January Window

10

We were late getting back from Leeds. The flight was delayed by the snow. As usual my mind was buzzing after the match and it was almost 2 a.m. when I finally went to bed. I took the bed in the spare room so as not to wake Sonja, who sleeps like a cat. When I woke up the following morning it was with the knowledge that she’d already gone to work — she has a practice in Knightsbridge shrink-wrapping people who have eating disorders: people who are fat, or anorexic — and that there was someone ringing my doorbell.

I slid out of bed, hobbled to the entryphone and found a woman staring up at the camera. For a moment I thought it must be one of Sonja’s patients except that she was neither thin nor fat; in fact, she was just right.

‘Mr Manson?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir. But we did make an appointment for ten o’clock this morning. My name is Detective Inspector Louise Considine, from the police station at Brent. I’m investigating the death of Matt Drennan.’

‘Right. I’m sorry. Had a late night. You’d better come up.’

I buzzed her in, threw on a pair of jeans and a sweater, and poured some bottled mineral water into my one-touch, bean-to-cup coffee machine. At nearly four grand it was the pride and joy of my kitchen. I couldn’t cook very much, but I could make a delicious caffé latte.

She was better-looking than most coppers I’d seen, and believe me, I’ve seen a lot. Wholesome-looking and frankly a bit fairy-like, she had long fair hair, big blue eyes and a nose that was sort of pointy. She was wearing a short grey coat and leather gloves.

‘Did you forget? That we had a meeting? Oh dear, I’m sorry. You certainly look like you forgot.’

‘We had a match yesterday. And the flight back was delayed by snow. Please. Take off your coat and have a seat.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Want some coffee?’

‘Yes, please, if you’re making it. Milk and no sugar.’

I nodded and flicked a switch on the machine.

‘That looks impressive,’ she said. She sounded posh — too posh to be a copper.

‘It does everything except wash the cup afterwards.’

She shrugged off her coat and went to inspect some of the paintings on my walls.

‘This is good,’ she said, examining a largish picture of a thuggish-looking man with a shaven head and raised fists. He looked like a bare-knuckle fighter. ‘He’s rather frightening, isn’t he?’

‘That one’s by Peter Howson,’ I said. ‘Scottish artist. I bought that painting to remind myself of what it was like to be in prison. There were several times when I found myself sharing a cell with blokes just like him. People who were always ready to put a fist down your throat for no good reason. Every time I look at it I tell myself how incredibly lucky I am. Lucky that I was able to put all that behind me. Unlike nearly everyone else who comes out of the nick.’

‘It’s a nice place you’ve got here, Mr Manson. You have very good taste.’

‘You mean for someone in football.’

‘You must be rich to live round here.’

‘I only work in football,’ I said. ‘I make money from something else that doesn’t require me to do anything at all.’

‘Yes, you’re a director of Pedila Shoes.’ She smiled. ‘I Googled you. It was easier than tapping your phone or having you followed twenty hours a day. These days police work is mostly done with the aid of web-crawlers and hyperlinks, html and meta-tags.’

‘That explains why you don’t look anything like a copper.’

She smiled. ‘How is a copper supposed to look, then?’

‘Not like you. You look like you just finished your law degree.’ I smiled. ‘I read your business card. Or at least a picture of it on my iPhone. LLB, wasn’t it?’

She raised an eyebrow at me. ‘I do have flat feet. And I can say fuck a lot. If that helps.’

I brought her the coffee and then sat down opposite her.

‘It makes two cups at once. Fuck.’

‘Time is precious.’

‘Isn’t it?’ She tasted her coffee and nodded with appreciation. ‘Mmm. Good, too.’

‘Java beans. From the Algerian Coffee Stores, in Soho.’

‘I love that place. I should warn you: I’m liable to come here again. This is much better than my local coffee shop.’

‘And I should warn you, I don’t much like the police.’

‘Yes, I know. I was warned about that by my chief inspector. And from what I’ve read about you I’m lucky this coffee isn’t poisoned.’

I smiled. ‘I should wait and see, if I were you, Miss Considine.’

‘I don’t blame you at all for thinking ill of the police. I’m sure I’d feel the same way if I’d been wrongly convicted of something.’

