False Nine (24 page)
He pulled a face.
‘I won’t say the truth is always best,’ I added. ‘Sometimes a lie is kinder. But this isn’t one of those times. I love the game. And I love the people who are good at the game. I saw the way you played against Barcelona back in September and I honestly thought you were the best player on the pitch.’
He nodded. ‘You’re right. That was the best I ever played for PSG. If only I’d scored that night things might have been different.’
‘Football is hard like that. Very hard, sometimes. Talk about survival of the fittest. Sometimes it seems positively Darwinian. As unforgiving as Nature itself. A career can end in just five minutes with an ill-timed tackle, like the one that finished Man United’s Ben Collett. On football’s scrapheap at the age of just eighteen. But you’re still in the game, son. Never forget that. And just because it doesn’t happen at one club doesn’t mean it won’t happen at another. People never seem to remember that when Thierry Henry left Monaco he didn’t go straight to Arsenal, he had a dismal eight months at Juventus.’
‘You’re right. He did, didn’t he? Christ, I’d forgotten that, too.’
‘The Italians played him on the wing but he was largely ineffective and I think he scored only three goals in sixteen appearances.’
‘It’s the same with me,’ insisted Jérôme. ‘PSG kept playing me on the wing when I’m a striker. In that game for Barcelona I was a nine, but a false nine. That’s my best position. Same as Messi.’
‘Barcelona clearly think the same way. That’s why they’re keen to have you playing for them ASAP. I want to help Barcelona because they were good to me when I was just out of the nick and I needed a coaching job. And you should know I’ll always put them first. But I want to help you, too, Jérôme, because I respect your ability. I genuinely think you can be one of the best players in the world.’
‘Thank you for that.’
I stood up, straightened the crease on my trousers and glanced around. ‘I’d like to use the toilet if I may. While I’m out of the room I suggest you make a decision one way or the other.’
Jérôme Dumas showed me to a lavatory on an upper floor. I washed my hands in a stone shelf basin and on my way back downstairs stuck my head around a couple of doors because I’m nosy that way. Jérôme’s master bedroom was home to several Louis Vuitton bags and, strewn across the floor, a whole wardrobe of clothes and accessories; it certainly didn’t look as if the cleaner was doing very much in that house; then again, it was a cleaner from Guadeloupe.
On the wall of another bedroom was a painting of a pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama, very like the one Dumas had at his apartment in Paris. They must have been selling a job lot of them to footballers that year.
Back in the treble-height drawing room, it seemed that Jérôme was finally ready to spill his guts. It was about time. My patience with him was growing very thin. If there had been a boot or a pizza at hand I might have thrown it at him.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you everything. Everything. I just hope I’m doing the right thing.’
‘Then it’s lucky you’ve got your lawyer to advise you,’ I said. ‘Tell him, Grace. Tell him it’s got to be like this. My way or the highway.’
‘You’re doing the right thing, Jay,’ said Grace. ‘Scott really is here to help. I wouldn’t have brought him here if I didn’t think you could trust him.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
I knew Jérôme was serious because he turned off the PlayStation while he said this and you know something must be about to happen when someone under the age of twenty-five turns off one of those idiot-boxes voluntarily.
‘So. Why don’t you tell me what happened?’
‘All right. I will. The guy in prison, in Antigua, Grace’s mystery client – he’s my father.’
‘I see.’
‘He lives in Antigua now. But he isn’t from there. And he hasn’t lived with my mother since the whole family left Montserrat, way back in 1995. That’s where we’re from, see? I’m not from Guadeloupe at all. I’m from Montserrat, which is the island between here and Antigua. When the Soufrière Hills volcano exploded in July 1995, it ruined not just Plymouth – which is the capital city of Montserrat – but my whole family. And not just ours. Two-thirds of the island’s population were forced to flee their homes. A lot of them went to Guadeloupe. But my dad always hated Guadeloupe, which was where my mum was from, originally. Anyway, he refused to come here with her and it didn’t help that they weren’t married. Dumas is my mother’s name. So, I came here with her and he went to Antigua to live with his sister, and her daughter.’
‘That’s me,’ said Grace. ‘John Richardson is my uncle.’
‘Jesus,’ I muttered.
Jérôme grinned. ‘I told you it was complicated.’
