False Nine (29 page)

‘That only explains the observable behaviour, not the physical details. For example, did you ever know a lefty who instinctively played the ball with his right?’

‘No,’ said Scott. ‘But lots of lefties are good with both feet.’

‘That’s not what I’m asking,’ I said. ‘I passed him the ball when he wasn’t expecting it and without thinking about it, he trapped the ball with his right. That’s reaction. Not choice.’

‘All right. I’ll concede that.’

‘What about the picture?’

‘The picture? I think that’s weird, yes. But I don’t know that you can infer anything from that. Perhaps he just didn’t notice the picture was upside down? Perhaps he’s just a philistine.’

‘If it was any old painting, I’d agree. But even a print by Yayoi Kusama costs a lot of money. The one in his apartment must have cost at least a million dollars. I know because I checked it out when I was in Paris. But he didn’t turn a hair when he was looking at it the wrong way round.’

‘He’s got a cold,’ said Scott. ‘So, he’s not seeing straight. I’ve had a cold and I didn’t know what day it was.’

‘You’ve never had a cold that meant you didn’t know what day it was. You’re exaggerating.’

‘Yes, but to make a point.’

‘What about the inky finger?’

‘He washed his hands.’

‘Grace washed her hands. Since last night I estimate she washed her hands at least three or four times. And the ink was still on her fingers this morning.’

‘So, maybe he’s just the fastidious type.’

‘In which case why is he wearing the same clothes he wore last night? I can still see the traces of the ink on his jeans from when he wiped his hand on them. That’s not very fastidious.’

‘Good point. The book by Russell Brand can be easily explained. It’s just a fucking book you gave him. Not a big deal. Besides, he’s ill-mannered. You already know that about him.’

‘And not liking coffee?’

‘Perhaps he was drinking coffee last night for a reason. To be sociable. To stay awake for some reason. I’ve met people who drink coffee who aren’t as crazy about it as you are.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Of course, anyone overhearing this little chat with yourself would conclude that there’s nothing wrong with him. That you’re the one who’s fucking crazy. A schizophrenic.’

‘True. All right. We’ve got until seven o’clock tomorrow morning to figure this out, all right? After that we’ll be on the plane back to Barcelona. And it will be too late.’

‘Mmm hmm. How many engines does this plane have anyway?’

‘It’s twin-engined.’

‘Would you call yourself a nervous passenger?’

‘Yes, Scott. I would.’

‘Then maybe he is, too. Did you think of that, Sherlock? Maybe he doesn’t like to fly any more than you do.’

‘I never thought of that. But still, it would only explain the moody behaviour. Not the details. And aren’t you forgetting something? When I was giving him a couple of Catalan phrases? I never suggested a Spanish teacher to him last night. Nor before. That was just bullshit. A bluff. To see what he’d say.’

‘You’re a suspicious fucker, Manson. Do you know that?’

‘Yes. I am. Let me know if you think of anything, okay?’

‘You know where to find me. I’ll be right here whenever you need me, pal.’

I went back into the bedroom and lay down. I hadn’t slept much the night before and so I closed my eyes and, for some surreal, peculiar reason I started to dream of Manchester United and a League Cup game they’d played against Barnsley back in 2009.

The way you do sometimes.

27

I sat bolt upright on the spare room bed as if a powerful current of electricity had been conducted through my body, and swore, loudly, several times.

‘Fucking hell. Fucking hell. Fucking hell.’

Okay, it’s not exactly ‘
eureka
’ and I’m no Archimedes but suddenly the solution to the problem that been occupying me earlier now seemed so bloody obvious that it shouldn’t have been a mystery at all; in fact, the very ordinariness of the answer now seemed to be in inverse proportion to the apparent difficulty of the original question. It was simple. And it was brilliant. And nobody but me had guessed it until now.

‘Fucking hell. The sneaky little cunt. The duplicitous bastard.’

I jumped off the bed, went into the bathroom, splashed some water onto my face and then stared into the mirror at my ruefully smiling double. The man I knew almost as well as I knew myself.

‘You look very pleased with yourself, Scott Manson.’

‘You have to admit. It’s the only possible answer.’

‘Go on then. You’re dying to tell me what I already know, of course. But don’t let that stop you.’

‘It’s not him,’ I said. ‘The kid downstairs. It’s not Jérôme Dumas. It can’t be. It looks exactly like him. Almost exactly. It sounds like him. Almost. Even behaves like him.’

‘Almost.’

