Break Point: BookShots (8 page)

Kirsten Keller went through the usual routine of bouncing the ball twice, looking once down the court and tossing the ball high into the air. It was an exact replay of the final point at Roland Garros, where she had collapsed and forfeited the game.

Not this time
.

She smashed the ball hard down the court. Basilia desperately got a racket to it. It looped high into the air and hung there for what seemed like an eternity. The world slowed down and the only thing that moved was Keller, powering into the court and leaping at the ball like a striking panther. She put everything into that shot: the bitterness and humiliation of the loss in Paris, the anger at the black roses, the grief of losing Maria Rosario. The crowd burst into wild, ecstatic cheers and drowned out the umpire as he said, ‘Game, set and match, Miss Keller.’

She pumped her fists, shook hands with Marta Basilia and turned to each corner of the stadium, acknowledging the crowd with her racket held aloft. She looked to the stand and tried to pick out Foster, but he was already moving, trying to get to her. Basilia headed straight for the players’ locker room. Keller hung back, enjoying the moment. She’d undone the hoodoo of Roland Garros. Maria Rosario would have been proud.

Keller wiped her face with her wristband as she approached the fans hanging over the green hoardings, waiting for a chance for an autograph. A forest of hands reached out as she came near. They held out oversized tennis balls and programmes to sign. She grabbed at what they gave quickly and mechanically, wanting to please as many people as she could before her muscles started to tighten. A hand thrust through the crowd, close to hers. More insistent than the others. As she reached out instinctively, she felt something drop into her outstretched palm. Her blood froze as she looked down. It was a delicate silver chain. The last time she had seen it was around Maria Rosario’s neck. She looked up in horror, trying to identify Rosario’s killer in the tangle of human flesh. But the hand slipped back into the crowd like a recoiling serpent and vanished from sight.

Seeking out the face in the crowd, for a second she caught the briefest glance of two eyes glinting malevolently at her. They were angry and bitter; dark pools of hate and unbridled rage. She turned, panicking, searching for Foster as more fans crowded in for autographs. Her stomach twisted, not from the fear, but from the sudden and complete understanding that someone had killed Maria and that somehow it was all because of her. A guilt she couldn’t rationalise flooded through her and synapses fired in her brain, trying to comprehend what she might have done to cause this man to hate her. Who could hate her enough to kill her friend?

She searched the faces of the crowd again, but the malevolent eyes were gone, and although she saw the back of a man break from the pressing crowd and slip through a nearby exit, it could have been anyone.

FOSTER GUIDED KIRSTEN
Keller quickly up the glass-and-steel stairs that led to Wimbledon’s Press Room.

‘You can shower back at the hotel,’ he told her. ‘Until then, we stay together.’

They were walking shoulder-to-shoulder, Keller vibrant and alert after winning her match, Foster vigilant and attentive, as Abbot followed two steps behind.

‘He’s getting closer,’ Keller said. ‘So why hasn’t he attacked me?’

‘He’s biding his time and getting a kick out of scaring you,’ Foster said. ‘The question is: how long will he wait?’

At the top of the stairs they reached a security door. Foster knocked firmly and a few seconds later a nervous-looking runner appeared. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt, with a headset hanging around his neck. He had the air of a man who was drowning. He stared at Foster’s looming frame with a mixture of annoyance and alarm and was about to speak, when he saw Kirsten Keller next to him.

‘Oh, Christ!’ he said. ‘Did we book you? I don’t think we’re expecting you …’

His voice tailed off as he started thumbing through reams of running orders on his clipboard.

‘She’s not scheduled,’ Foster said, ‘but I’m guessing you’d like to interview her?’

‘God, yes.’

‘I need to see your recordings of today’s match,’ Foster said. ‘Specifically the moments immediately after the match, when Kirsten was signing autographs. You give me that, and Kirsten will give you three minutes on air. Can you do it?’

The runner stuck his headphones over his ears and spoke into the microphone. He glanced at Keller a couple of times, and after a moment he looked back at Foster and said, ‘Five minutes – and you’ve got a deal.’

‘Three minutes,’ Foster said. ‘And every second you negotiate is a second less on air.’

