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something if you’re following them, right?’
    ‘The problem, Vik,’ said Phil, ‘is that whatever Prometheus re-tweets gets picked up by the tabloids. Which, like anyone else, Bekim does read. Not to mention Christoph Bündchen. And of course they haven’t forgotten what happened to the German boy in Brazil. The newspapers are trying to stir up trouble like they always do.’
    ‘ Is he gay?’ Phil was asking me, but it was Vik who answered him.
    ‘Of course he’s gay,’ he said. ‘Not only that but he’s living with a man.’
    ‘To be fair,’ I said, ‘Harry Koenig is just a flatmate. A German player from QPR reserves that the liaison officer fixed up for Christoph to live with, so that he wouldn’t get lonely.’
    ‘Maybe so. But actually Harry is gay, too.’
    ‘How do you know that?’ I asked.
    ‘Because I had them drone-hacked.’
    ‘Drone-hacked? What’s that?’
    ‘I own a military drone company,’ said Vik, matter-of-factly. ‘The smallest ones are about the size of a pigeon. You just have a drone follow someone around, sit on their window ledge, record what you want. They can recharge themselves on telephone lines.’ Vik was unapologetic about this. ‘I’ve drone-hacked all our players. I’m not paying the kind of money I pay to our players without knowing everything about them I can. Relax, Scott, it’s not illegal.’
    ‘Well, if it isn’t, it sounds like it ought to be.’
    I wondered if I’d been drone-hacked; it made phone-hacking sound very old-fashioned.
    ‘I’ve also had them all given psychiatric evaluations. Did you know that three of our players are psychopaths?’
    ‘Which ones?’ I asked.
    ‘That would be telling. Don’t look so shocked, gentlemen. Psychopaths can be useful, especially in sport. It doesn’t mean they’re going to kill someone.’ He chuckled. ‘At least not right away.’
    I wondered if he was unconsciously referring to our helicopter pilot, who was circling our improbably small landing site like a bee considering the charms of an unusual yellow flower with an H-shaped stigma. I closed my eyes and waited for us to put down.
    ‘Cheer up, Scott,’ said Vik. ‘It might never happen.’
    ‘I sincerely hope not.’

6
    A small fleet of black Range Rovers was waiting on the helipad to take us into the centre of the city. Twenty minutes later we were speeding up the Champs-Élysées. It all looked very different from the last time I’d been there in May 2013 when, as a guest of David Beckham, I’d visited Paris to see PSG’s win over Lyon, which secured them their first French title since 1994. The day after there had been a riot as the celebrations turned ugly and I’d hurried back to the George V Hotel to escape the sting of tear gas. Shops were looted, cars burnt out and passers-by threatened with violence, with thirty people injured, including three police officers. Whoever thinks English fans don’t know how to behave should have been there to see it. There’s nothing the French can learn from us when it comes to having a riot, which is probably why there are always so many police in Paris. Paris has more cops than Nazi Germany.
    The restaurant was Taillevent, in rue Lamennais. It was a rather cool austere room of light oak and beige-painted walls, and catered to those who wouldn’t dream of spending anything less than one hundred and fifty euros on lunch. They greeted Vik as if he had climbed down from a golden elephant with a diamond on its forehead. Kojo Ironsi was already there as was Vik’s other guest, an American hedge fund manager called Cooper Lybrand.
    I liked Kojo more than I expected to; I liked Cooper Lybrand not at all. Kojo talked about his boys and his clients. Cooper only talked about the chimps and muppets he’d taken advantage of in one business deal after another. But both of them were after the same thing: Vik’s cash.
    Kojo was smartly dressed and politely spoken, with a well-deserved reputation for looking after