Hand of God (13 page)

‘Leave it, Simon,’ I repeated, taking hold of his arm. ‘They can’t even see you, cos of the smoke.’

He was about to take my advice when a high ball came our way and, immediately in front of us, Daryl Hemingway and Diamntopoulou both jumped to head it. The Greek seemed to mount up on the Englishman’s back in an almost gymnastic attempt to reach the ball. Neither man quite making contact, but in the wrestling match that ensued the Greek suddenly fell clutching his face in pain, as if Daryl had deliberately straight-armed him to the ground. It was patently obvious to me and to Simon – and must have been equally clear to the linesman standing right beside us – that Daryl’s back-swinging arm had done little more than brush Diamntopoulou’s girlish top-knot of hair. But with the Greek still rolling on the pitch in agony as if he had been stabbed in the eye with a red-hot poker, we were astonished to see the lino raise his flag and Merlini, the referee, already striding towards Daryl and reaching for the card in his top pocket.

A yellow would have been bad enough; the red was an outrage. Daryl Hemingway stood there as if he could hardly believe what was happening. Nor could Simon and I. How we restrained ourselves from further comment at that moment, I shall never know. I put a hand on Daryl’s shoulder and started to walk him to the dugout but not before changing our own formation from 4-3-3 to 4-4-1. If we dug in, we might hold on to a draw, which was at least something we could build on back in London.

‘I didn’t fucking touch him, boss. Honest.’

‘I saw the whole thing, Daryl. It wasn’t your fault. One of these bastards has been bought. That much is now obvious, anyway.’

I looked back to the pitch in time to see Diamntopoulou get back to his feet, without a mark on his face, and Simon, still on the edge of the technical area, sneer: ‘You cheating, fucking bastard. He never touched you. Call yourself a sportsman? You’re a fucking girl, that’s what you are, son. A fucking girl.’

Diamntopoulou was barrel-chested, with more tattoos than a Scottish regiment, and under the Yorkshireman’s obvious derision he bristled, visibly.

‘You call me a girl?’

‘Well, you’re not a man, that’s for sure.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘No, but I’ll fuck you, if you like, girlie. That’s all you’re good for, you Greek
malakas
.’

‘You need to learn some manners, fat man,’ shouted Diamntopoulou, squaring up, as two Olympiacos players intercepted, and that the fourth official was there to put his body in front of the Greek’s.

‘Any time you’re ready to try,
malakas
, I’ll be fucking ready.’

Unsurprisingly, Simon found himself sent back to the dressing room; to be fair to the Greek officials, in all normal circumstances they might have sent him to sit in the stands, but these were hardly normal circumstances. It wasn’t judged safe for Simon to sit among the Olympiacos fans; and of course they had a point. Anywhere looked safer for Simon than the Olympiacos stands.

Reduced to just ten men we had a hard job containing the Greeks, especially Perez on their left wing. We held out bravely with Gary Ferguson rescuing us a couple of times and Kenny Traynor on his best form with three top-drawer saves, but now doubly demoralised it was an impossible task.

As soon as the second half restarted Perez escaped from Jimmy Ribbans to curl in a left-footer that was their second. Ten minutes later Schuermans failed to dispossess Perez who ran into more space than he could have imagined was possible and hammered in his second one of the match.

The ruins of our evening might fairly have been compared with the Acropolis when Dominguez was substituted in the 79th minute and Machado, who came on in his place, scored immediately with a scrambled millipede of a goal that came about because they just had more fucking legs to kick the ball than we did. The final score was 4–1.

I went to shake hands with Hristos Trikoupis and was more than a little shocked to see him grinning back at me and holding up four fingers. Under different circumstances I might have made something out of it; instead I turned away and then clapped my players off the pitch. They hardly needed another bollocking.

‘Come on, lads. Hurry up and get changed. We’ve a plane to catch. The sooner we get out of this madhouse and back to London the better.’

I wasn’t looking forward to the television interview I’d agreed to do immediately after the game; I certainly wasn’t going to tell their reporter, what I really thought of it: that this was a night of confusion, duplicity, disorder and defeat. That wouldn’t play well with anyone, even though it was the truth. Instead I’d already decided to be a bit Italian about it; Italian football managers are masters at dissembling and they have a saying that comes in useful at times like these.
Bisogna far buon viso a cattivo gioco
: ‘It’s necessary to disguise a bad game with a good face.’

