January Window

  ‘Christ, Maurice, you’ve got more possible suspects there than the Orient Express.’

  ‘And I haven’t even mentioned Semion Mikhailov.’

  ‘Who the fuck’s he?’

  ‘Ukrainian business rival of Viktor’s, apparently. Huge bloke. Head like a fucking bowling ball.’

  ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘Only that people are afraid of the guy. One of the security guards who operates the Mobicam – a Russian bloke called Oleg – he spotted him sitting in the crowd. Oleg said he was surprised that the Home Office let someone like that into the country. He’s top Mafia, apparently.’

  ‘I wonder if Viktor knows he was there.’

  ‘There’s not much Viktor doesn’t know.’

  ‘Sounds like we’re spoilt for choice.’ I laughed. ‘Is there anyone we left out? Al Qaeda? Lee Harvey Oswald? Fucking hell.’

  ‘It’s a funny old game,’ said Maurice.

  ‘Look, Maurice, Viktor wants me to play Sherlock here and see if I can find the person who did it before the law does. To save him some aggro.’

  ‘Makes sense. When you’ve got that much loot you’ve got plenty to hide as well.’

  ‘He reckons the Home Office are out to get him; and that I hate the police just enough to have the guts to tell them to fuck off.’

  ‘I don’t recall Sherlock Holmes saying that to Inspector Lestrade,’ said Maurice. ‘But fair enough. I guess that makes me Watson, right?’

  ‘If you like. All right then, draw me up a list of possible suspects. People with a grudge who were at Silvertown Dock. Or people who are just villains. And start putting your ear to the pipe. But let’s keep all this between you and me. No law for now, eh?’

  ‘I don’t like talking to the old Bill any more than you do, boss. Especially after tonight. That woman from the Yard was really trying to bring you into line, wasn’t she?’

  ‘I have that effect on women,’ I said. ‘And while you’re at it, check on Zarco’s ticket allocation. Who his guests were this afternoon, if any. It’s usually just his family, but you never know.’

  ‘Right you are, boss.’

  I spent another hour under Zarco’s watchful eye going through the messages and calls on his mobile phones.

  Zarco’s ‘play phone’ contained a series of texts to and from Claire Barry. Most of the older ones were spectacularly obscene. Sexting, I think they call it. A couple of times I glanced up at his portrait and shook my head.

  ‘You dirty old bastard,’ I said. ‘What were you thinking of? Suppose Toyah had found these?’

  But the tone of their exchanges changed, abruptly, when Claire revealed to Zarco that her husband had discovered the existence of the relationship with the London City manager. Sean’s reputation had gone before him and suddenly Zarco’s texts became stiff and formal. He told Claire he was breaking it off and it was clear from our acupuncturist’s replies that the end of the love affair had caused her considerable heartache – and him, too. It seemed they had been in love with each other, although Zarco – a staunch Roman Catholic – had never made any secret of the fact that he wasn’t ever going to leave Toyah. I didn’t blame him for fancying Claire, she was a good-looking girl. I sent her a message of condolence – from my own phone – telling her I’d come and see her in the morning, if that was okay.

  Meanwhile, I made a note of Claire’s mobile number and decided to try and speak with her about what had happened when I next saw her alone at Hangman’s Wood.

  The ‘something else’ phone had a flat battery and I didn’t have the right kind of charger for it, so I dropped it in my desk drawer; besides, I now had an important job to do as the new manager of London City. I called Phil Hobday to tell him what he already knew; next I called Ken Okri, the team captain, and informed him that I had been appointed the caretaker manager; then I called our first team coach, Simon Page, and asked him if he would take over from me as assistant manager, and when he agreed, I also asked him to take charge of the training session on Monday morning.

  ‘Are the police saying anything about what happened to Zarco? Because there’s this rumour on Twitter that he was beaten to death.’ Simon was from Doncaster and whenever he spoke I was reminded of Mick McCarthy.

  ‘It seems to be the theory the police are working on.’

  ‘Not everyone loved the man like you and me, Scott.’

