by Philip Kerr
I took my iPhone out of my backpack, in the hope that I might deal with some of the shit heaping up at my door. An email I’d been composing for Hugh McIlvanney about João Zarco looked unimprovable, so I sent that, with a copy to Sarah Crompton. Jane Byrne wanted to stage a reconstruction of Zarco’s last moments with the help of Crimewatch, at our next weekend home fixture. I said yes to that. Another one from UKAD invited me to a meeting at the FA head office so that my memory could be refreshed regarding drug-testing protocols. Stupid sods. Could I do an interview with Football Focus? Fuck off; I’d already said no to Gillette Soccer Saturday and TalkSPORT. I had an old mate from Southampton who’d been given the manager’s job at Hibs and did I have any advice for him? Knowing Edinburgh, I did: don’t let the bastards get you down.
Then I scrolled through some texts: the Rape Crisis people wanted a donation, to which I said yes, and Tiffany Drennan informed me that Drenno’s funeral would be on Friday, to which I also said yes. Viktor had sent me a text saying he would be back from Russia in time for the match on Tuesday night, and that Bekim Develi would be coming with him; and the red devil himself had sent me a text in which he told me he was looking forward to playing for City and felt sure that ours would be a very successful relationship. I texted him back a one word ‘Welcome’. Meanwhile, on my iPad, I quickly Googled Warwick Square and discovered that it had its own website, with an active residents’ association and a useful table of property prices. Flats were a staggering two million quid, while what few houses there were for sale started at a cool eight million.
It never surprises you what your own house is worth, but it always surprises you the price that other people want for their houses.
‘Can I help you?’
The man looking at me was thirtyish, thin, and about six feet tall; he wore a brown Crombie coat with a velvet collar and a yellow hard hat.
‘I’m a friend of Zarco,’ I said.
‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen you on the telly, haven’t I? On A Question of Sport.’
‘You’ve got a good memory. Is there somewhere we can talk?’
‘What about?’
‘I understand you went to see Mrs Zarco,’ I said. ‘About some money you say you’re owed. Twenty thousand quid, to be exact.’
Tristram Lambton hesitated.
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘You say you recognise me off the telly? Well, that should reassure you I’m not from the Inland Revenue or the Home Office. I don’t care who you’re employing on the site and how you’re paying them. I’m here to help Mrs Zarco, if I can.’
‘There’s my car. Let’s talk there.’
The Bentley was silver grey with all the extras; when you shut the door it sounded like you’d walked through the entrance of a very exclusive gentlemen’s club. It smelled like one, too; all leather and cigars and thick pile carpets.
‘I didn’t know that Mrs Zarco wasn’t aware of my arrangement with her husband,’ said Lambton. ‘I felt really awful about it afterwards. But I thought, widowed or not, the best thing for her now would be to complete the building project as quickly as possible so she can flog the place and get on with her life. Which does seem to be what she wants to do. Frankly the whole job has been a bloody nightmare from start to finish.’
‘That’s certainly the impression I got. But what was your arrangement with Mr Zarco?’
‘The Zarcos have been getting a lot of complaints about the building work from the neighbours. In particular the people at number thirteen, next door – as you can imagine. Which means that I’ve been under a lot of pressure from the Zarcos to get this building finished as soon as possible. And the only way I can get the lads to work the overtime I’m asking them to do in order to make that happen is to pay them double time, in cash. Money really does talk to these boys. That was my arrangement with Mr Zarco. He’d pay the double time himself. The weekends, too. On Saturday he was supposed to stump up the twenty k that would help me to get things finished before the end of March, which is ahead of schedule, I might add. But you know what happened. It’s really too bad. I liked him a lot. Now I’ve no idea what I’ll do. I mean, that’s the end of the double overtime and working on a Sunday.’
‘Not necessarily.’
I’d anticipated this moment. In Toyah’s lavatory I’d separated the bung money into two amounts: twenty grand and thirty grand. The twenty grand was still in the Jiffy bag, the rest was in a compartment in my backpack.
‘Here,’ I said. ‘The twenty grand he was planning to give you.’
