‘He was afraid you’d find out and that you’d be angry.’
‘He was damn right. I didn’t know this, Scott. But now that I do, I am angry. Perhaps I would have sacked him if I’d found out. Perhaps I might have been obliged to sack him, you know? It’s such a stupid thing to have done. Maybe I would even have hit him.’ Viktor smiled wryly as he realised what he’d said. ‘Yes, I might have hit him for being greedy, and for dropping me in the shit, which this does. But let me be quite clear, Scott: I would not have had him beaten to death. Insider trading — even by proxy — is a serious matter. Difficult to prove, but serious. And yet not so serious that I would have had him killed. Even so, I shall certainly have to take legal advice in this matter. Just in case it is suspected that I gave Zarco this information so that he might profit from it.’
‘How did he find out? Do you have any idea?’
‘That’s a good question. I’m not sure. Perhaps he saw something on my laptop once, read an email on my iPhone, I don’t know for sure. But more importantly now, how did you find out? And does anyone else know about this? In particular, the police?’
‘Gentile knows, but that’s all. I only know because Zarco used to keep a burner phone in my cabinet drawer, which he used for — well, I assumed it was for making arrangements with his mistress. In fact I think this particular phone was exclusively for speaking with Gentile.’
‘And this phone? You still have it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I should like to see it,’ said Viktor. ‘It may even be that I will have to give it to my lawyers. Just to protect myself, you understand.’
‘I want to speak to Gentile before I do that. I’d like to use it to lever some more information out of him, if I can.’
‘Be very careful, Scott. While I’m not connected to the world of organised crime, the same can’t be said of Paolo Gentile.’
‘You mean, he’s linked to the Mafia?’
‘Gentile lives in Milan but he is originally from Sicily. A few years ago he was investigated by the Italian authorities for his links to a man called Giovanni Malpensa. Malpensa is the head of a family that controls the Palermo district of Trabia; not to mention a stake in several Italian football clubs. Gentile may not be dangerous but Giovanni Malpensa certainly is.’
‘And you still allowed the Traynor deal to be made by this man?’
‘You think one agent is any more honest than another? Come on, don’t be so naïve. Denis Kampfner has some very crooked friends in Manchester’s drug-dealing underworld. This is not surprising, of course, because there’s more money than ever in football. It’s a whale, tied to the side of the ship that’s the world economy. And more money means there are more sharks feeding on it. In 2013 BT paid almost a billion dollars for Champions League and UEFA football broadcasting rights. But do you honestly think that means the game has become any less corrupt than it ever was? On the contrary. Football and money go hand in hand. Football itself has become an important marketing tool — perhaps the biggest marketing tool there is, these days. How else are you to reach the all-important market of men? Life’s decision-makers. Whatever the women’s groups say should happen, it’s still men who make the big financial decisions in any household, which means they’re the most important audience to reach. Anywhere in the world. From Qatar to Queensland, football is now the lingua franca of the world. It’s why people are prepared to bid so much for World Cup rights, even to the extent of paying millions of dollars in bribes.’
‘Which reminds me,’ I said. ‘I understand we’re to be the Subara stadium.’
‘Yes, the Subara. It’s a little like the Emirates, don’t you think?’
‘And yet we could so easily have been the Jintian Niao-3Q.’
Viktor made a comic sad face. ‘Yes, it’s a great pity that isn’t going to happen. Unless of course you feel inclined to accuse the Qataris of murdering Zarco, Scott. That would certainly be a game-changer. It would leave the field clear for the Chinese. Again. Of course if you did that you’d be a friend to me.’ He laughed a big jolly laugh. ‘Not to mention Ronan Reilly. He’d be pleased to have the Qataris accused of murder, too.’
He was smiling but it was hard to know if he was joking or not. That was the thing about Viktor Sokolnikov; he was a hard man to read.
‘Look, Viktor. I think I should make one thing quite clear. I’m not going to accuse anyone of murder unless I’m absolutely sure they did it. Not for you, not for Jintian Niao-3Q, not for anyone. Right now, I’ve no idea who killed Zarco. No idea at all. And I really think it’s best I keep any theory in this matter in reserve until I have some pretty hard evidence, don’t you?’
‘Well, please make sure you let me know first of all. I shall be very interested to hear what you have to say on the subject. Very interested indeed.’
‘Thanks for being so frank with me, Viktor.’
‘No problem.’
‘Since you’re being frank, let me ask you one more question.’
‘Fire away.’
‘That argument you had with Alisher Aksyonov, on Russian TV. When you nutted him in the teeth? What was it about?’
Viktor grinned sheepishly. ‘What else but football?’
31
It was almost seven o’clock when I decided to pack up and go home. I was tired. It had been a long day and I was looking forward to seeing Sonja and doing not very much. Maurice tossed me my car keys and wished me a good night.
‘You staying in the office?’ I asked.
‘Just for a short while,’ he said. ‘I made a call to a mate, someone I knew in Wandsworth. He’s always been good for information. You know, the sort you can’t get on Google. And he said he’d call back before seven thirty. I was thinking that if this was a professional job — I mean the meet-and-greet on Zarco — then he’d probably know about it. There’s not much he doesn’t know.’
‘Thanks, Maurice.’
‘Careful driving home, boss. It’s pretty murky out there.’
I went along the corridor towards the main stairs. It kept you fit walking around and up and down the dock; there were only three floors but at the highest point of the Crown of Thorns the building was almost ten storeys high, a height of more than one hundred feet, and it could take you a full ten minutes to make your way around the entire floor. Some of the security guys and post boys used Segways — those electric stand-up scooters — but I preferred to walk, especially on a day as busy as this one when I’d been unable to get into the gym. Things were much quieter now and almost everyone had gone home. A yard or two ahead of me, a uniformed police officer seemed to be walking in the same direction and, in his wake, I could detect a faint whiff of something sweet and vaguely familiar.
‘Are you lost?’ I asked, helpfully. ‘This place is like the maze at Hampton Court. Each floor looks the same.’
‘Looking for the stairs to the main entrance,’ he muttered.
‘Then you are lost,’ I said. ‘The main stairs are back the way you just came. This way are the stairs to entrance Z. Which leads to the car park.’
‘The car park will do,’ he said vaguely. ‘That’s where I left my car.’
Everything about this copper seemed vague except the smell, which at last came to whichever part of my memory dealt with something as elusive as the proper names for scents. I could never identify perfumes. I never knew the name of the stuff Sonja preferred, but I did know the smell that was coming off the copper’s clothes. When you’ve spent eighteen months in Wandsworth you get to know the smell of marijuana the way you know the stink of your own unwashed body. And there was something else that was strange: the car park I was going to was the players’ car park, not the place where the police had parked their own vehicles; that was outside the front entrance.