‘Look, Maurice, Viktor wants me to play Sherlock here and see if I can find the person who did it before the law does. To save him some aggro.’
‘Makes sense. When you’ve got that much loot you’ve got plenty to hide as well.’
‘He reckons the Home Office are out to get him; and that I hate the police just enough to have the guts to tell them to fuck off.’
‘I don’t recall Sherlock Holmes saying that to Inspector Lestrade,’ said Maurice. ‘But fair enough. I guess that makes me Watson, right?’
‘If you like. All right then, draw me up a list of possible suspects. People with a grudge who were at Silvertown Dock. Or people who are just villains. And start putting your ear to the pipe. But let’s keep all this between you and me. No law for now, eh?’
‘I don’t like talking to the old Bill any more than you do, boss. Especially after tonight. That woman from the Yard was really trying to bring you into line, wasn’t she?’
‘I have that effect on women,’ I said. ‘And while you’re at it, check on Zarco’s ticket allocation. Who his guests were this afternoon, if any. It’s usually just his family, but you never know.’
‘Right you are, boss.’
I spent another hour under Zarco’s watchful eye going through the messages and calls on his mobile phones.
Zarco’s ‘play phone’ contained a series of texts to and from Claire Barry. Most of the older ones were spectacularly obscene. Sexting, I think they call it. A couple of times I glanced up at his portrait and shook my head.
‘You dirty old bastard,’ I said. ‘What were you thinking of? Suppose Toyah had found these?’
But the tone of their exchanges changed, abruptly, when Claire revealed to Zarco that her husband had discovered the existence of the relationship with the London City manager. Sean’s reputation had gone before him and suddenly Zarco’s texts became stiff and formal. He told Claire he was breaking it off and it was clear from our acupuncturist’s replies that the end of the love affair had caused her considerable heartache — and him, too. It seemed they had been in love with each other, although Zarco — a staunch Roman Catholic — had never made any secret of the fact that he wasn’t ever going to leave Toyah. I didn’t blame him for fancying Claire, she was a good-looking girl. I sent her a message of condolence — from my own phone — telling her I’d come and see her in the morning, if that was okay.
Meanwhile, I made a note of Claire’s mobile number and decided to try and speak with her about what had happened when I next saw her alone at Hangman’s Wood.
The ‘something else’ phone had a flat battery and I didn’t have the right kind of charger for it, so I dropped it in my desk drawer; besides, I now had an important job to do as the new manager of London City. I called Phil Hobday to tell him what he already knew; next I called Ken Okri, the team captain, and informed him that I had been appointed the caretaker manager; then I called our first team coach, Simon Page, and asked him if he would take over from me as assistant manager, and when he agreed, I also asked him to take charge of the training session on Monday morning.
‘Are the police saying anything about what happened to Zarco? Because there’s this rumour on Twitter that he was beaten to death.’ Simon was from Doncaster and whenever he spoke I was reminded of Mick McCarthy.
‘It seems to be the theory the police are working on.’
‘Not everyone loved the man like you and me, Scott.’
‘That was just his management style,’ I said. ‘He didn’t mean half the things he said. He was just winding people up. Playing mind games.’
‘In any other walk of life but football that might be okay,’ said Simon. ‘But for a lot of people, you make these kinds of remarks and they don’t forget them. They don’t forget and they learn to hate. Some of the comments I’ve seen on Twitter are less than complimentary. “Big mouth had it coming” — that kind of thing. So I’m glad you made that speech about him at Hangman’s Wood tonight. I’ve been watching it again on YouTube. In fact I’ve watched it several times. It was good what you said, and it helps cancel a lot of those negative comments out, you know? Everyone appreciated it. I just hope I’ll be as good an assistant as you were.’
‘Thanks, Simon. And you will be. I’m sure of it.’
When we’d finished talking about the team and our next match I switched on my Mac and watched myself on YouTube, the way you do. In truth, I wanted to see if I looked in any way equal to the man from whom I had taken over, who was always a master of man-motivation. Frankly, I had my doubts about that.
Someone behind me had shot the speech on an iPhone — I wasn’t sure who and it didn’t really matter — but they’d also filmed some of the players’ reactions and when I looked at them, it was a shot of Ayrton Taylor that caught my eye. Taylor was the player humiliated by Zarco in front of everyone at the training session before the Leeds game and subsequently placed on the transfer list. He was standing immediately behind Ken Okri and at first I didn’t know why, but something about Taylor struck me as curious. Then I realised what it was: as Taylor moved his hair with his left hand I could see that his hand was bandaged.
A good coach knows everything about the injuries all his players are carrying — especially those players who are for sale, because the first thing that happens before a transfer deal can be finalised with a new club is that the player submits himself to a medical — and it puzzled me that Taylor’s injured hand should have escaped my eye until now, especially as he was left-handed.
I could have called Nick Scott, the team doctor, and asked him about Taylor’s hand, but by now it was very late and I didn’t want to disturb him at home in case I’d made a mistake.
So I switched on the television and chose the London City sports channel on the Sky box. Speeding quickly through the tribute to Zarco I finally found what I was looking for — footage of both teams entering Silvertown Dock a couple of hours before the game. I saw myself — ridiculous in my hideous orange tracksuit — leading the players down the tunnel to the dressing room, Ken Okri joking with Christoph Bündchen, Xavier Pepe and Juan-Luis Dominguin lost inside their own Skullcandy, and finally Ayrton Taylor wearing his street clothes. I hit the pause button and with the Sky remote moved the picture forward, frame by frame, until I had exactly the view I wanted. This was a shot of Ayrton Taylor’s left hand. Quite clearly I saw him glance at the enormous Hublot on his wrist — the same kind of watch that Viktor had given me for Christmas.
Taylor’s hand was unbandaged. Whatever injury he had sustained must have occurred between the team’s arrival at Silvertown Dock and my speech at Hangman’s Wood, an interval of time during which João Zarco had probably been beaten to death.
20
João and Toyah Zarco’s house in Warwick Square was a ten-minute drive from my flat in Chelsea. Pimlico is quiet at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning and as I drove along the embankment in Sonja’s BMW, I hoped I’d be a little too early to encounter any of the photographers and reporters who, according to Toyah’s text, had been camped outside her front door until the small hours. I was wrong about that. They were there in force and looked like they’d been there all night. Muttering curses I drove a couple of times around the communal gardens before leaving the car on the opposite side of the square, in front of the large house the Zarcos were converting, and which was covered in scaffolding hidden behind a mural designed to look exactly like the house next door, and that described itself as ‘noise-cancelling’. Erected by the builders to forestall complaints from the neighbours, it didn’t seem to be doing its job very well; despite it being a Sunday I could already hear the sound of drilling. Texting Toyah to tell her I was approaching her front door, I walked round to the other side of the square and the elegant six-storey white stucco mansion the Zarcos had been renting while the Lambton Construction Company attempted to complete the extensive conversions ahead of schedule.