Chapter 315: December I

He was at Margaret's door at 5 to 9 on the Monday, in the same postman's jacket, with the rain still on his shoulders.

"Alan Pike," he said, and shook my hand, and then Margaret's. "I did Marsh Road for 26 years. I finished in the summer."

Margaret had the papers ready on the corner of her desk, squared off, in the order she meant to show them. We had won 2-0 at Watford on the Saturday. The Gazette was folded under Margaret's in-tray with the score on the back.

"This is what the trust's share covers," she said, and put the first sheet in front of him. "The ground, the name, the colours, the badge. Any borrowing, from anybody, the chairman included. The training ground since August. And the right to put one director on our board, which the trust has not used."

"Not yet," said Alan.

"This is from the bank, dated this morning." She put the second sheet down. "What is in the club's account. No loans against it. No charges on anything we have."

He read it with his finger under each line.

"These are the forms we sent to Companies House this autumn, every time the chairman put money in as shares." She laid them out one at a time, 6 of them.

"Anybody in the country can ask for them. And this is the clause in the club's articles. 2 years of wages in pounds, never touched."

Alan read every page. It took him a quarter of an hour. Maureen came to the door once with a mug of tea for him, put it at his elbow and went away again.

When he had finished he squared the papers and slid them back across the desk.

"That tells me it is shares," he said. "It tells me it is in the bank and nobody has lent it. Thank you for that." He folded his cap in half on his knee. "It does not tell me where a man of 27 gets 7 million pounds in a month."

"No," said Margaret. "It does not."

"In 2010 I brought the post up those stairs every morning." He nodded at the door. "Brown envelopes and red ones. Solicitors. The bank. Firms waiting for their money."

Maureen had come back to the doorway. "You brought them at 7," she said, "so I had them open before the phone started."

"I did." He did not turn round. "I watched you open them, and I watched your face while you did it. I am not carrying letters like that up those stairs again."

"Nobody is asking you to," I said.

"Then tell me where it came from, Mr Mercer."

Margaret kept her eyes on the papers.

"I will tell you myself," I said. "Not this morning."

"When?"

"Before Margaret signs for the stand on Wednesday."

He thought about it. "I leave the house at 10 to 6 on a Wednesday. I do my grandson's paper round, since his knee."

"Then I will be there at half past 5."

Margaret passed him her pad. He wrote his address on it in capitals, and she tore the sheet off and gave it to me.

When he had gone down the stairs she shut the door.

"The deed gives him the borrowing," she said. "He has seen the borrowing. It does not give him that letter."

"I am not going to show him the letter."

"Good." She put the papers in her drawer. "Then what are you going to tell him at half past 5 on Wednesday?"

I had no answer for her. She went back to the gate figures for Tuesday, and I went downstairs.

Blackpool came on the Tuesday night under the lights, with 600 in tangerine in the away end and an air horn going from the kick-off, paaarp. They sang through the whole of the first half and most of the second.

2 of the 4 who had stood still at Doncaster were on our bench, with their coats zipped up. Sadler did not look at them once all night.

Quinn put us in front just after half-time, low inside the far post from 20 yards.

The Bovril End went up behind the goal. "BAI-LEY! BAI-LEY!" A minute later they scored from a corner, and the away end jumped up and down on the old steps in one tangerine block, stamp, stamp, stamp.

Their lads kept singing through the last 20 minutes, in the cold, with their scarves held up over their heads.

In the life before, those same supporters walked onto the pitch in May 2015 and stopped the last game of a relegation season. The next season their club went down again, into the bottom division of the Football League.

In November 2017 a High Court judge found that the family who ran it had paid nearly 27 million pounds out of it to companies they controlled, and in 2019 the court put the club into receivership.

Who would their trust have made answer?

The referee blew at 1-1, peep. 23 points from 18.

I went up to Margaret's office afterwards. She was still at her desk with her coat on, writing up the gate.

"I need the letter," I said. "For one night."

She put her pen down. "Yesterday you said you would not show it to him."

"We gave the trust its share so that somebody could stand up and ask where the money came from. If I will not answer the first man who asks, what did we give them?"

"It has my signature on the last page, Sam. Under the solicitor's."

"Then I will tell him the rest of it is complete because you checked it, and that 2010 is mine and nobody else's."

"It names the man in London, and the client account in April." She did not move towards the cabinet. "You cannot take it back off him once he has read it."

"I would sooner he read it from me than heard it from somebody else in a year."

She looked down at her pad, with her hand flat on it. Then she unlocked the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and took out the folder.

"It does not leave your hand," she said. "He reads it at his table with you sat there. No copies. On my desk by 9."

Alan's house was the end one of a terrace behind the bus garage, with a bike chained to the drainpipe and a light on in the kitchen at 25 past 5. His wife let me in in her dressing gown and put the kettle on, click, without asking how I took it.

Alan was at the table in his jacket, with the bag for the round folded beside him. On the wall by the back door was a photograph of the Bovril End in deep snow, before there was a roof on it, with a boy in a balaclava at the front holding a shovel.

"That is me," he said, when he saw me looking. "1963. They paid us a shilling to clear the steps."

I put the folder on the table between us and kept my hand on it.

"It is internet money," I said. "The one in the papers. I put my savings into it in 2010, when it was pennies and nobody wanted it."

He waited.

"I sold it in 2011, and that cleared the club's debts. I put some back that winter. Since then I have sold pieces when the club needed them, the biggest in April and this autumn, for Robbie's block and the new end. All of it is in here."

He looked at the folder.

"The thing the drug dealers use," he said. "It was on the news in October."

"That is the one."

"Why not say so on Friday? In front of everybody?"

"Because it is mine. And because the papers say what you just said about it."

"They do."

"The town would have had it by Saturday, and half of them would think the club was standing on something that could blow away." I took my hand off the folder. "It is not. It was pounds in the bank before Margaret signed anything."

His wife put 2 mugs down and went back upstairs. The tea was stewed and very sweet, and the kitchen smelt of the toast she had made him before I came.

Alan opened the folder and read it. All 11 pages, with his glasses on, his finger under each line the way he had read Margaret's papers. The kitchen clock went round behind him, tick, tick, and the radio on the windowsill gave the early news very quietly.

Halfway through he stopped and took his glasses off.

"Can it go back to pennies?" he said. "What you sold?"

"It can fall a long way. It fell by 4 fifths in 2 days in April."

"And if it does, what does the club owe?"

"Nothing. It was pounds in the bank before anybody signed for anything. Margaret will not sign till it is."

He put his glasses back on and read the rest.

At the end he turned to the last page and looked at the 2 signatures, the solicitor's and Margaret's under it.

"2010 is just your word," he said.

"Yes."

He closed the folder and pushed it back across the table. It was 10 past 6 by his clock.

"I will tell the board," he said. "What it is, and that I have read it, and that it is clean as far as a postman can tell. The town is for the board to decide."

"What will you tell them about 2010?"

"That it is your word. And that the red envelopes stopped coming in the summer of 2011. I carried the post. I would know."

He picked up the bag. "I would have told them if it was dirty. Now I have got 63 papers to do, and my grandson will want to know why I was late."

I put the folder on Margaret's desk at 10 past 8. She checked every page was there and locked it in the drawer.

"He is telling the trust's board, and nobody else," I said.

"Then the trust's board will know by Friday what Maureen and I have known since April." She wrote it on her pad. "And they will ask you about 2010, the same as he did."