Hand of God

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ I said. ‘We’ve had a very constructive talk about everything, he and I. I talked, and he listened. I could be wrong, Simon – and I sometimes am – but I think everything will be fine with that lad now. At least it will be when he finds out which fucking pocket I put his bollocks in. Anyway, he’s not as dumb as you think he is. I think he might actually be quite smart.’

  ‘Let’s hope you’re right,’ said the big Yorkshireman.

  My phone rang again. I didn’t recognise the number, but I answered it anyway. In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t; Simon heard every word.

  ‘Mr Manson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Francisco Carmona. From Orientafute.’

  Orientafute – or Representação Sports e Agência de Orientação – was the largest agent-servicing company for footballers and football managers in Europe; and Francisco Carmona was its rapacious Brazilian founder. He’d made deals with all the big clubs and was rumoured to have made a twelve million euro fee on the summer transfer of Getúlio to Real Madrid for 125 million euros – the largest fee ever pocketed by a football agent.

  ‘I was very sorry to hear about Bekim Develi. He was a great player. A good man.’

  ‘Yes he was.’

  ‘Look, I’m going to be in Athens on Monday and if you’re still there I was wondering if we might meet up and have a talk.’

  ‘Mr Carmona. I don’t know how you got this number but I have no interest in speaking to you now or at any time in the future. I have an agent already, thank you.’

  ‘No problem. But if you change your mind, I’ll be staying at the Astir Palace hotel.’ I ended the call and shook my head.

  ‘Fucking Frank Carmona. I’ll bet he’s here to try and tap up some of our lads.’

  ‘Aye, there’s nothing players like more than someone telling them how much they could earn at another club.’

  I could tell Simon thought that this might include football managers as well, but for once he was too diplomatic to say so.

  ‘Nothing we can do about it,’ I said. ‘The transfer window doesn’t close for another week.’

  ‘Did you speak to Vik about replacing Bekim?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Christ, I’m fed up of being here,’ said Simon. ‘I never thought I’d say this, but I wish we were back in London.’

  ‘I’m working on that.’

  ‘With all due respect to you, boss, that doesn’t exactly fill me with fucking optimism. Finding Zarco’s killer back home was one thing, but this is Greece. They do things differently here.’

  ‘Just as often they don’t do them at all, Simon. That’s really the point of what I’ve been up to these past few days. Or maybe you thought I was just seeing the sights. Checking out the Acropolis and the Parthenon. Setting up a secret meeting with Francisco Carmona, perhaps.’

  ‘It’s none of my fucking business what you do in your spare time, boss.’

  ‘Well, I’m not. Really. I’ve never spoken to that shite hawk before.’

  ‘I believe you. Listen, boss. There’s something I have to tell you. Last night I was chatting with this English bloke at the hotel who’s got a mate who has a local radio show. Fellow called George Hajidakis. I think it’s the Greek equivalent of TalkSport. Anyway this bloke – Kevin, his name is – he told me that Hajidakis had said that Olympiacos aren’t taking any chances next Wednesday. He reckons they’ve already bought the referee. He’s Irish.’

  ‘Look, Simon, the Greeks are always calling foul. About the only thing they can agree on is that someone else’s club are a bunch of cheats.’

  ‘Yes, but this bloke told me that George Hajidakis was going to mention the bent Irish ref on the show till he had the shit beaten out of him by two heavies with brass knuckles. He’s in hospital now.’

  ‘Saying it and knowing it are two things. But proving it to the satisfaction of UEFA is something else. Christ, those bastards fined José Mourinho more than fifty thousand euros when he was at Madrid just for suggesting that you’ve got no chance of a fair match against Barcelona. So you’ll excuse me if I keep my fucking mouth shut, Simon. If your friend is right and they have bought the ref then we’ll just have to play around that, like a dog turd in the goal mouth.’ I shook my head. ‘Forget it. I don’t need this right now.’

  ‘You’re a cool bastard, Scott Manson, and no mistake. I tell you the referee has probably been bought and you just shrug it off like a cheap raincoat. So you’re saying we just ignore it, or what?’

