Hand of God

26

My iPhone rang in the royal suite. It was Peter Scriven, the team’s travel manager.

‘The hotel manager is already asking me how long I think we’re going to be here. He’s got other guests who are arriving at the weekend. The Ministry of Culture is trying to find us another hotel but it’s high season and things are tight.’

‘They can’t have it both ways. They can’t forcibly detain us in their country and throw us out of our fucking hotel. Can they?’

‘I wouldn’t put it past them, boss. This is Greece. From what I’ve read about us in the papers we should count ourselves lucky they’re not demanding the Elgin marbles back before they let us go.’

The doorbell rang.

‘I’ve got to go, Pete. Talk to you later.’

The girl standing at the front door smiled broadly when she saw that the occupant of the royal suite didn’t actually look like a royal and said, ‘Hi, I’m Jasmine. Panos said you were looking for company.’

‘Panos?’

‘The barman downstairs.’

‘Yes, of course. Come in, come in. ‘

‘Thank you.’

‘I’m Scott,’ I said, closing the door behind her. ‘Pleased to meet you, Jasmine.’

‘Are you here on business?’

‘In a way.’

She stalked slowly around the suite like a girl holding the round card for a fight at the MGM Grand. In the wine cellar she squealed; and in the dining room she let out a gasp. Then, for a moment, she stood up on tiptoe by the fifth-floor window, looking one way and the other, like a beautiful meerkat.

‘Great view,’ she said.

‘It is from where I’m standing,’ I muttered, then added, ‘This suite is a little fancy for my taste, but then I’m not royal.’

‘Oh, I like it. I like it a lot.’ She sat down on one of the many sofas and arranged her legs, carefully, which is to say what I was now looking at was a perfect geometry of flesh and high-heels that Euclid never dreamed of — for which the only algebraic formula could be S=EX².

I offered her a drink from the extensive bar. She asked for a Coke. I fetched us both one from the fridge and sat down beside her on the sofa. Her hair was nicely combed and she smelt lightly of scent; it was hard to believe that she’d just come from another guy’s bed. But then some of these girls can scrub up in less time than it takes for a scally to steal a car.

‘Can we get the business out of the way first of all?’ I asked, like a real John.

‘I’m glad you mentioned that,’ she said. ‘It’s five hundred for an hour. Eight for two. And two thousand for the whole night. Nice suite like this. Be a shame to waste it sleeping.’

I took out my wallet and counted four new one hundred Euro notes onto the coffee table. ‘Listen, Jasmine. All I want to do is talk.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘What do you want to talk about, Scott?’

‘Jasmine,’ I said. ‘You’re Russian, right?’

She nodded, suspiciously. ‘You’re not a cop, are you?’

‘This is the royal suite, not police headquarters. And that’s cash on the table, not a bailout from the European Central Bank. Really, I’m not a cop. I hate the cops.’

Jasmine shrugged. ‘Some of them aren’t so bad.’

‘Do you know a girl called Valentina, Jasmine? And please don’t say, no, because I know you do. Your friend Panos told me. All I really want from you is some information about her. You tell me what you know about her, you take the money and then you go. Simple as that.’

‘Is she in trouble?’

‘No. Not yet. As a matter of fact that’s what I’m trying to save her from. It’s important that I speak to her before the cops do. Really, you’d be doing her a favour. Nobody wants cops in their life. Not if they can help it. I had a brush with them once, in London, and it’s left me badly scarred. Cops are like herpes: once you’ve had them, they always come back.’

‘You want her phone number? Her email? I can give you this. For free.’

She opened her bag and took out a little notebook and after consulting it for a minute or so, she wrote a number and email on a piece of paper.

I glanced at it. I knew the number by heart, I’d already called it so many times; and her email was almost as familiar.

‘Any other contact numbers? A postal address? A Skype address, perhaps? Only I’ve been ringing this number all day and she hasn’t called back.’

