Hand of God (39 page)

In the malodorous slum of a dressing room I told our players only that there was nothing I could tell them that would improve the way they were playing now, except for one thing:

‘Just imagine what’s happening right now, in the Olympiacos dressing room. Fucking chaos, that’s what’s happening. Total meltdown. Let’s hope Trikoupis is in jail. Giannis Maniatis is probably having to do the team talk. Giving them a piece of his mind. Which he probably keeps in that little space between his eyebrows.’

‘What would you say, boss?’ asked Gary. ‘What would you say to them if it was you in there giving the team talk?’

‘Yes,’ said Ayrton, ‘it’d be good to hear that.’

‘Christ,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t know where to start. But I suppose the first thing I’d tell those guys in red would be this: you’re a complete bunch of
malakes
.’

Everyone cheered with noisy good humour.

‘Either that or a bunch of fucking mongs.’

More cheers.

‘He said “mong”,’ squeaked Ayrton Taylor, in imitation of Ricky Gervais, who is quite fond of the ‘m’ word himself.

‘But seriously, lads, Gianni needs to tell his team to keep a lot tighter at the back. That’s the major problem. The way they defended those two set pieces we had – that was appalling; we were unlucky not to have scored from those as well. They seem more interested in trying to keep possession of the ball than in defending. I think that may have been the inspired team tactic of the night. Deny us the ball and play pass the bloody parcel and hope that we’ll give up chasing the game. But it’s not working. Nothing for them is working now. Not even the gods.

‘In the air, well, they’re just crap. A team of acrophobic pygmies could win more high balls than they did in the first half. And certainly I would take that child Mouratidis off. He’s completely lost his bottle now that Gary has given him an old-fashioned Toxteth lobotomy.’

Prometheus grinned a huge grin and clapped Gary on the back of the head.

‘Here, mind the fucking hair,’ he said, which got another big laugh.

‘Gary? You might not get the Ballon d’Or this year, but you’ll certainly win the lead balloon for the best head-butt I’ve seen since Zinedine Zidane took out Marco Materazzi. Maybe they’ll erect a statue to you in Qatar. But I really wouldn’t know who I’d bring on in Mouratidis’s place. Mrs Boerescu, probably. She couldn’t do any worse than him. Maybe she could offer a free blow job for anyone of theirs who scores a goal tonight. That might get them going a bit. I know it would get Big Simon going. He’s talked about nothing but her sucking his cock since he saw her in the tunnel.’

Everyone cheered again.

‘Frankly, they’re not playing like a side that went into this leg 4–1 up. They’ve lost every cube of the ice cool they should have had about this game. I mean, all they needed to do was keep their heads, but that’s not happening. At the moment they’re being ripped open by good old-fashioned running football. Not passes. Running. Real Roy of the Rovers stuff. When you run at them it’s like you fillet them with a fucking fish knife. They don’t know how to handle a fast-running game. And that’s all I’d say to you. Run at the cunts. You get the ball and run at them like Prometheus did when he scored his first goal and I promise you we’ll win this.’

We went back on the field to find that the local riot police had turned up in force bearing shields and batons and were now facing the Olympiacos fans, on the basis, I suppose, that the Panathinaikos fans were less likely to burn down their own stadium. An acrid cloud of smoke hung like a net curtain and the match restarted with everyone wondering if it would be finished that night.

Mouratidis was still on the field, which struck me as a serious mistake, but I hardly paid this much attention after what I’d just seen in the tunnel.
Because surely William Winter had winked at me
. Was it possible that he was on our side? I was still trying to get my head around what this meant when the referee blew his whistle. Immediately Olympiacos were on the attack and thanks to Giannis Maniatis they enjoyed their best chance of the night. It should have been a goal, such was the quality of the Greek captain’s effort, with a brace of superb strikes: the first came off Kenny Traynor’s enormous fist and ricocheted straight back at the Greek’s feet; the second strike ought to have been in the back of the net as soon as Maniatis put his boot through it, but somehow Kenny picked himself off the ground, dived again, and this time collected the ball cleanly with two hands. The most astonishing thing was not that Maniatis failed to score but that a man as big as Kenny Traynor could move so quickly; I’ve seen scalded cats move with less speed. And even the Greek captain was moved to go and shake our goalkeeper’s hand after his awe-inspiring save.

