Philip Kerr - January Window

He meant this little speech to be reassuring, I think, and yet somehow it wasn’t. For one thing there were the bodyguards outside, and for another there was the simple reality that even if Viktor was just a businessman, he knew plenty of people who operated on the edge of the law.

He grinned. ‘Next you’re going to be asking me for my alibi, Scott. It’s just as well I spent the whole afternoon with those people from the Royal Borough of Greenwich. They’ll vouch for me.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. Because I think Zarco had a good reason to be afraid of you. He’d done something wrong. Something illegal.’

‘So, you know about that.’ Viktor’s cold, dark eyes narrowed. ‘I can see I wasn’t wrong about you, Scott. I made the right choice.’

‘Let’s hope you still think so at the end of this conversation, Viktor.’

‘I’m not an idiot. I knew there was a good reason Zarco preferred us to use Paolo Gentile rather than Denis Kampfner for the Traynor transfer. I suspected he was going to take a bung on the deal. Partly it’s my fault. Let me explain: you see, a long while back Zarco had begged me for a share tip. I hate doing that kind of thing but he insisted, so I told him about this energy company in the Urals. They’d just had a big find of oil and it was generally held that the shares would go through the roof. I had bought some and so, I believe, did he. Except that there hadn’t been a big find of oil, it was all a fraud, and instead the shares went down the toilet. Zarco lost a lot of money. Not as much as I did, but then I can afford it. I felt bad about that. Very bad. He lost at least a quarter of a million pounds, I think. So when he asked if we could use Gentile as the agent on the Traynor transfer I agreed so that Zarco could recover what he’d lost. I even pretended to believe what Zarco told me — that Denis couldn’t be trusted. Yes, it’s true, I turned a blind eye to being robbed by my own manager.’

Viktor lit a little cigar with a gold lighter. That’s the thing about owning your own football club; the anti-smoking laws just don’t apply.

‘You remember when people first had cars? Well, of course you don’t remember it. What I mean is that in 1865 the British parliament passed a series of acts called the Locomotive Acts, which applied to self-propelled vehicles on British roads. A law that was copied in America, by the way. For safety reasons a man with a red flag was obliged by law to walk sixty yards ahead of each vehicle. It’s the same with me. My money walks sixty yards ahead of me with a red flag and everyone sees me coming, in the full sense of this figure of speech. Like a patsy, you know? What else do you call someone who always has to pay full price? And no one ever gives me value for money. Not unless I push hard for it, which means, of course, that I am always seen as ruthless. Ruthless and grasping. But only because I want the same value for money as anyone else.

‘You’re well off in your own right, Scott. Well off and comfortable — but not rich, perhaps. But when you’re very rich you get used to people robbing you, my friend. To some extent you learn to put up with it. I’ve been ripped off by everyone. My PA, my lawyer, my pilot, my driver, my butler, my ex-wife, my accountant — you name it, Scott, they’ve ripped me off. When you’re as rich as me it’s an occupational hazard. I suppose they think I’m so rich I won’t notice. But of course I do. I always do. It’s a sad fact, Scott, but when you’re as rich as I am the only people you can trust are the people who don’t want anything from you. It was extremely disappointing to find that Zarco was stealing from me. But it wasn’t exactly a surprise. It’s as simple as that.’

‘Not quite.’

The narrow eyes narrowed a little more. He picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue and said, ‘Explain, please.’

‘When Zarco learned that the planning objections to the Thames Gateway Bridge were about to be rejected by the Royal Borough of Greenwich, he used the money from the bung to buy shares in SSAG. Almost half a million quid’s worth.’

‘This I didn’t know.’

‘Him and Gentile.’

‘Wait.’ Viktor sighed wearily. ‘Don’t tell me he used the same company to buy the shares that he did to buy those Urals Energy shares? Monaco STCM?’

‘I’m afraid he did. It was only later on that he discovered Monaco STCM was partly owned by the Sumy Capital Bank of Geneva.’

‘Idiot. If you’ll forgive me, this is why people go to prison, Scott. Because they’re stupid and they make stupid mistakes.’

‘He was afraid you’d find out and that you’d be angry.’

‘He was damn right. I didn’t know this, Scott. But now that I do, I am angry. Perhaps I would have sacked him if I’d found out. Perhaps I might have been obliged to sack him, you know? It’s such a stupid thing to have done. Maybe I would even have hit him.’ Viktor smiled wryly as he realised what he’d said. ‘Yes, I might have hit him for being greedy, and for dropping me in the shit, which this does. But let me be quite clear, Scott: I would not have had him beaten to death. Insider trading — even by proxy — is a serious matter. Difficult to prove, but serious. And yet not so serious that I would have had him killed. Even so, I shall certainly have to take legal advice in this matter. Just in case it is suspected that I gave Zarco this information so that he might profit from it.’

‘How did he find out? Do you have any idea?’

‘That’s a good question. I’m not sure. Perhaps he saw something on my laptop once, read an email on my iPhone, I don’t know for sure. But more importantly now, how did you find out? And does anyone else know about this? In particular, the police?’

‘Gentile knows, but that’s all. I only know because Zarco used to keep a burner phone in my cabinet drawer, which he used for — well, I assumed it was for making arrangements with his mistress. In fact I think this particular phone was exclusively for speaking with Gentile.’

‘And this phone? You still have it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I should like to see it,’ said Viktor. ‘It may even be that I will have to give it to my lawyers. Just to protect myself, you understand.’

‘I want to speak to Gentile before I do that. I’d like to use it to lever some more information out of him, if I can.’

‘Be very careful, Scott. While I’m not connected to the world of organised crime, the same can’t be said of Paolo Gentile.’

‘You mean, he’s linked to the Mafia?’

‘Gentile lives in Milan but he is originally from Sicily. A few years ago he was investigated by the Italian authorities for his links to a man called Giovanni Malpensa. Malpensa is the head of a family that controls the Palermo district of Trabia; not to mention a stake in several Italian football clubs. Gentile may not be dangerous but Giovanni Malpensa certainly is.’

‘And you still allowed the Traynor deal to be made by this man?’

‘You think one agent is any more honest than another? Come on, don’t be so naïve. Denis Kampfner has some very crooked friends in Manchester’s drug-dealing underworld. This is not surprising, of course, because there’s more money than ever in football. It’s a whale, tied to the side of the ship that’s the world economy. And more money means there are more sharks feeding on it. In 2013 BT paid almost a billion dollars for Champions League and UEFA football broadcasting rights. But do you honestly think that means the game has become any less corrupt than it ever was? On the contrary. Football and money go hand in hand. Football itself has become an important marketing tool — perhaps the biggest marketing tool there is, these days. How else are you to reach the all-important market of men? Life’s decision-makers. Whatever the women’s groups say should happen, it’s still men who make the big financial decisions in any household, which means they’re the most important audience to reach. Anywhere in the world. From Qatar to Queensland, football is now the lingua franca of the world. It’s why people are prepared to bid so much for World Cup rights, even to the extent of paying millions of dollars in bribes.’