The fog that had settled over the city meant that Erasmus didn’t see the stadium until he was so close that it suddenly loomed up out of the greyness like an ancient ghost ship in a sea fog. He parked in the executive car park and made his way into the quiet and empty ancient stadium. The security guard lounging at the player’s entrance didn’t recognise him but a quick flash of the pass that Ted had given him and he was soon in the bowels of the stadium heading for the treatment rooms under the main stand.
The stadium was old, very old. The corridors were narrow and utilitarian, cutting-edge design in 1892 but now an anachronism in the world of super slick corporate stadiums. This wasn’t one of the new shiny, modern structures funded by oligarch’s billions. It was a relic of a world past, of workingmen’s dreams and hopes. Well, that was what a slightly hurt Pete had told Erasmus when he had commented on the age of the place.
Apart from the security guard there seemed to be no one else around. It was a Wednesday evening and there was no game on but Erasmus would have expected something to be happening, a corporate event of some kind perhaps, but there was nothing. His footsteps echoed off the concrete passageways as they wound down deeper under the main stand.
After two minutes of walking without seeing another soul he eventually reached the lower area where the treatment rooms were located. The rooms were far below pitch level. Erasmus stepped close to the farthest door. He could hear the low muffled sound of two voices coming from inside. He knocked on the door.
The voices stopped and for a few seconds there was silence and then the door opened. A middle-aged and immaculately groomed Asian man in a dark grey suit stood before Erasmus. His lips were pursed in annoyance.
‘Hello, can I help you?’ said the man in the finest public school accent that money can buy.
Behind the man, sitting on a treatment table, was Wayne. His left shirtsleeve was rolled up and he looked flushed. He waved at Erasmus.
‘Raz, how are you?’
‘Hi, I’m Erasmus,’ he said to the Asian man and then smiled at Wayne. ‘Hi Wayne, how’s your head?’
‘Bad, but not as bad as it would have been if you hadn’t got me out there in time. I am rubbish at those drinking games!’
Cheery as ever, even with a needle in his arm. Wayne was similar in so many ways to the squaddies he had worked with over the years. Take away the fame and the fortune and you were left with the same raw material, a young, idealistic kid who needed training to deal with the trials life was going to put in your way.
‘I am Dr Khan. We are in the middle of a session here.’
Polite but assertive. Very officer class, thought Erasmus.
‘I didn’t know Wayne was injured?’
Dr Khan’s expression didn’t change.
‘I can’t talk about his treatment. Patient confidentiality. You understand, of course.’
Wayne leaned over the side of the bed.
‘I’m not injured, Raz, Dr Khan just gives me vitamin shots, tests my blood, that sort of thing.’
Dr Khan’s eyes flickered ever so slightly in annoyance but he still stood blocking the door to his domain.
‘Is Steph around? Ted wants her to do a piece in the programme about being Wayne’s girlfriend that sort of thing,’ said Erasmus.
‘Good luck with that, she hates Ted, thinks he a tosser! But she likes you so you may be in luck. She usually waits for me outside in the main stand seats, directors’ enclosure. Try there.’
‘I will do, good luck for Saturday if I don’t see you before.’
‘I won’t need luck,’ he pointed at his left foot, ‘I’ve got this.’
Dr Khan had begun to close the door, and it was shut before Erasmus had a chance to reply. He retraced his steps and then took the stairs up to the main stand, directors’ box. He followed the stairs to the pitch and stepped out into the cold night air.
The fog had settled all the way to the bottom of the pitch and was slowly twisting and turning in the darkness of the stadium’s belly. The stadium, which seemed so vibrant and full of life when full for a game, seemed desolate and eerie now. There were no floodlights on and in the gloom Erasmus couldn’t see anybody in any of the seats. He looked further down the rows of seats and then realised he had come out too high up. He heard the sounds of a muffled conversation and looked more closely at the rows below him and he could see that there were two people about fifty rows down. In the gloom it was impossible to tell who they were but one of them must be Steph.
Erasmus started to walk down the stairs, his shoes slapping against the concrete echoed loudly in the deserted arena.
One of the people below turned around, looked at him and then got up from the seat, and walked along the row to an exit before disappearing out of sight. It was too dark for Erasmus to make out who it was.
The other figure waved at him.
Twenty yards away Erasmus recognised Steph. She was wrapped up tightly in an expensive looking leather jacket with a fur collar.
He slid down the row of seats and sat next to her.
‘I didn’t mean to scare your friend away,’ he said
Steph smiled.
‘You didn’t.’
Erasmus said nothing, leaving a gap in conversation he hoped she would fill, but she didn’t oblige.
‘So, I’m here to collect. You said you would tell me your theory on why Wayne’s lost his form?’
The smile on Steph’s face vanished. She took a deep breath.
