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.’
For Dumas the best bit of news will have been that he was picked for the game against Guingamp. This does not sound much for a player of his standing and the player’s latest comments will only fuel speculation that he is on his way out of Parc des Princes and is already bound for another club. Some will say good riddance. If you compare Dumas’s stats with those of Ibrahimovic and Cavani it’s impossible not to agree with this reporter that, given the number of minutes played versus the number of goals scored and shots at goal, Dumas has been found wanting. It seems he has yet to learn that more is expected of the player earning €125,000 a week than the fans paying his wages. But in the warped world of modern football these spoiled Renaissance princelings seem to want it all.
Mandel looked up. ‘That’s it. There’s a table here on the page opposite with those stats which tell the real truth. But really, what he said, it was unforgivable. Most people think he gave the interview to accelerate his transfer to another club.’
‘That’s certainly the way I read it,’ I said. ‘Then again, there’s no doubt he was genuinely depressed. This is Seroxat. You don’t take this unless there’s a real problem. I wonder if the team doctor knew he was using this shit.’
Mandel shrugged, collected the packet of Cialis in his enormous paw and pulled a face.
‘Or that.’
‘Any man of his age who can’t get it up for a woman like Bella Macchina has a problem, all right. That’s a better reason to get depressed than not getting the ball in the back of the net.’
‘Erectile dysfunction is often a corollary of depression.’
Mandel grinned. ‘Maybe in England, monsieur. But not here in France. We get depressed but we’re never so depressed that we could stop fucking.’
We went into the bedroom where I quickly found a drawer full of bondage equipment: chains and manacles, collars and restraints. And it was only now that I noticed the mirror on the ceiling immediately above the bed, which I pointed out to Mandel.
‘Maybe he likes fucking a lot,’ suggested Mandel. ‘In which case he might have needed the Cialis. Even a man as young and fit as Jérôme Dumas can require a little help now and again. I wish we’d had this stuff when I was his age. Especially if I had known what I now know, which is that you get to a certain age and you don’t fuck at all. With or without Cialis.’
9
Dumas’s PA, Alice, provided me with several useful telephone numbers, including that of his ex-girlfriend, Bella Macchina, the Marilyn Agency model whom she called and arranged for me to meet that evening. Alice made me coffee while she and I talked in the apartment’s huge and very shiny kitchen. She was a good-looking girl with short hair and glasses who somehow reminded me of Jeanne d’Arc. Perhaps it was the gamine hairstyle. Then again it might have been the silver cross around her neck, the silver bouclé sweater that resembled a chain-mail shirt, or the number of cigarettes she smoked, lit with a handsome vintage lacquer Dunhill she said had been a parting gift from Jérôme Dumas, the flame of which needed a little adjusting it was so long.
I explained that PSG and FCB had hired me to try and find him.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Mr Mandel from the club told me.’
‘First of all — and I’m sure that a lot of people have asked this already, so I apologise in advance — but have you any idea at all where Jérôme might be now?’
‘I had assumed he was already in Spain. That he must have gone there immediately he came back from his holiday in Antigua. Because there was no real reason for him to return to Paris. The apartment is up for sale. The agency believed it would sell more easily if he left it furnished as it is now. Only Mr Mandel tells me that there’s no evidence he ever came back from Antigua. That neither of the return air tickets he bought were used.’
‘I believe so. Tell me about Antigua.’
‘He had planned to go there for two weeks over Christmas and New Year. It was me who bought the air tickets and booked the hotel.’
‘There were two tickets?’
‘He had arranged to go there with his girlfriend, Bella. But they broke up just before they were supposed to go and so he went on his own.’
‘Any idea why they broke up?’
Alice smiled. ‘He was like any other young man with too much money. There were a great many other women ready to help him spend it. I think she was able to tolerate that for a bit. After all, she saw a few other men herself. But with Jérôme women were like a hobby. You’d have to ask her about this. I don’t feel comfortable talking about this with a stranger.’
‘You’ll forgive me, I hope, if some of my questions seem intrusive, but there’s a time factor here. If I don’t find him soon I think the loan deal with FC Barcelona could be off. Which would be bad for Jérôme. His reputation is already in the mud. This could finish him. Clubs don’t like players who take time to settle in, but they especially don’t like players who disappear without a trace. It makes picking a team difficult.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said. ‘So, ask away.’
‘Did you ever sleep with him yourself?’
She coloured.
‘I’m sorry. But I have to ask.’
‘Yes. But we both agreed it was a mistake and we decided not to do it again.’
‘Was it?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Did he agree more than you did? That it was a mistake?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you in love with him, maybe?’
‘Yes,’ she said dully. Alice took off her glasses and began to clean them with a tissue she’d found in the sleeve of her sweater. She was much better looking than I had first appreciated.
‘Did he know that?’
‘No. I certainly didn’t tell him. And I don’t think he was capable of knowing it in any other way. He was much too caught up in himself to have even considered the possibility. My feelings were probably quite low on his horizon.’
‘When Bella said she wouldn’t go with him to Antigua — did he ever ask you to go in her place?’
‘He would have done if I hadn’t already made it very clear that I wasn’t prepared to go in those circumstances.’ She tried a smile but it didn’t seem to work very well. ‘It’s one thing to come off the bench as a player substitute in a football match, it’s another thing to take another girl’s place in a man’s bed. Even if the sex we had was very good.’
‘Why did he want to go to Antigua when he was from the island of Guadeloupe? After all, Guadeloupe is less than a hundred kilometres south of Antigua.’
‘I asked him that. The reason was simple, he said. For one thing he has no family left in Guadeloupe. But the main reason he said is that Antigua has much better hotels. He was booked in to stay at Jumby Bay, which is the best hotel on the island, apparently. A villa there costs anything between ten and twenty thousand US dollars a night.’