Philip Kerr - False Nine

‘Changed, how?’

‘Perhaps he grew up a little. Became a bit more serious. Took himself a bit more seriously. Too seriously.’ Mandel pulled a face. ‘He was too political for our tastes. Too left wing. He was always shooting his mouth off about things on Twitter that had nothing to do with football and which he ought to have left alone.’

‘Such as?’

‘The PS. The French Socialist Party. He gave money to the lefties which hardly endeared him to some of his team mates, none of whom much like paying Hollande’s millionaire tax. I believe he also gave money to some youth groups here in Paris. And you can bet if there was a demonstration he’d have been there. He was a real hypocrite like that.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘We French take revolution very seriously. We don’t like people who play at revolution. For whom it seems to be a pose.’

‘Was it a pose?’

‘The Lamborghini lefty, that’s what people called him. Mao in a Maserati.’

‘Yes, I can see how that might irritate some. Is that why PSG decided to loan him to FCB?’

Mandel nodded. ‘Then there were the interviews he did with Libération and L’Equipe which pissed a lot of people off and really helped him on his way out of the Parc des Princes.’

L’Equipe was a French nationwide daily newspaper devoted to sports.

‘Is that in the attached file, too?’

‘Of course.’

‘By the way, I shall also want to see the recordings of the most recent matches Dumas played for PSG. This season and last season.’

‘This season he’s had one good game. That was back in September, against Barcelona.’

‘That was the famous 3–2 in Group F, right?’

‘Yes. He was really good that night. He didn’t score himself but he had three good assists. You ask me it was that night which persuaded Barca to take him on loan. I mean, he wasn’t just good in attack, he was good in defence, too.’

‘I saw him in the match against Nice. He wasn’t bad then, I thought. Of course I had no idea that I was going to have to pay such close attention to the minutiae of this young man’s life. When you are trying to understand the man and what has happened to him it helps to see him do what he is good at.’

‘Very well. I’ll get you some films. Would you prefer DVDs or video files?’

‘Video files. And I’ll need some tickets for the next home match. You never know who I might have to sweeten up for some information. You can have them back, of course, if I don’t use them.’

‘Sure.’

‘Now then. That article in L’Equipe . Read it to me, while I search this place.’

‘All right. But tell me what you’re looking for and then maybe I can help you there, too.’

‘I really have no idea what I’m looking for, Mr Mandel. I’ll only know it when I see it and even then perhaps not immediately. As so-called detectives go, I’m someone who relies on the discovery of things unsought. The forensic equivalent of penicillin. The trick to this is to realise the significance of what one has found. Which is, of course, not always immediately apparent. It’s the equivalent of the goalkeeper who scores goals as well as saving them. Rogério Ceni scored 123 in his career. That’s not a happy accident. It’s more than that — what the English call serendipity. Since your language doesn’t like to use English words, I would invite you to take rogérioceni as the French equivalent.’

It sounded good. And I hardly wanted to tell him that serendipity was the only thing I had in my investigative sports bag. The truth was I felt like a physio called onto the pitch to fix a torn Achilles with just a roll of tape and a bottle of smelling salts. Really, it was pathetic how ill-equipped I was to carry out my appointed task.

I went into the bathroom and opened the cabinet — it seemed like a good place to start my search. You can usually tell a lot about a man just by searching through his medicines. Naturally there was lots of ibuprofen — sometimes it’s the only way you can get yourself down to the training ground — and plenty of kinesio tape: taping a sore joint works , especially when you’re also taking ibuprofen. But almost immediately — even before Mandel had started to read the article from his iPad — I had discovered that Jérôme Dumas was depressed. In the cabinet was a bottle of one of the most commonly prescribed SSRIs — selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. I placed the bottle beside the handbasin and kept searching.

Jérôme Dumas has courted the anger of Paris Saint-Germain supporters by stating that the fans at Parc des Princes have made him feel unwanted and that this has now reached the stage where he almost avoids the ball. In a frank interview, Dumas also said that it was no fun playing for PSG and that he only looked forward to away games now as there were fewer fans present to give him a hard time.

‘Ooo, that’s bad,’ I said, opening a drawer. I found a rather large toilet bag which I unzipped and rifled through, tossing most of the contents into the bath. ‘That’s very bad.’

‘It’s really dispiriting when your own fans are the ones shouting the racial abuse,’ Dumas said. ‘Of course you want them to support you. But lately I’ve had a run of bad form when I haven’t scored and they’ve not been very understanding. I just wish they would be a little more patient with me. You don’t mind the away fans booing you. That’s part of the game. But it’s different when it’s your own support. In the game against Nice there seemed to be one standard for me and another for Zlatan. I don’t understand why there were whistles and catcalls when I missed a goal but nothing but applause when he hit the woodwork. There’s a double standard here which I find baffling and hurtful.’

In the toilet bag I was surprised to find several packets of Cialis. I placed these beside the SSRIs.

‘I’m sure everything will come right when I score my first goal for PSG but the longer I go without a goal the more pressure I’m going to be under; and the more pressure I’m under means the less likely I am to score. It’s a vicious circle.

‘At the moment I actually look forward to away games because I feel I’m going to get a lot less stick from the crowd. And I’m not the only player who feels this way. One or two of the other lads who haven’t scored of late are finding it hard to deal with the high expectations of our fans. I think they should try to get behind our players a bit more and for them to offer encouragement to get things right on the pitch instead of stick when we get things wrong.

‘Laurent Blanc was a great player and he’s a great manager too. But I don’t think he knows how to get the best out of me, yet. Frankly, we are struggling to communicate, he and I. It’s not like there’s anything wrong with my French like some of these Africans. At the moment there is some sort of impediment between us that stops us communicating properly. But I don’t know what it is. If I make a mistake it isn’t because I am lazy, which is what has been suggested and why I am talking like this. Sometimes I make mistakes. We all do. That’s football. But when I miss a chance that’s what people say. They’re like, “He missed that chance because he was out of position; and he was out of position because he’s a lazy black bastard.” As a footballer you have to laugh about it and shrug it off. But lately I seem to have forgotten how. I tell you I feel really low about this.’

Jérôme Dumas was dropped from the games against Nantes and Barcelona and his provocative comments will place a further strain on his relationship with PSG fans and management. Charles Rivel, for the club, disagreed strongly with what Dumas told L’Equipe : ‘The fans don’t strike me as hard to please at all. They follow the club all over Europe. It’s a very loyal support that we have here at PSG. One of the best. I haven’t heard fans booing Dumas or calling him lazy. But let’s be honest — this is a player who is on €125,000 a week. Yes, it’s human nature to want to be loved. But it seems utterly deluded of Dumas to be complaining that people who are paying eighty euros a ticket to watch a single game are not being supportive enough. This player needs a reality check. Yes, the team should have scored more than one against Nice, but it’s just paranoia on the part of Jérôme Dumas to suggest that he was singled out by the fans for an extra level of criticism.’