Hand of God (28 page)

As I put the phone in my pocket, Charlie added: ‘But as to how you’re going to get past that code, your guess is as good as mine. I don’t know anyone who can break into these things.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I know just the man.’

About a minute after I took my seat again Panathinaikos scored the only goal of the match. It wasn’t a great goal; the OFI back four defended like they were wearing ankle weights and the goalkeeper managed to go the wrong way even though the forward in the green shirt had already telegraphed where he was planning to kick the ball. But none of that stopped the crowd from partying like it was 1999: a huge green firework exploded at the Gate 13 end, so loud it had every one of the London City players and staff – myself included – ducking down like a missile had been fired into the stadium by an Apache helicopter.

‘Christ’s arse,’ yelled Simon. ‘What the fuck was that?’

A cloud of green smoke drifted across the pitch, turning everything in the stadium opaque and, for a minute, it looked as if we were at the bottom of the sea, like those drowned sailors from the Battle of Salamis.

‘I think that was just the beautiful game, as celebrated by Zorba the Greek,’ I said.

‘Makes you wonder how they kicked off back here when they won Euro 2004. I tell you what, if I could speak Greek they’d think I was fucking Plato. Each one of those Greeks thought that someone else was going to make the tackle. Four players in the box and not one of them marking his man. Whenever another team get anywhere near our box, you know what I want? I want our back four to die in a ditch to defend those eighteen yards. That’s the way you used to defend and it’s the way I used to defend. It takes heart to play football like that, boss. And those lads just didn’t have it. Look at them: all those fucking tattoos they have on their bodies. There’s only one tattoo, only one slogan that should be inked on every great centre back’s chest:
¡No pasarán!
They shall not pass. That’s what I’d have tattooed on me if I was a defender today.’

I took the coach back to the Astir Palace with the team and sat next to Prometheus.

‘What did you think of that?’ I asked.

‘Not much. And they’re racists, too. I could hear monkey chants every time one of the black players got the ball. I thought Greeks were supposed to be civilised.’

‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘It’s the birthplace of democracy.’

‘Perhaps. But it certainly didn’t count for much even then, I reckon. If you hear monkey noises on Wednesday night, here’s what you’re going to do. Score a goal. And then score another. That’s the best way to shut these bastards up. But as a matter of fact, if you’d been on that park you’d have scored three. Before half time.’

Prometheus grinned a big grin.

‘That lot we just saw are the Greek champions,’ I said. ‘By default, maybe. But they are a top side. Same as Olympiacos. And when we play
them
on Wednesday night, I want you to go and score a hat-trick, not for Bekim Develi but for yourself. As Aristotle says, “Blessed is he that opens the eyes of the blind.” So, I want to see the player I know you can be.’

‘Okay, boss.’

‘This morning you were telling me that you used to jail-break stolen phones,’ I said. ‘When you were a kid.’

He shrugged. ‘Still do. Just to keep my hand in. I love knowing about that shit.’

I handed him Nataliya’s iPhone.

‘Could you sidestep the passcode on this one? Only you’ll have to do it quietly, without talking about it, because what I’m asking you to do could get us both arrested.’

‘Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened, boss.’

‘I don’t doubt it. But this is serious stuff now. And these are serious people. If we get caught it’ll be six months in a Greek nick.’

Prometheus took the phone from me and tapped it awake.

‘Leave it with me, boss. I’m from Nigeria. If I don’t know how to do it I can just as soon call someone at home who does.’

Back in my bungalow at the Astir Palace I checked my emails and then took another look at the contents of Bekim Develi’s Louis Vuitton Keepall and matching toilet bag; I already knew what kind of underpants he wore but I was looking for something else – a key to understanding Nataliya’s death that was going to enable me to steal a further march on the police. I guessed that just having her name and her phone wasn’t going to be enough; it seemed to me that you couldn’t have too much information when you were investigating a crime like murder.

I spread the contents of the Keepall on the floor, the same way ex-cop Charlie had done with Nataliya’s handbag. I’m a quick learner that way. I was still looking at these as if I was playing a memory game with objects on a tea tray when Skype gurgled its watery ringtone. It was Sara Gill, the Englishwoman who’d been raped and almost murdered in Athens. I’d Skyped her earlier and left a message to Skype me back.

