January Window

by Philip Kerr

  On the ground surrounding the body were found several brooms and brushes, a couple of buckets, and some window-cleaning equipment. Small litter included eleven cigarette ends – most of which were English or American brands, although one was Russian – some spent matches, a button, a few copper coins, a McDonald’s wrapper, several old City ticket stubs, a Styrofoam Starbucks coffee cup, a football programme, a month-old copy of the London Evening Standard, and an empty half-bottle of vodka. None of this looked like it was going to provide the vital clue that would solve the mystery of Silvertown Dock.

  I closed the report and locked it in my filing cabinet before unlocking my office door again. Rather shamefully, perhaps, my first reaction on having finished reading the report was to congratulate myself on being alive when someone else – someone close to me – was not; but this, in the great scheme of things, is really all you can ask. To be around when others have had their heads bashed in is not much of a philosophy, but in the absence of something better it serves just as well as anything else.

  37

  When the training session at Hangman’s Wood was over I sat down with Simon Page and some physio reports and made the team choice for the match on Tuesday night. Christoph was out of the team in favour of Ayrton, and we had some of the more experienced players, like Ken Okri, at the back, but the rest of the side was taken from our reserves and under twenty-ones. At their pre-match press conference the Hammers had announced that they intended to field a full-strength side for the Capital One Cup match. Since the last cup won by West Ham had been the UEFA Intertoto Cup in 1999 – an out-of-season competition that was generally held to be a joke – and before that the FA Cup in 1980, when they’d defeated Arsenal, the club had decided that they owed it to the supporters to actively compete for some silverware.

  I was surprised at this decision; then again, it’s an easy mistake to make – to pay attention to what the fans want instead of what’s best for the team. I decided that we were going to stick to our guns – the young guns, that is. But my mind really wasn’t on team selection. I kept on thinking about Zarco’s sunglasses on the floor of suite 123 and what they were doing there.

  I had a theory, but as with all good theories I needed to conduct an experiment in order to test it. I rang Maurice.

  ‘I want you to do me a favour,’ I told him. ‘There’s a place called the Mile End Climbing Wall, on Haverfield Road, in Bow. I want you to go and buy some rope.’

  ‘Don’t do it,’ said Maurice. ‘You’re too young to die.’

  ‘Two hundred feet of rope, to be exact. In fact, I want everything you’d need to go climbing on the Crown of Thorns. A helmet, a padded harness, the rope, and someone who knows how to use that gear. If Sir Edmund Hillary is knocking around tell him there’s two hundred quid and a pair of tickets in it for him if he’ll come back to the dock with you. Otherwise, bring back anyone else who looks like he knows his ice axe from his elbow. I need two things from him: one is to lower me safely out of a high window; the other is to keep his mouth shut. If there’s no one prepared to help we’ll just have to work it out ourselves. But I want to do this today before it rains or snows again.’

  ‘All right. Will do. It’s your neck. What’s this about, boss?’

  ‘I’ll explain everything when I see you.’

  A couple of hours later Maurice was back at the dock accompanied by a thin, intense-looking man with red hair and a beard; he was wearing a green Berghaus fleece and carrying a large coil of rope and a rucksack full of gear. His name was Sean and he was from Bethnal Green, which is of course where a lot of great Alpinists have hailed from. I was still wearing my tracksuit and a pair of trainers from the training session at Hangman’s Wood. I led the two men up to suite 123 and closed the door behind us.

  ‘What is this room, then?’ asked Sean.

  ‘Private hospitality suite. Belongs to some guy from Qatar.’

  ‘Really? Looks like the inside of my dad’s Jaguar.’

  I showed Sean into the kitchen and then opened the kitchen window.

  He peered out of it and nodded, circumspectly. ‘That’s about a fifty-foot drop.’

  ‘About that, yeah. I figure twenty feet to the descending cross beam and then another thirty or so to the ground.’

  ‘You’re serious about this, aren’t you?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘That cross beam looks a bit awkward. You wouldn’t want to have to climb on it. Especially in this weather. It looks slippy.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘What the fuck’s the point of it, anyway? The beam, I mean. In other words, does it have a function?’