This single sporting gesture did much to alter the temperature of the match; because having seen their captain shake Kenny Traynor’s hand, the Olympiacos fans applauded him too, as if they realised not only that they’d seen a save of the rarest quality, but that they’d also seen a decent sportsman in the person of their own mono-browed captain.

Simon clapped his big hands and shook his head.

‘Bloody marvellous,’ he boomed. ‘What did I tell you? Sticky fingers. That’s what any great keeper needs. God only knows how that man didn’t score. What a pity that Kenny Traynor isn’t English and that he’ll never grace a World Cup.’

I didn’t say anything. Even as a Jock myself I couldn’t have argued with that. But that wasn’t what was making me silent. It was the realisation that after what Simon had said I knew exactly how Bekim Develi had been killed; it had been staring me in the face like the Zapruder film for the last hour; not only that but I knew who had killed him, too.

I stayed quite still for a moment, then walked back to the dugout and sat down feeling like a man who has suffered a stroke and for whom half the world has suddenly disappeared. If you had placed a mirror in front of me I would not have seen my own reflection. The noise of the crowd seemed to get sucked up in a vacuum, along with the oxygen in the air around me. On the pitch I could hear the worms crawling through the earth underneath the grass; they were surely better than the people who had killed Bekim. Above me the smoke seemed to roll like thunder through the stadium; it tasted sweeter than the sour flavour that I had in my mouth from knowing what I now knew, beyond any reasonable doubt.

‘You’re in charge,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid I need to go and speak to someone. Right now.’

‘Can’t it fucking wait?’

‘No, it can’t.’

‘Speak to who?’ asked Simon as I stalked off. ‘Where the fuck are you going?’

‘To speak to Mrs Boerescu. I want to ask her something. Maybe she’ll give me a blow job if I talk to her nicely.’

Charlie and two of Vik’s bodyguards were standing at the end of the corridor that led to his box, watching the match through the open door of another box which was not occupied.

‘Everything all right, boss?’ asked Charlie.

‘I’ll tell you in a minute, Charlie, after I’ve spoken to
my
boss.’

‘Mr Sokolnikov, right. Just let me know if you want my help for anything else. I like working for you, Mr Manson. You’re a good guy.’

‘Thanks, Charlie.’

The bodyguards nodded silently and I nodded back, wondering if they were armed and what they might have done if they had known what was in my mind; only it wasn’t them who gave me pause for thought as I opened the door to the box, but Louise. I’d forgotten that Vik had invited her to watch the match with him and she was the only person in that room whose good opinion of me really mattered. About Vik, Phil, Kojo Ironsi, Gustave Haak and his diminutive toady, Cooper Lybrand, I couldn’t have cared less.

‘Scott,’ said Vik. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Yes,’ said Phil. ‘Surely you must have missed the all-important goal.’

‘What goal?’ I asked.

‘Ayrton Taylor just scored from thirty yards,’ said Phil. ‘While you were probably climbing all those stairs.’

‘What?’

Kojo swatted something invisible with his fly-whisk. ‘It was a beautiful strike,’ he said, quietly. ‘Almost as good as the one scored by Prometheus.’

I walked to the window and stared down from the gods at the pitch where Ayrton was still sprinting around the pitch perimeter, spinning an orange City football shirt in his hand like it was a lasso, and probably earning himself a yellow in the process. At last the Olympiacos fans had become silent. ‘Bloody hell.’

‘That’s right,’ said Vik. ‘We’re three–nil up. That’s four all on aggregate. If things stay as they are we’ll go through on the away goal we scored last week. Isn’t it wonderful? I don’t know what you and Simon have said to them this past week, but the boys are playing out of their skins. Congratulations. Right now, I couldn’t be more happy.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘We will. Jesus fucking Christ. We’re going to qualify. I don’t believe it.’

‘Even so,’ added Phil, ‘don’t you think you should be down there on the touchline supporting your team? Advising them? Encouraging them? With all due respect, it’s a little bit early for a celebration. There are at least thirty minutes of the game left to play.’

My delight in the score line gave way to something much less pleasurable.

‘I didn’t come up here to celebrate,’ I said. ‘Or to look for any praise, Phil. Not right now.’

