The Penalty by Mal Peet Read Free Book Online

whatever. Last month, some girl who reads the weather on the TV, for Chrissake, had to pay to get her daughter back. You know what? I sometimes worry about my wife. And I’m a nobody.”
    Faustino made a sympathetic face.
    “But,” Fabian added, “I’m not convinced it was a kidnap.”
    “Why not?”
    Fabian looked over his shoulder and then down at Faustino’s piece of Japanese technology.
    “That thing running, Paul?”
    “Er … no. The little orange light there? It’s meant to turn green when it’s recording. Why?”
    He had no need to ask, really. Obviously the da Silvas had imposed a vow of silence on their staff. That was one reason why the newspapers were running on the spot and the gaggle of reporters at DSJ’s front door had that look of peasants besieging a rich city. But Cesar Fabian clearly had something to get off his chest. And it was a fairly big chest.
    “Okay, Cesar. This is off the record. I’m not working on the story anyway. But how come you don’t think Brujito was kidnapped?”
    “In the first place,” Fabian said, “it’s gone on too long. These things are usually worked out, one way or another, in three or four days. And no one saw the kid being bundled into a van or anything. Know why? Because he wasn’t. He left the ground by the home-team entrance, alone. Two security guys saw him go. So did the CCTV cameras. They also filmed him walking away from the stadium, heading for the pedestrian bridge over the avenida.”
    “Did they? I didn’t see that anywhere in the papers.”
    “Yeah, well. I guess there are things Lord and Lady da Silva want kept quiet.”
    “Right. Which is why you haven’t told me any of this.”
    “Exactly.”
    The two men sat in companionable silence for several moments. A maintenance man in a red jumpsuit walked through the lounge. When he had gone Faustino said, “I’m right in thinking you were in the dugout at that game, aren’t I? I mean, I’ve read the stories, watched the match on TV, but nothing much seemed to happen to the kid. Did you see anything?”
    “No, not really. We were all over Atlético from the start, as you know. I mean, it was a game we were certain to win. Atlético should never have got as far as the semi-final in the first place. Morientes, like any good manager, gave our guys a real heavy talking-to before the game about being overconfident, staying tight at the back, all of that. But we were going to win for sure. And when Brujito scored our second, just before half-time, we seemed to have it wrapped up.”
    “And at half-time,” Faustino asked, “in the changing room, Brujito was okay?”
    “Sure. Quiet, like he usually is, but happy. It was a lovely goal that he’d scored, and the other players were, you know, fluffing his hair and hugging him and all that stuff. And when the buzzer went he was straight up on his feet, running on the spot, couldn’t wait to get out for the second half, same as usual. Then, fifteen minutes or so in, he just seemed to lose it.”
    Faustino said, “The phrase I keep reading in the papers is that the boy ‘broke down’. Which usually means the player got some kind of injury out of nowhere, like a hamstring or something. Is that what happened?”
    “No. Definitely not. Brujito screwed up the penalty, and everyone in the dugout – everyone in the city – was gutted. But there didn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with the kid. It’s just that he’d stopped playing. Morientes substituted him a couple of minutes later, as you know, and when he came off I went up to him and put his warmer round his shoulders and said something like, ‘Are you hurting, are you okay?’ and he shook his head. But instead of sitting down on the bench he went straight off down the tunnel towards the changing room.”
    “What, like he was pissed off at being substituted?”
    “No,” Fabian said, “nothing like that. He just seemed sort of … dazed. Anyway, Morientes gave me a look, and I