False Nine (22 page)

‘And what conclusions have you made?’

‘None yet.’ She smiled and squeezed my hand. It was supposed to make me feel better only her nails seemed quite sharp. ‘I’ll let you know when I’m ready to make my summing-up.’

‘I can’t wait, your honour.’

Grace opened her handbag, found a handkerchief, dabbed her forehead and then produced a bottle of scent with which she deodorised herself and then the car.

The driver laughed and said something in Creole.

‘Where are we going now?’ I asked.

‘The beach. In Le Gosier.’

‘We were in Le Gosier before lunch, weren’t we?’

‘Yes. And now we’re going back there.’

‘Because it’s preordained by your client that we should.’

‘Yes.’

‘I remind you of a cat, you said.’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Well, you remind me of a cat, as well. But for entirely different reasons. The fact is, you’re quite inscrutable. I look at you and I have no idea what you’re thinking.’

‘Good. I’d hate to think I could be so easily read.’

‘Lady, I couldn’t read you if you’d hired the Red Arrows to write your name in the clouds.’

‘Maybe I’m not such a mystery.’

‘No. But everything else to do with you is.’

‘Trust me. All will be revealed.’

I pulled a face.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘When a lawyer says trust me, I need to check I still have my wallet.’

‘Go ahead. I think I know every cheap lawyer joke there is.’

‘Except that there are no cheap lawyers.’

‘And yet it was me who bought your air ticket from Antigua to Guadeloupe. And whose credit card is lodged with the hotel.’

‘Believe me, I’ve wondered about that, too. And I’ve come to a conclusion. Actually, it’s still more of a theory.’

‘Oh? Might I hear what that is?’

‘I don’t think any of the people we’ve met on Guadeloupe are related to Jérôme Dumas at all. I think it’s probably your client in jail who’s related to him. Who’s maybe at least as worried about him, if not more, as FC Barcelona or Paris Saint-Germain are. I think that maybe Jérôme’s disappearance has something to do with your client being in jail. If I knew the name of your client I bet I’d find that Jérôme’s disappearance follows on from his imprisonment like Sunday follows Saturday.’

21

The taxi took us to a gravel car park at the furthest end of the beach at Le Gosier and dropped us near the town hall, an improbably large, ultra-modern building that was out of all proportion to the rest of the sleepy little town: it was as if someone had commissioned Richard Rogers or Norman Foster to design a scout hut.

I paid the malodorous driver and we walked down a quiet road where an old man straight out of the pages of Hemingway was wrestling a big, dead barracuda into the boot of a Renault Clio while another, younger man was manhandling lobster pots out of a small boat. We stepped onto a white sandy beach where Grace kicked off her shoes and I did the same. The sand felt good under my toes and, for the first time since our arrival on the island of Guadeloupe, I started to relax.

Lots of lardy-looking French people were lying on the beach, or floating in the water like so much white plastic flotsam. The sea lapped energetically at the sand and but for the ugliness of the cheap swimwear that was on show you might have thought you were in paradise. That was me being a beauty fascist again. In my time as a football manager I’ve been called a lot of things – a cunt, mostly – but a beauty fascist certainly wasn’t one of them. It was true, of course. I tend to think fat people ought to keep it covered. That or go on a fucking diet. Not that it was easy to see how anyone could put on weight in Guadeloupe. The place seemed like an ideal place to begin a crash diet.

Fifty yards off the beach was a small desert island and on the island was a lighthouse, although it was hard to see the necessity for warning any shipping to keep away. A simple Google search could have persuaded you of the absolute necessity of never going anywhere near Guadeloupe at all.

We walked about thirty or forty yards until we came to a wooden door in a wall of rocks and banana leaves. We stepped carefully between some Frenchies who were enjoying a little shade and whose grumbles indicated their resentment at our disturbing them, and Grace pressed an intercom button on the doorpost. Eventually a man’s voice answered, in French.

‘Yes? Who is this?’

‘My name is Grace Doughty and with me is Scott Manson, from FC Barcelona. We’re looking for Jérôme Dumas.’

‘I’m Jérôme,’ said the voice. ‘Come on up,’ he added, and buzzed us in.

‘I don’t believe it,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘Jesus Christ,’ I said, as Grace pushed the door open and we walked through it into a nicely tended garden. ’

‘Ye of little faith,’ said Grace.

