Hand of God Read online

  ‘Scott, really.’ Vik smiled and rubbed his beard. ‘You’re being a little melodramatic. What you do, you do very well, but honestly it’s nothing compared to what I have to do.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. You’re an intelligent man. But sometimes I wonder if you have the least idea of what it’s like to run a twelve-billion-pound business. The responsibility. The effort required. The number of things I have clamouring for my attention. I have thirty thousand people working for me. All you have to do is get eleven men to play football.’

  I nodded silently. I already felt sad but now I felt small, too.

  On The Lady Ruslana Vik was the master in a way he never was on land; he only had to nod to make things happen around him. The crew of the boat wore orange polo shirts and shorts and were so young they looked like a high school gym class in Australia, which was where they were from, mostly; once or twice I thought he’d nodded at me only to discover that he’d ordered himself a drink, or a snack, or sent some flowers to Alex, or summoned the launch that would take me back to the hotel.

  ‘I’d forgotten that helicopters make you nervous, Scott,’ he explained.

  ‘I don’t think I ever mentioned it, did I?’

  He shrugged. ‘A man doesn’t have to say anything at all for him to be just as eloquent as Hamlet,’ he said. ‘Sometimes, his body says everything for him. Besides, I think you’ve had more than enough stress for one day, my friend. I know I have. So then. Take the launch. Go back to the hotel. Eat something. Try to get a good night’s sleep. And like I said before, leave everything other than tomorrow’s football match in my hands. But before you do all that, forgive me please. I’m sorry I put you down like that earlier. I made you feel insignificant and unimportant and that really wasn’t necessary. My apologies.’

  It was perhaps a modest demonstration of omniscience; all the same it was a touching one.

  And then he embraced me warmly.

  When I got back to the hotel I found the police waiting for me in the lobby; they explained that there would have to be a post-mortem and that for legal reasons Bekim Develi’s possessions could not be removed from his bungalow at the hotel, which was now closed until further notice.

  ‘It’s the coroner’s office,’ they explained. ‘When a man of just twenty-nine drops down dead there are procedures that must be observed.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said.

  It looked as though any funeral plans that Viktor Sokolnikov might have had for Bekim Develi to be buried in his home town of Izmir were now on hold.

  19

  We resumed the match abandoned the previous night with eighty-three minutes still to play. And the game started well. How could it not? We were already a goal up. This was an away goal too, the best kind in UEFA’s Animal Farm world where some goals are more equal than others. Our players seemed anxious to win the game, for Bekim’s sake if nothing else. The sports page of every English newspaper urged us on to victory over the Greeks and – with one Cassandra-like exception, the always-prescient Henry Winter at the Daily Telegraph – predicted that City would surely prevail.

  Unfortunately no one had shown Olympiacos the script of how this particular revenge tragedy was supposed to play.

  Our evening began to break up like the Elgin Marbles almost as soon as the City players stepped onto the pitch. It was as if, having lost Hector, our doom had been sealed for we were uncertain in defence, clueless in midfield, and impotent in attack. Schuermans and Hemingway were both outplayed by the thirty-two-year-old Argentine Alejandro Domínguez, who proved that his team had no need of centre forward Kostas Mitroglu – sold to Fulham for £12.5 million – to score goals. He equalised with just fifteen minutes on the clock, running on to a fantastic through ball from Giannis Maniatis, Olympiacos’s captain and central midfielder, whose pass looked as if he might have called Jesus Christ’s bluff and got a camel through the proverbial eye of the needle. Why our own midfielders didn’t close him down was one mystery; but it was wrapped up in the enigma of how our almost sedentary defenders didn’t manage to stop Domínguez from finding space to take a shot that Kenny Traynor ought to have saved easily. Unsighted and wrong-footed, our goalkeeper dived one way and Domínguez neatly flicked the ball the other. The ball crossed the line with an almost cartoonish lack of pace, as if Jerry the mouse could have stopped it, adding to Traynor’s obvious distress. He slapped the ground several times and shouted at the pitch, as if blaming the gods of the underworld below our feet.

