False Nine

by Philip Kerr

  ‘I’ve never talked about this to anyone except my family,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ I said, wearily, ‘you’re the true king of France.’

  ‘Jay,’ said Philippe Dumas. ‘Why take a chance? He’s a prick. You can’t trust this guy to keep his mouth shut. And once it’s out in the open it’s out. There’s no going back with something like this.’

  ‘I have to tell him, Philippe. You heard what he said. If I level with him there’s still a chance for me.’

  ‘That’s right, Jérôme,’ I said. ‘A good chance, I’d say. You’re a top player. With everything going for you. But if I have to get on that plane by myself, it will be because of your bullshit. It will be over. I can promise you that. No football team will ever touch you again. I’ll make fucking sure of it.’

  Jérôme nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you everything. The whole story.’

  I sipped some bourbon and waited, patiently.

  ‘Have you ever heard of a footballer called Asa Hartford?’ said Jérôme after a long pause.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course.’

  Almost everyone in English football has heard of Asa Hartford. Back in the early seventies he was a Scottish international who played for West Bromwich Albion. A good one, too. I think he even knew my dad. He also played for Scotland. Then – in 1971, was it? – Leeds United bought him in a high-profile transfer that fell through after it was discovered that Hartford had a hole in the heart.

  ‘He has a ventricular septal defect,’ said Jérôme. ‘That’s the proper medical term for the condition.’ He paused. ‘For my condition.’

  I frowned as the implications of what he was telling me began to sink in.

  ‘Holy shit. You mean—’

  ‘There’s a tiny hole in the septum – in the middle wall – between the left and right ventricle in my heart. In a normal heart all of the blood that is pumped out from the left ventricle goes into the aorta. In people with VSD, when the heart beats, part of the blood in the left ventricle flows back into the right ventricle through the septum hole. So, the heart works harder as it has to pump not only the blood entering the heart normally from the rest of the body, but also an extra amount of blood flowing through the VSD.’

  ‘Jesus, I think I’m beginning to guess what’s been going on.’

  ‘No need. You’ve done enough guessing, Mr Manson. This is a condition that affects only me, not my brother, Philippe. We’re identical twins in almost every other regard. I discovered I had a hole in my heart at a clinic in Marseille about eight or nine years ago, just before I was going to start playing for AS Monaco. And it was pointed out to me that this might prevent them giving me a contract. So we hushed it up. My mum and my dad. Grace. Everyone. You understand, because of the chance that this gave my whole family we couldn’t afford to do anything else. My father arranged for my twin to come over from Guadeloupe and take the medical on my behalf. We did the same thing again in Paris when I went to join Paris Saint-Germain. Only that time I went back to Guadeloupe and for a while my brother took my place in Paris. To have a taste of the good life himself. He’s a good footballer, you see. Very good, actually. Just not as good as me. It’s not every pair of twins who are as good as the Da Silvas.

  He plays for a part time local team called CSC. But because he normally wears a beard nobody notices that he looks like Jérôme Dumas. Besides, his name isn’t Dumas, it’s Richardson, Philippe Richardson. No one ever knew we were twins because how many twins live apart like we did? Me living with our mum in Marseille and Philippe living with our dad in Monserrat and then here in Guadeloupe.’

  ‘I can see that,’ I said. ‘But Asa Hartford had a successful career. The transfer at Leeds fell through, yes. But he went on to play for Manchester City, didn’t he? Nottingham Forest? Everton? And for big money, too. He was a great player. He even played for Ally’s Tartan Army in the 1978 World Cup. And he’s still alive. I think my dad still sees him from time to time. VSD is mostly asymptomatic. A lot of people go through life without even knowing that they have it. And certainly there are plenty of sportsmen who have it. Aren’t there?’

