Hand of God

45

Svetlana was a good cook and had prepared a variety of delicious Greek dishes.

‘It’s nice to have someone here for dinner,’ she said bringing one plate and then another out onto a terrace that overlooked a small yard that was full of blocks of stone. ‘When I’m here I tend to live like a nun.’

She poured me a glass of cold white wine and then went back into the house, leaving me to think a while. For some reason I was thinking about Sara Gill. At the same time I was thinking about football. The truth is, of course, I’m nearly always thinking about football; and quite often when I’m thinking about football I remember something that João Zarco used to say. He was much more of an original thinker than most people ever knew. I could almost hear him now:

‘I’ve been reading about this Greek philosopher called Zeno,’ he said. ‘You know? That story about the arrow in flight? It’s an argument against motion. That time is entirely composed of instants so that at every instant of time there is no motion occurring. I was wondering if his thinking could be applied to football, and I think it can. Everything in football can be broken down into distinct passages of play like the movement of the arrow; and every passage of play can be broken down into transitional moments, when a game turns decisively: a tackle, a poor clearance, a penetrating pass. These transitional moments can have the force of revelation when you see these moments of revelation for what they are. So that you can act on them. That’s all the future is, too.’

At that point I wouldn’t say I had a revelation, but I did stand up from the table and make a fist. Something Svetlana had said — I wasn’t even sure what this was — had made me guess the probable identity of the man who had helped Thanos Leventis attack Sara Gill; the man who had raped her and left her for dead in the harbour.

When Svetlana came back onto the terrace she was wearing an elegant pair of black slacks and a matching long-sleeved T-shirt, and she smelt of perfume.

‘You look pleased with yourself,’ she observed.

‘If I do it makes a change on this trip,’ I said, sitting down again. ‘I’ve never been one to sit around congratulating myself. I guess all football managers are like that: beset with thoughts about what could have been. Sometimes it seems that there’s a guy inside my head who’s always cross with me.’ I sighed. ‘Poor Bekim. This might have been his best season ever.’

We sat down at the table and started to eat.

‘I certainly admire your appetite,’ I said, watching her eat a large plate of moussaka. ‘It’s not many women who can eat like that with a clear conscience.’

I knew I didn’t have to make a cheesy remark about what a good figure she had — we both knew it was superb — but I was anxious to secure her continued cooperation. Svetlana had told me quite a bit, however I felt I needed to know everything.

When we finished dinner she lit a cigarette and since it was Sunday night — the only night when I allow myself to smoke — I had one, too.

‘Thank you for an excellent dinner,’ I said. ‘And for saving me from an evening on my own. It was the local taverna or tinned spaghetti.’

‘Tinned spaghetti?’

‘Bekim’s kitchen cupboards are full of the stuff.’

‘Yes, of course, it would be. He loved English food. You know, I think the last person I cooked for was probably Nataliya. She came out here to stay for a few days about six months ago. She was going through a bad patch, poor kid. She was depressed. I’m not exactly sure but I think there had been an attempted suicide when her boyfriend had cleared off to England.’

‘This would be the guy called Boutzikos.’

‘Nikos Boutzikos. Yes.’

‘You were friends then? You and she.’

‘It wasn’t just business. We were — well, let’s just say we were close.’

‘No, let’s just remember that you agreed to tell me everything,’ I said. ‘For keeping your name from the police. So I need it all, if you don’t mind.’

‘All right.’ For a moment she exhaled smoke from each nostril, like a dragon about to breathe fire. ‘If you really must know we went to bed together. It was her idea. She wanted me more than I wanted her, and I only did it because I thought it might make her feel better. As a matter of fact it was me who felt better. She made me come like a train. Which is odd because I have very little experience with women.’

I shrugged. ‘Then I guess she knew what she was doing. Professional girl like her. After all, that was her job, wasn’t it? Threesomes. Foursomes, for all I know. That kind of thing.’

‘You make that sound ugly.’