  ‘Seriously, Simon, we’ve got enough grief in Greece without adding to it. In case you’d forgotten we’re not allowed to leave the country. The team is effectively under open arrest with one of our number suspected of having had a hand in a girl’s murder.’

  ‘The tart. Right.’

  ‘Now keep this to yourself but I managed to find out her name. I’m going to call that lawyer now and tell her.’

  ‘I see. Want me to leave?’

  ‘No. I’d rather you didn’t. If something happens to me then it’s best there’s someone else who knows her name, too. Someone English.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Only that I don’t really know what the fuck I’m doing, or what the fuck I’m getting myself into here. It could be that this is more dangerous than I thought it was.’

  I called Dr Christodoulou on speakerphone so Simon could hear our conversation, and told her the name of the girl; but I didn’t tell her what I had in my mind to do next.

  ‘How did you find this out?’ she asked.

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘You know that it’s a crime to withhold information in a murder inquiry,’ she said. ‘Even in Greece. By rights I should really inform Chief Inspector Varouxis. I could be disbarred.’

  ‘Just hold off for a little while,’ I told her. ‘At least until I’ve had a chance to follow up on this.’

  ‘All right. But only until Monday, right?’

  ‘Sure. How is it going with your own enquiries? Did you manage to find out anything about Svetlana Yaroshinskaya?’

  ‘Not yet. Like you said, it’s the weekend. Most Greeks don’t work on a Saturday.’

  I was half inclined to ask her on which particular day they did work but thought it would have sounded rude.

  ‘All right. Give me a call when you have something.’

  I hung up and looked at Simon.

  ‘That gives me less than forty-eight hours.’

  He frowned.

  ‘To find out who killed her and why.’

  ‘Maybe you should leave this alone,’ he said. ‘We don’t need you getting yourself murdered, boss. Right now you seem to be the only one who’s in with a shout of getting us all home. Just be careful, okay? I’ve already had one bugger die on me while we’ve been here. I don’t want another.’

  39

  Panathinaikos arranged for a coach to take us to their match against OFI at Leoforos, which was what the locals called the Apostolos Nikolaidis Stadium. As it pulled away from the Astir Palace hotel I walked to the back of the bus and peered out of the back window to see if there was a silver Skoda Octavia on our tail. When I saw that there was I smiled; it’s always nice to be proved right about something. Especially when it’s the cops.

  I sat down and closed my eyes. It felt fantastic to be going to a football game, even one we weren’t actually playing. The only pity was that I wasn’t going to see the game itself. I had other plans that afternoon. The mood on the coach was boisterous to say the least, with Gary Ferguson leading not just the team these days but its sense of humour, too, even though his jokes were more obvious than any new hair on the front of his head.

  ‘Look at the state of this country,’ he complained as the coach roared north. ‘Shops boarded up. Roads left unrepaired. Squeegee guys everywhere. People say it’s the credit crunch, whatever the fuck that is. I’ve been watching the Bloomberg Channel every day in my room since I got here to find out what happened
to this bloody place.’ The idea of Gary glued to Bloomberg got a laugh all of its own. ‘That’s the financial channel with all these wee numbers on the bottom of the screen. To be honest when I first saw them I thought they were the final scores but it turns out they’re stocks and shares, shite like that. Anyway, take it from me, lads, you won’t find any of the answers on Bloomberg as to why they’ve had such a bad recession here. You want to find out what went wrong take my advice and watch some Greek porn channels. They explain everything. Quite simply everyone in Greece is fucked.’

  More laughter.

  ‘As a matter of fact, that’s why I feel so at home in this shithole. This country makes the coffee for fucking Germany in the same way that Scotland makes the tea for England. But I reckon the Greeks could teach the Scots a few things about doing fuck all for a living.’

