The Penalty by Mal Peet Page A

rewound the tape, little bursts of reverse action.
    “What? Here?”
    “Yeah,” Faustino said, squinting. “Hold it there.”
    Brujito had the ball against the inside of his left foot. He was a couple of paces from the corner flag, hemmed in by Cabral, who was spreading his arms like a man trying to shepherd an unpredictable animal. The other Atlético defender was just coming into the shot from the left. But what interested Faustino was that Brujito was not looking at either of them. Nor was he looking at the ball. At that vital instant he seemed to be staring into the crowd, as if he had just been struck by something thrown at him and was wondering where it had come from.
    “Paul? What?”
    Faustino lifted a hand. “Wait.”
    He studied the screen. Behind Brujito the electronic advertising hoarding was displaying a word fragment, the letters
esp
. Beyond it, in the space reserved for wheelchair users, were parked a heavy man wrapped in a DSJ flag and an open-mouthed boy clutching the arms of his chair; standing behind them was an oldish guy all in white – a medical person, perhaps. The rest of the image was a living mosaic of red and black. Red and black shirts, scarves, banners. Faces painted red and black stripes, red and black quarters. Heads tiny beneath red and black wigs. Masks. Like a congregation of witch doctors. And Brujito was looking somewhere into this mass. But at what?
    Salez pressed the
play
button.
    Cabral wins the ball and makes his hasty clearance but Brujito stays frozen, still looking away. Then the camera goes chasing the action and the moment is over.
    Faustino was back in his car with the key in the ignition when he felt that familiar itch, almost a prickle, at the base of his brain. His on-board lie detector had a message for him. Something wasn’t right.
    He ran through the adjectives that one could apply to Max Salez:
lazy, sad, seedy, unattractive, envious, provincial.
A fool. But even fools sometimes know things that other people don’t. So how about
shifty, evasive, defensive, secretive
? Yes, that was more like the Salez he had spent the last hour and a half with. The way he’d fiddled with that pen, saying, “I guess so. Maybe.” Not
embarrassed
. Not
inadequate
. No, the sneaky little bastard
knew
something.
    From where he was parked Faustino did not have a good view of the building he had just left, and the entrance was continually obscured by people coming and going from the fast-food joint next door. Damn! Still, he sat, sweltering, for ten minutes and finally he was rewarded. There was Salez: no mistaking that horrible lime-green and orange shirt. Faustino put his sunglasses on. He started the car, and when Salez got into a yellow taxi Faustino pulled away from the kerb and followed it, keeping two cars between himself and the cab.
    Ten minutes later it stopped in a nondescript square called Plaza Bandiera. Faustino passed it and parked, illegally, fifty metres ahead and on the opposite side. When the cab drove off, Salez walked a mere five paces to the window of a kitchenware shop and took an unlikely interest in the goods on display. Except that, every few seconds, he turned to scan the traffic. Faustino rummaged in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes, but before he could light one a police car, a blue and white saloon with the SJDP insignia, pulled up alongside the shop. Salez strolled, as casually as he could manage, to the front passenger window and leaned his head in. After a brief conversation he straightened up and looked around him. He appeared hesitant, undecided. Then, seemingly in response to something the driver said, he opened the rear passenger door and got in. The car moved off. It turned right and right again at the top of the square and came past Faustino. The driver was white, or nearly so, and not in uniform.
    Faustino was not at all happy about tailing a cruiser belonging to the notorious San Juan Department of Police, so when he lost it at the complex