False Nine (27 page)

‘What else?’

‘You’ll read a lot of crap in the newspapers – or online – about how the club is unhappy and going through a difficult phase. Actually, I don’t think that’s true. Yes, they lost a couple of key players in January; and there’s a transfer ban until 2016 that’s to do with some kids having the wrong documents. Which is bullshit. And who knows if Messi gets on with Luis Enrique or not? But they’re only a point behind Real and getting better all the time. Financially, the club is better off than it’s ever been. Annual revenues are more than five hundred million euros. Only Real does better with just over six hundred. There’s no tyrant king who needs keeping sweet. They’re even opening an office in New York to sell the club abroad. About the one thing I’d do is try to bring Johan Cruyff back into the Barca fold. At the moment he’s having a protracted sulk at his home in Sarrià-Sant Gervasi. Like Achilles I think he’s the key to future victory.’ This time I didn’t wait for him to look blank. ‘A Greek hero.
Troy
. Brad Pitt.’

‘Oh, right. Of course. Great movie. Things never clicked for me at Parc des Princes in Paris the way things worked in Monaco. Believe me, it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying.’

‘I know.’

‘I just hope it can work out for me at Camp Nou.’

‘Of course it can. You’re still young. Listen, Gerard Piqué was just twenty-one when he left Man U to play for Barca. Now there’s a player who hardly ever made the team back in Manchester. But within months of starting work under Guardiola he was one of the best defenders in the world. Guardiola would probably tell you that Piqué was his best signing. In the World Cup squad at twenty-three. Married to Shakira. He even has his own video game. Man U let him go for just eight million euros; they’d have to pay six or seven times that now. Maybe more. That kind of success can be yours, too, Jérôme. I’m convinced of it. In a year’s time, with any luck, PSG will feel the same way about you that Man U do now about Piqué.’

‘You really think so?’

‘I know so. I can smell it. The sweet smell of success for you.’

‘I’d like my own PlayStation game,’ said Jérôme. ‘There’s millions to be made in the games industry.’

I nodded. It was increasingly clear that Jérôme Dumas was a man of contradictions. It was equally clear it was going to be a long flight back to Spain.

‘Me, I can smell dinner,’ said Grace, changing the subject. ‘And I’m starving. I feel like I haven’t eaten since breakfast.’

Jérôme grinned. ‘After what you said I thought I’d ask Charlotte to make something for us. She’s a very good cook. Doesn’t touch alcohol but loves food. We’ve got foie gras, lobster and everything. She was trained in Paris so she knows just how fastidious French people like Gui and me are about food.’

‘Which makes me wonder why so many of them bother to come to Guadeloupe at all,’ I said. ‘You’d think that this was a place to be avoided.’

Jérôme led us into the dining room.

‘It’s cheap to get here,’ he said. ‘That’s why. The French government subsidises the air fares and the cruise prices to make sure the tourism industry here is thriving. It costs a lot more to travel from London to Antigua. That way they think they can keep the locals happy. More or less. And it satisfies those French who want some winter sun but are too cheap to go to St Barts.’

‘Why didn’t you come here in the first place?’

He grinned. ‘You’re staying at Jumby Bay and you need to ask? Guadeloupe has got nothing like that. Besides, my dad lives on Antigua. There’s all that and there’s Sky Sports. Jumby Bay has got Sky. And that means football on the telly. Whenever you want it. Almost.’

I had to admit he had a point there.

Charlotte served a superb dinner which put us all in a very good mood. And afterwards Jérôme made us some excellent coffee and then helped us to some of Gui’s vintage Armagnac. He was a good host like that but probably a bad house-guest for the same reason.

‘So,’ I said, ‘are you ready to travel back to Barcelona with me and face the music?’

‘I’m still a bit worried about my dad. But yes, I am.’

‘That’s good. I’ll try to send a text to them tonight and have a private jet sent here within twenty-four hours to fly us back to Spain.’

‘Good luck with that,’ said Jérôme. ‘Sending a text, I mean.’

‘You’re right. Perhaps I’d better call them from the hotel. Look, I have to go back to Antigua to collect the rest of my stuff from Jumby Bay. I’ll do that first thing in the morning and then be back here to fly to Spain with you, tomorrow night. I’ll tell them, in confidence, about your father and arrange for you to have some compassionate leave as soon as possible. You can take your medical, do the press conference and be back here to visit your dad in a week or two.’

