Chapter 304 00 II

At 20 to 12 the second line rang for real. Margaret listened, wrote, and held the phone out to me across the desk. "It is them. About Carrow."

Lewis Carrow was the centre-forward Sadler had asked me for in June. He was 27. He had scored goals in this division for 2 seasons before a Premier League club took him, and he had sat on their bench for most of the year since.

In June they had wanted a million and a half for him and 10,000 a week, and my rule had said no to the wages before anybody got as far as the fee.

"We would loan him to you for the season," said the man on the line. "No fee. You pay half his wages, 5,000 a week. We want his wages off our bill before our man signs, and our man signs tonight."

"And if it is not done tonight?"

"Then we keep him, and we do not get our man."

I gave the phone back to Margaret.

"Once the window shuts, a loan can only be for 93 days," she said, when she had put it down. "That is the emergency rule. They will not do 93 days for him. It is tonight, or it is January."

Maureen came up the stairs with the green book open at the wages page.

"5,000 a week for 36 weeks," she said. "180,000. I have not got it, Sam. The cup money was going to be some of it."

"The League would let you," said Margaret. "In this division a club can lose 3 million in a season. It can lose 8, if 5 of them come from you as shares."

"So I could put 180,000 in tonight."

"And nobody at the League would say a word. It is your rule that says no. Not theirs."

Derby had been at Marsh Road 9 days before. In the life before, 8 years on, Derby County went into administration, in September 2021. They had broken the League’s rules on money, they owed the taxman about 29 million pounds, and the League took 21 points off them that season.

"No," I said. "Not out of mine."

I turned to the window. "I am sorry, Craig."

"Do not be sorry." Sadler did not get up. "I would not have taken him on your money. In April I had 4 lads waiting a week on it, and we lost at Sheffield with our heads full of it. I am not having one man in that room waiting on you again."

Maureen shut the book on her finger.

"Their manager at Southend asked me for Pete," Sadler said. "Every week in his team, for the season, and they pay every penny of his wages. Pete is on 2,500 a week."

"90,000," said Maureen.

"It is half. I will tell Pete myself, to his face, at the training ground. If he says no, he stays."

He went at half past 12. At half past 1 he rang Margaret from the training ground.

"He wants till 7," Margaret told me, when she had put it down. "He wants to talk to his wife first."

At 3 Wilf rang from his car, back from Milton Keynes. He had been to see the 17-year-old we watched there last season. He was in their first team now, Wilf said, and nobody was going to prise him out of it that day. I thanked him and let him go.

At 4 Sadler came back and sat down in the chair by the window again, and the Southend manager rang him there. He needed a name by 8, or he was going after another target man, and he would not ring again.

At 5 Carrow’s club rang. "We have put him in his car," the man said. "He is coming south on spec. If it is not you, there is another club asking, and he goes there instead. You have till he gets to your door."

Margaret wrote the 3 deadlines on a sheet of paper and stuck it to the front of the fax machine. 8. Carrow on M1. 23:00.

It was still 90,000 short, even if Pete said yes.

I stood at the top of the stairs and asked myself what I would say to Sadler at 11 if it did not come. That the rule had held? That was true, and it would not put anybody at the far post on Saturday.

Was I sure the rule was worth a striker? I had been sure in May, in an empty office. It was harder to be sure with Craig sitting in the chair by the window, not asking for anything.

"Priya," I said. "Who pays this club less than it is worth?"

She did not have to think. "Terry. League One money for the shirt, and 2 years left on the deal."

I rang Terry myself. He was at Marsh Road in 20 minutes, in his work clothes, and he stood in Margaret’s doorway with his arms folded.

"You want more money off me," he said. "You. With what you have got."

"Yes."

"Say why, then."

"Because this club pays its wages out of what it takes in, and nothing else. Danny printed it in the Gazette."

"I read it."

"Your name is on a Championship shirt, on the television, at every ground in the division, and you pay League One money for it. That is the club taking in less than it should. I would sooner fix that than break the rule."

"And if I say no?"

"Then he does not come, and I do not ask anybody else."

Margaret put her pen down. "A shirt deal at a fair price is income," she said. "A present dressed up as one is not, and the League can ask which it is. Priya?"