The young runner’s eyes widened slightly and he relayed the message to his producer, as he beckoned them through the doors. The wall immediately in front of them was completely covered in flat screens showing different courts and different players, with the same verdant turf wallpapering every shot. The screens were angled inwards at the top and the bottom, giving the impression that they were inside a giant goldfish bowl. Three women were working in swivel chairs in front of a huge illuminated mixing desk. They wore the same headsets as the runner and seemed so engrossed in their pictures that they didn’t notice the invasion. The runner tapped one of them on the shoulder and she turned round and slipped one earphone off.

‘Hey, Bethan,’ he said, smiling nervously. ‘These guys need your help.’

She was a thin woman with tight lips that looked as if they’d forgotten how to smile. She looked at the runner like she might rip his skin from his body.

‘Half of Africa needs my help, according to Save the Children, but I’m a bit fucking busy at the moment.’ Her cold eyes moved from the runner to the group of strangers in her gallery and she said, ‘No offence.’

‘None taken,’ Foster said. ‘Come on, Kirsten, we’ll head back to the hotel.’

Even in the strange light, Foster could see colour draining from Bethan’s face as Keller stepped out from the shadows. Good, let her squirm. His codeine hit was wearing off and the left side of his body was beginning to throb again and he was starting to feel irritable.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Bethan muttered, mostly to herself. ‘What do you need?’

‘Whatever pictures you’ve got, from the end of the match,’ Foster said. ‘Every camera. Every angle. I’m looking for someone in the crowd.’

‘And you want this when?’ Bethan said in a disbelieving tone. ‘Now?’

Foster explained the deal, the same way he’d explained it to the runner, and Bethan rolled her eyes and started punching time-codes into her computer. The runner breathed a sigh of relief and led Keller out into the studio, with Tom Abbot following close behind.

Soon the screens in front of Foster were alive again, and Bethan was scrolling through images until they found what he was looking for. There were two cameras that had caught the scene. The first was useless, showing nothing but a brief glimpse of the guy’s baseball cap in the middle of the scrum. The other angle was better, filmed from the far side of the court, over Keller’s shoulder. It was a wide shot, with Keller small in the middle of the screen. The excited faces of the people in the crowd were smaller still.

‘Can you zoom in?’ Foster asked.

Bethan pressed buttons and the frame tightened around Keller. But the closer they got, the grainier the quality of the shot became.

‘Can you loop that bit?’ Foster said, as he saw the arm emerge from the crowd. ‘And slow it right down?’

Bethan did, and the shot played through on the screens in front of them. The grainy arm punched through, and Keller’s hand came forward. And then it repeated, again and again, the arm staying grainy and the guy’s face staying blurred.

Foster leaned forward until he was cheek-to-cheek with Bethan, his lips next to her microphone.

‘Time’s up,’ he said.

‘Did you find anything?’ Abbot asked as they all headed back down the glass-and-steel steps. Foster was quiet and brooding.

‘Nothing,’ he said distantly. ‘Just an arm disappearing into the crowd. Dead end.’

‘CCTV?’ Abbot asked.

‘Cullen’s going to get hold of it, but I don’t expect they’ll find anything. There are too many people moving around the grounds, and we haven’t had a good enough visual on this guy to pick him out in such a massive crowd.’

They walked in silence back to the Range Rover, Foster’s strong hand gentle but persistent in the small of Keller’s back. When they reached the car, there was a note waiting for them on the windscreen. It was typed on cheap white paper, folded once and tucked under the wiper blade. Foster skimmed it and then handed it to Keller while he started up the car.
Soon it will all be over. You deserve what’s coming. And if you don’t know why, then you deserve it even more
.

THE HEAVENS OPENED
as Foster drove back towards the hotel. Plump raindrops smashed onto the Range Rover’s roof like meteors, and red brake lights kaleidoscoped across the rain-drenched windscreen.

‘Is this normal?’ Keller asked irritably as they sat idling in the traffic.

‘Pretty much,’ Foster said. The black sky mirrored his mood. The strength was slowly coming back to his arm, but with it came a throbbing pain and an unwelcome sense of his own vulnerability. They were almost at Elephant and Castle when he said, ‘I can’t do this any more.’

Keller looked at him, aghast.

‘The job?’

‘The traffic.’

