‘He’s certainly a fearsome-looking figure. Especially with his plate out. He always gives a new meaning to the phrase “man marking”.’
For a moment we were silent as we watched the players.
‘Prometheus is probably the most gifted player on the park right now,’ said Simon. ‘Everything he does comes naturally.’
‘Including being a cunt.’
‘True. Although he’s not been nearly so arrogant of late. Maybe it was Bekim’s death. Or maybe it’s just this place.’ Simon took a deep euphoric breath of air and nodded. ‘Smashing here, isn’t it?’
‘Apparently this training ground is named after a Greek poet.’
‘Aye, well, that’s easy to understand. If I had to look at that view every day I might write a poem myself.’
‘I think I’d like to read a poem by you,’ I said, wondering how many rhymes you could get for ‘fuck’ and ‘cunt’ which were, after all, the most frequent words in Simon’s Yorkshire vocabulary. ‘What’s the mood like without Bekim?’
‘Aye, well, that’s a question.’
He went back on the pitch for a minute, organised another exercise and then came back.
‘Now that we’ve lost our team Jesus,’ I said, ‘the other disciples are going to need inspiration.’
‘You what, boss?’
‘All teams need their own Jesus. Someone who can turn water into fucking wine, cure lepers and the blind, and raise the team from the dead when we’re having a mare. Bekim was ours. So, who’s the new team Jesus? That’s the real question, Simon. Gary is a good captain, but he’s not an inspiring figure. He’s a discipline. And as last lines of defence go, he’s the best. But he’s not someone who can look you in the eye and persuade you that he’s the answer to your prayers.’
Simon hummed and hawed an answer but in truth I already knew the answer to my own question. Before the pre-season window closed on 31 August I was going to have to persuade Vik to pay top money for the Hertha team captain, Hörst Daxenberger. With his long blond hair, blue eyes and beard, Daxenberger was the nearest thing to Jesus I’d seen outside a crappy Hollywood movie. But to get him to come to City we were going to have to beat Olympiacos and qualify for Champions League; if we could do that, it’d be the one thing we could offer him that Hertha couldn’t.
After the session was over I gathered the team and the playing staff around me in the warm sunshine and spoke to them.
‘I know you all miss your families so let me say right away that Vik’s lawyers haven’t given up trying to persuade the police to change their minds about keeping us here in Athens. But unless a miracle happens it looks like we’re remaining here for now. And let’s face it, things could be a lot worse. The lads from Panathinaikos couldn’t be more helpful and let’s make sure they always know how grateful we are to them. Meanwhile, the sun’s shining, the food is good and there’s a nice beach at the hotel. I suggest you get a nice tan, download a book, use the gym and lay off the duty-free because we have the small matter of a Champions League match next week. Not to mention a three-goal deficit.
‘So, I’ll tell you what we know and then I’d like to invite anyone who can shed some light on any aspect of this sad affair to speak up – without fear of discipline or me grassing them up to the local filth. I promise you there will be no fines and no bollockings for anyone who can add to the store of what we know. Because I believe our best chance of getting out of here is to approach this like a team. To pool any information that we might have. I know the cops have already asked you about this and I don’t know what you’ve told them, but I imagine it’s not much. Bekim was your team mate and you’re still looking out for him. I respect that. So am I. But this is me asking the questions now, not the cops. I want some answers.’
‘Are you planning to play the amateur sleuth again, boss?’ asked Gary. ‘Like at Silvertown Dock when you helped find out who killed Zarco?’
‘That’s one idea. The cops are still trying to find their arseholes right now, so why not? It can’t do any harm, can it? Now, as I’m sure you all know, Bekim rented girls like other people rent Boris bikes. Against team orders he had a girl back to his bungalow on Monday night, before the match. He fucked her six ways to Sunday, and the next day she was found at the bottom of the harbour with a kettlebell roped to her ankles. That’s why we’re being held here. The cops still don’t know who she was. The question is, do any of you? Did he offer to spit-roast her with you? Did you hear anything? Did you see anything? As far as I can see she was a blonde, with a blue dress, and a tattoo of a labyrinth on her shoulder. Russian probably. Liked footballers, fuck knows why.’
