‘No, listen to this bit. It says, questioned last night at his … two million pound South Kensington home, Sir Ray Bims said … he would not be going to America. He … refused to comment further … except to repeat he was … innocent-of-the-alleged-charges.’ Malcolm Dirn, captain of the Eel Bridge Rovers Football Club, ended his halting reading from the tabloid newspaper in a rush. He was seated at the front of the club’s stationary private coach. Dirn looked up, frowned defensively, and gave a vigorous pull at the crutch of his gold and blue track suit. Reading aloud made the thirty-two-year-old footballer uncomfortable because he was no good at it—something even his small daughter would have agreed on. ‘What about that, then?’ he demanded bullishly, in a thicker than normal Wolverhampton accent.
‘Nothing else he could say,’ commented Jimmy Atler, a normally taciturn East Londoner. He had also had to raise his voice above the sound of the piped music played, as it always was played at this time, because it was alleged to lift the team’s early morning spirits. Atler was pushing an expensive-looking canvas grip into the overhead rack. Most things that he owned were expensive—including his winter tan, and the top-of-the-range BMW 320i he had just left in the players’ car park.
‘Is it saying some more, Malc? About Sir Ray?’ questioned Stan Bodworski, the Polish mid-fielder whose understanding of English was still a lot better than the way he spoke it. Like Atler, one of the team’s star strikers, Bodworski had been transferred to the Eels in May of the previous year. He was sitting three rows behind Dirn. ‘Is there anything about him being chairman of Eels?’ he pressed.
‘No. Only what I read out before.’
‘I’m not hearing all that.’ Bodworski sounded worried, but he often did.
‘It only says he’s a director of this Cayman Islands bank. The American directors are supposed to go before a Grand Jury. In Miami. So what’s a Grand Jury when it’s at home?’
Nobody answered Dirn because nobody knew.
‘But the bank’s not really American or British?’ asked Atler.
‘Cayman Islands is British dependency,’ Bodworski provided carefully and accurately, aware he wasn’t exactly answering the question. Even so, those about him were impressed with the information. He folded his brawny arms across his chest. ‘Lot of banks in the Cayman Islands,’ he went on, with more confidence.
‘Is that where you keep your loot, Stan?’ asked another player.
‘Stop still a minute, everybody,’ shouted Jeff Ribarts, the middle-aged assistant team manager. His was a dogsbody job, and a lot less important than the title implied, as most people were aware, including Ribarts. He was standing on the top step inside the gold and blue painted coach that was parked close to the players’ entrance to the south stand of the Hugon Road stadium.
‘Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three. One missing,’ the asthmatic ex-player completed loudly, glancing up and down at the clipboard in his hand. He was on tiptoe because he wasn’t tall enough otherwise to see to the back of the coach.
There should have been thirty-four in the party—Ribarts himself, eleven players and five substitutes from the Eel Bridge Rovers first team, eleven members of the reserve team, five apprentice players and the team coach. They were due to leave Hugon Road at 7.30 a.m. for the four-hour Tuesday session at the club’s Cherton practice ground. That was ten miles to the west, in Surrey. Both grounds had been bought in 1911, in the halcyon days soon after the Club had been founded. The Hugon Road stadium was close to the Thames in Fulham.
‘Who’s missing?’ Ribarts questioned, looking at his watch: it was 7.29.
‘Who d’you think, Jeff?’
‘Who’s always missing?’
‘Let’s go without him. Those in favour?’
Ribarts ignored the roar of approval that followed the last proposals, and glanced at Malcolm Dirn. The captain gave a negative half shake of his head. They would wait another few minutes for the absentee. A player who missed the coach was fined.
‘Here he comes. Blimey, get an eyeful of that, then. She’s another new one, too. Blimey,’ repeated an overawed young apprentice player at the back.