He gave her a reassuring smile, then pulled the Range Rover onto the kerb and cut the corner into a side street. It took them five minutes to find an old-fashioned London boozer and they wasted no time in getting out of the rain. The place was called the Boar’s Head, and it had an air of perpetual night-time about it. Oppressive black beams held up low-slung ceilings that were stained yellow from the smoke of a hundred thousand cigarettes, and the timber bar looked as if it had sailed rough seas for too long. The place was full of dark corners fit for pirates and smugglers and people who didn’t want to be found. People like Foster, Abbot and Keller.

Keller sat back in the dark booth, nestled between the two men. She felt exposed, still wearing her tennis whites. Still salty from the exertion. Still knowing that her stalker was out there somewhere, lurking.

‘I was thinking,’ she said, ‘there’s no way Basilia hired that guy to scare me, or to kill Maria. I saw his eyes in the crowd. Just for a second. He was staring at me like he hated every bone in my body. I couldn’t breathe when I saw that hatred burning. He’s the guy. It’s all about him and me. Nobody hired him. Not Basilia or anyone else. I just wish I knew why.’

Abbot swilled his beer in his glass and took a sideways glance at Foster to see if he could get a steer on his thoughts. But Foster sat impassive and inscrutable.

‘He’s not a player, either,’ Abbot said. ‘You smashed through him yesterday like he was made of paper. He’s no kind of athlete at all.’

‘Okay,’ Foster said, nursing his pint. ‘So we know who he’s not. But who the hell
is
he? And what does he want?’

‘Some of those Chinese betting syndicates can get pretty nasty,’ Abbot said. ‘Any of them offered you money to throw a game?’

Keller shook her head.

‘They wouldn’t approach Kirsten,’ Foster said.

Abbot raised an eyebrow.

‘You sure?’

Foster turned to Keller.

‘How much sponsorship did you earn last year?’

Keller looked at him for a moment.

‘I didn’t earn any,’ Foster said, ‘if it makes you feel better about disclosing.’

She smiled and said, ‘Eighteen million dollars, give or take.’

Abbot gave a low whistle.

‘Next round’s on you,’ he said.

‘There’s five point eight million prize money on top of that,’ Foster said. ‘Any gambling syndicate would know there’s no point trying to bribe Kirsten. It would cost too much.’

He rolled his pint glass between his fingers, feeling it scuff across a century of beer-soaked varnish on the table beneath.

‘Or they could murder my coach,’ Keller said, voicing Foster’s unspoken thought. ‘And send me half crazy in the meantime.’

Foster nodded.

‘It’s possible. But there are much easier ways of getting the job done. Whatever is happening, we need to react. Today.’

Suddenly Keller looked overwhelmed.

‘What are we supposed to do, if we don’t even know what this guy wants?’

Foster sighed.

‘You want my professional opinion?’

She said that she did.

‘Go home.’

The intimacy of the past few days made the brevity of his answer sting. For a moment Keller sat in stunned silence.

‘Because?’

‘Because, like you say, we don’t know what this is,’ he said. ‘Tom’s right. The guy’s not a player, but somehow he’s got unusual access to you. He threatened you, but killed Maria. We don’t know why, but the trouble hasn’t stopped since she died, which means the guy is still fixated on you. He’s dangerous, and he’s coming. The safest thing to do is to get out of the way.’

Abbot turned to Keller and backed up his friend.

‘Chris is right,’ he said. ‘This guy’s getting closer and it looks as though he’s focusing on the final.’

Keller twisted in her seat and faced Foster full on, her eyes burning into his.

‘I can’t control what happens when you’re out on the court,’ Foster told her, his voice a low admission.

‘I can’t promise to keep you safe. So you need to go home.’

Keller took a breath and composed herself. As Foster watched, she found her nerve. Her skin flushed, suddenly glowing healthily under the dim yellow lights. Her shoulders broadened as her lungs filled and her whole frame set in a stronger, more perfect poise. Slowly, the cold-steel gaze that Foster had seen in her eyes during matches replaced the burning anger.

‘I am twenty-three years old,’ she said. ‘This is my time. And it doesn’t come around twice. It’s my time to win matches, to win tournaments and to become world champion. You know who says so? Maria Rosario. Except that she’s dead. But I’ll tell you something: if I run now, I will never find out who killed her, and I’ll never know why. And we’ll never catch this guy, and I’ll live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.’