Chapter 1

 

There is something about a high-profile football match that has John Milton on edge. Detective Inspector John Milton, that is. Head of the English anti-soccer hooliganism task force and the man who, more than any other man on the face of the planet on this particular day, probably wished that he had steered well clear of the ‘sensible’ career path he was treading.

“Position camera two onto that group there,” he said with a twinge of agitation in his strong southern voice. Pointing to the screen over the shoulder of a uniformed officer, Milton watched as the shaven heads and weathered faces of a small group of England fans became clearer as the CCTV camera focused in.

“What are they doing there?” pondered Milton while slipping a finger under his pale blue tie to loosen a noose that had pulled ever tighter as the sultry September day dragged on.

Peeling away to no one in particular, he barked his orders: “Okay. Get some boys over there and chuck them back in the away end … and for Christ’s sake get some air con into this room.”

For two hours, Milton and his team of eagle-eyed officers had stared at a wall of TV screens covering just about every member of the 40,000 crowd in the stadium outside. Despite it being Switzerland in the middle of September, the temporary construction lofted high above the halfway line was heating up, but that could have been attributed just as much to the tension inside than to the muggy autumn evening on the exterior.

The calm, almost laid-back atmosphere in the stadium was of stark contrast to the mayhem that had unfolded in the hours building up to the game, and it fanned the flames burning inside Milton, who was feeling the pressure of 12 months of limited results … well, if the truth be known, no results.

A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face, traversing the lines and wrinkles that had become ever more visible over the past year. It stalled for a moment on the bottom of his chin and gathered weight before dropping onto his hand as he leaned over a flimsy table in the middle of the room. Not even beads of sweat could break his stare at the wall of screens, which were busily zooming in and out of every nook and cranny of the stadium.

“Where are they?” he mumbled under his breath while interspersing glares at the screen with glances through the huge window looking out over the pitch. “Where, where, where, where, WHERE are they?” his voice growing in volume before his fist landed on the table, which in turn buckled to the floor, taking with it a tray of drinks and sandwiches politely laid on by the hosting Swiss police.

For a moment his fellow officers turned their inquisitive heads, but on seeing the frustration that Milton was visibly exuding they returned to their work like frightened schoolboys.

Half turning to the door, Milton realised that it was probably the biggest act of violence demonstrated within the stadium all evening, and running his hand through his ever receding hairline he conceded that he had been beaten once again.

“Bastards,” he mumbled under his breath, but just loud enough for the seven officers from both his own task force and the local constabulary present to hear. They buried themselves back into their surveillance work for fear of incurring the wrath of their commanding officer.

Milton knew he was going to get it with both barrels when he flew back to HQ in London the following day. The jobs didn’t come much bigger than this. This was the Olympic Gold of all police jobs.

With less than five months before FIFA, the world governing body for football, announced its decision as to which country would host the 2006 World Cup, it was neck-and-neck between old enemies Germany and England. England had all the ingredients for a successful bid: the stadiums, erected at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds to the taxpayer, the hotels, the entertainment and, of course, the history and tradition. There was just one thing that had become a thorn in the side of the bid and it was a thorn of javelin proportions.

Since launching its bid two years earlier, English hooligans had wreaked havoc on every away game that the national team had been a part of, and Milton was the man assigned to intervene. A policeman with an impeccable track record and 12 years of distinguished service under his belt, and commended and promoted for his undercover work in thwarting a major drugs operation, Milton was tailor-made for the job. His late father was a police chief, and his father before that, but the one he had tried to impress the most was the father of his wife, a recently retired Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Force who judged Milton’s achievements against those of his own.

This assignment was to be his big breakthrough. The hooliganism trail had become the biggest ongoing news story since the Gulf War and surely the man who brought an end to it all would be treated as a war hero … and rewarded so too? That sort of potential praise was exactly what attracted Milton to the assignment in the first place but it had started to wear thin. He would be lucky if he got away with holding a lollipop stick and helping school kids cross the road for the rest of his career given his progress over the past year.

Four away matches, four incidents of mass hooliganism, hundreds of arrests and thousands of banning orders restricting known troublemakers from travelling abroad, and yet the Switzerland v. England match presented the worst incidents yet. Milton knew the stakes had been raised. No longer was it a bunch of lager louts on a jolly. It had become more organised than that, but who and where the organisers were had become the focal point of Milton’s life. Twelve months and millions of pounds later, he was no nearer to a solution than the armchair know-it-alls who universally proclaimed “idiots” and “lock ’em up” after watching the events unfold on the 6 o’clock news.

