Death in a Far Country (7 page)

As soon as they had left their coats, Laura was hailed by Tony Holloway, snaking through the crush towards them with a glass in his hand and a glazed look in his eyes that indicated that it was by no means the first drink of the day.

‘Laura,’ he said, giving her an unexpected kiss on both cheeks that she was too slow to evade. ‘Our lovely Laura,’ he went on, and Laura could feel Thackeray bristling beside her. ‘You know,’ the sports editor ploughed on, addressing himself to Thackeray now. ‘You know, your lovely Laura has suddenly become a football expert? Amazing, isn’t it? I’d no idea she understood the off-side rule, had you?’

He put an arm round Laura’s shoulder and glanced around the room, swaying slightly.

‘Jenna invited you, did she? Wonderful lady, Jenna Heywood, but not long for this job. You wait. The old guard’ll have her out, one way or another. You’ll see.’

‘You sound as if you’ve been celebrating since the final whistle,’ Laura said tartly. ‘Have you written your report for tomorrow? I reckon Ted will want it on the front page.’

‘All taken care of, sweetie, all wrapped up and ready to go, the front page splash, of course,’ Tony said blithely. ‘Ted’s here somewhere, by the way.’ He glanced across the room
in the direction of a group of heavy men with dark suits and flushed faces amongst whom Laura could see their editor chomping on a cigar and waving a whiskey glass in the air, evidently haranguing his listeners in a way that was all too familiar to his staff.

‘I didn’t know he was a footie fan,’ Laura said.

‘Oh, it’s not that game with Ted, is it, darling? It’s another sort of game entirely.’ And with that Holloway wove off into the crowd again with what she guessed he hoped was an enigmatic smile. Laura turned back to Thackeray with a shrug.

‘Sorry about that. You know, I think my foray into sport may be strictly a one-off,’ she said. ‘It’s not the game, it’s the company you have to keep. But let’s make the most of it while we’re here, shall we? The drinks seem to be over there.’

After a couple of glasses of champagne, Laura’s party turned into a dizzy whirl of introductions and brief conversations as alcohol-fuelled young men in designer gear, almost invariably accompanied by fiercely tanned young women, tottering on high heels and wearing very little, grouped and regrouped around her. She lost sight of Thackeray after a short time and suddenly found herself face to face with Paolo Minelli, who looked rather too enthusiastically pleased to see her. His girlfriend Angelica did not seem to be in sight.

‘Ciao, Laura, cara,’
he said, pronouncing her name as Dante would have done and kissing her on both cheeks. ‘You look ravishing tonight.’

‘Paolo,’ Laura said, dodging what appeared to be an attempt at an even closer embrace. ‘You must be delighted by the result yesterday.’

‘I am delighted, Jenna is delighted, OK is delighted.’ For a second his face clouded as he seemed to catch the eye of someone in the crowd behind him. ‘I just hope we can keep OK for the rest of the season,’ he said quietly, although there was little chance of being overheard amongst the frantic chatter and laughter all around them.

‘He wouldn’t go so soon, would he?’ Laura asked, surprised. ‘I thought he’d only just arrived.’

‘He was Sam Heywood’s last purchase,’ Minelli said. ‘No one rated him very highly so he came cheap and his contract is short. But there’s always pressure at clubs like this to sell the best players on. There’s never enough money.’ Suddenly his crumpled face took on an expression of tragic intensity. ‘If you’re talking to Jenna, tell her how crucial you think OK is to the team. She likes you. She’ll listen to you.’

‘Surely she wouldn’t sell him,’ Laura said.

‘There are people who would,’ Minelli said. ‘And he’s ambitious. What young man with his talent isn’t? I’m doing my best to keep him happy here, but you never know what others will offer. We pay him as much as we can afford, I helped him get a good car, a top-of-the-range Beamer, he has a nice flat, girls, whatever he wants. But I know that look in his agent’s eye. I see the pound signs there.’

Minelli took another pull at his drink and then smiled suddenly.

‘But I shouldn’t bore you with my troubles. And that’s all off the record, by the way. I almost forgot that a beautiful woman like you earns her living as a reporter.’ He put his arm around her waist and she could feel his hot hand move very close to her breast and she pulled away abruptly.

‘I must find my partner,’ she said, although she could see no sign of Thackeray in the milling and increasingly raucous crowd. But with a feeling of relief she did see Jenna Haywood moving towards her with a welcoming smile on her face. Minelli spotted her too, and with an ingratiating nod headed immediately in the opposite direction.