‘Precisely. But it just isn’t him. It’s some other sod. I’m looking at you in the mirror and I’m thinking this is what he sees. Only he doesn’t need a fucking mirror to do it.’

‘You mean…’

‘Exactly. He’s got a brother.’

‘Like Gary and Phil Neville.’

‘More alike than them. Identical. And probably a lot more amicable than those two bastards.’

‘Fábio and Rafael da Silva? The Brazilian lads.’

‘Yes. Monozygotic twins.’

‘Did you say psychotic or zygotic?’

‘You probably need a bit of both to get away with a scam like this. I was trying to work out why the fuck I was thinking about Manchester United before I went to sleep, and that’s the reason. Them. The da Silva boys. Old Trafford’s Cheech and Chong.’

‘They were good. Rafael is better than Fabio, who’s now at Cardiff City, I think. Which says all you need to know. And don’t forget the Bender boys in Germany.’

‘Jérôme has got a secret twin.’

‘Or Frank and Ronald de Boer. Rene and Willy van de Kerkhof. Except that they’re not secret twins, of course. Everyone knows about them.’

‘This would certainly explain why Jérôme didn’t know about Russell Brand’s booky-wook, about the picture, or the Spanish teacher, and why the brother I met this afternoon isn’t quite like the one I met last night. There’s no ink on his forefinger and he plays with his right foot instead of his left. Because he’s not the same man. Apart from that they’re identical.’

‘Fucking hell, you’re right, you know.’

‘Exactly.’

‘But why? Why would you do something like this?’

‘I don’t know. But when you think about it, it could be the basis of a very nice racket.’

‘I see what you mean. If one brother ever gets injured, the other can take his place. Like
The Man in the Iron Mask
.’

‘Yes. Just like that. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Jérôme Two is almost as talented a player as Jérôme One. Only not quite. Which makes a big difference in football, of course. I mean, there are lots of lads with plenty of talent but only a few with the extra five per cent of ability you need to carry you into professional football at the highest level.’

‘That could be it, yes.’

‘Which would explain this whole weird scam. One twin supports the other. They probably shared everything. The same job. The same girl.’

‘You mean?’

‘Why not? Bella Macchina. It’s what twins do, isn’t it? Shag each other’s girlfriends.’

‘It’s what you’d do if you were a twin, Scott, which isn’t necessarily what most normal people would do. Not everyone is a bugger for the hole like you.’

‘Maybe you’re right. But it also explains why he – they – liked to hire those two French hookers he called the Twin Towers. Because he, they, were into twins in a weird way that no one could ever have suspected.’

‘Fucking hell. That’s right. So. What the fuck are you going to do now?’

‘I don’t know. Have it out with him – them – I guess. Here and now. I think I’ll have to tell the one who’s here to go and fetch the other from his hiding place so I can hear them out.’

‘That could be tricky.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Suppose they don’t want to play?’

‘Then I’ll have to leave them here and fly back to Europe by myself.’

‘And the clubs? What are you going to tell PSG and FCB?’

‘I don’t know that either. I think a lot depends on what the twins have to say about this. But if this has been going on for a while, and I rather suspect it has, then there are an awful lot of people in Paris and Barcelona who are not going to be happy. Not to mention Paolo Gentile.’

‘Do you think Grace Doughty knew about all this? She was pretty economical with the truth before, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes. I do. The bitch. I think she knows everything.’

‘A good fuck, though.’

‘Yes, a very good fuck. And I’m going to miss that.’ I paused and thought for a second. ‘But it might explain why she didn’t want to come back to London to represent me before the FA. Because she didn’t want to be involved with this little scam any more than was absolutely necessary. The plain fact of the matter is that it’s fraud, pure and simple.’

‘And the father? John? Where does he fit into this picture?’

‘I’m not quite sure. My brain is still a bit puffed out after thinking of this answer.’

‘You didn’t exactly think of it. I mean, it sort of arrived in your subconscious mind, while you were napping. It’s not like you deduced it while smoking your favourite pipe, is it?’

‘Where does it say that all your best thinking has to be done consciously?’

‘True. But don’t think this makes you a fucking genius. It doesn’t. Not by a long chalk.’

‘Maybe so, but if two big clubs like Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain thought that I was the one man in football who could solve this fucking problem for them then you have to admit they were bloody clever, because that’s exactly what I’ve done, isn’t it?’

‘Good for you. But where does that leave your three million euro bonus? Have you thought about that? Will they still pay it if all this comes out into the open? They never said anything about paying you if it turns out that Jérôme’s disappearance was related to some wrongdoing. Did they?’

