How NOT to be a Football Millionaire - Keith Gillespie My Autobiography (14 page)

20

Accused

A WOMAN allegedly raped by Leicester City captain Paul Dickov claims fellow player Keith Gillespie pinned her to the wall during the attack... In a police statement, she said Northern Ireland international Gillespie also threatened to throw her from the window of her third floor hotel room, hit her in the face, and battered her on the shoulder. As Dickov carried out the alleged attack, a third man is said to have stood by applauding and egging him on. If the allegations are true, Dickov, and team-mates Gillespie, 29, and Frank Sinclair, 32 – who are all charged with rape – could be jailed for up to 12 years.’

– Daily Mirror,
March 8, 2004

La Manga. The slightest mention of that place darkens my mood. It’s impossible to reflect on a life-changing experience without the old feelings of anger and injustice rushing back.

My mother still has all the newspaper cuttings and flicking through the lies is a reminder of the nightmare, a twisted chain of events which led to me being accused of a vile crime. I spent a week in a Spanish prison, presumed guilty of rape and powerless to prevent my name from being dragged through the mud while the real low-lifes lined their pockets. I was no stranger to bad publicity but this was a totally different ball game.

Oh, it was a great story alright. Premier League stars boozed up abroad, drunk on power and forcing themselves on women because that’s just how we rolled. I can see why it made the news around the world. There was just one significant problem. It wasn’t true. Not even remotely true.

The sad fact is that while it might only take one day to blacken someone’s reputation, it can take a lifetime to remove the stigma. Some people will always associate me with an incident that I’m convinced was a set-up.

What happened? All I can do is tell my story.

It was just another mid-season trip. We were deep in relegation trouble, a dressing room packed with experience but short of inspiration and confidence. Micky thought it would recharge the batteries.

La Manga is a popular destination for football clubs. On paper, it offers the complete package. A five-star Hyatt Regency hotel, good facilities, attractive weather, a golf course, plus a bar and casino for unwinding. Leicester had run into a bit of trouble there a few years previously when Stan Collymore was part of a group that let off a fire extinguisher, but it wasn’t an obstacle to going back. Being honest, I can’t say I was looking forward to it very much. The way my season was going, I would have preferred a few days at home. After making an effort to sign me, Micky didn’t play me very much. He preferred James Scowcroft on the right wing because he was good in the air and could get his head on diagonal long balls which probably says something about our style of play.

Micky didn’t like gambling, and thought I spent too much time looking at the Racing Post instead of concentrating on football. It didn’t help that his assistant, Alan Cork, was keen on the nags. Micky followed Corky a few times and found him grilling me for tips. I don’t think that reputation helped my cause.

But Micky enjoyed stamping his authority. Although he was from Sheffield, he’d storm around with a Cockney accent. ‘Fack this’ and ‘Facking that’. Annoying as that was, he did allow us to enjoy ourselves when the time allowed, and the itinerary for the Spanish trip was player-friendly. Training was scheduled for the evening, which meant no early starts and permission to have a couple before bed. So, there was no rush to the airport bar when we travelled on Sunday, February 29, as we were going straight to training when we landed. Then, we had the night to ourselves.

Inevitably, I was drawn to the lights of the casino where I parked myself at a blackjack table with our keeper, Ian Walker. The others split off to do their own thing, with the non-gamblers pitching up in a bar at the opposite end of the room. We heard laughter and were aware they had some girls in their company but there was nothing unusual about that. I was more interested in winning cash, and had no intention of moving until closing time when the staff cleared everyone out towards the lobby. The boys from the bar had brought the birds with them, three African girls who lived in Germany which explained their rapport with our recent arrival, the former Spurs midfielder Steffen Freund. They were dressed up for a night out and lapping up the attention.