‘That’s brilliant. I know it sounds a lot, but these Romanian boys are hard workers and worth every penny. I mean they really do want to bloody work, unlike some of our own. But don’t get me started on that.’ He laughed. ‘Now if you can just sort out Mr and Mrs Van de Merwe at number thirteen, everything will be perfect.’
‘What would you suggest?’
‘Seriously?’
41
Pimlico is like Belgravia without rich people. The folks in Pimlico aren’t exactly poor, it’s just that much of their wealth is tied up in the value of their flats and houses.
Number twelve was an end-of-terrace property; the house next door was a six-storey white stucco mansion from the early nineteenth century with a fine Doric portico and a black door that was as polished as a guardsman’s boots; or at least it would have been if it hadn’t been covered with a fine layer of builders’ dust. There was a blue plaque on the wall but it was too dark for me to identify the famous person who had once lived there. But I knew the area quite well; Gianluca Vialli had lived around the corner when he’d been player-manager of Chelsea until 2001, and if anyone deserved a blue plaque it was him: the four goals he’d scored against Barnsley were among the best I’d ever seen in the Premier League.
I pulled the old-fashioned doorbell and heard it ring behind the door, but I think I might have heard it ring in Manresa Road.
At least a minute passed and I was about to give up and go away when a light went on in the portico; then I heard several bolts being drawn and a largish key being turned in a probably Victorian lock. The door opened to reveal an old man in a brown corduroy suit. He had a sort of Dutch painter’s beard and moustache that was white but stained with nicotine, and wild grey hair that seemed to be growing in several different directions at once so that it looked like the Maggi Hambling seascape on my wall. On his nose was a pair of half-moon glasses and around his neck was a loosely tied beige silk scarf. He had one of the weariest faces I think I’d ever seen – not so much lined as cracked; you wouldn’t have been surprised to see a face like that shatter into a dozen pieces.
‘Mr Van de Merwe?’
‘Yes?’
‘Forgive me for interrupting you,’ I said. ‘My name is Scott Manson. I wonder if I might come inside and talk to you for a moment?’
‘About what?’
‘About Mr Zarco.’
‘Who are you? The police?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not the police.’
‘Who is it, dear?’ said a voice.
‘Someone about Mr Zarco,’ said Mr Van de Merwe. ‘He says he’s not the police.’
His voice, no less weary than his face, sounded a bit like someone looking for a channel on a shortwave radio. And his accent sounded vaguely South African.
A woman as anxious-looking as a stolen Munch scream came into the hall; she was old and small with a mountain of fairish hair and wore a thick white sweater with a South African flag on a breast that was as large as my backpack.
‘You’d better come in,’ said the man and shuffled to one side, which was when I noticed he had a crutch to help him walk.
The hall was dominated by a film poster for a creaky old movie called Passport to Pimlico, an Ealing comedy from a few years after the war. The old couple looked as if they’d been in it. On a table was a blue glass figurine, possibly Lalique, of a semi-naked woman; some opened mail for a Mr John Cruikshank MA lay next to it. There was a strong sm
ell of furniture polish in the air and a large pile of newly washed yellow dusters on the stairs.
They ushered me into a large sitting room full of furniture that had seen better days but possibly a couple of world wars, too. There were books and paintings and everything looked like it had been there for a very long time; a thin layer of more recently acquired dust covered the back of long leather sofa they invited me to sit on. A younger woman, quite good-looking, wearing jeans and a fleece, was seated at the opposite end. She noticed me wiping my fingers on my hand and, immediately producing another yellow duster, angrily set about wiping the sofa.
‘This is my daughter, Mariella,’ said Mr Van de Merwe. ‘Mariella, this is Mr Manson. He wants to ask us some questions about poor Mr Zarco.’
Mariella grunted, irritably.
‘Not exactly questions,’ I said. ‘Is it just the three of you here?’
‘That sounds exactly like a question,’ said Mariella.
‘It was just small talk,’ I said. ‘Maybe a bit too small for some.’
‘My son-in-law John lives here too,’ said Mr Van de Merwe. ‘He’s away at the moment.’
