Philip Kerr - Hand of God

‘Yes, but this bloke told me that George Hajidakis was going to mention the bent Irish ref on the show till he had the shit beaten out of him by two heavies with brass knuckles. He’s in hospital now.’

‘Saying it and knowing it are two things. But proving it to the satisfaction of UEFA is something else. Christ, those bastards fined José Mourinho more than fifty thousand euros when he was at Madrid just for suggesting that you’ve got no chance of a fair match against Barcelona. So you’ll excuse me if I keep my fucking mouth shut, Simon. If your friend is right and they have bought the ref then we’ll just have to play around that, like a dog turd in the goal mouth.’ I shook my head. ‘Forget it. I don’t need this right now.’

‘You’re a cool bastard, Scott Manson, and no mistake. I tell you the referee has probably been bought and you just shrug it off like a cheap raincoat. So you’re saying we just ignore it, or what?’

‘Seriously, Simon, we’ve got enough grief in Greece without adding to it. In case you’d forgotten we’re not allowed to leave the country. The team is effectively under open arrest with one of our number suspected of having had a hand in a girl’s murder.’

‘The tart. Right.’

‘Now keep this to yourself but I managed to find out her name. I’m going to call that lawyer now and tell her.’

‘I see. Want me to leave?’

‘No. I’d rather you didn’t. If something happens to me then it’s best there’s someone else who knows her name, too. Someone English.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Only that I don’t really know what the fuck I’m doing, or what the fuck I’m getting myself into here. It could be that this is more dangerous than I thought it was.’

I called Dr Christodoulou on speakerphone so Simon could hear our conversation, and told her the name of the girl; but I didn’t tell her what I had in my mind to do next.

‘How did you find this out?’ she asked.

‘Never mind.’

‘You know that it’s a crime to withhold information in a murder inquiry,’ she said. ‘Even in Greece. By rights I should really inform Chief Inspector Varouxis. I could be disbarred.’

‘Just hold off for a little while,’ I told her. ‘At least until I’ve had a chance to follow up on this.’

‘All right. But only until Monday, right?’

‘Sure. How is it going with your own enquiries? Did you manage to find out anything about Svetlana Yaroshinskaya?’

‘Not yet. Like you said, it’s the weekend. Most Greeks don’t work on a Saturday.’

I was half inclined to ask her on which particular day they did work but thought it would have sounded rude.

‘All right. Give me a call when you have something.’

I hung up and looked at Simon.

‘That gives me less than forty-eight hours.’

He frowned.

‘To find out who killed her and why.’

‘Maybe you should leave this alone,’ he said. ‘We don’t need you getting yourself murdered, boss. Right now you seem to be the only one who’s in with a shout of getting us all home. Just be careful, okay? I’ve already had one bugger die on me while we’ve been here. I don’t want another.’

Panathinaikos arranged for a coach to take us to their match against OFI at Leoforos, which was what the locals called the Apostolos Nikolaidis Stadium. As it pulled away from the Astir Palace hotel I walked to the back of the bus and peered out of the back window to see if there was a silver Skoda Octavia on our tail. When I saw that there was I smiled; it’s always nice to be proved right about something. Especially when it’s the cops.

I sat down and closed my eyes. It felt fantastic to be going to a football game, even one we weren’t actually playing. The only pity was that I wasn’t going to see the game itself. I had other plans that afternoon. The mood on the coach was boisterous to say the least, with Gary Ferguson leading not just the team these days but its sense of humour, too, even though his jokes were more obvious than any new hair on the front of his head.

‘Look at the state of this country,’ he complained as the coach roared north. ‘Shops boarded up. Roads left unrepaired. Squeegee guys everywhere. People say it’s the credit crunch, whatever the fuck that is. I’ve been watching the Bloomberg Channel every day in my room since I got here to find out what happened to this bloody place.’ The idea of Gary glued to Bloomberg got a laugh all of its own. ‘That’s the financial channel with all these wee numbers on the bottom of the screen. To be honest when I first saw them I thought they were the final scores but it turns out they’re stocks and shares, shite like that. Anyway, take it from me, lads, you won’t find any of the answers on Bloomberg as to why they’ve had such a bad recession here. You want to find out what went wrong take my advice and watch some Greek porn channels. They explain everything. Quite simply everyone in Greece is fucked.’

More laughter.

‘As a matter of fact, that’s why I feel so at home in this shithole. This country makes the coffee for fucking Germany in the same way that Scotland makes the tea for England. But I reckon the Greeks could teach the Scots a few things about doing fuck all for a living.’

I always loved listening to Gary riff about stuff. Maybe he did have a future career in television after all, as a comedian. But after a while, something else began to creep to the edge of my mind and crouch there like a guy in a high-viz jacket at the end of a match, as if he was expecting trouble, and, much as I would have preferred it, I could hardly ignore it. I got up and sat behind the coach driver. He was in his sixties, I thought; lots of white hair, big sunglasses, skin like leather, Nikos Galis T-shirt (Nikos Galis was a Greek basketball player), BO like the last towel in a sauna and tobacco-plantation breath.

At the next red light I put a slightly damp twenty on the dashboard in front of him.

‘I was wondering if you knew Thanos Leventis.’ I paused, and then added: ‘Hannibal Leventis?’

‘I knew him.’ He shook his head. ‘It was really terrible what he did. I’ll be honest with you, sir, I didn’t think he was the type. I mean, you have to be crazy to do what he did, right? But he wasn’t crazy at all. Not even bad. He was just ordinary.’

I stayed silent for a moment as he manoeuvred the coach around a difficult corner. Then I said: ‘There was some talk that Leventis didn’t act alone. That he had an accomplice.’

‘Yes, sir. That’s what one of the victims said. But the police judged her evidence to be unreliable, apparently. She was badly beaten up, of course. I suppose it’s why they didn’t think she could be relied on as a witness.’

I knew a bit about unreliable evidence myself.

‘And what do you think?’

‘I heard she said the other guy worked for the United Nations because he was wearing a UN T-shirt or something like that. That’s why the cops discounted her evidence. After all, who wears a UN T-shirt? And what kind of UN worker goes around raping and murdering people? They’re supposed to stop that kind of thing, not take part in it.’

‘I guess you’re right.’

‘But you know, if there was another guy, then they’ll catch up with him sooner or later. After all, if you do that kind of thing once, you’ll almost certainly do it again.’

‘Unless he already has.’

We turned onto Leoforos Alexandras. Some of our players hadn’t yet seen the stadium and they were surprised at how dilapidated it looked.

‘It’s not exactly Stamford Bridge,’ said Xavi Alonso. ‘Or Silvertown Dock.’

‘It looks ready for demolition,’ observed someone else.