‘It was my cousin here who paid for me to go to Birmingham University,’ said Grace. ‘But for him, I’d probably be cleaning floors at Jumby Bay. He’s the most generous man I know.’
‘And she wasn’t lying, she really didn’t know where I was,’ insisted Jérôme. ‘I didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell anyone. Even my dad didn’t know for sure.’
‘In which case, I apologise,’ I said. ‘I was out of line, I can see that now.’
‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘You weren’t to know.’
‘I still don’t know very much,’ I added, pointedly.
‘Whenever I went to Antigua I’d see my dad. He’d arrange a trip on board a friend’s boat. We’d sail down to Montserrat, just to take a look. But I don’t think things are going to get better there any time soon. There’s still a lot of pyroclastic activity in and around the south part of the island. People are not allowed into the exclusion zone but me and my dad still go when we can, and see for ourselves. The boat’s owner – DJ Jewel Movement – was another guy from Montserrat and a friend of my dad’s. Or at least he was. The day before I was supposed to fly back from Antigua, we went out on the boat. Took a trip to the island, as was usual. Got high. A bit too high, actually. My dad and Jewel Movement quarrelled about something. Money, probably. They were still at it when I got off the boat in Nelson’s Dockyard. But I never thought they’d try to kill each other. The first thing I knew about that was the morning I was supposed to fly back. Like you said, I was at the airport and I saw it in the newspaper. I didn’t know what to do. But I knew I certainly couldn’t leave the area. Equally, I didn’t want the publicity of staying in Antigua and turning up at the police station and trying to bail him out, or whatever you do when that happens. I thought it might jeopardise all of Paolo Gentile’s work in getting me all those endorsement deals. So I called Grace and told her. Then a friend of GJB – Gui-Jean-Baptiste – took me here on his boat until I figured out what to do. I’d hoped the police would accept his story – that it was self-defence – but instead they charged him with murder.’
‘It goes almost without saying,’ said Grace, ‘that being charged with murder is always a serious matter. In Antigua, however, it’s worse than serious. We have the death penalty in Antigua. My uncle is facing the gallows, Mr Manson. If he’s found guilty he might easily be sentenced to death. As things stand now, it’s unlikely he would be hanged; the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council would almost certainly prevent an execution. But the Labour Party, which took power in June 2014, seem to want to break away from the Commonwealth. And its legal system. If that happened we might soon start hanging people again in Antigua. Like in St Kitts and Nevis. And the Bahamas. By the time a verdict is reached in John’s trial there’s every chance that Antigua might have started to carry out executions again. It seems to be what the people here want.’
‘Christ, I didn’t know.’
‘Oh, yes. That would mean I’d have to leave the island, of course. I couldn’t continue to work in a society that hanged people.’ She glanced at her cousin. ‘Sorry, Jay; you were saying.’
‘At first I intended to be here for just a couple of days,’ said Jérôme. ‘A week at the most. But the longer I stayed, the harder it seemed just to leave him and go back to Barcelona and play football. I mean, you can imagine how worried I was? I couldn’t think about sport. Not for a minute. Someone once wrote that the immediate prospect of being hanged focuses the mind wonderfully. I’d agree with that except for the word “wonderfully”. The last few weeks have been hell. I was already depressed but this made everything seem even worse. I’ve been following the case on TV and in the papers but I haven’t been able to contact Grace. I gave her my numbers in Paris and Barcelona but of course I haven’t been there. And there’s no landline here; GJB likes it that way. Not even internet. As you’ve probably gathered by now, the mobile signal on the island is virtually non-existent. I didn’t like to go into Pointe-à-Pitre even at night, in case I was recognised. So I’ve just been laying low here, hoping something will turn up. My dad would have been furious that I’d stayed on here, of course, instead of going back. For Dad my career comes before anything. Anything at all, including him. The family needs money, see? It’s not just him. It’s my aunt, too. She’s been sick. My dad actually thought I was back in Europe until you showed up asking questions about my whereabouts. He only learned about that because Grace overheard you talking to that stupid cop in St John’s. Anyway, Grace told my dad, and he was furious and said she had to get a message to me insisting that I go back to Barcelona with you, and that he’d be all right. And here you both are.’
