by Philip Kerr
This single sporting gesture did much to alter the temperature of the match; because having seen their captain shake Kenny Traynor’s hand, the Olympiacos fans applauded him too, as if they realised not only that they’d seen a save of the rarest quality, but that they’d also seen a decent sportsman in the person of their own mono-browed captain.
Simon clapped his big hands and shook his head.
‘Bloody marvellous,’ he boomed. ‘What did I tell you? Sticky fingers. That’s what any great keeper needs. God only knows how that man didn’t score. What a pity that Kenny Traynor isn’t English and that he’ll never grace a World Cup.’
I didn’t say anything. Even as a Jock myself I couldn’t have argued with that. But that wasn’t what was making me silent. It was the realisation that after what Simon had said I knew exactly how Bekim Develi had been killed; it had been staring me in the face like the Zapruder film for the last hour; not only that but I knew who had killed him, too.
I stayed quite still for a moment, then walked back to the dugout and sat down feeling like a man who has suffered a stroke and for whom half the world has suddenly disappeared. If you had placed a mirror in front of me I would not have seen my own reflection. The noise of the crowd seemed to get sucked up in a vacuum, along with the oxygen in the air around me. On the pitch I could hear the worms crawling through the earth underneath the grass; they were surely better than the people who had killed Bekim. Above me the smoke seemed to roll like thunder through the stadium; it tasted sweeter than the sour flavour that I had in my mouth from knowing what I now knew, beyond any reasonable doubt.
‘You’re in charge,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid I need to go and speak to someone. Right now.’
‘Can’t it fucking wait?’
‘No, it can’t.’
‘Speak to who?’ asked Simon as I stalked off. ‘Where the fuck are you going?’
‘To speak to Mrs Boerescu. I want to ask her something. Maybe she’ll give me a blow job if I talk to her nicely.’
58
Charlie and two of Vik’s bodyguards were standing at the end of the corridor that led to his box, watching the match through the open door of another box which was not occupied.
‘Everything all right, boss?’ asked Charlie.
‘I’ll tell you in a minute, Charlie, after I’ve spoken to my boss.’
‘Mr Sokolnikov, right. Just let me know if you want my help for anything else. I like working for you, Mr Manson. You’re a good guy.’
‘Thanks, Charlie.’
The bodyguards nodded silently and I nodded back, wondering if they were armed and what they might have done if they had known what was in my mind; only it wasn’t them who gave me pause for thought as I opened the door to the box, but Louise. I’d forgotten that Vik had invited her to watch the match with him and she was the only person in that room whose good opinion of me really mattered. About Vik, Phil, Kojo Ironsi, Gustave Haak and his diminutive toady, Cooper Lybrand, I couldn’t have cared less.
‘Scott,’ said Vik. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Yes,’ said Phil. ‘Surely you must have missed the all-important goal.’
‘What goal?’ I asked.
‘Ayrton Taylor just scored from thirty yards,’ said Phil. ‘While you were probably climbing all those stairs.’
‘What?’
Kojo swatted something invisible with his fly-whisk. ‘It was a beautiful strike,’ he said, quietly. ‘Almost as good as the one scored by Prometheus.’
I walked to the window and stared down from the gods at the pitch where Ayrton was still sprinting around the pitch perimeter, spinning an orange City football shirt in his hand like it was a lasso, and probably earning himself a yellow in the process. At last the Olympiacos fans had become silent. ‘Bloody hell.’
‘That’s right,’ said Vik. ‘We’re three–nil up. That’s four all on aggregate. If things stay as they are we’ll go through on the away goal we scored last week. Isn’t it wonderful? I don’t know what you and Simon have said to them this past week, but the boys are playing out of their skins. Congratulations. Right now, I couldn’t be more happy.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘We will. Jesus fucking Christ. We’re going to qualify. I don’t believe it.’
