The club room looked as though it had been built in the 1950s for club committee members, and that afterwards it had been decided that modernisation was merely a passing fad.
The ceiling light was too bright. Grey-green walls with flaking wood panelling. A table made of dark imitation wood that was far too long, its edges gleaming where nervous hands had been running their fingers along them for decades. Ten armchairs, five on one side, five on the other. On the wall hung team photos, yellowed newspaper articles and a faded pennant of the Chestnut Boars.
On a side table stood a small thermos flask of tea. Next to it lay a plate of dry butter biscuits that looked as though they’d been baked for the hall’s opening in 1947.
Fox wasn’t standing by the table, but by the window, which looked out onto nothing but a dark courtyard. He looked as though he had no intention of letting furniture get in the way of his interrogation strategy. Dana was already seated, her folder closed in front of her, a pen laid parallel to the edge. She had the bearing of a woman who only wrote when people began to be of use.
The door opened.
One after another, they entered:
Luc, captain of France, Cemil, captain of the Ottoman Empire, Shane, captain of the British team, and Ilya Rozanov, captain of the Soviet Union.
Four men embodied four kinds of tension.
Luc looked as though he wore composure like other people wore a jacket: elegant, effortless, slightly too deliberate. Cemil seemed like someone who had learnt to tighten his grip on control the uglier the situation became. Shane appeared calm, but only if one knew nothing of shoulders and hands. Ilya had become completely smooth again, which in his case never meant relaxation.
Fox gestured towards the four chairs.
“Gentlemen. Sit down!”
None of them did so immediately: Shane first, half-reluctantly; Luc with a brief, precise movement; Cemil without a sound; and Ilya last. Dana noticed the order.
Fox waited until they were all seated. “I am Special Agent Fox Mulder of the FBI. This is my colleague, Special Agent Dana Scully. She is a doctor and has made a preliminary diagnosis following Walter Franklin’s death a few minutes ago.”
The words did nothing to change the atmosphere in the room.
That was almost worse.
Luc did not lower his gaze. Neither did Cemil. Shane grew even quieter. Ilya showed no visible reaction.
Dana didn’t open the folder. “We don’t know for certain at the moment what he died of. A natural collapse is one possibility. Other possibilities are also on the table.”
Fox took that on board, but not in a reassuring way. “What we also know is that several people in this hall had reasons to take an interest in Walter Franklin that went beyond charitable gratitude.”
He looked round the room.
“And since all four of you were in the immediate vicinity, we’ll start with you. I’ve deliberately left Japan out because, as things stand, there’s been no direct link.”
Luc didn’t lean back a single millimetre. “On what basis exactly?”
“On the basis that a man collapsed on the ice whose past is more interesting than his foundation brochures.”
Cemil spoke next. His voice was calm, almost too calm. “So you are detaining us – foreign guests – against our will and without regard for diplomatic protocol, because our host died in public.”
“I’m not detaining anyone,” said Fox. “I’m asking for your cooperation before I start getting more formal.”
Shane glanced briefly at Cemil, then back at Fox. “What exactly do you want to hear?”
Scully picked up the pen. “First, something simple. Where were you each of you in the twenty minutes leading up to the collapse?”
Fox wasn’t just watching the answers. He was watching who seemed prepared for which question first.
Luc answered first.
“With my team. Then at the boards. Then at the final line-up. Everyone in the hall saw me. You would have seen that too, if you hadn’t just been staring at the sandwich plates of the people on stage.”
Dana didn’t write anything down. “The whole time?”
“As far as I know, yes.”
Cemil followed. “Game, boards, final line-up.”
He paused briefly.
“If you’re from the FBI, should we call in a lawyer? Or the Ottoman consul? Or at least our coach? My team consists of Ottoman citizens. Your jurisdiction isn’t unlimited here.”
Fox smiled faintly. “My jurisdiction is determined by the seriousness of the crime, not by the suspects’ place of birth.”
Dana stayed with Cemil. “Were you alone at any point this evening? With support staff? With Franklin?”
“Not with the philanthropist, as he’s called here by his admirers.”
A slight twitch played around his mouth. Not pain. More like reluctance to even mention the name in the same sentence.
Shane was next.
