False Nine

  ‘The good-looking kind.’

  ‘No, I meant, what kind of law does she practise?’

  ‘I dunno. The kind that represents criminals in court, I guess. What other kind is there?’

  ‘Is she the greedy kind of lawyer? Or just the dishonest kind of lawyer?’

  ‘That remains to be seen. But she was kind of persuasive.’

  ‘Oh, that kind of lawyer.’

  ‘Yes. Exactly.’

  ‘Well,’ said Everton, ‘it sure couldn’t harm you to go along with what she says. Not for twenty-four hours. Man, it takes people twenty-four hours just to order a bloody taxi on this island. Strikes me you’ll get further with her than I have speaking to local boatmen.’

  He handed me back some money.

  ‘Here, boss. You better have this.’

  ‘Then you’d better let me buy you a drink.’

  We went into the bar, ordered a couple of the local beers and sat in the window. We hadn’t been there very long when I saw Grace Doughty walking up the street. She was carrying her Burberry briefcase.

  ‘That’s her. That’s the lady lawyer I was talking about.’

  ‘Man, that is a fine-looking woman.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘When you said she was a lawyer I was thinking of someone playing on a rubber tyre at the end of a chain. But that lady is hot, boss.’

  Everton was right. The woman had more curves than a bag full of footballs. If I stayed on Antigua I knew I was going to have to put my hand in that particular bag, regardless of the consequences. If only I knew what she was up to, who her client was, where this was all going. I had to find out more about Grace Doughty.

  I handed Everton the money he’d just handed back to me.

  ‘Look, Everton, why don’t you follow her? See where she goes. Who she knows. It might give me a better idea of what this is all about.’

  ‘Sure thing, boss. Anything you say. Following pretty girls – I’m an expert.’ Everton stood up and drained his beer bottle. ‘But you know, it strikes me that maybe she can keep you company while you is looking for this guy. You could do worse than her for female company right now. A man needs a bit of female company in the tropics. Maybe you should give her a ring and ask her to dinner at Jumby Bay. Get to know her better. Then maybe you can learn to trust her better, too.’

  Everton was right about that too but nevertheless I spent the evening alone, festering with irritation and resentment at my appointed task. I felt as if I’d been left on the bench after an extended Christmas break had left a question mark over my fitness and all I really wanted to do was play football, regardless of the consequences for my hamstrings. Come to think of it, that’s how I feel most of the time. It’s like there’s a football-sized hole in my life which I don’t think anything, not even management, is ever going to be able to fill. Certainly not searching the jungle for some stupid kid who couldn’t handle the pressure. If that’s what had caused him to disappear. After what Grace Doughty had told me in her office I’d stopped believing that anything bad could have happened to Jérôme Dumas. I almost wished that it had.

  A brick-faced couple from Birmingham eating dinner at the next table in the softly lit robbery that was being perpetrated in the hotel’s swish restaurant were looking as bored as a pair of Staffordshire dogs on a chimney-less mantelpiece. They must have wondered what the hell they were doing there. I know I did. Meanwhile, an electric piano trio worked its way stolidly through a repertoire that had been inspired by the elevator muzak in an Arndale shopping centre. At that particular moment my world – the world of football – seemed to be more than an ocean away and if the chairman of Tranmere Rovers had called to offer me a job managing the club, I’d have taken his fucking arm off.

  18

  It sounded good. The part about Tranmere Rovers. But it wasn’t entirely true. Over a swift dinner with my iPad I checked my email and there was one from Qatar offering me a job working with the national side, which must have seemed urgent after their recent exit from the Asian Cup in Canberra. The 4–1 defeat they’d suffered at the hands of their most bitter rivals, the United Arab Emirates, would have been especially hard to bear for the Qataris. But try as I might I couldn’t see myself doing a Don Revie and coaching football in the desert any more than I can see a World Cup being played there in the summer of 2022. Nobody can. They’d have more chance of mounting an ice-hockey tournament. But it wasn’t just that. It was the way all of these Arab countries treated women. I like women. A lot. Paolo Gentile couldn’t have been more on target about my Achilles heel if he’d hit it with an arrow.

