by Mel Stein
‘What’s our time frame, Mo?’ Donaldson asked, realising that the quicker things progressed the quicker he could get back to a chilled glass of dry white wine and equally dry land. He had never particularly liked the sea and the slight swell that had got up since their arrival had given his cheek-bones a greenish tinge.
‘It’s tight,’ Halid replied. ‘The lawyers did their job well in prising open the window of opportunity, but we have to be in Zurich in two weeks time with both our proposal and tender.’
‘Two weeks!’ Conway whistled. ‘You have to be joking.’
‘Richard. You should know by now that if I am going to appeal to your sense of humour, I preface the attempt with the statement that I have a joke to tell you. No, I’m perfectly serious. Nick, you’re not feeling too good?’
‘I feel a bit queasy, Mo, to tell you the truth.’
‘I hope you will always tell me the truth, Nick. I have never liked falsehoods. You should have said,’ Halid continued, knowing full well that now that he, rather than Donaldson, had raised the issue, it was an acceptable one for discussion. ‘Come on. We’ll go up on deck and take in the fresh air. You’ll soon feel better.’
Nick Donaldson almost ran up the steep steps, thinking not for the first time what a clever manipulator of men was Mohammed Halid. A small gesture, yet he had him feeling a wave of gratitude. He didn’t want to think of waves at that moment. There were enough waves of nausea already running through his body. The fresh air hit them all like a smack in the face as the wind blew in from the Solent. Mark was still in the same short-sleeved polo-neck shirt in which he’d arrived at the office and he shivered with cold. It was crazy. All those years on the field and in training wearing only shorts and light shirts, years playing on frozen northern wastes on January nights and he’d never felt a hint of cold. Yet, here he was in early autumn, desperately in need of a sweater. He was getting soft and he didn’t know what, if anything, he could do about it.
He’d not noticed the name on the boat as they’d stepped aboard, but now he could hardly fail to realise it was called Susie. The name was everywhere on the vessel. The lifebelts, the exterior of the captain’s cabin, wherever there was a square inch of white paint, there was the name in a delicate shade of blue. Whosoever Susie was, Halid was determined to make public his feeling for her.
Mark did not need to wait long for an explanation.
‘You like the boat, I think, Mark. We have some sweatshirts or jumpers aboard if you feel cold.’
There was not a lot Halid missed, Mark realised, and made a permanent mental note for the future.
‘It is a tribute to my wife, Susie. A present from me to her on our wedding.’
Richard had shepherded Nick towards the prow of the boat to enable the wind to meet him straight in the face and a note of intimacy crept into Halid’s voice. It was just he and Mark together, men who had seen and experienced the variety of emotions that life had to offer. Although Mark had worked at the station he knew little about the owner’s private life, had not even known his wife’s name until today. This was the first time he had been alone with Halid for more than a few casual moments in the corridor or at the coffee machine. Mark had learned enough about human nature over the past few years to recognise the symptoms of a man’s need to talk, his need to confide, to recognise when a man was lonely. And Mohammed Halid at that particular moment seemed to be a lonely man with a burning desire to talk.
‘She is much younger than me, my Susie, you know.’
Halid looked sideways at Mark, almost shyly, as if to satisfy himself that the other man was neither laughing at him nor embarrassed by the confidence.
‘Does that matter?’ Mark asked. He didn’t know why people felt able to confide in him, just why they felt the urge to open up, but it had stood him in good stead in his days as a private investigator and he saw no reason to hide that talent under a bushel now that he had retired.
‘I have little doubt that they gossip about it and have a laugh behind my back.’
‘They may gossip, but I doubt if they laugh. I’m not sure that you’re the sort of man that others laugh about.’
‘You’re an honest man, Mark. I’m pleased to have you on board.’
‘The boat or the team?’
Halid threw back his head and laughed, delighted by his unintentional pun. Mark just smiled politely.