‘I don’t remember. But look, that hardly matters right now. All that matters is the truth, surely?’

‘Don’t be too sure about that. Lies and lying are the oil that keeps the wheels of civilisation turning smoothly.’

‘Who said that?’

‘I did.’

‘Well, you should know. The amount of lies you’ve told. Or maybe I should say that you are planning to tell.’

‘To who?’

‘That nice policewoman. Louise. You are going to lie to her, aren’t you? When you get back home. About what you’ve been getting up to here and in Paris with that other bird. The lovely Bella.’

‘I don’t know that I’m planning to lie to her, exactly.’

‘No, you’re just going to do what Grace Doughty did. Which is to be economical with the truth.’

‘Touché.’

‘You know it’s not fair to her, don’t you? Louise. She’s a nice girl. Too good for a bastard like you, probably.’

‘Agreed. But what can I do? Grace handed it to me on a plate. And so did Bella Macchina, more or less.’

‘Would you Adam and Eve it? What a load of bollocks. “And the man said, The woman thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat.”’

‘Yeah, all right. Guilty as charged. I’m feeling bad enough about that as it is without you making me feel even worse.’

‘Are you? Are you really? I doubt that. I really do.’

‘It’s not like we’re married or anything.’

‘And that would make such a big difference to someone like you, wouldn’t it? Need I remind you of how you behaved when you were married? You were shagging someone else’s missus, that’s what you were doing. Paolo Gentile was right, you know. For you, this is a weakness. An Achilles heel. Which is a nice way of saying that you’re just a cunt. A clever cunt. But a cunt nonetheless.’

I sighed and turned away from the bathroom mirror. You can take only so much from your own conscience.

Feeling a little cross with myself I went to find Jérôme 2 – or whatever the hell his name was – and then have it out with him.

28

As I passed the master bedroom I saw the door was open a few centimetres and, peering through the gap, I glimpsed Jérôme 2 lying fast asleep on his bed. For a second or two I contemplated barging in there and waking him up with my hands wrapped around his neck to demand an immediate explanation but a few moments of reflection convinced me that it was probably best to adopt a slightly softer, more laid-back approach than half-throttling him first. Nobody reacts well to being rudely awakened and while I thought I could probably hold my own in a fight with him, I saw little point in exacerbating what already promised to be a delicate situation. And, thinking it might be better if I waited for him to wake up on his own, I went downstairs to search Gui-Jean-Baptiste Target’s extensive drinks tray for a bottle of oak-aged bourbon I’d seen the previous night.

I was about to help myself from a bottle of Elijah Craig when I glanced out of the window and, in the garden lights, caught a glimpse of Charlotte leaving the house with a laden tray in her hands. Given her size she would have been hard to miss. It was like watching a Swiss ball float through the garden. I quickly followed the housekeeper in time to see her place the tray on the lawn and unlock a door near the bottom of the garden before picking the tray up again and going through the door. She closed it carefully behind her and running after her I was just in time to hear the sound of the key turning.

Was the tray for her, I wondered, or for someone else? Maybe she was a live-in housekeeper and these were her quarters. Perhaps she locked the door to ensure some privacy for herself. You could hardly blame her for that. Then again, I remembered her saying goodnight to everyone during dinner last night, and having gone out by the front door. Besides, there was a bottle of beer on the tray and I seemed to recollect Jérôme Dumas saying something about her not touching alcohol. So the beer could not have been for her but for someone else.

As I pondered these circumstances the thought now occurred to me that, perhaps, I had misjudged the situation. It wouldn’t be the first time. Was it possible that Jérôme 1 was being held prisoner, just like the man in the iron mask? Far from being in cahoots with Jérôme 1 perhaps Jérôme 2 was intending to take the place of his twin brother whom he’d incarcerated in order that he might enjoy a taste of the Lamborghini lifestyle himself. Having seen Guadeloupe you could hardly blame him for that. And who would ever know? Even if he wasn’t as talented a player as his twin, Jérôme 2 might even manage to play a couple of games for Barcelona before they concluded he simply wasn’t up to scratch and returned him to PSG. Meanwhile, Jérôme would still be on a hundred grand a week – six or seven times as much as an islander’s average yearly salary. Only a few months earning this kind of loot would probably be enough for any young man living out his days in Pointe-à-Pitre. It might easily leave him set up for life. That’s a lot of temptation for anyone to resist, even a brother. Perhaps especially a brother.