  ‘That was just his management style,’ I said. ‘He didn’t mean half the things he said. He was just winding people up. Playing mind games.’

  ‘In any other walk of life but football that might be okay,’ said Simon. ‘But for a lot of people, you make these kinds of remarks and they don’t forget them. They don’t forget and they learn to hate. Some of the comments I’ve seen on Twitter are less than complimentary. “Big mouth had it coming” – that kind of thing. So I’m glad you made that speech about him at Hangman’s Wood tonight. I’ve been watching it again on YouTube. In fact I’ve watched it several times. It was good what you said, and it helps cancel a lot of those negative comments out, you know? Everyone appreciated it. I just hope I’ll be as good an assistant as you were.’

  ‘Thanks, Simon. And you will be. I’m sure of it.’

  When we’d finished talking about the team and our next match I switched on my Mac and watched myself on YouTube, the way you do. In truth, I wanted to see if I looked in any way equal to the man from whom I had taken over, who was always a master of man-motivation. Frankly, I had my doubts about that.

  Someone behind me had shot the speech on an iPhone – I wasn’t sure who and it didn’t really matter – but they’d also filmed some of the players’ reactions and when I looked at them, it was a shot of Ayrton Taylor that caught my eye. Taylor was the player humiliated by Zarco in front of everyone at the training session before the Leeds game and subsequently placed on the transfer list. He was standing immediately behind Ken Okri and at first I didn’t know why, but something about Taylor struck me as curious. Then I realised what it was: as Taylor moved his hair with his left hand I could see that his hand was bandaged.

  A good coach knows everything about the injuries all his players are carrying – especially those players who are for sale, because the first thing that happens before a transfer deal can be finalised with a new club is that the player submits himself to a medical – and it puzzled me that Taylor’s injured hand should have escaped my eye until now, especially as he was left-handed.

  I could have called Nick Scott, the team doctor, and asked him about Taylor’s hand, but by now it was very late and I didn’t want to disturb him at home in case I’d made a mistake.

  So I switched on the television and chose the London City sports channel on the Sky box. Speeding quickly through the tribute to Zarco I finally found what I was looking for – footage of both teams entering Silvertown Dock a couple of hours before the game. I saw myself – ridiculous in my hideous orange tracksuit – leading the players down the tunnel to the dressing room, Ken Okri joking with Christoph Bündchen, Xavier Pepe and Juan-Luis Dominguin lost inside their own Skullcandy, and finally Ayrton Taylor wearing his street clothes. I hit the pause button and with the Sky remote moved the picture forward, frame by frame, until I had exactly the view I wanted. This was a shot of Ayrton Taylor’s left hand. Quite clearly I saw him glance at the enormous Hublot on his wrist – the same kind of watch that Viktor had given me for Christmas.

  Taylor’s hand was unbandaged. Whatever injury he had sustained must have occurred between the team’s arrival at Silvertown Dock and my speech at Hangman’s Wood, an interval of time during which João Zarco had probably been beaten to death.

  20

  João and Toyah Zarco’s house in Warwick Square was a ten-minute drive from my flat in Chelsea. Pimlico is quiet at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning and as I drove along the embankment in Sonja’s BMW, I hoped I’d be a little too early to encounter any of the photographers and reporters who, according to Toyah’s text, had been camped o
utside her front door until the small hours. I was wrong about that. They were there in force and looked like they’d been there all night. Muttering curses I drove a couple of times around the communal gardens before leaving the car on the opposite side of the square, in front of the large house the Zarcos were converting, and which was covered in scaffolding hidden behind a mural designed to look exactly like the house next door, and that described itself as ‘noise-cancelling’. Erected by the builders to forestall complaints from the neighbours, it didn’t seem to be doing its job very well; despite it being a Sunday I could already hear the sound of drilling. Texting Toyah to tell her I was approaching her front door, I walked round to the other side of the square and the elegant six-storey white stucco mansion the Zarcos had been renting while the Lambton Construction Company attempted to complete the extensive conversions ahead of schedule.

