Philip Kerr - Hand of God

Varouxis lit another cigarette and thought for a minute.

‘But then I suspect you already knew the man I was going to name,’ I said. ‘That’s why you asked Sergeant Tsipras to leave the room, isn’t it?’

Varouxis remained silent.

‘If you’ll permit me to say something,’ said Louise. ‘Surely it’s better that you should reopen the case yourself than at the behest of the British ambassador and your own Ministry of Justice.’

‘In spite of what you say, the only way I could reopen this case would be if I had the kudos of solving the death of Miss Matviyenko, or the death of Bekim Develi. No one could argue with my decision to reopen Miss Gill’s case under such circumstances as those.’

‘Might I ask why anyone would argue with it?’ said Louise.

‘My superior, Police Lieutenant General Stelios Zouranis, is the cousin of this man Venizelos. He is also a member of Golden Dawn. I dislike both the man and the organisation, but my hands are tied, at least until I crack this particular case. The minister would have to listen to me then, you understand. He could not resist it.’

Louise nodded. ‘We understand.’

‘Antonis Venizelos has that scar through his eyebrow from an injury he sustained in a football match against Thessaloniki back in 2000,’ said Varouxis. ‘Venizelos stamped on the ankle of another player, for which offence he was head-butted by a third player and received sixteen stitches in his head as a result. He was always a very dirty player. And I say that as a Panathinaikos supporter. Indeed, for a while after that incident his nickname was Minotaure.’

He opened the window and waved some of the smoke out of the conference room.

‘I tell you frankly that I always suspected that he was involved. And I would dearly love to put this man in prison. And not just because he is a rapist and a murderer but because his kind represents the worst in our society. His kind of hatred and intolerance are not the true Greek way. We might have invented democracy but we are beginning to forget what it means. In order to convict him I will need to make my voice louder and solving this case will certainly do that.’

‘Yes, I can see that.’

‘I am impressed by what you’ve been able to discover, Mr Manson. Impressed but perhaps not that surprised after the way you were able to find out who killed João Zarco. I should have realised that you were not the type of man to sit on his hands and do nothing. I give you my word that if you help me now that I will help you.’

He held out his hand for me to shake; I took it. Then he shook hands with Louise.

‘Perhaps the three of us can bring things to a satisfactory conclusion,’ he said. ‘In fact, I am quite sure of it.’

After the pre-match chat with ITV — why do these guys always ask such stupid questions? — I went to find my players.

For the match against Olympiacos at the Apostolis Nikolaidis Stadium, across the road from the GADA, I chose to wear my own plain black tracksuit, matching T-shirt and a pair of black trainers. A Zegna linen suit, white shirt and silk tie hardly felt appropriate for what was certain to be a long and frenetic evening, and I wanted all of my players to fully understand what I had to say to them in the dressing room: that the game in front of us was going to require a die-in-the-ditch performance of real substance and very little style.

Not that there was much style on offer to us that night; the dressing room at Apostolis Nikolaidis was as shabby as the outside of the stadium had suggested it would be, and a sharp contrast to the shiny, brushed aluminium perfection of the facilities we enjoyed at home in Silvertown Dock. Some of the coat hooks on the walls were loose or non-existent and there were only wire hangers for shirts and jackets; the floor was uneven and it was strewn with spent matches, cigarette ends and bits of chewing gum. The chiller cabinet for water bottles wasn’t switched on but that hardly mattered since it was also empty. There was a strong whiff of drains in the air and mould growing in the corners of the dripping showers which were missing more tiles than an old Scrabble set. Nor was there any air-conditioning either, just a couple of industrial-sized fans that blew Simon Page’s player notes around the place and made me glad that I’d only brought my iPad.

‘Right, you noisy sods,’ said Gary Ferguson throwing his man-bag onto the bench, ‘stop complaining and get your fucking kit on. Just remember, if this shithole is for the home team then imagine what the away team dressing room looks like. There’s probably a turd in the bath. In fact, I know there is because I left one floating there yesterday.’

That got a big laugh.

‘Are you going to eat that banana?’ said Zénobe Schuermans.

‘Actually, I was thinking of throwing it into the crowd,’ said Daryl Hemingway. ‘Just in case they run short during the game.’

‘Count yourself lucky they just throw bananas here,’ said Kenny Traynor. ‘When Hearts used to play Hibs the cabbage bastards threw fucking coins.’

‘At Anfield they used throw toilet rolls,’ said Soltani Boumediene.

‘I swear,’ said Ayrton Taylor, ‘if someone throws a coin at me I’m going to throw it back.’

‘Listen, son,’ said Gary, ‘if someone throws a coin on the pitch at this place it’s more likely to be an offer to buy the fucking football club.’

‘When are those illiterate Scouse fuckers going to realise that it’s “a field” not “an field”? asked Jimmy Ribbans.

All this was just nerves and I let them have a few more moments of levity before settling them down.

‘Right then,’ I said. ‘Could I have your attention please, gentlemen?’

I waited for a long minute and outlined my strategy — the one I’d described to Vik and Phil on The Lady Ruslana . Then I told them the hard truth about our chances. Like a lot of truths this one contained an important constituent that wasn’t required to make any sense. That’s a manager’s job; to remind players that football is one of those magical places where the truth is often stranger than fiction.

‘It’s no small thing to turn over a 4–1 deficit,’ I told them. ‘This would seem difficult even on our own ground at Silvertown Dock. But here, in Athens, in this third-world slum that Panathinaikos call a stadium, in the dilapidated capital city of a shit-stormed country that’s going to the dogs but which still manages to bark very loudly indeed?’

I paused for a moment so we could all hear the noise of the capacity crowd, which was mostly Greek; about fifty per cent Olympiacos, thirty per cent Panathinaikos hoping to see their old rivals beaten, ten per cent City fans, and ten per cent impartial tourists come to watch what they hoped might be a fascinating game of football.

‘You hear that? That’s the sound of those dogs barking now. All that barking means the same thing: no one expects us to win tonight. No one here in Greece. And no one back in England, either. Everyone has written us off. I just got a tweet from Maurice in London: on ITV Roy Keane has just said our chances of going through to the next round are less than they were for the blokes in The Guns of Navarone . Which is almost true; it certainly seems to me we’ve been through our own Greek tragedy, gentlemen. They used to give a goat to the Greek poet who could tell the best story. Well, you can keep the goat; this particular tragedy could have won you the fucking Booker prize.

‘For ten days we’ve had to endure being away from homes and our families; we’ve had whole armies of TV and press all over us like jock-rash; we’ve had the local filth asking us questions about hookers and drugs and all kinds of shit that were nothing to do with football. They’ve thrown bananas at us on the pitch and brickbats in the newspapers. Our champion, our Ajax is dead and yes, they think it’s all over. Would you believe that Proto Thema — the biggest selling Sunday newspaper in Greece — said that this match we’re about to play had been reduced to the status of a mere testimonial? That we were just turning up to give us something to do in Athens while we were under effective house arrest? To which I say, fuck off. We’re made of stronger stuff than that. This team doesn’t just “turn up”. We turn up to play. And when we play we play to win.