Sudden Death Read Free Page B

lying in her open coffin before the funeral in Dublin.
    But this was different. This time Jake had watched life fade out of a man’s eyes.
    There was a voice chanting in his head, quiet but insistent:
    I saw someone murdered.
    Jake logged on to the Internet and entered ‘Andrew Chernoff’ into the search engine. There were thousands ofentries. The first was a profile of Chernoff from his playing days. He’d been a decent midfielder for Oxford United in the mid eighties, part of the team that took them to the old First Division. His stats were solid, averaging eight goals a season.
    The profile said that he’d finished his playing days with Wrexham and that he’d retired in 1994, aged thirty-six. That made him fifty-two, much older than he’d looked. Like Jake’s dad, he played in the days before big money made footballers into millionaires. Since quitting the pitch, Chernoff had made a name for himself as a top-flight scout, spotting gifted youngsters.
    The second entry was from
The New York Times
and was dated only a week earlier. It was a piece about Chernoff’s appointment to the St Petersburg Tigers. Apparently he was being paid handsomely to be the talent spotter for Igor Popov’s new team, and had been given a blank cheque-book to travel the world in search of the very best players.
    Jake’s eyes were drawn further down the article to a subheading – ‘Criminal Allegations’ – where the journalist recounted rumours of wrongdoing within Igor Popov’s oil empire:
    Scandal continues to hound Popov, who made his fortune during the deregulation of the energy market following theSoviet collapse. Accusations of fraud, protectionism and intimidation have long been associated with his business dealings, but the Russian government recently dropped its investigations.
    With a fortune currently estimated at $18 billion, Popov is believed to be the seventh richest man in the world.
    An image accompanying the article showed a smiling Chernoff standing on a training pitch with a short man in a sharp suit who was captioned as Popov. Jake stared closely at the face. There was no mistaking the rodent-like quality of Popov’s thick dark hair and sharp eyes. It was wrong to judge, but perhaps there was some truth to the allegations . . .
    Why would my dad want to work for a man like that?
    The article had several links at the bottom, and one was a piece from the business pages: ‘Igor Popov – Gangster or Opportunist?’
    Jake clicked through. The article was by an American investigative journalist called Daniel Powell, whose picture accompanied the byline.
    Jake’s fingers clutched the mouse tighter.
    It was the same man Jake had seen standing outside the Obed restaurant an hour before, taking photographs asChernoff’s body was loaded into the back of the ambulance.
    Jake swallowed and struggled to understand.
There was no way Powell could have reached the restaurant that quickly, unless . . .
    . . . unless he was already following Chernoff.

3
    J ake woke to the sound of a phone ringing. It took him a moment to realise that he’d fallen asleep across the computer keyboard. The article about Popov was still on screen. The evening came flooding back: Chernoff’s death. His dad’s weird behaviour. He checked the clock; it was nearly midnight. The phone stopped abruptly.
    Must have been a wrong number. Who’d ring at this time of night?
    Jake’s mouth was dry. He needed water. He got up and tiptoed out to the landing. The stairs were in darkness but he didn’t switch the light on, opting to feel his way down. The sound of a muffled voice came from his dad’s study, next to the kitchen. The study door was ajar. Jake stopped to listen.
    ‘How quickly can the lab turn it around, Sam?’ his dad asked.
    The lab? Who’s he speaking to?
    ‘That’s great,’ he said. ‘We can’t afford to wait six weeks for the police to bungle their way through a tox analysis.’
    Jake pushed the door open a fraction and peered