False Nine

  I went into the bathroom and opened the cabinet – it seemed like a good place to start my search. You can usually tell a lot about a man just by searching through his medicines. Naturally there was lots of ibuprofen – sometimes it’s the only way you can get yourself down to the training ground – and plenty of kinesio tape: taping a sore joint works, especially when you’re also taking ibuprofen. But almost immediately – even before Mandel had started to read the article from his iPad – I had discovered that Jérôme Dumas was depressed. In the cabinet was a bottle of one of the most commonly prescribed SSRIs – selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. I placed the bottle beside the handbasin and kept searching.

  Jérôme Dumas has courted the anger of Paris Saint-Germain supporters by stating that the fans at Parc des Princes have made him feel unwanted and that this has now reached the stage where he almost avoids the ball. In a frank interview, Dumas also said that it was no fun playing for PSG and that he only looked forward to away games now as there were fewer fans present to give him a hard time.

  ‘Ooo, that’s bad,’ I said, opening a drawer. I found a rather large toilet bag which I unzipped and rifled through, tossing most of the contents into the bath. ‘That’s very bad.’

  ‘It’s really dispiriting when your own fans are the ones shouting the racial abuse,’ Dumas said. ‘Of course you want them to support you. But lately I’ve had a run of bad form when I haven’t scored and they’ve not been very understanding. I just wish they would be a little more patient with me. You don’t mind the away fans booing you. That’s part of the game. But it’s different when it’s your own support. In the game against Nice there seemed to be one standard for me and another for Zlatan. I don’t understand why there were whistles and catcalls when I missed a goal but nothing but applause when he hit the woodwork. There’s a double standard here which I find baffling and hurtful.’

  In the toilet bag I was surprised to find several packets of Cialis. I placed these beside the SSRIs.

  ‘I’m sure everything will come right when I score my first goal for PSG but the longer I go without a goal the more pressure I’m going to be under; and the more pressure I’m under means the less likely I am to score. It’s a vicious circle.

  ‘At the moment I actually look forward to away games because I feel I’m going to get a lot less stick from the crowd. And I’m not the only player who feels this way. One or two of the other lads who haven’t scored of late are finding it hard to deal with the high expectations of our fans. I think they should try to get behind our players a bit more and for them to offer encouragement to get things right on the pitch instead of stick when we get things wrong.

  ‘Laurent Blanc was a great player and he’s a great manager too. But I don’t think he knows how to get the best out of me, yet. Frankly, we are struggling to communicate, he and I. It’s not like there’s anything wrong with my French like some of these Africans. At the moment there is some sort of impediment between us that stops us communicating properly. But I don’t know what it is. If I make a mistake it isn’t because I am lazy, which is what has been suggested and why I am talking like this. Sometimes I make mistakes. We all do. That’s football. But when I miss a chance that’s what people say. They’re like, “He missed that chance because he was out of position; and he was out of position because he’s a lazy black bastard.” As a footballer you have to laugh about it and shrug it off. But lately I seem to have forgotten how. I tell you I feel really low about this.’

  Jérôme Dumas was dropped from the games against Nantes and Barcelona and his provocative comments will place a further strain on his relationship with PSG fans and management. Charles Rivel, for the club, disagreed strongly with what Dumas told L’Equipe: ‘The fans don’t strike me as hard to please at all. They follow the club all over Europe. It’s a very loyal support that we have here at PSG. One of the best. I haven’t heard fans booing Dumas or calling him lazy. But let’s be honest – this is a player who is on €125,000 a week. Yes, it’s human nature to want to be loved. But it seems utterly deluded of Dumas to be complaining that people who are paying eighty euros a ticket to watch a single game are not being supportive enough. This player needs a reality check. Yes, the team should have scored more than one against Nice, but it’s just paranoia on the part of Jérôme Dumas to suggest that he was singled out by the fans for an extra level of criticism.’

