False Nine by Philip Kerr

had enough of football?’ I said. ‘Maybe he’s burned out. That can happen.’
    ‘Your fee is still one million,’ said Ahmed. ‘The three million euro fee is payable only if Dumas plays. Needless to say that his failure to play at all for FCB will have financial consequences for PSG.’
    ‘We won’t get paid,’ said Rivel.
    ‘If he’s had enough of football an important part of your job would include persuading him to come back home,’ said Oriel. ‘That’s another reason we want to hire you. To talk him round if he’s got cold feet.’
    ‘Let’s say I do take this job. How long should I keep looking for?’
    ‘Until the end of this month,’ said Ahmed. ‘Four weeks. Six at most.’
    ‘Ideally,’ added Jacint, ‘we should like the player back in time for us to play him in el clásico , on Sunday, March the twenty-second. If he could feature in the match against Madrid, it will be as much as we can hope for.’ He shrugged. ‘As you may remember, Madrid won the last classic, three–one, in front of their home fans.’
    ‘We were robbed,’ said Oriel. ‘Not the first time, of course.’
    ‘They came from behind after Neymar gave us the perfect start, with a goal after just four minutes.’
    ‘They had a penalty which should never have been given,’ said Oriel. ‘It was ball to hand, not hand to ball as the law states. Gerard Piqué was unfairly penalised. It was the sheer injustice of this penalty that affected our team.’
    I nodded, smiling. Nothing changes very much in a rivalry like the one that existed between Madrid and Barcelona. But it was perhaps the only rivalry in which one side had forced the other to play, at gunpoint. For many, the hatred that now existed between Madrid and Barcelona had not existed at all until that game, in 1943. Madrid won the game 11–1, which makes you wonder about the team talk at half time. What did the manager say to his team?
    ‘On second thoughts, you’d best let these Spaniards beat us, lads, or they’re liable to shoot us, like they shot Lorca. If they can shoot a poet these fascists can certainly shoot a football team.’
    ‘Will you do it?’ asked Jacint. ‘This club will be forever in your debt.’
    ‘And ours,’ added Charles Rivel.
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said, wavering a little.
    I like Barcelona. I like Catalans. I just didn’t want to turn into football’s Inspector Clouseau.
    I got up from the table.
    ‘I’m going to the men’s room. So give me a few minutes, to think about it.’
    ‘If it’s a question of money…’ said Ahmed.
    ‘The money’s fine,’ I said. ‘No, I’m just wondering if you’d come to Pep on his year off and asked him to help you out like this, what he’d have said.’
    ‘Pep’s not an intellectual,’ said Jacint. ‘You’re the one who went to university, not him. All he knows is football.’
    ‘Maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong,’ I said. ‘Anyway, university doesn’t mean much nowadays. You can get a degree for staying in bed and watching television. What I meant was that Guardiola has always been very single-minded. A man with a plan. Total football of the kind he learned under Cruyff doesn’t seem to accommodate what you’re asking me to do. Other clubs might get the idea that I’m less interested in playing 4-4-2 than in playing the amateur sleuth.’
    ‘You’re a clever man, Scott,’ said Jacint. ‘Maybe a little too clever for this game. But you’ll always be part of the Barca family. I think you know that.’
    There are times – usually when it’s someone paying me a compliment like that – when I look down at my feet as if I expect to find a ball, and the fact is that sometimes I still don’t know what to do when I see there isn’t one. I swear when I first stopped playing football I used to wake up at night and look around for the ball. Especially when I was in the nick. It’s like I don’t know what to do with my feet. As if they’re at a loss without a