I clicked on the little green bubble for a video call and found myself looking at an Asian woman with short brown hair who was probably in her thirties; a little overweight, she wore a white T-shirt and a grey jacket. The room she was in was typically Cotswolds, with a big fireplace and a dog sleeping on the floor behind her.

‘Hello, Mr Manson,’ she said. ‘I’m Sara Gill. You Skyped me earlier. I was in the garden at the time. Detective Inspector Considine explained your situation on the telephone. And I read about that unfortunate young woman in the newspapers, of course. So I’ll help you if I can.’

‘Thanks for calling me, Sara. It’s a long shot, I know, but I wondered if there was a possibility that her death might be connected with what happened to you and a number of other woman in Athens only a few years ago. You see the woman who died this week was a prostitute and it struck me as a little odd that the police didn’t mention that the other women who were murdered were also prostitutes. Nor did they think to mention that there might be a football connection; Thanos Leventis drove a bus for the Panathinaikos football team, didn’t he?’

She listened patiently while I stumbled around my explanation like a flat-footed drunk. I tried to explain, with all the diplomacy of the England rugby team, that there was no suggestion that she herself was a prostitute; no more was I comfortable asking her about what had happened, but even on Skype she could see this and tried to put me at my ease. Then she told me her story clearly and patiently and it was several minutes before I realised that a slight tremor had crept into her voice. When she got to the end of her harrowing account she swallowed an egg and I saw her hands were shaking.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That can’t have been easy for you.’

‘It wasn’t,’ she said. ‘But I’ve decided that it’s only by talking about it that I will ever get justice.’

‘Why do you think the police didn’t believe what you said – that there were two men who attacked you?’

‘For one thing, they had a confession from Thanos Leventis. And what’s more Leventis said he had acted alone. I don’t think they wanted to risk anything to mess up his story. For another, I’d been beaten to the point of unconsciousness and it was several days before I was thinking straight again. I was in shock, of course, which meant I contradicted myself during the initial interview. But they had already decided I was unreliable as a witness. By the time they caught Leventis I was back in England, and no one was much interested in what I had to say. I called the police a few times and reminded them that there was another man but they didn’t seem to care very much. That’s when I called the Greek newspapers and told them. But I think most people were happy to sweep it all under the carpet and forget about it. And let’s face it, this was when the Greek economy was collapsing around everyone’s ears. There were riots in the streets as people tried and failed to get their money out of banks. The newspapers had bigger fish to fry. The police didn’t even ask me to attend the trial as a witness. It was all over before I knew it and I didn’t even get a chance to confront Thanos Leventis in court.’

She wiped the corner of an eye with a handkerchief.

‘I’m sorry to make you talk about this again, Sara.’

‘Don’t be,’ she said firmly. ‘If there’s any chance that what you’re doing might help to catch this man then you have my thanks, Mr Manson.’

‘Can you give me a description? Of the second man.’

‘Yes. He was older than Leventis. In his late thirties, I should say. Tall, with dark hair and a very hairy body, like a lot of Greeks. I know that because he made me perform oral sex on him. I do remember that he had very sweet breath, like he’d been eating mints.’ She laughed. ‘Not like a Greek at all, if you know what I mean.’

‘Oh, I do. I do.’

‘And here’s the bit I think made the police think I was deluded; it was like he had three eyebrows.’

‘Three eyebrows?’

‘At least that’s how it seemed to me.’

‘Would you recognise him again?’

‘I think so. Yes, I’m sure I would.’

‘What was he wearing?’

‘Jeans and a T-shirt, with a sort of UN logo on it. Again, I’m not sure about that. Sort of... sort of like a wreath made of olive branches? Except that it wasn’t a map of the world within the branches, but it looked more like a sort of labyrinth.’

‘A labyrinth?’

