Hand of God

by Philip Kerr

  ‘I was a bit taken aback to discover you’re coming to Athens, Frank. When I called you before it was because I wanted to speak to you about a player at another club. Someone you represent. Hörst Daxenberger, from Hertha.’

  ‘You’re looking to replace Bekim Develi?’

  ‘That’s right. Why don’t you cancel your flight to Athens and get on a flight to Berlin and see how much that German lad wants to come and play in London instead of trying to upset some of my players with some of that Orientafute bullshit.’

  ‘It’s not your players I’m interested in, Scott. It’s you. You’re the reason I was coming to Athens. I want to represent you. From what I hear, you might need an agent.’

  Charlie came back from the police car.

  ‘Look, I can’t talk now. Just speak to that German lad and find out if he’s interested.’

  I finished the call and looked at Charlie.

  ‘That’s a stroke of luck,’ said Charlie. ‘Mr Prezerakou is Nataliya’s landlord and he’s gone to fetch some keys for us. I told him we were looking for illegal immigrants and naturally he’s only too keen to help. No one around here likes illegals. He hasn’t seen her in days but that’s not unusual at this time of year. He says she often goes on vacations to Corfu. Apparently, she’s a good tenant and always pays her rent on time and he insists he saw all of her paperwork before he rented her the apartment. Originally, the apartment was rented to her husband, Mr Boutzikos, but he’s working in London now and Nataliya manages the place herself.’

  Ten minutes later we were inside Nataliya’s apartment and nosing around her belongings which, for me at least, felt oddly transgressive. Charlie didn’t look remotely bothered by what we were doing although we both wore latex gloves and it wasn’t for the sake of appearances: Mr Prezerakou had stayed downstairs in his shop but the cops already had my fingerprints and it wouldn’t have done for them to have discovered my dabs all over Nataliya’s flat.

  Everything was neat and tidy and furnished with that Ligne Roset sort of stuff that people on the continent seem to think is smart and contemporary. There was a large, signed Terry O’Neill photograph of Faye Dunaway lounging by the pool of the Beverly Hills Hotel that prompted me to think that Nataliya might reasonably have supposed she resembled the Oscar-winning actress. Otherwise the place spoke of a person who loved reading and not films – there was no TV and her shelves were groaning under the weight of books in Greek, Russian and English. Her closet was full of designer labels and in her tiny bathroom was a make-up trolley that could have supplied a large girls’ school.

  Charlie had found her passport in the door of a small desk.

  ‘She was Ukrainian,’ he said. ‘Born Kiev 1989.’

  He handed it to me and I placed it on the kitchen table before I stepped onto the balcony and looked out at the rooftops of the surrounding buildings; with their numerous water tanks, washing lines and satellite dishes it was not a particularly inspiring view but it was a typical one.

  On the balcony itself was a yoga mat and a number of carefully arranged weights, including some kettlebells, and I wondered if Nataliya’s murderer had helped himself to one of these to tie to her feet before dropping her into the nearby marina. I took a picture of them with my iPhone camera. Meanwhile, Charlie had found her handbag – or at least the bag she had probably been using on the night of her death; I had a vague idea that it matched the one I’d seen her carrying on the CCTV footage Varouxis had shown me of her visiting Bekim Develi in his bungalow at the Astir Palace hotel. Like everything else it was designer-made and expensive.

  Charlie emptied the contents onto the kitchen table beside the passport and we both sat down to go through these. There was a make-up bag, a purse containing a thousand euros in new one hundred notes, credit and identity cards, a driving licence, a mobile phone, a small scented candle, some eyedrops, some earrings, some shoe clips, a bunch of keys, a picture of a man we took to be Boutzikos, several condoms, some lubricating gel, a pair of handcuffs, a vibrator, some antiseptic hand gel, a packet of wet wipes, a change of underwear, a pair of stay-up stockings. The pharmaceuticals were, said Charlie, more interesting: four epinephrine auto-injectors, a bottle of ceftriaxone and a bottle of flunitrazepam.

  I took a picture of everything – including the passport and licence – on my iPhone.

  ‘It looks as if she was allergic to something,’ I said, taking one of the auto-injectors out of its box. It hadn’t been used. None of them had.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Charlie. ‘Epinephrine is a vasodilator. A lot of hookers in Greece use epinephrine as a fast-acting substitute for Viagra when clients can’t get it up. It’s just adrenalin after all. And unlike cocaine, epinephrine won’t get a girl busted if a cop finds it in her possession.’

  ‘What is ceftriaxone?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s her just-in-case,’ he said.

  ‘Just in case of what?’

  ‘Just in case of gonorrhoea. A lot of VD is penicillin resistant in Greece, so they prescribe ceftriaxone. Or azithromycin. If you can get it. Looks like she wasn’t about to take that chance.’

  ‘And Levonelle?’ I asked examining a small pharmaceutical box with Greek writing. ‘What does that cure?’

  ‘Unwanted babies. It’s the morning-after pill.’

  ‘And the flunitrazepam?’ I emptied out some little blue and white tablets on the palm of my hand. ‘That’s a sedative, isn’t it? For depression.’

  Charlie laughed. ‘If you could read Greek you would see that the trade name for flunitrazepam is printed on the box, also. This is Rohypnol. The so-called date-rape drug. A lot of hookers slip it into the drinks of their more badly behaved clients. No, this little girl looks like she was prepared for anything.’

  ‘Except the thing that happened. She wasn’t prepared for that.’

  ‘No, I guess not.’

  Charlie swept everything back into Nataliya’s handbag. ‘No one is ever prepared for a trip to see Persephone,’ he said.

  I picked up Nataliya’s iPhone 4, which was in a neat little plastic case with a gold chain that made it look like a girl’s evening bag, took off one of my latex gloves and tapped the screen. The battery was in the red but there was enough juice left in the thing to see that, like my own phone, a security code was needed to access its contents.

  ‘We need to get into this,’ I said. ‘We can use it to find out who she saw that night. So we’ll keep it for a little while. At least until Monday when our lawyer will have to tell the police about this place.’

  ‘Then we’d better take the handbag as well,’ said Charlie. ‘Otherwise that detective will think it looks strange. We can always bribe some Roma people to hand it in to your lawyer for the reward when you’re done with it. They can say they found it in a wheelie bin on the marina.’ He shook his head. ‘He’ll think it looks strange anyway when the apothecary downstairs tells him about the police having been here already. But cops in Greece are used to other cops doing a bit of freelance work. He’ll know it was you, of course; or someone you paid to do it.’ He looked at his watch. ‘So we’d better get you back to the game and your alibi for this afternoon.’

  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.’

  41

  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 Apac
he 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.�
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  ‘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.’