  I always loved listening to Gary riff about stuff. Maybe he did have a future career in television after all, as a comedian. But after a while, something else began to creep to the edge of my mind and crouch there like a guy in a high-viz jacket at the end of a match, as if he was expecting trouble, and, much as I would have preferred it, I could hardly ignore it. I got up and sat behind the coach driver. He was in his sixties, I thought; lots of white hair, big sunglasses, skin like leather, Nikos Galis T-shirt (Nikos Galis was a Greek basketball player), BO like the last towel in a sauna and tobacco-plantation breath.

  At the next red light I put a slightly damp twenty on the dashboard in front of him.

  ‘I was wondering if you knew Thanos Leventis.’ I paused, and then added: ‘Hannibal Leventis?’

  ‘I knew him.’ He shook his head. ‘It was really terrible what he did. I’ll be honest with you, sir, I didn’t think he was the type. I mean, you have to be crazy to do what he did, right? But he wasn’t crazy at all. Not even bad. He was just ordinary.’

  I stayed silent for a moment as he manoeuvred the coach around a difficult corner. Then I said: ‘There was some talk that Leventis didn’t act alone. That he had an accomplice.’

  ‘Yes, sir. That’s what one of the victims said. But the police judged her evidence to be unreliable, apparently. She was badly beaten up, of course. I suppose it’s why they didn’t think she could be relied on as a witness.’

  I knew a bit about unreliable evidence myself.

  ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘I heard she said the other guy worked for the United Nations because he was wearing a UN T-shirt or something like that. That’s why the cops discounted her evidence. After all, who wears a UN T-shirt? And what kind of UN worker goes around raping and murdering people? They’re supposed to stop that kind of thing, not take part in it.’

  ‘I guess you’re right.’

  ‘But you know, if there was another guy, then they’ll catch up with him sooner or later. After all, if you do that kind of thing once, you’ll almost certainly do it again.’

  ‘Unless he already has.’

  We turned onto Leoforos Alexandras. Some of our players hadn’t yet seen the stadium and they were surprised at how dilapidated it looked.

  ‘It’s not exactly Stamford Bridge,’ said Xavi Alonso. ‘Or Silvertown Dock.’

  ‘It looks ready for demolition,’ observed someone else.

  Ayrton Taylor had the SP on why this was:

  ‘In fact,’ he explained, ‘it was supposed to have been demolished more than a decade ago. Panathinaikos moved out of Leoforos in 1984 to play in the new Olympic Stadium. But they had to move back here in 2000 while renovations to bring the place in line with UEFA requirements took place. Cut a long story short, the money ran out and now they’re stuck here for the foreseeable future.’

  ‘It’s just like I was saying,’ said Gary. ‘The country is fucked.’

  ‘And to think people in Britain are still bellyaching about the cuts,’ said someone else. ‘They don’t know how well off they are.’

  ‘Come to Greece and then vote Tory,’ said Ayrton. ‘Makes perfect sense to me.’

  Antonis Venizelos, our liaison from Panathinaikos, greeted us at the main entrance. He wore a short-sleeved green shirt and a green and white tie; with all the hair on his arms he looked like an Iranian surgeon.

  He handed out some tickets, lit a menthol cigarette and we trooped after him and into the ground.

  ‘So,’ I said, making polite conversation, ‘the other team. OFI. Where are they from?’

  ‘The island of Crete,’ he said, ‘where English whores go on holiday to get laid by a nice Greek boy.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not the only reason,’ said Simon, stiffly.

  ‘English whores and sand monkeys.’

  ‘Sand monkeys?’ I frowned. ‘Who or what are they?’

  ‘The island of Crete is where all the illegals from Libya and Egypt make for on their cargo boats.’ Venizelos shrugged. ‘It’s a real problem for them and for us and the EU does nothing about it. As long as they stay out of Germany and France no one gives a damn. Every week our coastguard has to rescue boatloads of them. Just the other day they picked up 408 in one boat. That’s 408 people we’re now going to have to look after. In my opinion we should have let those bastards drown. Then maybe someone would help us to do something about it.’

  The crowd began to applaud as they saw us take our seats and Venizelos left us. The stadium may have been falling down but our welcome was holding up; and the pitch looked to be in excellent condition.