Milton knew, as he looked out of the surveillance room window, that those organisers were out there somewhere, probably laughing at the inability of Britain’s biggest and most expensive international police operation to thwart them; smirking because they had got away with it - again.

The pressure had got to everyone and one young sergeant, Peter Miller, was almost ready to throw in the towel. He whispered to his right, “It’s like looking for a piece of hay in a bloody haystack,” which was met by a rush of air pushed from the nostrils of his comrade - a kind of muffled smirk-cum-sigh.

Sitting in a corner of the Portakabin, which resembled a high-tech scout hut, Milton rested his chin on his hands and reflected on the day’s bizarre events: seventeen police officers hospitalised; 53 innocent bystanders injured; over 100 beer-swilling Englishmen arrested; and damage to the beautiful city of Zurich running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. But the damage to the British economy would run into billions should England miss out on clinching the World Cup 2006, and FIFA had warned the English authorities that its patience was running out. The tired old ‘minority’ excuse had become hard for the footballing powers-that-be to swallow. Downtown Zurich resembled a city that had just welcomed a battalion from the Anarchist Revolutionary Guard. A minority? Not anymore; this was more like an army.

Windows smashed, shops turned upside down and innocent men, women and children beaten as an outpouring of indiscriminate rage swept through an otherwise tranquil city. These people’s lives would never be the same again and Milton believed that the perpetrators should be charged with war crimes, never mind the slap on the wrist and the free trip home that probably lay in wait for them.

There was an eerie silence in the surveillance room as each and every member present felt the pressure that their superior was under. Still glued to the screens, the officers were determined to bring some sort of relief to their respected boss who had stood by each and every one of them during a difficult period.

Suddenly the silence was sliced open by Sergeant Thomas Waite, eager to be the bearer of good news for his embattled guv’nor. The 28-year-old had probably grown closer to the boss over the past year than any of his colleagues.

“Sir, there’s the fella we filmed chucking the police helmet through the newsagent’s window this afternoon,” he said, focusing his screen on a tough-looking, beer-bellied lout in his late thirties. The man, sticking a customary English soccer solute of two fingers up at the opposing fans, was seemingly uninterested in the action on the pitch, his head and body aimed towards the Swiss fans located on the other side of the dividing security fence.

Milton shook his head as he rose to his feet to inspect the discovery. “Who do these idiots think they are? They have a wife and kids at home; probably a desk job too; but as soon as they get the stamp of a new country in their passports they become animals, the lowest sort of scum. Call themselves patriotic? Their grandfathers would turn in their graves if they could see how the loved ones they had fought for had turned out. It makes me sick.” Then, with a deep breath, almost a sigh of despondency, Milton decided: “Haul him in, Waite. He can join the rest of the boys for bed and breakfast.”

As he slowly returned to his corner of solace, Milton heard Waite dish out the instructions in slow, easy-to-understand English to his Swiss counterpart on the other end of the radio. “That is row X, seat 42, in the Alpine Stand.” A cackled reply was met by, “No! Row X, not Rolex. Do not go to the Rolex Stand. It is the Alpine Stand! Row X, seat 42, in the Alpine Stand.”

The cackled reply seemingly understood the instructions on this occasion, but Milton could not help but smirk to himself and thought that, as soon as the transmission had finished, the overworked Swiss sergeant on the other end of the walkie-talkie would turn to his colleagues and remark, “Fucking English!” A common sentiment Europe-wide when it came to football.

Nevertheless, within seconds the surveillance room watched on the screen as a heavy-handed mob of police waded into the crowd, grabbed the identified offender and herded him away, much to the annoyance of the man’s comrades who kicked, punched and spat on the well-padded officers. Not surprisingly, their reply with a few swipes of their rubber sticks brought the short burst of trouble to an end.

Milton watched and almost enjoyed the show in a bizarre and sadistic sort of way. For a moment he imagined he was watching real-life TV in the comfort of his own South London home, with a mug of tea handed to him by his loving wife as he stroked the tummy of his Labrador, and his two boys looking on from their toys strewn out over the large sheepskin rug.

Fat chance. His daydream was pinched by the thought that millions, if not billions, of people across the world also would have witnessed this spectacle on television, and would observe dozens more like it over the coming days.