‘I don’t mean to. But in retrospect that’s how she seems to me: professional. How else am I to describe someone who was prepared to dope her clients?’

‘Nonsense. She wasn’t that kind of girl at all.’

‘What do you think these are? Breath fresheners?’

I tapped the Photos app on my phone and showed her the picture of the Rohypnol pills I’d found in Nataliya’s handbag.

‘These were found in her bag,’ I said.

But Svetlana was still shaking her head.

‘You’ve got it all wrong. Nataliya didn’t use these for knocking out clients. That’s not how this business works. Not at our sort of level, anyway. No, these pills were for her. They’re antidepressants. A girl on Omonia Square might have done what you’re suggesting but not someone like Nataliya. At a thousand euros for a two-hour GFE she wasn’t exactly a hooker off the street.’

I showed her the next picture. ‘And I suppose the ceftriaxone was just in case she caught a cold.’

‘Accidents happen. It’s best to be prepared.’ She frowned. ‘How do you know all this anyway? About the Rohypnol? I thought you said the cops hadn’t found anything.’

‘They didn’t find it. I did. With the help of my driver, Charlie. He used to be a cop with the Hellenic police. We persuaded her landlord in Piraeus to let us into her flat and then had a nose around. I took her bag away for safekeeping. And I photographed the contents, as you can see.’

I handed her my phone and let Svetlana look at the pictures I’d taken.

‘For the moment I still have the bag although our team’s lawyer in Athens reckons that I will have to hand it over to the police sooner than later.’

Svetlana paused when she saw the picture of Nataliya’s iPhone.

‘So, the cops are going to want to speak to me after all. I mean they’ll almost certainly find my number on her phone. Not to mention a few texts, perhaps.’

‘Not necessarily. One of my players used to knock off phones for a living. He’s trying to break the code. It might be that I can erase one or two things before I hand it over.’

‘I see.’ Svetlana swept the screen of my phone to view the next picture and then frowned. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said.

‘What?’

She turned my phone around to show me a picture of one of Nataliya’s four EpiPens.

‘These EpiPens. I don’t think she was allergic to anything. In fact, I’m sure of it. I cooked for her. She’d have mentioned something like that.’

‘Charlie says that’s not why she had the stuff. He says Viagra is in short supply in Greece and that a shot of adrenalin will help some guys get it up.’

‘Nonsense. Believe me, there’s no Viagra quite as powerful as a twenty-five-year-old girl like Nataliya.’

She pinched the screen of my iPhone and enlarged the picture of the EpiPen.

‘Besides, look at the writing on the side of the box. It’s in Russian. This wasn’t even hers. This EpiPen was prescribed in St Petersburg. To Bekim Develi.’

‘What?’

‘She must have taken it. Them.’

For a moment I considered the possibility that Bekim had been using epinephrine as a performance enhancer, like ephedrine, for which Paddy Kenny had been busted while playing for Sheffield United back in 2009. Suddenly the heart attack started to look like it might have been self-inflicted.

‘Christ, the idiot,’ I muttered. ‘Bekim must have been using the stuff as a stimulant.’

‘Well, he was but not like you think,’ said Svetlana. ‘Bekim might have been a lot of things but he wasn’t a cheat. But surely you must know he suffered from a severe allergy?’

‘An allergy? To what?’

‘To chickpeas. He never travelled without at least one of these pens.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. He told me himself.’

‘I’ve seen the medical report that was carried out prior to his transfer. There was no mention of any allergies.’

‘Then he must have lied to your doctor. Or the doctor agreed to cover it up.’

‘Our guy would never have done something like that.’ I shook my head. ‘But chickpeas. Surely that’s not very serious.’

‘Not in London, perhaps. But it is serious in Greece. They use chickpeas to make hummus. And for curries, of course.’

‘Christ. That explains the spaghetti hoops.’

Svetlana nodded. ‘As long as I knew Bekim he was always careful about what he ate. Especially in Greece.’

