Chapter 270 - 266 I

Danny’s piece ran on Good Friday. I read the last line over my toast, the one about money somebody was counting on, and I folded the paper and put it in the kitchen drawer with the takeaway menus.

12 days later, on the Wednesday morning after Orient, I sat down at my desk at 8 o’clock to sell.

The building was loud with the night before. Priya had a printout of the table taped to her door, our name in 5th with a ring of red biro round it. Somebody had already written UP THE TIDE under it in a different pen.

"Bramall Lane," she said from my doorway. "Sheffield have given us 2,000 for Saturday. I have sold 1,600 since 7 o’clock. Do I ask them for more?"

"Ask them for the whole end."

"They will say no."

"Then they will have said no. Ask."

She went off smiling. I shut my door and opened the screen.

All year I had sold small slices of the coin through one quiet man in London, who rang back within the hour and never asked what the money was for. 25,000 for Tottenham. A loan fee here, a wage there. He could do 50,000 in a morning.

3 million pounds was not a morning for the quiet man. It was 60 of them.

It had to go through the big exchange, the one in Tokyo that handled most of the world’s trading. I had sold through it once before, in June 2011, to pay off this club’s debts.

10 days after I used it, it was robbed and shut for a week. I had been lucky by 10 days and called it a plan.

I knew what became of that exchange. In February 2014 it would shut its doors with most of its customers’ coins gone, and the whole world would hear its name. I had always remembered the year.

I had not remembered that it would choke 10 months before the end, on the busiest day it ever had.

The price had climbed every day that week. I knew the week and I knew the top, near enough. I did not know the hour. So I sat with a cold cup of tea and watched it climb, and waited for it to come up to the numbers I wanted.

At 20 to 1 it was a few dollars short of my first one and still rising. click. click. I put the orders in, in 4 pieces, at 250, 255, 258 and 260. Enough coin, at those prices, for 3 million pounds and a little over.

ORDER RECEIVED, the screen said, 4 times.

At 5 to 1 Priya knocked and put her head round the door.

"They will give us another 600 in the corner," she said. "That is all they have. Is that a yes?"

"Yes."

"Sam?"

"Yes. Sorry. Yes, take them."

"That makes 2,600," she said. "Stan says it is the most we have taken anywhere since the 80s. He was there for that one as well."

She looked at the screen over my shoulder, saw a column of numbers she did not understand, and went away again.

At 1 o’clock the price on the screen said 266.

I had remembered it to within a few dollars. I sat and watched the number, the highest that coin had ever been, and I waited for my 4 orders to turn from ORDER RECEIVED to FILLED.

They did not turn.

A line of small print had come up at the top of the screen. The exchange was processing orders 40 minutes after they were placed. My orders had not reached the market. They were in a queue in Tokyo, behind tens of thousands of other people’s.

By the time they reached the book, near 2, the price had turned and was under the lowest of them. Nobody was buying at 250. Nobody was going to buy at 250 again that spring.

I cancelled them and put them in again at 240 and 235. click. CANCELLATION RECEIVED. The small print said 70 minutes now, and the new orders reached the book under the price as well.

I knew how it worked from here. Anything that exchange filled by Wednesday night would be pounds in a bank in Essex by Friday. Anything later would not.

I went down the stairs and out into the car park, because I could not sit in that chair.

Kieran’s van was by the gate with both back doors open and a roller of white paint on the tailboard. He had the radio on for the 5 o’clock news while he cleaned his brushes in a bucket. slap of the bristles against the side.

"Pompey, boss," he said. "Listen."

The radio said that the High Court had cleared the way that day for Portsmouth’s supporters’ trust to take over their club.

"That is their own fans," Kieran said. "Bought it. Good for them." He knocked the brush on the bucket. clack. "Imagine us doing that, boss. Ted would put his bus pass in."

"Ted would put his house in."

"You all right, boss? You are white."

"I am all right, Kieran. Go home. You have been here since 6."

Maureen was putting her coat on at the top of the stairs when I went back up.

"Is it done?" she said.

"Not yet."

"But it is today."

"It is this week. It lands on Friday."

"Friday, then." She did up her top button and went down past me.

At 6 I rang the quiet man.

"Mr M." crackle of a bad line. "I know why you are ringing. Everybody is ringing."