‘I was fitted up. That’s what happened.’

‘But the Met is very different today from how it was, even a few years ago.’

She had a sexy way of talking, as if she knew the effect her voluptuous mouth had on things as ordinary as words; every sentence seemed to end in a pout. She sipped her coffee and glanced around the room again.

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘Please do. I was very sorry to hear about Mr Drennan. But if I’m honest, it seems that I only ever knew him as someone who was famous for being drunk and getting himself into one scrape after another. It’s hard for me to connect someone as clownish as him with top-level sport.’

‘What you have to remember is that a lot of footballers — and I do mean a lot — are just overgrown schoolboys. Every team has someone who’s as much of a comedian as Drenno was. But there are very few teams that have someone as talented as him. In his day Drenno was perhaps the most outstanding player in the country. Look, there are a lot of wankers in football — just watch Soccer AM — but Matt Drennan wasn’t one of them.’

‘Yes, I read your tweets about him. And watched some of his goals on YouTube.’ She shrugged as if she was hardly impressed with what she’d seen.

‘Do you follow a team?’

‘Chelsea.’

‘It figures.’

‘Does it? Oh dear. That makes me sound very predictable. Unlike Matt Drennan. I mean, I know he was your friend and I’m sorry to say this, but to me he always looked like an accident waiting to happen.’

‘Not like that.’

‘No?’

‘I certainly never expected him to go and hang himself, if that’s what you want to know.’

She nodded. ‘It is, among other things.’

‘I expect there will have to be a post-mortem and an inquest,’ I said.

She nodded again.

‘Will I have to give evidence?’

‘Perhaps. Did you know his wife, too?’

‘Yes. I was at the wedding. Actually, I was at both his weddings.’

‘She says she’d already thrown him out. For good this time, according to her. And that was before he beat the shit out of her.’

‘So I believe. How is she, by the way?’

‘At home now. Avoiding the newspapers and the newspapermen who are camped out at the bottom of her drive.’

‘I tried calling her, but...’

‘She’s not answering the phone. Now, I appreciate that this might be difficult for you, but I need to ask you some questions about exactly what happened when Drennan was here. After all, you were one of the last people to speak to him before he killed himself. At least according to Maurice McShane you were. It was on your behalf that he contacted us, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. It was. I wanted to help with your enquiries.’

‘Of course.’

‘And I think I was, probably, one of the last people to see Matt.’

I told her precisely what had happened.

‘So he was drunk and he was depressed,’ she said.

I nodded. ‘Definitely. I even offered to drive him to the Priory. I could see he was in a bad way. But he wouldn’t let me. I mean he was pissed, but he wasn’t that pissed. Not by his standards. I mean he wasn’t legless. Besides, he’d been before — to the Priory — and it didn’t work.’

‘Did he say what he was depressed about?’

‘How long have you got? The fight with his wife would have depressed him. He’d lost his diamond stud, from his ear — like I told you. He told me she’d thrown a boot at him but he didn’t say he’d assaulted her. I suppose that might have resulted in a custodial sentence because he’d assaulted her before. That would have depressed him, too.’ I shrugged. ‘What else? Not being able to play football any more. Getting older. His health. Drinking again. Being broke. Life in general. It’s a typical football story, I’m afraid. Look, he certainly didn’t mention that he was going to kill himself. But if he had I’m not sure what I could have done about it.’

‘You could have kept him here and talked him out of it, perhaps.’

‘Clearly you didn’t know Matt Drennan. You couldn’t talk him out of an off-licence or a last game of bar-billiards, let alone what you’re suggesting, Miss Considine.’

‘So he didn’t say anything to you about his best friend from Glasgow, Tommy MacDonald.’

‘Mackie? No, nothing at all.’

‘You know he was in the army. In Afghanistan.’

‘Kind of. Hey, has something happened to Mackie?’

‘Sergeant Thomas MacDonald was blown up on patrol in Helmand Province last Tuesday.’

‘Christ.’

‘He died later on, in hospital.’

