Philip Kerr - Hand of God

‘After a while I didn’t want to do it any more. I sold some of my work to a cruise ship company and I was a lot less inclined to fuck guys in football for money. You might find this hard to believe but as a matter of fact, you were my last client. Really, I only did it as a favour to Bekim. He paid me in advance and said I didn’t have to fuck you if I didn’t want to but you were a nice guy, and you’d behave yourself. Anyway, just so you know, I did it with you because I wanted to. But I’ve never done it here on Paros. Not even with Bekim. When I’m in Athens I’m Valentina. When I’m here I’m Svetlana Yaros, the sculptor. And that’s never been a problem until today.’

She gathered her hair in a ponytail at the back of her head and squeezed some of the water out.

‘Stay there,’ she said.

She got up for a moment and went to fetch not her clothes or a robe but a cigarette from the kitchen and I wasn’t sorry about that. Calypso herself could not have looked more seductive.

‘Tell me about Hristos Trikoupis,’ I said.

‘Did he tell you about me?’

‘No. It was Jasmine.’

‘Ah, Jasmine. You have been thorough. For a while I had a regular thing going with Trikoupis. He wanted me to be his mistress, but I wasn’t interested in something like that. He was too hairy for me. Too much like an animal. What is more he has terrible breath.’ She wrinkled her nose with displeasure. ‘We’d have dinner at Spondi and then I’d go to his apartment near the stadium and have sex with him. But I’d stopped seeing him and more or less got out of the football VIP escort business. When you and I went to the game against Hertha he saw us and was furious about it. I didn’t mean to make him angry. But he was so jealous of you. Like, he really hated you.’

‘That explains a lot,’ I said. ‘He said a lot of nasty things in the newspaper about me I figured were just mind games, ahead of the match. But maybe I was wrong about that.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘When did you last see Nataliya?’

‘In May, I think. We had a drink together at the Grande Bretagne with two black guys. A Panathinaikos player and his agent. We all went to dinner at a place called Nikolas tis Schinoussas where we met another player, a Romanian guy. He plays for Olympiacos. Then we went back to the Romanian’s place in Glyfada. The agent went back to the hotel by himself.’ She frowned. ‘You’re going to make me try to remember names, aren’t you? I’m not much good with names.’

‘Try.’

‘The Romanian guy was Roman someone or other.’

‘Roman Boerescu?’

She nodded.

‘And the others? The two black guys?’

‘Let’s see now. The player was called something angelic. Yes. It was Séraphim.’

I nodded. ‘Séraphim Ntsimi. Panathinaikos bought him from Crystal Palace in the summer.’

‘If you say so. I wouldn’t know anything like that. I just sleep with them.’

‘And the agent?’

‘Tojo. At least I think that was his name. Tall guy. Head like a bowling ball.’

I nodded. ‘Yes, I know who that is.’

I was silent for a while.

‘How am I doing?’ she asked.

‘Good.’

She closed her eyes and held her face up into the sun.

‘Are you planning to stay at Bekim’s villa tonight?’ she asked.

‘That’s the idea.’

‘What are you going to do for dinner?’

‘I thought I might go into town and find a little taverna. Not to mention a telephone signal and a Wi-Fi signal.’

‘You won’t get into anywhere good. Not in August. Everywhere reasonable will be booked up. Why don’t you have dinner here?’ She shrugged. ‘I already made something. I generally cook for two and that lasts for two days. So you’re in luck, really.’

‘I’d like that. But on one condition. That you put on some clothes.’

‘Are you sure about that? There are some men who would pay a lot of money to have a naked woman cook for them. Besides, I never wear clothes at home, apart from my overalls. And I wouldn’t like to wear those while I’m serving dinner.’

‘Perhaps we can excuse them on this occasion,’ I said vaguely. ‘It is very hot, I suppose.’

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.’