  ‘It’s modern architecture,’ I said. ‘There’s no function. Just form.’

  ‘So what’s this all about?’ he asked. ‘Are you an adrenalin junkie or did you just drop your mobile phone out of the bleeding window?’

  ‘Let’s just say I’m doing it because it’s there.’

  ‘Comedian.’ Sean smiled a thin sort of smile. ‘Everyone thinks they’re Mallory and Irvine these days. You ever done any climbing before?’

  ‘Only the stairs,’ I said.

  ‘Got a head for heights?’

  ‘I guess we’ll find out.’

  ‘True.’ Sean sighed. ‘Two hundred quid and a couple of tickets, right?’

  I nodded and handed over the money and the tickets for the Hammers match, which had been in my pocket.

  ‘Paid in full.’

  ‘Cheers, mate. I’d have preferred tickets for Tottenham, myself, but I ’spose these’ll do, yeah. Thanks.’

  All the time he kept glancing around as if checking out his surroundings.

  Sean went out of the kitchen and into the sitting room. He pointed at the sliding door.

  ‘What’s out there?’

  Maurice lifted the roller blinds and then opened the door to reveal the stadium seating and, in the centre, the pitch.

  ‘Ah,’ said Sean. ‘Now that’s what I’m looking for.’ He pointed at some of the seats in front of the hospitality suite. ‘First principle of climbing: find something stronger than yourself to tie a rope onto. These seats will do fine.’

  When he’d finished tying the rope onto the seats he fetched the climbing harness from his backpack and fed the long piece of webbing around my waist, through the buckle, and then back again; with the two leg loops he did much the same. He checked the three buckles were fastened to his satisfaction and then tugged a loop in front of my navel towards him.

  ‘This is the belay loop,’ he explained. ‘The single strongest point of the harness. And the bit that’s going to attach you to life. Are you left-handed or right-handed?’

  ‘Right-handed.’

  He attached a karabiner to a belay device and clipped it onto the belay loop. Then he took a bite of rope and forced it through the bottom of the belay device. ‘This lower part of the rope is your brake,’ he explained. ‘The brake hand is your right hand and that never comes off the line. Not for a moment. The guide hand on the upper part of the rope is your left hand. You’re safely tied in now.’

  ‘I’m beginning to think my two hundred quid is well spent,’ I said.

  ‘Hopefully you won’t ever know just how well,’ said Sean. ‘Now all you have to do is belay.’

  Having showed me the basics of belaying, and letting me practise a little, we were ready to go.

  ‘If you start to fall too quickly then bring your brake hand – your right hand – down between your legs and the bend in the rope will arrest your descent. Understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  He handed me a helmet and I strapped it on. A few minutes later I was out of the window and leaning back with both hands on the brake rope, as instructed. Each time I loosened my double grip on the brake rope I could descend.

  ‘Take your time,’ said Sean. ‘A couple of feet at a time until you get your confidence.’

  From the kitchen window I let out the rope in short increments until I was standing on
tiptoe on one of the main beams on the crown of thorns. And now that I was there I was able to inspect the steel surface of the descending beam more closely and confirm what I had strongly suspected: that Zarco had actually fallen from the window of the kitchen. He’d hit the main beam on which I was standing, then slid round and down at an angle, shifting a trail of dirt and bird shit from the polished steel.

  I sat down, let out some more of the guide rope and followed the trail along the beam on my arse, down and around, like a child descending a water slide, until about forty feet further on, the trail in the dirt and bird shit moved abruptly to the left, and then terminated. It was here that Zarco must have slipped off the beam and fallen a second time, this time onto concrete about twenty feet below, where Maurice was now standing, to confirm what I now knew for sure: that Zarco hadn’t been beaten up and that all of the injuries detailed in the autopsy report were surely consistent with a fall from the kitchen window of suite 123.

  Given that you couldn’t actually see the window – any window – from the ground, it was an easy mistake for the police to have made; I’d made the same mistake myself when I’d first seen the crime scene. But crime it was, not an accident, or even a suicide: Zarco might have been worried that Viktor Sokolnikov was going to find out about his insider dealing, but he certainly wasn’t the type to throw himself out of the window. I couldn’t ever imagine him committing suicide. Besides, on Saturday morning he’d been in a good mood. He was always in a good mood before a big game. Especially one he thought we were going to win.

