Chapter 295: Withdrawals I

Sadler went home that night with Leicester on his mind, and so did I. On the Thursday morning, before anything came from Leicester, something came from Tokyo.

It was on the big exchange’s front page at 25 past 11, in a grey box I nearly scrolled past.

The exchange was "temporarily suspending cash withdrawals of USD" for the next 2 weeks. Its bank could not keep up. Dollars could still be paid in. They could not be taken out.

I scrolled down to my account.

All through June I had been filling Maureen’s pencil line from 2 places. The quiet man in London took 50,000 pounds’ worth of coin off me every morning and paid in pounds the same day: 20 mornings to the 28th, a million.

The other million went through Tokyo in 2 halves, sold for dollars and wired home.

Since May that exchange’s wires had been slow. The Americans had frozen some of its money over a licence, and the papers talked about it for a week. I stopped thinking about it when they did.

The first half had taken 11 days to reach the club’s account. The second half I had sold on Monday, at 101 a coin. Nearly 800,000 dollars had sat on the screen since, waiting for a wire.

That exchange had now shut on me twice.

In the life before, it said in July that dollars were moving again. By September most of the people waiting for dollars there were still waiting.

tap tap of my fingers on the edge of the desk.

2 weeks, the notice said. What if it was the coin next? What if I sat here and waited, the way I had sat and waited in April, and the grey box got bigger on Monday?

I sent a small piece of coin off the exchange to my laptop, as a test. It arrived. Coin could still leave.

I could have pushed the dollars through coin into euros and asked for those instead. But the euro side of that exchange had too few buyers to take 800,000 dollars of coin in a day, and I did not trust the same bank in Tokyo to wire euros any faster than dollars.

So I cancelled Monday’s wire. The dollars came back onto my balance as a number I could spend inside that exchange and nowhere else.

I turned them back into coin in pieces over the next half hour, at 110 and a bit. For every 11 coins I had sold on Monday, I got 10 back.

Then I sent everything I had there to the laptop on my desk.

It took 40 minutes to show. The phone rang 3 times and I let it.

When it was there I shut the laptop and went down the corridor to Maureen.

She had page 1 of the green book in front of her, and the wages on a calculator beside it. She looked at my face and put her pen down.

"How much?" she said.

"About 500,000 of the June line will not be here by the end of the month."

"Sit down. From the start."

I told her, from London to the grey box.

"What did turning it back cost you?"

"One coin in 11."

She wrote it on the edge of her pad, one in 11, and drew a ring round it. Then she did the June sum out loud, the way she does the wages, with her pen on each figure.

"London is 14 mornings in and 6 to come, so a million by the 28th. Tokyo’s first half landed on the 14th. Tokyo’s second half is coin on your laptop. So I have about 1,500,000 coming, and a line in pencil that says 2 million."

"Yes."

"Can you sell the other 500,000 somewhere else by Friday week?"

"I could. But June has had everything I planned to sell this summer. I am not selling more to fill a line in pencil."

Maureen put her pen across the pencil line.

"The academy block is that 500,000," she said. "Margaret will not sign the contractor’s papers till the whole of it is in the account."

She turned her pad to a page of dates.

"If he has not started by the 8th of July, his men go to a school job in Billericay, and after that he has nothing for us till November. Robbie loses his summer."

I could have sold that afternoon and kept Robbie his summer. I did not.

Another season in a corridor was the price, and Robbie’s boys would pay it.

"I will tell him tomorrow," I said, "at the training ground."

"Where is the coin, if it is not on the exchange?"

"On my laptop, since 1 o’clock. That is better than Tokyo. It is not good enough."

"Where should it be?"

"On paper. In a vault."

Margaret came in without knocking, with her coffee in her hand, and stopped when she saw the 2 of us.

"What has happened?" she said.

"Tokyo has stopped paying out dollars for 2 weeks," said Maureen. "He had nearly 800,000 of them there. He turned them back into coin and took the coin off the exchange onto his laptop, and it cost him one coin in 11."

Margaret looked at me. I nodded. Maureen went on.

"The June line is about 500,000 short. Robbie’s block waits. And he wants the rest of it on paper, in a vault."

Margaret put her coffee down on the filing cabinet.

"None of the big banks give out new boxes any more," she said. "Not one. They stopped taking new customers. There are a few private vaults left, and nearly all of them are in London."

"London."

"If you are putting a fortune on paper, I want to see where the paper goes."

"So do I," said Maureen.

"Monday," I said. "Both of you."

I told Doyle on the Friday morning, by the tea urn at the training ground.

He had the drawings for the academy block pinned to the wall beside it with 4 drawing pins: 2 changing rooms, a classroom, a room for Dev with a proper bed in it. He had been showing them to anybody who came in for a cup of tea since April.

"It is the block," I said. "The money for it is late, and the contractor’s men go to another job on the 8th of July. It will not start this summer."

"WHEN, THEN?"

"When the money is in the bank, and the contractor has men free. Maureen says his next ones are free in November."

"NOVEMBER?" He looked at the drawings. "MY SCHOLARS GOT CHANGED IN A PORTAKABIN LAST SUMMER AND IN A CORRIDOR ALL WINTER. Bags on the floor, Dev stepping over them. I told them on the last day in May, I said lads, that is the last winter in that corridor."

"You told them what I told you in April. I was wrong."

"Is it Joe? His wages?"

"No. Joe’s wages come out of what the season tickets bring in, like the players’. This was the other money, and part of it is late."

Doyle took one of the drawing pins out of the corner of the sheet and pushed it back in again, harder. thock.

"Kieran still gets his pitch?"

"Kieran gets his pitch. That money is here."

"So my lads get Kieran’s new pitch, and then they get changed in that corridor." He let his breath out. "They will not mind. They are 16 and 17. It is me that minds."

Kieran was in the doorway in his boots. He had heard every word.

"I will put a bench in the corridor, Robbie," he said. "A long one. I done one for the away dressing room once."

"MAKE IT LONG, THEN," said Doyle. He took the 4 pins out of the sheet, rolled it up, and put it under his arm.

Priya caught me in the car park at Marsh Road at dinnertime, with her sunglasses on her head.

"A man from Leicester rang," she said. "He wanted to know who takes in the post for the club when you are away. I told him I do."

"Did he say what for?"

"He was polite, and he would not say what it was for. I wrote his number down."

I spent the weekend at my kitchen table, making the coin into paper.

On the Friday afternoon I had driven to a shop in Southend and paid cash for the cheapest laptop they had, and a printer from the shelf beside it.

The laptop had never been near the internet, and it never would be. I took the wireless card out of it with a small screwdriver before I turned it on.

I had saved the web page that makes the keys onto a memory stick from my old laptop, and carried it across. It printed them in pairs, one pair to a sheet, with a square of black and white dots for each half.

zzzt. zzzt. of the printer head going back and forth. I did 20 sheets, and then the same 20 again, 40 in all.

I put each sheet in a plastic sleeve. Water ruins the squares of dots, and a fold through one can ruin it as well. I folded nothing.

Then, from the old laptop, I sent the coin out to the 20 codes, one at a time, and waited for each to show before I sent the next. I kept back what the quiet man would need for his last 5 mornings, and left that on the old laptop.