‘He told me he had a girl coming over to his bungalow,’ said Xavier Pepe. ‘And that she was something special. That she was Attica’s best-kept secret and the most beautiful woman in Athens.’
‘He actually used that phrase?’
Xavier nodded.
It was how Bekim had described Valentina before I had gone to Athens to see Hertha play Olympiacos.
‘Can you remember what time it was when he said this?’
‘It was after dinner,’ said Xavier. ‘About nine thirty.’
I took out my notebook and wrote this down, calculating that Bekim might actually have been expecting Valentina right up until the very moment when the other girl showed up – according to Chief Inspector Varouxis – at eleven o’clock.
‘I think I might even have reminded him that his bungalow was next to yours, boss. And that he’d better be careful or you’d have his bollocks for breakfast.’
‘And I would have done. So be warned. Anyone who thinks he might like a bit of local legover while we’re here had better think again. Local cunt is definitely off menu until this thing is resolved.’ I paused. ‘Is that it, Xavi?’
He nodded.
‘Anyone else?’ I paused. ‘What about this amulet that was found around his neck? Does anyone know anything about that? The detective I spoke to called it a hamsa. Apparently it resembles an open right hand. I’m pretty sure I never saw Bekim ever wear such a thing in England. And in spite of his attitude to my orders I’m quite sure he wouldn’t have taken lightly the risk of falling foul of a UEFA official in Greece. They’ve handed out yellow cards for less.’
‘I gave it to him.’ It was Denis Abayev, the team’s nutritionist – the man who had tried to lead everyone in prayer on the flight to St Petersburg when the plane had made an emergency landing.
‘But you’re the one Bekim accused of being a Muslim jihadi.’
‘Only because he was scared,’ explained Denis. ‘Besides, he apologised for what he said almost immediately, didn’t he? The hamsa is a good luck sign in the Middle East. It’s also supposed to provide protection against the evil eye. I’ve been meaning to mention it to you before but I didn’t like to, because you told me not to do anything religious near the players.’
‘So why did you?’
‘I gave him the hamsa to make him feel better. He might not have believed in God, but Bekim was superstitious. He told me he thought someone was trying to put the hex on him.’
‘What the fuck do you mean, “the hex”?’
Denis held up a little blue pendant that looked like a glass eye and handed it to me. ‘He found this hanging on the handle of the French windows outside his bungalow, the night we arrived.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a mati,’ said Denis. ‘An evil eye. They’re very common here; you can buy them on any street corner in Athens. As an evil eye against the evil eye. Or just to mess with someone’s head. And it did. Bekim was upset by it.’
I tossed the little blue eye back to Denis.
‘Look, lads, the only evil eye I’ve ever seen that fucking works belongs to Roy Keane,’ I said. ‘That Irishman could stare down a Gorgon.’
‘Nevertheless, Bekim Develi is dead, boss,’ said Gary Ferguson. ‘There’s no getting away from it. This particular evil eye looks like it worked.’
‘That??
?s bollocks, and you know it, Gary. Look, this was just someone pissing around, right? A member of the hotel staff having a laugh. All the same, I’m beginning to see why the guys from Panathinaikos hate Olympiacos so much. It seems there’s nothing these bastards won’t do to try to put you off your game. Did you mention this to the cops, Denis?’
‘No, boss.’
‘Then let’s keep it that way, shall we? We’ve got enough on our plate without the Greek cops thinking that someone wanted Bekim dead as well.’
‘Too fuckin’ right.’ Gary shook his head. ‘Sooner we get out of this shitehole the better. When that cunt Inspector Verucca was interviewing me, every time he breathed near me I almost passed out.’
I nodded. ‘That career in television you were planning, Gary. After retirement. I think you’re going to have to work on your media skills.’
