Philip Kerr - January Window

‘You’re serious about this, aren’t you?’

‘Very.’

‘That cross beam looks a bit awkward. You wouldn’t want to have to climb on it. Especially in this weather. It looks slippy.’

‘Probably.’

‘What the fuck’s the point of it, anyway? The beam, I mean. In other words, does it have a function?’

‘It’s modern architecture,’ I said. ‘There’s no function. Just form.’

‘So what’s this all about?’ he asked. ‘Are you an adrenalin junkie or did you just drop your mobile phone out of the bleeding window?’

‘Let’s just say I’m doing it because it’s there.’

‘Comedian.’ Sean smiled a thin sort of smile. ‘Everyone thinks they’re Mallory and Irvine these days. You ever done any climbing before?’

‘Only the stairs,’ I said.

‘Got a head for heights?’

‘I guess we’ll find out.’

‘True.’ Sean sighed. ‘Two hundred quid and a couple of tickets, right?’

I nodded and handed over the money and the tickets for the Hammers match, which had been in my pocket.

‘Paid in full.’

‘Cheers, mate. I’d have preferred tickets for Tottenham, myself, but I ’spose these’ll do, yeah. Thanks.’

All the time he kept glancing around as if checking out his surroundings.

Sean went out of the kitchen and into the sitting room. He pointed at the sliding door.

‘What’s out there?’

Maurice lifted the roller blinds and then opened the door to reveal the stadium seating and, in the centre, the pitch.

‘Ah,’ said Sean. ‘Now that’s what I’m looking for.’ He pointed at some of the seats in front of the hospitality suite. ‘First principle of climbing: find something stronger than yourself to tie a rope onto. These seats will do fine.’

When he’d finished tying the rope onto the seats he fetched the climbing harness from his backpack and fed the long piece of webbing around my waist, through the buckle, and then back again; with the two leg loops he did much the same. He checked the three buckles were fastened to his satisfaction and then tugged a loop in front of my navel towards him.

‘This is the belay loop,’ he explained. ‘The single strongest point of the harness. And the bit that’s going to attach you to life. Are you left-handed or right-handed?’

‘Right-handed.’

He attached a karabiner to a belay device and clipped it onto the belay loop. Then he took a bite of rope and forced it through the bottom of the belay device. ‘This lower part of the rope is your brake,’ he explained. ‘The brake hand is your right hand and that never comes off the line. Not for a moment. The guide hand on the upper part of the rope is your left hand. You’re safely tied in now.’

‘I’m beginning to think my two hundred quid is well spent,’ I said.

‘Hopefully you won’t ever know just how well,’ said Sean. ‘Now all you have to do is belay.’

Having showed me the basics of belaying, and letting me practise a little, we were ready to go.

‘If you start to fall too quickly then bring your brake hand — your right hand — down between your legs and the bend in the rope will arrest your descent. Understand?’

‘I understand.’

He handed me a helmet and I strapped it on. A few minutes later I was out of the window and leaning back with both hands on the brake rope, as instructed. Each time I loosened my double grip on the brake rope I could descend.

‘Take your time,’ said Sean. ‘A couple of feet at a time until you get your confidence.’

From the kitchen window I let out the rope in short increments until I was standing on tiptoe on one of the main beams on the crown of thorns. And now that I was there I was able to inspect the steel surface of the descending beam more closely and confirm what I had strongly suspected: that Zarco had actually fallen from the window of the kitchen. He’d hit the main beam on which I was standing, then slid round and down at an angle, shifting a trail of dirt and bird shit from the polished steel.

I sat down, let out some more of the guide rope and followed the trail along the beam on my arse, down and around, like a child descending a water slide, until about forty feet further on, the trail in the dirt and bird shit moved abruptly to the left, and then terminated. It was here that Zarco must have slipped off the beam and fallen a second time, this time onto concrete about twenty feet below, where Maurice was now standing, to confirm what I now knew for sure: that Zarco hadn’t been beaten up and that all of the injuries detailed in the autopsy report were surely consistent with a fall from the kitchen window of suite 123.

Given that you couldn’t actually see the window — any window — from the ground, it was an easy mistake for the police to have made; I’d made the same mistake myself when I’d first seen the crime scene. But crime it was, not an accident, or even a suicide: Zarco might have been worried that Viktor Sokolnikov was going to find out about his insider dealing, but he certainly wasn’t the type to throw himself out of the window. I couldn’t ever imagine him committing suicide. Besides, on Saturday morning he’d been in a good mood. He was always in a good mood before a big game. Especially one he thought we were going to win.

No, someone had pushed him out of that kitchen window. Pushed him to his death. It was the only possible explanation for how his sunglasses had come to be found lying on the floor by Paolo Gentile.

After Sean had gone, and I was alone again with Maurice in suite 123, I told him about the fifty grand I’d found in the freezer and then explained my theory about what had happened to Zarco: that someone had pushed him out of the kitchen window.

‘There’s a tiny blood stain on the beam immediately below this window,’ I said. ‘That must have been how he got the blow to his head.’

‘Makes sense,’ said Maurice. ‘It certainly explains why the door on that maintenance area was locked from the outside. Because no one opened it.’

‘And it explains why no one spotted someone as famous as him going down there in the first place; because he didn’t. At least not using the stairs.’

‘But why do you believe that Paolo Gentile found the sunglasses exactly like he said he did?’ asked Maurice. ‘Maybe he was lying. Maybe he and Zarco argued about something. The bung, perhaps. Maybe it was him who pushed Zarco out of the window.’

‘It’s true they’d argued about the bung before,’ I said. ‘I saw them arguing about it at a service station in Orsett. But the bung was paid, after all. The cash part, anyway. So they could hardly have argued about that.’

‘Yes, but he did fuck off to Milan that very same day. He didn’t even hang around for the match. And that’s exactly what I’d have done if I’d topped Zarco. Caught the next flight home. Once someone is in Italy, it’s not so easy getting them back here to face charges. If you’ve got money there you can give the Italian law the runaround. Look at Berlusconi. He’s got away with it for years.’

‘I still don’t buy it, Maurice. It was Zarco who persuaded Viktor Sokolnikov to use Gentile on the Kenny Traynor transfer, instead of Denis Kampfner. Viktor was a golden goose for an agent like Gentile. There’s no telling how many golden eggs Zarco could have persuaded our mega-rich proprietor to lay for our Italian friend. I just don’t see Gentile doing it. He had too much to lose by killing him.’

‘All right. That makes sense.’

‘Now Viktor, on the other hand...’

‘Don’t tell me you fancy Viktor for it,’ said Maurice.

‘I don’t know. Maybe. There’s a YouTube video of him nutting his fellow oligarch, Alisher Aksyonov, live on Russian television. He looks like he means it, too. If Viktor had found out about Zarco buying shares in SSAG he might have been angry enough to hit him.’