Priya had a sheet of paper ready. "Every shirt deal in this division is worth more than his. I have them all here. The cheapest is 95,000 a season more."

Terry ran his finger down the list to the bottom and kept it there.

"That is the going rate, then," he said. He unfolded his arms. "Write it, Margaret. I want it signed before I go home and tell Pauline what it cost me."

She wrote it on the club’s paper, 1 page, and he signed it at her desk.

Pete came in from the car park at 7. He was the tallest man in the building, and he had to bend his head under the frame of Margaret’s door to come in.

Sadler took him into the boardroom and shut the door. They were 10 minutes. When they came out Pete’s face was red, and he went straight past us to the stairs. At the top he stopped.

"I will play every week?" he said to Sadler.

"Every week."

"And in May?"

"In May you come back, and we talk."

"Southend." Pete went down 2 stairs and stopped again. "I can be home for my tea."

Then he went, clump, clump, clump, all the way down.

Sadler stood at the top of the stairs till the door at the bottom had shut behind him.

"He got us to Wembley," he said. Then he turned to Maureen. "Write it in."

Margaret rang Southend at 20 past 7, and faxed their forms for Pete at a quarter to 8. The League sent back the approval at 10 to 9.

Maureen wrote it into the green book, 3 lines under the wages, and turned it to me.

"180,000 for half his wages," she said. "Take off Pete’s 90,000. Take off Mr Brennan’s 95,000. That is 5,000 over, Sam. If one gate is short this winter, it is gone."

"Then ring them," I said to Margaret.

Joe had been in the corridor for most of an hour with his notebook, saying nothing.

"Wilf watched Carrow twice in the spring, for Craig," he said. "I have been through his games since I came. When the ball goes wide, he goes to the far post and waits there. Pete did that for us. Nobody else in this building does."

After that it was the clock over Margaret’s door, tick, tick, tick.

At half past 9 the second line rang. Margaret listened, wrote, and put it down.

"His club," she said. "The other one has rung them again. They want to know if he is here yet."

He was not. Sadler turned his chair round to face the car park.

At 10 past 10 a pair of headlights came round the corner of the car park and stopped under Margaret’s window. A car door went, thunk.

"He is here," said Priya, from the bottom of the stairs. "He has driven 5 hours in his training kit."

By a quarter past, Dev had him on the bed in the treatment room with the door open, working down from his back to his knees and his ankles.

"Fit," said Dev, at 20 to 11. "He has played 6 games all year, and he is fit."

Carrow came out pulling his shirt back on. He was shorter than I had expected, and quick on his feet. He looked at Sadler first.

"Who crosses it from the left?"

"Robertson," said Sadler. "Rudd, if he is not playing."

"Tell them both I will be at the far post."

"You have 19 minutes," said Margaret, from behind her desk. "Sit down and sign."

The loan agreement came through from his club at 10:42. The fax machine woke up, whirr, and the pages curled out one at a time onto the floor. Margaret picked them up in order and laid them on the desk, and Carrow signed where she put her finger, 9 times.

At 10:47 she fed the League’s forms into the machine. It took them, whirr, a page at a time. Sadler watched the machine.

At 10:53 the fax machine woke up again by itself.

THE FOOTBALL LEAGUE · Registrations · Monday 2 September 2013 · 22:53 Club: Tilbrook Town Player: CARROW, Lewis (forward) Temporary transfer to the end of the 2013-14 season Registration approved

Margaret read it twice and laid it on top of the pile.

"It is done," she said.

Sadler stood up. "Wednesday, 10 o’clock," he said to Carrow. "I will tell you where you stand then." He went home.

The window shut at 11. Priya rang Danny at 5 past and read him the name down the line, and the reason. Maureen wrote Carrow’s name into the green book under Pete’s.

I drove home at midnight. In the kitchen I opened the laptop and looked at the price of the coin.

Most of the summer it had sat round about 100 dollars, and in July it had gone down into the 70s. On the first of August it had been under 97.

The stand was waiting for the winter. So was Robbie’s block. This time I would sell in pieces.

The screen said 130.20. While I was watching it, it said 131.