‘I like you, Mark. You do not need to humour me. The others would have pretended to have found the joke as hilarious as me. But you do not need this job, you do not need me, so you can be true to yourself, be your own man. That is good. We are going to work well together.’
Halid paused, as if considering whether to open up fully, then the decision made as swiftly as he apparently made all decisions in his life, he plunged on with the conversation.
‘We have a chance with ESL, but we do not have certainty. When Nick finishes his retching we’ll get back to the drawing board and I can explain my strategy; but by opening up the race once again I have also opened a …’ He struggled for the words, refusing to ask Mark for any assistance. He was not the sort of man to ask for any help, Mark felt, even when something far more important than an elusive English phrase was at stake. ‘Yes, I have opened a Pandora’s Box,’ Halid said triumphantly. ‘We are in the lead for these rights, but only because I have fired the starting pistol. I can hear them panting after me in pursuit. I can smell his breath on the air.’
‘His?’ Mark asked as the plural turned to the singular.
The question seemed to calm Halid down, to make him less dramatic in his analysis of the situation.
‘Of course, I am forgetting that you never met my ex-partner, Nathan Carr. If you had met him then you would not forget either him or his name. He would make quite sure of that. Nathan Carr owns Jet TV. You’ve heard of it?’ he asked with heavy sarcasm, knowing that anybody who was deeply involved in sport could not have failed to have heard of it.
Mark nodded and then, sensing something more was required of him, added, ‘Sure. Go on. Tell me about Nathan Carr and this Pandora’s Box.’
‘I can see I have your attention. I can also see I’m beginning to stretch your patience with my games. That’s fine too. I admire men who have a low boredom threshold. They usually have an incisive mind.’ He turned and looked Mark square in the face. ‘Yes, I think you have an incisive mind, Mark Rossetti.’
‘I’m grateful for the compliment. Test me. I’m still curious about Nathan Carr.’
‘Well, let me satisfy you. I know Carr wanted the ESL rights from way back; but when they seemed to have gone elsewhere he gave up. Now I’ve put them back in the ring he’s going to want them all over again. He’ll want them all the more badly because he’ll know that I want them and anything I want he has to have.’
‘He sounds a little childish.’
‘Childish? No, not a word I’d use to describe Nathan Carr. Children are innocent. He never was innocent, although there was a time when I thought he was at least honest.’
‘You sound as if you hate him,’ Mark said quietly.
‘No, I don’t hate him. He hates me. He envies our success.’
‘He’s probably not alone in that, but that wouldn’t justify the sort of depth of emotion you’re describing.’
‘It doesn’t. The hatred stems from the fact he believes I stole his wife. You see Susie was once married to him.’
‘And did you steal her?’ Mark asked, wondering even as he asked whether he was probing too far.
‘No, I don’t think so. To steal something it has to belong to somebody else and it had been a long time since Susie belonged to Nathan if, indeed, she ever did.’
Then as suddenly as he had begun his story he decided it was at an end.
‘So. If Nick is ready and cleaned up shall we go back to the cabin? We’ve a long two weeks ahead of us. Believe me, Carr will be working his men at Jet twenty-four hours a day.’
‘So what do we do about that?’ Mark asked.
‘We work twenty-five,’ Halid replied and, although he smiled as he spoke, Mark did not get the impression that he believed that to be in any way impossible.
CHAPTER 10
It had been a long and exhausting week since what had turned into an all-nighter on the boat. Mo Halid not only expected Nick, Richard and Mark to be working on the presentation and tender for ESL in Zurich, but also to be attending to their normal duties at the station.
‘Why don’t you tell him to stick his presentation where the sun doesn’t shine?’ Patti had asked when she’d finally found a moment to place him in her busy schedule for dinner. ‘You don’t need his crummy job. There are a lot more useful things you could be doing than preening yourself on the little screen or trying to get him these ELS rights.’
‘ESL,’ Mark corrected her.