With my usual roomie Craig Hignett out on loan, I was sharing with Frank Sinclair for the first time. Frank was a prolific Ladies’ man and, unsurprisingly, doing a lot of talking with the girls. I was quite sober, so I left them to it and ducked off to the room. The card was faulty so reception sent a member of staff to make sure the new key was working. Then, I rang Craig Short, because Blackburn were in Marbella, and we’d been texting during the night. By the time our chat finished, the main group had moved to the corridor. My door was open, and Ian Walker and Matty Elliott came in for a few beers – they were in the room opposite.

It was getting a bit rowdier outside, and we heard a few shouts. Paul Dickov, our Scottish striker, walked into the room, saying that one of the birds had attacked him and yanked a chain off his neck that was a present from his wife. He was pretty pissed off. The bird came in to continue the argument. Paul wasn’t the tallest guy in the world, and she’d taunted him about that, saying he must have a small cock. It was silly stuff. She sat on Frank’s bed, in no rush to go anywhere. I didn’t know this girl, didn’t know her name or anything about her. So, she had overstayed her welcome. “Could you get out now?” I said. She refused to move. I went to lift her by the arm and she jumped up and grabbed my throat. I stood back, and threw my hands in the air. She sat down again. We kept asking her to go and five minutes later she finally left.

The next thing we heard was more screaming and shouting in the corridor. The birds were fighting between themselves, shouting so loudly across each other that it was hard to understand what language they were even speaking. All we knew was that they were annoying. Eventually the noise died down. Frank, who’d been missing for a while arrived back, and I dropped off to sleep, oblivious that I would have to tell the story of that tame night so many times.

Monday was business as usual. We lounged by the pool during the day, and trained in the evening. The majority went for a meal after, but all I was interested in was blackjack. Frank and a few others sneaked out to a nightclub after their food, and there was no sign of him when I went to bed.

Tuesday followed the same routine. The rest were out for grub in the evening. I was sat in the Piano Bar with Ian, waiting for the casino to open, when the gaffer marched through the foyer screaming into his phone. He spotted us and came charging over. “What do you know about rape?” he screamed.

We hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. Micky said the Spanish police were looking for everyone’s passports and called the other lads back from their restaurant for an urgent meeting. It was held in one of those big conference rooms with a pen and paper at every seat. Ian and I thought something had happened in the nightclub trip on the Monday night and started joking about by drawing up a list of suspects as we waited. Number one was Frank. Number two was Frank. Number three was Frank. You get the picture.

The gaffer was in no mood for messing when everyone had turned up.

“What do any of you know about rape on Sunday night?” he announced. Now, we were really confused.

“Sunday?”

Steffen Freund put up his hand and admitted to shagging one of the Africans early in the night. They’d nipped back to his room for a quickie before returning to the bar. In the rest of our minds, that solved it. Steffen was fucked. We weren’t thinking that he’d raped her – he said it had been consensual – but it cleared up where the allegation had come from. The mystery was over. It was his matter to sort out.

Micky ordered us to stay in the hotel area for the night, but Ian and I slipped out of sight for another blackjack session before finishing up with a drink back in his room where Matty had stayed in to eat. When Ian fell asleep, we squirted tomato sauce and mayonnaise on his hair. Matty knew he would get the same treatment if Ian stirred during the night so he came across to stay with myself and Frank. We woke in the morning to a knock from Ian who was standing in the corridor with his hair all over the shop. He went off for a shower and someone else rapped on the door. This time, it was a sombre looking Corky, who quickly wiped the smile away.

“Your face has been picked out of the passports. You’ve got to go to the police,” he said. They also wanted Matt and Frank as well as Dickov, Scowcroft, Danny Coyne, Lilian Nalis, Nikos Dabizas and, of course, Steffen. It was a strange collection of players. Scowy hadn’t bothered leaving his room, and we reckoned that Lilian, who had long hair, was chosen because he looked like Ian’s dated passport photo from his Tottenham days. Considering I’d barely left Ian’s side for three days, it made little sense that one would be picked out and not the other.