‘No, I didn’t know that.’ I nodded. ‘But it certainly explains a great deal about Drenno’s mood. He never really talked all that much about Mackie. At least not to me. But I know he and Mackie were close. You might even say they were partners in crime, since they were always in trouble for one thing or another: fighting, vandalism, practical jokes that went too far, general bad behaviour. It was nearly always drink-related. When Mackie joined the army I think my old club Arsenal were more than a little bit relieved. They figured he was a bad influence on Drenno. But actually I’m sure it was the other way round. Mackie joined the army to get away from Drenno and the drinking. At least that’s what Drenno always said.’

‘Did you know Sergeant MacDonald?’

‘I met him a few times. I couldn’t say that we were friends, though. We weren’t. I didn’t like him, to be honest. I’m sorry he’s dead. He served his country and you have to respect anyone for that.’

‘Why didn’t you like him? Any particular reason?’

I shrugged. ‘Like I said, I thought he was a bad influence. Frankly I was very surprised when he went into the army. He’d spent a lifetime sponging off Drenno and he was the most ill-disciplined sod you could hope to meet. A typically belligerent Scot. It was hard to see why he should suddenly have decided he wanted to do something like join the army. Unless it was just to get away from Drenno.’

‘Tell me, what was Matt Drennan wearing when he came to see you?’

‘You mean was he wearing an England shirt?’

‘No, I mean what was he wearing?’

‘Leather jacket. Jeans. Trainers. Plain white shirt. There was blood on the collar. And on his earlobe. I already explained that. Was he wearing an England shirt when he hanged himself?’

‘I’m really not at liberty to say.’

‘It was in the Daily Mail.’

‘Then it must be true.’

‘Why do I get the feeling you’re not being straight with me, Miss Considine?’

‘One: you don’t like the police — you said so yourself, Mr Manson. And two: I’m not being straight with you because I’m here to ask questions, not to provide you with answers. Sorry. This is a police inquiry into a man’s death. Even if it looks for all the world like a suicide, there are still rules of evidence I have to observe. As a police officer I operate to a different standard than the Daily Mail. Look, all I’m trying to do is build a picture of Matt Drennan’s last few hours so that there’s no room for any doubt that he killed himself. And in case that seems a rather laborious matter of dotting the “i”s and crossing the “t”s, it is; however, we live in an age of conspiracies and it won’t be long before someone who read a book called Who Killed Kurt Cobain? Or Who Killed Princess Diana? Or Who Killed Michael Jackson? is tempted to write a book called Who Really Killed Matt Drennan? That’s what I’m hoping to avoid. For his sake. For the sake of his family and friends.’

‘Fair enough. And I appreciate you saying so.’

‘I’m glad you think so. I certainly wouldn’t like you to sue the Met again because of my incompetence or dishonesty.’

I nodded. ‘I’m beginning to see why they sent you to see me.’

‘Oh, good. Then we’re making progress.’

‘You are. I’m not sure about the Met.’

‘Do you mind if I ask you a question you might find a little insensitive?’

‘You mean the comments about Drenno being a waste of space weren’t?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

I shrugged. ‘Be my guest.’

‘Thank you. Well then, it’s this. I’m puzzled. You have a university degree. You speak several languages. You live in a fifteen-million-pound apartment in Chelsea. Why would someone as obviously successful as you, Mr Manson, still have a friend who was as big a loser as Matt Drennan?’

‘That’s not insensitive. It’s just a little ignorant of what football is about, Miss Considine. You see football is an international club, a fraternity — a bit like the Freemasons. Wherever you go it’s almost inevitable that you’ll run into someone you once played with, or against. Matt Drennan was my team mate. What’s more, he was the only team mate who came to see me when I was in prison. He came even though he’d been advised by the people who were trying to manage his image not to come. At that time it was me who was the loser, not him. I was scum. A rapist. That picture by Peter Howson. That’s what people thought of when they thought of me. Everyone but Drenno. Not many people know it, but Drenno lost a sponsorship deal with a pharmaceutical company because he came to see me in the nick. So, for all his faults, he had a good heart and I loved him for it.’

She nodded and placed her coffee cup on the low table in front of her.

‘Thanks for your help,’ she said. ‘And thanks for the excellent coffee. By the way, did you win yesterday?’

‘Yes. We won. 8–0.’ I smiled. ‘That’s good, by the way. Very good. In case you were wondering.’