  Then there was an email from Tempest asking when I was going to be back in the UK. I’d been summoned to appear before the FA to face a charge of bringing the game into disrepute because of my stupid tweet about Rafinha having his period. I replied to her that I honestly didn’t know when I’d be back but that obviously I’d agree to meet with them as soon as I was in London. So that was something to look forward to. If it wasn’t so irritating it would be laughable.

  I also had an email from Mandel in Paris. Attached was a copy of the Paris police report on the murder in Sevran-Beaudottes: a drug dealer had been found shot dead less than two hundred metres from the Alain Savary Sports Centre. There had been no arrests and there were no suspects, but there was a clue: the dead man had been found with a bloodstained satin patch in his hand. On the patch was a Gothic letter D. And I couldn’t help thinking that this was the same patch missing from a T-shirt modelled by Jérôme Dumas in a magazine and which was now being worn by another drug-dealer in Sevran. All of which might have been a pretty good reason to leave Paris and not come back.

  My mobile phone rang, which was a surprise since the signal was up and down like a yo-yo. It was Everton.

  ‘I done followed that lady like you asked, boss.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘After we saw her outside the bar on Nevis Street, I tailed her east for a couple of blocks onto Independence Avenue, and then Coronation Avenue. She went to the local jail, boss. HMP St John’s, Antigua. She was there for almost an hour, after which she went to a travel agent on Nevis Street, and then to a place in Jolly Harbour. I followed her in me own car. Jolly Harbour is about fifteen minutes’ drive southwest of St John’s. She lives in a nice apartment close to the golf course which is a game she plays because there was a full set of clubs in the back seat of her car. She lives alone, I reckon. There’s only her name on the bell. I was about to call you from a bar in Jolly Harbour when she went out again. And I followed her all the way to the ferry dock.’

  ‘The ferry dock. Where’s that?’

  ‘The ferry dock for Jumby Bay, boss. There’s one every hour. I figure she’s on her way to see you. She’s on the boat now. Be there in less than five minutes, I’d say.’

  ‘I’m not expecting her.’

  Everton laughed. ‘Looks like that lady has got other ideas. Maybe you is going to have some female company tonight after all, eh?’

  I left my room and went down to the lobby, hid myself behind a banana plant and waited. A minute or two later Grace Doughty came in through the door of the hotel, looking a little less formal than when she’d been in the office. She was wearing a pink skirt and jeans, with a pair of matching blue, high-heeled sandals that helped to show off her shapely legs. At the front desk, she spoke to the concierge, handed him a manila envelope and headed out of the front door again. And because she was wearing heels I had plenty of time to collect the envelope from the concierge and catch her up on the pathway to the jetty.

  ‘You were leaving the ground without shaking hands? That’s an Aston Villa supporter for you, I suppose. You and Paul Lambert both.’

  She frowned.

  ‘He’s the current Villa manager,’ I explained.

  She smiled thinly. ‘I didn’t want to disturb your dinner.’

  ‘Had that. Believe me, with just my iPad for company it didn’t take very long.’

  ‘The restaurant
’s supposed to be very nice.’

  ‘It is. I suppose.’

  ‘Albeit very expensive.’

  ‘Yes it is. Still, it’s an expensive mail service you’re running here at sixty bucks for the ferry trip.’

  ‘Actually it didn’t cost me anything because I said I’d be coming straight back. I wanted to make absolutely sure that got into your hands tonight.’

  ‘Well now that you’re here, why not stay for drink?’

  We went into the bar where I ordered some wine. ‘Thank God you came,’ I said. ‘Now I can justify ordering something good. It never seems worth it when you’re on your own.’

  ‘I know that feeling.’

  ‘You live alone?’

  ‘Divorced. Husband’s a lawyer, too. Which isn’t a good recipe for matrimonial harmony.’

  ‘I think it beats marrying a footballer. I was never a good husband.’

  ‘That’s a fairly common mistake.’

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked staring at the envelope.

  ‘An air ticket, to Pointe-à-Pitre.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Guadeloupe.’