  ‘Perhaps that used to be the case, in Asa Hartford’s day,’ said Jérôme. ‘Frankly, it’s never once given me a problem. Not once. Not so much as a twinge. It’s a very common heart condition. It’s estimated that lots of kids are born with a VSD. But insurance companies have changed everything since football became a billion dollar business. Also, VSDs can cause strokes in some people – it’s the condition that nearly killed Fabrice Muamba – so its very hard to get insured to play when you have VSD. So you see my dilemma,’ said Jérôme. ‘I make a lot of money. And the way things are going I’m likely to make a lot more thanks to Paolo Gentile. There’s even talk of me becoming the black Beckham. But all of that ends if it becomes known that I have VSD. On the other hand, if Philippe goes to Barcelona in my place, then everything can proceed as normal.’

  ‘You mean if Philippe here flies back to Barcelona to take the club medical on your behalf? If he deceives the club into thinking he’s you? I can see why that’s attractive. The money. The cars. The women. Sure. It makes perfect sense.’

  ‘But you know it’s not just me who stands to benefit from all this money. Surely you can see that. I know you think I’m what the English call a champagne socialist, yes? But I really do believe in giving something back. To the people here in Guadeloupe. To my father. My brother. The local lycée. A new wing for the local hospital.’

  ‘All right, all right. You’re a saint. I get that. But what I don’t understand is that none of this would have been a problem if Philippe had just flown home from Antigua in your place like he was supposed to do. I wouldn’t be here now. You could have done all this and no one would have been any the wiser. What the fuck happened?’

  ‘You’re right. What happened was this. The night before I was due to fly back to London I left Jumby Bay to come here on a boat owned by a friend of my dad’s, DJ Jewel Movement. I got off the boat, Philippe and I swapped clothes and he got back on the boat and they sailed back to Antigua. But somehow DJ worked out that we’d switched and demanded money from Dad. He thought we were working some kind of confidence trick and he wanted a share of the profits.’

  ‘They were still arguing about it when I got off in Nelson’s Dockyard,’ said Philippe. ‘DJ was a crook. A violent crook. That knife on the table is his. I took it with me when I got off the boat. Because I was afraid for my dad.’

  ‘It’s just like I told you before,’ added Jérôme. ‘More or less.’

  ‘When I got to the airport I saw the newspaper and guessed what must have happened,’ said Philippe. ‘Or at least part of it. The newspaper didn’t say who was actually dead. My dad or DJ. So I got a ride back here to sit it out until I knew for sure. But I don’t know, the stress of that got to me, I guess. I got pneumonia and couldn’t travel. I’m only just over it, really.’

  ‘So we were stuck,’ said Jérôme. ‘I could hardly fly to Spain and take the medical myself. Not without risking everything. Then you turned up and we thought that you wouldn’t notice. That there wouldn’t be time for you to notice. We thought that you’d be so pleased to have found me that you wouldn’t suspect anything was wrong. Why would you notice? Even here on Guadeloupe nobody seems to have worked it out. And you wouldn’t have noticed, probably, if the plane hadn’t been delayed. By now the two of you should have been airborne and all of your suspicions allayed with a sleeping pill and an in-flight movie.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Like you told me,’ said Jérôme. ‘I’d have asked the team for some compassionate leave and when Philippe came back here, I’d have taken his place.’

  ‘Very neat. I have to hand it to you, it’s a great scam.’

  ‘Like I said, I didn’t have a choice. I’m still a good player, Scott. I can still make it to the top of the game. You’ve seen me play. You know what I can do. You said yourself, I can go right t
o the top. And you know the Asa Hartford story. A high achiever. A Scotland international, like you said. So, you have to let Philippe go back in my place. Otherwise it’s not just me who suffers, it’s a lot of other people, too. This game we love – it’s the only real social mobility that exists in the world. It’s the only chance people like me from a small island like Guadeloupe have of moving up in the world. For some genuine wealth redistribution.’

  ‘That’s hardly fair,’ I said. ‘You’re putting this on me.’

  ‘What’s fair got to do with it? This is football, Mr Manson. And you do what you have to do in order to win. We’re part of an entertainment industry that’s now worth billions, thanks to the likes of Sky and BT. What’s the difference between me hiding the fact that I have VSD and a Hollywood studio concealing the fact that the romantic leading man in their latest movie is secretly gay? Answer me that.’