‘Even so,’ added Phil, ‘don’t you think you should be down there on the touchline supporting your team? Advising them? Encouraging them? With all due respect, it’s a little bit early for a celebration. There are at least thirty minutes of the game left to play.’
My delight in the score line gave way to something much less pleasurable.
‘I didn’t come up here to celebrate,’ I said. ‘Or to look for any praise, Phil. Not right now.’
Louise stood up and tried to take my hand; she could see the anger in my face even if the others couldn’t. I took my hand out of hers, kissed her fingers and tried to contain myself for a few moments longer.
‘Then, I don’t understand,’ said Vik. ‘What did you come for?’
‘Louise,’ I said, ‘I think you’d better let us have the room for a moment. You, too, Mr Haak, Mr Lybrand. What I have to say is best kept among the people at this football club. Me, Vik, Phil and Kojo here.’ I smiled a humourless smile. ‘If you don’t mind.’
‘Be careful,’ murmured Louise and went out of the door.
‘I don’t deserve you,’ I whispered.
Looking more than a little bemused, Gustave Haak and Cooper Lybrand stood up but hesitated to follow her, looking to Vik for their proper cue to stay or leave.
‘Scott, please,’ said Vik. ‘These gentlemen are my guests. You’re embarrassing me. Whatever this is about, can’t it wait until after the game?’
‘I’m sorry, Vik, but no, it can’t. You see, if I wait I might just lose a little bit of the anger I’m feeling now and then I might not be able to go through with this.’
‘That sounds ominous,’ said Phil.
Vik looked at Haak and Lybrand and nodded. ‘Perhaps, if you guys were to wait downstairs. You’d better tell Louise to wait there, too.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll text you all when we’re through in here, okay?’
‘All right,’ said Haak and went out of the door, with Cooper Lybrand close on his heels like a small dog.
‘Soccer’s not really my cup of tea, anyway,’ he said. ‘I prefer baseball.’
‘Wanker,’ I muttered, after they’d gone.
‘Your timing stinks, Scott,’ said Phil.
‘You’re right. But you can’t always time these things to perfection. One minute you don’t know something and then the next it’s like the light goes on and you see everything really clearly but you just can’t wait until the time seems right to do something about it.’
‘You’re a jealous bastard, if ever I met one,’ he added.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I assume this display of petulance is all about Kojo here. And his appointment as the club’s new technical director? He told us about your swearing at him in the tunnel before the game.’
‘That was thoughtful of him.’ I decided to say nothing about his role in Soltani’s sending off; that seemed hardly important beside what I had to say now. But it told me something important about the kind of treacherous colleague Kojo would have made.
‘If you are going to offer us your resignation,’ said Phil, ‘then it could easily have waited until after the game.’
‘Yes, it is about Kojo.’
Kojo put down his cigar and stood up. We were all standing now.
‘But it certainly isn’t about his appointment as the club’s technical director. And it’s not about me offering you my resignation. At least it wasn’t. Although now that you’ve mentioned it, Phil, then we’ll have to see how things pan out, won’t we? But why don’t you tell them why I’m here, Kojo? I assume you must have guessed.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. You may be unscrupulous but you’re not stupid.’
‘I’ve no idea what
you’re talking about, Scott. Like I said to you before, I sincerely hope we can work together but I’m beginning to have my doubts about that. Seriously, Vik, this man seems a bit unhinged.’
‘I wouldn’t work with you Kojo. Not in a million years. Not if you managed every player in the world. And I’ll tell you why. I mean, quite apart from the fact that you are a fucking crook—’
‘Of course he’s a fucking crook, Scott,’ said Vik. ‘Do you seriously think I don’t know that already? I know everything about this dodgy bastard. How do you think he got the bloody job at the club in the first place?’
‘What?’
‘He twisted my arm, that’s why I employed him. He threatened to reveal an important business deal I have concluded with Gustave Haak and the Greek government. A deal that’s been cooking for months. A deal it’s best that no one knows about. Especially here in Greece. At least not right now.’