  No, someone had pushed him out of that kitchen window. Pushed him to his death. It was the only possible explanation for how his sunglasses had come to be found lying on the floor by Paolo Gentile.

  38

  After Sean had gone, and I was alone again with Maurice in suite 123, I told him about the fifty grand I’d found in the freezer and then explained my theory about what had happened to Zarco: that someone had pushed him out of the kitchen window.

  ‘There’s a tiny blood stain on the beam immediately below this window,’ I said. ‘That must have been how he got the blow to his head.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ said Maurice. ‘It certainly explains why the door on that maintenance area was locked from the outside. Because no one opened it.’

  ‘And it explains why no one spotted someone as famous as him going down there in the first place; because he didn’t. At least not using the stairs.’

  ‘But why do you believe that Paolo Gentile found the sunglasses exactly like he said he did?’ asked Maurice. ‘Maybe he was lying. Maybe he and Zarco argued about something. The bung, perhaps. Maybe it was him who pushed Zarco out of the window.’

  ‘It’s true they’d argued about the bung before,’ I said. ‘I saw them arguing about it at a service station in Orsett. But the bung was paid, after all. The cash part, anyway. So they could hardly have argued about that.’

  ‘Yes, but he did fuck off to Milan that very same day. He didn’t even hang around for the match. And that’s exactly what I’d have done if I’d topped Zarco. Caught the next flight home. Once someone is in Italy, it’s not so easy getting them back here to face charges. If you’ve got money there you can give the Italian law the runaround. Look at Berlusconi. He’s got away with it for years.’

  ‘I still don’t buy it, Maurice. It was Zarco who persuaded Viktor Sokolnikov to use Gentile on the Kenny Traynor transfer, instead of Denis Kampfner. Viktor was a golden goose for an agent like Gentile. There’s no telling how many golden eggs Zarco could have persuaded our mega-rich proprietor to lay for our Italian friend. I just don’t see Gentile doing it. He had too much to lose by killing him.’

  ‘All right. That makes sense.’

  ‘Now Viktor, on the other hand…’

  ‘Don’t tell me you fancy Viktor for it,’ said Maurice.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. There’s a YouTube video of him nutting his fellow oligarch, Alisher Aksyonov, live on Russian television. He looks like he means it, too. If Viktor had found out about Zarco buying shares in SSAG he might have been angry enough to hit him.’

  ‘But he was with the people from RBG when Zarco went missing, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Only some of the time. On Saturday afternoon, before the match, when Phil Hobday came to tell me that Zarco had gone missing, he told me that Viktor was looking for him, too. But yesterday, when I spoke to Viktor in my office, he told me he was with the guys from RBG for the whole afternoon. One of them is mistaken. Or lying.’

  ‘Fucking hell, Scott. Be careful. You’ve only just got this job.’

  ‘Listen, someone was in here with Zarco. I think whoever it was sat down and had a cup of coffee with him. There were just three mugs in the dishwasher, which was still on the first time I came in here. A dishwasher cycle’s a pretty good way of getting rid of your fingerprints. So, suppose that Viktor found Zarco in suite 123; maybe they sat down over a coffee and Zarco decided to confess all to Viktor, who went nuts. Frankly, who could blame him? On the evidence of what’s on YouTube there’s no doubt that Viktor can handle himself. And that he’s got a temper. By his own admission he used to be a rather more hands-on businessman than he is now. That is, hands on someone’s coat lapels.’

