by Philip Kerr
‘Who says I buy her an expensive Christmas present? That’s you, Scott, not me. I don’t buy women presents. I don’t have time. You’re the one who likes to buy presents.’
‘You must have bought her something, surely?’
Zarco grinned. ‘Toyah’s married to Zarco. She doesn’t need a Christmas present.’
9
Elland Road, the home of Leeds United FC, is no place for the faint-hearted in January. Even on a midsummer’s day the area is as bleak as the hair on a witch’s tit, but in winter a northwest wind whips off the Yorkshire Dales and seems to take the spirit right out of you. Doubly so when you consider that the stadium is right next to Cottingley Crematorium and they do say that sometimes, when the wind is blowing in the right direction, you can catch the pungent whiff of an afternoon service of remembrance. The beautiful game was rarely ever played in Leeds and certainly never when Billy Bremner was the Leeds captain back in the seventies, a time when Leeds United was one of the dirtiest sides in football. And I have the marks on my shins to prove it wasn’t much better in the nineties and noughties, when David O’Leary was the manager and the likes of Jonathan Woodgate and Lee Bowyer were there.
Although my father knew Billy Bremner very well – Bremner captained Scotland at the 1974 World Cup – I met the man only once, not long before his untimely death in 1997. I mention Billy Bremner because I think there’s something very wrong about the statue of Billy that stands outside Elland Road. It’s only my opinion, but Billy Bremner looks like he’s black. In reality the diminutive Scotsman, who was born near Stirling, was a pasty-looking white man with red hair. I don’t know why the Billy outside Elland Road should appear to be black but it’s as if he’s been partly cremated in the crematorium nearby. The hair is the right colour, as it happens, and so is the Leeds shirt, but every time I see it I have a laugh because I’m sure Billy would have fucking hated it. Even the statue of Michael Jackson that used to stand outside Craven Cottage is more true to life than Billy’s statue; weirdly, Billy is blacker than Michael is, although maybe that’s not so strange. Anyway, Billy just looks creepy, like a shitty piece of sculpture by Jeff Koons, or a statue of a saint you might see in a shrine in Cuba or Haiti, as if he might come alive to put the fear of God and voodoo into any team turning up to play Leeds at Elland Road. Maybe that’s the idea. If so then it might work even better if the supporters were to carry it round the pitch before the match, because it certainly wasn’t working for Leeds when London City went there for the third round FA Cup tie.
Nothing was. Not even a spectacularly tasteless song about Zarco from Leeds fans.
It was Leeds United’s second loss in a new year that was only seven days old and their worst result since losing 7–3 to Nottingham Forest in March 2012. Christoph Bündchen, replacing Ayrton Taylor up front as our number one striker, gave City fans a very late Twelfth Night present of five golden goals in an eight-goal rout of Leeds United that proceeded without reply. This was the biggest win in our club’s history and it was doubly fortunate that Viktor Sokolnikov had flown back from the Caribbean aboard his private Boeing 767-300 just to see the match.
Bündchen was City’s hero but Juan-Luis Dominguin also scored two, and this was after Xavier Pepe made a forty-yard strike that was the first of the evening and already looks like being the goal of the season – a top-drawer goal conjured from absolutely nothing, which departed his right foot like an arrow from a longbow. There was nothing speculative about Pepe’s incredible strike: by contrast, Andrea Pirlo’s curling goal for Milan against Parma in 2010 seems like a long shot, in its full idiomatic meaning. Pepe’s shot was something else: head down, with every sinew of his muscular body engaged, he knew exactly what he was doing and the ball flew as straight as a high-velocity bullet. By the time the Leeds goalkeeper, Paddy Kenny, had started to move for it, the football was already in the top corner of his net. Small wonder that Pepe was recently ranked by Bloomberg as the seventh best footballer in Europe.
