by Alison Bond
The St Ashton players were all struggling now. Making silly tired mistakes, having played too hard and too fast for too long. Surely it was only a matter of time before Tottenham finished them off? Still, they had emerged with far more than a shred of dignity intact. They could walk off the pitch with their heads held high, applaud the fans that had carried them this far. Outplayed perhaps, but not outgunned. If they could just make it through these last few minutes without collapsing from exhaustion, then they could all swap shirts and for ever remember the day they took the game to Tottenham. Just a few more minutes. The fans were screaming for something, anything. Gabe stumbled over his own feet and for a fleeting, shameful moment he wished for a winning goal at the other end. Even if that meant surrender. If the match ended in a draw and they had to face a replay, at White Hart Lane, he knew they would never be able to perform again like this. Tottenham would put out their best team, none of these B-team players, and wipe them off the pitch, making sure that nobody remembered how close they came to losing face.
He could hear his own blood pounding against his skull, thumping like a headache, and he wanted this to be over. He imagined he looked something like a horse at the end of the Grand National, a lumbering beast, foaming with sweat. Somewhere in his hazy peripheral vision he saw the fourth official raise a board declaring injury time. He had no idea how many more minutes were left. He could no sooner read the board than he could fly.
Then the ball was at his feet. He was thirty, maybe thirty-five, yards out. Two of Tottenham’s best defenders, household names almost, were bearing down on him with more speed than he could possibly conceive of right now. How did they still have the energy?
And, because he was tired, and because he was desperate, and because he wasn’t really sure if his trembling legs would carry him if he tried to run away with the ball, Gabe pivoted neatly, looked up once, twice and a third time, then audaciously fired the ball towards the goal.
It went high into the air. The goalkeeper was miles off his line and started frantically running backwards as soon as he realized the ball was on target.
Gabe watched the lob soar through the leaden winter sky, incapable of doing anything more. The two defenders zipped past him, but Gabe couldn’t move. He watched, and he waited, like the crowd, like every player on the pitch, as the ball reached its zenith then fell in a slow arch towards the goal, went over the scrabbling goalie’s head and scraped under the crossbar by a hair’s breadth.
Gooooooaaaaaal!
In the stands they started dancing.
St Ashton 3 – Tottenham 2. The final whistle blew before the game really got going again and the hardy crowd were hoarse from screaming their appreciation.
It might not have been the sexiest match they’d ever seen, certainly the setting wasn’t very glamorous, and there weren’t many big stars out there today, but Gabe Muswell had just scored a hat-trick against Spurs and they wanted him to hear just how much it meant to them.
*
She was already looking up the phone number before the ball went into the back of the net. This kind of thing just never happened. Never. And yet it had.
Please don’t let him be ex-directory.
She could imagine some other sports agents across London doing exactly the same thing. She only hoped that they were calling their assistants rather than doing the simple task themselves. A few clicks found just one Muswell in the St Ashton area.
She dialled.
Surely if this was the right number it would be engaged. Not that she expected anyone to be home, but family and friends would be lining up to congratulate the hero, right? But it rang. She would leave a friendly message, offering her services should he require them. She wasn’t trying to broker him a new deal with a different club – that would be against the strict FIFA rules that governed the game. If she wanted to do that she’d have to approach the club first, even a small one like St Ashton. When you played football your life was not your own to trade; you belonged to the club just as surely as starlets belonged to their studios in 1950s Hollywood. Besides, it was a lucky hat-trick, beautifully done but too late in his career to have a lasting impact.
She would offer to navigate and negotiate the hundreds of media requests that would be heading his way. Gabe Muswell was the man of the moment and with her help that could be a very lucrative moment indeed.
‘Hello, yes?’
Unexpectedly the phone was picked up. ‘Hello, have I got the right number for Gabe Muswell?’
‘Yes, what is it?’
‘Is that –’ she flicked back to the article about Gabe and his wife – ‘Christine?’
‘It is. Who’s this?’
His wife was at home? Maybe they’d split up since this article was written or maybe they’d had a baby. Why else would she be missing what was undoubtedly a once-in-a-lifetime event? At least she would have been watching it on television. She was surprised that Christine didn’t sound a little happier, more jolly. Her husband was a hero.
‘My name’s Samantha Sharp,’ she said. ‘I wanted to get in touch with Gabe, with both of you, and introduce myself.’
‘What for?’
‘Well, firstly to say well done! I’m an Arsenal fan myself and I can tell you that there’s going to be big celebrations in Islington tonight.’
‘I’m sorry, what do you want? Are you selling something?’
‘I’m a sports agent with Legends. Perhaps you’ve heard of us?’
‘No.’
‘Well, that’s me, and I wanted to get in contact. Does your husband, does Gabe, currently have any representation?’
‘For what?’
