Hand of God

31

At Southampton, Hristos Trikoupis and myself had both played in defence, first for Glenn Hoddle and then wee Gordon Strachan. I don’t know why Glenn isn’t managing a club these days. Glenn kept the Saints in the Premier League against all odds; he bought me from Palace, and more controversially he bought Hristos Trikoupis from Olympiacos. Controversially because Hristos had led a player revolt against the manager of the Greek national team before Euro 2000. By all accounts he made Roy Keane and Nicolas Anelka look like teacher’s pets. We played well together; I won’t say we were Steve Bould and Tony Adams but we were pretty solid. Hristos was everything you’d want from a right back: tall, with a head like a hammer, and the unquestioning and ruffianly air of a professional hit man. I was always surprised that it should have been me who went to Arsenal and not him. Maybe that’s what’s driving how he feels about me now; I don’t know. I went to Arsenal; he went to Wolves. I never asked how he felt about me going to the Gunners. And after I left the Saints I didn’t speak to him again until the night Bekim died.

He was better groomed now; he’d let his fair hair grow and put on a little bit of weight which looked good on him. He walked out the restaurant, wearing a navy blue suit and a crisp white shirt open to his hairy navel; the woman with him was very thin with long brown hair and wore a layer-effect dress that made her look like Victoria Beckham. I recognised her: Nana Trikoupis, singer and former Eurovision contestant. She came sixteenth with a song called ‘Play a Different Love Song’ which Terry Wogan had amusingly renamed, ‘Sing a Different Song, Love.’

They got into the black Maserati and drove off.

‘That’s him,’ said Charlie, starting the car. ‘And that’s her, too. Queen Sophia. It’s what the Greek newspapers call his bitch of a wife. Because she’s such a terrible snob.’

‘We’ve met. I went to their wedding. She threw a glass of champagne over the best man when he’d finished his speech.’ I grinned. ‘I guess back in 2002 WAG wasn’t such a common term. Apparently she thought he’d called her a wog.’

We followed them east, down the main highway, and hugged the coast south, towards Vouliagmeni and the Astir Palace Hotel where all of the City players were staying. About halfway there he turned onto Alimou, and then right.

‘It looks like he’s heading towards Glyfada,’ announced Charlie. ‘The Beverly Hills of Athens. It’s where you live if you’re a millionaire. Everyone from Christos Dantis to Constantine Mitsotakis.’

I assumed these were some famous Greeks although I’d never heard of them.

‘Every Greek dreams of winning the lottery and moving to Glyfada. You won’t see any graffiti, the streets are clean, there are no empty shops and the cars are all new. I can never understand why, when there’s a big demo and people want to have a riot, that they do it in Syntagma Square and not in Glyfada. If they burnt a few houses down here the government would soon pay attention.’

The Maserati pulled up in front of a set of electronic gates close to the Glyfada Golf Club and then disappeared up a short drive.

‘This is as good as it gets in Athens,’ said Charlie. ‘A house on Miaouli. I’ll bet he’s even got a private entrance to the golf course.’

I nodded, remembering the house Hristos had once owned in Romsey, on the outskirts of Southampton — a nice six-bedroomed family home in Gardener’s Lane; this house was something else. Even through the gates it looked like the dog’s bollocks.

At the gate I got out of the car, pressed the intercom button on the gatepost and waited for the security camera to focus on my smiling mug and thumbs up. Then an electronic voice — quite obviously Trikoupis himself — asked me to state my business, in Greek.

‘I want to see Hristos Trikoupis.’

‘He’s not here.’

‘Come on, Trik. I know it’s you.’

‘Look, I don’t want any trouble. If this is about what happened the other night after the game then I already told the newspapers that I was sorry. I got a bit carried away.’

I knew very well that no apology had been offered by Trikoupis for showing me four fingers for the four goals they’d put past us; instead he’d uttered some bullshit about how touchline confrontations were the inevitable result of having the technical areas too close together; and while this might have been true I also knew that Trikoupis had called me a ‘black Nazi’, a ‘sore loser’ and a ‘cry baby’ — as if the death of my player was already irrelevant to the way I’d handled myself that night.

‘Hey, forget about it,’ I said, coolly. ‘Look, I was in the area and I thought I’d drop by. To clear the air between us without all the football press there to watch us.’

‘I appreciate that you did this. But the thing is, Scott, it’s not very convenient right now. We’re just about to have a late lunch.’

‘That’s all right, Trik. I understand, perfectly. But can I ask you one question?’

‘Of course, Scott.’

‘Are you alone? By the intercom? I mean, can anyone hear you at this present moment?’

‘No, no one can hear me.’

‘That’s good. You see, I’m here because I wanted to speak to you about a mutual friend of ours. A Russian lovely named Valentina.’

‘I don’t know anyone by that name.’

‘Apparently she knew that poor girl who was found at the bottom of Marina Zea the other night with a weight around her ankles. And I don’t mean boots by Jimmy Choo. In fact, I think it was Valentina who sent her along to Bekim in her place. Which makes it very important I speak to her.’

‘Like I said, I don’t know anyone by that name,’ insisted Hristos.

