‘Wait a minute,’ said Vik. ‘Are you saying Bekim died from... from an allergic response? Not a heart attack at all?’
‘No, what I’m saying is that a heart attack was most likely the result of anaphylactic shock. Which might have been avoided if his condition had been known.’
‘But I knew Bekim for several years,’ said Vik. ‘He never mentioned any of this to me. What was he allergic to?’
‘Chickpeas.’
‘Chickpeas? You’re joking. Are you sure?’
‘Positive. And it was no joke. I’m not sure an allergy like that would have counted as much of a problem in England. But here in Greece — well, chickpeas are a menu staple. It beats me why he decided to have a holiday home here of all places, where he was at greater risk.’ I shrugged. ‘But that was Bekim.’
‘It would probably explain why he would never come for a curry,’ said Phil. ‘They use them in Indian food, too. Remember? At the end of last season we booked the Red Fort for an end of season dinner? In Soho? And he declined to come?’
‘I’d forgotten that,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I’m not sure how much of this the autopsy will reveal. An allergy produces symptoms that could easily be mistaken for something as ordinary as a heart attack. All the same I’m damned sure this is what killed him. Someone tainted his food with chickpeas. Perhaps as little as a couple of grams of the stuff. I’m afraid that for a man like Bekim this was every bit as lethal as if they’d poisoned his food with polonium.’
Vik shuddered. ‘That’s a word no Russian living abroad ever likes to hear,’ he said.
I smiled to myself; my news had shaken them more than I might have imagined.
‘Why didn’t our own team doctors find this out?’ said Phil. ‘Did they fuck up, or what?’
‘Not necessarily,’ I said. ‘It’s not really something they’d test for. More like a question they’d have asked him during the medical. What I do think is that someone at Dynamo St Petersburg covered it up to make sure Bekim’s transfer to London City went through all right when we bought him back in January. And that it was almost certainly done with the player’s own connivance.’
‘I can guess who that was,’ said Vik. ‘The club’s part owner. Semion Mikhailov.’
I was glad I didn’t have to say this myself; no one likes to tell his Russian billionaire boss that he has been sold a pig in a poke.
‘Of course,’ said Phil. ‘That slippery bastard owed you money, didn’t he? And you took Bekim as a player in part payment of that debt.’
Vik nodded sombrely. ‘Which also makes him suspect number one for nobbling him, too. Semion Mikhailov is a big gambler. But like a lot of big gamblers he prefers a sure thing. Who better than him to take advantage of our having a Champions League match here in Athens? The girl’s phone. Do you have it with you, Scott?’
I found the email I’d received from Prometheus on my own iPhone and handed it to Vik. ‘No, but I have the email she sent. From the address bar it looks like there were several people it was meant for.’
‘Would I be right in thinking that the police don’t have any of this information either?’ he asked.
‘That’s right, but only until tomorrow.’ I glanced at my watch; it was almost 2 a.m. ‘Or to be more accurate, today. I’ll have to hand Nataliya’s handbag and its contents over to Chief Inspector Varouxis later on this morning. Given that this is already a murder investigation, our lawyer, Dr Christodoulou, thinks it would be ill-advised to hold back evidence from the police for much longer.’
‘And she’d be right,’ murmured Phil. ‘You could go to prison for something like that. We all could. This is serious, Scott. By rights we should call the police right now. Don’t read that, Vik. If you do you’ll become complicit in whatever law-breaking has already occurred.’
But Vik was already reading the email.
‘Look, Phil,’ I said. ‘I’m aiming to put a bomb underneath the Greek police and I’m hoping that this email will do that. After that I really need to concentrate all my attention on Wednesday’s game. I want to walk into police headquarters this morning with enough evidence to put this whole investigation into the fast lane. Maybe even the name of the person that put her up to nicking his pens. Perhaps even the identity of the guys who dropped her in the harbour wearing a cast iron ankle bracelet. And he’ll have to listen to me because I’ve also got evidence that perhaps connects this case with a series of older murders. It turns out that this isn’t the first time that a local call girl got dumped in the marina. Back in 2008 they had something similar happen. The guy they nabbed for those had an accomplice who was never arrested. And I know who he is. With any luck his name is on that email.’
‘Jesus,’ said Phil.
‘How about it, Vik? Have we got a result?’
‘Yes and no,’ said Vik. ‘This email she tried to send — it appears to be a suicide note.’
50
‘So what did you talk about?’ asked Louise. She was wearing a little black nightdress now that resembled the twilight of some erotic goddess and was leaning on one elbow examining my face carefully for clues. ‘With Phil and Vik. It wasn’t just football, I’ll bet.’
I moved my head on the pillow.
‘He didn’t fire you, did he?’
‘No, he didn’t. But it’s almost as bad.’
I explained that Kojo Ironsi was now the club’s technical director.
‘What does that mean?’
‘For one thing I think we’re going to have a lot more African footballers in the team. But I suspect it also means that Vik wants to make all the real footballing decisions himself. He probably thinks Kojo will be more inclined to do what he’s told than I am. At least when it comes to buying and selling players.’
‘But he’s not wrong about that, is he?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Oh, come on, Scott. You were against the sale of Christoph Bündchen; and you were against the purchase of Prometheus. I seem to recall you were even opposed to buying Bekim Develi, too. I bet there’s probably someone else — someone else I don’t know about — someone Viktor Sokolnikov wanted to buy or sell and you just pissed on the idea. Made him feel stupid. You’re good at that, sometimes.’
I thought for a moment. ‘I didn’t want to sell Ken Okri to Sunderland, I suppose. Or lose John Ayensu.’
‘There you are. It’s Viktor Sokolnikov’s money, Scott. You should try to remember that. London City is his plaything, not yours. Just like this stupid yacht.’
‘What’s stupid about it?’ I said, although I knew she was right; it was a stupid yacht.
‘As a way of losing vast sums of money there’s not much that beats having a superyacht. Except a Premier League football club. It seems to me that a football club is the biggest white elephant any billionaire can buy. A white woolly mammoth, probably.’
‘I don’t know. The laws of economics operate differently when applied to football. I sometimes think that Maynard Keynes should have written a special chapter for football teams. In big clubs profit and loss don’t always mean what they’re supposed to mean.’
‘Maybe, but you wouldn’t be the first manager who couldn’t buy or sell the players he wants, would you? Doesn’t Mourinho have a similar problem with Abramovich at Chelsea? From what I’ve read it wasn’t Man U who told him he couldn’t have Wayne, it was the Russian.’
‘You’re very well informed, all of a sudden.’
‘Listen, if you don’t choose the player you can’t be held to account when he fails to score. It wasn’t Mourinho who bought Fernando Torres; ergo, he can’t be blamed when Torres misfires. Think about it, in a sense it lets you off the hook from which managers are hanged by the newspapers.’