‘Straight to business, eh?’ She fixed him with a stare that he couldn’t even begin to decipher and then smiled. ‘Oh well. I did, didn’t I. You’ve signed that fat tosser’s waiver, haven’t you?’ she asked.
Erasmus knew what she meant. It had been a term of the contract with Ted that Erasmus agreed to complete confidentiality in his dealings with the club and any disclosure of information to a third party was strictly prohibited. A gagging clause, in other words.
‘I have. Why have you got it in for Ted, by the way?’
Steph lit a cigarette and inhaled before ejecting a tight, band of smoke from her pursed lips.
‘Real Madrid wanted to buy Wayne last January. Ted wouldn’t let the sale go through. He said he wanted him to play for Everton for a few more years. But Ted didn’t realise that Wayne is bigger than this club now, he’s a fucking global superstar but he’s regretting it now though.’
‘Because of Wayne’s loss in form.’
‘No shit Sherlock.’
‘Why has he lost his form, Steph?’
She dropped the cigarette on the concrete floor and ground it out with her leather heel and then she leaned in close, her scent filling Erasmus’s nose.
‘If Ted had let the sale go through none of this would have happened.’
‘What happened?’
She looked away towards the Gwladys Street end of the ground and then back at Erasmus.
‘If I tell you what I know you can’t tell Ted, do you promise?’
‘I promise,’ he said too quickly, although she didn’t seem to notice. He had no idea whether he would be keeping his promise, it depended, as it always depended, on what the price was of keeping the secret.
‘Last March Wayne was injured and missed three games. He strained a calf muscle at the Villa game while warming up.’
‘A muscle strain, that’s not serious?’
She shook her head.
‘You don’t get it. There was nothing wrong with him. He pretended to have a pulled the muscle. The club flew him to the US for three weeks to have treatment but he was fine.’
‘So why did he do it?’
‘He told me he wanted a break. Gary Jones was properly injured at the time. He’s at the end of his career and is injured every other game it seems, so he went with Wayne. They just had a holiday for three weeks.’
‘I can’t believe Ted sanctioned that?’
Steph laughed.
‘Ted doesn’t know. He hasn’t got a clue what’s going on half the time. Khan signed him off as unfit and away he goes.’
‘But Khan’s the club doctor?’
‘No, Khan is Wayne’s doctor as insisted upon by Steve Cowley in Wayne’s contract.’
Erasmus was thinking about what he had seen in the treatment room.
‘How did this affect his form?’
It had become colder now and the fog had grown icy fangs that bit into Erasmus’s spine. He shivered.
‘I don’t know. I said I’d tell you what I know and I have. He came back from the States and he hasn’t been the same player he was since. At first his form was terrible then towards the end of last season it picked up, and this season, well, you were here last week, you heard the boos.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
She smiled again and looked straight into Erasmus’s eyes.
‘We had a deal.’
If there was one thing that Erasmus was sure about more than anything at this moment it was that Steph Besant had her own reasons that had nothing to do with any deal with him.
She stood up.
‘So we’re quits now,’ she said.
‘Sure.’
She leant down and pecked him on the cheek.
‘See you around, Erasmus.’
She left him sitting there and walked up and away towards the exit.
He looked out at the pitch. You couldn’t see the grass now the fog had become so thick. To a fanciful mind the way the grey air moved in the wind almost looked like ghosts playing a game.
There was something that Steph had told him that had rattled a door handle in his mind but it wouldn’t open. Erasmus believed that insight often came when the mind emptied or indeed when it was stimulated with chemicals. Erasmus smiled to himself and let his mind wander.
After a minute or two he knew it wouldn’t come, but it would at some point he was sure. He shivered again and this time left his seat and made his way out of the stadium. He saw nobody but the security guard on his way out. The stillness of a place built to be filled with people was disconcerting and he was glad to be leaving.
In the car park there was another car parked next to his and getting out of it was De Marco. He was wearing a leather flying jacket and a blue silk scarf. He looked like a dashing aristocratic pilot from the First World War.
‘Ehhh, Erasmus! Come sta?’
Erasmus shook his hand.
‘Not bad, and you, Marco?’
‘Va bene. I have to come in though on such a cold Engleesh night. I have a cold. I need to see the doctor. Is very bad. I miss Italy sometimes, no?’
‘Yeah, sure. Can I ask you something, Marco? Does the club doctor give you vitamin shots?’
Marco frowned.
‘Vitamin shots, no. I hate needles, even if he wanted to I say no!’
‘What about the other players?’
Marco shrugged.
‘You have to ask them, no?’
‘OK, thanks Marco. See you later.’
‘Ciao!’
Marco walked off towards the entrance to the stadium. Erasmus let his hand rest against the bonnet of Marco’s car: it was icy cold. He stood still for a moment thinking about that fact and then shrugged: time for home.