“With my team. Stepped away briefly before the game, then back on the ice. After that, the line-up and the closing ceremony.”
Dana looked up. “Stepped away briefly where?”
Shane answered too quickly, realised it himself and caught himself just in time.
“Toilet. Fresh air. Wrong way. Take your pick.”
Fox made a mental note of that.
Then Ilya spoke.
“Match. Team. Corridor. For a cigarette. Then back. Then the ice.”
There it was.
Fox said nothing. Dana wrote just two words. Cigarette. Fresh air. Then she asked, “So you two were both away briefly as well?”
Shane shrugged. “Is that forbidden in this building?”
Ilya looked at the teapot. “I didn’t know that bad American architecture made me a criminal.”
Fox didn’t smile this time, but he poured Ilya a cup of the bad tea. He was too interested for that.
“Have a sip of tea; it’ll improve your memory.”
Silence.
Dana looked at Fox in confusion and shrugged. Ilya, on the other hand, took the cup and drank it down to the last drop, licked his lips with his tongue and grinned at Fox.
“I don’t feel a thing.”
Dana left the folder closed in front of her. “Did you know Walter Franklin personally?”
The question hung in the air, and now it became clear how differently people lie before they lie.
Luc didn’t look surprised. More as though he’d decided to be prepared for this moment.
“Casually.”
Cemil replied almost simultaneously. “Likewise.”
Shane simply said: “No.”
Ilya, half a breath later: “Not really.”
Fox now walked slowly once around the table. Not aggressively. More like someone examining a floor plan where there might still be a hidden door.
“Casually is a word people like to use when the truth would be more socially precisionist.”
Luc looked up at him. “Precisionist isn’t a word.”
Fox stopped behind his chair.
“Good. Franklin was your father.”
The words weren’t loud, but they hit home cleanly. Shane turned his head towards Luc. Ilya looked surprised for the first real moment of the evening, but only Cemil remained as still as an Ottoman tile.
Luc met Fox’s gaze with botanical precision. “Biologically, yes.”
Fox took it a step further.
“And Franklin was your father, too.”
Now he looked at Cemil.
Cemil paused for a second. Just long enough for everyone in the room to read the silence.
“Yes.”
Then he added: “But I belong to my mother. Not to him.”
Shane was now sitting completely still. Not out of neutrality, but because a whole host of new possibilities were currently trying to spring to mind simultaneously.
Ilya looked back and forth between Luc and Cemil.
Dana took over, calmly and without a trace of drama. “So we’re all on the same page: Luc Moreau’s mother was Franklin’s French wife at the time, a country noblewoman from the Bordeaux region. Cemil’s mother was her Ottoman maid from Lebanon. Both women later had a relationship with each other as well. They are half-brothers. Correct?”
Luc nodded: “Yes.”
Cemil, more dryly: “If we’re going to turn private history into a police interrogation, then at least let’s be precise.”
Shane leaned back slightly, his face open enough for a moment to show that he hadn’t been prepared for this particular turn of events.
“Jesus.”
Ilya said nothing at all. But the word ‘family’ now hung in the room with a different weight than it had just a few minutes ago.
Fox tapped his finger lightly on the edge of the table. “That goes some way towards explaining why Franklin wasn’t viewed by either of you as just any old sponsor.”
Luc’s voice grew colder. “He wasn’t just any sponsor, either.”
Cemil said, “No. He was just a very consistent mistake with good manners. Someone who handed out money to all sorts of people, except his own children.”
Dana looked at Cemil. That was the first genuinely emotional moment in the room.
“Did you speak to him before the match?”
Cemil replied immediately: “He wanted to. I didn’t. In eight years at boarding school, he never once spoke to me, phoned me or visited me. Why should I speak to him here?”
Luc said almost at the same time: “I’ve had no contact with him, not today and not in the last twenty years.”
Shane looked back and forth between them again.
Fox kept his gaze on Cemil. “What did he want to talk about today?”
“Family.”
“That’s not a topic. It’s a smokescreen. Did he want money from you? Or did he want you to win the tournament so it wouldn’t be noticed if he couldn’t pay out the scholarships afterwards?”
Cemil’s face didn’t harden, but rather grew more blank.