‘I used to play for Northampton Town, so that can’t be true.’

The door closed neatly behind us and we walked up a long, sloping lawn towards a modern two-storey house constructed of red concrete and glass with a metal terrace and a big picture window. What resembled a set of large canvas sails covered the flat roof like several sun umbrellas. It was very private in that almost none of this could be seen from the beach and the house was shrouded with royal palms and red bougainvillea. Music by Stromae – who is almost as good as Jacques Brel, and a recent and happy discovery of mine, thanks to Bella – was blaring out of an open window while emerging from a tinted glass door was a barefoot young man wearing a Barcelona team kit and whom I recognised immediately as Jérôme Dumas. Around his neck were a pair of PSG Beats; on his wrist was a large gold Rolex and, in his earlobes, were the diamond Panther studs that Bella told me he’d bought from Cartier in Paris. I felt my jaw drop for a second.

‘It’s him,’ I murmured. ‘I’m sure it’s him. I recognise the earrings.’

‘You can thank me later,’ she said as we neared the man in the Barca shirt.

‘Jérôme Dumas, I presume,’ I said, happily. ‘Scott Manson. I’ve been looking for you everywhere. In Paris, Antigua and now here in Guadeloupe. You’re a hard man to find, Jérôme.’

‘I guess so.’

There was a football on the lawn and seeing it, out of sheer exuberance that my mission now appeared to be over, I kicked it to him playfully.

‘Well, thank God for that, anyway,’ I said. ‘Although we do have a lot to talk about.’

‘If you say so.’

He trapped the football with his left foot, flicked it up, bounced it off his knee and onto his head, nodded it twice and then headed it back to me as if hoping to see what I was made of.

‘Your new employers are very anxious that you return with me to Barcelona as soon as possible,’ I said. ‘You’ve an important match coming up.’

I fielded the ball on my chest, and then up onto my head again, let it roll over my scalp, dropped it onto my knee and then my bare foot, and kept it up again a couple of times, before tapping it back to him. Between us it felt like a kind of language, a sporting Esperanto, and in a sense it is; where two or more men are kicking a football they’re in a dialogue.

‘Sure, and I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused,’ he said, grinning sheepishly. ‘I know you’ve come a long way to find me, Mr Manson.’

Jérôme had the ball in the small of his back now. After a second he shrugged it off and onto his own head and let it bounce five, six, seven, eight times before catching it on his instep and playing it back to me again with perhaps a little more venom than was necessary.

‘Scott,’ I said, controlling the ball with my head. ‘Call me Scott. I’m glad to see you’ve been keeping up your skills.’

I could feel the sweat breaking out on my head and chest as I tried to match his abilities with the ball, which were considerable and much superior to my own; even fifteen years ago I’d have been struggling to keep up with this guy. Now at the age of forty-one I was almost out of breath. I tucked my hands back against my wrists and concentrated hard to keep the ball just an inch or two in the air above one foot. I almost didn’t notice when someone inside the house turned the music off.

‘You’re not so bad yourself, Scott. Not bad at all. For an old guy.’

‘Thanks. And less of the old, if you don’t mind, sunshine.’

‘You were at Arsenal once, weren’t you?’ he said. ‘Before you went into management?’

‘That’s right. I was a centre back.’

‘I eat them for breakfast,’ said Jérôme.

‘Funnily enough, I’ve heard that one before. I think it was Paul Raury, from West Bromwich Albion, who said something similar to me just before I broke his ankle.’

‘When you two are quite finished showing off…’ said Grace.

I flicked the ball to Jérôme who played it off his knee, caught it in his big hands and tucked it possessively under his arm.

‘This is Grace Doughty,’ I said. ‘She’s a lawyer from Antigua. She’s been helping me to find you. Although to be more accurate it’s me who’s been helping her, I think. Given that she seems to know the island and speaks Creole.’

‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Mr Dumas,’ said Grace. ‘Too much, really. He’s been obsessing that we were on a wild goose chase. I told him that you have to be patient with wild geese, but I don’t think he believed that until now.’

‘Can you blame me?’ I said.

‘Pleased to meet you.’ Jérôme shook her hand and then mine. ‘Come inside and have something to drink. You’ve come a long way, I expect.’

‘Do you speak Creole?’ I asked Jérôme.