  The Legend fired off several red flares behind Traynor’s goal, which only served to underline the Scotsman’s infernal performance and filled the air in the stadium with a strongly sulphurous smell.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ exclaimed Simon. ‘I’ve seen some daft defending in my time but those two twats take the biscuit. The way they ran at the lad Domínguez you’d have thought they were trying to do a scissors in fucking rugby. Do you want to shout at them or shall I? Because I am so fucking angry about that, boss. I am so fucking angry.’

  ‘Be my guest,’ I said.

  Simon spat out his extra-strong mint like a loose tooth, marched to the edge of the technical area, gesticulated furiously at our back four and let rip with a stream of obscenities that made me glad the Greek supporters were so loud. All I heard were the words ‘stupid cunts’, and in truth, when you come right down to it, those were the only two words he really needed. I wasn’t sure if FIFA could have envisaged what Simon was doing as ‘an element of the game’ within the change it had made to the laws in 1993, bringing technical areas into existence, but I doubted this kind of thing really did ‘improve the quality of play’. Of course, I was guilty of this sort of intemperate behaviour myself; indeed there were a couple of times when I’d been sent to the stands for what the referees’ association called ‘aggressive coaching’.

  By now our goalmouth had disappeared in the cloud of red smoke from the Greek flares, which spared our goalkeeper’s blushes, and wisely, the referee waited a full minute before restarting the game.

  ‘Simon,’ I called, ‘come back here. You’ll give yourself a fucking heart attack.’

  He didn’t hear me. Brick-faced and full of rage, the big Yorkshireman continued to shout and wave his arms about like a madman conducting an orchestra of deaf musicians and suddenly it occurred to me, after what had happened to Bekim Develi, that his having a heart attack wasn’t so very improbable. And as the game restarted I got out of my seat and, leaving the dugout, went to fetch him back. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hristos Trikoupis complaining to the fourth official that I had stepped in his technical area, which wasn’t true, of course, but, at that particular moment, I had other things to worry about.

  ‘Leave it, Simon,’ I repeated, taking hold of his arm. ‘They can’t even see you, cos of the smoke.’

  He was about to take my advice when a high ball came our way and, immediately in front of us, Daryl Hemingway and Diamntopoulou both jumped to head it. The Greek seemed to mount up on the Englishman’s back in an almost gymnastic attempt to reach the ball. Neither man quite making contact, but in the wrestling match that ensued the Greek suddenly fell clutching his face in pain, as if Daryl had deliberately straight-armed him to the ground. It was patently obvious to me and to Simon – and must have been equally clear to the linesman standing right beside us – that Daryl’s back-swinging arm had done little more than brush Diamntopoulou’s girlish top-knot of hair. But with the Greek still rolling on the pitch in agony as if he had been stabbed in the eye with a red-hot poker, we were astonished to see the lino raise his flag and Merlini, the referee, already striding towards Daryl and reaching for the card in his top pocket.

  A yellow would have been bad enough; the red was an outrage. Daryl Hemingway stood there as if he could hardly believe what was happening. Nor could Simon and I. How we restrained ourselves from further comment at that moment, I shall never know. I put a hand on Daryl’s shoulder and started to walk him to the dugout but not before changing
our own formation from 4-3-3 to 4-4-1. If we dug in, we might hold on to a draw, which was at least something we could build on back in London.

  ‘I didn’t fucking touch him, boss. Honest.’

  ‘I saw the whole thing, Daryl. It wasn’t your fault. One of these bastards has been bought. That much is now obvious, anyway.’

  I looked back to the pitch in time to see Diamntopoulou get back to his feet, without a mark on his face, and Simon, still on the edge of the technical area, sneer: ‘You cheating, fucking bastard. He never touched you. Call yourself a sportsman? You’re a fucking girl, that’s what you are, son. A fucking girl.’

  Diamntopoulou was barrel-chested, with more tattoos than a Scottish regiment, and under the Yorkshireman’s obvious derision he bristled, visibly.