‘Would you like a drink, Mr Manson?’ asked his wife. ‘A sherry, perhaps?’
‘Yes, please.’
All three of them went out of the room, leaving me to stare at the ceiling for several minutes. Through the wall I could hear the sound of one of Lambton’s Romanian workmen hammering nails, and then someone started with a drill. It was easy to see why the Van de Merwes had felt moved to complain about the noise; listening to that for twelve hours a day would have driven me mad. All the same it was hard to imagine them harassing a tardy postman, let alone a gang of Romanian builders, as Lambton had alleged.
They arrived back as a little trio – Mr Van de Merwe bearing a single glass on a silver tray, his wife carrying a bottle of sherry, and their daughter holding a plate of sliced ham.
‘Is that a Stanley Spencer?’ I asked, pointing at a painting on the wall.
‘Yes,’ said the old man.
‘It’s nice,’ I said, with considerable understatement; Spencer was one of my favourites.
‘Mr Zarco liked a drop of sherry,’ explained the old man. ‘Particularly this Oloroso. Which goes well with Iberian ham.’
I tasted the sherry; it was delicious. ‘When was Zarco last here?’ I asked.
‘Several weeks ago. And on more than one occasion. He came to apologise for all of the building work next door, which has been going on for the best part of six months now. Quite intolerably. Well, you can judge for yourself if anyone could live with that noise from first thing in the morning until eight at night. At our time of life you look forward to peace and quiet. For reading and listening to music. It wouldn’t be so bad if we were deaf, but we’re not.’
‘Yes, I can quite understand how irritating it must be,’ I said. ‘And you have my sympathy.’
Mariella spotted another cloud of dust falling from the ceiling onto the sideboard and went after it fiercely with the duster.
‘We tried to reach some accommodation with him about it,’ continued Mr Van de Merwe. ‘But I’m afraid we failed.’
‘What sort of accommodation?’
‘A financial settlement,’ said Mr Van de Merwe. ‘We had hoped we might all go back to South Africa for a while. That’s where we come from, originally.’
‘From Pretoria,’ his wife said, helpfully. ‘It’s really lovely there at this time of year. Around twenty-five degrees. Every day.’
‘But the air fares are very expensive,’ continued her husband. ‘And so is accommodation. Even a cheap hotel costs a lot of money.’
‘Do you know South Africa, Mr Manson?’ asked Mrs Van de Merwe.
‘A little. I was there for the World Cup in 2010. My ears are still recovering from all the vuvuzelas.’
When the old couple looked at me blankly, Mariella said, ‘The lepatata mambus.’ She looked at me and shrugged. ‘That’s the proper Tswana name.’
‘I see.’
‘Pretoria is very beautiful at this time of year,’ repeated Mrs Van de Merwe.
‘Couldn’t you have gone somewhere else?’ I said. ‘Somewhere nearer, perhaps, like Spain? It’s warmer there than it is here at this time of year. And cheaper to get to.’
I started to stuff my mouth with the ham; that was delicious, too, and would maybe save me from having to make dinner. Now that Sonja was gone my enthusiasm for doing anything but make coffee in the kitchen was much reduced.
‘We’ve never really liked Spain,’ said the old man. ‘Have we, dear?’
‘We don’t speak the language,’ said his wife. ‘South Africa was the only real alternative for us.’
‘Mr Zarco did make us an offer,’ said the old man, ‘to cover the expenses of our temporary relocation, but it simply wasn’t enough, so we turned it down. I think he thought we were trying it on. But we really weren’t, you know. It was all most disappointing.’
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Do you mind me asking how much money he did offer? To compensate you for all you’ve suffered while the work has been going on?’
‘Ten thousand pounds, wasn’t it?’ said the old man.
His wife nodded. ‘Yes. I know that sounds like a lot of money, and it is. But the flights alone were about three or four thousand.’
I made a quick mental calculation, picked up my backpack and took out four bundles of cash. It’s always nice being generous with someone else’s money. Not that this was entirely my own idea; it was Tristram Lambton who had put the germ of the idea in my head and it seemed as good a way of getting rid of Zarco’s bung as anything else I could think of.