Sinking back into the big white sofa like a collapsing balloon Jérôme uttered a deep and despairing sigh as if at any moment he might fall to pieces and give way to a flood of tears and the insupportable weight of a very large black dog. He shrugged, and then rubbed his scalp as if acutely self-conscious that I was looking critically at him, narrow-eyed, trying to judge the veracity of his story.
‘I don’t know what else to tell you. Really I don’t. I can’t say that my actions could make sense. But, I’ve been depressed. For several months, really. And I can’t honestly explain why.’
‘You don’t have to,’ said Grace. ‘That’s the nature of depression. The only true cause is physiological.’
‘Maybe. But I know most guys would look at my cars and my house and my girlfriend and think such a thing impossible. How could a guy like me be depressed? But I am. And the fact is it’s getting worse. I ran out of Seroxat a couple of weeks ago, which was all that was keeping me afloat really. Since then I’ve done nothing but stay in bed, play the PS4 and stare out of the fucking window. Frankly, I’m glad you’re here as I really don’t know what would have become of me otherwise.’
It all sounded plausible enough, and yet there was something about his story that didn’t quite ring true. It was nothing I could put my finger on. Maybe it was just the fact that like a lot of rich young footballers Jérôme struck me not as someone stupid or lacking in intelligence, merely precipitate, a little unwise perhaps. Which was why most young footballers these days had someone like Paolo Gentile around; someone to advise them anyway. But I felt I had to push the door and see that there was nothing hidden behind it.
‘What are you not telling me?’ I asked.
Jérôme shook his head.
‘Come on. There’s always something people keep back right to the end. Something they don’t want to give up.’
‘Like what?’ asked Jérôme.
‘I don’t know. But that’s just how it is when you’ve been in prison like I have. You spend enough time with enough liars, you get a feeling for when there’s more to tell.’
‘I think you’re being a bit unfair,’ said Grace. ‘It sounds to me like Jérôme’s made a clean breast of everything. He was worried about his father. Any man can understand something like that, surely.’
‘Now I know you’re lying. You’ve got your lawyer speaking for you.’
Grace laughed. ‘Here we go again. It’s lucky I’ve got a sense of humour.’
‘But I’ve told you everything,’ insisted Jérôme. ‘Honest.’
‘Believe me, that’s a word you never use when you’re trying to tell someone the truth. Not that the football field is much different from prison, mind. The bullshit you hear when you’re out there on the pitch. I wish I had five quid for every lie I’ve heard during my twenty-odd years in football. I never meant to hurt him. It was a fair tackle. I never dived. Who me? I played the ball, not the man. It was a fifty-fifty ball. That was ball to hand, ref, not hand to ball. I am ten yards back. And that’s to say almost nothing about the lies you hear in the dressing room when you’re a manager. The leg’s fine, boss, it doesn’t hurt at all. I can play the next half without any problems. I couldn’t hear what you were saying, boss.
‘Jérôme, do I look like a dick? All footballers are fucking liars. Lying is just part of the game now, like ice packs or isotonic energy drinks, or a chunk of Vick’s VapoRub on your shirt front. I honestly think that if a team suddenly started to tell the truth, everyone would think they were on drugs. So, what is it that you’re not telling me?’
‘Nothing,’ he protested. ‘I’ve told you the whole story. And that’s the truth.’
But I was swiftly wrong-footed by what happened next.
Jérôme Dumas began to cry.
‘That’s it,’ said Grace. ‘I think he’s had enough.’
‘Now you really sound like his brief.’
Grace stood up. ‘I think it best that we finish this discussion for now. We can meet again later. This evening. When Jérôme is feeling like himself again.’
‘Suppose he goes walkies again? Then what? I’ll have summoned the Barcelona jet here for no reason.’
‘So wait a little,’ said Grace. ‘A few hours’ delay until you’re satisfied everything is as it should be won’t matter very much now, will it?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
She sat down next to the weeping footballer and put her arm around his heaving shoulders.
‘You’re not going anywhere, are you, Jay?’ she said. ‘Not now that we’ve found you.’
He wiped his face and shook his head. ‘No, I’ll be here.’
‘We’re going to walk back to the hotel,’ she told him. ‘We’ll come back at around seven when perhaps we can go somewhere for dinner. That is, if we can think of anywhere they serve something that’s actually edible.’