  ‘Is that where I’m going?’

  ‘First thing tomorrow morning. We both are. I felt I should accompany you. As a sign of my good faith. To help you find Jérôme Dumas. Besides, it’s a short flight and I thought you might need someone along who speaks French and Creole.’

  ‘And is this on the say-so of someone in the local nick? Your secret client perhaps.’

  ‘So, it seems that you do have a good nose after all.’

  ‘I like to know who I’m dealing with. Especially when it turns out to be a criminal.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were so particular,’ said Grace. ‘Given your own penal history.’

  ‘Is that on Wikipedia, too?’

  ‘Yes. It is. You’ve had an interesting life, Mr Manson.’

  ‘Scott. If we’re going to be travelling together we should call each other by our first names, don’t you think?’

  ‘You are going then? To Pointe-à-Pitre?’

  ‘I don’t think I have much choice. Right now, yours is the only game in town. So I may as well play along. Three points would be nice, but I’ll settle for a no-score-draw. Finding out just where he is right now would be almost as good as meeting him in person.’

  ‘Have you met him before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So why did they send you and not someone he knows?’

  ‘I might be wrong about this but the people he’s met already aren’t too impressed with him. In fact, not knowing him might actually be an advantage.’

  ‘Is that why PSG loaned him to Barcelona?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Was he in any kind of trouble?’

  ‘In Paris? Yes, he might have been. I’m not sure.’

  The waiter arrived with the wine; I sniffed it carefully and then nodded at him to pour.

  I clinked glasses with Grace affably; she tasted the wine and added her appreciation.

  ‘Incidentally,’ she said, ‘it’s worth mentioning that while my client may be in prison at the moment, that doesn’t make him a criminal. Actually, he’s on remand. That means he’s innocent until proved guilty. Although to be quite frank with you that’s the part of English justice that continues to elude me. You arrest a man, charge him, throw him in prison for months and months, and only then do you bring him to trial. Some of my clients have been waiting to come to trial for more than a year. That might be permissible in England where the prisons have to conform to European standards, but here, on Antigua, it’s nothing short of a disgrace.’

  ‘Believe me, Wandsworth nick isn’t Jumby Bay. And it’s eighteen months of my life I won’t ever get back. Especially as those eighteen months might have been the best I’ll ever know. I was playing for Arsenal when it happened and it doesn’t get much better than that. Not for me.’

  ‘I’d have thought management could be a lot of fun.’

  ‘There’s nothing that’s as much fun as playing. Take my word for it. And it’s best you do. That way I can spare you a lot of the clichés about football. I tend to suffer from those the way normal people have dandruff.’

  ‘I’ll certainly let you know if I get bored in that way. I’m the female equivalent of Head n’ Shoulders.’

  I opened the envelope and found an open return ticket to Guadeloupe. But that was all there was in the envelope. ‘What, no suggestions for where to look? No addresses? No names? I thought that was the deal. Unless he’s hiding at the airport.’

  ‘I wish he was.’

  Grace tapped her head and as she lifted her arm I caught a strong scent of her perfume, which did little to dissuade me from finding her attractive.

  ‘They’re all in here. Oh, don’t worry, Scott, this little magical mystery tour won’t take us long. Guadeloupe isn’t very big. And it’s a dump, too. Frankly, the less time we have to spend there the better. The airport is the best thing on the island. That’s not a joke. If Guadeloupe was half as nice as Antigua the British wouldn’t have let France have it. There’s certainly nowhere like Jumby Bay on the island. It’s probably the least charming island in the Caribbean and is full of French people who can’t afford to go to St Barts. About the only thing on Guadeloupe which is better is the education system, which ranks among the best in the whole of France.’

  ‘You know the island well?’

  ‘I used to go on holiday there, for a while, when I was a child. But originally I’m from Montserrat, which is a little island just south of here. My mother was from Antigua, which is how I came to live here. What about you? What’s your background?’

  I told her about my Scots father and my black German mother.

  ‘That’s quite a mixture,’ she said.

