Chapter 308 Under The Lights II

Leicester scored again 7 minutes after half-time. Riyad lost the ball on the halfway line trying to beat a second man, and they were away. 3 passes, and their centre-forward put it under Braithwaite, thump.

The slow song came over from the away end again, quicker now. The Bovril End went quiet, and the away steps sang at it.

"SHALL WE SING A SONG FOR YOU? SHALL WE SING A SONG FOR YOU?"

I could hear the horses outside.

I had kept Jamie in June for nights like this one. Was this what I had kept him for, to watch him chase their keeper’s punts while the people who wanted him sang at us? I looked down at the pitch and had no answer.

"Sam," said Margaret.

"Watch Craig," I said, and did not take my eyes off the touchline.

Down there Sadler said nothing to anybody for a full minute. Nobody came off. Then he called N’Golo Kanté over to the edge of the technical area and pointed up the pitch, once. N’Golo went 10 yards further forward and stayed there.

From then on he was in their half. He won it back off their best midfielder twice in 3 minutes, thud, thud. The second time he gave it to Riyad on the right.

Riyad came inside onto his left foot and hung it up at the far post. Carrow had drifted off their captain’s shoulder to the back post while their captain watched the ball.

He headed it down and in, thock.

"LEW-IS CAR-ROW!"

Carrow ran to N’Golo, who had won the ball, and picked him up off the grass, and said something into his ear that nobody else could hear.

"2-1," said Margaret, as if she was writing it down.

"Again," I said, to the pitch. "Go again."

The Bovril End had found its voice, and it did not stop.

"BOV-RIL END! BOV-RIL END! BOV-RIL END!"

On 64 minutes their best midfielder tried to turn away from N’Golo in the centre circle, and N’Golo nicked it off him. Jamie had gone before the tackle was finished.

The pass went through the middle, between their captain and the other centre-half, and their keeper came for it, the way he had come for everything all night. Jamie got there a stride before him. He lifted it over him with the outside of his right foot.

It bounced once on the 6-yard line and went in, thup.

The end came down the steps at him, ROAR, and the stewards at the front wall put their arms out.

Jamie turned straight round for the halfway line.

"VAR-DY! VAR-DY! VAR-DY!"

I was out of my seat with both fists up, and Margaret had hold of my coat. When I sat down, Leicester’s director was still watching Jamie run back.

"Quicker than the film," he said.

Neither side would settle for a point after that. They hit our bar from 20 yards, clang. Carrow had a header saved at the near post.

Harry Maguire threw himself in front of a shot on the edge of our 6-yard box and took it on the chest, thud, and got up shouting at Stokes to push out.

From the back of the Bovril End a voice I knew came over everybody else’s.

"HARRY! HARRY MAGUIRE!"

Ted was standing, with a banner lad holding him up under each arm.

"Who is that?" said the director.

"That is Ted. He has stood on that end longer than anybody in this ground."

"We have one of those," he said. "Behind our dugout."

With 2 minutes left their substitute got in behind Robertson and shot from 12 yards. Braithwaite went down to his right and got the ends of his fingers to it.

It hit the post, tonk, and came back into his chest, and he lay on it with his eyes shut while the Bovril End sang his name.

"BRAITH-WAITE! BRAITH-WAITE!"

"TIL-BROOK! TIL-BROOK! TIL-BROOK!"

The banner lads had the bedsheet up again, and the whole of the middle of the end sang it with them.

"OUR END! OUR END! OUR END TILL MAY!"

The referee looked at his watch and blew, one long one, peeeep.

2-2.

The director stood up and buttoned his coat. "March, then," he said.

"March."

He went down the steps with his secretary. At the bottom he stopped and looked back up at the Bovril End, where they were still singing at the players walking off, under the bedsheet.

In the tunnel Sadler was waiting for his players with his hands in his pockets. Each one went past him into the dressing room. He said a word to some of them and nothing to the rest.

"2 down to that lot," he said to me, when the last of them had gone in.

"What did you tell N’Golo?"

"To go and get it. He did." He went in after them.

Joe Tredwell came down the tunnel last, writing as he walked. He stopped by me.

"What did you see, when Craig called N’Golo over?" he said.

"N’Golo moving 10 yards."