‘Like the one in the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. Only I don’t think this one was as complicated as that. I sometimes think that’s the key to everything, not metaphorically, but in reality. If I could work out what that sign meant it would help me find the man who raped me. Not Leventis. Because the truth is, Leventis couldn’t get it up, if you’ll pardon my French. That’s why he knocked me out. And that’s why I’m alive today. Because they thought I was already dead. They dumped me in the harbour and the water was so cold that I woke up. But when they left I’m sure they thought I was already dead.’

‘They dumped you in the harbour? I didn’t know that. Where, exactly?’

‘I’m not sure exactly. Somewhere in Piraeus, I suppose. The actual assault took place on a piece of waste ground next to a football stadium. Which wasn’t very far away from the harbour, because that’s where I’d been walking when I was attacked. I do remember that the people who fished me out took me into the lobby of a nearby hotel.’

‘Can you remember the name of the hotel?’

‘Yes, it was the Hotel Delfini. They were very nice to me, and called the police. From there they took me to the Metropolitan Hospital, which was right next door to the stadium where I’d been attacked. I could see it from my hospital bed. Only it wasn’t the one where Panathinaikos play; it was the other Athens team that plays there: Olympiacos. Yes, I remember now; that was the other football connection. Besides the fact that the driver of the coach worked for Panathinaikos.’

‘What day of the week did the attack take place, Sara?’

‘It was a Saturday night in September.’

‘And would you happen to remember if there’d been a football game that day?’

‘No, I don’t. But it was the last Saturday in September, so you could probably find out.’

After we finished our Skype conversation I called up Google Maps and saw that the Karaiskakis Stadium where Olympiacos played was exactly 3.5 kilometres from the Hotel Delfini in Marina Zea; and there was a large patch of waste ground immediately to the southwest of the ground, on the Piraeus side. Given where she’d been dumped after the attack, it was beginning to look like a real possibility that Nataliya’s death might be connected with the attack on Sara Gill and others. In view of the racism of the Greeks, had she been attacked because she was Asian? The Greek newspapers were often reporting attacks on Romas and Pakistanis by the far-right Golden Dawn organisation. And I knew from my own experience that a dark skin was enough to bring hatred and contempt down on your head. I was equally intrigued by Sara’s description of the logo on her attacker’s T-shirt: the word labyrinth had of course reminded me of the tattoo on Nataliya’s left shoulder. Was this a connection, too?

Absently I stared at Bekim Develi’s belongings laid out on the bungalow floor, thinking about Sara Gill’s closing remark. At the back of my head, a half-perceived thought began to gain clarity. After a moment or two I realised that perhaps the key that
I’d
been looking for was staring me in the face. I bent down and picked it off the floor.

It was the key not to a suitcase, or a car, or a hotel room, or a left-luggage locker, but to Bekim’s house on the island of Paros.

The next day I caught the lunchtime flight to Paros aboard a DHC-8-100, a propeller plane with more vibrations than the Beach Boys and none of them good. Paros was just one of a group of islands known as the Cyclades which, from the air, resembled a betting slip torn up and its pieces scattered on a bright blue carpet. Paros wasn’t the smallest island of the group although you could have been forgiven for thinking that it might have been when you saw the tiny airport with its postage stamp of a runway.

I hired a little Suzuki 4x4 at Loukis Rent-a-Car immediately opposite the sleepy little airport terminal, and using the directions from the guy in the office I set out for the southwest tip of the island, where Bekim’s house was to be found. The island itself was like a large links golf course – scrubland with drystone walls and very few trees. But for the omnipresent noise of cicadas you might almost have thought yourself in a remote part of Ireland suffering an unusually severe heat wave. The locals were just as wizened and peasant-like. Nearly every building I saw was made of white stone with all of the doors, window frames and shutters, balcony railings, and gates painted the same shade of blue, as if only one colour could be obtained at the local hardware shop. Either that or everyone on the whole island was an Everton supporter.

Less than fifteen minutes later I was driving up a rutted track to a collection of rectangular white buildings surrounded by empty rough land that bordered a perfect little private beach. Bekim’s house resembled an outpost in some forgotten French colony. I parked my car around the back in the shade and tried to call Prometheus, to see how he was making out with Nataliya’s iPhone, but I couldn’t get a signal.