  ‘I sometimes wonder where the black part of me originated.’ I grinned. ‘I know it’s not Scotland. That’s been pointed out to me more times than I care to remember. The Scots aren’t exactly known for their sensitivity in matters regarding race. Or about anything else, for that matter. But now and again, I’d really like to know where my ancestors came from. Which part of Africa, you know?’

  ‘You can’t help that when you’re in the Caribbean. It comes with the territory. My great-great-grandfather was white. But whether that means he owned my great-great-grandmother I’m not sure.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not even sure it matters. Not any more. The slavery thing, I mean. When I lived in Birmingham I used to get pretty worked up about things like that, but not now. Life’s too short. And me, I’m such a mixture of races that it would probably take the CERN particle accelerator to separate all of my atoms out and say where they came from.’

  ‘You got that right.’

  ‘It’s ironic though. The way rich Europeans bring the descendants of the young black men they used to transport across the Atlantic to the Caribbean to work on sugar plantations, to play football in places like Liverpool, Lisbon and Lagos. Those were the centres of the European slave market.’

  ‘Not just the Caribbean,’ I said. ‘There are plenty coming straight from Africa, too, these days. But it seems especially true of Guadeloupe. Half the French team would seem to hail from Guadeloupe. Why is that, do you think?’

  ‘I think maybe you’ll have a better idea after you’ve been to the island.’

  ‘You know, I wish I’d met you when we were in the overlap, at Birmingham University. I might have enjoyed it a bit more.’

  ‘I bet you did all right with the girls.’

  ‘I was a pig.’

  She smiled patiently. ‘You wouldn’t have liked me. I was always working in the library. Law is rather demanding in that respect.’

  ‘I like libraries. Just because I work in football doesn’t mean I don’t read. I might have worked a bit harder myself if I’d known you. You might have inspired me. I think I had it rather easy in comparison with you. It must have taken a lot to get yourself there from somewhere like here.’

 
‘I’ve no complaints.’

  ‘No, you’re not the type to complain. I like that, too.’

  ‘Anything else? You’re doing well. And I’m in the mood for compliments.’

  ‘You like to hear them, I guess. But I doubt you take any of them that seriously. It strikes me you already have a pretty good idea of who and what you are. Someone else’s affirmation isn’t of much importance to you. And you can take that as a compliment.’

  ‘That’s three in a row. Means you get a prize.’

  ‘Oh, what’s that?’

  ‘You get to buy me another drink.’

  We talked some more, and then Grace said she should probably go.

  ‘I’ll walk you down to the ferry,’ I said, signed the bill and stood up, expectantly.

  ‘Good manners, too,’ she said. ‘How I’ve missed that in a man.’

  ‘You can thank my mother.’

  Grace stayed put in her chair.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘I only said I should go,’ she said. ‘Not that I am going. There’s a subtle difference between the preterite form of “shall” and the present progressive tense. Especially when it comes to sex.’

  ‘That sounds like a lawyer’s argument.’

  ‘It is. But as it happens I’m a little easier to persuade than an English jury where you’re concerned. Then again, I am biased. I didn’t expect to like you. A lot.’ She smiled. ‘Don’t look so shocked, Scott. I’m a single woman. And I’m not in a relationship. Nor likely to be either. The men on this island leave a lot to be desired. At least by me. I’m not about to share everything I’ve worked hard to get for myself so that I can support some lazy good-for-nothing who stays home, drinking beer and watching cricket on television all day. I have the example of my mother and my father to know that’s not for me. Slavery may have been abolished but believe me, it still exists in thousands of homes all across the Caribbean. Uncomplicated sex suits me just fine for the moment. Of course, if you’d rather not then just say so. I won’t be offended. Like all lawyers I have one safe place to keep the cash box and important documents, and another for my feelings.’

  I sat down again and took her hand. ‘Just one thing. Even if you don’t always understand them you’ll have to allow me the odd sporting metaphor in bed. You see, for any Englishman, football, not poetry, is the gold standard for metaphors about sex and love. Without football no Englishman would even know how to make love. And I always sing when I’m winning.’