‘Vik, please,’ said Kojo. ‘You make it sound like blackmail. It wasn’t like that at all. All I did was point out that I could hardly talk about your deal if I’d signed a confidentiality agreement, which I could only do if I was actually employed by you. I was actually trying to protect you and our relationship. I explained all this to you before.’
‘Shut up, Kojo,’ said Vik. ‘When I want you to speak again I’ll press a button. That’s what I’ve paid for, right?’ Vik looked at me with narrowed eyes; it was the first time I’d seen him looking angry. ‘There was a deal being cooked which he overheard while he was a guest on my boat. And which I don’t want anything to disturb. Anything at all. You understand?’
‘And perhaps the less Scott knows about that deal the better,’ Phil told Vik. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘His salary as technical director and what I paid for King Shark are a drop in the ocean compared to the deal I’ve just done here. So, whatever it is you’ve come to tell me about him, I really don’t give a fuck about it. D’you hear? He could have embezzled Oxfam and I wouldn’t give a damn. Okay? So why not forget about whatever this is about and go and watch the rest of the game from the dugout, where you belong?’
I nodded. And I might have done exactly what Vik had suggested I do – at least until after the match – if Kojo had not put that fat cigar in his greedy mouth and smiled at me.
The last time I punched someone in the face as hard as that I’d been on C wing – the induction wing – at Wandsworth Prison; I don’t even remember his name, all I know is that the guy had it coming DHL. It was some white bastard with more body art than a tattoo parlour window, who hated Arsenal and who kept calling me a coon; and that would have been all right except that on this particular day he’d gobbed on me, too – a great green Gilbert of a gob that was the slimy straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. According to the medical orderly in the prison hospital I broke his nose so badly it looked like a belly dancer and they had to put so many bandages up his nostrils that they thought he was Paul fucking Daniels when they pulled them all out again.
Kojo could take a punch though and for a minute or two he and I went at it, trading punches and kicks as if we were matched in a cage at the Troxy in east London’s Commercial Road. Finally, after a couple of hard ones on the side of my head that left my ears singing like a kettle, I felled him with a short uppercut and he didn’t get up again.
By now the bodyguards had appeared, guns in hand, but with the fight very obviously over, Vik waved them out again.
‘Out, out,’ he yelled. ‘Get the fuck out. We’ll deal with this ourselves.’
I bent down, retrieved the silk handkerchief from the top pocket of Kojo’s safari jacket, wiped my face and my knuckles with it and threw it away.
‘I need a drink,’ I said. ‘I need a drink very badly. D’you mind if I help myself?’ I poured a glass of champagne, drained the glass, sat down and breathed a sigh of relief.
‘I feel so much better now that I’ve done that.’
59
Vik and Phil looked at me with a mixture of fear and horror, so much so that I laughed out loud. Then there was a big roar outside and I jumped up to look out of the window, but it wasn’t a goal, just the Greeks bellyaching about something else. I turned back to face my employers and shook my head.
‘I thought we scored again,’ I said. ‘But it was nothing.’
‘Jesus, Scott,’ said Vik. ‘Have you gone mad?’
‘Maybe. Now ask me why I smacked him.’
Vik rolled his eyes and shook his head. ‘I already told you,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘I know he’s a crook and I really don’t care what he’s done.’
‘Oh, he’s a bit more than a crook, is our technical director. He’s a murderer. It was him who was behind what happened to your friend and mine, Bekim Develi.’
Kojo pushed himself up on one elbow and leaned back against the wall. ‘It’s not true, Vik,’ he said, reaching for the handkerchief that was no longer in his breast pocket. ‘I never murdered anyone.’
‘You know,’ I said, ‘I have to hand it to you, Kojo, that’s almost true. Almost.’
‘Here.’ Phil picked the handkerchief off the floor where I’d dropped it and tossed it to him; Kojo wiped his bleeding nose with it and stayed silent.