28
On my way back to the hotel to meet with Chief Inspector Varouxis I stopped at the Laiko General Hospital. I’d arranged with him that I could see Bekim’s body and pay my respects, but mostly I just wanted to see that they were taking proper care of him. What with the strike I was concerned that they’d have my friend wrapped in a bin bag underneath some keftedes in the freezer.
It was a pink-coloured building in the city’s northeast with little to distinguish it from any other public buildings in Athens. The word dolofonoi was graffitoed on one of the exterior walls near an entrance that was behind a line of orange trees. I’m fond of orange trees, but in Athens you find oranges lying on every street like fag-packets, which struck me as a little sad.
‘Dolofonoi. What does that mean?’ I asked Charlie, who’d come in to help me find the pathology department.
‘It means “murderers”.’
‘Christ, I bet that fills the patients with confidence.’
‘Anarchists,’ he said. ‘They think that by undermining everyone’s morale they can bring down the state.’
The state didn’t look too healthy to me but I kept my opinion to myself. I liked Charlie.
The doctors – and more importantly, the pathologists – were on strike, but the hospital orderlies were in a different union and so they were on duty; one of them led me down a long, badly lit corridor that looked like a left-luggage office, with dozens of refrigerated cabinets of the kind everyone’s seen on CSI. The orderly was smoking a cigarette which, such was the cloying smell of human decay, might easily have been regarded as necessary for the job as the green scrubs he was wearing. A stepladder was standing in the middle of the floor as if someone had started to try to fix the faulty strip light on the ceiling, which was blinking like Morse code, and then changed their mind. The orderly checked a number on his clipboard and then moved the ladder with a loud tut and a sigh. He managed to make everything he did look like such a bloody inconvenience that I wanted to clout him on the back of his absurdly permed head. No less absurd was his flourishing black moustache which looked like a pair of spent Brillo pads.
Just as the strip light stopped blinking the orderly opened a door and drew out a drawer – the wrong drawer, that much was immediately apparent, for the toenails on the foot were neatly varnished with a pale shade of lilac.
‘Perhaps if you took the fag out of your face you might see what the fuck you’re doing,’ I said under my breath.
But even as the orderly tutted again and closed the polished steel drawer, I knew I was now much more interested in the lady with the toenails than in Bekim’s dead body. I’d remembered what one of the boys diving off Zea Marina had said: that the body they’d found in the water had a purple manicure. Of course to a boy, lilac looks the same as purple.
I let the orderly find the correct door and spent a sombre minute staring at Bekim Develi’s body – it was hard to believe he was dead – before indicating with a curt nod that I was finished with him. But I wasn’t finished in the mortuary. I needed to look at the girl’s body too, if I could, for this had to be the girl from Marina Zea. How many dead bodies did they have with such perfectly varnished toenails? It hadn’t occurred to me that they would have put the body of the girl who’d drowned in the same mortuary as Bekim Develi. And yet it made perfect sense, too.
Of course, being Sherlock Holmes is easier in Greece than it might be in other countries. When everyone looks as if they know by heart the words to ‘Brother Can You Spare a Dime?’, it’s relatively straightforward for someone with money – someone like me – to buy exactly what he wants, more or less. But I was already learning not to be so absurdly generous. When the average monthly wage is just a thousand euros a nice new fifty is almost two days’ pay. I held it up in front of him like a cup final ticket and told Charlie to tell him he could have it if he showed us the girl with the lilac toenails again.
The orderly hesitated only long enough to remove the cigarette from his mouth and then stub it out on the side of the stepladder. He pocketed the rest of it to smoke later, I supposed.
‘I speak English,’ he said, and took the note which he stuffed into the same pocket as his half-smoked cigarette. It looked like a metaphor for all of the EU’s financial problems: the euro, in danger of going up in smoke because of Greek fecklessness.
He opened the previous steel door, pulled out the drawer, and swept back a grubby green sheet to reveal the stark-naked body of a girl. At the same moment the strip light started to flicker again and now I understood the purpose of the ladder, because the orderly mounted it and began gently flicking the fluorescent tube with a finger until it settled down again.