There was a lunge by those seated on the right side of the vehicle to see out to the left, in the still dim morning light. A white, open-topped Porsche had ground to a halt next to the coach, throwing up a hail of chippings. The well-developed redhead driving the car threw her arms around the tracksuited Adonis in the passenger seat, pulled him towards her and kissed him long and hard on the mouth, kneading the back of his head with her scarlet-tipped fingers, and applying herself with an ardour that was little short of athletic. Goaded on by appreciative cheers from inside the coach, the woman now opened her hazel eyes wide, to gaze up victoriously over her lover’s shoulder at his now scarcely containable team mates. When he left the car, she leaned back and pushed both hands through her windswept hair, flamboyantly adjusted the wide collar of her open fun-fur coat, and made her skirt ride up even higher on her thigh—a performance well visible to most of the interested males peering down on her. It was a bravura finale that the mesmerized audience adored.
‘ ’Morning all,’ the Adonis offered breezily some moments later as he climbed into the coach to a mixed chorus of jeers and cheers. His name was Gareth Trisall, he was twenty-three, born in the Rhondda Valley, sturdy, medium height, as handsome as his compatriot Richard Burton, unmarried, and another one of the team’s three newly acquired star players. Trisall had recently lost his driving licence after pleading guilty to a drink-driving charge. The women who had since been chauffeuring him were as remarkable for their physical attractions as for their sheer numbers.
‘What’s the charge for the exhibition, Gareth?’ called someone.
‘Pity he doesn’t get it in as often for the Eels. Like last Saturday,’ grumbled Dirn, but he was smiling as he threw a mock punch at Trisall’s stomach as the other went by.
‘You’re late, Gareth,’ Ribarts had said, and not smiling, as the player had pushed past him at the door.
‘Not really. And a pretty good reason if I had been, wouldn’t you say, Jeff boy?’ Trisall called back from along the aisle.
The white car was now heading out of the car park towards the main road. For all her surface glamour, Ribarts calculated that the driver was easily ten years older than Trisall. All Trisall’s women were older, he thought, with money or access to money. They had to pay for the privilege of escorting the idolized Trisall, the highest paid member of the Eels and the one least likely to part with a penny when he didn’t need to. Well, Trisall might want all his savings soon if the stories were true, Ribarts thought darkly as he settled himself on the seat in the well, across from the driver, as the streamlined coach moved off.
‘Where’s the Gaff, then?’ asked Trisall, looking about him before he dropped down beside Bodworski. Both these newcomers to the Eels had individually cost more money than the notional transfer price of the rest of the team put together—excluding Atler, the other new player. But even Atler hadn’t been in the same price bracket as these two.
Bodworski and Trisall had become friends, at the start largely because they had both been new boys. Although the rest of the players had welcomed them for promising to add sorely needed strength to the ailing team, there had been jealousy over what they had cost and what it was guessed they were being paid. The same could be said of what the others thought of Jimmy Atler. The difference was that Atler had made friends with no one.
‘The Gaff, he’s going in his own car. Got to be back at ten. Back here, understand? It’s for a meeting with Sir Ray,’ said Bodworski, making it sound like bad news.
Gaff was short for Gaffer. It was what the team members called Felix Harden, the thirty-eight-year-old manager of Eel Bridge Rovers, the First Division team known universally as the Eels. Normally Harden would have been on the coach. It was the rule as well as the tradition that everyone assembled at Hugon Road first thing, whatever the day’s programme. This made for greater efficiency if arrangements were altered at the last minute; it dated from the time, long past, when most players would have lived close to the stadium and when many would not have had transport of their own in any case.
Harden had come back as manager three years before this. He had started his career as an Eels apprentice, then he had been an Eels player for five years before serving fourteen seasons with more illustrious teams. But Hugon Road had always been his spiritual home—his real home too in a way, since he had been born less than a mile from the stadium.
Stan Bodworski was often better informed than the others about the Gaff’s movements, and about club news in general, because Lilian, his Scottish wife, was the Eels’ Marketing Manager. She had got the job independently after the news of Stan’s transfer had broken at the end of the previous season—and solely on her experience and abilities, at least that was the official word.