‘Then no wonder he didn’t let Zoi cook for him.’

‘If he’d accidentally ingested chickpeas, he’d have suffered anaphylaxis.’

‘And without the EpiPen that would have been potentially fatal.’

She nodded.

‘But surely someone at Dynamo St Petersburg, his previous club, would have known about this?’ I wasn’t asking her, I was asking myself.

‘And if they didn’t mention it?’ She left that one hanging for a few seconds before saying what was already in my mind. ‘That would have affected the transfer fee, wouldn’t it?’

‘It would have affected the whole transfer,’ I said.

‘I know Russians much better than I know football,’ said Svetlana. ‘They certainly wouldn’t allow the small matter of medical disclosure to affect a big payday. Not just his previous club, but Bekim, too. He was really delighted to go and play for a big London club. Russians love London.’

‘So they must have colluded in the deception,’ I said. ‘Him and Dynamo.’

‘Why not?’ said Svetlana. ‘Your own doctor probably just asked him a simple question. Are you allergic to anything? And all he had to do was answer was a simple “no”.’

I took a long hit on the cigarette and then put it out; the flavour brought back strong memories of prison when a single fag can taste as good as a slap-up meal in a good restaurant. I said: ‘The more important question now is what Bekim’s EpiPens were doing in Nataliya’s handbag?’

Svetlana didn’t answer. She lit another cigarette. We both did. There was much to think about and all of it unpleasant.

‘This is serious, isn’t it?’ she said after a while.

‘I’m afraid so. If Nataliya took his pens it must have been because she was paid to do it.’

‘By who?’

‘I don’t know. But forty-eight hours ago this guy from the Sports Betting Intelligence Unit — part of the Gambling Commission back in England — asked me if Bekim could have been nobbled. In spite of what I told him, it’s beginning to look as though he might have been.’

‘Nobbled? What does it mean?’

‘It means fixed. Interfered with. Doped, like a horse. Poisoned.’

I tried to remember the late lunch we’d all had at the hotel, prepared by our own chefs according to the guidelines laid down by Denis Abayev, the team nutritionist: grilled chicken with lots of green vegetables and sweet potato, followed by baked apple and Greek yoghurt. Nothing to worry about there. Not even for someone with an allergy to chickpeas. Unless someone had deliberately introduced some chickpeas into Bekim’s meal.

‘He must have eaten something with chickpeas in it before the match,’ I said. ‘There’s no other explanation.’

‘Okay, let’s work this out. How long before the match did you have lunch?

‘Three or four hours.’

‘Then that can’t have been it. When you have an allergy it’s almost instantaneous. He’d have gone into anaphylaxis the minute he ate the stuff. On planes they’ll sometimes tell you that they’re not serving nuts just in case a person who suffers from an allergy should inhale a tiny piece.’

‘Yes, you’re right. Which makes you realise that for someone who has got an allergy a nut or a chickpea can be as powerful as a dose of hemlock.’

‘And anyway,’ she asked, ‘why would someone do such a thing?’

‘Simple. Because on the night that Bekim died, someone in Russia took out a very big in-play bet on the match we played. These days, people will bet on anything that happens during a match: ten-minute events, the time of the first corner, the next goal scorer, the first player to come off — anything at all. It means that someone from Olympiacos, or someone from Russia, must have nobbled Bekim somehow. A ten-minute event like Bekim scoring and then being taken off. That must be it.’

‘Nobbled. Yes, I understand.’

I looked at my iPhone but as before there was no signal. ‘Shit,’ I muttered. ‘I really need to make some calls.’

‘You can’t,’ she said. ‘Not up here. But I could drive you into Naoussa where there’s a pretty good signal at the Hotel Aliprantis. I have a friend there who’ll let us use the internet, as well. If you think it’s necessary.’

‘I’m afraid I do. Svetlana, if I’m right, it wasn’t just Nataliya who was murdered, it was Bekim, too.’