January Window (8 page)

‘Where I come from, if you want a man dead you don’t warn him by sending him a message,’ he’d said. ‘And certainly not one as theatrical as this. It’s like something from the pages of a book by Mario Puzo. I appreciate you calling, Scott, and your concern for my reputation. But don’t worry about me. I can assure you, I am very well protected.’

This was true; Sokolnikov never moved without at least four bodyguards. One of them was a former Russian boxer, covered in tats, who looked like Vinnie Jones’ ugly big brother.

Now, Zarco stared into the hole and shook his head.

‘Football,’ he said. ‘It’s tribal, of course. And this kind of thing is what tribes do, isn’t it? It took billions of years for man to evolve from being a beast and a savage, but it only takes ninety minutes on a Saturday afternoon for all of that to come undone.’ He looked at Colin. ‘Can you fix this little divot, Colin? Before the Newcastle match?’

‘It won’t be easy,’ said Colin, ‘but I can fix it, yes. It takes seven to ten days for a new pitch or a bit of turf to bed in. But what about the police, boss? I reckon I could get myself into trouble here. This is a crime scene, isn’t it? Suppose that bloody Inspector Neville finds that I’ve filled in his hole? Suppose he comes back here this morning?’

Zarco pulled a face. Sometimes his face was as rubbery as a comedian’s.

‘To look at the hole again?’ he said. ‘It’s just a bloody hole in the ground, isn’t it? Besides, it’s not his hole, it’s our hole. And it doesn’t belong in the middle of a football pitch.’

‘Listen to him,’ I told Colin. ‘He sounds just like Bernard Cribbins.’

Colin knew I’d made a joke although he didn’t understand it. I make a lot of jokes like that, which nobody understands. That’s what happens when you get older. Zarco didn’t understand it either, but then he was Portuguese.

‘Fill it in and repair it,’ I told Colin. ‘I’ll take full responsibility. You can tell him that. But before you do fill it in maybe you should dig down a little. It could be that when you disturbed the people who excavated this, they were actually filling the hole in again.’

‘I don’t follow you, Scott.’

‘Humour me, will you, Colin? Usually when people dig a grave it’s because they want to bury something in it. Something, or someone.’

‘You don’t mean…?’ The Welshman glanced at the grave in horror.

‘I do mean, Colin. I do mean.’

Zarco grinned. ‘Perhaps Scott is expecting you to find Yorick in this grave,’ he said.

‘Who?’

‘Terry Yorick,’ I said. ‘Defensive midfielder for Leeds United. His daughter Gabby used to do the football on the telly. Nice-looking bird. Great pins. I don’t watch it nearly so much now she’s gone.’

Zarco laughed at Colin’s continuing incomprehension and walked back towards the players’ entrance. I followed him closely.

‘Alas, poor Terry Yorick,’ I said. ‘He was Welsh, too. Poor bastard.’

‘To be or not to be. You know, with an attitude like that I think maybe Hamlet followed a football team.’

‘FC Copenhagen, probably.’

‘So, Scott. Today’s fitness and injury reports? You got them?’

‘On your desk, boss.’

‘Good.’ Zarco’s phone bleeped. He checked the screen and nodded: ‘Paolo Gentile. Excellent. Looks like we’ve now got ourselves a Scottish goalkeeper. Let’s hope he’s as good as you said he was. Now all we need is a translator. I couldn’t understand one fucking word he said. Except that one. Fucking.’

‘I’ll translate. I speak good Scottish.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘I thought Denis Kampfner was handling the transfer.’

‘Viktor doesn’t trust him, so he brought his own agent in. Paolo Gentile.’

‘He’s your agent, too, isn’t he?’

‘Yes. What of it?’ Zarco’s phone bleeped again. ‘Now who’s this? The BBC.
Strictly Come Dancing
. They want me for the new series. I keep saying no and they keep offering more money. As if.’

‘I bet you’re quite the twinkle-toes.’

‘I hate that shit. I hate all those stupid shows. Me, I’d rather read a book.’

I glanced back over my shoulder and saw that Colin was already in the hole and digging.

‘Poor Colin,’ I said. ‘Get him on the subject of grass seed and he’ll talk for fucking hours, but I don’t think he’s read a book in his life.’

‘He reads. He has a book in his office toilet.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. Mind you, it’s a pretty crappy book. I think maybe when he runs out of toilet paper… It’s your book.
Foul Play.
’

I grinned. ‘At least I wrote mine, boss.’