‘In the meantime, don’t worry,’ said Grace. ‘I’m quite hopeful that as soon as Antigua’s director of public prosecutions has had a chance to review the police evidence they’ll see this was a clear case of self-defence, and agree with my submission that this doesn’t warrant a murder charge. Once that has happened I’m very confident that we can get your dad bail.’

‘Thank you. Both of you.’ He shook his head.

‘What?’ asked Grace.

‘I feel such a fool, really,’ he admitted. ‘To have overreacted in the way I did. It’s just that I’ve grown very close to my father.’

‘Forget about it,’ I said. ‘A lot of people would probably have done the same as you. I’m very close to my own father, myself. If he’d been facing a murder charge I’m not sure I could have left him to sweat it out on his own.’

‘I’ll come with you, Scott,’ said Grace. ‘Back to Antigua.’

I looked at her narrowly. ‘Maybe you should stay here in Guadeloupe. It might not be such a good idea for Jérôme to be on his own too much until he’s on his meds again.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ said Jérôme. ‘Really. You don’t have to worry about me, Scott. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Good. I’ll come here in a car from the airport and pick you up myself. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

On our way out of the door again, Jérôme took my hand and held onto it tightly. There were tears in his eyes and for a moment he seemed unable to say anything. I squeezed his hand back and smiled.

‘I just want to say thanks, Scott. Thanks for helping me like this, man. I don’t know what I’ve have done if you hadn’t turned up.’

I shrugged.

‘I guess that you’d have carried on staying here. This is a nice house. It’s very comfortable. You’ve a fine cook here in Charlotte. And there’s a copy of my book as well. I really don’t know what else anyone could ask for.’

26

I kissed Grace and then her fingers, still inky from the night before and smelling strongly of me. Taking advantage of our last chance for a fuck before I flew back to Spain, neither of us had had much sleep. Every time I’d opened my eyes I’d climbed on top of her bones.

‘I’m exhausted,’ she admitted. ‘You must be, too.’

‘I’ll sleep on the jet,’ I told her. ‘In fact I’m kind of banking on that. It’ll be a good way of escaping from Russell Bore’s half-baked theories about the future of global capitalism.’

‘He means well.’

‘So did Robespierre. Seriously though, how much influence do you have with your cousin? Because someone needs to tell him to button his lip for a while. Catalans are a generous-hearted people but they don’t much like it when people start telling them where to get off. There’s a good reason that Spain had a civil war.’

‘I’ll speak to him.’

‘Do. And while you’re at it tell him to lay off the hookers and the weed.’

‘Yes. I will. I must say the gun thing still worries me a bit.’

‘You can leave that to me.’

We left the hotel and went to the airport in Pointe-à-Pitre to get on the Diamond Star I’d chartered for a return flight to Antigua. It turned out that Guadeloupe’s airport had the best mobile signal on the island. As soon as we were there I started to receive texts and missed call messages. Most of them were from Jacint Grangel at Barcelona, Charles Rivel at PSG and Paolo Gentile, but there were one or two from Louise Considine, in London. To her I sent a text saying that I missed her and that I was looking forward to coming home: both of which were true. I’d already spoken to Jacint from the hotel, the night before.

It was a bumpy flight that had us both groaning like a couple of pensioners on Blackpool’s Big Dipper, and I was glad I’d hired a twin engine light aircraft; there’s something about having two engines instead of one that reassures me – even if they are propeller engines.

When Grace and I landed in the airport at St John’s and had recovered our nerves we said our goodbyes in the terminal.

‘I’ll see you in London,’ I told her.

She said nothing for a moment.

‘The FA? My disciplinary charge? Remember?’

‘No.’ Grace shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘What do you mean? I’m going to need your silver tongue, Grace. My own has a habit of getting me into trouble. That and my thumbs. But I’ve taken your advice and binned my Twitter account. I should have done it months ago. It’s been nothing but grief.’

‘Look,’ she said, ‘the last few days – they’ve been nice, very nice, but frankly I’m going to have my hands full preparing my uncle’s defence. In spite of what I told Jérôme back in Guadeloupe, there’s still a long way to go on this one. Any optimism you might have heard from me was calculated to help you get him back to Spain for his medical. Until the DPP says that this is a case of manslaughter he’s still facing a capital charge.’