But it was Christoph Bündchen who gave the Leeds manager nightmares, and perhaps not just him. Bündchen is only twenty-one years old and has yet to be picked for his home country of Germany, and this prompted me to think that if the German manager, Joachim Löw, hasn’t yet found a place in his team for a player of Bündchen’s goal-scoring ability, then Roy Hodgson’s England had better watch out for the rest of the German team. It’s true that Christoph’s first goal was a well-taken penalty after a clumsy challenge brought Pepe down in the box when the score was ‘only’ 3–0. But the next four goals scored by the young German were nothing short of sublime, and at one stage it seemed as if it were Leeds United versus Christoph Bündchen, who, incredibly, doesn’t seem to have been ranked by Bloomberg at all. What made this even more satisfying to me was that I had persuaded Zarco to pay the German club FC Augsburg just four million quid for the boy when we joined City in the summer.
It wasn’t that Leeds failed to take their chances; in truth they only ever seemed to have one chance in the whole match and that was soon after Pepe’s goal when Lewis Walters intercepted a nonchalant pass by the City centre back, Ross Field, and chipped our reserve goalkeeper, Roberto Forlan – who had little else to do all evening – only to find our captain, the ever-reliable Ken Okri, hack his effort off the line.
At half time it was 4–0 and the lads seemed to take Zarco at his word when he told them to go and enjoy themselves and do the same in the second half as they had done in the first.
After that Leeds were seldom threatening. The fifth goal came within seconds of the game restarting when another scorching shot from Pepe was well saved by Paddy Kenny; he then rolled the ball out to Kevin Beech, who found Bündchen on him in a flash. Beech attempted a desperate square pass to Stefan Signoret but Bündchen read it as if it had been written on the advertising hoarding in six-foot-high letters, intercepted the ball at speed, sold the poor keeper a sweet dummy and then toed the ball across the line. 5–0.
Bündchen’s third goal was pure magic and was made more impressive by the near superhuman length of his stride. Bündchen is well over six feet tall and looks more like a defender than a striker, which makes him very intimidating when he’s running flat out at you. Scornfully hurdling trailing legs that looked like obvious penalties if they’d brought him down, and selling dummies as if the Leeds players were toddlers in highchairs, the German must have changed direction three times before he found the space for a shot that he seemed to dig out of the grass, and which left the poor keeper dumped on his backside with his head in his hands. For all the world it looked as if he was just checking he could still hold onto something round. Zarco ran the length of his technical area in celebration, threw himself onto his knees and slid for several yards, ruining the trousers of a good suit and looking like someone who was already in training for Strictly Come Dancing on Ice.
With fifteen minutes still to go many of the Leeds supporters were making for the exits as if they were passengers on the Titanic, only the lifeboats were gone, and when Leeds conceded a stupid free kick, it’s unlikely that any of them were that surprised when Bündchen stepped up to take it and promptly scored again, blasting the ball cleverly underneath the feet of the players’ wall, which jumped as one to try to head it clear.
We were still celebrating that one in the dugout when Christoph scored the last goal of the match. In truth it was comedy gold: Paddy Kenny cleared his line only to gift the ball to Dominguin, who volleyed it to Bündchen as if recognising a player who was on the form of his life. The German wünderkind proceeded to run straight at the goalkeeper with the ball balanced on his head until, just as the keeper reached him, he dropped the ball onto his toe and tapped it in.
It’s generally held that the FA Cup is not what it used to be, that the bonus money in the Premier League means that no one much cares about the FA Cup any more, but that’s not how it seemed to us. A cold January evening in Yorkshire never felt as good as it did to me that night in Leeds. We took the ball wit
h us when we boarded the coach to take us to Leeds Bradford International Airport and awarded it to Christoph, who – showing a sense of diplomacy far beyond his years – promptly gave it to the club’s absurdly grateful Ukrainian proprietor. As we drove away it seemed to me that Billy Bremner was shaking both his fists at the sky and the capricious gods of football.
On the coach I was already having to deal with a list of injuries as long as the faces of the Leeds supporters we’d seen outside the ground. The worst of these was our centre back, Gary Ferguson, whose ankle had locked up again.
‘There’s no diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperstosis,’ explained Nick Scott, the team doctor. ‘He’s just knackered. So that’s all right.’
