Hand of God

36

Reading the sports pages on my iPad and watching Football Focus on BBC World, I felt like a fish out of water. I’d have given anything to be back in London preparing for our big game with Chelsea. I always liked going to Stamford Bridge, especially in August. Chelsea always feels special in summer. I guess that’s why I live there.

Would we have beaten the Blues? At the beginning of the season, when your whole team is fit, anything is possible; for the same reason it’s the newly promoted teams, like Leicester City, that you have to watch out for. It’s only as the season wears on that beating the top sides becomes progressively more difficult. If, like the Blues, you’ve got a team composed of twenty-five international players, then it stands to reason you’re going to be in the running for a top-four spot at the end of the season. It also stands to reason that if you have a squad like that and you’re not top four then you’re going to get the sack.

It was very early in the season for a manager to get the sack but according to the papers, that’s what had happened to an old mate of mine. Nick Broomhouse had been manager at Leeds United for just two months and, after a dismal start to the season that saw them losing 6–0 to newly promoted Wolves and then 5–0 to Huddersfield, the new club chairman and owner declared he had no confidence in the manager. The match against Huddersfield was one of those derby matches that any Leeds manager just has to win. My guess is that he was just looking for an excuse to be rid of the previous owner’s man. I had my own problems, of course, but these didn’t stop me from sending a text offering my sympathies to poor old Broomhouse.

Of course, any manager always expects to get the sack, the way a burglar probably expects to get caught and go to prison. It’s hardwired into your psyche that the sack is an occupational hazard; probably it’s one of the reasons some of us are paid so much in the first place. But the money is never sufficient compensation for having your team taken away from you at a moment’s notice. It hasn’t happened to me, yet, but I don’t doubt that my turn will come. Sometimes football management is just revolving doors. A six-year contract like mine would make some managers feel safe. Not me. A guy as wealthy as Viktor Sokolnikov would hardly notice paying five million quid to get rid of me. I’m not quite as cheap as chips to a man like Vik, but I’m something pretty close to it.

I was still musing upon my own disposability when Louise rang from my flat in Chelsea. We proceeded to have one of our more typically playful conversations, the way two people do when they think they might be in love but don’t want to admit it before the other has.

‘I miss you,’ she said, plaintively.

‘I miss you, too,’ I said.

‘I’m lying in your big bed, naked, with all the newspapers, and wishing you were here.’

‘As long as it’s just the newspapers you’re in bed with, then that’s okay.’

‘I just want you to know exactly what you’re missing here, Scott.’

‘Believe me, I know. For one thing there’s that game against Chelsea. Not to mention some big bonuses if we’d beaten the bastards. Which we could have done. Even without Bekim.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘I know what you meant, darling. But since you were teasing me, I thought I’d tease you back.’ I laughed. ‘That’s why football was invented: to make women believe that we don’t think about sex all the time.’

‘Does it work?’

‘Sure. For exactly forty-five minutes. Until half time when we can start thinking about sex again, for just fifteen minutes.’

‘Don’t you ever think about me during the match? Not once?’

‘Maybe once or twice.’

‘Really?’

‘But that’s only until your own side scores. Putting three past Man U, when Fergie’s in the stands with a face like a slapped arse. That’s better than sex in any manager’s book.’

‘It’s not in your book.’

‘You read it?’

‘There are ten copies on your bookshelf. I could hardly avoid it.’

‘But you only read the one, right?’

‘Funny. I read it thinking it might give me an insight into you.’

‘You certainly won’t get anything like that from my book.’

‘You think not?’

‘You want insights into my way of thinking? Read the match-day programme.’

‘I can tell you wrote it, Scott. The book, I mean. Some of the phraseology...’

‘Of course I wrote it. Who do you think I am? Wayne Rooney?’

‘It told me a lot that I didn’t know.’

‘That’s what Wayne said.’

‘It told me that you have a habit of getting yourself into scrapes. That maybe I should fly out to Athens. That you needed me to keep you out of trouble.’

‘That was in the book?’

‘To keep you company in the royal suite.’

‘I’d like that, too. So, see if you can get a flight. Why not? I’ll start running the bath. It’s a big one.’

‘All right, I will. I won’t cramp your style? There must be a lot of Greek girls dying to go to bed with you.’

‘Not since breakfast.’

‘You can, you know. I don’t mind.’

‘I know.’

I tutted loudly and changed the subject. ‘I spoke to your friend, Wakeman.’

‘How was that?’

‘He was a little insulting. For a start, I think he believes that all Africans are crooks. A lot of them are, of course. But nobody likes to be reminded of that. It’s not so very long ago I was from Africa myself.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Not your fault, baby.’

‘Well, I spoke to Sara Gill.’

‘Who?’

‘The woman from Little Tew in Oxfordshire? The one who was attacked by Thanos Leventis. The killer the Greek newspapers dubbed Hannibal. I’ll text you her mobile and her Skype number.’

‘She’s willing to speak to me? About what happened to her?’

‘Yes, she’ll speak to you. She’ll speak to anyone about what happened. It’s getting people to listen that’s been her problem until now.’

‘I’ll listen to her. I’m a good listener.’

Louise laughed. ‘You think you are. But you’re not. You get paid to talk, Scott. To talk at the right time and to say the right things. Which means you tend to say only what you want others to think that you’re thinking, which isn’t always the case, of course. It’s quite a skill you have: the art of talking judiciously.’

‘Is that what you think about me?’

‘You don’t want to know what I really think about you, darling.’

‘Of course I do. That’s why I go to bed with you, my lovely. So I can listen to what you’re mumbling about me in your sleep.’

‘I think you’re actually quite a lonely man. Like a lot of football managers. It’s you versus the world. You versus the next team. You versus the crowd. You versus the guy in the other dugout. You versus your father. You versus the newspapers. You versus the Metropolitan Police. And now it’s you versus the Greek police. You’re someone who needs to prove something, Scott. Because you’re a survivor. Because you’re driven. That’s why you’ve turned detective again. Because you can’t leave things alone. Because you want to be right.’

‘And here was me thinking it’s because I want to help clear Bekim Develi’s name, and to get my lads back home to London.’

‘You think that’s why you’re doing it, I know. But it’s not true. You’re doing it because, like most men, deep inside that inflated ego you call your heart you believe that you’re just a born detective. This is just another kind of contest for you.’

I grinned. Louise had me pegged all right. It was one of the reasons I was so fond of her. ‘Maybe.’

‘But I’ve got news for you, my love: nothing in this world gets solved the way you think it should. To your satisfaction, I mean. Nothing in this job ever finishes up the way it ought to. The sooner you learn that the better.’