  For Dumas the best bit of news will have been that he was picked for the game against Guingamp. This does not sound much for a player of his standing and the player’s latest comments will only fuel speculation that he is on his way out of Parc des Princes and is already bound for another club. Some will say good riddance. If you compare Dumas’s stats with those of Ibrahimovic and Cavani it’s impossible not to agree with this reporter that, given the number of minutes played versus the number of goals scored and shots at goal, Dumas has been found wanting. It seems he has yet to learn that more is expected of the player earning €125,000 a week than the fans paying his wages. But in the warped world of modern football these spoiled Renaissance princelings seem to want it all.

  Mandel looked up. ‘That’s it. There’s a table here on the page opposite with those stats which tell the real truth. But really, what he said, it was unforgivable. Most people think he gave the interview to accelerate his transfer to another club.’

  ‘That’s certainly the way I read it,’ I said. ‘Then again, there’s no doubt he was genuinely depressed. This is Seroxat. You don’t take this unless there’s a real problem. I wonder if the team doctor knew he was using this shit.’

  Mandel shrugged, collected the packet of Cialis in his enormous paw and pulled a face.

  ‘Or that.’

  ‘Any man of his age who can’t get it up for a woman like Bella Macchina has a problem, all right. That’s a better reason to get depressed than not getting the ball in the back of the net.’

  ‘Erectile dysfunction is often a corollary of depression.’

  Mandel grinned. ‘Maybe in England, monsieur. But not here in France. We get depressed but we’re never so depressed that we could stop fucking.’

  We went into the bedroom where I quickly found a drawer full of bondage equipment: chains and manacles, collars and restraints. And it was only now that I noticed the mirror on the ceiling immediately above the bed, which I pointed out to Mandel.

  ‘Maybe he likes fucking a lot,’ suggested Mandel. ‘In which case he might have needed the Cialis. Even a man as young and fit as Jérôme Dumas can require a little help now and again. I wish we’d had this stuff when I was his age. Especially if I had known what I now know, which is that you get to a certain age and you don’t fuck at all. With or without Cialis.’

  9

  Dumas’s PA, Alice, provided me with several useful telephone numbers, including that of his ex-girlfriend, Bella Macchina, the Marilyn Agency model whom she called and arranged for me to meet that evening. Alice made me coffee while she and I talked in the apartment’s huge and very shiny kitchen. She was a good-looking girl with short hair and glasses who somehow reminded me of Jeanne d’Arc. Perhaps it was the gamine hairstyle. Then again it might have been the silver cross around her neck, the silver bouclé sweater that resembled a chain-mail shirt, or the number of cigarettes she smoked, lit with a handsome vintage lacquer Dunhill she said had been a parting gift from Jérôme Dumas, the flame of which needed a little adjusting it was so long.

  I explained that PSG and FCB had hired me to try and find him.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Mr Mandel from the club told me.’

  ‘First of all – and I’m sure that a lot of people have asked this already, so I apologise in advance – but have you any idea at all where Jérôme might be now?’

  ‘I had assumed he was already in Spain. That he must have gone there immediately he came back from his holiday in Antigua. Because there was no real reason for him to return to Paris. The apartment is up for sale. The agency believed it would sell more easily
if he left it furnished as it is now. Only Mr Mandel tells me that there’s no evidence he ever came back from Antigua. That neither of the return air tickets he bought were used.’

  ‘I believe so. Tell me about Antigua.’

  ‘He had planned to go there for two weeks over Christmas and New Year. It was me who bought the air tickets and booked the hotel.’

  ‘There were two tickets?’

  ‘He had arranged to go there with his girlfriend, Bella. But they broke up just before they were supposed to go and so he went on his own.’

  ‘Any idea why they broke up?’

  Alice smiled. ‘He was like any other young man with too much money. There were a great many other women ready to help him spend it. I think she was able to tolerate that for a bit. After all, she saw a few other men herself. But with Jérôme women were like a hobby. You’d have to ask her about this. I don’t feel comfortable talking about this with a stranger.’

