Gentile Friday 22.13
Okay. Will you be there?
Zarco Friday 22.15
Maybe. Not sure. Before the game I have a lunch in director's dining room with VS and some people from the council. So if I'm not there just leave it where you left it last time.
Gentile Friday 22.25
Will do. Should beat Newcastle.
Zarco Friday 22.45
Scott has good idea to psyche them out. You wait and see.
Gentile Saturday 10.00
Have 50k.
Zarco Saturday 10.10
Glad to hear it.
Gentile Saturday 11.17
On my way to SD.
Gentile Saturday 11.45
Arrived at SD.
Zarco Saturday 11.48
If we meet anywhere in the ground outside 123 just blank me, okay?
Gentile Saturday 11.55
No problem. I'm not going to stay for the match.
Zarco Saturday 12.10
I appreciate this.
Gentile Saturday 12.10
No problem. Football Focus thinks it will be a draw today.
Zarco Saturday 12.15
Is that Keown or Lawro?
Gentile Saturday 12.18
Lawro.
Zarco Saturday 12.19
Both good defenders, but Keown is smarter. Besides, you can't have a haircut like Lawrenson's and be taken seriously. Put your money on City.
Gentile Saturday 12.23
I never bet on anything that's not a sure thing.
Zarco Saturday 12.45
Sensible guy.
Gentile Saturday 13.00
Delivered as promised. Just missed you, I think. Easy as 123. Good luck this afternoon, and enjoy weekend. I'm off home now. I have to fly back to Italy this evening.
Gentile Saturday 15.15
A thank you would be nice.
Gentile Saturday 15.25
Whatever. At airport.
Gentile Saturday 19.00
Back in Milan. Where the fuck are you?
There were no texts from Zarco after 12.45 p.m. and, according to Phil Hobday, Zarco had left the director’s dining room at around 1.05 p.m., after which he hadn’t been seen alive again. Where had he gone after that? It was impossible to imagine him being forced to go somewhere against his will without someone noticing. Zarco’s face was in a thirty-foot-high mural on the side of the stadium. He wasn’t exactly anonymous. Surely someone must have seen him.
These texts begged several other questions, too: if Paolo Gentile had brought a fifty grand bung to Silvertown Dock and left it hidden somewhere for João Zarco, where was it now? Was it even where he had left it? After all, fifty grand is a pretty good reason to beat someone up and rob them. Unless of course he hadn’t brought it at all, and they’d quarrelled again. Wasn’t it possible that the texts Gentile had sent to Zarco after 1 p.m. had just been a cover? And where better to be now that the police were investigating Zarco’s death than safely at home in Italy?
On the other hand, maybe Toyah was right after all, and Zarco had good reason to be afraid of Viktor — a better reason than even she knew. Just what would Viktor have done if he’d found out that Zarco had bought shares in SSAG on an insider tip?
In the hope of learning more — what was 123? Who were the guys he’d needed the fifty grand for? Could they have been sufficiently pissed off at Zarco to have killed him? — I called Paolo Gentile on the number listed on Zarco’s mobile phone, but I wasn’t at all surprised when the call went straight to his voicemail. I left a message asking Gentile to call me urgently.
By now I had also realised just how sensitive all of these texts were and how dearly the police would have wanted to see what was on Zarco’s phone. Of course I knew that I was committing a serious offence by not handing it over — withholding evidence in a murder inquiry carries a prison sentence, and I knew all about what that was like. I had no wish ever to go back to Wandsworth. But Zarco’s reputation and that of London City were of greater consequence than this. For the first time in my life I knew the absolute truth of Bill Shankly’s famous quote when he was still the manager of Liverpooclass="underline" ‘Some people believe football is a matter of life and death... I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.’
And how.
26
I went along to the players’ lounge where everyone was watching Sky Sports, just for a change — Tottenham versus West Bromwich Albion, the first of three Super Sunday televised matches. In the studio before the match there was, of course, plenty of talk about Zarco’s death and my appointment as manager, which the three pundits seemed to think was a good thing. I tried not to pay attention to it but I’d always respected Gary Neville; that back pass to Paul Robinson in the Euro 2008 qualifier against Croatia aside, you had to admire a man who, at the age of just twenty-three, had had the strength of character to tell Glenn Hoddle just what he thought about the faith healer the England manager had brought into the squad.
Every so often an attractive uniformed WPC with a clipboard from the Essex Constabulary would summon one of the players or staff who’d been at Silvertown Dock the day before for a short interview with a detective; but this seemed to be taking a while and some of the lads near the end of the alphabet were impatient to get back home to spend what would have been a rare Sunday with their families. A few of the others were behaving in a rather boorish and tiresome way towards the poor WPC; when she came into the room one of the younger players said, ‘Hey, lads, the stripper’s here,’ and I quickly gained the impression that this had been going on for a while.
‘That’s enough of that,’ I said firmly. ‘This woman has got a job to do. Try to remember that this is a murder inquiry and treat her with respect.’
Which was good, coming from me.
Everyone groaned, not because they disagreed with me but because Tottenham, who were just three points behind us in the table, scored first.
‘Hey, boss, can you get someone to turn the heating on? It’s brass monkeys in here,’ someone said. ‘We’ve asked Big Simon but nothing seems to happen.’
Which explained why a moody-looking Ayrton Taylor was wearing a black shearling coat from Dolce & Gabbana which seemed to match his curly, rockabilly hair; on the other hand, since the coat cost seven grand, maybe he just didn’t want to leave it lying around for someone to fuck with — give it a haircut, perhaps. I couldn’t blame him for that. Players were always pissing around with each other’s clothes — cutting the arse out of a pair of jeans, and sometimes far worse. I’d looked at that coat in the shop myself and decided that a) seven grand was far too much to pay for a coat and b) I looked like a tit in it anyway. That was how Sonja came to buy me a nice grey cashmere coat from Zegna. Taylor’s hand was still bandaged but he wasn’t trying to hide it in his pocket as perhaps he might have done if he really had battered Zarco to death.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I said, then I caught Taylor’s dark eye. ‘Ayrton. Could I have a word with you, please?’
‘Sure.’
We stepped outside and walked down the corridor until we came to a bulletproof glass cabinet containing Viktor Sokolnikov’s most precious possession — a replica of the famous Jules Rimet trophy that he had bought from the Brazilian Football Confederation for fifty million dollars. The real one was in a vault in Viktor’s bank — but most people believed the one on display at Silvertown Dock was the real thing.