Philip Kerr - January Window

The injuries to his body were all blunt trauma injuries, mostly to the head and upper torso, consistent with a severe beating; a violent impact to the front of the skull had resulted in a depressed fracture that had been the most probable cause of death. From the shape of the head fracture it seemed more than likely that Zarco had been struck with a blunt instrument although, so far, no murder weapon had been found.

Which probably explained the police divers in the Thames.

The right-hand side of the chest area was badly bruised, several of the ribs cracked, and his fingers and knuckles badly bruised as if he had fought back. And, underneath the fingernails of his right hand, the pathologist had found minute traces of skin and blood that were not Zarco’s. This did not surprise me. Zarco had never been the type to turn the other cheek; certainly not as a player. Once, when he’d been playing for Celtic, he’d responded to a couple of hard punches from the Rangers player Nwankwo Nkomo with a well-placed and rather more effective head-butt that had broken Nkomo’s nose. Even as a manager of La Braga, Zarco had had his fair share of brawls and fisticuffs, most famously in the tunnel at the San Siro when he’d mixed it with Howard Page, the manager of AC Milan, with the result that FIFA had banned them both from the touchline for several games. Zarco was no shrinking violet and I couldn’t see that anyone taking a swing at him wouldn’t have received something in kind.

The pathologist also found several blue woollen fibres underneath Zarco’s fingernails that could not be matched to anything that the Portuguese had been wearing at the time of his death and which, it was implied, might have come from an assailant’s clothing; this seemed to suggest the possibility that Zarco had grabbed hold of the lapel or the collar of whoever it was that had attacked him. Also consistent with a violent struggle having taken place was the way Zarco’s tie had been found around his neck; it had been knotted much too tightly, almost as if an assailant had used it to try and strangle him with.

Traces of Zarco’s vomit had been found on the ground; this was thought to be consistent with his having sustained a hard blow to the stomach.

Of more palatable interest to me were the contents of Zarco’s pockets, and there were colour photographs of these, too: his regular mobile phone — the one his wife knew about — some loose change, a money clip, a wallet for credit cards, a set of keys — which didn’t include a key to the door of the maintenance area where his body had been found — a wedding ring, a leather Smythson notebook in which he would write things during a game, the hard box for his Oakley sunglasses, a Mont Blanc pen, a business card from a councillor with the Royal Borough of Greenwich, a piece of white moulding from a ceiling (rather strangely), a gold coin, a Silvertown Dock pass which had been on a silk lanyard around his neck, and the Hublot watch and light blue prostate cancer silicone band that had been on his wrist.

After Zarco’s father, José, died of prostate cancer, Zarco had become a tireless supporter of Prostate Cancer UK. Growing a terrible moustache every November to help raise funds was only a small part of what he did for this charity, which had already tweeted their grief on learning of his death.

On the ground surrounding the body were found several brooms and brushes, a couple of buckets, and some window-cleaning equipment. Small litter included eleven cigarette ends — most of which were English or American brands, although one was Russian — some spent matches, a button, a few copper coins, a McDonald’s wrapper, several old City ticket stubs, a Styrofoam Starbucks coffee cup, a football programme, a month-old copy of the London Evening Standard , and an empty half-bottle of vodka. None of this looked like it was going to provide the vital clue that would solve the mystery of Silvertown Dock.

I closed the report and locked it in my filing cabinet before unlocking my office door again. Rather shamefully, perhaps, my first reaction on having finished reading the report was to congratulate myself on being alive when someone else — someone close to me — was not; but this, in the great scheme of things, is really all you can ask. To be around when others have had their heads bashed in is not much of a philosophy, but in the absence of something better it serves just as well as anything else.

When the training session at Hangman’s Wood was over I sat down with Simon Page and some physio reports and made the team choice for the match on Tuesday night. Christoph was out of the team in favour of Ayrton, and we had some of the more experienced players, like Ken Okri, at the back, but the rest of the side was taken from our reserves and under twenty-ones. At their pre-match press conference the Hammers had announced that they intended to field a full-strength side for the Capital One Cup match. Since the last cup won by West Ham had been the UEFA Intertoto Cup in 1999 — an out-of-season competition that was generally held to be a joke — and before that the FA Cup in 1980, when they’d defeated Arsenal, the club had decided that they owed it to the supporters to actively compete for some silverware.

I was surprised at this decision; then again, it’s an easy mistake to make — to pay attention to what the fans want instead of what’s best for the team. I decided that we were going to stick to our guns — the young guns, that is. But my mind really wasn’t on team selection. I kept on thinking about Zarco’s sunglasses on the floor of suite 123 and what they were doing there.

I had a theory, but as with all good theories I needed to conduct an experiment in order to test it. I rang Maurice.

‘I want you to do me a favour,’ I told him. ‘There’s a place called the Mile End Climbing Wall, on Haverfield Road, in Bow. I want you to go and buy some rope.’

‘Don’t do it,’ said Maurice. ‘You’re too young to die.’

‘Two hundred feet of rope, to be exact. In fact, I want everything you’d need to go climbing on the Crown of Thorns. A helmet, a padded harness, the rope, and someone who knows how to use that gear. If Sir Edmund Hillary is knocking around tell him there’s two hundred quid and a pair of tickets in it for him if he’ll come back to the dock with you. Otherwise, bring back anyone else who looks like he knows his ice axe from his elbow. I need two things from him: one is to lower me safely out of a high window; the other is to keep his mouth shut. If there’s no one prepared to help we’ll just have to work it out ourselves. But I want to do this today before it rains or snows again.’

‘All right. Will do. It’s your neck. What’s this about, boss?’

‘I’ll explain everything when I see you.’

A couple of hours later Maurice was back at the dock accompanied by a thin, intense-looking man with red hair and a beard; he was wearing a green Berghaus fleece and carrying a large coil of rope and a rucksack full of gear. His name was Sean and he was from Bethnal Green, which is of course where a lot of great Alpinists have hailed from. I was still wearing my tracksuit and a pair of trainers from the training session at Hangman’s Wood. I led the two men up to suite 123 and closed the door behind us.

‘What is this room, then?’ asked Sean.

‘Private hospitality suite. Belongs to some guy from Qatar.’

‘Really? Looks like the inside of my dad’s Jaguar.’

I showed Sean into the kitchen and then opened the kitchen window.

He peered out of it and nodded, circumspectly. ‘That’s about a fifty-foot drop.’

‘About that, yeah. I figure twenty feet to the descending cross beam and then another thirty or so to the ground.’