‘Chairman Bims is in the news. In the paper this morning,’ said Trisall, as the coach waited for an opening in the traffic before turning on to the main road. He ran a hand twice across his short dark hair.
‘There was talk about that. Before you are coming. He is risking going to prison. In America.’
‘Lot of balls, that is, Stan,’ said the Welshman firmly. ‘Take it from me.’
‘But he’s director of a bank where they … they wash the money.’
‘Launder it.’
‘It’s drug money. They say that’s all it does, this bank.’ The speaker’s lips pouted to show disgust. ‘The American directors are being arrested.’
‘No. Being investigated, that’s all. Got to find them first, though. That’s what the Telegraph says.’ Trisall took a serious newspaper—or this morning’s girlfriend did. ‘It’s because the bank has a branch in Miami,’ he went on, opening and shutting the ashtray in the arm of his seat: the ashtray was pristine clean because officially nobody in the team smoked. They don’t have anything here. Bet you nothing’s proved about the drug money, either. Canny lot of buggers, bankers. Bankers and pit owners, my granda used to say.’ He studied his companion more closely. ‘The news isn’t stopping Sir Ray coming in today to bawl out the Gaff anyway. What does Lilian think about it, then?’
Bodworski shrugged at the reference to his wife. ‘Nothing. Says it’s not our business.’ As the coach moved away he looked back at the lighted club offices where his wife would be hard at work by now. She had driven in with him. The offices were on the top floor at the rear of the south stand, and above the mezzanine floor with its glass-fronted boxes looking on to the pitch.
Trisall sniffed energetically, which is how he did most things. ‘Lilian’s right, in a way,’ he offered, but without real conviction. ‘Except I suppose Sir Ray may stand to lose a packet. Could harm the club, that could.’
The gate money is down. More than expected,’ the Pole offered in a lowered voice.
The two men fell silent, looking out of the window, and contemplating the traffic building up on the approaches to Hammersmith Broadway—which was not a lot different from the frightening way it built up on every other weekday morning.
A small boy, half enveloped in a black and white Fulham Football Club scarf, was waiting to cross the road at an intersection. After he had recognized the easily identified coach, he screwed up his face and made rude finger gestures at the passengers with both hands as they passed him.
‘Hope your face freezes like that, miserable urchin,’ said the Welshman making faces back, sticking out his tongue and wagging his hands behind his ears. ‘Probably a solid Eels supporter before we came, boyo,’ he added to the Pole.
Both Bodworski and Trisall knew that uninspiring football was the cause of the team’s present failure to attract spectators. Of thirty-eight matches played this season, they had lost twenty-three, drawn seven and won only eight. The poorest attendances had been at the last three home matches. The lure of three new players, all bought from Premier League teams, had died early. This was because the star performers had failed to shine, or even to twinkle in their new galaxy. Even the team’s place in the First Division was now in jeopardy. It was a classic situation that created all round doubt and insecurity.
The two players were both anxious to know for certain the reason why the club’s chairman and its manager were meeting on a Tuesday morning in late February. Top management meetings normally took place on Saturday mornings before home matches. The likeliest guess was that the Gaff was going to be bawled out—but it was just as possible that Bodworski or Trisall or Atler, or even all three of them, were again heading for the transfer list.
After the coach had left, silence descended on the stadium and its flat approach in the still dim morning light. Only the returning pigeons showed movement as they swooped in and pecked about the concreted area for morsels. Groundsmen arrived at 8.30 in winter, and office staff normally came in an hour after that. Apart from the lights in the offices of the south stand, the only others burning were in the Eels Supporters Club which was in an old two-storey building on the street next to the gate.
The stadium was a substantial one, set in seven acres. Three grandstands provided seating for twenty thousand people, but it was rare for spectators in that number to come to Hugon Road nowadays. When the south stand had been rebuilt five summers before this, the Eels had been near the top of the First Division, with the management sure that the club was on its way up into the Premier League.