  At the last minute the mêlée of newsmen and women recognised me and, desperate for a syllable of something they could report, they surged round like a pack of beagles as a policeman helped me make my way up the steps where a house door was already opening.

  ‘Scott! Scott! Over here, Scott!’

  ‘Sorry to hear about Mr Zarco, sir,’ said the policeman. ‘It’s a great loss to football. I’m a London City fan myself.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, and stepped quickly into the hall.

  The Sunday newspapers lay, unread, on the black and white tiled floor, which was probably the best place for them. They were full of Zarco’s murder, of course, and most of them carried a list of some of the things Zarco had said, as if to say here was why Zarco was killed: he had a big mouth. And there was a small part of me that couldn’t disagree with that.

  A tall, thin blonde woman wearing black-framed glasses closed the door behind me and let out a deep breath.

  ‘Hello, Toyah. How are you bearing up?’

  ‘Not well,’ she said. ‘This would be quite bad enough without all that as well.’ She nodded at the door. ‘I feel like a prisoner in my own home. They’ve been there all night – I could hear them, chattering away, like they were queuing for seats for the centre court at Wimbledon. Them and that policeman’s radio. I wanted to ask him to turn it down but that would have meant opening the door.’

  I could hear the grief choking her voice. She shook her head wearily, took off the glasses, wiped her pale blue eyes and then blew her nose with a handkerchief that looked inadequate to the task of coping with so much misery. Putting her thin arms around my neck, she said:

  ‘Not that I could sleep, even if I wanted to – there’s so much going on in my head right now. I suppose they’re just doing their jobs, but I really don’t know what they want. A picture of me looking like shit, I suppose: the grieving widow’s tears. It’s what sells newspapers, isn’t it?’ She sighed. ‘Oddly enough, it’s the neighbours I feel sorry for. On top of everything else they’ve had to cope with from us since we moved here, now there’s this media circus to contend with.’

  She smelled of white wine and perfume and she looked very tired. Her strawberry-blonde hair was combed severely back from her forehead and fastened tight with a black scrunchie. Like a lot of Australian women Toyah tried to avoid the sun, but her plain black T-shirt and trousers made her look even more pale than she probably was.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ she replied quietly.

  ‘I’ll miss him a lot. More than I can say.’

  ‘A friend emailed me a link to what you said on YouTube,’ she said. ‘That was very nice. And I was thinking… at the funeral, I’d like you to speak about him. If you would.’

  ‘Of course. Anything.’

  I took her in my arms and hugged her close as she started to cry. After a while she pulled away and blew her nose again. ‘I must look such a sight,’ she said.

  ‘What are you supposed to look like when your husband dies?’

  ‘Like Lady Macbeth, I guess. What’s done cannot be undone. I played that part, you know. At the Old Vic. That was how we met, Zarco and I. It was Patrick Stewart, the actor, who introduced us. He supports Huddersfield Town Football Club. Zarco liked it that he still supported the team from his home town.’

  ‘I know. João told me.’

  ‘Would you like a coffee, Scott?’

  ‘Please. If you feel like making it.’

  We went down an open iron staircase and into a huge Bulthaup kitchen that looked as clean and functional as a Swiss laboratory. On the wall was a large painting of the Australian outlaw, Ned Kelly, as imagined by Sidney Nolan. I knew that Zarco had admired the famous outlaw for the simple reason that like Kelly, Zarco saw himself as someone who was very much opposed to the ruling establishment, at least in the world of football. On more than one occasion he had suggested that the best way of improving things in the English game would be ‘to buy a guillotine and cut off some heads’.

  ‘Is it just you here?’ I asked, looking for the Brazilian housekeeper who was usually hovering around the Zarco home.

  ‘I sent Jerusa home. She always goes to mass at Westminster Cathedral on a Sunday. I’d go myself if I could get out of the door. Besides, it was João who hired her and I’m not entirely sure she’s legal, and what with all the cops who were in and out of here last night I thought it best to send her away while this is going on.’

  ‘Probably a good idea,’ I said. ‘Best not to tempt them.’