‘Well, for football, for any media attention, local press, local events, that kind of thing?’ Had this woman been drinking in the middle of the day? It felt like Christine Muswell was either dumb or drunk, and her instincts told her that she was not dumb. ‘I have to warn you, Christine – may I call you Christine? – that life could get pretty insane over the next few days.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, because of what your husband just did.’
‘Oh no!’ The sharp and disinterested tone of Christine’s voice changed drastically. ‘Has something happened to Gabe? Is he in trouble? Are you a reporter?’
‘No, I’m a sports agent,’ she said slowly as the truth dawned. ‘Have you been watching the match today? The Tottenham match that your husband has been playing in?’
‘No. I’ve been cleaning the bathroom.’
‘Christine, Gabe scored a hat-trick. They won.’
‘They did?’
‘And any minute now I imagine the country’s media will be all over him trying to get his side of the story. His and yours.’
‘They won?’
‘Yes.’ She was going to have to spell this out in simple terms. ‘That sort of attention can be quite overwhelming if you’re not used to it and you might want to think about hiring someone, someone like me, to act as a kind of buffer between you and the tabloid press, who as I’m sure you know are not the most, shall we say, decent types.’
There was a pause at the other end.
‘Christine? Are you still there?’
‘I’ve got thirteen missed calls on my mobile.’
‘It’s been quite a day.’
‘I’m sorry but we’re not interested,’ said Christine abruptly.
‘As long as you understand that I’m not trying to sell you anything? I can assure you I’m a legitimate agent. Legends is a global company. You might have read something in the papers about Monty and Ferris Welstead? That was our most recent success.’
She should have said ‘my’, ‘my success’. She was probably the only agent at Legends that didn’t like to pretend the entire company would collapse without her. But teamwork was an advantage, and a trait too deeply rooted in her to be brushed aside when it suited her ego.
‘The thirty million?’ said Christine. ‘That was you?’
She recognized something in her voi
ce immediately. A love of money. An avarice that could be exploited. Christine Muswell’s greed would be her way in.
Back on familiar footing, Samantha set out her stall.
‘My first step would be to sell Gabe’s story exclusively to one of the tabloids, the Mail or the Sun probably. Why tell the same story over and over for free when you can tell it once for money?’
‘How much?’
‘I’d really have to talk to Gabe before I could put an exact figure on it, but we could possibly be talking several thousand pounds.’
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely. But it would be essential that he didn’t give too much away for nothing, not before we’ve had a chance to talk.’
And I’ve found out how much juice we can squeeze from his life story.
‘Several thousand?’
‘And that would be just the start. There’s the glossy magazines, OK or something like it, endorsements, television and radio. There’s a real window of opportunity here. Once-in-a-lifetime kind of stuff.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Samantha Sharp – Sam.’
‘What do I have to do?’
She took a deep breath. ‘There will probably be other agents calling you – they’re probably trying to get through right now.’
‘But you were first,’ said Christine, with a surprisingly simple concept of fair play.
Her eyes flicked up to the clock on the wall. ‘I could be in St Ashton in an hour. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to sit for a while and talk about this?’
‘I’ll expect you in an hour?’
‘No problem. And when you speak to Gabe perhaps you could suggest that he doesn’t spend too long with the press? Especially not the national press.’
‘You don’t know Gabe,’ sniffed Christine. ‘He loves attention.’
‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’
In a daze Christine wandered into the front room and turned on the television. There were scenes of jubilation at the St Ashton ground, and then suddenly there was Gabe, there was her husband, looking knackered and dishevelled but irresistibly sexy.
She had to sit down. That was her man, the man she chose, talking to that nice Garth Crooks from the BBC. He looked happy, so happy.
Several thousand pounds.
She went into the kitchen, determined to find him something special for his dinner, more inclined to be his loving wife than she had been for years.
There was a bottle of champagne she’d been saving since Christmas. She looked at it. Then she opened it. Then Christine poured herself a glass and she drank it.
Samantha stepped out of her house and locked the door behind her, reminding herself yet again to get someone in to see about how it jammed in damp weather. The house was one of a short row of panelled 1970s townhouses, ugly as sin when she bought it nine years ago but with a certain kind of retro chic these days. The front garden was bare except for an enormous magnolia tree which ensured that at least for a few weeks in spring she had the best-looking house on the block.
She climbed into her steel-grey Mini Cooper and started north towards the M1.
Gabe Muswell wasn’t going to be a massive earner, but he was a nice little high-profile cherry to top off her month. It wouldn’t be complex work. Leanne could handle most of it. Her mind was already processing the best opportunities for him as she crawled through the Saturday-afternoon traffic around Brent Cross, a mental manifesto for all things Muswell.
Not for a moment did she think of Jackson in his Westminster penthouse, waiting for her.
6
Aleksandr Lubin would inherit everything when his father died.
Billions.
So was it any wonder that he was looking forward to it?
He liked drugs, women and football in that order. He was currently flying high on cocaine while he screwed a fabulous-looking woman with the sports news on, muted, in the background, showing the English football highlights. Life was good.
