‘Something like that,’ said Cruikshank.
‘As if,’ snorted Mariella. ‘Trying to fob us off with some tickets, more like.’
‘That’s not fair,’ said her husband.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Please, Mariella. You’re not helping. I liked him, Mr Manson. Well, most of the time, I did. He knew I was a City fan – have been for a while, actually – and, well, as you say, he thought that if we kept on talking we could sort out our differences. Hence the tickets. And perhaps we would have sorted something out, I don’t know. Anyway, he told me to come along to one of the hospitality suites on Saturday, before the match, so that we could talk. Number 123. It belonged to some Qatari businessmen who weren’t using it, he said. He also said that he was going to make an improved offer – for my parents-in-law to get away from the square until the building work was complete. So I went along. And we talked. We were in the kitchen, having a coffee. At first it was all very amicable. Then I mentioned that this house was going to need redecorating after his builders had finished. As you can see for yourselves, the place is covered with dust, because of the vibrations from the constant drilling. I gave him a piece of ceiling moulding that had fallen on my mother-in-law’s head last week as evidence of that. I mentioned a price – an estimate we’d had from a painter and decorator. Twenty thousand pounds. This was on top of the ten he’d already offered us. That was when he accused me of trying to cheat him. He said that he thought we were talking about a sum to enable Marius and Ingrid – that’s Mr and Mrs Van de Merwe – to get away on holiday. And now here I was asking for three times as much to include redecorating as well.
‘Anyway, I’m afraid things got a bit heated. He swore at me in Portuguese. Well, I can speak a bit of Portuguese – I used to work in Brazil. He called me a cadela. And a cona. I won’t translate that but I think you can imagine the sort of thing it means. Anyway I got angry and so I shoved him. Just shoved him, that’s all. I didn’t even hit him. He fell against the window and the whole window just pivoted open behind him for no good reason that I could see, and he went straight out, head first. I mean the window just bloody opened as he fell against it. I tried to grab him – I think I got hold of his tie – and maybe he grabbed me, I’m not sure. As his tie slipped out of my hand I lost my footing and then he was gone.
‘I heard an almighty clang as he hit something on his way down, but when I looked out of the window I couldn’t even see him. But it had to be near enough sixty or seventy feet to the ground. And it was immediately obvious that he couldn’t have survived a fall like that. At the time that’s what I told myself, anyway. Because I panicked and ran away. I got home and thought about it and I was on the point of calling the police to explain what had happened when it said on the news that he’d been murdered. And then I lost my nerve to say anything. But for that I think I would have handed myself in. Really I would. I’m not a murderer, Mr Manson. As I said before, I liked the man. I’m so, so sorry.’
‘I understand that, Mr Cruikshank.’
‘What’s going to happen to me?’ he asked Louise.
‘That’s not for me to say, sir,’ she said.
‘But what I find a little harder to understand,’ I said, ‘is why you broke into Silvertown Dock and dug a grave for Zarco in the centre of my pitch and left his photograph in it. That really wasn’t very nice at all; and hardly an accident. You want me to tell you how I know about that as well? Unfortunately you left some tools behind, Mr Cruikshank. One of them had the initials LCC on the handle. For a while I thought that meant London County Council, the forerunner of the Greater London Council. But that all seems a long time ago, even for a spade. Then I saw the name of Mr Zarco’s builders on the mural next door: the Lambton Construction Company. I was actually speaking to one of the workmen the other day and he told me they’d had some tools stolen. That was you as well, wasn’t it?’
Cruikshank nodded. ‘It was meant to be a sort of poetic justice, if you like,’ he said. ‘I just wanted him to know what it was like to suffer the kind of disruption we’d suffered here: to have someone turn your whole life upside down. Frankly I was amazed when you managed to repair the pitch as quickly as you did.’
‘Was that your idea?’ I asked. ‘Digging a hole in the pitch? Or was it your wife’s?’
I looked at the woman with folded arms who was now staring so angrily at the curtains her eyes might have set them on fire. For the first time since meeting her I had a clear sense of the hatred that lay within this woman.
‘How about it, Mrs Cruikshank? You helped him, didn’t you? I can’t think of any other reason your husband would have bothered nicking two spades from next door. For all I know you may have meant the blame to fall on some of those poor Romanian guys.’
She said nothing.
‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, Mr Cruikshank,’ I said. ‘I think it’s very noble of you to try to shoulder the whole blame for all of this. You have my sympathy; I did something rather similar myself once. But it doesn’t do any good, you know. Speaking for myself now I think it just made things worse.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Manson,’ he said.
‘Yes you do. You see, according to the turnstile computers at Silvertown Dock, the two tickets Zarco gave you for Saturday’s match were both used. Somehow I don’t see Mr Van de Merwe walking all the way to the match. Not with that leg of his. Or somehow Mrs Van de Merwe. Which means you were there, too, weren’t you, Mariella? You were in suite 123 with Zarco and your husband. To help with the negotiations.’
At this point in the proceedings her silence was eloquent enough.
