Chapter 311: Steel I

I rang the quiet man from my car before dinner, with the engineer’s letter still on Margaret’s desk upstairs and the rain coming in off the estuary onto the windscreen.

"The steel has come in 63,000 over," I said. "I am selling the last of it to the man who takes it for Geneva, with some of the stand."

"Then I am glad you rang," he said. "I was going to ring you this afternoon."

"Why?"

"My bank has written to me. They want 2 weeks with nothing large going through my account while they look at October. I can take your mornings again from Monday the 18th. Not before."

I sat with the phone against my ear and watched the wipers go.

"So Monday is nothing."

"Monday is nothing, Mr Mercer. I am sorry for it."

"Is it me they are looking at?"

"It is everybody who sends me more than they used to. You are one of them."

"And if they close the account?"

"Then you will not hear from me on the 18th." He waited. "I do not think they will close it."

That was 900,000 of the steel gone off his mornings in one phone call. Now the whole 963,000 had to go up the stairs on the Mile End Road, and before the 14th.

I had deleted Felix’s message in April, but his number was still in the phone. I sent him one line from the car park: It is Mercer. I need a morning before the 14th.

Leeds beat us 2-0 at Elland Road the next afternoon. Their whole ground stood up and sang Marching On Together before the kick-off, and from the directors’ seats I could not hear our end over it.

For an hour it was 0-0, and Braithwaite had 2 saves to make. Then their centre-forward scored twice in 9 minutes, a header from a corner and a shot across Braithwaite from the edge of the box, and the whole ground went up both times, WHUMPH.

Our end sang through the last 10 minutes anyway, 2 goals down.

Afterwards Sadler stood in the away corridor with the team sheet rolled in his fist.

"I want the video man in on Monday," he said to me. "They need to see that corner, not hear about it from me."

I had come up on the train, and I went home the same way. Somewhere past Peterborough my phone lit up on the table.

Wednesday. 10. Same door. F.

On the Tuesday I took a second sheet out of the vault at Fenchurch Street.

It was Bonfire Night. At 7 the town let its fireworks off over the pier, and I could hear them from the kitchen with the curtains shut, fwoosh, and then the kids next door started on bangers in the back lane, crack, crack, crack.

A dog 2 gardens along barked at every one of them till 10.

I typed the new sheet into the laptop under the kitchen light. The smoke came in under the back door. It smelt like a struck match.

What was on that laptop now was the steel and the first of the stand. I slept with it on the chair beside the bed and woke at 3 to see that it was still there.

The phone shop had a new sign, red and white, with a deal on it for a phone I had never heard of. The green door at the side was open this time, propped with a fire extinguisher, and the stairs had a strip of new carpet on them.

There was a proper desk at the top where the card table had been, with 3 screens on it, and a radiator under the window that ticked as it warmed, tink, tink. On the wall was a whiteboard with times and numbers on it in red pen.

Felix was eating noodles out of a carton with a plastic fork. He had a new jumper on.

"Mr Mercer." He put the carton down. "I have been up since 4. China."

"What happens in China at 4?"

"Everything. One of their exchanges stopped charging people to trade, and now they trade more than anybody in the world. It is all night, here. I sleep in the afternoons."

The top line on the board said 05:30 · 269. While I watched he wrote 10:30 · 270 at the bottom.

"That is Tokyo," he said. "Tokyo is always the top number, because nobody can get their dollars out of Tokyo for weeks. The people who print the index leave it out now."

He sat down. "What is it this time?"

"Columns. For a roof."

"How much?"

"963,000 for the steel. The order goes in by the 15th, and our secretary wants the money in the day before."

"And?"

"And the stand under the roof after it. About 5 and a half million more, by the end of the month."

He wiped the fork on a napkin. "230," he said. "Geneva pays me 240. The 10 is my living."

I did not argue with it.

"How much can you take today?"

"5 million, if you want. Geneva has more pounds than coin in that client account, and every week it costs them more."

"And in the last week of November?"

"I will not give you a number for 3 weeks from now. They may want more. Perhaps 2 million. Perhaps nothing."

He picked the fork up again. "Since it went past 200 last week, I have had people up these stairs every day who got in at 10 dollars and cannot sleep. If you leave Geneva hungry today, they will fill up from them by Friday."

In the life before, on Monday the 18th of November, a committee of the American Senate sat at 3 in the afternoon in Washington, 8 in the evening here, for its first hearing on internet money.

The Justice Department told them it could be a legal means of exchange, and the head of their central bank had written to them that it might hold long-term promise. It had been about 500 on the Sunday. When the hearing finished, it was 650.

So why not sell him a million today, the steel and a little over, and come back in the last week for the rest? He had just said perhaps nothing.

The quiet man could do his million from the 18th and no more. If Geneva was full, where would 4 and a half million come from by the 29th?

And why not 5, and have it done? Because I knew what the 18th would do to every coin I left on paper.

He had said perhaps 2. With his 2 in the last week and the quiet man’s million, the rest of the stand had to go today: 2 and a half million of it, and the steel on top.

"3 and a half million," I said. "The steel, and 2 and a half of the stand."

"Not 5?"

"Not 5."

"At 5 it is done today, Mr Mercer. At 3 and a half you are waiting on Geneva for 3 weeks, and I cannot help you."

"What fills Geneva up?"

"People like the ones on my stairs. If it keeps going up, more of them come, and every one of them takes some of Geneva’s room."

"And if it stops going up?"

"Then Geneva stops wanting it at all, and that is worse for you."

"Then I wait on Geneva."

"Then that is your risk." He wrote 3.5m on the whiteboard and underlined it. "Steel first?"

"Steel first. When it is in the club’s account, the rest."

I opened my laptop on the corner of his desk. He rang the solicitor in the City, and I typed while he talked.

For 20 minutes after I sent the first piece, the steel was neither on my laptop nor in the club’s bank. I sat with my hands between my knees and listened to the radiator, and did not look at the whiteboard.

At 20 past 11 Maureen rang.

"963,000," she said. "From the same solicitor as in the spring. Is that the steel?"

"That is the steel. 2 more coming."

"I will stay at my desk."

The second piece landed at 10 past 12 and the third at 20 to 1. Nobody from the bank rang. Margaret had sent them a copy of the solicitor’s letter in October, before they could ask for it.

"That is the 3," Maureen said, the last time she rang. "3,500,000."

Felix walked me to the top of the stairs.

"If Geneva has room in the last week, I will tell you," he said. "If it has not, I will tell you that as well."

"When?"

"When they tell me."

There were burnt rocket sticks in the gutter all along the Mile End Road from the night before, and the bus shelter outside the shop still smelt of them.