Philip Kerr - False Nine

‘Are you serious?’

‘I think it’s better to be absolutely sure of nothing when it comes to things such as God. I don’t feel frightened by not having an answer to something like that. Generally speaking, I like not having the answers to anything important. How could we ever know that shit? This is the way things are supposed to be, I think. And this is one reason I like football so much. In football it’s perfectly possible to have all answers to everything mysterious, such as why one side wins and why another side loses. To that extent football provides a perfect philosophy for life, by which I mean a theory or attitude that acts as a guiding principle for human behaviour. And it will never let you down. Unless it involves FIFA and Sepp Blatter, of course, in which case it will always let you down. But fundamentally football is a perfect way to live your life, because all “why” questions can be answered in football, as opposed to a lot of other things where they can’t be answered at all.’

Grace laughed.

‘I’m serious. Believe me, applying the values and tenets of football to the world in general will take you a lot further than any religion I’ve ever come across. You have to be a philosopher to be a manager — although not every manager knows that he is one. And you can forget Stephen Hawking. There’s not one manager in football who doesn’t have a better understanding of time than he does. How it expands, how it stretches, how everything in a game changes from one minute to the next.’

‘I had no idea that it was so intellectually challenging. And here was me thinking that it’s just twenty-two men kicking a ball around.’

‘That’s a very common mistake.’

We turned the corner and stopped in front of a concrete bungalow that must once have looked modern and inhabitable; now it reminded me of a caravan in January. The fuse box on the front wall was open and half of the electrics were spilling out onto the grass verge in a miniature Gordian knot of coloured wires and copper screws; the windows were untidily curtained and dirty; and the porch was home to a broken washing machine and a bale of old newspapers.

‘We’re here,’ said Grace. ‘At the first place I was told to look for Jérôme Dumas.’

‘If he’s here he certainly needs rescuing.’

It was impossible to know if the place was occupied or not but, undeterred, Grace opened the gate to the empty driveway and, ignoring the faded yellow front door, she went around the back with me following close behind her. By now we could hear a football match on a radio or a television, life’s universal soundtrack, and I started to believe that our search was going to be a mercifully short one.

‘Hello,’ Grace said loudly in French. ‘Is there anyone home?’

Instead of Jérôme Dumas we found a man lying on a cheap sunlounger and reading a copy of France-Antilles , which is the local newspaper. Seeing us in his back yard he put aside his newspaper and stood up. He was tall, thin, strong, and very very black; he looked like a length of pig-iron.

‘You’re not the cops,’ he said in French.

‘No, no. no. Nothing like that. Look, we’re sorry to disturb you, but we’re looking for a friend. Jérôme Dumas.’

The man shook his head. ‘Never heard of him.’

‘I know,’ said Grace. ‘ Mwen ka palé Kréyol. Sa ou fé ?’

The man nodded. ‘ Sa ka maché, è wou ?’ he said.

They continued in Creole, which meant I understood nothing about what was happening. The conversation lasted about five minutes, at the end of which Grace smiled and shook the man’s hand.

‘ Mwen ka rimèsié’w anlo ,’ she said, and walked back the way we’d came. I followed.

‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s strike one, I’m afraid.’

‘I never get that,’ I said. ‘About baseball, I mean. They call it a strike when they don’t hit it. That’s what you meant, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I never get that — any more than I get calling American football, football, when no one kicks the goddamn ball. At least hardly ever.’

‘Well, he didn’t know where Jérôme Dumas is. At least he said he didn’t. I don’t know whether or not you noticed the headphones on the ground by the sunlounger. They were Paris Saint-Germain Beats, by Dr Dre.’

‘I didn’t see that. No.’

‘Which are quite expensive, I think. At least a hundred euros.’

‘At least.’

‘And just the sort of thing that someone might bring a guy from Paris, as a present. Like the PSG charms key ring that was lying next to them. And the miniature PSG shirt in the acrylic glass ornament that was on the kitchen windowsill.’

‘You didn’t happen to see what number it was?’

‘Nine, I think.’

‘You see what I meant before? About me being a detective? That’s Jérôme’s shirt number.’ I grinned. ‘So much for my powers of observation.’

‘I expect you were trying to get your head around Antillean Creole.’

‘Maybe. I mean, I can speak good French, but I don’t understand a word of Creole.’

‘That’s the whole point of it. It’s not meant to be understood by the masters.’

‘Is that why you were speaking it? So that I wouldn’t understand?’

‘No. I was speaking Creole so that he wouldn’t feel threatened.’ She took my hand. ‘But I do like the idea of having a master.’

‘I can see I’m going to have to be quite firm with you.’

‘Oh, I do hope so, sir.’

‘Where to now, Mr Frodo?’

‘Back to the hotel. And from there we can get a taxi into Pointe-à-Pitre. For some lunch and then the next address on our list.’

‘If that guy knows where Jérôme is then he’s bound to tell him that we’re looking for him, don’t you think?’

‘I would say that’s half the point of us looking for him at the four addresses that I’ve been given by my client, wouldn’t you?’

‘In which case we might easily subvert the whole process and go to the last address on your list.’

‘We could do that, yes. But then you’d only have my word that it was the last address on my client’s list, wouldn’t you? So, I think we’ll just do this by the numbers. The way my client asked us to do this. You never know. We might incur some penalty for disobedience. And we wouldn’t want this decided by penalties, now would we?’

The Yacht Club in Pointe-à-Pitre wasn’t really a yacht club but a modern-looking restaurant on the edge of an empty harbour. It certainly didn’t look as if any of the smart yachts that came to winter in the Caribbean were mooring here in Guadeloupe. It wasn’t much of a restaurant either and I’ve had much better meals at Piebury Corner, near the Arsenal, and certainly less expensive ones. Guadeloupe used the euro and while there was nothing of any quality to buy and — on the evidence of the lunch we pushed around our plates at the Yacht Club — nothing to eat either, the prices were comparable with mainland France, which is to say, expensive.

It started to rain, which didn’t help my mood. The waiter came and drew down some screens to stop our table from being soaked. It seemed uncharacteristically thoughtful.

‘That’s the most expensive bad meal I’ve had in a long while,’ I remarked.

‘I’ll remind you that you said that at dinner. I warned you not to have the Creole Plate.’

‘The mobile signal’s not much better.’

‘No, but I’m really not surprised by that either.’

‘You’re not expecting much of an improvement then?’

‘In the signal? Or the food?’

‘Either one.’

‘Not until we’re back on Antigua.’

‘I’m beginning to understand why you’re over there and not here. You know, it’s a pity. You could do a lot with this island.’