Zarco laughed. ‘Fuck you, Scott.’

‘You know, it’s a pity I didn’t think of it before,’ I said. ‘But I kind of wish I’d persuaded one of the lads to get in that grave before we looked at it with Colin just now. We could have chucked a bit of earth on top of someone and given that Welshman the fright of his bloody life.’

‘After what happened to Drenno last night? I worry about you, Scott. Really I do.’

‘Drenno would have been the first to see the funny side of a joke like that. That’s why I loved him.’

‘You have a very sick sense of humour.’

‘I know. That’s why I’m your team coach, boss. A sick sense of humour is absolutely bloody essential when you’re training a squad of overpaid young cunts. Fucking with them keeps their feet on the ground.’

‘True enough. Look, I’m very sorry about Drenno. I know you two were friends. He was a great footballer.’

‘Just not very sensible.’ I shrugged. ‘Sonja thinks it was inevitable that something like this would happen eventually. In fact, she almost predicted it.’

‘See if she can predict the result on Sunday. I could use a little help from the spirits.’

‘She already did. We’re going to win 4–0.’

‘Good. Buy her a late Christmas present from me, will you?’

I sighed. ‘I’ll never forget Drenno’s Christmas present to me when we were playing at Arsenal. A bottle of sun-tan lotion.’

We were still laughing as we reached the tunnel. But the laughter faded a little as we heard a shout and Colin came running after us, holding a square object in his hands.

‘You were right, Scott. There was something in that grave. This.’

‘It’s not a grave,’ I said. ‘It’s a hole. Just remember that.’

He handed me a framed photograph. The glass was smeared with earth and mud but the person in the picture was clearly identifiable. It was a photograph of João Gonzales Zarco, the one that was on the cover of his autobiography:
No Games, Just Football
.

Zarco took the framed photograph from my hands and nodded. ‘This was in the hole?’

Colin nodded. ‘Last night’s rain must have brought some earth down on top of it. That’s why we didn’t see it then. We might never have found this. It’s lucky you suggested digging down a bit, Scott.’

‘Isn’t it?’ I said, doubtfully.

‘It’s a good picture,’ observed Zarco. ‘Mario Testino took this shot. I look like Bruce Willis, yes?’

I said nothing.

‘Don’t look so worried, Scott,’ said Zarco. ‘I’m not in the least bit concerned by this kind of thing. I told you: there are times when football supporters are like savages. At the Nou Camp, we had a pig’s head thrown on the pitch when Luis Figo was taking a corner. And you should see those crazy bastards at Galatasaray, Coritiba and River Plate. They probably get this kind of thing all the time. But it’s England where I work and where I make my living, not a country where a man who plays football sometimes goes in fear of his life. The values of this country are good ones. And the people who did this are the exception. What worries me more is Leeds, tomorrow. They’re always a good cup side. Manchester United 1972. Arsenal in 2011. Tottenham in 2013. And the best FA Cup Final I ever saw was a recording of Chelsea versus Leeds in 1970. Now that was a fucking football match.’

Colin nodded. ‘2–2 draw. Which Chelsea won in the replay. First one since 1912.’

Zarco grinned. ‘You see? He does read.’ He handed the picture back to Colin. ‘You hang onto this. A keepsake. Hang it above your desk and use it to frighten the rest of the ground staff.’

‘Shouldn’t we tell the police about this?’ said Colin. ‘Finding your picture in the hole, I mean.’

‘No,’ said Zarco. ‘Don’t tell anyone about this or the press will be all over it. It’s bad enough that they know I’ve been asked to go on
Strictly Come Dancing
without them knowing about this, too. And don’t for Christ’s sake tell Mario Testino. He’ll have a fit.’

‘My wife loves that programme,’ confessed Colin. ‘You should go on it, boss.’

‘With all due respect to your wife, Colin, I’m a football manager not a fucking
bandido burro
.’

He checked his phone once more. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘My builder – again. I swear that man calls me more than my wife.’

Zarco had bought a house in Pimlico and was having extensive building work done, including a new façade designed by Tony Owen Partners from Sydney, Australia. The façade included an ultra-modern-looking Möbius window that had proved less than popular with Zarco’s neighbours and, of course, the
Daily Mail
. From the artist’s impression I’d seen in the newspaper the new façade looked to me like the J. P. Morgan Media Centre at Lord’s Cricket Ground.