‘There’s twenty thousand pounds,’ I said, feeling a sense of relief to have got rid of yet more of Zarco’s bung. ‘To cover all your expenses, and to compensate you for what you’ve had to endure these past few months.’
‘What?’ Mr Van de Merwe’s jaw had started to sag in a rather alarming way, as if he’d had a stroke. ‘I don’t understand. Mr Zarco is dead, isn’t he?’
‘Look, please don’t ask me to explain, but I’m quite sure he’d have liked you to have this money.’
The Van de Merwes looked at each other, bewildered.
‘Twenty thousand pounds?’ said Mrs Van de Merwe.
‘It’s very generous of you,’ said the old man. ‘Of Mrs Zarco. But really—’
‘Are you serious?’ asked her daughter.
‘Very.’
‘No, really, we couldn’t,’ said the old man. ‘Not now he’s dead. It wouldn’t seem fair, somehow. I mean on the television it said the man had been murdered. We couldn’t accept it, could we, dear? Mariella? What do you think?’
‘Oh, Dad,’ his daughter said irritably. ‘Of course we can accept it. It only seems unfair. But it isn’t unfair at all. After all you’ve gone through, it’s exactly what you and Mum should do.’
‘But Mrs Zarco is a widow now,’ said his wife. ‘She can ill afford this kind of expense, surely. That poor man. What his wife must be feeling now. We should speak to John. Ask him what he thinks.’
‘We’ll take it, Mr Manson,’ Mariella told me firmly.
Her parents looked at each other uncertainly, and then Mrs Van de Merwe began to cry.
‘It’s all been very trying for my wife,’ explained the old man. ‘What with the noise and everything. She’s quite exhausted.’
‘We’ll take it,’ repeated his daughter. ‘Won’t we? I think we should. And I’m speaking for John now, too. If he were here he’d say that this is absolutely the right thing to do. Yes, we’ll take it.’
The old man nodded. ‘If you think so, dear, then yes.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘I think you’re doing the right thing, too.’
I got up to leave with Mr Van de Merwe accompanying me to the door.
‘You’ve been very kind to us, Mr Manson,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to say, really. I’m almost speechless. It’s more than generous.’
‘Don’t thank me. Thank Mrs Zarco. Only not right now, eh? Perhaps when the work is complete and she’s finally living next door, you might thank her then.’
‘Yes, yes I will.’ He held my hand for a moment too long; there were tears in his eyes, too.
‘The blue plaque outside,’ I said in the hall, anxious to be gone from my good deed. ‘I’m just curious – who was it who lived here?’
‘Isadora Duncan,’ he said and pointed at the glass figurine on the hall table. ‘That’s her.’
‘The stripper,’ I said.
‘If you like.’ He smiled uncertainly. ‘Yes, I suppose she was, really.’
Isadora Duncan wasn’t really a stripper; not as such. I knew that. It was just my way of making him think a little less highly of me. That seemed only proper; after all, it wasn’t my money I’d just given away.
42
I shouldn’t have been nervous but because this was my first match as the new manager of London City, I was. The previous Saturday’s game against Newcastle didn’t count; then I’d been talking to a football team that Zarco had picked and which was playing for him. All of the players had wrongly assumed that at some stage Zarco would turn up in the dressing room and hand out praise to those who’d played well and, more importantly, bollockings to those who’d played badly. No one ever wanted a bollocking from João Zarco.
But the game against West Ham was very different and everyone knew it. A manager’s first match in charge sets the tone for how his tenure is perceived, not just by the owner and the sports writers, but more importantly by the club’s supporters, who are as superstitious as a wagon-load of gypsies. My ex-wife’s brother refuses to go to an Arsenal game without his lucky cat’s whisker; he’s just one of many serious, rational men who follow football but who believe in jinxes and curses and the acts of a capricious God who ordains a win or a loss. A bad defeat in this first match would be like an albatross around my neck. I don’t know what Napoleon’s opinion of Premier League football was, but he knew the value of luck and I badly wanted to be lucky with my first game in charge. In spite of what Geoff Boycott says, good luck is the most valuable commodity in sport.