‘Hi,’ Jenna said. ‘I’m glad you could come. The egregious Paolo wasn’t bothering you, was he? Don’t give him any encouragement is my advice.’

‘Thanks,’ Laura said. ‘I’m certainly not going to do that. How’s it going? Has yesterday’s result made you a few more friends?’

‘Well, among the fans, maybe,’ Jenna said, with a wry smile. ‘Though they’re only as reliable as last Saturday’s result.’ She glanced around the room and fixed her gaze on the same group of middle-aged men to whom Ted Grant had been talking earlier.

‘I think Les Hardcastle’s still conniving to get me out,’ she said. ‘It’s not really results that interest him. He’s much more interested in selling United’s ground and – he says – moving out of the town centre. The plan is to buy a bigger tranche of land and build a new stadium with some sort of lucrative leisure complex attached. It’s not a bad idea, as it goes, but I reckon some of the directors wouldn’t be too upset if they didn’t have to bother with a stadium at all. I can’t prove that, of course, but football at this level is not a very cost-effective business. Everyone knows that. The shareholders would prefer a few other fish to fry. But for God’s sake, don’t say I said that.’

‘My father’s still got some shares, apparently,’ Laura said. ‘And he reckons someone’s trying to buy them up.’

Jenna looked at Laura in silence for a moment.

‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ she said. ‘You know I reckon all this stuff about not liking a woman running the club is a load of cobblers. The real reason they want to get rid of me is because I’m determined to keep the club alive for the fans. That’s what gets up their noses.’

‘You wouldn’t be thinking of selling OK Okigbo then?’ Laura asked. ‘Paolo Minelli seems to think you might.’

‘Do I look that stupid?’ Jenna said. ‘Managers at this level are always the same: they can’t decide whether they want to keep a brilliant player or sell him on and buy two or three cheaper ones. And I’m convinced some of them still line their own pockets during these transactions. Of course OK’ll go in the end. He’s bound to. He’ll want to move up to a bigger club and we’ll benefit from buying cheap and selling at a profit. Someone will make us an offer we can’t refuse. But I hope it won’t be soon. Anyway, I’ve got the majority of the shares safely locked up in my name, so they’re going to have a fight on their hands if they try any dirty tricks.’

‘Keep me in touch,’ Laura said lightly.

Jenna looked at her with a more serious expression than Laura had expected.

‘I will,’ she said. ‘I don’t trust your sports editor colleague. I reckon he’s in the pocket of Les Hardcastle and his mates. And I’m not at all sure where your editor stands. This is a small town and he wields a lot of power.’

‘Ted Grant will stand wherever he reckons will do him a bit of good,’ Laura said candidly. ‘But he will listen if there’s a good story going. In the end he’s a newspaperman first and won’t let an exclusive pass him by. So let me know if you have
trouble with Tony Holloway and there’s anything you think’s worth printing.’

Laura felt a hand on her arm and spun round, thinking Minelli had returned and ready to take him on, only to find Thackeray behind her, still holding the glass of tonic water with which he had started the evening. She introduced him briefly to Jenna, who nodded and half-turned away.

‘Good to meet you, but I have to circulate,’ she said. ‘Keep the troops motivated, and all that.’

Laura glanced at Thackeray, who seemed restless and unaccountably annoyed.

‘Is your back hurting?’ she asked quietly. But he shook his head.

‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘I just wondered who that dark-haired chap was who was pawing you.’

‘That’s the coach, Paolo Minelli,’ she said. ‘I can deal with him. He’s got a girlfriend here somewhere who’ll keep him in line anyway.’

‘How long do you want to stay?’ Thackeray asked.

Laura shook her head.

‘Let’s have something to eat and then we can go,’ she said, suddenly dispirited. ‘You go and look at the food. I just want to say hello to Les Hardcastle. He’s a friend of my father’s.’

She slipped away through the crowd but Thackeray did not take her advice. Instead he spotted the Nigerian striker Okigbo, less tall and more rounded than he expected the star player to be. He was on the other side of the room with another older, heavier black man beside him, whom he recognised as the man who had left the African Social Club that morning. The press of party-goers moved out of the way as he shouldered
his way across the crowded room and he interrupted the two men’s conversation with a curt introduction.

‘I wasn’t at the match but I hear congratulations are in order, Mr Okigbo,’ he said to the younger man, who grinned with obvious delight at the compliment.