‘Of course you do. You picked her up in your lovely black Maserati one night outside the Grande Bretagne Hotel. And knowing her, I bet you took her to Spondi. She’s fond of that restaurant. As was Bekim. He went there with her, too. Sounds like quite a place. While I’m here I’ll have to check it out myself. Perhaps I’ll go after the Panathinaikos game tomorrow. Chief Inspector Varouxis’s coming with me — he’s a fan of the Greens. Perhaps I’ll him about her then. You see, he doesn’t know about Valentina. Not yet, anyway. Although to be honest with you, Trik, I’m not sure he ought to know about her. Not for her sake but for yours and mine. Now I can probably take the heat for something like that, I think. I’m not married. But I should think it’s very different for you.’

There was a longish silence.

‘So what’s it to be? A little chat with me now or a longer chat downtown with the law? Not to mention an uncomfortable audience with Queen Sophia afterwards.’

Hristos sighed. ‘What do you want, Scott? Specifically?’

‘I want all the contact details you have for Valentina: mobile phone, addresses. Everything. Plus, the name of anyone else that knew her: pimp, clap doctor, other punters. Everyone. I’m doing you a favour. You talk to me or you talk to Varouxis. It’s as simple as that.’

‘All right, all right. Wait there. I’m coming down to the gate.’

‘Okay.’

I waited, staring at the three-storey modern villa that stood at the end of the drive; it resembled the wing of an expensive clinic, or a small boutique hotel. The lawn was so perfect it looked as if it had been painted.

Then I saw him walking quickly down the drive. He came to the gate and handed me a sheet of paper through the railings.

I shook my head.

‘This is the way you really want to do it? Like I was your Fedex guy? You know, I expected more of you, Trik. After all we went through together at St Mary’s. This insults me. At the very least I expected you to be a man. Not someone who would hide behind his security gates.’

I looked at the sheet of paper, recognising the same typewritten telephone number and email address that were now printed almost indelibly on my mind.

‘And I have these details already. Tell me something I don’t know.’

Hristos Trikoupis was looking shifty and embarrassed. ‘That’s all I have. Look, what do you want me to say? I met her just the one time.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘It’s true, I tell you.’

‘You just printed this off. So the details came easily to hand. Which doesn’t speak of someone you only saw once. What’s her surname? Did you file her name under V for Valentina, or something else?’ I crushed the sheet of paper in my hand and threw it back through the railings. ‘Like A for Adultery. Or perhaps C for Cleaners because make no mistake, that’s where Nana’s going to take you when she finds out that you’ve been a naughty boy. You forget, I came to your wedding. I’ve seen her temper. It’s almost as terrifying as the way she sings.’

‘Come on.’ Hristos shook his head with exasperation. ‘Who gets a surname from a girl like that? None of these girls show you their passport. Besides, they all have working names. Like Aphrodite and Jasmine.’

I let that one go. Maybe he knew Jasmine and maybe he didn’t, but I wasn’t interested in her relationship with Bekim Develi.

‘Please, Scott. I really don’t know anything about her. You’re right. I took her to Spondi. Maybe they knew her there. I’d really like to help you here. But I really don’t know anything.’

‘Where did you fuck her? I mean after dinner.’

‘I have a small apartment near the training ground.’

‘How did you meet?’

‘I met her at a charity evening arranged by the Hellenic Football Federation in the Onassis Cultural Center. On Syngrou Avenue. In aid of disabled sport.’

‘Who introduced you?’

‘You won’t say it was me who told you?’

‘I will tell your wife if you don’t spill the beans, you bastard. I just want to get home.’

‘It was a woman called Anna Loverdos. She’s on the International Relations Committee of the HFF.’

‘Yes, I know. She keeps calling me to offer her sympathies about Bekim. I’ve been avoiding her calls but now I think I’ll get back to her. Maybe tonight.’

‘As a matter of fact I’m pretty sure Anna introduced Valentina to Bekim Develi, too. Really, Scott, that’s all I know. Only please, don’t let any of this get out. Anna could lose her job.’

‘And I know how keen you all are to keep your jobs.’ I nodded. ‘On one condition.’

‘Yes?’

‘That when you and I see each other again, at next week’s game, you’ll shake my hand. Before and after the match. Properly. Because that’s the example we’re supposed to give those who watch the game. If we don’t have respect for each other we don’t have anything. And I’m fed up with the British press hunting for reasons why we don’t get on.’

As he nodded I grabbed his shirt collar through the gate, and pulled him towards me quickly so that he banged his head hard on the railings.

‘And if you ever call me a black Nazi again, you cunt, I’ll fucking have you up before a FIFA disciplinary committee.’

I got back in the car and Charlie drove off.

‘Speaking as a Green, sir,’ he said, ‘that was nicely done. Very nicely done indeed. I’d have paid money to see that bastard head hit something harder than a football.’

On the way back to the hotel I saw a tattoo parlour and had Charlie pull up outside so I could get an expert opinion on the dead girl’s tattoo, now on my iPhone. But here — and at another tat parlour closer to the hotel — the SP was that while the labyrinth was well-drawn, the design wasn’t unusual, not in Greece, where the idea of labyrinths got started, more or less.

About the only thing I knew for sure about labyrinths was that there was always a monster waiting at the end.