Of course, it’s one thing putting on a good face when it’s only ITV waiting to speak to you in the players’ tunnel. It’s another thing altogether when it’s the fucking cops; it’s always more difficult putting on a good face for them.

Two uniformed police officers and a third man wearing a grey linen suit met me outside our dressing room. The man in the grey suit was tall with fair hair and a little tuft of hair under his bottom lip that I suppose was a beard but looked like some baklava that had missed his mouth. I’d seen better beards growing on a toothbrush. I might have ignored him altogether but for the credentials wallet he was holding up in front of my face. His teeth were very white but even at a distance his breath could have done with freshening.

‘Are you Mr Scott Manson?’

‘Yes.’

‘My name is Chief Inspector Ioannis Varouxis, from the Special Violent Crime Squad, here in Athens.’ He put away the wallet and handed me a business card with English on one side and Greek on the other. ‘Could I speak with you, sir? In private.’

Under his arm was an iPad in a rubberised cover that matched the colour of his suit and I caught a scent of a rather nice aftershave. His shirt was clean and neatly pressed and he didn’t look like the Greek policemen I had seen in movies.

I frowned. ‘Now?’

‘It is important, sir.’

‘All right. If you insist.’

He led me along the corridor to the officials’ room where I’d gone the previous night following Bekim’s death; my mind raced through the reasons why someone from a special violent crime squad should want to speak to me. Had Simon Page hit someone? Had a Greek assaulted him? Were the Olympiacos supporters planning to attack us as we left the Karaiskakis Stadium? The two uniformed policemen took up positions either side of the door which one of them closed, leaving me alone with the Chief Inspector.

‘First of all, let me say that I am very sorry about Bekim Develi.’

I nodded silently.

‘To die so young was a terrible tragedy. And that it should happen in Greece, during a match like that, was most regrettable. Actually, I wanted to speak to you earlier today but my superior, Police Lieutenant General Stelios Zouranis, felt that this might interfere with your preparations for tonight’s game. Indeed, that you might think this to be a crudely partisan attempt to influence the result.’

‘I’m not sure that anything would have affected our performance tonight. We were awful.’

‘Under the circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that you lost. For the record I should tell you that I am a Panathinaikos supporter. So, it makes my skin crawl even to be here. Your player, Hemingway, he should never have been sent off. But that was just typical of a match against Olympiacos. Somehow they always contrive to win.’

I looked at my watch. ‘You’ll forgive me if I ask you to come to the point, Chief Inspector. We have a chartered plane waiting to take us back to London. It seems that your air-traffic controllers are going on strike at midnight. And we really don’t want to miss our take-off slot.’

‘I know. And believe me this is most regrettable also, sir. But I’m afraid that none of you will be permitted to leave Greece.’

‘What?’

‘Not tonight, at any rate. Perhaps not for several days.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Not until we have completed our inquiries. The Minister of Culture and Athletics has spoken to the manager of your hotel and he has generously agreed to extend your stay until this whole matter has been resolved.’

‘What matter? Your inquiries into what?’

‘I am in charge of investigating a violent crime, Mr Manson. Specifically, a homicide. Perhaps even a murder.’

‘Murder? Look, with all due respect, Chief Inspector, what’s this all about? Bekim Develi had a heart attack. In front of thirty thousand people. I can easily understand that there will have to be a post-mortem into his death; that’s normal in any country. But I fail to understand the need for a police investigation as well.’

‘Oh, it’s not Bekim Develi’s death I’m investigating, sir, although I believe there will have to be an inquest – standard procedure.’

‘Then whose death are we talking about? I don’t understand. Has something happened to someone on my staff?’

‘No sir. Nothing like that. The body of a young woman was found in the harbour at Marina Zea, near Piraeus, this morning. Some boys discovered the body in ten feet of water, with a heavy weight tied to her feet. Our investigations revealed that this woman had a plastic room key for the Astir Palace – your hotel – in the pocket of her dress. This afternoon we went to your hotel and found that the room key had been issued to Mr Develi. We also checked the hotel CCTV and, er... well, see for yourself.’

