Philip Kerr - Hand of God

He nodded. ‘I have another question for you.’

I shrugged. ‘Fire away.’

He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a pendant on a piece of leather string — an amulet depicting the palm of an open right hand. It reminded me of something I’d seen recently but what I couldn’t quite recall.

‘They removed this from around his neck at the hospital and gave it to the coroner’s office. Did you know he was wearing it?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘And if I had I’d have told him to remove it immediately. FIFA forbids players to wear any kind of jewellery during a football match. You can get booked for that kind of thing.’

He tugged at his experimental beard for a moment, which gave me a better understanding perhaps as to why he had grown it: to give him pause for thought. ‘In view of what you’ve just said — that wearing such a thing is forbidden, can you imagine why he would have run the risk of wearing such a thing?’

‘No. Is this Greek?’

‘I believe it’s Arabic.’

‘What is it, anyway?’

‘This is supposed to provide defence against the evil eye. Christians call it the hand of Mary. Jews call it the hand of Miriam. But Arabs call it a hamsa : the hand of God.’

‘This can’t be allowed to stand,’ said Vik. ‘We have a game against Chelsea on Saturday and we have to be back in London to beat him.’

To Viktor Sokolnikov, beating Roman Abramovich was more important than almost anything, as evidenced by the fifty grand bonus he’d previously offered every City player if we won. Every Russian billionaire probably measures himself against the Chelsea owner although quite a few — for example, Boris Berezovsky — are found wanting.

We were in the royal suite at the Grande Bretagne Hotel in the centre of Athens which Phil Hobday had taken to use as our team offices while we remained stuck in Greece; and at eight o’clock the next morning it was there we met the lawyers from Vrachasi, one of the top firms in Athens, that Vik had engaged to fight what amounted to the team’s open arrest.

‘I want a petition filed before the Greek court today,’ he insisted. ‘And I don’t care what it costs.’

Dr Olga Christodoulakis, the senior partner from Vrachasi, was a large brunette in her forties with a pretty face and a manner as brisk as her own handwriting. She wore a bright green blouse that did little to restrain her enormous bosom and a tight black skirt that wasn’t so much a pencil as a decent-sized fountain pen. She spoke excellent English with an American accent, but her bag-carrier of an associate — a younger man named Nikos something — was more fluent and just occasionally she said something in Greek and he chipped in with a swift translation.

‘That’s going to be difficult,’ she said. ‘The Greek courts are on strike at the moment. Which means that we’re going to have to ring around the city and try to find a sympathetic judge who’s prepared to break the strike to hear our case.’

Phil Hobday was horrified. ‘Judges going on strike? I never heard of such a thing.’

‘If the state doesn’t pay what they owe you then there’s not a lot of incentive for you to go to court,’ she said. ‘But right now that’s not your biggest problem. I gather from the police that they intend to wait on the pathologist’s report on the dead girl before deciding what to do next. The trouble with that is that the doctors handling all of the police autopsies are on strike, too.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ exclaimed Vik. ‘This is like being back in Russia.’

‘Can’t another hospital do the autopsy?’ suggested Phil. ‘A private hospital. Like the Metropolitan Hospital in Piraeus. That’s where they took Bekim Develi, wasn’t it? They’re not on strike.’

‘I’m afraid that would never happen,’ said Dr Christodoulakis. ‘The Laiko General Hospital of Athens, on St Thomas’s Avenue, has been handling police autopsies in Athens since 1930. This is not about to change just because of one strike. The doctors there are owed money by the state, the same as the lawyers. And to try to go around that would cause more trouble than it’s worth. Even if we wanted to I doubt we’d find any pathologist who would dare to take this job.’

‘I’m afraid she’s right. These are the unfortunate facts of life in Greece right now.’ Toby Westerman, from the British Embassy in Athens, looked pained, although that was probably his default expression. His thinning brown hair was combed from the back to the front which lent him the look of an unruly schoolboy, an effect that was enhanced by an old school tie and a pair of glasses that were almost opaque with fingerprints.

‘It’s like something out of Kafka,’ said Vik. ‘At this rate, the guys might be stuck here for weeks.’

I hadn’t read any Kafka but I had read Catch-22 , which was what the situation reminded me of. And I had another concern: discipline. Keeping a rein on eighteen players in a city like Athens during August was going to be difficult. Just the night before several of them had slipped out from the hotel complex in Vouliagmeni to visit a lap-dancing club on Syngrou Avenue.

‘Who was this girl that she can cause so many problems?’ demanded Vik.

‘A hooker,’ said Phil. ‘That much seems certain.’

Vik got up from the table and walked around the dining area before helping himself to coffee from a silver pot on the sideboard. With the suite’s expensive draperies, crystal chandeliers, gilt mirrors, bronze sculptures and original oil paintings, he looked quite at home. Beyond the drawing room and through the door you could see a bed big enough for any self-respecting oligarch and a couple of mistresses. Or hookers.

‘I mean, just because she might have shagged Bekim doesn’t mean he knew anything about her. Since when did that make you responsible for the rest of someone’s life?’

He stared out of the window but his temper was not assuaged by the fine view of the Acropolis and Constitution Square. I didn’t blame Vik for being upset. The Greek constitution and its poorly functioning legal system was depressing. I was feeling upset myself but not about our catch-22 situation in Athens so much as what had happened back in London. Bekim’s girlfriend, Alex, had taken an overdose of cocaine the previous night and was now at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital where her condition was officially described as ‘poor’.

‘Your policemen,’ Vik asked our buxom lawyer. ‘What are they like?’

‘What he means is can they be bought?’ asked Phil.

‘Exactly, so,’ said Vik. ‘Well, why not? This is a heavily indebted country in its seventh year of recession. According to the annual Corruption Perceptions Index this country is the most corrupt country in the EU.’

Dr Christodoulakis shifted uncomfortably on her large backside.

‘Ordinarily I might answer yes,’ she said carefully. ‘But with two government ministers involved, and the press already invested in the story, the possibilities for a miza or a fakelaki ...’ She glanced at the bag carrier.

‘A backhander,’ said Nikos.

She nodded. ‘They are limited. For such a public case it would not be wise for anyone to take a backhander. But even if you did manage to bribe the investigating police officers you should also be aware that the Greek police are not to be trusted. They’re closely related to the Golden Dawn — right-wing neo-Nazis.’

‘I don’t see that their politics matter very much,’ said Phil. ‘A bent fascist can be just as useful as a bent communist.’

Toby Westerman put his hands over his ears theatrically, and managed to look like one of the three wise monkeys. ‘I don’t think I should be listening to this kind of talk,’ he said.