Dead Ball

by Tom Palmer

  What the hell is going on? Who is this? Text me now to say you are OK. C xxx

  Danny smiled – and texted Charlotte back:

  OK. D

  Then he stood at the edge of a Russian forest, thousands of miles away from home. And waited.

  Five more minutes. Then he’d go back to the party.

  GOOD FRIEND

  Danny had been standing in the woods without moving a muscle.

  Although he could see no one looking for him, he knew they might be watching. That was why he’d chosen to wait – and to do nothing. That would be what they least expected.

  As he waited, Danny listened to the sounds coming from the woods. Rustles. Screeches. And snaps. He smiled. They could rustle and screech and snap all they liked – he wasn’t scared of wildlife tonight.

  But he jumped when his phone started to buzz in his pocket. A call this time. Not a text.

  A call? From who? Holt? Worrying where he was?

  Danny looked at the screen, cupping his hands round it, so the light it gave off wouldn’t be seen.

  Charlotte.

  Danny fumbled with the phone, nearly dropping it.

  ‘Hello?’ he whispered.

  ‘What’s going on? What the hell are you doing? Who were those men in the video?’

  ‘It’s some Russians…’ Danny tried to explain, keeping his voice quiet.

  ‘I thought I told you to look after yourself. I’ve been worried. Are you safe?’

  ‘I’m OK.’

  ‘Then why are you whispering, Danny?’

  Danny grinned. ‘I’m hiding,’ he said.

  ‘What? Hiding? From who? Danny, tell me.’

  ‘Some men. We’re at some rich guy’s house. At a party. I went for a look round and… well, just keep the film. Save it. It proves something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The taller man. He’s the England keeper, Matt McGee. He’s talking to the other man, Dmitri Tupolev. It might be evidence.’

  ‘Evidence?’

  ‘Please, just keep it. This call’s costing two pounds a minute.’

  ‘I don’t care how much it costs. What I do care about is that you’re safe.’

  ‘I’m safe,’ Danny said. Something made him smile.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘In that case,’ Charlotte said, ‘I’ve got news.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Danny wondered what she could have to say to him. The first thought that jumped into his head was that she was going to announce she had a boyfriend. The idea horrified him.

  ‘That stuff you told me about McGee,’ she went on. ‘At the party.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘About him knowing that guy. The criminal?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Well, I told the police. They didn’t realize McGee and Barnes knew each other. They had no link. So they only went and raided Barnes’s properties. They’d been looking for an excuse anyway. And guess what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They found the presses – for the counterfeit money – and loads of dodgy cash.’

  Danny’s heart began to thump. ‘And the guy, Barnes?’ he asked, hopeful.

  ‘And him. They arrested him and some others.’

  ‘Brilliant. But what about McGee? Did they say anything about him?’

  ‘Not officially.’

  Danny paused. ‘But… unofficially.’

  ‘Well, the officer who I gave the information to says one of the men they arrested has said something that clears McGee. Sort of.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ Danny said.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want him to be clean.’

  ‘So what’s he up to with this Russian guy, then?’ Charlotte asked. ‘If he’s so clean.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Danny said, as an owl hooted in the depths of the wood.

  ‘But you think?’

  ‘He could be taking a bribe to throw the game,’ Danny said. ‘It looks like that. But it’s not true. I’m sure… well, almost sure.’

  Charlotte said nothing for a moment. Then: ‘Where are you, Danny?’

  Danny knew she’d heard the owl hooting. ‘In a wood,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m hiding.’

  ‘So you said. Who from?’

  ‘A Russian billionaire’s private army,’ Danny replied.

  Charlotte paused again.

  ‘You said you were safe. Danny. I’m worried. I… care about you.’

  Danny wanted to say the same thing back. He cared about Charlotte too. A lot.

  ‘I’m safe,’ he said. ‘Trust me. I’ve not lied to you, have I?’

  ‘No,’ Charlotte said. ‘But all this detective stuff you do. You need to be careful.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You’d better be. If you don’t come home alive, I’ll kill you.’

  ‘OK,’ Danny said, the grin still on his face long after Charlotte had put her phone down.

  TUESDAY

  FOLLOWING McGEE

  Tuesday. The day before the big game.

  Danny had breakfast with Holt. He decided to try some of the Russian food on offer today. Blini, which were long soft eggy cakes. And some small balls of jelly that looked like jam. Danny ate some of the blini. They were OK. Then he tried the jam. He nearly spat it out. It was really salty. Or fishy. He couldn’t tell. He grabbed a cup of tea to take the taste away. Now he felt sick.

  ‘I’ve got some more stuff to do this morning,’ Holt said, eyeing him, but not mentioning the food. ‘An interview with an official. But he wants me to go alone.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Danny said. ‘I reckon I’ll do some sightseeing this morning.’

  ‘I’ll be free this afternoon,’ Holt said, frowning. ‘How about we check out some more places in the guidebook? Get some presents? Can you wait?’

  Danny could still feel a tension between them from last night. But neither of them had acknowledged it.