“He spoke of loyalty. Of old ties. Of how some people forget to whom they owe their position. And their income. He wanted to remind us of our blood ties and old debts, as if I’d asked him to father me.”
Fox took note of that.
Then to Luc: “And with you?”
Luc’s jaw moved almost imperceptibly. “About responsibility. About names. About how good sons should know when to let the past rest. And when to invest in the future. He spoke to me too about blood ties, and that I owed him my life.”
Shane no longer looked merely tense, but as though he’d just realised he might have protected the wrong story in the wrong way.
Ilya noticed this in him and, for his part, didn’t feel any calmer.
Dana turned to Shane. “So it could be that Franklin wanted to let one of his sons win in order to hand over the lion’s share of the charity funds to him. Or to persuade the second son to let the first win. That would be fraud. It could destroy careers. It could exclude teams. That’s two motives too many.”
She let the sentence hang for a moment.
Then she asked: “Mr Hollander, you said you didn’t know Walter Franklin personally. And yet you were in the corridor briefly. Did you hear or see anything there that might be relevant now?”
Shane scattered her gaze like a dandelion flower. That was never pleasant with Dana, because she didn’t just look at people, she tested their mettle.
He replied cautiously.
“Perhaps. Not enough to build a story out of it.”
Fox pounced on it immediately. “Then give me the pieces. I’ll do the building.”
Shane ignored the attempt to draw him out. “I heard voices. Franklin. The doctor. Tense. Nothing more.”
Ilya said without warning: “Me too. When I was smoking that cigarette.”
Shane turned his head towards him, too quickly to appear innocent.
Fox noticed it just as much as Dana.
Now the room was no longer connected solely by Franklin. Now visible lines were running between Shane and Ilya as well.
Dana asked, “So you were in the corridor too and heard something.”
“Yes.”
Fox looked at Ilya. “The same thing?”
Ilya returned his gaze. “If I’d heard the same thing as Hollander, then I would have bumped into Hollander too, wouldn’t I?”
Shane pressed his lips together. That hadn’t been planned, but it wasn’t a complete lie either.
Fox looked from one to the other. “How convenient is that? Did you meet Mr Hollander in the corridor, away from the others?”
Ilya remained completely calm. “No. There was no reason for that. I only met him on the ice.”
A brief pause.
“And defeated him; everyone applauded.”
Shane looked at him. Briefly, sharply, almost hurt.
Dana said, “At least that’s how it looks. Or perhaps there was an agreement here too about who would win.”
Ilya frantically wondered whether that was an insult, an accusation or a trap. But better to be suspected of having won a game through manipulation than anything else.
Luc now leaned forward slightly for the first time.
“Are we here because an old man collapsed, or because you’ve suddenly taken a fancy to turning every private disorder of those present into a motive with Derrida-like precision? Derrida is a French philosopher, in case you didn’t know.”
Fox looked at him.
“I’m an agent, not a philosophy student.”
Cemil closed his eyes briefly, as if he’d been expecting exactly that answer.
Dana remained the calmer of the two. “We don’t yet know what Franklin died of. But we already know there were familial, historical and possibly financial benefits. In any case, he’s dead now and the four of you are still alive. That’s strange, isn’t it?”
Luc looked at her for a moment longer. Then he gave a brief nod. Fox stepped back to the head of the table.
“Right. So let’s be clear from now on: no one leaves the hall. We’ll speak to each of you individually again. After that, possibly with other players, coaches and support staff. And if any of you happen to get the idea of covering for someone because you think it’ll make the situation more bearable—”
His gaze deliberately went first to Shane, then to Ilya, then briefly to Luc and Cemil.
“—don’t do it.”
Dana finally opened the folder. “We’ll start with Captain Moreau. Then Captain Arslan. Then Captain Hollander. Then Captain Rozanow.”
She pulled her medical bag over and opened it.
“Before that, I’ll take blood, semen and saliva samples, just to be on the safe side. From each of you. Not as an admission of guilt, but for medical and toxicological purposes. Don’t worry, I won’t be injecting any tracking nanites into you with this blood sample.”
Cemil looked at her. “Is this voluntary?”
“No,” said Scully. “If you don’t want to, I’ll have to ask Agent Mulder to have the hall attendants restrain you. But don’t worry, I don’t work for an anti-doping agency.”
