The chain of causation was beginning to seem clear enough, too. Zarco would have known that the Qatari guy who owned suite 123 wasn’t likely to be using it for a while and figured he could use the room as his letterbox. Gentile would have taken the fifty grand to the suite and left it in the fridge freezer, as instructed in Zarco’s texts; but when the news of Zarco’s death broke the Italian agent must have realised that only he and Zarco knew about the bung and figured that he might as well try and recover the money. It was just sitting there, getting cold, and with the key it would have been easy enough, but at the same time Gentile couldn’t have risked leaving the cash there for much longer as there was a match against the Hammers on Tuesday night and, unlike Zarco, he had no way of knowing if suite 123 would remain unoccupied by its usual owner.
It was time I spoke to Gentile, so I called him on my mobile and on this occasion he answered.
‘Scott,’ he said, ‘I was just about to phone and congratulate you. It’s too bad about João. He was truly one of the greats and I shall miss him a great deal. But I hope you and I can do business together in the future.’
I’d met Paolo Gentile on several occasions; it was hard to be the assistant manager of a top English football club owned by a billionaire and not have met Paolo Gentile. Where there is a huge picnic laid out on a perfect lawn there are also wasps, and Gentile was one of the largest and most persistent. FIFA seemed to have him under permanent investigation but nothing ever stuck. And unlike most English football agents, who couldn’t have looked less like their clients, Gentile was smooth and cool and strikingly handsome, in a very Italian way. He always dressed well, in Brioni, and his many white Ferraris were his trademark and just the thing to excite the impressionable and usually car-crazy young men who were the subject of his relentless human trafficking. Incredibly thin — he seemed to survive on a diet of tennis, cigarettes and coffee — Gentile had a hooked nose that lent him the profile of some Renaissance princeling or Doge of Venice. And he was just as cunning as either.
My Italian was usually better than his English but on this occasion I wanted him to be the one who was paying close attention and so I sat down on the sofa and continued the conversation in my own first language.
‘That all depends, Paolo,’ I said. ‘You see, I’ve just been having a little chat with a friend of yours. Terry Shelley. I caught him raiding the fridge here yesterday evening. It seems as if he was trying to find you a late-night snack. That’s what fifty grand is to someone like you, isn’t it, Paolo? A snack.’
‘Terry Shelley. I don’t know him, Scott. Unless he’s the boy who plays up front for QPR.’
‘Nobody plays up front for QPR, Paolo. If they’ve any sense they sit back and defend. And if you’ve any sense you’ll sit back and try to do the same. Only the ball’s already in the back of your net, old son. It only remains for me to decide on the proper course of action. Whether to involve FIFA or the Metropolitan Police. After all, there is a murder inquiry going on here at Silvertown Dock. And you were trying to get hold of what the police might consider to be vital evidence that might shed some light on who killed João Zarco.’
‘I had nothing to do with what happened to Zarco,’ said Gentile. ‘Really, I am as mystified by what happened as you probably are. But you know that already, of course. Otherwise you wouldn’t be calling me like this, would you? And you must also have the money, too. Perhaps you have even decided to keep it for yourself. I certainly couldn’t stop you. So the only question is what else do you want, Scott?’
‘Some information.’
‘Perhaps I can help you. But let’s be quite clear. It’s you I’m speaking to, right? Not the police.’
‘You know about me and the police, Paolo. We’re not really on speaking terms. Haven’t been for a while.’
‘Yes, I thought that was still the situation. I just wanted to hear you say it. In Italy we have a different attitude to the police than you do in England. You make jokes about the law-abiding Germans but I think no one in Europe is quite as law-abiding as the English.’
‘You’re forgetting I’m half German, half Scots.’
‘That’s true. So then, let’s talk. What do you want to know?’
‘I know about the insider share deal with SSAG. And to be fair I should inform you that so does Viktor Sokolnikov.’
‘That’s a pity. Is he going to inform the Financial Services Authority?’
‘Probably not if he can avoid it. Viktor likes to keep a low profile where he can. He’s going to speak to his lawyer before he does anything. But even if he did speak to the FSA you can probably blame what happened on Zarco.’
‘Thanks for that, Scott. I appreciate the heads-up.’
‘Look, the only thing I don’t know about is the cash part of the bung. What he wanted it for. And what the urgency was. So, tell me about Saturday morning.’
‘Are you turning detective at the same time as you become the new City boss? I’ve heard of total football. What’s this? Total football management?’
‘You might say I’m playmaking here, yes. Making space for the truth, perhaps. I figure it’s my job to sort things out here as quickly as possible. Not just the football, but the rest of it, too. The unsolved murder of a club manager is very bad for player morale.’
‘True.’ Gentile paused long enough to light a cigarette and inhale sharply. ‘So then. We’d done business like this before, Zarco and I. He would use an executive box when he knew it wasn’t going to be occupied. It was convenient for him and convenient for me, too. I went to the box, as instructed. I left the bung in the icebox, as instructed. Zarco wasn’t there when I got there; and he wasn’t there when I left. That’s all I know about Saturday morning.’
‘And why did he want the cash? I mean, he seemed to be in a hurry for it. In his texts he said he wanted it for the weekend.’
‘That’s true, he was. But I don’t know why. Look, why does anyone want cash, Scott? Paper is nice to have around. You put it in your safe and you use it for holiday expenses, to pay the babysitter, to give to your mama at Christmas. Lots of managers like a bit of cash in hand. Literally. They’re old-fashioned like that. You’d be surprised who else likes a bung; it’s not just the usual suspects. It’s like drugs and sport. Nobody takes drugs until they get caught and even then it’s a mistake, someone else’s fault, a cold remedy that turned out to be something bad. It’s the same with bungs. Everyone is against it until they get one. And is it any wonder with all the money that’s sloshing around football right now? BT pays out nine hundred million pounds for broadcast rights to the Champions League and right the way down the food chain there are people saying, dov’è la mia parte? Where’s my slice of the big pizza? That’s just economics, Scott. The law of supply and demand. Except that Adam Smith forgot about the law of television sport and the law of two hundred grand a week and the law of insatiable greed. You can’t change that. All you can do is take advantage of it.’
‘Did Zarco mention he was scared of anyone? I’m wondering if he wanted the fifty grand to pay someone off. Someone who’d threatened him, perhaps. I take it you heard about the grave that was dug in our pitch, with Zarco’s photograph at the bottom of it?’