  ‘You call me a girl?’

  ‘Well, you’re not a man, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘No, but I’ll fuck you, if you like, girlie. That’s all you’re good for, you Greek malakas.’

  ‘You need to learn some manners, fat man,’ shouted Diamntopoulou, squaring up, as two Olympiacos players intercepted, and that the fourth official was there to put his body in front of the Greek’s.

  ‘Any time you’re ready to try, malakas, I’ll be fucking ready.’

  Unsurprisingly, Simon found himself sent back to the dressing room; to be fair to the Greek officials, in all normal circumstances they might have sent him to sit in the stands, but these were hardly normal circumstances. It wasn’t judged safe for Simon to sit among the Olympiacos fans; and of course they had a point. Anywhere looked safer for Simon than the Olympiacos stands.

  Reduced to just ten men we had a hard job containing the Greeks, especially Perez on their left wing. We held out bravely with Gary Ferguson rescuing us a couple of times and Kenny Traynor on his best form with three top-drawer saves, but now doubly demoralised it was an impossible task.

  As soon as the second half restarted Perez escaped from Jimmy Ribbans to curl in a left-footer that was their second. Ten minutes later Schuermans failed to dispossess Perez who ran into more space than he could have imagined was possible and hammered in his second one of the match.

  The ruins of our evening might fairly have been compared with the Acropolis when Dominguez was substituted in the 79th minute and Machado, who came on in his place, scored immediately with a scrambled millipede of a goal that came about because they just had more fucking legs to kick the ball than we did. The final score was 4–1.

  I went to shake hands with Hristos Trikoupis and was more than a little shocked to see him grinning back at me and holding up four fingers. Under different circumstances I might have made something out of it; instead I turned away and then clapped my players off the pitch. They hardly needed another bollocking.

  ‘Come on, lads. Hurry up and get changed. We’ve a plane to catch. The sooner we get out of this madhouse and back to London the better.’

  I wasn’t looking forward to the television interview I’d agreed to do immediately after the game; I certainly wasn’t going to tell their reporter, what I really thought of it: that this was a night of confusion, duplicity, disorder and defeat. That wouldn’t play well with anyone, even though it was the truth. Instead I’d already decided to be a bit Italian about it; Italian football managers are masters at dissembling and they have a saying that comes in useful at times like these. Bisogna far buon viso a cattivo gioco: ‘It’s necessary to disguise a bad game with a good face.’

  Of course, it’s one thing putting on a good face when it’s only ITV waiting to speak to you in the players’ tunnel. It’s another thing altogether when it’s the fucking cops; it’s always more difficult putting on a good face for them.

  20

  Two uniformed police officers and a third man wearing a grey linen suit met me outside our dressing room. The man in the grey suit was tall with fair hair and a little tuft of hair under his bottom lip that I suppose was a beard but looked like some baklava that had missed his mouth. I’d seen better beards growing on a toothbrush. I might have ignored him altogether but for the credentials wallet he was holding up in front of my face. His teeth were very white but even at a distance his breath could have done with freshening.

  ‘Are you Mr Scott Manson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My name is Chief Inspector Ioannis Varouxis, from the Special Violent Crime Squad, here in Athens.’ He put away the wallet and handed me a business card with English on one side and Greek on the other. ‘Could I speak with you, sir? In private.’

  Under his arm was an iPad in a rubberised cover that matched the colour of his suit and I caught a scent of a rather nice aftershave. His shirt was clean and neatly pressed and he didn’t look like the Greek policemen I had seen in movies.

  I frowned. ‘Now?’

  ‘It is important, sir.’

  ‘All right. If you insist.’

  He led me along the corridor to the officials’ room where I’d gone the previous night following Bekim’s death; my mind raced through the reasons why someone from a special violent crime squad should want to speak to me. Had Simon Page hit someone? Had a Greek assaulted him? Were the Olympiacos supporters planning to attack us as we left the Karaiskakis Stadium? The two uniformed policemen took up positions either side of the door which one of them closed, leaving me alone with the Chief Inspector.