  ‘You could die. That’s the difference, surely.’

  ‘And if I’m willing to take that risk? Whose business is it except mine? If I’d rather die than give up football? Who should mind but me? And who better than a player like you to understand something like that? How do you like not playing football any more? Do you miss it? I’ll bet you do. But at least you had your chance. You had your chance. At least you played, and for as long as you could. Don’t take that away from me, Mr Manson. Please, I’m begging you. You take football away from me now, you’ll be taking away everything I’ve got and everything that I’m ever going to have.’

  ‘Don’t put this on me,’ I said again.

  ‘Who else should I put it on? The pilot of the jet? I’m not asking you to lie for me. I’m just asking you not to say anything to PSG or to FCB.’

  ‘To be economical with the truth. A lie by omission.’

  ‘If you want to put it like that, yes. But where’s the harm? Who’s injured by your silence? Surely that’s what really matters. Who gets hurt?’

  ‘You’re asking a hell of a lot, son. I told you before I owe a lot to Barcelona. More than you know.’

  ‘And I repeat the question: who is hurt? Look, just assume for a moment that I go to Camp Nou and score lots of goals. Which is a fair assumption given the number of goals I scored at Monaco. It never really clicked for me at PSG because they kept playing me on the wing, when I’m a natural nine. You can see that.’

  ‘A false nine,’ I remarked. ‘I can see that all right.’

  ‘Perhaps. But you said yourself, I’m still a top player. Assume that during the remainder of the season I score… let’s say ten goals. How is the club damaged? Or, assume I play in el clásico and score just one goal and that goal is an equaliser, or even the winning goal, perhaps. How is Barcelona damaged by my condition? Suppose they sell lots of shirts as a result. Suppose all that. How is PSG damaged by Barcelona profiting from my loan to them?’

  ‘Suppose I just tell Barcelona and let them decide.’

  ‘You know that won’t work. They’re a big company and they have big company rules. It’s not people like you and Luis Enrique who decide things at clubs as big as Barcelona. Not any more. It’s accountants and lawyers and management consultants and actuaries. Medical actuaries. I’ve looked into what might happen in considerable detail. Don’t think I haven’t agonised about this myself. I have. A medical actuary is a physician who puts a number on the risk incurred by a medical insurance company when a company like PSG or FCB employs someone like me. A doctor with a calculator and a set of tables who knows nothing at all about football but who makes a bet on whether or not his medical insurance company would have to pay out in the possible event of me keeling over in the middle of a game.’

  ‘I know what a medical actuary does, thanks.’

  ‘Right. Then you know how that works. No one likes to bet on a horse when they think there might be something wrong with it. That’s all I’m asking you to do. Make a bet on the man you see, not on the man you can’t see – the man with a hole in his heart. I’m a sure thing, Mr Manson. I can feel it. I’m no crock.’

  I glanced at my wristwatch. There wasn’t long before the jet was supposed to take us to Spain. And it seemed I now had to decide the future of Jérôme Dumas, not to mention his whole fucking family and possibly – if Paulo Gentile was to be believed about the commercial possibilities for their futures, together – Bella Macchina, too. I could certainly have done without that responsibility.

  ‘I’ll think about what you’ve said. And let you know – well, as soon as I’ve arrived at a decision. In the morning, probably.’

  I collected the bottle of Elijah Craig off the drinks tray. I don’t normally drink spirits; then again, I’m seldom put in fear of my life.

  ‘I’m going to change my clothes because I’m soaking wet, and then I’m going to finish this bottle.’

  30

  In my time as a football manager I’ve had to make some tough decisions. Who to drop from a team; who to sell. I remember having to break it to the guy who was my captain at London City that an injury meant he was never going to play for the team again, and it would probably spell the end of his career. And it did. I remember hearing the sound of him weeping in the bogs afterwards – him, a real hard Scots bastard. He took to the bottle after that and I felt like shit for weeks. More than a few weeks. It felt like I’d ruined his life and it’s been a skidmark on the porcelain of my soul ever since.