‘Whatever. It’s going to be a stupid league, driven by rich people who want to be richer. Come on, Mark. You know I like football. That’s how we met for Christ’s sake. But it’s all going mad. Wages, prices, TV exposure. Last Sunday I worked out I could have watched five matches if I’d juggled around with my set and my video. It’s too much of a good thing. They’ll kill the golden goose, believe me.’
‘Do I detect a note of sour grapes being served with this cooked goose?’ he asked. It was the wrong question.
‘No, you don’t. It’s just that I care about you, although there are times when I wonder why. I can see what’s happening. You’re being sucked into a world that just isn’t you.’
‘How do you know what is or isn’t me any more? We’ve hardly seen each other. You come up with some project that may or may not exist. That’s fine for you. I start to get involved in something I really enjoy, something I feel I might actually be quite good at and it’s like the end of the world. What is this all of a sudden? You’re Mother Teresa and I’m Attila the Hun?’
He was angry with himself for becoming angry when he’d made a private promise that they’d just have a pleasant evening out at one of their old haunts. But she was pushing him, had been pushing him since the evening began and he was tired, too tired to maintain the control he desired. And now she had pushed him just beyond the edge. He’d intended staying the night at the Burrow, but as he double-parked his car outside, she slammed the door shut with machine-rattling force and stamped down the steps leading to her flat before he could tell her he thought it might be better if they slept alone. He was so tired and he felt that if they spent much longer in each other’s company they would both say something they would regret for ever. Yet, as soon as the decision had been taken by her he felt deprived, felt as if the night no longer held anything for him, dreaded the thought of rolling into his own bed and finding no comfort without the warmth of her body next to him. At that moment he was lost with her and lost without her.
That had happened a couple of days after his visit to Southampton and had given him the excuse to throw himself body and soul into the project if, indeed, he needed an excuse.
To add to his work burden Kenny Cunningham had pulled Barry Reed into his squad for the friendly match against Colombia. The experienced Steve Mercer had cried off with a knee injury and the England manager had clearly been impressed by what he had seen when watching Hertsmere’s Geordie midfielder. Halid was never one to miss an opportunity and knowing of Mark’s relationship with the latest addition to the England ranks, had delegated to him the responsibility of obtaining an interview.
‘Mo, I’m not sure I’ve really got the time. Nick and I have a meeting scheduled with the accountants, Richard’s screaming at us to sit down with him on a production budget, I’m still not convinced I know what the hell I’m doing …’
Halid cut him short.
‘Don’t be so modest, Mark. You’re a natural at this. I saw your amendments to Nick’s initial draft introduction to the presentation. All good points, things the others just wouldn’t have thought of.’
‘But I don’t understand the economics of broadcasting. I’m an ex-professional footballer, sometime private investigator. Neither of those make me much of an expert on how we convince the powers that be that it should be your TV station that shows the ESL matches exclusively; nor how we pitch our bid.’
Mo was having none of it.
‘My son Nabil’s not an expert either, but he thinks he is. That hasn’t stopped him getting involved.’
Mark knew that to his cost. Nabil was involved in everything, but then Nabil thought he knew everything. Nabil Halid could be told nothing. Already one secretary had been fired on the spot for giggling a little too loudly over the story of his efforts to bail his sister out of the police station. That had been a failure and, like his father, Nabil did not take kindly to failure.
‘In fact,’ Halid continued, ‘why not take Nabil with you when you do the interview? It’ll get him out of Nick and Richard’s hair.’
‘And into mine,’ Mark thought, but kept his counsel. He had got to know Mo well enough in a remarkably short space of time to realise it would be a waste of breath. It may have sounded like an inspirational idea, but he would have thought it all through carefully before saying anything. Nick and Richard’s assignments were now more important than anything Mark could achieve so he could be more usefully employed by interviewing Barry Reed. If he took Nabil with him then it would make life easier for the other two to complete their tasks. That was the way Mo operated. Move the pieces logically around your own private chess-board and in the greater game even his son was just a pawn.