  ‘I’m glad he’s gone,’ said Simon. ‘For a man who smokes menthols he says some very sour things. Sometimes I’ve half a mind to stick one on him, boss.’

  ‘Don’t do that, for Christ’s sake. These are the only friends in Greece we have.’

  ‘You do know he’s a bloody Nazi, a member of the far-right Golden Dawn? At least that’s what he told me.’

  ‘Lots of people are, I think. They’ve got eighteen seats in the parliament.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean they’re right.’

  ‘No, of course it doesn’t.’ I looked at my watch. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go somewhere, and I probably won’t be back in my seat until the end of the match. It suits me for the cops to think I’m here for the next hundred and five minutes. So don’t worry. I’m not about to disappear, like Zarco.’

  ‘Where are you going, boss?’

  ‘It’s probably best I don’t tell you,’ I said. ‘Just enjoy the game. And if anyone asks you later on, I was here all the time.’

  Simon nodded. ‘Right you are, boss. And remember what I said: be careful.’

  I went out of the south entrance where, outside the official Panathinaikos store, Charlie was waiting in the Range Rover. We drove fast and west for a while before turning south in the direction of Piraeus.

  ‘I never thought I’d hear myself say this,’ said Charlie, ‘but it’s a pity you weren’t watching Olympiacos. It’d be nearer and we’d have more time.’

  ‘Can’t be helped. But if we miss full time it won’t really matter that much. The important thing is that we’ve given the cops the slip again.’

  Charlie glanced in his mirror as if just making sure and then nodded.

  40

  Dimitrakopoulou was the north street on a little square of neat gardens with tall trees and a playground where several children were having noisy fun on the swings under the watchful eyes of their mothers.

  Charlie got out of the car and fetched an old blue police sweatshirt and matching baseball cap from a plastic bag in the boot.

  ‘I brought these from home,’ he said, putting on the sweatshirt and the hat. ‘They wouldn’t convince a real policeman, of course, but for anyone else they’ll do fine. Let me do the talking. And don’t speak to anyone. It’s probably best if you seem bad-tempered and overworked and keep your sunglasses on; that way, you’ll look like a real detective.’

  Nataliya Matviyenko’s apartment was on the top floor of an ochre-coloured building with so many green canvas canopies shielding its several balconies from the strong afternoon sun
it looked like it was under sail. There was a pharmacy on the ground floor that, according to the plastic clock on the door, was about to close for the afternoon and, next to the pharmacy, a modern glass door with several bell buttons.

  ‘There’s a Nataliya Boutzikos here,’ said Charlie, ‘but no Nataliya Matviyenko.’

  ‘Has to be her,’ I said. ‘Don’t you think?’

  Charlie nodded and rang the bell; it was always possible someone else lived in the same apartment – Mr Boutzikos, perhaps – but there was no answer.

  ‘Now what?’ I asked.

  ‘Now we wait for the cavalry.’

  ‘Holy shit,’ I said. A police car was coming slowly along Dimitrakopoulou with its blue light on.

  ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘This is them now. The cavalry, I mean. These guys are nothing to do with the GADA. They’re friends of mine. I put a call in to the Piraeus Police for a squad car to turn up and make things look a bit more convincing, at least for the benefit of people who live around here. They’ll keep watch for us while we break into her flat. Have you got a couple of twenties?’

  I gave him four tens and watched as Charlie went over and leaned into the driver’s window. I didn’t see him hand over the money but I suppose he must have done because the police in the car switched off their blue light, lit up a couple of cigarettes and settled down to wait for us to do what we wanted to do. Charlie returned to the door as the pharmacist came out of his shop, still wearing a crisp white coat, and curious to know why the police were in his neighbourhood.

  Charlie started talking to him and, after a while, the pharmacist went inside the shop again. In an effort to contain my nerves I took out my phone, checked the recent calls list and then rang Francisco Carmona, from Orientafute.

  ‘Frank? It’s Scott. Sorry I couldn’t talk earlier.’

  ‘That’s okay, Scott. I’m used to people pretending they don’t know me.’