But we weren’t too worried on the way to the station. We all thought it was about Steffen and, while Micky was a bit hyped, the rest of the staff seemed laid back. By coincidence, the chief executive Tim Davies was out in Spain to catch up on a few things, and he had quickly arranged a local solicitor to represent us. Her name was Ana Ruiperez, a woman in her 30s with long brown hair. Ana worked with her father, Luis, a leading lawyer from nearby Cartagena. She said we might be cautioned but it would only be a formality.

We were even more relaxed when Steffen was called in for his interview first and emerged within five minutes to say he was allowed to go.

Paul was in next while the rest of us sat in a reception area. When the door opened, we expected him to walk out free. Instead, he was led out handcuffed by a pair of police officers who marched him past. Suddenly, this was serious.

My turn. I was brought into a room where two male police officers and an interpreter were sitting behind a table. Ana was in the room, too. I was asked to give my version of events. When I finished, they said I was being charged with an accusation of rape, and would be kept in custody. There was no time for discussion. I was ushered through reception, and down the stairs into a dimly-lit basement where my belt, phone and other possessions were taken away. The guards opened the door of a cell. A distraught looking Paul was slumped on a bed in the corner with his head in his hands.

Five minutes later Matty joined us and, one by one, the others followed. Lilian took the fourth bed in our cell. Scowy, Danny, Nikos and Frank were together next door. Nobody knew what the hell was going on. Frank had a confession to make. He’d ended up in the girls’ room after the row had gone off in the corridor, and had received a blowjob from one of them while her mate was in the room. He’d said nothing until now because we all thought Steffen was the story. Frank’s revelation didn’t change that feeling.

After a while, Tim Davies came to visit with some sandwiches. He said the rest of the training camp had been cancelled and they had decided to get the other players out of there immediately. The news was hard to take. Steffen, who did have sex with one of the girls, was on the way back to his family, while we were stuck in this dungeon. He said the legal team were doing their best to make sense of the situation.

We were trying to do the same as the night dragged on. Some were quieter than others. Paul, a solid family man, was really downbeat. Lilian was pacing around in circles wearing these annoyingly squeaky pair of trainers and Matty lost the plot with him. But Matty was a funny lad who also helped to lighten the mood. “I’m not being funny,” he said, “but Scowy has got locked up for not going out.”

Proper sleep was out of the question. We had enough to occupy our minds before a local drunk was taken off the streets and thrown into a neighbouring cell where he spent the next few hours loudly abusing the guards. Just what we needed after the day we’d had. The wailing stopped and I nodded off.

There were no windows in the dungeon. We had to assume it was morning when the warden called us. It was time to go to the courthouse so we were handcuffed together in pairs. I was tied to Matt Elliott and emerged into the light and the madness of a media scrum which confirmed that the situation was already big news. The cops bundled us into a van and, when we reached the court buildings, directed us towards a cramped single cell downstairs. It was a warm day, and the wrong place for eight grown men who hadn’t showered. The smell was horrible.

We were called in turns to have a longer chat with the police about the Sunday night.

I just went through my story again in more detail. I’ve no idea how Scowy managed to talk to them for half an hour considering he was in bed on the evening in question.

The legal team had good news for us. They’d discovered that the African birds had tried to check back into the hotel on the Monday knowing we were still there. And our crowd had also spoken to a taxi driver who said they were in good spirits when he’d taken them to the airport on the Tuesday when they filed the complaint to the police.

They didn’t sound like the actions of rape victims, and we thought the info might have been enough to get us out but it wasn’t that straightforward. The club were concerned that our side of the story didn’t appear to be registering with the local authorities. Also, an inexperienced judge had been assigned to the case, which was another worry on top of the language barrier. Tim had called on the help of the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, and a local Leicester MP, Keith Vaz, as well as a Spanish-speaking solicitor in the UK.

They said we had to return to the station cells for another night, but it didn’t seem as horrible a prospect with the knowledge of the girls’ strange behaviour. There was confidence we would be released the following day. On the Friday morning, Ana met us in the court building. “Your story is fine,” she told me, from behind a glass screen which had enough room underneath for her to pass through a cigarette so we could smoke as we talked. “You’ll be out of here today.”