Chapter 271 - 266 II

"It is Bitcoin," I said.

Maureen sat down.

Margaret went out without a word and came back with the morning paper from her desk, folded open to the business pages.

She put it down on the green book, on top of the ink, and pushed it across to me with one finger. Half a column on the business page, under a graph that went up for a month and down in an afternoon.

A currency on the internet had lost more than half its value between lunch and tea on Wednesday.

"This," she said.

"That."

"That is our turnover?"

"I got it early. I believe in it."

"How much of it is there?"

"Enough to pay for those 4 contracts many times over. Even at this morning’s price."

"Can you sell it this morning?"

"Only by giving it away."

"Then that is what it is worth this morning. Who else knows what it is?"

"Nobody in this building. The 2 of you, now."

"Not Craig?"

"Nobody."

"You believe in it." She took her glasses off. "Belief is what Ray Sully had, Sam. He believed in a guarantor."

I wanted to tell her what I knew. I had seen the end of the month and the end of the year, and the line on her graph was going to climb past anything either of them could picture.

I could not say I know. I have never been able to say it, in all the time I have sat in that chair, and until that morning it had cost me nothing.

"It will come back," I said.

"Maybe it will. I do not file against maybe. Here are my terms, and they are not going to move."

"Go on."

"2 years of this club’s wage bill, in pounds, in the club’s account, where Maureen can see it with her own eyes. When that is there, I file the 4 contracts that afternoon. Until it is there, I file nothing."

"2 years," Maureen said. She turned back 3 pages in the green book, ran her finger down a column and added the new contracts in her head. "With the 4 of them on the new money, that is 7 million pounds, near enough."

"7 million," Margaret said. "In pounds. Not in that."

"And the 400,000?" Maureen said quietly. "The lads’ bonuses. That was meant to be in here by Easter."

"It is all part of the same money."

"Then none of it is here."

Nobody said anything for a while. Down the corridor Priya was laughing on the phone with somebody about Saturday.

Margaret opened the door. "Ring me the minute it lands. Before you ring anybody else."

She went out. Maureen lifted the newspaper off the ink page, folded it small, and dropped it in her bin.

"I will tell you what I am going to do," she said.

"Go on."

"I am going to leave the book open at this page. I am not crossing it out, and I am not writing anything under it." She smoothed the page flat with the side of her hand. "When it comes, I will put a tick by it."

"And if it does not come?"

"Then it stays open." She sat back. "Go and do whatever it is you have to do, Sam."

Danny rang at 11, the way he had said he would on the Thursday before Easter.

"It is the 12th," he said. "You told me there would be something I could print."

"Not today, Danny."

There was a pause on his end. rustle of his notepad.

"Is it the thing I think it is?"

"What do you think it is?"

"I think 4 of your players were supposed to sign something this week. I think a man in a camel coat has been ringing round the Championship all week, and he does not do that for nothing."

He waited. "And I wrote a last line a fortnight ago that I did not want to be about you."

"Ring me on Monday."

"Sam."

"Monday. I will tell you on Monday what I can."

He let me go.

At 2 o’clock I went down to see the coach off for Sheffield. Sadler was standing at the door of it with his clipboard, counting heads.

"You coming up?" he said.

"In the morning."

"You look like you have not slept since Orient."

"I have not, much."

"Sleep tonight." He ticked a name. "I want you in that away dressing room at 2 o’clock tomorrow looking like a chairman. They are walking out in front of 20,000 people who want what we want."

"I will be there."

He had one foot on the step. "And Sam. We are 5th. Have one night of it."

He got on. Stan was in the front seat with his flask. Marsh was halfway down on the right, in his club coat, though he was not playing. He slid his window open as the engine started.

"You all right, chairman?"

"Fine, Len."

"You are not." He looked at me a second longer. "Whatever it is, bring it up with you tomorrow. Do not carry it on your own all night."

The window slid shut. The 4 of them were at the back, where they always sit.

Margaret had sent word to the training ground at 10 that the signing would not be today, and nothing else. They had taken it for paperwork. I had told them, in the canteen, that they would be paid today.

I was not going to tell them it had not come on the steps of a coach, in front of 20 other men, the night before Bramall Lane.

At 4 Margaret came back to my door.

"Mahrez’s agent has just rung me," she said. "He asked if the 4 contracts had gone to the League today. I told him no. I do not lie to agents. I do not tell them anything else either."

"What did he say?"

"He said thank you, and that he hoped we all had a good weekend." She held the door. "He will be on the phone to his client before he is out of his car, Sam."

I picked up my phone and looked at the 4 names in it.

I could ring them now, one after the other, on a coach on the M1, and tell 4 men down a telephone that I had broken my word to them.

I put the phone back on the desk. I would tell them tomorrow, in Sheffield, to their faces.

The exchange in Tokyo had opened again at 3 that morning. By the end of the Friday the price had touched 54.

THE TAPE (UK time) Wed 10 April · 13:00 · 266 Wed 10 April · 20:20 · 105 Thu 11 April · 15:00 · trading suspended Fri 12 April · 54

Raj picked me up at 10 that night, because I rang him, and because Raj has never once asked me why I am ringing.

"Hen party from Basildon," he said, as I got in. "9 of them, out in Southend. I fetch them at 2." He nodded at the feather boa on the back seat. "One of them left that as a deposit. Where are we going?"

"The seawall."

"Course we are." He reached for the radio. "You want this on?"

"No."

"Good. It is all Pompey tonight."

He drove us out to the lay-by at the far end, where the road gives up and the wall begins. The tide was in. It was high and black and right up against the stones. slap. slap.

He turned the engine off, then thought about it and turned it back on for the heater. There was a flask in the door pocket.

"Good money or bad money?" he said.

"Bad."

He nodded slowly, looking out of the windscreen at the water.

"How bad?"

"The worst I have ever had."

"Then get out and shout at it," he said. "I will keep the engine running."

I got out. The wind came straight off the estuary into my face, cold enough to make my eyes run.

I walked up the concrete steps onto the top of the wall. There was nothing in front of me but the dark water and the lights of a ship a long way out.

I shouted at it.

I shouted that I had been right. 266, at 1 o’clock on a Wednesday, to within a few dollars. Then I shouted the other half. 203, and my hand on the mouse, and taking it off.

After that it was not words. It was just noise, as loud as I could make it, until my throat hurt and the wind took it away up the river towards London and gave me nothing back.

slap of the tide on the stones below me.

I stood there till my hands went numb. Then I came down the steps and got back in the car.

My phone was on the seat where I had left it. 4 missed calls. Riyad. Harry M. N’Golo. J. Vardy. The Coat had been quicker on the phone than I had been brave on it.

I sent the same text to all 4. 2 o’clock, the dressing room. All of it. Sam. Then I turned the phone face down on my knee.

Raj had the heater up full. He looked at my face and handed me the flask.

"Better?" he said.

"No."

He started to pull out of the lay-by. "You are in Sheffield tomorrow."

"I am in Sheffield tomorrow."

"I will drive you. 7 o’clock." He checked his mirror and indicated, though there was nobody else on the road for a mile in either direction.

"Kebab?"