"Can you take any of it?"

"Not that size. Not today, not ever. I told you that in the summer." I heard him moving about, a door, a kettle. "Listen to me. That exchange is an hour behind itself. Anything you ask for up there, you get an hour late, at whatever it is by then."

"I see that."

"So if you want out tonight, you go in low. 150. Under. You go in under where it is, and you take whatever it gives you, and you walk away."

"And if I do not?"

"Then you are a man holding a lot of something on the worst night it has ever had." He waited. "Or you wait a week. It always comes back."

At 20 past 8 that night, by the clock in the corner of the screen, the price touched 105.

Then, for a few minutes, it climbed back up to 203.

I sat with my hand on the mouse. At 180 or 150, an hour late, I could still have had my 3 million out of that exchange by midnight. It would have cost me nearly twice the coin it would have cost at 1 o’clock.

I knew nothing that spring would be better than 150. I could not make my hand sell at 150 what had been 266 at 1 o’clock. I did the December sum anyway, what those extra coins would be worth by Christmas, and the number was bigger than this club.

I took my hand off the mouse, and the 12th went with it.

By 9 it was 150 again, and then lower, and I sat there until gone 11. The cleaners came and did the corridor round me. One of them asked if I wanted the light left on.

At 3 o’clock on the Thursday afternoon, our time, the screen stopped moving. A notice came up across the top in red. TRADING SUSPENDED.

The exchange in Tokyo had switched itself off until 3 the next morning to let the panic cool down, and every order I had was frozen inside it.

I went out into the car park for some air. Ted was coming out of the club shop with his coach ticket for Saturday in his hand.

"Front seat," he said, holding it up. "My knees. Here he is. 5th, son. 5th in this division. I had to read it twice in the paper."

"I saw it, Ted."

"Tomorrow, then." He tapped his wallet through his coat, where the slip lived. "You said Friday. On the train. You said Friday is when you tell me if we are keeping them."

"I did."

"So I will see you tomorrow."

"I will be in Sheffield on Saturday, Ted. So will you."

"Then you can tell me in Sheffield." He took his ticket and put it in his wallet with the slip. "5 to 1 on Tuesday. It will be 4 by Sunday if we do Sheffield."

Stan was carrying the skips out of the kit room to the van when I went back past. Sheffield on Saturday meant the coach on Friday at 2.

"You want to come up with us, chairman?" he said. "Plenty of room on the back seat."

"I will come up in the morning, Stan."

"Suit yourself." He heaved a skip onto his hip. "Maguire has been asking me which dressing room we are in up there. I said, the other one, son. The one you have never been in."

Maureen left at 6. She stopped in my doorway with her coat on and her bag on her shoulder.

"Tomorrow," she said.

"Tomorrow."

"I will be in at 8. The bank sends the printout at 8." She shifted the bag. "Goodnight, Sam."

"Goodnight."

I let her go home thinking the printout would have it. I had known since 9 o’clock on Wednesday night that it would not.

At 9 o’clock on the Friday morning, the 12th of April, she was standing at her desk with the green book open in front of her.

It was open at the page. The ink had dried black since the Thursday before Easter. Fri 12 April 2013 · Equity, S. Mercer · 3,000,000. The bank’s printout from 8 o’clock lay beside it.

"It is not here," she said.

She did not raise her voice. She put one finger on the bank’s printout, on the line where it should have been, and she held it there.

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"It is late."

"Late." She looked from the ink to me. "I waited for this morning from the first week you were here. Then I stopped waiting for it." She took her finger off the paper. "And here it is."

Margaret was in the doorway with her reading glasses on already.

"I have the 4 contracts on my desk," she said. "Drawn up, and signed by you. The 4 of them were going to put their names to them the minute I could file. I am not filing them."

"Margaret."

"Not against money that was promised for this morning and is not here." She came in and shut the door. click. "After Shorehaven, I will not put this club’s name on a single form that the money is not behind. You know that. You knew it when you gave me the 12th."

"It is coming."

"Then tell me what it is. Not what it is worth, Sam. What it is. Where it is."

I had never once said it out loud in that building. From the first week I had told them it was equity, and it was mine, and it was clean, and every word of that had been true.

"It is Bitcoin," I said.