Vik poured himself a glass of champagne, set down an upturned chair and sat on it. ‘Why don’t you just calm down, Scott?’ he said. ‘Calm down and tell us what this is all about.’
‘I guess I am pretty stoked,’ I said. ‘All right. Here it is – the whole ninety minutes. On Sunday, when I was on your boat, I told you that someone put Nataliya Matviyenko up to stealing Bekim’s EpiPens from his bungalow at the Astir Palace Hotel, on the night before he died. That someone was our friend Kojo, here. Kojo actually drove her away from the hotel in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes after she’d nicked the pens to order. I know that because on Monday morning the police showed me some new CCTV footage.’
‘It wasn’t me,’ said Kojo.
‘It’s true that no one can see your face on that film, Kojo. The Greek cop, Chief Inspector Varouxis – he thinks you were another punter, one who was into some kinky sex, on account of the fact that there was a whip lying on the rear shelf of the car. Except that it wasn’t a whip at all; it was that stupid fly-whisk you always have with you, wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ said Kojo, dabbing at his nose with his handkerchief. ‘And I didn’t know anyone called Nataliya.’
‘We can easily check with the local limo companies to see if you hired a car that night. No? And you already knew Nataliya from a trip you made here to Athens just a few months ago. I have a witness who was with you. Another hooker.’
‘That’s your witness?’ Kojo laughed. ‘Another hooker?’
‘Kojo had dinner with her and this other girl, one of his players – Séraphim Ntsimi, who plays for Panathinaikos – and Roman Boerescu, who plays for Olympiacos, of course. In case you weren’t paying attention, he’s the one who almost scored against us tonight. Oh, and if you’ve forgotten Nataliya, she was the hooker who drowned herself in the harbour, because she was so upset about what happened to poor Bekim. They were good friends apparently. She has my sympathies. I’m pretty upset about it myself. But then you’ve probably guessed as much by now.’
I took a deep breath and tried to overcome the adrenalin coursing through my body that was making me tremble a little. A big part of me wanted to really go to town on Kojo for what he’d done; a bloody nose didn’t seem like nearly enough.
‘Why would Kojo do such a thing?’ asked Vik.
‘Exactly,’ whispered Kojo.
‘Money. That’s why Kojo does everything, right? For money. In case you didn’t notice he’s spent the last few months desperate for money. On account of the fact that he has some largish gambling debts. Remember when we met him at that restaurant in Paris? Taillevent. He said then that he was going to Russia to look for a partner – trying to offload the King Shark Football Academy to someone with ver
y deep pockets. Anyway, it turns out that he found a partner. Only it wasn’t exactly the kind of partner he was looking for. He and your old friend, the owner of Dynamo St Petersburg, Semion Mikhailov, made a very substantial bet on the unlicensed market to do with the outcome of our first match against Olympiacos. Mikhailov knew about Bekim’s allergy and persuaded Kojo that he should help make the bet against London City a sure thing. By putting the fix in on our best player. A player who Mikhailov just happened to know was also our most vulnerable.’
‘Vik,’ said Kojo. ‘You have to believe me. This is all pure fantasy. I never made any such bet.’
‘Maybe you didn’t make it yourself, but you were in on it. And you had a good excuse to be here in Athens and do Semion Mikhailov’s dirty work, didn’t you, Kojo? City had just bought Prometheus and we were playing Olympiacos for a place in the Champions League. And you were looking to sell us another player, too. You were even invited on Vik’s yacht to talk about it. Which was also very convenient as you didn’t have to stay on the mainland and become a potential suspect like the rest of us.’
Vik looked pained for a moment. ‘It’s one thing stealing his pens,’ he said. ‘But that’s not what why Bekim died. As you said yourself on Sunday night, someone tainted his food with chickpeas. Perhaps as little as a couple of grams of the stuff. I can’t see how Kojo could have done that. On the day of the match Kojo was with Phil and me all day. Plus we have a team nutritionist. Everyone was very careful about what they ate before the match. On your own instructions.’