Chapter 276: Buyer II

At 10:12 Maureen said my name from her office, not loud.

I went in. She had the bank’s page up on her screen and the green book open on the desk beside it, at the page with the ink on it. Fri 12 April 2013 · Equity, S. Mercer · 3,000,000.

"It is here," she said.

She did not say anything else. She took her pen out of the drawer, and in the margin next to the ink she made a tick. scratch. Small and neat, like every tick in that book for 15 years.

Then she put the pen back in the drawer.

"Ring Margaret," she said. "She said before anybody else."

"Bring them in at 12," Margaret said, before I had finished my sentence. "I want all 4 names on all 4 contracts by 1 o’clock, and the League will have them by 2."

They came at 12, to the boardroom, straight from training in their tracksuits. Margaret had the 4 contracts laid out on the table in a row, each one open at the last page, and 4 cheap biros from the stationery cupboard lined up beside them.

Vardy came in first, signed, and put the pen down. It took him 10 seconds.

"Right," he said. He shook my hand, hard, once, and went and stood by the door with his arms folded to wait for the other 3.

Kanté read the first page and the last page, and signed, and then turned back and read the first page again to be sure. He shook Margaret’s hand as well, and Maureen’s, and then mine.

"Thank you," he said. "Merci, chairman."

Maguire signed his full name, every letter of it. Then he looked up at me.

"It was Tuesday, then," he said.

"It was Tuesday."

Mahrez read every page. Every clause, every line, with his finger under the words. Nobody hurried him. Margaret sat with her hands folded and watched him read her contract the way she would have read it herself.

At the last page he signed, and put the pen down, and stood up.

"I rang her at 11," he said. "When Margaret told us. My mother says you are not keeping me cheap any more."

"Tell her I heard her."

Margaret lodged all 4 with the Football League at 20 past 1. Maureen put 4 signing fees of 200,000 pounds through the payroll the same afternoon, and wrote all 4 in the green book in ink.

When I went down to the car park at 2, the Coat was leaning on a silver car with the camel coat open, looking up at the roof on the covered end.

"Mr Mercer," he said. "Congratulations."

"Thank you."

"I would have put my house on June. I rang a newspaperman on Saturday because I thought a chairman whose money did not come would hide from his players."

"Danny told me."

"He printed you. Not me." A phone went off in his pocket. He took it out, looked at who it was, and put it back without answering. "4 years," he said. "I can wait 4 years."

He got into his car with it still ringing in his pocket. I could hear it through the closed door as he backed out.

At 20 to 8 on the Tuesday night the announcer read out 4 names and the words new 4-year contracts, and the ground sang each name back at him. "VAR-DY! MAH-REZ! KAN-Té! MA-GUIRE!" boom of the drum in the Bovril End. Down on the pitch Stokes was clapping them in, one at a time.

We drew 1-1 with Coventry.

Coventry had been docked 10 points at the end of March, for going into administration. They brought a few hundred down on a Tuesday, and those few hundred sang for their club all night, and against the people who ran it.

Gayle scored for us after half an hour. They got one back from a corner with 20 minutes left, and we did not have another one in us.

Ted found me at the end, down at the front of the stand with his stick.

"A point," he said.

"I am sorry, Ted."

"Do not be sorry. They signed, then." He put his hat on and looked across at the away end, where the Coventry lot were still singing. "I watched those lads all night, son."

69 points. 43 played. 3 to play.

Danny ran it on page 3 on the Wednesday, smaller than Monday, under a photograph of the 4 of them in the boardroom holding Margaret’s biros. MONEY ARRIVES, 4 SIGN. He did not write anything else about it.

Margaret brought me a single sheet of paper on the Thursday morning and put it down on my desk.

"It goes in the articles," she said. "I want it there before the end of the week."

I picked it up. Before I was past the first line she was reading it out to me, in the voice she keeps for rules.

"The club holds in pounds, in an account in its own name, never less than 2 years of its wages. It does not borrow against that money."

She turned the sheet towards me with one finger. "If it ever falls short, nothing leaves the club but wages and tax until it is put back. Every shareholder and the Football League are told within 7 days."

"And who holds them to that?" I said.

"Maureen. Me. Whoever does our jobs after us." She uncapped her pen and held it out. "It is for whoever has that chair after you."

"And if I want it taken out again one day?"

"Then you will have to do it in writing, with your name on it, and send it to Companies House where anybody in the country can read it." She was still holding out the pen.

I signed it.

She looked at my name, and then she took the sheet back and blew on the ink.

"I stood in Maureen’s doorway on Friday and told you I would not file," she said. "I never want to say that to anybody in this building again."

"You were right to say it."

"I know I was. I did not enjoy it." She went to the door and stopped. "Thank you for not making me file against maybe."

On the Thursday it touched 126 before it settled at 103.

At 11 o’clock my phone buzzed on the kitchen table. Felix.

103. Geneva are very happy. The door is always open. F.

I sat at the table with it for a long time. The coins I had sold him on Monday for 14 million were worth 24 million on Thursday night. By November they would be worth more than 200 million.

If he had rung me then and asked me to come up his stairs again and do it all over at 60, for the same 4 lads and the same Tuesday, I would have gone. I deleted the message and went to bed.

WHAT THE WEEK COST (dollars) Wednesday 10 April, 1pm · 266 Friday 12 April, the low · 54 Monday 15 April, the Mile End Road · 60 By the end of November, the same coin is over 1,000.

On the Friday, at 5 o’clock, I took a cup of tea into Maureen’s office. The green book was open on her desk.

The club had more money in it than it had ever had in 119 years. 7 million of it would never be touched. The rest was already spent, on paper, on 4 contracts that would run till 2017 and on 14 bonuses that would only be paid if we went up.

She took her glasses off and put them on the desk.

"I have one question," she said. "Just the one."

"Go on."

"How long have you had it?"

"Since it was pennies."

She looked at me. Then she got up, reached past my chair to the shelf behind me, and took down the box file with 2010 on its spine. She opened it on the desk and turned it round so I could read it.

It was a list in her handwriting, 3 pages long. Every firm and every man this club had owed that winter, with the date she had rung each of them, what they had said, and how many more days they had given her. Some of the lines had 4 dates on them.

"And you sat on that," she said. "All through the minus 10."

"I did."

I waited for the next one. Why, or how, or what else was there. I had an answer ready for every one of them, and not one of my answers was true enough to give her.

She did not ask. She closed the box file, stood up, and put it back on the shelf between 2009 and 2011, and squared it with the flat of her hand. Out in the car park somebody was trying to start a car that did not want to start. whine. whine.

She sat down and put her glasses back on.

Sadler put his head round her door at half past 5 with his coat on and the team sheet for the morning folded in his hand.

"Coach goes at 7," he said. "Portsmouth. Their supporters took their club over this afternoon. It will be loud." He looked at the green book, and at the 2 of us. "We are 8th. I want a point at least."

"You will get one," Maureen said.

"I will get what I get," Sadler said, and went.

"There is one more figure," I said. "For the summer. The training ground and the academy. 2 million, by the end of June."

Maureen did not say anything. She opened the drawer and took out a pencil. Under the ink line with its tick, she wrote it in small, neat figures.

June 2013 · Equity, S. Mercer · 2,000,000.