Jasmine shook her head. ‘That’s all I have. Sorry.’

‘Pity.’

I didn’t suppose for a minute that Jasmine was this girl’s real name; I imagined she’d chosen it because she thought the name made her seem more alluring; it didn’t. I was doing my best to be brisk and businesslike, but it wasn’t working very well, at least not for me. She couldn’t have seemed more alluring to me if I’d been tied to the mast of the Argo.

‘All right. Let’s try something different. Did you ever work together? You know, for a client who wanted to see two girls. That kind of thing?’

It was a pleasant thought; and one that would have been all too easy to have made a reality.

‘I asked her to do this once. But she said no. She preferred to work alone. Without an agency. And to pick and choose who her clients were. She could have made much more money than she did, I think. Have you met her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you know what I’m talking about. She’s so beautiful. And clever, too.’

‘What else can you tell me about her?’

‘She is from Moscow. A graduate in Russian literature. She likes going to art galleries and museums. She’s into sculpture, I think.’

‘How did you meet?’

‘In the bathroom downstairs. She spoke to me. I guess I looked a bit more obvious than she did back then. She gave me a few tips on how to tone it down a bit so I wouldn’t get thrown out of places like this. Once or twice I saw her in here, at the Intercontinental, or the St George. We would say hello and sometimes have a drink if we were waiting for someone. I liked her.’

‘Can you think of anyone else who knew her? Other girls, perhaps?’

‘No. Like I said, she didn’t work through an agency or from a website. She relied on word of mouth.’

‘What about a girl with a tattoo on her shoulder? A tattoo of a labyrinth.’

Jasmine frowned. ‘I’ve seen a girl like that talking to Valentina, perhaps. But I didn’t know her name.’

‘Was she Russian, too?’

‘I think so. A lot of the girls working in Athens are Russians these days.’

I decided to level with Jasmine in the hope that what I told her would jog her memory, or even scare her into remembering something.

‘The reason I’m asking is this, Jasmine: the girl with the labyrinth tattoo was found drowned in the harbour at Marina Zea sometime yesterday morning. As yet she hasn’t been identified. All I know is that she might have known Valentina and that Valentina might be able to identify her.’

‘But why? You said you weren’t a cop.’

‘I’m not. When did you last see Valentina?’

‘Not for a while.’ She shrugged. ‘There are so many girls doing this kind of thing in Greece since the recession that it’s hard to keep track of anyone. People drop out of the business all the time. But there’s no shortage of girls to take their place.’

‘One last question. Valentina’s clients. Did you ever see her with one?’

‘Maybe. But it’s not the kind of thing you talk about.’

‘Come on, Jasmine. It’s important.’

‘All right. I saw her with two clients. One was at a restaurant here in Athens called Spondi, with that footballer who died the other night: Bekim Develi. The other time she was getting into a man’s car. Outside here, as it happens. A nice car. A new black Maserati.’

‘Expensive.’

She shrugged. ‘Believe me, this guy — he can afford it.’

‘You recognised him? The client?’

Jasmine hesitated. Her eyes were on the money. ‘If I tell you who it was, you won’t say it was me who told you.’

I placed another fifty on the table. ‘Not a word.’

‘It was Hristos Trikoupis,’ she said.

‘The Olympiacos manager?’

She nodded.

‘Are you sure it was Hristos Trikoupis?’

‘Yes,’ she sneered. ‘It was him all right.’

‘You’re not a fan then?’

‘Of Olympiacos? No.’

‘Why? Because you support Panathinaikos?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘My boyfriend supports PAOK. He’s from Thessaloniki. Believe me, they hate Olympiacos just as much as those bastards from Panathinaikos.’

‘Football,’ I said. ‘Ninety minutes of sport and a Trajan’s Column of hatred and resentment.’

‘Is it any different in England?’

‘No.’

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.’

‘No, you’ve helped me a lot. Really, you have. You can take your money and go if you like.’

She gathered up the money and left.