Philip Kerr - January Window

In the event it took only half an hour to drive the ten-mile journey from my flat off the King’s Road to the East End. There aren’t many people on the road at that time of the morning but the press were there in force when I arrived. As I approached the gates of the club car park they surged towards the Range Rover to see who I was. At the same time I wondered what was so interesting at Silvertown Dock that it could have diverted them from going to Wembley Way; I didn’t know it at the time but Wembley Way was equally popular with journalists that night. There are more newspapers and television stations in England looking for a good story than you might think. Especially when it’s a story about football.

I drove up to the gates of the club car park and waited for our security men to let me in. It was raining heavily now and while I was waiting I switched off the windscreen wipers just to deny the many waiting photographers a better shot of my tired and probably miserable face. The floodlights were on inside the stadium, which was very strange at nearly three in the morning.

‘Scott! Scott! Scott!’

Since I had no idea of what to expect when I got inside the stadium I thought it best not to say anything. That suited me just fine as I don’t like talking to the papers any more than I like talking to the police. Sarah Crompton was always trying to persuade me to be a bit friendlier to the press but old habits die hard; whenever I get doorstepped by reporters or papped by some monkey with a Canon I feel half inclined to hand out a taste of what Zinedine Zidane gave to Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup Final. Now that’s what I call a headline.

I found Maurice McShane waiting impatiently for me at the players’ entrance, next to the riverside and the special private marina where Viktor Sokolnikov sometimes arrived at the stadium aboard a thirty-five-metre Sunseeker sport yacht. Maurice was a big fair-haired man with a beard and a voice like someone shovelling grit. To my surprise he was with the head groundsman, Colin Evans, who Sokolnikov had enticed away from the Bernabeu at great expense: Colin Evans was generally held to be the best groundsman in Europe and the City pitch always won all sorts of awards for its excellent condition.

‘The fuck’s going on?’ I said. ‘What are you doing here at this time of night, Colin?’

Colin shook his head, growled, clearly speechless with anger and led the way out through the players’ tunnel and onto the pitch. He was fit-looking and young for a groundsman — no more than thirty-five — and wearing the same kind of City tracksuit I was wearing, he could easily have passed for a player.

‘You’ll see soon enough,’ said Maurice.

‘Sounds ominous.’

The stadium always looked fantastic for an evening fixture when all the floodlights were on. They made the orange seating look a very appetising and Christmassy shade of tangerine, while the grass seemed to shine like a rare emerald; and for our sixty thousand seated supporters that’s exactly what it was: something very precious, hallowed even. Small wonder that every so often we had requests from fans who wanted to have a relation’s ashes scattered on the pitch. Colin would never have allowed such a thing, of course; apparently it’s very bad for the grass but not so bad for the flowers. Colin’s roses always won prizes.

He led us along the halfway line, through the centre circle to the spot where several policemen were standing as if about to kick off a game. Normally I could never make that walk without a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I was about to play a match; on this occasion, however, I felt as empty as the stadium itself. Drenno’s death was still very much at the front of my mind. For a moment I thought I was about to see a dead body. But I certainly wasn’t expecting to find what I saw now.

‘What the hell?’ I put a hand to my mouth and rocked back on my heels for a moment.

‘Nice, isn’t it?’ said Maurice.

A hole had been dug in the centre of the pitch. I say a hole, but it was obviously a grave, about six feet long and at least two or three feet deep.

A stranger wearing a fawn-coloured duffel coat came towards me; he was holding a police identification card in front of him.

‘I wonder if I might have a word with you now, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘My name is Neville, Detective Inspector Neville, from Royal Hill.’

‘Give us a minute here, will you, Inspector?’ I asked. ‘Please.’

I led Maurice and Colin a few paces away so that the detective wouldn’t hear our conversation.

‘When did this happen?’ I asked.

‘I came out here just after midnight,’ said Colin. Originally from the Mumbles, in Swansea, he spoke with a strong Welsh accent. ‘We recently had some electric fox-proof fences fitted to stop them crapping on the pitch at night. The lads hate it if they slip in that shit; it’s much worse than dog shit — the smell stays with you for days afterwards. Anyway, I was out to check that they were working properly and I noticed that someone had left some tools scattered across the pitch: a couple of spades and a fork. That’s when I found it.’

I picked up a spade, glanced at the initials on the handle: LCC and then tossed it aside.

‘How the fuck did they get in here?’ I said. ‘It’s supposed to be ticket only.’

Colin shrugged. ‘They probably slipped in during the day, when the doors are open to the building contractors, and hid in the stadium.’

‘Building contractors? What are they doing?’

‘We’re having one of the bars refurbished,’ explained Maurice.

I grunted. I could hear the internet joke now: thieves broke into Silvertown Dock to raid the trophy cabinet, but left empty-handed.

‘What kind of a bastard would do this, Scott?’ complained Colin.

‘Colin,’ I said. ‘How long have you been in the game? You know what some of these bastards are like. A rival team’s supporters could have done this. But with the results we’ve had since Christmas it could just as easily be our own fans — for fuck’s sake, our own lot aren’t exactly nice. Have you heard the kind of verbal poison that gets yelled from these terraces?’

‘Well, it certainly wasn’t a fox,’ observed Maurice. ‘I mean, I know foxes are cunning ’n’ all but I never saw one who could dig a nice rectangle like that. Not without a ruler.’

‘And as for you,’ I told Maurice, ‘sure it’s serious and a pain in the arse, but it could have waited until the morning, couldn’t it? I mean, it’s just a fucking hole in the ground.’

Maurice McShane was a former solicitor who’d been disbarred for professional misconduct after it was found he’d used an anonymous account to tweet some insults about another barrister. He’d also been a successful amateur boxer, almost winning a bronze medal in the light heavyweight division at the 199 °Commonwealth Games in Auckland. Maurice was a good man to have around when someone was in a difficult spot, and as able to sort things with his fists as he was with a wad of cash. He said nothing; instead he took out his mobile phone and showed me a text he’d received from a reporter on the Sun :

Mozza. Would you care to comment on the suggestion being made that the grave in the middle of your pitch is a Sicilian-style message for your prop, Viktor Sokolnikov, whose former partner, Natan Fisanovich, turned up in a shallow grave in 1996, having been buried alive? At least that’s what it said on Panorama . Gordon.

There was a similar text from the Daily Mail ; and I dare say if I’d bothered to look at the texts arriving every minute on my own mobile phone I’d have found something along the same lines.