  ‘You’ll forgive me, I hope, if some of my questions seem intrusive, but there’s a time factor here. If I don’t find him soon I think the loan deal with FC Barcelona could be off. Which would be bad for Jérôme. His reputation is already in the mud. This could finish him. Clubs don’t like players who take time to settle in, but they especially don’t like players who disappear without a trace. It makes picking a team difficult.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said. ‘So, ask away.’

  ‘Did you ever sleep with him yourself?’

  She coloured.

  ‘I’m sorry. But I have to ask.’

  ‘Yes. But we both agreed it was a mistake and we decided not to do it again.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Did he agree more than you did? That it was a mistake?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were you in love with him, maybe?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said dully. Alice took off her glasses and began to clean them with a tissue she’d found in the sleeve of her sweater. She was much better looking than I had first appreciated.

  ‘Did he know that?’

  ‘No. I certainly didn’t tell him. And I don’t think he was capable of knowing it in any other way. He was much too caught up in himself to have even considered the possibility. My feelings were probably quite low on his horizon.’

  ‘When Bella said she wouldn’t go with him to Antigua – did he ever ask you to go in her place?’

  ‘He would have done if I hadn’t already made it very clear that I wasn’t prepared to go in those circumstances.’ She tried a smile but it didn’t seem to work very well. ‘It’s one thing to come off the bench as a player substitute in a football match, it’s another thing to take another girl’s place in a man’s bed. Even if the sex we had was very good.’

  ‘Why did he want to go to Antigua when he was from the island of Guadeloupe? After all, Guadeloupe is less than a hundred kilometres south of Antigua.’

  ‘I asked him that. The reason was simple, he said. For one thing he has no family left in Guadeloupe. But the main reason he said is that Antigua has much better hotels. He was booked in to stay at Jumby Bay, which is the best hotel on the island, apparently. A villa there costs anything between ten and twenty thousand US dollars a night.’

  ‘Christ, it must be good.’

  ‘He could afford it.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘He likes expensive hotels. The more expensive the better.’

  ‘I’ve heard he’s a bit of a champagne socialist. Is that right?’

  ‘You’ve been talking to Mandel. Jérôme’s a socialist, yes, but I don’t think he liked champagne very much.’

  ‘It’s an English phrase. It means that you’re a hypocrite.’

  ‘Not in France. There are plenty of socialists who like to eat and drink well here. Especially in Paris. Our president, for example. Jérôme likes the good things in life, like anyone else. Me included. In different circumstances I wouldn’t mind a week in Jumby Bay and I’m a socialist. And I love champagne. So what does that make me? A hypocrite?’

  ‘No, but you’re not telling other people to wear a hair shirt and pay less attention to making money. You’re not the one going on demonstrations outside the French stock exchange. Or preaching the end of capitalism to Mélissa Theuriau on French television.’

  The co-editor in chief and anchor of Zone Interdite, Mélissa Theuriau was generally held to be the best-looking woman on French TV – a view with which I found it hard to disagree.

  Alice shrugged. ‘It wasn’t all hot air with him, you know. He’s done some good things with his money. Things he didn’t like to shout about.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘There was a youth centre in Sevran to which he often gave money to pay for sports facilities. He went there sometimes to see how they were getting on. He wanted to give something back.’

  ‘Sevran?’

  ‘It’s a suburb northeast of the Paris Périphérique.’

  ‘Tough area?’

  ‘Very. Lots of black kids with no future. His words, not mine.’

  ‘What was he like to work for?’ I asked.

  ‘Thoughtful. Gentle. Kind. A bit impulsive.’

  ‘I found some antidepressants in the bathroom cabinet. Did he seem depressed to you?’

  Alice took a deep breath and smiled a gentle smile. ‘This is Paris. Everyone is depressed about something. It’s how we Parisians are. From what I’ve seen of life in London I don’t think we’re as carefree as the English. Even when we drink champagne.’

  ‘Was there anything specific depressing him?’

  ‘His mother died about six months ago. I suppose that might have had something to do with it.’

  ‘Here in Paris?’