"Craig asked me at half-time if N’Golo could do 2 jobs at once. I said I did not know." He clapped twice, quietly. "What do I write down for that?"

Carrow came past with his shirt off and his boots in his hand.

"Priya found me a flat on the front," he said. "The sea is right outside the kitchen window."

He went on down the corridor to Dev. Jamie put his head round the dressing-room door and saw me.

"Did their man see that?"

"He saw it."

"Good," said Jamie, and shut the door.

On the Wednesday Maureen came along the corridor at a quarter past 5 with her glasses in her hand and shut my door behind her.

"Have you seen it?" she said.

I had seen it. On the Tokyo board it had been 140 at dinnertime. It was 131, and falling.

Margaret came in at 10 past 6. She had heard it on the radio in her car.

6 O’CLOCK NEWS · The FBI has shut down an online marketplace used to sell drugs, and arrested the man it says ran the site. He was arrested in a public library in San Francisco. The internet currency used on the site has fallen sharply in the last hour.

"Is that the same as yours?" said Margaret.

"The same."

At 7 o’clock it was 109.

"It has lost a fifth since dinnertime," said Maureen. "I have been watching it go down since 5. Should we sell Robbie’s piece now? Before it goes lower?"

In the life before, the news came out of America late that Wednesday, our time. The coin fell for a couple of hours and was most of the way back before midnight. At the end of October it was over 200.

Was this the same day, or the start of something I had forgotten? It touched 109 again while I watched it.

"No," I said. "Robbie’s piece goes in the week of the 21st, like the schedule says."

"And if it is 80 on the 21st?"

"Then it costs me more, and Robbie still has his 500,000 in the account on the 25th. I am not selling on the worst night it has had since April. I have watched it fall further than this and come back."

Maureen took her glasses off and put them back on. Then she nodded.

Margaret had not sat down. "The papers will have this tomorrow. Drugs and internet money, all over the business pages."

She put her hand flat on my desk. "If the League ever asks where the money for that stand came from, I want to show them more than your word."

"What do you want?"

"A letter from the solicitor in Chelmsford. Where your money came from, from the very first pound. On file before the first piece lands."

"From the first pound," I said.

"From the first pound."

"He can have it written by the 21st."

"By the 18th. I want to read it first."

"I will ring him in the morning."

"And the quiet man?" said Maureen. "Will he still take it, after tonight?"

"He takes it at whatever the price is on the morning. That is all he has ever done."

"And if the bank asks where Robbie’s 500,000 came from?"

"Then they get the letter," said Margaret.

Raj was in the car park at 8 with his engine running. The cab smelt of the kebab shop under his office. He had the radio on low, and turned it off when I got in beside him.

"My cousin has been on at me about that internet money since the summer," he said. "He put his savings in it in June. On the Japanese one."

"How much did he put in?"

"Enough. He drives a van for a carpet firm, and he reads about it on the internet every night. He says the banks are frightened of it." Raj let the handbrake off. "He wanted me in as well. On Monday I gave him 2,000 in cash, and he put it in for me."

"Before today."

"Before today. An hour ago it was worth 1,600. He rang me nearly crying." Raj pulled out onto Marsh Road. "Now he says it is coming back, and I should hold on."

"Do not sell it tonight."

"That is what he says."

"And get it out of Tokyo. His and yours."

Raj glanced across at me. "Out where?"

"Anywhere you hold it yourselves. Not a company."

"Why?"

"Because in June that company stopped letting people take their dollars out. It was in the papers. Some of them are still waiting."

"He says that is all sorted now."

"Tell him to take it out anyway."

We stopped at the lights by the church. Raj drummed his fingers on the wheel, tap, tap, tap.

"It is 2 grand, Sam," he said. "It can sit there. I am not losing sleep over 2 grand."

"Raj."

"What?"

"Take it out."

He looked at me properly then. "You are serious."

"Yes."

"I will ask him how. At the weekend." The lights changed, and he drove on. "Ted had no voice left when I fetched him last night. He has not lost it like that since Wembley."

He dropped me at my door and pulled away with his radio back on. I stood on the step till his tail lights had gone round the corner. Then I went in and rang his mobile.

"Raj," I said, when he picked up. "Tomorrow. Bring your cousin."

"He will want to know why."

"Bring him anyway."