But the following season had brought disaster. Instead of rising into the higher league, the team had dropped six places in the First Division. It was then that Lord Grenwood had reluctantly sold the club to the keen and confident Sir Ray Bims—recently knighted, wealthy, anxious to become a ‘name’ in soccer, and certain that the Eels’ fortunes were due to change for the better. And his predictions had been right, measured over the following two years, although the team still failed to reach the Premier Division before it hit another bad run at the end of the subsequent season. That run had extended to the present.
So, in the circumstances, when Bims drove his turbo-charged Bentley into the stadium at 7.44 it might have been expected that he would have had one of two pressing problems on his mind—either the club’s difficulties, or else his personal ones with a Caribbean bank as reported in the morning newspapers. It was surprising then that, to the contrary, his thoughts were on something totally pleasurable as the car purred across the open concourse, its chassis levelling to the undulations in the ground surface as imperturbably as an ocean-going motor yacht responds to helm on placid water. The car scarcely even disturbed the pigeons, except the ones in its immediate path.
After parking in the bay reserved for him in the basement, Bims stepped across briskly to the lift nearby. He was a burly figure, thick-set and muscular, and altogether well preserved for his age, which was fifty-four. His thick, black wavy hair was parted in the centre and still grew well forward on his brow. His nose and mouth were heavily pronounced features, the steel grey eyes small, deeply recessed and seeming seldom to blink under untamed bushy eyebrows. He was dressed in a well tailored, loud, blue pinstripe suit, blue shirt, and the tie of an exclusive club in St James’s.
Emerging from the lift on the mezzanine floor, Bims crossed the lobby and let himself into the chairman’s suite immediately opposite by punching the key codes at the side of the door. The room he entered was large and square with a full-width sunken gallery on the far side. The gallery was largely out of sight from the door because the bar was set in front of most of it.
The place was expensively furnished in a heavily masculine style, the pine-panelled walls decorated with Eels’ trophies and memorabilia. The carpet was as rich to the tread as the leather armchairs and sofas were to the touch. The desk, to the right of the door, was small but unquestionably antique. The bar, recently enlarged, was now prominent enough to put serious drinkers at their ease. There was a television receiver angled in a recess above the bar with a screen of awesome size.
The gallery had twenty-four armchairs in two terraced rows behind a long window. It was reached down steps set against the wall to the far left of the bar. There was a fine view from here of the pitch, or there was when the blinds were open. At present they were closed.
The door in the centre of the wall to Bims’s far right as he entered led to a smallish dressing-room and bathroom, both windowless. The dressing-room contained a bed and had been provided originally for Berty Grenwood who had needed to rest after lunch and before the game on afternoon match days.
Bims secured the corridor door electrically after shutting it behind him, then made for the dressing-room. As he entered this, a tall, dark-haired young woman had been emerging from the bathroom. She was entirely naked.
He caught his breath in admiration, not surprise. ‘I’m sorry I’m late. The traffic—’ he began.
But she had already moved into his embrace and stopped his words, pressing her fingers on his lips and silently shaking her head. Then she kissed him, with a fierce, starved lover’s kiss, her body moulding to his, tightening and moving against him.
At length, she drew her lips away with a satisfied murmur. ‘You’re all right?’ she said, the concern in her tone deep and genuine.
‘Yeah. I think we’ll weather this particular storm.’ His voice was deep and gravelly. He began to caress her, his touch firm and possessive.
‘I was worried. By the newspapers. Until you called from the car. So are you going to—’
‘Talk about it later, huh?’ It was a command rather than a request.
‘Whatever you say, lover,’ she answered. Her concerned expression was replaced by a mischievous smile. ‘So aren’t I good to be ready like you asked?’
Her firm lissom figure was exquisite rather than generous, matured but not over-ripened. The long straight hair dramatically framed the slim, high-cheekboned face and the deep blue, intelligent eyes. Now she searched his face and neck again with her open mouth, snatching kisses and bites, while her hands were busily involved unknotting his tie, undoing his shirt buttons. She was behaving with nearly the finesse of a well-trained geisha—this Scottish business graduate, the marketing manager of the Eels, and wife of the soccer celebrity Stan Bodworski.