That thought brought a touch of embarrassment to Milton. It was a thought that men the same age as him, and some even older, could bring such disgrace to a country they claimed to love and represent. Did they not realise what harm they were causing their beloved England?

As his superiors had drilled into him after the previous four humiliations abroad since he had taken over, the World Cup 2006 would create thousands of jobs, bring in billions of tourism pounds and one simply could not put a price on the hundreds of hours of worldwide television exposure. It would underline England as one of the world’s great countries and tourist destinations, not to mention Europe’s most desirable country to live in.

Madness!

Milton knew he had failed miserably so far, but with only two more away matches remaining until FIFA’s D-Day he also knew that for now his position was probably safe. It was too late to appoint a new task force and the powers that be had decided it was shit or bust with Milton’s operation.

If his results didn’t improve, what would happen after the next two games was simply not worth contemplating right now, but ‘humiliation’ and ‘back on the beat’ echoed in Milton’s mind far too often for his own liking these days. If he could escape from it all, he would. But he knew he could not.

Milton’s long stare at the floor was broken by a sharp blast from the referee’s final whistle from the pitch outside. He was up and out of the door before the first set of players had shaken hands on the pitch.

“Make sure we’ve got all the surveillance stuff from the ground and the shopping centres ready for taking back with us tomorrow,” was all he could muster, not wanting to catch the overworked eyes of his colleagues as he clumsily grabbed a bundle of papers and set a course for the exit, followed by Waite.

As he left the stadium for the temporary lock-up set up by the local establishment to house the expected English troublemakers, he could not help but think that the referee’s whistle had not only signified a defeat for the English team on the field but also a defeat for the English police force off it. The latter defeat, though, was possibly more damaging to the nation than the football team’s could ever be.

 

* * *

 

Walking into the old school building, which had been renovated at great cost to accommodate its unwilling English visitors, Milton felt a relief to be away from the ground. With Waite at his side like a loyal sheepdog, the pair bounced time-old theories off each other in the hope of finding the answer, which seemed to be further away now than when they were first assigned to this mess in what seemed like a lifetime ago.

“Sir, they were just a bunch of thugs looking for a ruck,” deduced Waite. “How can anyone stop a few thousand grown men going on the rampage?”

“Come on, Waite. You know better than that. That was cold, calculated destruction. It was organised. It was callous and it was successful,” replied Milton, as he approached the wall-sized reinforced windows housing the arrested English hooligans in the former school’s gymnasium.

They knew its layout well having visited the facility several times during the week building up to the match. As with any England game, trouble was expected and the local police cells would not have been able to cope.

Assessing the assembled hooligans, Milton concluded that they looked a sad and pathetic bunch of individuals, caged in like the animals they were and spitting and staring at any passer-by that looked in.

“These men couldn’t have orchestrated the destruction we saw this afternoon. Most of these men are cowards, taking out the frustrations of their inadequacies at home on some innocent foreign land under the banner of football.”

Looking back at the gathering of bloodied, pot-bellied, tattooed men hanging around like school kids in detention, Milton was under no illusion that the big fish had got away once again.

“These aren’t the men we are looking for. These are simply soldiers, and soldiers are ineffective unless they have generals calling the shots. These men couldn’t organise a gang bang in a brothel on pay day.”

The pair continued to walk through the bland corridors and into an office, which was formerly the headmaster’s room. Through the orange door sat Commissioner Oleg Von Wolf. Peering at Milton and Waite over a walrus moustache and rose red cheeks, the Swiss Police Chief took his knee-length leather boots off the heavy oak desk and shuffled upright on the arrival of his visitors, who by now resembled a downtrodden Oliver Twist creeping towards his domineering master for a hiding that’s inevitable.

“May I congratulate you and your English thugs,” said Von Wolf.

Milton had seen enough Second World War movies to realise that the Commissioner’s tongue was firmly rooted into his cheek.

“Your hooligans have succeeded in destroying one of Central Europe’s most beautiful cities and all we have to show is this bunch of overweight, drunken idiots who look like they have just got off an Airtours flight from SPAIN!”

Von Wolf’s speech gathered momentum as his voice grew louder and Milton knew this was nothing compared with the roasting he would receive at the hands of his own superiors within the next 24 hours.

“With all due respect, sir, we have worked on this operation together for the past six weeks, so now is not the time to be deflecting blame from yourself,” Milton replied in defiance.

The retort was practical, but he may just as well have had a bowl in his hand asking for more broth for all the good it served.