‘Fucking hell,’ I said, knowing full well that Ferguson, who was a Scouser, was sitting right behind me. ‘The only part of that I understand is him being an idiot.’
‘He’s probably got some osteophytes floating around in the joint which are causing his ankle to seize up.’
‘That explains why his passing was so shit,’ I said.
‘Thanks a lot,’ said Ferguson. ‘I was trying me best.’
‘I know, that’s what made it so fucking painful to watch.’
‘We should get it X-rayed this time,’ the doctor told me. ‘I think we’ve reached the end of being able to treat this with anti-inflammatories.’
‘Or we could just shoot the poor bastard,’ I said. ‘Might be kinder. Cheaper, too.’
Osteophytes. We used to call these bone spurs, or parrot beaks, but whatever you call them the effect is the same: they severely limit joint movement and cause extreme pain. I knew what that was like as my own ankles were none too good after a decade playing the game; sometimes I count myself lucky that I went to prison and I didn’t play on into my thirties with the help of corticosteroids injected into my ageing joints. As it is I hobble through my flat in the morning like I’m looking for my Zimmer frame. A few years ago I saw Tommy Smith giving a speech at a dinner; I was shocked that Liverpool’s hardest ever club captain now needs sticks or a wheelchair to get around. It’s a hard truth but even today being an athlete can fuck you up.
‘Talk about a Pyrrhic victory,’ I said to the doc. ‘It’s the curse of Billy Bremner.’
‘Who’s Billy Bremner?’ asked Ferguson.
‘Black bloke, used to play for Leeds,’ I answered patiently.
‘And what’s a Pyrrhic victory?’
I saw no point in giving a history lesson to someone who thought that Napoleon was a type of brandy and that Nelson was a fucking wrestler. It’s true I have a university degree, though it’s a 2:2 from Birmingham, not a First from Oxbridge, but while I reckon I possess an above average intelligence, next to some of the lads on our team I’m Richard fucking Dawkins.
‘It means a win that’s so bloody good it gives you a hard-on,’ I told him.
Even before we reached the airport the weather suddenly changed for the worse. The team coach felt like our own little snow globe.
10
We were late getting back from Leeds. The flight was delayed by the snow. As usual my mind was buzzing after the match and it was almost 2 a.m. when I finally went to bed. I took the bed in the spare room so as not to wake Sonja, who sleeps like a cat. When I woke up the following morning it was with the knowledge that she’d already gone to work – she has a practice in Knightsbridge shrink-wrapping people who have eating disorders: people who are fat, or anorexic – and that there was someone ringing my doorbell.
I slid out of bed, hobbled to the entryphone and found a woman staring up at the camera. For a moment I thought it must be one of Sonja’s patients except that she was neither thin nor fat; in fact, she was just right.
‘Mr Manson?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir. But we did make an appointment for ten o’clock this morning. My name is Detective Inspector Louise Considine, from the police station at Brent. I’m investigating the death of Matt Drennan.’
‘Right. I’m sorry. Had a late night. You’d better come up.’
I buzzed her in, threw on a pair of jeans and a sweater, and poured some bottled mineral water into my one-touch, bean-to-cup coffee machine. At nearly four grand it was the pride and joy of my kitchen. I couldn’t cook very much, but I could make a delicious caffé latte.
She was better-looking than most coppers I’d seen, and believe me, I’ve seen a lot. Wholesome-looking and frankly a bit fairy-like, she had long fair hair, big blue eyes and a nose that was sort of pointy. She was wearing a short grey coat and leather gloves.
‘Did you forget? That we had a meeting? Oh dear, I’m sorry. You certainly look like you forgot.’
‘We had a match yesterday. And the flight back was delayed by snow. Please. Take off your coat and have a seat.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Want some coffee?’
‘Yes, please, if you’re making it. Milk and no sugar.’
I nodded and flicked a switch on the machine.
‘That looks impressive,’ she said. She sounded posh – too posh to be a copper.
‘It does everything except wash the cup afterwards.’
She shrugged off her coat and went to inspect some of the paintings on my walls.