  Toyah paused in front of the built-in Miele coffee machine and sighed with exasperation.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know how to make this work,’ she said. ‘Zarco loved being the barista around here. I’ve never learned.’

  ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Let me. It’s the same model as the one I have at home.’

  She nodded. ‘I forgot. Coffee’s your thing, isn’t it?’

  She leaned against the worktop and watched me carefully as I set about operating the machine.

  ‘Was it Detective Chief Inspector Byrne who came to see you?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember.’

  ‘A woman. Looks a bit like Tilda Swinton.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Did she tell you how they thought Zarco had met his death?’

  ‘A blow to the head, she said. And there were several other injuries that were consistent with him having sustained a severe beating.’ She shrugged. ‘There were other things but after that I stopped listening, for a while.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘She said you’d offered to go and formally identify the body. Is that right? Because I’d give anything not to see Zarco laid out on a slab in a morgue. I’ve always had this thing about hospitals and the smell of ether. I really think I might faint. It’s one of the reasons we never had any children, he and I. I’m very squeamish. The sight of blood just makes me shudder.’

  ‘I have the same feeling about policemen. But, yes, I’ll identify him. It’s not a problem for me.’

  ‘Thank you, Scott.’

  ‘If there’s anything else I can do, please don’t hesitate to call me. Manresa Road is only ten minutes away in the car. If you feel you don’t want to be alone you can always come and stay there with Sonja and me.’

  ‘Thanks but no, I’d prefer to stay here, I think. At least for the moment. Besides, the police are coming back this afternoon. With more questions, I expect.’

  ‘I get a bit antsy when there’s lots of law around,’ I said. ‘So I’m not looking forward to all that myself. I’m on my way to Hangman’s Wood later on this morning. She – Byrne – wants to question everyone who was at Silvertown Dock yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘Sounds a little excessive.’ Toyah smiled thinly. ‘There were sixty thousand people there yesterday.’

  ‘Everyone in the club, anyway. From the kitman to our star striker. Even Viktor Sokolnikov is going to be interviewed.’

  ‘Good. Because personally I’d put him at the top of a list of possible suspects.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ r />
  ‘Oh, come on. You know. His background in Russia. All of these oligarchs are dodgy, Scott. Viktor Sokolnikov more than most. Speaking for myself I never trusted him. I mean, you don’t like to disappoint people like that, do you? I’m quite certain that Zarco was afraid of him.’

  ‘No, he wasn’t,’ I said.

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘No. Not in the least.’

  ‘I’m surprised. You’ve seen some of the thugs he has around him.’

  ‘They’re bodyguards. He has to be careful. Okay, I wouldn’t want to tangle with any of them. But Viktor’s okay. Really.’ I paused for a moment. ‘Look, he’s asked me to take over as manager, Toyah. I wanted you to be the first to know. Before I told anyone that I’ve said yes. It all seems too soon to be appointing someone new, but—’

  ‘But there’s a Capital One Cup match on Tuesday. Yes, I know.’ She nodded. ‘I appreciate you telling me, Scott. Just be sure you know what you’re getting into. And remember what I told you. That Zarco was afraid of him.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning. But in relation to what, exactly?’

  ‘You remember that Zarco made those remarks about the World Cup in Qatar.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It was Viktor who put him up to it.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, why?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I think it was something to do with the naming rights for the Crown of Thorns stadium. But don’t ask me to explain about that because I can’t.’

  ‘All right. But did you tell any of this to the police?’

  ‘That he was afraid of Viktor Sokolnikov? I might have mentioned it. But I didn’t mention the Qataris.’

  ‘What else did they ask you?’

  ‘Nothing specific. It was more general stuff, really. Did we have any threats at home? Any anonymous phone calls? Did he have any money worries?’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. But he never told me things that he thought might worry me. Anyway, she kept asking me about some photograph of Zarco that had been found in a hole in the pitch at the Crown of Thorns. I didn’t know anything about it. He didn’t tell me. I felt like such an idiot. Did you know about it?’