Anya struggled underneath him, playacting, knowing that he liked to feel powerful as much as she liked to feel overpowered. That was why they made such a good couple. That and the fact that such a classic Slavic beauty could only be temporarily tamed by an enormous fortune such as his.
She wrenched herself free of him and rolled them both over with her strong lean limbs, raising herself on her elbows and letting her long dark hair trail over his chest. Aleksandr grabbed her arse and pulled her down onto him. She smiled and tossed back her head so that her perfect breasts jutted out for him to admire. It was only fair, seeing as he had been the one to pay for them.
He reached for her greedily.
There was something about the feel of fake tits that drove him wild. He had tried to work it out once and decided that there was nothing better than a woman who was willing to endure that much pain to make herself more attractive to men. Like high heels and corsets, fake tits meant a woman was willing to suffer for sex.
He pinched her left nipple between his thumb and forefinger, hard enough to make her cry out, and she squeezed him between her thighs.
Anya wasn’t his girlfriend, but she didn’t know that.
He was born in the Ukraine twenty-four years ago, at his father’s holiday home on the Crimean Peninsula. Before she died his mother used to sing him lullabies from that region, songs full of sailors and sea nymphs and pagan gods. He was named for his maternal grandfather, a penniless farmer, who left nothing but his flaming auburn locks to the daughter he adored. She’d married his father for love. She’d stayed with him for money.
Goran Lubin, Aleksandr’s father, had seized the chance to make money as Russia emerged from its communist restraints, using his black market expertise to exploit Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberalism, sinking every dirty penny he had made into the country’s enormous reserves of oil and aluminium, so that by the time the market readjusted Lubin was one of a handful of new Russian billionaires whose dirty money had been washed spotlessly clean by glorious capitalism. After his wife died he sank all his emotions into his only son and so Aleksandr grew up in a sanctuary of privilege and adoration, cared for by a team of nannies as his father protected his business interests around the world.
And every time he came home he brought more extravagant gifts and dismissed the nannies for the remainder of his stay so that he, and he alone, could be with his son.
‘You are my boy prince,’ he would say. ‘You are worth the world to me.’
And that’s exactly how Aleksandr felt.
Every time he fucked a beautiful woman he knew that his father would be proud. His father would like Anya. If she was still on the scene when he next visited. He would be a fool to settle down so young. That might have been how they did things in the old country, but times had changed. Thankfully.
On his eighteenth birthday his father gave him the apartment where he was currently banging the gorgeous Anya. A five thousand square foot penthouse on the south side of the Vistula River in Krakow, overlooking the Wawel Castle. Krakow would be the hub of the emerging technologies in the region. It suited Goran to have a base there.
And as the city was renowned for having some of the best-looking women in the world walking its cobbled streets it suited Aleksandr too.
He sat up, pushing his chest against Anya’s, gripping her close, and biting her shoulder as he looked over it to see what was happening with the football, just in time to see Gabe Muswell’s first goal.
For his twenty-first birthday Aleksandr’s father had given him a football team.
Not just any football team, but the White Stars of Krakow, the most successful team in the city’s history, and the most reviled of the three teams which played their home games there. Most of their supporters came from the rural areas, attracted by the team’s reputation for glamour and violence. The locals, most of whom supported rivals Cracovia or Wisła, feared them. As twenty-first birthday gifts went, it was impressive.
‘Something for you to do,’ sai
d his father. ‘I know you like football.’
The truth was that investment in a football club was a monetary rather than sentimental decision, and Poland, on the up and up, was as good a place as any to put his money.
For the first few months he had done little more than swan around the executive box at home games and give interviews to the press from his penthouse, boasting of his plans for the team. As their lead at the top of the national league began to look precarious he was forced to take a more active interest. When they slipped from the top and languished outside the top three the fans started to turn on him. One afternoon, after the team’s third consecutive loss, he was booed as he left the stadium in his German sports car. He was humiliated in front of the Polish princess he was desperately trying to get into bed. He never saw her again.
Both of his top forwards were out through injury and they currently had a seventeen-year-old kid playing as a lone striker up front. They were holding their position in the table, just, but it wasn’t enough. They needed a new striker on loan. They needed him yesterday.
On the screen behind the frantically bucking Anya, Gabe Muswell scored his second goal.
Aleksandr flipped her over so that she was on all fours and stabbed into her from behind. That was much better. He could see the television perfectly. Better still, his security cameras, with tape permanently recording, had a magnificent view of Anya’s ecstatic face as he pounded her.
Something to watch later.
He reached over to the bedside table where his little vial of coke was balanced carefully on its end. He sprinkled some of it onto her shoulder blade and then grabbed a handful of her thick hair and tugged her forcefully towards him so that he could lick the cocaine off her arched back.
As the narcotics entered his bloodstream with a potent rush he watched Gabe Muswell score his third wonder goal.