That was enough. Ilya shot Shane a look that was far too obvious, which he returned in confusion, but neither of them objected.
Dana worked precisely and without any fuss. Swabs. Tubes. Labels. Gloves. Luc first. Cemil next. Shane held out his arm too calmly. Meanwhile, Ilya didn’t look at Shane, which was more conspicuous than if he had.
Eight tubes, four saliva samples.
Dana handed each of the four another tube.
“If it’s more comfortable for you, I’ll leave the room whilst you fill the third tube; Agent Mulder will make sure nothing gets mixed up or tampered with.”
The silence in the room was louder than noise.
Ilya tried to put on his coolest face. “I have nothing to hide.” He took the tube, stood up, walked to one of the corners of the room and turned his back on the group before unbuttoning his trousers. Luc shook his head, then he too took a tube and stood in another corner.
“What would you say if I refused to fill this tube on religious grounds?” asked Cemil.
Dana frowned: “I’d have to make a note of it. And I’d try to find a fatwa declaring the act permissible if it’s necessary not for the sake of pleasure or intoxication, but to identify a perpetrator.”
Cemil growled briefly, then took his tube and stood in the third corner, whilst Ilya let out a hissing sound and said something in Russian. He sealed the tube, wiped his hand on a handkerchief and returned to the table, where Shane was still sitting shyly. Ilya pushed the tube towards Dana and grinned.
“Impressed?”
Dana labelled the tube.
“By what? I’m a professional investigator.”
Cemil was next to return to the table and pushed the tube towards Dana, who labelled it. He sat down. Now Shane took the tube too and looked back and forth between Dana and Fox in confusion.
“The atmosphere in this room isn’t very… private.”
Now Luc arrived too and placed his tube next to Dana’s medical bag before sitting down again.
“Get it over with quickly, otherwise we’ll be sitting here until breakfast!” commented Luc as he aggressively shoved the tube towards Shane. Shane took the tube, glanced around at the others, and then stood up as well. “Talk about something investigation-related while I’m at it, so I don’t feel like I’m being watched.” He went to the corner Ilya had used earlier, which Dana and Fox noted.
“Luc, Cemil and Ilya, what did you eat and drink this evening, especially anything alcoholic? And I’d also like to know whether you touched the trophy with bare hands or with gloves.”
Fox pointed at Luc, whilst Dana made a note in her folder.
“Three of those strange venison or roe deer pies, two carrots. I only drank water and two tonics.” Luc folded his arms.
Cemil nodded when Fox pointed at him. “Three gherkins, two slices of wholemeal bread and four radishes. I also drank tea. By the way, it was fresher downstairs than the brew from this flask.” Cemil pointed to the thermos flask.
Dana asked: “Did you not drink alcohol because it wasn’t served to athletes, because it’s unhealthy, or for religious reasons?”
“Do you harbour anti-Islamic sentiments, even though you’re a doctor?”
Dana pricked up her ears. “I’m just curious and don’t want to overlook any details.”
“Are you going to ask Ilya if he drank alcohol because the Russian Patriarch or the General Secretary of the CPSU does too?”
Fox tried to lighten the mood: “Ilya, what did you eat and drink?”
“Water, beer and four slices of bread with bacon.”
Shane, his cheeks flushed, now returned to the table and slid the tube over to Dana, who labelled it professionally. Only once she had placed everything in the sample container and sealed it securely did she nod to Fox.
“I’ll take this to the medics and check whether the tournament doctor has documented the cause of death.”
Fox nodded. “Take care of yourself and check your weapon first.”
“That’s what a good doctor always does,” said Dana.
It sounded like a habit, not a promise. She left the room.
Fox waited until the door was closed. Then he said, “Captain Moreau stays. The other three wait outside. And please: no conversations in the corridor.”
Cemil was the first to stand up. Shane remained seated for a fraction of a second too long, as if he wanted to say something, but didn’t. Ilya rose silently.
As they walked out, Shane’s and Ilya’s eyes met, with exactly the wrong kind of understanding that made someone more suspicious, not less. Then they all went out, whilst Luc Moreau remained seated. The door closed. Fox took the chair opposite. The first real interrogation could begin.