Hand of God

25

Back at the Grande Bretagne I had a light dinner on my own in the Winter Garden restaurant next to Alexander’s Bar and contemplated my next move. The only people calling or texting me were journalists and someone called Anna Loverdos from the Hellenic Football Federation — the Greek equivalent of the FA — offering her assistance, as well as several other managers sympathising with London City’s plight, including José Mourinho, which struck me as a little out of character.

I watched a guy talking to a girl in the bar at the same table where I’d first met Valentina and after a while I knew I recognised the barman serving them as the same one who’d served us. After I charged my dinner to Vik’s suite, I went and sat at the bar under the sceptical eye of Alexander the Great who knew a thing or two about murder himself having connived at the death of his own father, Philip.

The guy with the girl at my old table was working hard to seem like a regular sort; he was from Australia, one of those impeccably casual, sockless types, with stubble that never seems to grow beyond a certain uniform length. But I figured he was on the wrong side of five feet six inches and while he was doing his best to seem relaxed, he wasn’t. Short guys are always bustling around like terriers to make up for their lack of inches; it’s fine if you’re Messi or Maradona but for most guys it’s a problem. Especially when they’re with a girl as tall as this one was; she looked like a Trojan prince’s wet dream with beanstalk legs, plenty of big black hair, and a bow mouth that was probably too big for Cupid but looked just right for me.

The barman came over and I ordered a Macallan 1973. At three hundred and ten euros a glass that got his attention; and it was his attention I wanted more than I wanted the Scotch. When he brought the bill, I put four crisp one hundred euro bills into the maroon leather folder and told him to keep the change. As he reached for the folder I covered it with my hand.

‘Maybe you remember me?’

He shook his head. ‘Sorry, sir, I don’t.’

‘I was here a few weeks ago when Olympiacos played the German side, Hertha FC. I was in here with a girl. A Russian girl. Blonde. She wore a tweed minidress and Louboutin high heels. Her name is Valentina and I got the feeling you certainly remembered her from another time. On the Richter scale I would say she was at least an eight point nine. The kind of girl that causes major structural damage, even to earthquake-resistant wallets and credit cards. You remember her?’

I removed my hand from the folder, sat back on the stool and sipped some of the Scotch. The barman was looking at the folder and trying to work out if a ninety euro tip was more than he was making in salary that evening; we both knew it was.

‘Come on. Aloysius Alzheimer would remember a girl like that.’

With a pimp moustache, a dinner-plate waist and a Derby winner’s teeth, the barman looked like Freddy Mercury. He took the folder and laid it under the counter. ‘Valentina? Yes. I remember her. I wouldn’t say she’s a regular in this bar, but maybe once or twice a month she comes in here.’

‘With a different guy?’

‘Not every time. But always with someone like you. A foreigner with plenty of money.’

‘A working girl.’

He shrugged. ‘This is Greece, sir. Any work is good work, nowadays. Who can afford to be proud about such things? Look at me: I used to be a university lecturer, in Chemistry. Now I mix cocktails for fifteen hundred euros a month. For fifteen hundred euros a night, who knows what I would do? But a poutána she was not. The doorman would never have allowed her in here. Excuse me for one minute, please.’

He went away to make some drinks for a few minutes and then came back.

‘Did you ever see her with Bekim Develi, the footballer?’

‘I liked him,’ said the barman. ‘And now that he’s dead I wouldn’t like to cause his family any distress. He was almost as good a tipper as you are.’

‘I’m his family,’ I said. ‘As good as. I’m the manager of London City. My boss, Viktor Sokolnikov, is renting the royal suite. You might say we’re trying to do a bit of damage limitation. Damage to Bekim’s reputation, that is. The whole team is stuck in Athens until the police have satisfied themselves that there’s no connection between Bekim and the death of another working girl.’

‘This was in the newspaper, yes, I know.’

‘We don’t know this girl’s name, yet. But perhaps she was a friend of Valentina’s. That’s what I’m trying to find out. Another hair-salon blonde with a labyrinth tattoo on her shoulder. I figure the best way of us getting home is to prove that Bekim had nothing to do with her death, but we can only do that if we can identify her. And to do that I need to find Valentina. Valentina and the dead girl — they both had Bekim in common, you see.’

‘I understand, sir. I’m prasinos, myself. Green through and through. I have no love for Olympiacos. The way that bastard Hristos Trikoupis behaved after the game was a disgrace to this country. I’m surprised you didn’t hit him. So I would enjoy it very much if you beat those bastards when next you play them. I tell you, it was the best moment of my life when the Greek Football Federation stripped the gavroi of all those points and took the championship away from them. So, I will tell you what I know.

‘Valentina — I don’t know her surname — but this was a nice woman, for a Russian. She always left me good tips, you know? Her Greek was very good. As was her English. She liked going to art galleries and museums. And she always carried a book, which is unusual. Also I think maybe she lived close to this hotel because one time when I was going home on my scooter I saw her walking in the street. She looked like she was also going home. Where was this now? Around the corner. Somewhere between Akademias and Skoufas.’

‘Why do you think she was going home?’

‘The streets are very steep there and she had her shoes off. The way women do when they’ve finished for the evening. Like they don’t mind if they get their feet dirty.’

I nodded. ‘Fair enough.’

‘In here I never seen her with any other guy I recognised. But I did see her with another girl. Not a girl with a labyrinth tattoo on her shoulder. Another girl.’

‘Do you have a name for this other girl?’

‘No. But I can tell you who this girl is. I can even tell you where to find her.’ He looked across my shoulder and nodded at the girl with the beanstalk legs who even now was leaving the Alexander bar with her diminutive friend. ‘It was her. I’m sure of it. This girl was a friend of Valentina’s. She’s Russian, too.’

I finished my Scotch and was about to follow them when the barman took me by the arm.

‘The guy with her is staying in the hotel. And I expect they’re going upstairs to his room. You wait there, and I’ll make sure.’

He followed them out of the bar and was gone for a couple of minutes. When he came back he collected the leather folder and the bill off the table where the girl with the legs had been seated.

‘Mr Overton went up to room 327 with her.’

‘How do you know?’

The bar man grinned and flipped open the folder to reveal the bill with the Australian’s name and room number written there by him.

‘I followed them to the elevator,’ he said. ‘Now all you have to do is wait for her to come down again.’

I looked at my watch; it was just eight thirty. ‘It’s kind of early,’ I said. ‘They could be a while, don’t you think?’

The barman shook his head. ‘A girl like that costs a lot of money,’ he said. ‘My guess is that she’ll be back down here in the lobby just before ten. You can set your watch by some of these girls. Tell you what: I’ll speak to the concierge and get him to send her up to your room when she’s through with the other guy. Until then, relax. Have another drink.’

I ordered a beer. The Macallan 1973 was good, but it wasn’t worth three hundred and ten euros a glass. Nothing is.