‘I dunno. The kind that represents criminals in court, I guess. What other kind is there?’
‘Is she the greedy kind of lawyer? Or just the dishonest kind of lawyer?’
‘That remains to be seen. But she was kind of persuasive.’
‘Oh, that kind of lawyer.’
‘Yes. Exactly.’
‘Well,’ said Everton, ‘it sure couldn’t harm you to go along with what she says. Not for twenty-four hours. Man, it takes people twenty-four hours just to order a bloody taxi on this island. Strikes me you’ll get further with her than I have speaking to local boatmen.’
He handed me back some money.
‘Here, boss. You better have this.’
‘Then you’d better let me buy you a drink.’
We went into the bar, ordered a couple of the local beers and sat in the window. We hadn’t been there very long when I saw Grace Doughty walking up the street. She was carrying her Burberry briefcase.
‘That’s her. That’s the lady lawyer I was talking about.’
‘Man, that is a fine-looking woman.’
‘You think?’
‘When you said she was a lawyer I was thinking of someone playing on a rubber tyre at the end of a chain. But that lady is hot, boss.’
Everton was right. The woman had more curves than a bag full of footballs. If I stayed on Antigua I knew I was going to have to put my hand in that particular bag, regardless of the consequences. If only I knew what she was up to, who her client was, where this was all going. I had to find out more about Grace Doughty.
I handed Everton the money he’d just handed back to me.
‘Look, Everton, why don’t you follow her? See where she goes. Who she knows. It might give me a better idea of what this is all about.’
‘Sure thing, boss. Anything you say. Following pretty girls — I’m an expert.’ Everton stood up and drained his beer bottle. ‘But you know, it strikes me that maybe she can keep you company while you is looking for this guy. You could do worse than her for female company right now. A man needs a bit of female company in the tropics. Maybe you should give her a ring and ask her to dinner at Jumby Bay. Get to know her better. Then maybe you can learn to trust her better, too.’
Everton was right about that too but nevertheless I spent the evening alone, festering with irritation and resentment at my appointed task. I felt as if I’d been left on the bench after an extended Christmas break had left a question mark over my fitness and all I really wanted to do was play football, regardless of the consequences for my hamstrings. Come to think of it, that’s how I feel most of the time. It’s like there’s a football-sized hole in my life which I don’t think anything, not even management, is ever going to be able to fill. Certainly not searching the jungle for some stupid kid who couldn’t handle the pressure. If that’s what had caused him to disappear. After what Grace Doughty had told me in her office I’d stopped believing that anything bad could have happened to Jérôme Dumas. I almost wished that it had.
A brick-faced couple from Birmingham eating dinner at the next table in the softly lit robbery that was being perpetrated in the hotel’s swish restaurant were looking as bored as a pair of Staffordshire dogs on a chimney-less mantelpiece. They must have wondered what the hell they were doing there. I know I did. Meanwhile, an electric piano trio worked its way stolidly through a repertoire that had been inspired by the elevator muzak in an Arndale shopping centre. At that particular moment my world — the world of football — seemed to be more than an ocean away and if the chairman of Tranmere Rovers had called to offer me a job managing the club, I’d have taken his fucking arm off.
18
It sounded good. The part about Tranmere Rovers. But it wasn’t entirely true. Over a swift dinner with my iPad I checked my email and there was one from Qatar offering me a job working with the national side, which must have seemed urgent after their recent exit from the Asian Cup in Canberra. The 4–1 defeat they’d suffered at the hands of their most bitter rivals, the United Arab Emirates, would have been especially hard to bear for the Qataris. But try as I might I couldn’t see myself doing a Don Revie and coaching football in the desert any more than I can see a World Cup being played there in the summer of 2022. Nobody can. They’d have more chance of mounting an ice-hockey tournament. But it wasn’t just that. It was the way all of these Arab countries treated women. I like women. A lot. Paolo Gentile couldn’t have been more on target about my Achilles heel if he’d hit it with an arrow.
Then there was an email from Tempest asking when I was going to be back in the UK. I’d been summoned to appear before the FA to face a charge of bringing the game into disrepute because of my stupid tweet about Rafinha having his period. I replied to her that I honestly didn’t know when I’d be back but that obviously I’d agree to meet with them as soon as I was in London. So that was something to look forward to. If it wasn’t so irritating it would be laughable.
I also had an email from Mandel in Paris. Attached was a copy of the Paris police report on the murder in Sevran-Beaudottes: a drug dealer had been found shot dead less than two hundred metres from the Alain Savary Sports Centre. There had been no arrests and there were no suspects, but there was a clue: the dead man had been found with a bloodstained satin patch in his hand. On the patch was a Gothic letter D. And I couldn’t help thinking that this was the same patch missing from a T-shirt modelled by Jérôme Dumas in a magazine and which was now being worn by another drug-dealer in Sevran. All of which might have been a pretty good reason to leave Paris and not come back.
My mobile phone rang, which was a surprise since the signal was up and down like a yo-yo. It was Everton.
‘I done followed that lady like you asked, boss.’
‘And?’
‘After we saw her outside the bar on Nevis Street, I tailed her east for a couple of blocks onto Independence Avenue, and then Coronation Avenue. She went to the local jail, boss. HMP St John’s, Antigua. She was there for almost an hour, after which she went to a travel agent on Nevis Street, and then to a place in Jolly Harbour. I followed her in me own car. Jolly Harbour is about fifteen minutes’ drive southwest of St John’s. She lives in a nice apartment close to the golf course which is a game she plays because there was a full set of clubs in the back seat of her car. She lives alone, I reckon. There’s only her name on the bell. I was about to call you from a bar in Jolly Harbour when she went out again. And I followed her all the way to the ferry dock.’
‘The ferry dock. Where’s that?’
‘The ferry dock for Jumby Bay, boss. There’s one every hour. I figure she’s on her way to see you. She’s on the boat now. Be there in less than five minutes, I’d say.’
‘I’m not expecting her.’
Everton laughed. ‘Looks like that lady has got other ideas. Maybe you is going to have some female company tonight after all, eh?’
I left my room and went down to the lobby, hid myself behind a banana plant and waited. A minute or two later Grace Doughty came in through the door of the hotel, looking a little less formal than when she’d been in the office. She was wearing a pink skirt and jeans, with a pair of matching blue, high-heeled sandals that helped to show off her shapely legs. At the front desk, she spoke to the concierge, handed him a manila envelope and headed out of the front door again. And because she was wearing heels I had plenty of time to collect the envelope from the concierge and catch her up on the pathway to the jetty.
‘You were leaving the ground without shaking hands? That’s an Aston Villa supporter for you, I suppose. You and Paul Lambert both.’
She frowned.
‘He’s the current Villa manager,’ I explained.