  But choosing between two players was easy compared with the dilemma that Jérôme Dumas had landed me with. How do you decide something like that? How do answer a question that might result in the end of a young man’s career? There was that and then there was all the excess fucking baggage he’d managed to attach to my decision: the kids’ school in Pointe-à-Pitre, the hospital wing in Le Gosier, his brother’s welfare, his father’s legal defence, his cousin’s legal practice in Antigua. I told myself that a hole in the heart was one thing but that I’d have to have no heart at all to rule against him playing again.

  In a way I actually admired him. His determination to play the game at all costs was something I could easily understand. You had to hand it to the lad, the idea of sending his twin to take his medical was cheeky and ingenious and just the sort of thing my old mate Matt Drennan would have done. The game was different then, of course, and that was only ten or fifteen years ago. It’s true, the money has changed everything. Jérôme was right about that. And why was it all right to conceal the true sexuality of a leading man in Hollywood – not mentioning any names, of course – and yet somehow unacceptable to cover up something like VSD? Why is there a higher standard expected of football clubs than movie studios? I don’t get that. All the crap from the Labour Party in the wake of the so-called ‘obscene’ Premier League television deal, about clubs not paying the living wage to some of their employees, had really pissed me off. Why the fuck stop there? Why not slap a windfall tax on the clubs and give the money to fucking Palestine, or to find a cure for Ebola? Cunts. The BPL is one of our most successful exports and there’s nothing obscene about that.

  He was also right about VSD. More than he knew, perhaps. He probably didn’t realise it but only a week or so ago I’d read a very relevant story in the sports pages of newspapers. An English court of law had ordered Tottenham Hotspur to pay £7 million in damages to a promising star of the youth team, Radwan Hamed, who suffered cardiac arrest days after signing his first professional contract for the club, since when he had been unable to live independently. An ECG screening before he signed showed his heart to be ‘abnormal’ but he was not stopped from playing by team doctors with the result that Hamed’s family had sued Spurs for negligence. Spurs were indemnified by the doctors’ insurers in respect of these damages but it underlined that there was no way that any insurance company was even going to countenance the possibility of allowing a man with a hole in his heart to play top-flight football. The days when an Asa Hartford might have enjoyed a full fifteen years at the top of the game were long gone.

  By now I was just a little
bit pissed. But that was good. I was going to need to be a little bit pissed to tell Jérôme I wasn’t going to participate in his deception, which was the decision I was always going to have to make. Because the plain fact of the matter is this: I owe Barcelona a lot. I owe them everything. It was them who took me on when no one else was prepared to give me a chance. And you don’t forget that in a hurry. Not in football. In spite of what I’d told Jérôme, I knew I would have to decide in favour of the club. That’s what loyalty is. I couldn’t have decided any other way. Not in a hundred years. Naturally I felt really sorry for Jérôme Dumas but the way I saw it I didn’t have any real choice in the matter. Choosing between the club that had nurtured my managerial ambitions and a player who was prepared ruthlessly to deceive it at all costs was, if I’m honest, never a choice at all. But that didn’t make it feel any better. Which was why I’d grabbed the bottle of anaesthetic.

  In truth, most of the time I was sitting in my room with the bottle I was trying to think of a way of salvaging something of Jérôme’s career. Nobody likes to throw someone on life’s scrapheap. Least of all me, who knows a few things about being on the scrapheap. When you’re in prison you realise that the scrapheap looks like a step up from where you are now.

  I might have called someone with whom I could talk this over – my dad, perhaps – but the signal on my phone was, predictably, non-existent. So I was on my own. And those are the toughest decisions of all.

  I slept for a couple of hours, woke around four, took a shower and went downstairs. The Louis Vuitton bags were still piled in the hall and the twins were where I’d left them on the sofa, wearing expressions of deep concern and anxiety. I glanced around. The knife was gone, thank God. I went into the kitchen, brewed some Bonifieur coffee and came back into the drawing room. Both of the twins stood up, expectantly.

  I saw no point in beating around the bush so I took a deep breath and said, ‘I’ve decided. I’m afraid the answer has to be no.’