  ‘First of all, let me say that I am very sorry about Bekim Develi.’

  I nodded silently.

  ‘To die so young was a terrible tragedy. And that it should happen in Greece, during a match like that, was most regrettable. Actually, I wanted to speak to you earlier today but my superior, Police Lieutenant General Stelios Zouranis, felt that this might interfere with your preparations for tonight’s game. Indeed, that you might think this to be a crudely partisan attempt to influence the result.’

  ‘I’m not sure that anything would have affected our performance tonight. We were awful.’

  ‘Under the circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that you lost. For the record I should tell you that I am a Panathinaikos supporter. So, it makes my skin crawl even to be here. Your player, Hemingway, he should never have been sent off. But that was just typical of a match against Olympiacos. Somehow they always contrive to win.’

  I looked at my watch. ‘You’ll forgive me if I ask you to come to the point, Chief Inspector. We have a chartered plane waiting to take us back to London. It seems that your air-traffic controllers are going on strike at midnight. And we really don’t want to miss our take-off slot.’

  ‘I know. And believe me this is most regrettable also, sir. But I’m afraid that none of you will be permitted to leave Greece.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not tonight, at any rate. Perhaps not for several days.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Not until we have completed our inquiries. The Minister of Culture and Athletics has spoken to the manager of your hotel and he has generously agreed to extend your stay until this whole matter has been resolved.’

  ‘What matter? Your inquiries into what?’

  ‘I am in charge of investigating a violent crime, Mr Manson. Specifically, a homicide. Perhaps even a murder.’

  ‘Murder? Look, with all due respect, Chief Inspector, what’s this all about? Bekim Develi had a heart attack. In front of thirty thousand people. I can easily understand that there will have to be a post-mortem into his death; that’s normal in any country. But I fail to understand the need for a police investigation as well.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not Bekim Develi’s death I’m investigating, sir, although I believe there will have to be an inquest – standard procedure.’

  ‘Then whose death are we talking about? I don’t understand. Has something happened to someone on my staff?’

  ‘No sir. Nothing like that. The body of a young woman was found in the harbour at Marina Zea, near Piraeus, this morning. Some boys discovered the body in ten feet of water, with a heavy w
eight tied to her feet. Our investigations revealed that this woman had a plastic room key for the Astir Palace – your hotel – in the pocket of her dress. This afternoon we went to your hotel and found that the room key had been issued to Mr Develi. We also checked the hotel CCTV and, er... well, see for yourself.’

  Varouxis opened up his iPad and tapped the Video icon to show me a grainy-looking piece of film.

  ‘This is her arriving at Mr Develi’s bungalow, on Monday night. As you can see, the time identification shows it to be 2300 hours. You will agree that this is surely him saying goodnight to her at the door, yes?’

  ‘Can I please view that clip again, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Certainly sir.’

  I watched the clip several times, but it was not to verify what Varouxis had said regarding Develi – clearly it was Bekim. Instead I wanted to establish if the girl entering and leaving the dead man’s bungalow was Valentina, the escort to whom he had introduced me; it wasn’t, which was a relief as it absolved me from having to tell the Chief Inspector that I had slept with the dead woman. The girl in the film was good-looking and given Bekim’s predilection for renting late-night female company it didn’t take a detective to guess her profession. His hands were inside the girl’s knickers as he was still saying hello to her.

  ‘Yes, that’s him all right,’ I said. ‘For obvious reasons I’d ordered a player curfew on visitors that night which Bekim Develi seems to have ignored. The girl I don’t know.’

  ‘You’ll admit then that it’s possible Bekim Develi might have been one of the last people to see this girl alive. You see there’s CCTV of her going into the bungalow; but none of her leaving.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose so. But to be fair to Bekim, she might have left by the back door, to the terrace.’

  ‘Yes, that’s possible. But certainly if he himself was alive now we should want to speak to him very urgently, in which case I would be having this conversation not with you but with him. Where did you meet her? What time did she leave? That kind of thing.’