‘I was so lucky,’ he said. ‘The goal just opened up for me. The eighty-ninth minute, you know? Unbelievable.’

‘And are you connected with the club too?’ he said to the man he knew as Emanuel.

‘Oh, just a fan really, but I knew OK’s family in Lagos before he came to this country. We are both Nigerians, and there’s not so many of us in Bradfield, so we made contact again. He kindly invited me to the party.’

‘But you didn’t recognise the girl whose picture we were showing this morning at your Social Club? We thought she might be Nigerian.’

‘No, I didn’t know her.’ Emanuel was clearly not intending to offer any further information about himself and Thackeray wondered why. OK Okigbo looked puzzled.

‘What girl is this?’ he asked.

‘I’m a police officer, Mr Okigbo,’ Thackeray said, watching the footballer closely for any sign of alarm, which he knew was not unusual and far from incriminating when the word ‘police’ was introduced into casual conversation, but the young man’s cheerfulness did not dissipate. ‘I’m investigating the death of a black girl we can’t identify and I went to the African Social Club this morning to see whether anyone could place her. Nobody did. You haven’t come across a young African girl recently, have you?’

‘Afraid not,’ OK said easily. If he was lying he was good at
it, Thackeray thought.

‘If she was Nigerian we would know her,’ Emanuel said flatly.

‘You know all the Nigerians in Bradfield, do you, Mr – erm – I don’t think I caught your name?’

‘Emanuel Asida,’ the man said. ‘And yes, I think I probably do.’

But before Thackeray could pursue his questions two more men joined the group.

‘All right, OK?’ a heavily built ginger-haired man in an electric blue suit asked aggressively. He turned his gaze on Thackeray when the young footballer nodded slightly uncertainly. ‘Jenkins,’ he said. ‘Dennis Jenkins. I’m OK’s agent. I keep an eye on his interests, and all that malarky.’ The eyes Jenkins kept on the world were blue and very sharp.

‘Steve Stone,’ the other man said. ‘We’ve met before, Mr Thackeray. I didn’t expect to see you here. United is your secret vice, then, is it?’ He held out a hand, which Thackeray ignored as his mind flashed back to the last occasion he had seen Stone: across an interview-room table at the beginning of an ultimately abortive investigation into the man’s connection with several different vices in Bradfield a couple of years before. In spite of what the police reckoned was sufficient evidence for Stone’s financial involvement in a brothel masquerading as a club, the Crown Prosecution Service had not been impressed and Stone had walked away laughing, an episode, Thackeray thought, that seemed to have done nothing to dent his cocky self-confidence. He nodded.

‘You’re another football fan?’ he asked.

‘In the family,’ Stone said with an easy smile. ‘My sister
Angelica’s Paolo Minelli’s partner.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Thackeray said. ‘I’ve seen Mr Minelli at work.’ Stone scowled at that and seemed about to demand an explanation when Jenkins cut in.

‘I’ll have to drag OK away now,’ he said, taking the young footballer’s arm firmly. ‘A photo-call for a snapper from London, and we can’t ignore them, can we? Not with OK’s prospects. It was quite a result we had yesterday and OK’s a star now.’

He and Stone virtually escorted the footballer out of the room, reminding Thackeray of a pair of coppers with their prisoner, but when he glanced at Emanuel Asida quizzically the older Nigerian’s smile was bland.

‘He’ll go far, that boy,’ he said.

‘I’m sure,’ Thackeray agreed. ‘He looks as if he’s being well advised.’ And he turned away to seek out Laura again. But his search was interrupted by a sudden shriek from the far side of the room. Peering over the heads of the crowd as it turned in the direction of the continuing noise, he could see two young women, in the regulation stilettos and revealing dresses of the players’ wives and girlfriends, being pulled away from a red-faced young man in a smart Italian suit who appeared to have had a drink thrown over him and was cursing volubly. And slipping through the crowd from their direction, with a broad smile on her face, was Laura herself.

‘What’s all that about?’ he asked.

‘Some spat between one of the players and his girlfriend about who else he’s been seeing, as far as I can work out. She threw the drink and he slapped her face.’

‘Nothing new there, then,’ Thackeray said, still watching
as the two women who had attacked the player pushed and shoved their unsteady way towards the door. One was in tears and the other attempting to comfort her, with an arm around her bony shoulders.

‘There’s nothing in it, Katrina,’ the comforter said, as they passed Laura and Thackeray. ‘They’re just effing tarts, those girls, always hanging around to see what they can get their minging hands on, nothing serious, believe me.’