‘Eínai polý ómorfį,’ breathed Charlie. ‘She’s beautiful.’
‘That she is,’ I said. ‘Quite stunning.’
Immediately I knew that I was looking at the right girl. She was in her mid-twenties, I supposed, with large breasts that looked fake, and a blonde pussy that was waxed to the point of non-existence – just a little bit of fluff to put on a show for a client, or for one to get rough with. More importantly there was a neatly done tattoo of a labyrinth on her left shoulder and, certain that the power of my fifty might not last for very long, I took out my iPhone and started to take pictures.
‘No pictures,’ said the man on the stepladder.
I ignored him.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’m not about to Instagram these. I’m hoping to find out what her name is. Not sell pictures of her muff.’
The orderly stopped tapping the light – which was working again – and came back down the ladder.
‘Please, stop what you’re doing – if these pictures get in the newspapers I could lose my job. That’s a risk I can’t afford. Even a job that doesn’t pay money is still a job.’
I stopped taking pictures and found him another fifty from inside my pocket.
‘Who said it doesn’t pay money?’ I said.
Reluctantly he took the fifty.
‘But look,’ I added, ‘I give you my word you won’t see these pictures in the newspapers. You know who I am, you must have read about this. The police are holding my team here in Athens while they investigate the death of this girl. On Monday night she had sex with Bekim Develi. And until they know her name and exactly what happened to her that night we’re stuck here. Meanwhile the pathologists are on strike so there can’t even be an autopsy. And the cops might as well be on strike for all the use they are.’
‘You have my sympathies, sir; no one likes the cops in this town.’ He nodded. ‘So I will not insist that you erase these pictures you have taken on one condition.’
‘What is it?’
‘You’re training at Apilion, aren’t you? With Panathinaikos.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Have they told you what animals the people who support Olympiacos are? That they are all the bastards of Yankee sailors and whores.’
‘As a matter of fact they have.’
‘Then my condition is this, Mr Manson. That whatever happens next week, when you leave my country you don’t think too badly of my team. My name is Spiros Kapodi
strias and all my life I support Olympiacos. But what Hristos Trikoupis said about you before the match was very shameful, sir. And the way he held up four fingers for four goals instead of shaking your hand? This was also very bad. Things are terrible in my country right now, it’s true; but Greece is the home of European civilisation and, in my opinion, this is not how the game should be played. Our team deserves better than this man. We’re not all like him.’
‘It’s a deal,’ I said. ‘And I’m grateful.’
He pointed at the body lying on the open steel drawer. She looked like she was waiting for someone to switch on a sun lamp.
‘Please, Mr Manson,’ he said. ‘Take as many pictures as you want.’
I turned on my iPhone again and clicked away for a whole minute. To my surprise there were no marks around her ankles, and I remarked on this.
‘Then it would seem she did not struggle very much,’ said Spiros. ‘Perhaps she was drugged, or intoxicated. Better for her if she was. Of course this is something that only Dr Pyromaglou will be able to determine.’
‘Who’s Dr Pyromaglou?’
‘She’s the senior pathologist here at Laiko; it’s her who’s been given this case by the Chief Medical Officer. It will be Pyromaglou who carries out the autopsy on this poor woman when—’
‘She stops being on strike.’ I pulled a face. ‘Whenever that might be.’
‘Pyromaglou does not want to be on strike, you understand. But it’s been many weeks since any of us were paid in this hospital.’
‘So why isn’t your union on strike, Spiros?’
‘Because it’s not our turn to be on strike. Anyway, someone has to be here to care for the bodies. There would be a risk to public health if there was nowhere to put them. As it is, all of the other bodies in here are sharing a mortuary drawer with someone else.’
‘That sounds cosy.’
‘On police orders, these two – your player and the girl – are the only ones in here who rate a drawer to themselves.’ Spiros nodded. ‘Are you finished looking at her?’