  ‘OK,’ Danny said, smiling. He might get his mum and dad presents today. Maybe something for Paul and Charlotte. But there was no way Emily was getting a Russian doll.

  ‘In fact, shall we go and have a look at the stadium later this afternoon?’ Holt suggested. ‘Try and get in to have a look round before it’s overrun with security tomorrow?’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Danny said.

  Danny had decided to be friendly with Holt. He didn’t want to play the grumpy child any more. He knew Holt had a job to do. And, although he had big questions to ask about what Holt was up to, he knew now was not the time. One of his dad’s favourite detectives was called Maigret. He’d always wait for the right moment to ask a question. Even though he’d known what to ask for hours, even days. That was what good detective work was about. Timing.

  ‘How about I come back at midday?’ Holt asked. ‘We’ll find somewhere to have lunch. Can you amuse yourself in the hotel until then?’

  Danny nodded. He hoped he’d have his appetite back by then.

  Lunchtime arrived and passed. Holt phoned at 1 p.m. to say he’d been delayed. Danny decided to be brave. He was on his own in a city where barely anyone spoke English. He could have sat in his room. Waited all day. But there was something he really wanted to see in Moscow.

  Lenin’s tomb.

  He ordered a sandwich from room service and then went out into the city.

  He didn’t want to see Lenin’s tomb because he was a big fan of Russian history. He knew Lenin had been the first leader of Russia after it’d had its revolution. But that was about it. The thing was, he’d read about Lenin’s tomb in the guidebook. You could go in and see his body. His actual dead body. A body that had been dead for eighty-five years.

  The body was in a building called a mausoleum. Something about that appealed to Danny. It was horrible. Really horrible. But he couldn’t resist.

  The guidebook had said that you could see his face and that his ears
were all withered and tiny. Also, that loads of parts of his body had been replaced with wax and that some people thought Lenin was pretty much all wax now.

  Gross.

  Danny set off. The hotel was quite close to Red Square. According to the map he had to walk over the river, past a large cathedral with golden domes, take a right along the river and he’d be there.

  Coming along and then across the river had been a struggle. The roads were so busy it’d been hard to find a place to cross.

  But Danny made it eventually.

  Red Square was still enormous. A huge ring of concrete bollards surrounded the mausoleum. Groups of people gawped at the weird cathedral, the mausoleum, the Kremlin.

  The walls that went along one side of the square were so big – and the square itself so big – that Danny felt tiny. There was something about the scale of the place that was wrong. It was like the people were being made to feel that small.

  The mausoleum was a small red building that would have looked quite big if it had not been dwarfed by the walls of the Kremlin. It had the letters Λ Ε Η И Η across it. Several people were having their photographs taken, grinning into the cameras with the building holding their dead former leader inside. Including young children.

  Danny frowned. The place gave him the creeps.

  But he still wanted to see the body.

  He walked towards the entrance. There were two soldiers stood staring blankly out across the square. He thought about asking them if he could go in, but neither would meet his eyes.

  He was getting nowhere. And beginning to lose his nerve.

  And that was when he saw Matt McGee walk straight in front of him. Less than a hundred metres away. Across the front of the mausoleum. Towards the right of Red Square.

  Where was he going? On his own in Moscow centre? Were footballers allowed to do that? Danny looked around him for some FA security people, expecting to see some. But there was no one obvious.

  What was McGee doing? Maybe he was just sightseeing like Danny. Maybe he liked to get away from the claustrophobia of the hotel. Footballers could be into cathedrals and things like that. Maybe even mausoleums.

  Danny knew what he had to do. Follow. That was the only way to get answers to his questions.

  But he had to do it right.

  How many times had he read about following people in crime novels? Tailing, it was called. There were several principles. He knew them by heart.

  One: stay far back enough not to be seen, but not so far back as to lose your target.

  Two: don’t follow the target step by step. Try and cross roads so you’re not just following in his footsteps directly.

  Three: be ready to turn up a side road if you’re spotted. But never do it as soon as your target sees you. It would be too obvious.

  Danny waited. He let McGee get a hundred metres ahead of him, then he followed.

  This was more interesting than looking at a body that had been dead for eighty-five years.

  Definitely.

  As soon as Danny set off across the square, a man began to follow him. Using the same techniques, he kept a hundred metres behind, talking rapid English into his mobile phone. The man watched Danny as he turned out of the square, then moved in behind him.

  THE ATTACK

  Danny always stayed at least fifty metres behind McGee – in case his target looked back. Because, after all, McGee did know who Danny was. They’d spoken, briefly, outside the toilet on the plane. And been at the same party the night before.

  But McGee did not look back. Sometimes he dawdled, moving suddenly slower. He was walking like a man following someone, not someone being followed himself. Danny looked ahead, but could see no one McGee might be following.

  He got his phone out and set it to take a video, his finger over the record button. So he was ready.

  Danny followed McGee past some sort of memorial, a flame burning at the foot of the Kremlin wall. It was guarded by three sullen sentries. All with fur hats. Danny had to find his way round several people standing staring at the flame. Then McGee went through an enormous queue of people. All waiting, Danny assumed, to get into the Kremlin. Danny took his time edging past the people. He didn’t want to get too close to McGee. This crowd was the perfect cover.