Varouxis opened up his iPad and tapped the Video icon to show me a grainy-looking piece of film.

‘This is her arriving at Mr Develi’s bungalow, on Monday night. As you can see, the time identification shows it to be 2300 hours. You will agree that this is surely him saying goodnight to her at the door, yes?’

‘Can I please view that clip again, Chief Inspector?’

‘Certainly sir.’

I watched the clip several times, but it was not to verify what Varouxis had said regarding Develi – clearly it was Bekim. Instead I wanted to establish if the girl entering and leaving the dead man’s bungalow was Valentina, the escort to whom he had introduced me; it wasn’t, which was a relief as it absolved me from having to tell the Chief Inspector that I had slept with the dead woman. The girl in the film was good-looking and given Bekim’s predilection for renting late-night female company it didn’t take a detective to guess her profession. His hands were inside the girl’s knickers as he was still saying hello to her.

‘Yes, that’s him all right,’ I said. ‘For obvious reasons I’d ordered a player curfew on visitors that night which Bekim Develi seems to have ignored. The girl I don’t know.’

‘You’ll admit then that it’s possible Bekim Develi might have been one of the last people to see this girl alive. You see there’s CCTV of her going into the bungalow; but none of her leaving.’

I nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose so. But to be fair to Bekim, she might have left by the back door, to the terrace.’

‘Yes, that’s possible. But certainly if he himself was alive now we should want to speak to him very urgently, in which case I would be having this conversation not with you but with him. Where did you meet her? What time did she leave? That kind of thing.’

‘I guess you would at that. Just to clarify one thing. Does this injunction on travel back to London apply to Mr Sokolnikov and his guests on Mr Sokolnikov’s yacht?’

‘No. Only to those of you who were staying at the Astir Palace, which is where the dead woman was last seen alive.’

I nodded. ‘All the same, to detain a whole team for the behaviour of one man – a man who’s now dead – it seems a bit excessive.’

‘On the face of it, it might seem that way. But look here, we both have difficult jobs to do, Mr. Manson. Me, I have to balance what’s right from a procedural, investigative point of view with what’s legal and fair in this situation. And you, well, I should think it’s an impossible task you have, sir. Trying to police the behaviour of young men with wallets as large as their egos and their libidos. Perhaps you’ll also admit that it’s possible Bekim may not have been the only City player in that bungalow when she came through the door. That he was not the only player to break your curfew on visitors.’

‘Look, Chief Inspector, I’ve already agreed that it’s Bekim Develi in the film clip. But there is no proof in that footage that anyone else was there.’

‘No, not in the footage. You see, if I can’t speak to Bekim Develi then perhaps I can speak to someone else who might also have met this unfortunate young woman. Perhaps they had – in Greek we call this a
trio.
’

‘A threesome,’ I said.

‘Precisely so. I’m a married man, but one reads about such things. In books and newspapers.’

‘Is there any evidence of a threesome?’

‘Some, perhaps. The DEE – that’s our forensics team – they went to Mr Develi’s room this afternoon. They found indications that some kind of party occurred, perhaps. I don’t want to go into too many details but traces of cocaine were found although it’s impossible at this stage to say if the drugs were his or hers.’

‘Bekim Develi would never have taken cocaine on the night before a match,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m certain of that. He wouldn’t have taken the risk.’

‘I’m sure you’re right, sir. I dare say you’ve warned all of your players about the foolishness of such behaviour, on repeated occasions. Then again, it was you who ordered them not to entertain any girls in their rooms on the night before the match. An order that we now both agree that Bekim Develi flagrantly disobeyed. I would not insist that you remain here in Greece if I didn’t have a good reason to do so; and since I think I have at least two good reasons, I’m hoping you’ll see things from my point of view. That I can count on you to cooperate with my investigation.’

‘While I can of course see things from your point of view, Chief Inspector, I wonder if you can see things from mine. The free movement of EU nationals is a fundamental principle of the Treaty under article 45. It might be argued that the whole team will suffer economic damage if it is prevented from leaving here tonight.’