‘Fine,’ Mark said aloud, ‘I’ll call Jenny right now and see when would be a good time for the interview.’
Jenny Cooper was the Deputy Press Officer at the Football Association and Mark knew that although he could easily have rung the young Geordie directly in his room at the team’s England base, that action would have blown his chances and those of his station for future interviews with any other members of the squad. Jenny was both renowned and feared for her aggressive protection of the players from the media. She was never scared to be rude to anybody, including certain senior FA officials which was probably why she had remained as Deputy Press Officer for the last five years even though the main job had fallen vacant twice within that period.
‘Don’t ask, Mark, tell her. I want this item on air tonight,’ Halid said with an air of confidence that in a man of lesser personality would have been construed as arrogance. It simply did not occur to him that either Mark or Barry Reed might have other arrangements and even less that Jenny Cooper might refuse the request.
‘I’ll do what I can do, Mo. Where will I find Nabil to tell him he’s coming with me?’
‘He’s down at Studio 3. And you don’t need to tell him. He knows already.’ Halid smiled, as if he were just letting Mark in on what had been a neatly planned joke.
Mark looked at his watch. It was already eleven, which meant the players were in their morning session at Bisham Abbey. He brought up Jenny Cooper’s mobile number on his personal computer, dialled and to his surprise got through first time. The cellular telephone system had never proved particularly user friendly as far as he was concerned. The woman’s voice at the other end sounded both harassed and distant as if too many people had been able to get through that morning.
‘Mark, hi. Been a bit crazy down here today. The Press just got on to the story that Inter-Milan have bid eighteen million quid for Gary Davies.’
‘Eighteen?’
‘Exactly. A million for each goal he’s scored for England, as one of the journos told me he was going to put it within the pages of his scummy little tabloid. Anyway, Kenny’s been going mad trying to get the lads focused on this Colombian match, but the locusts don’t want to know. They’re clambering all over the place looking for any angle from what Gary has for breakfast to whether or not he’s ever had an affair with anybody from the female club physio to the mongrel who passes for the club mascot. After all that it’s nice to hear from a human being.’
‘I’m afr
aid I’m phoning as a journalist rather than a human being,’ Mark said apologetically.
‘Isn’t that the function of your other half?’ Jenny asked. Her tone made Mark hesitate. There was no doubt that Jenny was attractive. Small and slim, she was probably just the wrong side of thirty, her hair cropped close like a street-urchin’s, eyes of china-blue usually concealed behind pebble glasses, but with a wonderful peaches and cream complexion, and a generous smile. She had a reputation for moodiness and the smile was hard to raise but once achieved was worth the effort, a slow dawn bursting into a full glorious sunrise. Now, for the first time Mark felt she had some genuine interest in him as a person, rather than merely somebody she had to deal with as part of her job. It had been a long while since Mark had even thought of a woman other than Patti, but the use of the words, ‘other half’, had struck a discordant note.
‘I’m not sure the beautiful Miss Delaney is talking to me at the moment.’
‘More fool her,’ Jenny said, this time leaving Mark in no doubt that if he had any interest in her, then she, in turn, was readily available.
‘What can I do for you, anyway?’ she asked, the tone still flirtatious.
‘I need to bring the cameras down to interview Barry Reed for Ball Park. Any chances?’
‘For anyone else two, Bob Hope and no hope. But for you, I’ll see what I can do. When do you want it? We’ve a general Press call today at four. Barry’s not up for that one as far as I’m aware.’
She was referring to the manager’s practice of putting up just two or three players for each official session with the Press rather than exposing the whole squad and in particular those players that the media felt might provide a real story. It meant spreading the duties and the publicity opportunities around as well as keeping the more controversial figures out of the spotlight.
‘Can I call you back in ten minutes?’ Jenny asked.
‘Sure.’
‘And you’ll be doing the interview yourself? I’m sure that will make some difference to Kenny.’