  But, next, they headed away from the crowds, down the side of a major road, heavy traffic coming alongside them. If Danny needed to cross the road now, to avoid being seen, he would have had no chance. That tactic was not available to him. All he had was turning to walk the other way. And that would look really obvious. If McGee stopped, Danny would be stuffed.

  But McGee was not stopping. He seemed to be heading back to the river. They’d walked around three sides of the Kremlin. Danny wondered where McGee was going. He could hardly be doing this for exercise. The air was so polluted and dirty that it was the last thing a sportsman should be doing the day before a big game. It’d be as bad as smoking.

  Something had to happen soon. Danny could feel it. But what?

  McGee approached a crossing. There was a policeman in the middle of the road. He’d stopped one stream of traffic – five lanes of it – just at the right time, holding up a black-and-white stick authoritatively, allowing McGee and a figure fifty metres ahead of him to cross. McGee sprinted across the road. But Danny held back. He had to. He couldn’t just go after McGee. Not so soon. They’d be too close. So he waited. And that’s why, when the policeman started the traffic again, Danny was left on one side of the busy road, McGee on the other.

  Danny watched impatiently as McGee walked along the side of the river, then down what he assumed were stone steps leading to the waterside.

  Hundreds of cars had come past already. The traffic was endless. Danny was stranded.

  Eventually the policeman stopped the traffic and waved at Danny to cross.

  Danny walked sensibly until he was past the policeman. Then he ran across the rest of the road. In front of a large black people-carrier that skidded to a halt, missing him by metres. But Danny didn’t have time to worry about that. He wanted to see what McGee was up to. Was it related to last night? This had to be more than a stroll around Moscow. McGee was walking in a circle – not actually going anywhere. Danny ran over a large expanse of grass, close to the river. Then to the steps he’d seen McGee disappear down.

  He turned a corner and headed down.

  And that was when he saw Matt McGee grappling with another man on the steps. Danny’s finger hit the record button on his phone camera instinctively.

  At first, Danny assumed McGee was being assaulted. He went down the steps and shouted, hoping that would stop whatever was happening. And he saw the other man stare up, distracted just like he wanted. But instead of the other man stopping what he was doing, maybe casting an angry glance at Danny, Danny saw a look of horror on his face.

  Horror because he was falling.

  Danny must have looked shocked too. Because he’d recognized the man McGee was fighting with. The falling man. It was Robert Skatie. England’s other keeper.

  What the hell was going on?

  Skatie fell backwards, twisting in the air. He landed about six steps down, first on his shoulder, then rolling on to his back. Danny watched his head jerk backwards as he hit the steps.

  And then Danny saw McGee staring at him, waving his arms, beckoning Danny.

  Danny shook his head and turned to run back up the steps to find the traffic policeman. It was all he could think to do. But when he started up the stairs he saw four men.

  One was the Englishman who had been following him. And, although he looked different physically, Danny recognized who it was.

  For a moment he was stunned. Faced with the man he least wanted to see in the world, the man who had sent him to die in the bowels of City Stadium.

  Sir Richard Gawthorpe.

  The other three were dressed in black. He remembered what Anton had called them. Tupolev’s private army.

  ‘Run.’

  The voice
had come from right next to him. From McGee. Snapping Danny out of his confusion.

  ‘Come on. Run!’

  Danny felt McGee’s hand on him, yanking him down the stairs. It felt like McGee had lifted him to the bottom of the steps.

  ‘Go!’ McGee snapped.

  Danny looked up at McGee. McGee’s face was crumpled.

  But Danny couldn’t move. He was paralysed with fear.

  ‘GO!’ McGee shouted in Danny’s face, releasing him from his grip.

  So Danny did. He had no option. He’d witnessed a fight between two of England’s finest goalkeepers. He’d seen a private army coming down the steps, possibly to get him. And he’d seen Sir Richard Gawthorpe. His nemesis.

  That was what was making him run. Not knowing what the hell was going on.

  But why had McGee let him go? Why hadn’t he stopped him?

  Danny knew there was no point in trying to sort out his thoughts. Not while he was running like this, one foot banging painfully down on the concrete, followed by the other foot. He had to run. Find a safe place. Then he could think.

  NOWHERE TO RUN

  Danny ran for five minutes. Without stopping. Without looking back. It was the only way he could cope with the fear he was feeling. He ran until he reached another set of steps going up from the river to the city.

  He knew he had to keep running. Run. Don’t look to see if they’re catching up with you.

  He took three steps up at a time.

  When he reached the top he had no choice but to stop for air. His chest felt like it was being gripped in a vice. He squatted and looked back down the way he’d come.

  He expected to see no one. He expected to have outrun anyone who was coming after him. And, really, he thought, they had no reason to chase him anyway. He was just a boy. There were two England goalkeepers on the steps Danny had left. Why would they come after him?

  He exhaled.

  Then he saw two men. Both in black. Both coming round the bend in the river at full speed. Both looking straight at him.