The last time I punched someone in the face as hard as that I’d been on C wing — the induction wing — at Wandsworth Prison; I don’t even remember his name, all I know is that the guy had it coming DHL. It was some white bastard with more body art than a tattoo parlour window, who hated Arsenal and who kept calling me a coon; and that would have been all right except that on this particular day he’d gobbed on me, too — a great green Gilbert of a gob that was the slimy straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. According to the medical orderly in the prison hospital I broke his nose so badly it looked like a belly dancer and they had to put so many bandages up his nostrils that they thought he was Paul fucking Daniels when they pulled them all out again.
Kojo could take a punch though and for a minute or two he and I went at it, trading punches and kicks as if we were matched in a cage at the Troxy in east London’s Commercial Road. Finally, after a couple of hard ones on the side of my head that left my ears singing like a kettle, I felled him with a short uppercut and he didn’t get up again.
By now the bodyguards had appeared, guns in hand, but with the fight very obviously over, Vik waved them out again.
‘Out, out,’ he yelled. ‘Get the fuck out. We’ll deal with this ourselves.’
I bent down, retrieved the silk handkerchief from the top pocket of Kojo’s safari jacket, wiped my face and my knuckles with it and threw it away.
‘I need a drink,’ I said. ‘I need a drink very badly. D’you mind if I help myself?’ I poured a glass of champagne, drained the glass, sat down and breathed a sigh of relief.
‘I feel so much better now that I’ve done that.’
59
Vik and Phil looked at me with a mixture of fear and horror, so much so that I laughed out loud. Then there was a big roar outside and I jumped up to look out of the window, but it wasn’t a goal, just the Greeks bellyaching about something else. I turned back to face my employers and shook my head.
‘I thought we scored again,’ I said. ‘But it was nothing.’
‘Jesus, Scott,’ said Vik. ‘Have you gone mad?’
‘Maybe. Now ask me why I smacked him.’
Vik rolled his eyes and shook his head. ‘I already told you,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘I know he’s a crook and I really don’t care what he’s done.’
‘Oh, he’s a bit more than a crook, is our technical director. He’s a murderer. It was him who was behind what happened to your friend and mine, Bekim Develi.’
Kojo pushed himself up on one elbow and leaned back against the wall. ‘It’s not true, Vik,’ he said, reaching for the handkerchief that was no longer in his breast pocket. ‘I never murdered anyone.’
‘You know,’ I said, ‘I have to hand it to you, Kojo, that’s almost true. Almost.’
‘Here.’ Phil picked the handkerchief off the floor where I’d dropped it and tossed it to him; Kojo wiped his bleeding nose with it and stayed silent.
Vik poured himself a glass of champagne, set down an upturned chair and sat on it. ‘Why don’t you just calm down, Scott?’ he said. ‘Calm down and tell us what this is all about.’
‘I guess I am pretty stoked,’ I said. ‘All right. Here it is — the whole ninety minutes. On Sunday, when I was on your boat, I told you that someone put Nataliya Matviyenko up to stealing Bekim’s EpiPens from his bungalow at the Astir Palace Hotel, on the night before he died. That someone was our friend Kojo, here. Kojo actually drove her away from the hotel in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes after she’d nicked the pens to order. I know that because on Monday morning the police showed me some new CCTV footage.’
‘It wasn’t me,’ said Kojo.
‘It’s true that no one can see your face on that film, Kojo. The Greek cop, Chief Inspector Varouxis — he thinks you were another punter, one who was into some kinky sex, on account of the fact that there was a whip lying on the rear shelf of the car. Except that it wasn’t a whip at all; it was that stupid fly-whisk you always have with you, wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ said Kojo, dabbing at his nose with his handkerchief. ‘And I didn’t know anyone called Nataliya.’
‘We can easily check with the local limo companies to see if you hired a car that night. No? And you already knew Nataliya from a trip you made here to Athens just a few months ago. I have a witness who was with you. Another hooker.’
‘That’s your witness?’ Kojo laughed. ‘Another hooker?’
‘Kojo had dinner with her and this other girl, one of his players — Séraphim Ntsimi, who plays for Panathinaikos — and Roman Boerescu, who plays for Olympiacos, of course. In case you weren’t paying attention, he’s the one who almost scored against us tonight. Oh, and if you’ve forgotten Nataliya, she was the hooker who drowned herself in the harbour, because she was so upset about what happened to poor Bekim. They were good friends apparently. She has my sympathies. I’m pretty upset about it myself. But then you’ve probably guessed as much by now.’
I took a deep breath and tried to overcome the adrenalin coursing through my body that was making me tremble a little. A big part of me wanted to really go to town on Kojo for what he’d done; a bloody nose didn’t seem like nearly enough.
‘Why would Kojo do such a thing?’ asked Vik.
‘Exactly,’ whispered Kojo.
‘Money. That’s why Kojo does everything, right? For money. In case you didn’t notice he’s spent the last few months desperate for money. On account of the fact that he has some largish gambling debts. Remember when we met him at that restaurant in Paris? Taillevent. He said then that he was going to Russia to look for a partner — trying to offload the King Shark Football Academy to someone with very deep pockets. Anyway, it turns out that he found a partner. Only it wasn’t exactly the kind of partner he was looking for. He and your old friend, the owner of Dynamo St Petersburg, Semion Mikhailov, made a very substantial bet on the unlicensed market to do with the outcome of our first match against Olympiacos. Mikhailov knew about Bekim’s allergy and persuaded Kojo that he should help make the bet against London City a sure thing. By putting the fix in on our best player. A player who Mikhailov just happened to know was also our most vulnerable.’
‘Vik,’ said Kojo. ‘You have to believe me. This is all pure fantasy. I never made any such bet.’
‘Maybe you didn’t make it yourself, but you were in on it. And you had a good excuse to be here in Athens and do Semion Mikhailov’s dirty work, didn’t you, Kojo? City had just bought Prometheus and we were playing Olympiacos for a place in the Champions League. And you were looking to sell us another player, too. You were even invited on Vik’s yacht to talk about it. Which was also very convenient as you didn’t have to stay on the mainland and become a potential suspect like the rest of us.’
Vik looked pained for a moment. ‘It’s one thing stealing his pens,’ he said. ‘But that’s not what why Bekim died. As you said yourself on Sunday night, someone tainted his food with chickpeas. Perhaps as little as a couple of grams of the stuff. I can’t see how Kojo could have done that. On the day of the match Kojo was with Phil and me all day. Plus we have a team nutritionist. Everyone was very careful about what they ate before the match. On your own instructions.’
‘Yes, I didn’t understand that part myself. Until tonight, when I was in the tunnel before the match and I saw Mrs Boerescu. It turns out that she’s employed by Olympiacos to look after the kids before the match. You know? The ones who walk onto the pitch with the teams. I spoke to her just now. Nice woman. According to her it was Kojo who paid for the tea tonight. And who generously paid for the tea last week — on the night Bekim Develi died. Normally those kids don’t have any tea. On account of how everyone in Greece is short of money. But Kojo thought that was too bad and decided to take on the cost himself.’