.”

  “Well, Jesus, Paul, what d’you think I’ve been doing? That’s what we’ve all been doing. Man, there isn’t a single scumbag in this city we haven’t waved our wallets at.”

  “And?”

  “Nada. Nothing.”

  Faustino thought about that. “I assume, then, the conclusion you’ve come to is that if, if this is a kidnap, then it’s not the usual suspects. That right?”

  Maximo Salez picked up a ballpoint pen and examined it as if it were the first one he’d ever seen.

  “Yeah,” he said, eventually. “I guess so. Maybe.”

  Faustino watched the other man’s face for a couple of seconds; then he said, “Let’s watch the video.”

  THE TV ROOM contained a small collection of soft and mangy chairs. The window ledge was lined with empty plastic bottles and beer cans.

  Faustino said, “Let’s skip to the second half.”

  The cameras had lingered on Brujito, even at times when he was not involved in the play. He was not – as certain magazines liked to point out – a particularly handsome youth, and he held his head lowered slightly, like a solemn but dangerous dog. He was short, for a player, with a rather heavy upper body. The same sort of build as Maradona or the young English striker Rooney; the build that gives you a low centre of gravity, making it hard for defenders to knock you off balance. He was the kind of boy that, if you saw him in the street, you would take to be slow-witted and slow-moving. And when he had played his first games for DSJ, opposing defenders had made the same mistake, and paid dearly for it.