‘You mean if Philippe here flies back to Barcelona to take the club medical on your behalf? If he deceives the club into thinking he’s you? I can see why that’s attractive. The money. The cars. The women. Sure. It makes perfect sense.’
‘But you know it’s not just me who stands to benefit from all this money. Surely you can see that. I know you think I’m what the English call a champagne socialist, yes? But I really do believe in giving something back. To the people here in Guadeloupe. To my father. My brother. The local lycée. A new wing for the local hospital.’
‘All right, all right. You’re a saint. I get that. But what I don’t understand is that none of this would have been a problem if Philippe had just flown home from Antigua in your place like he was supposed to do. I wouldn’t be here now. You could have done all this and no one would have been any the wiser. What the fuck happened?’
‘You’re right. What happened was this. The night before I was due to fly back to London I left Jumby Bay to come here on a boat owned by a friend of my dad’s, DJ Jewel Movement. I got off the boat, Philippe and I swapped clothes and he got back on the boat and they sailed back to Antigua. But somehow DJ worked out that we’d switched and demanded money from Dad. He thought we were working some kind of confidence trick and he wanted a share of the profits.’
‘They were still arguing about it when I got off in Nelson’s Dockyard,’ said Philippe. ‘DJ was a crook. A violent crook. That knife on the table is his. I took it with me when I got off the boat. Because I was afraid for my dad.’
‘It’s just like I told you before,’ added Jérôme. ‘More or less.’
‘When I got to the airport I saw the newspaper and guessed what must have happened,’ said Philippe. ‘Or at least part of it. The newspaper didn’t say who was actually dead. My dad or DJ. So I got a ride back here to sit it out until I knew for sure. But I don’t know, the stress of that got to me, I guess. I got pneumonia and couldn’t travel. I’m only just over it, really.’
‘So we were stuck,’ said Jérôme. ‘I could hardly fly to Spain and take the medical myself. Not without risking everything. Then you turned up and we thought that you wouldn’t notice. That there wouldn’t be time for you to notice. We thought that you’d be so pleased to have found me that you wouldn’t suspect anything was wrong. Why would you notice? Even here on Guadeloupe nobody seems to have worked it out. And you wouldn’t have noticed, probably, if the plane hadn’t been delayed. By now the two of you should have been airborne and all of your suspicions allayed with a sleeping pill and an in-flight movie.’
‘Then what?’
‘Like you told me,’ said Jérôme. ‘I’d have asked the team for some compassionate leave and when Philippe came back here, I’d have taken his place.’
‘Very neat. I have to hand it to you, it’s a great scam.’
‘Like I said, I didn’t have a choice. I’m still a good player, Scott. I can still make it to the top of the game. You’ve seen me play. You know what I can do. You said yourself, I can go right to the top. And you know the Asa Hartford story. A high achiever. A Scotland international, like you said. So, you have to let Philippe go back in my place. Otherwise it’s not just me who suffers, it’s a lot of other people, too. This game we love — it’s the only real social mobility that exists in the world. It’s the only chance people like me from a small island like Guadeloupe have of moving up in the world. For some genuine wealth redistribution.’
‘That’s hardly fair,’ I said. ‘You’re putting this on me.’
‘What’s fair got to do with it? This is football, Mr Manson. And you do what you have to do in order to win. We’re part of an entertainment industry that’s now worth billions, thanks to the likes of Sky and BT. What’s the difference between me hiding the fact that I have VSD and a Hollywood studio concealing the fact that the romantic leading man in their latest movie is secretly gay? Answer me that.’
‘You could die. That’s the difference, surely.’
‘And if I’m willing to take that risk? Whose business is it except mine? If I’d rather die than give up football? Who should mind but me? And who better than a player like you to understand something like that? How do you like not playing football any more? Do you miss it? I’ll bet you do. But at least you had your chance. You had your chance. At least you played, and for as long as you could. Don’t take that away from me, Mr Manson. Please, I’m begging you. You take football away from me now, you’ll be taking away everything I’ve got and everything that I’m ever going to have.’
‘Don’t put this on me,’ I said again.
‘Who else should I put it on? The pilot of the jet? I’m not asking you to lie for me. I’m just asking you not to say anything to PSG or to FCB.’
‘To be economical with the truth. A lie by omission.’
‘If you want to put it like that, yes. But where’s the harm? Who’s injured by your silence? Surely that’s what really matters. Who gets hurt?’
‘You’re asking a hell of a lot, son. I told you before I owe a lot to Barcelona. More than you know.’
‘And I repeat the question: who is hurt? Look, just assume for a moment that I go to Camp Nou and score lots of goals. Which is a fair assumption given the number of goals I scored at Monaco. It never really clicked for me at PSG because they kept playing me on the wing, when I’m a natural nine. You can see that.’
‘A false nine,’ I remarked. ‘I can see that all right.’
‘Perhaps. But you said yourself, I’m still a top player. Assume that during the remainder of the season I score... let’s say ten goals. How is the club damaged? Or, assume I play in el clásico and score just one goal and that goal is an equaliser, or even the winning goal, perhaps. How is Barcelona damaged by my condition? Suppose they sell lots of shirts as a result. Suppose all that. How is PSG damaged by Barcelona profiting from my loan to them?’
‘Suppose I just tell Barcelona and let them decide.’
‘You know that won’t work. They’re a big company and they have big company rules. It’s not people like you and Luis Enrique who decide things at clubs as big as Barcelona. Not any more. It’s accountants and lawyers and management consultants and actuaries. Medical actuaries. I’ve looked into what might happen in considerable detail. Don’t think I haven’t agonised about this myself. I have. A medical actuary is a physician who puts a number on the risk incurred by a medical insurance company when a company like PSG or FCB employs someone like me. A doctor with a calculator and a set of tables who knows nothing at all about football but who makes a bet on whether or not his medical insurance company would have to pay out in the possible event of me keeling over in the middle of a game.’
‘I know what a medical actuary does, thanks.’
‘Right. Then you know how that works. No one likes to bet on a horse when they think there might be something wrong with it. That’s all I’m asking you to do. Make a bet on the man you see, not on the man you can’t see — the man with a hole in his heart. I’m a sure thing, Mr Manson. I can feel it. I’m no crock.’