‘Yes, I thought so. You know, I’ll bet it was you who had the presence of mind to close the window and put the three coffee cups in the dishwasher. A woman’s touch? Or was it just to make sure it looked like neither of you were ever there?’
The woman turned from the curtains and looked at me with distaste. She wasn’t bad-looking at all, I thought; fit-looking, too. As if she went to the gym a lot. The thin cotton singlet she was wearing afforded me a good impression of what her upper body looked like: strong shoulders, powerful biceps and well-defined nipples. But it wasn’t until the moment when she leaned across the sofa to pick up her cardigan and put it on that I guessed what must have really happened in suite 123 at Silvertown Dock.
‘You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?’ she sneered. ‘But you can’t actually prove any of this.’
‘Can’t I?’
‘You’re flying by the seat of your pants, Mr Manson.’
‘In fact,’ I continued, ‘I don’t think it was you who pushed João Zarco out of the window at all, Mr Cruikshank.’
‘As if we haven’t endured enough already with all this fucking building work next door. What gives you the right to come here and ruin our lives like this?’
‘I think it was your wife who pushed Zarco out of the window, Mr Cruikshank. Wasn’t it, Mrs Cruikshank? Probably when Zarco called you a bitch.’
‘John? Don’t say another word. Not without a lawyer present. Do you hear?’
‘That’s what cadela means, isn’t it? You see, I speak a little bit of Portuguese, too. And while I can easily see why he would have called you a cunt, Mr Cruikshank, I really can’t see that he would have called you a bitch as well. Not when Mariella here was in the room.’
‘Get out.’
‘I haven’t known you very long but it’s my impression that it’s not you who’s got the temper; it’s your wife here. It was you who pushed Zarco out of the window, wasn’t it, Mrs Cruikshank? It was your husband who grabbed him, I reckon, and tried to prevent his fall; but it was you who pushed him in the first place.’
‘Get out of this house, do you hear me?’
‘Of course, I can’t prove any of that. Then again, I don’t have to. I’ll leave it to the forensics team to match that little scratch on your neck to the tiny amount of skin and blood they found underneath Zarco??
?s fingernails. But you know something? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you really meant to push him out of the window, Mariella. This, after all, is a much better explanation of why you didn’t try to help him after he fell. Because you hoped he was dead and that all of this dreadful inconvenience you’ve experienced because of a little bit of building work would just go away forever. Isn’t that it?’
I’ve never heard a banshee and to be honest I wouldn’t know what one looked like, but I rather imagine that Mariella Cruikshank gave a pretty good imitation of one as, screaming something in Afrikaans, she threw herself across the room with hands that were reaching for my neck.
It was fortunate for me that I wasn’t standing in front of an open window.
50
‘What will happen to them?’ I asked Louise.
My rapprochement with the police force was progressing very nicely indeed. It was the following evening and Louise had not long come from the police station in Greenwich; we were lying in bed in my flat at Manresa Road and I had just spent an energetic hour making love to her. I had enormous regard for the police and the job they did, especially when the police looked like Louise Considine, who was now naked in my bed with her thighs still wrapped around my waist and my cock shrinking slowly inside her.
‘To the Cruikshanks?’
‘Yes.’
‘That all depends on the Crown Prosecution Service,’ she said. ‘But speaking as someone who studied law, I think manslaughter might be a lot easier to prove than murder. The scratch on Mariella Cruikshank’s neck and the fibres from her sweater we found underneath Zarco’s nails are certainly enough to prove that she pushed him, but not enough to prove she actually meant him to fall to his death. So far she’s been a hard nut to crack. Doesn’t give away much under questioning. I’m not sure she even knows herself if she meant to kill him or not. Frankly she’s an even bigger bitch than Jane Byrne.’
‘I can almost believe that. Did Jane give you any grief for what happened?’
‘Some.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be. It’s nothing I can’t handle.’
I nodded glumly. ‘It’s the old couple I feel really sorry for. I mean, if the Cruikshanks go to prison it will be pretty tough on Mr and Mrs Van de Merwe.’
Louise shrugged as if she didn’t care one way or the other.
‘Don’t you think so?’ I asked.
‘I wouldn’t feel too sorry for them either,’ she said. ‘They left for South Africa this morning.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘First class. It seems they think their daughter and her husband can cope with all of what’s going to happen quite well on their own. The prospect of twenty-five-degree temperatures in January was just too tempting, I suppose.’
‘Except that it’s now February.’
‘Is it?’
‘Believe me, I should know. Today is February the first. The January window just closed and Viktor can’t buy any more players. Which is probably just as well since I’m not so sure about the one we just bought.’
Louise groaned a little as I slipped out of her; then she rolled on top of me and kissed me on the forehead.
‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘it will be months before the Cruikshanks come to trial, by which time the Van de Merwes will be back home. The building work and the football season will probably be over.’
‘I guess.’
‘And you’ll have been confirmed as the new City manager.’
‘That already happened,’ I told her. ‘I spoke to Viktor Sokolnikov after I left you last night and told him about the Cruikshanks. I’m signing a new contract on Friday. So he was as good as his word.’