“So, Detective Inspector, you are blaming us for this destruction? You think it was our people who smashed up everything they could get their hands on? Was it our people who drank the pubs dry all afternoon? Was it our people who punched and kicked innocent women and children who were going about their daily business? I think not, Detective Inspector. You do not have a problem on your hands, you have a disease, and unless you find some sort of cure soon it will become an epidemic among your countrymen.

“We installed over 200,000 francs worth of CCTV cameras and manoeuvred over 1,200 full-time officers and reservists into the city at a cost of God knows what. This was the biggest police operation we have ever staged and it failed, Detective Inspector. I am at a loss to ask what more we could have done?”

But Milton, looking at the floor and shuffling his feet like a chastised altar boy, was taken aback by what was next said by the militarist Von Wolf.

“That said though, I do feel sorry for you, Detective Inspector. I have a press conference in 30 minutes and there is nothing to be gained from criticising each other. Worry not, Detective Inspector, you will come out of this smelling of roses … red roses I suppose you would prefer as an Englishman? You are not to blame for the actions of others. Damage limitation is the order of the day, or we will end up looking as stupid as each other.”

“Thank you, sir,” Milton replied to the first bit of decent news he had received in days. “I would like to speak to some of the prisoners now, sir.”

Pointing to a burly uniformed officer positioned by the door, Von Wolf added in his best exaggerated Queen’s English, “Oh, Detective Inspector.” Milton and Waite paused. “Good luck, old boy. I think you will need it.”

The three men walked back down the corridor towards the gymnasium where the England fans were detained.

At the entrance, which looked like it had been kicked more times than a Brazilian centre forward, stood two armed officers who nodded at the group of men and guided them with an outstretched arm to a classroom opposite. Inside, the lout, arrested earlier in the evening after being caught in the ground by the surveillance camera, sat with his head bowed down and two officers shouting at him from the other side of the desk.

The thug looked as though he had been dragged through a hedge backwards, and then forwards again just for good measure. Small cuts bled on his closely shaved, balding head, a signal that he had not given in lightly to his arrest, and he was almost relieved to see two ‘fellow’ Englishmen enter, albeit two coppers.

“Thank you, officers,” Milton gestured to the two Swiss interrogators, who in turn put on their caps and walked towards the exit. On the way out, one turned and spat in the direction of the shamed man and grunted, “I hope the Germans get the World Cup.”

At that precise moment that comment could have been supported by just about every footballing nation in Europe, in fact in the world. Earlier in the day such a remark would have seen the man reply with a barrage of punches, but he now seemed to accept that he was beaten.

“What’s your name?” enquired Waite after flipping a chair back to front and straddling the backrest.

Somewhat ashamedly, the man raised his head to reveal a puffed-up, blackening eye that was welling up with water.

“John Simons,” he replied with a whisper, barely loud enough to hear.

“What’s your story, John Simons? Over here for a ruck or to watch football? The evidence we have could put you away for a very long time, sunshine.”

Simons sat silent, suspecting a red herring had just been thrown at him, but he was soon forced into talking.

“Got something against newsagents eh, John Simons?” added Waite. The penny dropped, as the perpetrator realised his earlier act of vandalism had been caught … and so had he.

“Okay, okay,” Simons piped up. “What do you want to know?”

Milton, who had been pacing around the room like an inquisitive parent, suddenly realised that he had someone who was ready to squeal like a baby.

“We want to know exactly what you’ve been up to today,” he said, darting from the back of the classroom.

“Tell us a story, John Simons, about your little trip to Switzerland and we will see if we can get you out of here tonight,” Milton said in a sarcastic parental voice.

It did the trick. Simons went on to share that he had flown into Zurich the day before with a group of fellow Chelsea fans. He had taken two days off work from his job in the city and was expecting to catch the midnight flight back to Heathrow. Needless to say, he could forget about work for the week, or in fact for the rest of the year.

After a heavy night of bars and strip clubs, Simons and his merry men had retired back to their bed and breakfast in readiness for a hard day of drinking before the match. They had started with a beer to wash down their 9.00 a.m. continental breakfast and had continued drinking at the hotel before heading into the town centre. There they had joined around 8,000 other Englishmen who had flown, driven or caught the train in to watch this European Cup qualifier.