‘Yes, I had wondered about that.’

‘Before you spoke to him last night you asked me to back you up and I did. Not because I was anxious to please you, Scott, but because I don’t see that anything’s helped by him staying here. So, let’s just agree that we had a great time and leave it at that, can we? Maybe you’ll come back here to Antigua and maybe you won’t. We’ll just wait and see, okay? For the record I hope you do. But I think I told you I wasn’t looking for anything serious right now. And I meant that. I might not have mentioned this before but I’m thinking about going into politics and I don’t want anyone on the island thinking that I’m not a serious person. Which it could easily look like if I go to London to defend something as trivial as your sexist tweet.’

I grinned. ‘Well, that’s telling me.’

‘Oh, but you’ll easily find a brief to look after you. Hire yourself a QC. There’s plenty of them doing not very much. Better still, hire Amal Clooney. I’m sure that this is just the sort of high-profile case she’s looking for. It seems to me strange that the English law I studied and learned to love has nothing better to do these days than pay attention to a long line of stupid people who are just waiting to be offended by someone’s else’s opinion. I used to think England was the home of free speech. Thomas Paine. The rights of man. Speaker’s Corner. Now I tend to think it’s just the home of wimps, wallies and witch-hunts.’

‘I can see you were made for politics,’ I said.

She was right, of course. I knew that. But as Everton ferried me back to the hotel I felt just a little sad that I wasn’t going to see Grace any time soon. I hadn’t told her – it wasn’t perhaps what she wanted to hear – but she was the first black woman I’d ever been with and I’d liked it; I’d liked it a lot. I don’t think there’s anything Oedipal about that but maybe, just maybe, I’d fallen for her in a way I hadn’t expected.

‘Did you find him, boss?’ said Everton. ‘Your missing footballer? Monsieur Dumas.’

‘I found him. He’s been hiding in a house on Guadeloupe.’

‘Hiding? From what? Or who?’

‘I think he probably had a nervous breakdown.’

I was trying out this explanation just to hear how it sounded. It sounded a lot better than saying Jérôme’s father killed someone. That never plays well.

‘I’m going back there this afternoon. I’ve returned to Jumby Bay to settle my bill and fetch my bags. Barca are sending a jet for us. To Pointe-à-Pitre.’

‘They must be pleased.’

In truth ‘pleased’ hardly covered it. Jacint Grangel had been ecstatic.

‘I knew you were the man to find him, Scott,’ he’d said when I called him from the hotel in Le Gosier the previous night. ‘This is fantastic news. And very timely. We have weeks to get him fit for
el clásico
. Oriel is going to be delighted. And Luis. As for Ahmed, well, he had his doubts that you could pull this off. I’m really going to enjoy watching him hand you a cheque for three million euros. But is he fit? Is he all right? And where the hell are you? I’ve called you several times.’

‘Just charter a private jet. And send it to Guadeloupe as soon as possible. There’s a company in England I use sometimes called PrivateFly. They’re pretty good. It’s a little complicated so if you don’t mind, Jacint, I’ll explain everything in an email.’

‘Sure. I can’t wait to read it. Will you please copy it to Paolo Gentile? I think he’s phoned me every day since you left Paris. Have I heard anything? What’s happening? Would I be sure to call him back the minute I had any news? He said you’d ignored all his texts. If it comes to that you’ve ignored mine as well.’

‘Mobile reception isn’t so good on Guadeloupe. Nor is the food. The food is lousy. As a matter of fact, nothing is very good. Except the weather, of course. No complaints about that.’

‘It’s better than here, I can assure you. It’s been cold in Barcelona. We’ve even had some snow in the mountains above Tibidabo.’

I was going to miss the weather, but probably not much else. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting the FA, but I was very much looking forward to getting back home to London and seeing Arsenal at home to London City – although that was going to be a difficult match for me to watch. Who was I going to support? The last time I’d seen the two in action against each other I’d favoured the Gooners, only because I’d once played for them and because I was still angry with Viktor Sokolnikov; but time had softened my anger, not to mention my principles. I missed the team. I missed them more than ever I could have admitted to almost anyone.

I tried to give Everton some more money but he wouldn’t take it.