  ‘No. She lived in Marseille. That’s where she brought Jérôme to live when they left Guadeloupe.’

  ‘Any other family there?’

  ‘As far as I know it was just her and Jérôme.’

  ‘Anything else that might have been getting him down?’

  ‘His football. He hadn’t been playing well. And he was getting a lot of abuse from the fans for not trying hard enough. The situation with Bella also depressed him, of course. I’m not sure she loved him but I would say that he loved her. And the loan to Barcelona. That affected him a great deal, too.’

  ‘I gained the impression that he wanted this move from PSG. That he was looking forward to it.’

  ‘I think he convinced himself it would be a good move. But he was concerned the loan to FCB was evidence that there wasn’t a club that was prepared to buy him outright. That no one else would touch him. He was worried that it meant he was getting a reputation as a player who was difficult. Someone in the French newspapers had compared him to Emmanuel Adebayor. And this depressed him too, I think.’

  ‘Yes, I can understand how it would.’

  ‘He was worried how he might be received in Barcelona.’

  ‘Do you think he was the type of guy to commit suicide?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did he ever talk about suicide? The way people do sometimes? How you’d do it? Jump off a tall building. Drown yourself. That kind of thing.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because players do kill themselves,’ I added. ‘My own friend, for example. Matt Drennan.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I was with him the night he hanged himself. He’d been drinking, but that was nothing new. He’d been drinking too much for years and there was nothing that he did or said on this particular night that made me think he might be suicidal. At least suicidal enough to go and do it after leaving my house. But in retrospect I wish I’d treated the possibility with greater seriousness. And that’s what still haunts me a little. The idea that perhaps I could have done a little more.’

  ‘There’s nothing I’m not telling you, Mr Manson, if that’s what you’re driving at. And if he has killed himself I won’t be haunted by the idea that
I could have done more for him. I did everything for him. His laundry, his dry-cleaning, I paid his bills, booked the taxis and the tables at the restaurants and the nightclubs, took out the trash – which is to say I paid off the girls who needed paying off…’

  ‘Hookers?’

  ‘By the bus load.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘I answered all his mail, answered his telephone and I even wrote his tweets.’

  ‘Yes, I was going to ask you about his Twitter account…’

  ‘I’m afraid you won’t find any clues there. I wrote all his tweets. If you look at his Twitter account you’ll see that the last one was written on my last day of employment. The day before he went to Antigua. Most of them I cleared with him. The rest were retweets, or stuff I picked up in the newspapers about football that struck me as interesting. Nothing personal.’

  ‘Well, at least that’s one mystery solved.’

  Alice frowned.

  ‘I thought maybe the date of the last tweet might be significant,’ I explained. ‘In trying to determine if he might have committed suicide.’

  ‘What can I tell you? France has a suicide rate that is three times higher than in Italy and Spain, and twice the rate in Britain. It’s like I was telling you earlier. We’re not a happy people. Maybe that’s why we’ve had so many revolutions. There’s always something that’s pissing us off.’ She shrugged. ‘He was on Seroxat, wasn’t he? Since Jérôme Dumas left Paris I’ve been taking Seroxat myself.’

  10

  Paris looks its best at night. I’m not going to get stupidly Woody Allen about this but after dark the place really is magical, even a little ghostly, like one huge haunted house. Maybe it helps not seeing all the cops on the streets or the beggars in the doorways, not hearing the clamour of the traffic, not smelling the decay, but at night, when you look up and see those searchlights coming off a floodlit Eiffel Tower as if searching out enemy bombers, there is nowhere else like it on earth. Around every corner is some new aspect of the city, some new delight for the eyes, some extraordinary affirmation of the ingenuity of men. The man who is tired of London is tired of life but the man who is tired of Paris must be tired of civilisation itself. The continued existence of Paris – such an affront to so many Americans who can’t adjust to its lofty indifference from ordinary human concerns – is perhaps the premier work of man anywhere in the world. The extraordinary proclamation of a beauty that never fades is especially true at night, when the lady always looks her best.