‘This is good,’ she said, examining a largish picture of a thuggish-looking man with a shaven head and raised fists. He looked like a bare-knuckle fighter. ‘He’s rather frightening, isn’t he?’
‘That one’s by Peter Howson,’ I said. ‘Scottish artist. I bought that painting to remind myself of what it was like to be in prison. There were several times when I found myself sharing a cell with blokes just like him. People who were always ready to put a fist down your throat for no good reason. Every time I look at it I tell myself how incredibly lucky I am. Lucky that I was able to put all that behind me. Unlike nearly everyone else who comes out of the nick.’
‘It’s a nice place you’ve got here, Mr Manson. You have very good taste.’
‘You mean for someone in football.’
‘You must be rich to live round here.’
‘I only work in football,’ I said. ‘I make money from something else that doesn’t require me to do anything at all.’
‘Yes, you’re a director of Pedila Shoes.’ She smiled. ‘I Googled you. It was easier than tapping your phone or having you followed twenty hours a day. These days police work is mostly done with the aid of web-crawlers and hyperlinks, html and meta-tags.’
‘That explains why you don’t look anything like a copper.’
She smiled. ‘How is a copper supposed to look, then?’
‘Not like you. You look like you just finished your law degree.’ I smiled. ‘I read your business card. Or at least a picture of it on my iPhone. LLB, wasn’t it?’
She raised an eyebrow at me. ‘I do have flat feet. And I can say fuck a lot. If that helps.’
I brought her the coffee and then sat down opposite her.
‘It makes two cups at once. Fuck.’
‘Time is precious.’
‘Isn’t it?’ She tasted her coffee and nodded with appreciation. ‘Mmm. Good, too.’
‘Java beans. From the Algerian Coffee Stores, in Soho.’
‘I love that place. I should warn you: I’m liable to come here again. This is much better than my local coffee shop.’
‘And I should warn you, I don’t much like the police.’
‘Yes, I know. I was warned about that by my chief inspector. And from what I’ve read about you I’m lucky this coffee isn’t poisoned.’
I smiled. ‘I should wait and see, if I were you, Miss Considine.’
‘I don’t blame you at all for thinking ill of the police. I’m sure I’d feel the same way if I’d been wrongly convicted of something.’
‘I was fitted up. That’s what happened.’
‘But the Met is very different today from how it was, even a few years ago.’
She had a sexy way of talking, as if she kn
ew the effect her voluptuous mouth had on things as ordinary as words; every sentence seemed to end in a pout. She sipped her coffee and glanced around the room again.
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘Please do. I was very sorry to hear about Mr Drennan. But if I’m honest, it seems that I only ever knew him as someone who was famous for being drunk and getting himself into one scrape after another. It’s hard for me to connect someone as clownish as him with top-level sport.’
‘What you have to remember is that a lot of footballers – and I do mean a lot – are just overgrown schoolboys. Every team has someone who’s as much of a comedian as Drenno was. But there are very few teams that have someone as talented as him. In his day Drenno was perhaps the most outstanding player in the country. Look, there are a lot of wankers in football – just watch Soccer AM – but Matt Drennan wasn’t one of them.’
‘Yes, I read your tweets about him. And watched some of his goals on YouTube.’ She shrugged as if she was hardly impressed with what she’d seen.
‘Do you follow a team?’
‘Chelsea.’
‘It figures.’
‘Does it? Oh dear. That makes me sound very predictable. Unlike Matt Drennan. I mean, I know he was your friend and I’m sorry to say this, but to me he always looked like an accident waiting to happen.’
‘Not like that.’
‘No?’
‘I certainly never expected him to go and hang himself, if that’s what you want to know.’
She nodded. ‘It is, among other things.’
‘I expect there will have to be a post-mortem and an inquest,’ I said.
She nodded again.
‘Will I have to give evidence?’
‘Perhaps. Did you know his wife, too?’
‘Yes. I was at the wedding. Actually, I was at both his weddings.’
‘She says she’d already thrown him out. For good this time, according to her. And that was before he beat the shit out of her.’
