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wouldn’t dream of mentioning to the manager; only now they bring them to Maurice, who sometimes – if the matter is serious – brings them back to me. It had been my idea to hire Maurice; I’d met him in the nick and in the five months we’d been together at City we’d already seen off several scandals. I won’t go into these right now. Suffice to say that we never did anything illegal. Just stuff that kept some of our stupid fuck-head players out of the newspapers, for one thing or another.
    I went into the bathroom, closed the door, and sat down on the toilet. I think this is what they call multi-tasking. There were several texts from a variety of sports reporters asking me to call them but these I ignored, for the moment; better to get it from the horse’s mouth, I thought, already imagining some scandal involving Ayrton Taylor, mouthing off to a newspaper perhaps. Or getting himself into trouble with another player’s wife, again; he wasn’t such an example of good sportsmanship when it came to shagging someone else’s missus.
    ‘What’s up, Maurice?’
    ‘I thought you should know, as soon as possible,’ said Maurice. ‘A pal who works for the Met has just given me the heads-up on this. And I think you ought to prepare yourself for a shock. The police have found a body hanging from the railings along Wembley Way.’ He paused. ‘It’s Drenno. He’s only gone and hanged himself.’
    ‘Oh, fuck, no,’ I said. ‘The stupid, stupid bastard.’
    We were silent for several seconds.
    ‘You know his wife is in the same hospital as Didier,’ said Maurice.
    ‘No, I didn’t.’
    ‘Drenno beat her up quite badly.’
    ‘Christ. Has she been told?’
    ‘Yes. The press are there. And given your high-profile friendship it’s safe to imagine that they’ll be outside your flat before very long.’
    ‘Like a pack of vultures,’ I said. ‘To pick over the entrails.’
    ‘That’s what generally happens in these situations.’
    ‘Look, I’ll tweet something,’ I said. ‘And release a statement to the City press office at Silvertown Dock. And to Arsenal. Fuck. He was here, you know. The day before yesterday. Pissed as usual.’
    ‘Do you want me to tell the police?’
    ‘No, I’ll do it. But find out who’s heading up the inquiry, will you? And text me a number? I don’t want to explain myself more than once to these bastards.’
    ‘They’re bound to ask. So I’ll ask: was he suicidal when you saw him?’
    ‘No more so than usual.’ I sighed because then I remembered what he’d said. ‘But he did say something about making one last headline at Wembley. But I had no idea – Jesus, so that’s what he meant. Oh God. The stupid bastard.’
    ‘Scott.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘I’m sorry. I know you were fond of him.’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t fond of him at all, Maurice. But I did love that man.’
    I rang off, wiped the tears from my eyes, washed my face and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. I knew what the guy who was looking back at me was thinking, because he looked angry; he was thinking – Drenno came to you for help but you were too dumb to see that; too dumb or just too lazy. You thought you were being such a fucking hero volunteering to take him to the Priory and offering to pay for his first week of treatment, didn’t you? Christ, that was generous of you, Scott. The man needed a friend. Somewhere to stay for a couple of days until he was ready to face the music. He must have known he was going to be arrested for the assault on Tiffany; he’d been cautioned for that before. And you let him down. When you needed a friend, Drenno was there for you – when no one else would give you the time of day; but when he needed someone, where the fuck were you? Christ, he even visited you when you were in the nick. Anne didn’t. Your own wife. In the eighteen months you were inside, Drenno was the only one who visited you, apart from your parents and the lawyers. That’s the kind