Chapter 313: The Top I

I was at the training ground at 10 to 7 on the Monday. It was still dark, and Doyle was already at the gate in his tracksuit with a flask under his arm.

"You said 7," I said.

"I SAID 7 FOR YOU." He poured me a cup without asking. It was tea with 3 sugars in it. "I HAVE BEEN HERE SINCE 6."

The scholars started coming at 20 past, on bikes and off the first train, 16 of them in training tops under their coats. Nobody had told them to come before half 7. They stood along the corridor window inside with their breath on the glass.

At 25 past a low-loader came up the lane with its lights on and reversed into the car park, bip, bip, bip, with a yellow digger chained on its back. A van came in behind it full of men in orange jackets.

The foreman was a short man in a woolly hat with a clipboard. He shook Doyle’s hand first.

"Robbie Doyle?" he said. "Your secretary said you would show me where the corners are."

"THE CORNERS ARE PEGGED."

"I know they are. I would still like you to show me."

Doyle put the flask down on the wall and walked him out to the strip behind the clubhouse in the half dark. He pointed at each peg in turn, and the foreman wrote something on his clipboard at every one.

Kieran came round the end of the clubhouse with a rake over his shoulder and stopped when he saw the digger.

"I only got that furrow out of it on Thursday, boss," he said. "Off the storm."

"It was always coming up, Kieran."

"I wanted it nice for them, that is all."

The men stood fence panels up round the strip, clang, clang, one after another, with Kieran watching every one go into his grass. The digger came down off the low-loader on its tracks and the driver started it up, brrrm, and let it run.

The foreman came back to the car park with mud on his boots.

"Footings by the end of the month," he said to me. "Walls before Christmas, if it stays dry. Roof on in January, and his lads in by the end of February."

"And if it does not stay dry?"

"Then later. I would sooner tell you that now than in February."

At half past 7 the driver put the bucket into the corner where Dev’s room was going to be, chunk, and lifted out the first of Kieran’s turf.

Behind the corridor window the scholars made a noise I could hear through the glass. One of them was filming it on his phone. Dev came out of his room with a mug in his hand and stood beside me on the step.

"Which bit is mine?" he said.

"Where he started."

He watched the bucket go in a second time. "He has put it in the right place, then," he said, and went back in.

Inside, the whiteboard was still on the corridor wall with 18 NOVEMBER on it, underlined twice, the ink gone grey since September. The small lad who had asked about the bed stood under it with his bag.

"Can I rub it off now, Robbie?"

"LEAVE IT," said Doyle. "LEAVE IT TILL THE WALLS ARE UP. GET CHANGED. YOU ARE OUT IN 20 MINUTES."

The training kit had lived in the boot room at Marsh Road since the storm. Stan brought it out at 8 in 2 bin bags, every piece of it washed and folded by Kieran, and put the bags down by the corridor door and looked out at the digger.

"Is there a kit room in it?" he said.

"2 changing rooms, a classroom and a room for Dev."

"No kit room."

"No."

"Then the kit stays with me," said Stan, and picked his bags up again.

Doyle stayed at the window with his tea. When the bucket went in a third time he knocked once on the glass with his knuckle, knock, and the lad with the phone put it away and went to get changed.

I had fetched a third sheet from Fenchurch Street on the Saturday. At 9 I sent the first of the quiet man’s 10 mornings from the laptop on my knee in the car.

He rang at 10 past.

"My bank has finished with October," he said. "I have it, Mr Mercer. The same as before."

"And the other 9?"

"Every one of them, if you send them."

The coin was 478 that morning, when the digger went into Kieran’s strip. At midnight it was 744. I sent nothing more.

On the Tuesday Maureen had the news open on her screen when I came in.

"The Americans have had a hearing about it," she said. "In their Senate. One of their government departments said it can be legal." She put her finger on the screen. "It went over 900 in the night, it says here, and it is down in the 600s now."

Margaret read it over her shoulder with her coffee. "Does that make it better or worse for you?"

"Better, this week."

"And next week?"

"I am not putting the stand on next week."

"Good," said Margaret, and took her coffee back to her desk to ring the bank.

Felix rang my mobile on the Friday at 10 to 10, while I was on the stairs at Marsh Road.

"Geneva is full," he said. "They told me last night."

"Full since when?"

"Since Wednesday. They took 6 million off a man in Zurich, and they want nothing more till the new year." I heard him drink something. "But I have Hong Kong."

"The family."

"The family. The father has been taking it all month, a little at a time. He likes a round number. He will take 2 million."

"On what terms?"

"Their price is fixed at 5 o’clock on Monday, their time. That is 9 o’clock yours. The screen at 9, less 5 per cent. The pounds come into the client account on Thursday, and you send when they are there."

"Can they fix on Thursday, when they pay?"

"I asked them that before I rang you. They fix once a week." He waited. "I want a yes or a no by 6 tonight. After 6 they offer it to somebody else, and somebody else will say yes."

I went up the rest of the stairs and straight into Margaret’s office, and shut the door behind me.

She had a letter open on her desk. "The contractor’s figure for the stand came this morning," she said. "5,488,000. He holds the May start for us till Friday the 6th of December. After that it goes to a school job in Colchester."

"Geneva is full," I said.

She put the letter down. I told her the rest standing up, and she wrote it on her pad as I said it. Maureen heard the door and came through from her office carrying the green book.

"Do not fix it on Monday," Maureen said, when I had finished.

"Why not?"

"Because it has gone up by more than half since last Monday." She opened the book at the back, where she had been writing the quiet man’s mornings in pencil.

"Every day this week your 100,000 has cost you less of it than the day before. Fix on Monday and you sell 2 million at Monday’s price, when Thursday’s will be higher. Let the quiet man carry on into December instead."

"20 more mornings," said Margaret. "That is Christmas. The contractor gives the May start away on the 6th."

"Then sign on the 6th with what we have, and put the rest in by Christmas."

"Not with my name on it. Not a pound short. That was the rule in April and it is the rule now."

Maureen said it to me. "If it keeps going the way it went this week, by Thursday the same 2 million would take a quarter less of it. That quarter is money this club could have next year, Sam, and I am the one who has to find it."

I did the sum in my head while she talked. At the rate it was going, fixing on Monday would cost me most of a million pounds’ worth of it by the end of the month.

And December? In September I had drawn a box on a gas bill and written 30 November in it. I could not tell either of them what was on the other side of that box.

"You are right about Thursday," I said to Maureen. "It may well be higher. I am still saying yes."

"Then you are paying for Margaret’s rule."

"I am paying for the 6th, and for not selling in December. Yes."

Maureen closed the book. "I think you are wrong," she said. "I will write it down that I said so."

"Write it down."

Margaret picked up the letter with 5,488,000 on it. "Then I sign with him on Wednesday the 4th," she said, "with the money there."

"I will ring Felix before 6."

Raj drove me to Doncaster that afternoon for the Friday night game. He had the heater on full, and a tube of Ted’s mints rattled in the door pocket every time we went over a join in the road.

Past the Stamford turn he looked at me in the mirror.

"Sunny rang me last night," he said. "His deposit is worth more than the whole flat now, Sam. The whole flat. And my 2,000 is about 12,000." He laughed, and then he stopped. "He says 2,000 dollars by Christmas. Everybody on his forums says it."

"What will you do with 12,000?"

"Clutch for the cab, for a start. It has been slipping since September."

"Then move it off Tokyo. Tonight, if Sunny will do it for you."

"That is Sunny’s department."

"Then ask him to do yours, even if he will not do his."

Raj drove for a while with the indicator going for a lorry, tick, tock, tick, tock.