‘Yes. A bit. But when I answer the bell to the door on the beach I always speak French since it’s nearly always French people who are ringing it. Usually they want to know if there’s a toilet nearby. And I have to tell them, otherwise they piss on the wall.’

Inside, the air-conditioned house was very
Architectural Digest
– all open-plan with upper galleries of bookshelves and other rooms. A bank of white leather armchairs were arranged in front of a matching right-angle sofa, like so many sugar cubes. Lying by the sofa were several days-old copies of Antigua’s newspaper, the
Daily Observer
, and a copy of Guillem Balague’s excellent biography of Lionel Messi. On the wall was a big plasma television and on the screen was FIFA 15, with the sound turned down; Chelsea against Barcelona. In the middle of the room was a glass table and a couple of PS4 controllers, and everywhere there were vases of flowers and jugs of iced water, almost as if Jérôme had been expecting us. He poured us each a glass of water that was flavoured with elderflower cordial.

‘Nice place,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Grace. ‘I didn’t know it was possible to live as well as this on Guadeloupe.’

‘It belongs to a friend of mine,’ said Jérôme. ‘Gui-Jean-Baptiste Target.’

‘Why does that name ring a bell?’ I said.

‘He’s the centre forward for SM Caen. Used to play for AS Monaco.’

I nodded. ‘I remember. Wasn’t he involved in that match-fixing scandal involving Caen and Nîmes Olympique in November 2014?’

‘He was questioned, I think. But not really involved at all. No charges have been brought, anyway. He lets me borrow this place from time to time.’

‘Is he from Guadeloupe, too?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s quite a crowd of you,’ I said.

‘Not a crowd, my friend,’ said Jérôme. ‘A
team
. If only the French would remove their objections to our FIFA incorporation then we could compete in the World Cup. Perhaps not in Russia, but certainly in Qatar. And you know something else? We could win. Especially if we were playing France. In fact I think I could guarantee it.’

‘It’s the same in England. There’s nothing like sticking one to the mother country. Just ask the Scots, or the Irish. I think there’s no one they’d rather beat than England. I should know. I’m part Scots myself.’

Jérôme grinned. ‘Forgive me, but you don’t look much like a Scotsman.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment. Besides, people in Scotland have been saying that to me all my life. Which is one reason I live in England, I suppose. The English are a lot more tolerant of black people than the Scots. Anyone can look English, I think. But it takes a Scot to look like a Scot. And you know, whatever people say, the French aren’t so bad.’

‘I dunno. Some of them. Maybe.’

‘I saw your apartment in Paris. Met your ex-girlfriend. I’d say you’d enjoyed pretty much all that France has to offer. And then some. From what I’ve read in your file, you were making fifty thousand euros a week at Monaco when you were just sixteen.’

‘How is Bella?’

‘She’s well. Misses you, I think.’

‘I doubt that very much. I wasn’t very nice to her.’

‘Not too late to fix that, I’d have thought. If it was me I’d try to mend my fences with her. I’ve rarely seen a more beautiful girl.’

‘You think so?’

‘You and she made a very handsome couple. She showed me the pictures in
Marie Claire
and
Elle
.’

‘We did, didn’t we? But she made her choice. And now I’m alone.’

None of the pictures I’d seen on television or in the magazines did the man’s beauty justice. He was astonishingly handsome with a long nose, a full sensuous mouth and a shaven head. It was a strong, almost Egyptian head in that it reminded me of one of those huge granite carvings of the Pharaoh Rameses II that can be seen in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. He was tall and wiry, with legs as long as a crane fly’s and when you saw him you realised that his was a perfect footballer’s physique – not small, like a Messi, or as tall as a Crouch – but more felicitously proportioned, and just to see him was to picture him running at speed with the ball, or curling an improbable shot into the back of the net. Equally, it was plain to see why magazines and Italian designers were falling over themselves to sign him up. Paolo Gentile had not exaggerated. Except for the fact that his body was unmarked by tattoos it was easy to imagine this young man as the next David Beckham and getting rich beyond the dreams of anyone’s avarice. But if I had an early criticism it was that he seemed a little sulky; like a spoiled child.

‘Are you alone here now?’ I asked.

‘Yes, there’s just me and the housekeeper – Charlotte – who comes in every day and cooks and cleans for me.’