‘That’s because your wife is at my house,’ I said. ‘To get some peace and quiet, not to mention some good sex. And to get away from you. She hates you just like everyone else.’

‘This architect was Toyah’s idea, not mine,’ said Zarco. ‘I tell her, you want a house that looks Australian then go and live in Australia. This is London. This is where I live, this is where I make my living. Let’s have a house that looks like a London house, not the Sydney fucking Opera House. But this isn’t good enough for her and as usual Toyah gets her way. I swear, this woman is more difficult than any footballer I have ever had to deal with.’

‘That’s why we love them, isn’t it? Because they’re not fucking footballers. They’re women, who smell nice and who have nice legs. That’s why we buy them expensive Christmas presents.’

‘Who says I buy her an expensive Christmas present? That’s you, Scott, not me. I don’t buy women presents. I don’t have time. You’re the one who likes to buy presents.’

‘You must have bought her something, surely?’

Zarco grinned. ‘Toyah’s married to Zarco. She doesn’t need a Christmas present.’

Elland Road, the home of Leeds United FC, is no place for the faint-hearted in January. Even on a midsummer’s day the area is as bleak as the hair on a witch’s tit, but in winter a northwest wind whips off the Yorkshire Dales and seems to take the spirit right out of you. Doubly so when you consider that the stadium is right next to Cottingley Crematorium and they do say that sometimes, when the wind is blowing in the right direction, you can catch the pungent whiff of an afternoon service of remembrance. The beautiful game was rarely ever played in Leeds and certainly never when Billy Bremner was the Leeds captain back in the seventies, a time when Leeds United was one of the dirtiest sides in football. And I have the marks on my shins to prove it wasn’t much better in the nineties and noughties, when David O’Leary was the manager and the likes of Jonathan Woodgate and Lee Bowyer were there.

Although my father knew Billy Bremner very well – Bremner captained Scotland at the 1974 World Cup – I met the man only once, not long before his untimely death in 1997. I mention Billy Bremner because I think there’s something very wrong about the statue of Billy that stands outside Elland Road. It’s only my opinion, but Billy Bremner looks like he’s black. In reality the diminutive Scotsman, who was born near Stirling, was a pasty-looking white man with red hair. I don’t know why the Billy outside Elland Road should appear to be black but it’s as if he’s been partly cremated in the crematorium nearby. The hair is the right colour, as it happens, and so is the Leeds shirt, but every time I see it I have a laugh because I’m sure Billy would have fucking hated it. Even the statue of Michael Jackson that used to stand outside Craven Cottage is more true to life than Billy’s statue; weirdly, Billy is blacker than Michael is, although maybe that’s not so strange. Anyway, Billy just looks creepy, like a shitty piece of sculpture by Jeff Koons, or a statue of a saint you might see in a shrine in Cuba or Haiti, as if he might come alive to put the fear of God and voodoo into any team turning up to play Leeds at Elland Road. Maybe that’s the idea. If so then it might work even better if the supporters were to carry it round the pitch before the match, because it certainly wasn’t working for Leeds when London City went there for the third round FA Cup tie.

Nothing was. Not even a spectacularly tasteless song about Zarco from Leeds fans.

It was Leeds United’s second loss in a new year that was only seven days old and their worst result since losing 7–3 to Nottingham Forest in March 2012. Christoph Bündchen, replacing Ayrton Taylor up front as our number one striker, gave City fans a very late Twelfth Night present of five golden goals in an eight-goal rout of Leeds United that proceeded without reply. This was the biggest win in our club’s history and it was doubly fortunate that Viktor Sokolnikov had flown back from the Caribbean aboard his private Boeing 767-300 just to see the match.

Bündchen was City’s hero but Juan-Luis Dominguin also scored two, and this was after Xavier Pepe made a forty-yard strike that was the first of the evening and already looks like being the goal of the season – a top-drawer goal conjured from absolutely nothing, which departed his right foot like an arrow from a longbow. There was nothing speculative about Pepe’s incredible strike: by contrast, Andrea Pirlo’s curling goal for Milan against Parma in 2010 seems like a long shot, in its full idiomatic meaning. Pepe’s shot was something else: head down, with every sinew of his muscular body engaged, he knew exactly what he was doing and the ball flew as straight as a high-velocity bullet. By the time the Leeds goalkeeper, Paddy Kenny, had started to move for it, the football was already in the top corner of his net. Small wonder that Pepe was recently ranked by Bloomberg as the seventh best footballer in Europe.