Louise stood up and tried to take my hand; she could see the anger in my face even if the others couldn’t. I took my hand out of hers, kissed her fingers and tried to contain myself for a few moments longer.

‘Then, I don’t understand,’ said Vik. ‘What
did
you come for?’

‘Louise,’ I said, ‘I think you’d better let us have the room for a moment. You, too, Mr Haak, Mr Lybrand. What I have to say is best kept among the people at this football club. Me, Vik, Phil and Kojo here.’ I smiled a humourless smile. ‘If you don’t mind.’

‘Be careful,’ murmured Louise and went out of the door.

‘I don’t deserve you,’ I whispered.

Looking more than a little bemused, Gustave Haak and Cooper Lybrand stood up but hesitated to follow her, looking to Vik for their proper cue to stay or leave.

‘Scott, please,’ said Vik. ‘These gentlemen are my guests. You’re embarrassing me. Whatever this is about, can’t it wait until after the game?’

‘I’m sorry, Vik, but no, it can’t. You see, if I wait I might just lose a little bit of the anger I’m feeling now and then I might not be able to go through with this.’

‘That sounds ominous,’ said Phil.

Vik looked at Haak and Lybrand and nodded. ‘Perhaps, if you guys were to wait downstairs. You’d better tell Louise to wait there, too.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll text you all when we’re through in here, okay?’

‘All right,’ said Haak and went out of the door, with Cooper Lybrand close on his heels like a small dog.

‘Soccer’s not really my cup of tea, anyway,’ he said. ‘I prefer baseball.’

‘Wanker,’ I muttered, after they’d gone.

‘Your timing stinks, Scott,’ said Phil.

‘You’re right. But you can’t always time these things to perfection. One minute you don’t know something and then the next it’s like the light goes on and you see everything really clearly but you just can’t wait until the time seems right to do something about it.’

‘You’re a jealous bastard, if ever I met one,’ he added.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I assume this display of petulance is all about Kojo here. And his appointment as the club’s new technical director? He told us about your swearing at him in the tunnel before the game.’

‘That was thoughtful of him.’ I decided to say nothing about his role in Soltani’s sending off; that seemed hardly important beside what I had to say now. But it told me something important about the kind of treacherous colleague Kojo would have made.

‘If you are going to offer us your resignation,’ said Phil, ‘then it could easily have waited until after the game.’

‘Yes, it is about Kojo.’

Kojo put down his cigar and stood up. We were all standing now.

‘But it certainly isn’t about his appointment as the club’s technical director. And it’s not about me offering you my resignation. At least it wasn’t. Although now that you’ve mentioned it, Phil, then we’ll have to see how things pan out, won’t we? But why don’t you tell them why I’m here, Kojo? I assume you must have guessed.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you. You may be unscrupulous but you’re not stupid.’

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Scott. Like I said to you before, I sincerely hope we can work together but I’m beginning to have my doubts about that. Seriously, Vik, this man seems a bit unhinged.’

‘I wouldn’t work with you Kojo. Not in a million years. Not if you managed every player in the world. And I’ll tell you why. I mean, quite apart from the fact that you are a fucking crook—’

‘Of course he’s a fucking crook, Scott,’ said Vik. ‘Do you seriously think I don’t know that already? I know everything about this dodgy bastard. How do you think he got the bloody job at the club in the first place?’

‘What?’

‘He twisted my arm, that’s why I employed him. He threatened to reveal an important business deal I have concluded with Gustave Haak and the Greek government. A deal that’s been cooking for months. A deal it’s best that no one knows about. Especially here in Greece. At least not right now.’

‘Vik, please,’ said Kojo. ‘You make it sound like blackmail. It wasn’t like that at all. All I did was point out that I could hardly talk about your deal if I’d signed a confidentiality agreement, which I could only do if I was actually employed by you. I was actually trying to protect you and our relationship. I explained all this to you before.’

‘Shut up, Kojo,’ said Vik. ‘When I want you to speak again I’ll press a button. That’s what I’ve paid for, right?’ Vik looked at me with narrowed eyes; it was the first time I’d seen him looking angry. ‘There was a deal being cooked which he overheard while he was a guest on my boat. And which I don’t want anything to disturb. Anything at all. You understand?’

‘And perhaps the less Scott knows about that deal the better,’ Phil told Vik. ‘Don’t you think?’