‘Did you tell him that for a while you were convinced it was him who had killed Zarco?’
‘Er, no. But I did ask him to explain exactly what he meant by that remark he made, to the effect that all objections to the arrival of Bekim Develi had been thrown out of the window. He said that he was referring to the Home Office. Apparently they had originally objected to him because Develi had planned to open a nightclub as well, which is against the rules for what they call a Tier 2 sports migrant. Anyway, he’s given up that idea and he’s just going to play football. Which is how it should be. Football comes first. Football always comes first. Without football, life would be meaningless.’
‘That’s not exactly Aristotle, Scott.’
‘Actually, you’re wrong there. It is.’
Louise frowned.
‘Aristotle really did think that football contained the meaning of life.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘No, he did. Listen. This is what he says in his book, Nicomachean Ethics.’ I paused for a moment to remember the quote exactly.
‘This is going to be a joke, isn’t it?’
‘On the contrary. I think he knew exactly what he was saying, and as usual he was right. Aristotle says this: “Every skill and every inquiry, and similarly, every action and choice of action, is thought to have some good as its object. This is why the good has rightly been defined as the object of all endeavour. Everything is done with a goal, and that goal is good.”’ I shrugged. ‘Well, don’t you see? A goal changes everything.’
Now that’s a philosophical truth.
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July 2014
Never mind the Special One; according to the sports press I’m the Lucky One.
After the death of João Zarco (unlucky) I was lucky to land the job as the caretaker manager of London City, and even luckier to keep it at the end of the 2013–14 season. City were judged lucky to have finished fourth in the BPL; we were also judged to have been lucky to reach the Capital One Cup Final and the FA Cup Semi-final, both of which we lost.
Personally, I thought we were unlucky not to win something, but The Times thought different:
‘Considering all that has happened at Silvertown Dock in the last six months – a charismatic manager murdered, a talented goalkeeper’s career cut tragically short, an ongoing HMRC investigation into the so-called 4F scandal (free fuel for footballers) – City were surely very fortunate to achieve as much as they did. Much of the club’s good fortune can be attributed to the hard work and tenacity of their manager, Scott Manson, whose fulsome and eloquent eulogy for his predecessor quickly went viral on the internet and prompted the Spectator magazine to compare him to none other than Mark Antony. If José Mourinho is the Special One, then Scott Manson is certainly the Clever One; he may also be the Lucky One.’
I’ve never thought of myself as being lucky, least of all when I was doing eighteen months in Wandsworth nick for a crime I didn’t commit.
And I had only one superstition when I was a professional footballer: I used to kick the ball as hard as I could whenever I took a penalty.
As a general rule I don’t know if today’s generation of players are any more credulous than my lot were, but if their tweets and Facebook posts from the World Cup in Brazil are anything to go by, the lads who are playing the game today are as devoted to the idea of luck as a witch doctors’ convention in Las Vegas. Since few of them ever go to church, mosque or shul, perhaps it’s not that surprising that they should have so many superstitions; indeed, superstition may be the only religion that these often ignorant souls can cope with. As a manager I’ve done my best to gently discourage superstitions in my players, but it’s a battle you can’t ever hope to win. Whether it’s a meticulous and always inconvenient pre-match ritual, a propitious shirt number, a lucky beard, a pair of charmed socks, or a providential T-shirt with an image of the Duke of Edinburgh – I kid
you not – superstitions in football are still as much a part of the modern game as in-play betting, compression shorts and Kinesio tape.
While a lot of football is about belief, there’s a limit; and some leaps of faith extend far beyond a simple knock on wood and enter the realms of the deluded and the plain crazy. Sometimes it seems to me that the only really grounded people in football are the poor bastards watching it; unfortunately I think the poor bastards watching the game are starting to feel much the same way.
Take Iñárritu, our extravagantly gifted young midfielder, who’s currently playing for Mexico in Group A: according to what he’s been tweeting to his one hundred thousand followers it’s God who tells him how to score goals; but when all else fails he buys some fucking marigolds and a few sugar lumps, and lights a candle in front of a little skeleton doll wearing a woman’s green dress. Oh yes, I can see how that might work.
Then there’s Ayrton Taylor, who’s currently with the England squad in Belo Horizonte; apparently the real reason he broke a metatarsal bone in the match against Uruguay was that he forgot to pack his lucky silver bulldog and didn’t pray to Saint Luigi Scrosoppi – the patron saint of footballers – with his Nike Hypervenoms in his hands like he normally does. Really, it had very little to do with the dirty bastard who blatantly stamped on Taylor’s foot.
Bekim Develi, our Russian midfielder, also in Brazil, says on Facebook that he has a lucky pen that travels with him everywhere; interviewed by Jim White for the Daily Telegraph, he also talked about his recently born baby boy, Peter, and confessed that he had forbidden his girlfriend, Alex, to show Peter to any strangers for forty days because they were ‘waiting for the infant’s soul to arrive’ and were anxious for him not to take on another’s soul or energy during that crucial time.