  ‘Yeah, but why would he ask you to investigate Zarco’s murder if he was the one who did it? Doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘I’ve been wondering about that. But it’s not like I’m Lord Peter Wimsey, is it? I’m just some cunt in a tracksuit. So perhaps I was only supposed to muddy the waters for the police and stop them from finding out that he killed Zarco himself. Which, so far, has worked rather well, wouldn’t you say? I mean the cops don’t know shit about what really happened. They’re outside, playing Jacques Cousteau, looking for a murder weapon – a blunt instrument that doesn’t even exist. The only metal pipe that hit Zarco on the head was the one weighing several tons below the kitchen window. Without what I know, the cops don’t know anything very much. They don’t know about this room, Paolo Gentile, the bung on Kenny Traynor, the cash in the freezer, the shares bought in SSAG, and the fact that Zarco was feeling nervous about Viktor Sokolnikov. At least he was according to Toyah. She’s afraid of him, too. And here’s another thing, Maurice.’

  ‘Oh, fuck. I don’t think I want to know.’

  ‘Viktor gives me the job of replacing Zarco as manager of London City. One of the top jobs in football. I’m on the same money as Zarco, plus bonuses. Viktor even gives me a valuable portrait of Zarco to help sweeten the deal. To incentivise me, he says. Now suppose I do find something out. Something that incriminates Viktor himself. What do I do? Naturally I don’t go to the cops. He knows I hate the cops. According to Viktor, that’s one of the very reasons he asked me to play sleuth for him. Because he knows I won’t rat him out to the law. So if I do find something, the chances are that I’ll then do one of two things. Either I’ll have it out with him and he’ll persuade me to keep my mouth shut; perhaps he’ll try to bribe me, I don’t know. Or I’ll suppress the evidence altogether in the interests of my oh-so-generous employer and of course my own bright future with this football club.’

  ‘Hold up a minute.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a third alternative here that maybe you ought to consider, boss. That Viktor Sokolnikov doesn’t bribe you or persuade you to keep your mouth shut. Instead he puts the frighteners on you. He threatens you. Some of those bodyguards who work for him, they’re very scary guys. I was in the steam room at Hangman’s Wood with one of them and he’s got more fucking tattoos than a beach in Ibiza. Proper Russian Mafia tattoos, too. None of that “Mum” and “Dad” and “Scotland Forever” bullshit. These are tattoos that mean stuff to those in the know. You mark my words, boss: if you have it out with Viktor you might just disappear. This is the East End of London, remember? People have been disappearing round here since the princes in the Tower. Someone shoves you in that river one dark night, you might never be seen again. It’s not just me who thinks
so. That’s what the Leeds fans were singing about Zarco when we went to Elland Road. Remember? The fans might not have known about Zarco’s photograph in the grave we found out there, but it didn’t stop the flat-capped bastards from filling in the gaps, so to speak. He’s getting murdered in the morning/ Ding Dong the bells are gonna chime/ Vic and his mafia/ Will soon fucking have ya/ And get you to your grave on time.’

  ‘I’d forgotten that.’

  ‘All I’m saying is, be a bit careful, yeah? This isn’t handbags on the pitch with Mario Balotelli, boss. You’re up against someone with a very murky past. I watched that Panorama special on Viktor. He’s got more skeletons in his fucking cupboard than the Museum of Cairo. So, promise me you won’t accuse him or anything daft like that, not without speaking to me first, eh?’

  ‘Fortunately all the evidence is very circumstantial,’ I said. ‘So unless I find some real hard evidence I’m not about to do anything crazy.’ I shrugged. ‘But the fact is, I’m still going to have to consider my position here.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that if I do finally conclude that the person who killed João Zarco was the proprietor of this club then I can hardly remain here working for him. That would be impossible. Quite apart from anything else I’d always wonder if the reason I got the job was to keep me on side. But the fact is, I loved Zarco. I might not be able to tell the police about it but I couldn’t be around someone who’d killed Zarco, or had him killed. You do see that, don’t you? It would be a betrayal of my friendship for Zarco. He may not always have been entirely honest but he was always a good mate to me. And that’s what counts, Maurice.’

  ‘Would he have done the same for you? I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s what I think that matters, Maurice. It’s my bloody conscience that’s affected here, not Zarco’s. When I was in the nick I read Dante’s Inferno. Being in a hell like Wandsworth it seemed appropriate. Dante places Brutus and Cassius in the worst part of hell because they chose to betray their friend, Julius Caesar, rather than their country. I feel much the same way about Zarco.’