“Rumour was going around that trouble was going to kick off but none of us was interested in joining in,” he said. “That’s the truth. But before you knew it, at around noon, pandemonium broke out with fists, bottles, kicks, you name it, flying everywhere. We didn’t know who was who and we just got caught up in the melee. I lost it. I really lost it. Maybe it was the beer, maybe the adrenalin, but I shouldn’t have got involved. I just shouldn’t have done it …”

“Boohoo, pal,” interrupted Waite. “Who started the trouble? Give us names, places, inside leg sizes and you may be able to see your kids open their Christmas presents.”

Simons suddenly swallowed the magnitude of his dire situation and realised that his earlier actions were enough for him to suffer a lengthy stay in a Swiss jail.

He sighed, “I don’t know. That’s the truth. All the lads from the football clubs that used to be the ringleaders are banned from travelling now. Have been for a long time. Rumour has it that there’s this group of men. Trained men who love nothing more than this sort of thing. These men come in, cause a ruck and disappear without trace. Nobody knows who they are, where they come from or what club they support. People that have seen these lads in action reckon they’re mustard. They fight like you’ve never seen fighting before and the rest of us just get caught up in the excitement; it snowballs from there.”

The words sank into Milton’s head without a single word of reply. It pointed to a theory that had burned in his throat like CS gas since he had got involved in this whole mess. He knew that football violence was orchestrated, organised, but could it be that there was some group, some force of trained men pulling the strings? Surely not. He shook his head towards the direction of Simons, grabbed Waite by the arm and headed for the door.

“This is getting worse, Waite. We are in for big shit tomorrow at HQ!”

 

* * *

 

Back in his hotel room, Simons’ comments still haunted him. They repeated in his mind over and over again. Even under the cold bursts of shower water, Milton could not remove any of the day’s events from his mind and he knew he was in for a restless night before catching his 8.00 a.m. plane back to London to face the music.

Slipping on a white bathrobe without towelling off, Milton crashed onto the bed and grabbed the remote control to watch the inevitable. It was now well after midnight. His hair was still dripping onto his shoulders and bed, which was covered by an off-white coloured duvet.

CNN, BBC, SKY, not to mention the dodgy European channels, preached the same reaction stories about the ‘English disease’; FIFA’s patience running out; and responses from the bespectacled German politicians stating that England should be removed from the running to host the 2006 World Cup and the tournament handed to them.

He decided to remain with CNN. Surely the Yanks have no sustained interest in this? he thought wrongly to himself.

The pretty lady reporter was finishing off her summing up of the day’s events while standing outside the stadium: “No serious incidents have been reported since before the game and there is an uneasy calm over Zurich tonight where the residents are asking ‘why?’ and finding it hard to believe that this is all over a game of football after all.” She paused, stared at the camera, and then wrapped up: “This is …”

The name faded out as Milton’s head crashed against the pillow. Although tired, his eyes were wide open, as though he had taken a wrap of speed washed down with a pint of Red Bull. As he stared at the ceiling, he was suddenly propped upright again by the anchorman’s announcement that Swiss Police Chief Commissioner, Oleg Von Wolf, was about to make a live announcement.

Looking his pompous best with the world’s media at his mercy, Von Wolf declared: “We believe that our operation was a success. Over 100 English supporters were arrested and we will be handing their names over to our English friends in the anti-hooliganism task force. We are disappointed by the levels of violence that we have witnessed this afternoon but would like to say that our Swiss men and women who were on active duty have performed admirably and I would like to offer my congratulations for a job well done. I wish those in hospital my best wishes and will be visiting them personally later tonight. That is all I have to say on this matter for now.”

As hordes of tape recorders and microphones rushed towards the burly chief, he hastily left his podium and scurried behind the two large wooden doors of the police headquarters.

Milton knew he had just heard utter bullshit, but the Commissioner, as promised, had kept to his word by not criticising Milton’s operation. The two had become professional friends after all. Von Wolf felt sorry for his more junior counterpart. For that he was grateful as he towelled his dripping locks.

However, Milton also knew that Von Wolf had a hidden agenda. During their six-week build-up to the game, Von Wolf had confided to Milton that he had less than eight months left to serve in office, and he intended to spend his retirement in politics. It was hardly surprising, then, that he was heading to the hospital to see his wounded officers at 1.00 a.m. followed by a hungry pack of local media. He would probably look for a baby or two to kiss along the way.

Milton’s eyelids became heavier as he again fell back into the sanctuary of his king-size bed. All he could think of again before reaching the escapism of sleep was: “I am in for big shit tomorrow!”

At that point, he had never felt so alone in his life.