Read Chapter 17: After the Fall

The knock came at five in the morning, hard and insistent, like the club itself was trying to break down his door. James was already awake, sitting on the edge of his hotel bed in yesterday's shirt, the television muted on a looping news ticker that kept flashing Reeves's name.

He opened the door to find Rachel, his head of football operations, looking like she hadn't slept either. Behind her, a cluster of first-team players filled the corridor, still in training kit, as if they'd come straight from the ground.

"They heard," Rachel said. "They want to hear it from you."

James looked past her at the faces. Captain Tom Mercer stood at the front, his jaw set. Behind him, the younger players looked lost, boys pretending to be men in a game that had just shown them exactly how dirty it could get.

"Conference room," James said. "Fifteen minutes. Get the rest of the squad."

He showered in four minutes, dressed in the only suit he'd brought that wasn't wrinkled, and stood before the full first-team squad and backroom staff at five forty-five. The room smelled of Deep Heat and fear.

Mercer spoke first. "They're saying he killed himself because of the investigation. That you pushed him."

"I didn't push him." James kept his voice level. "And I don't believe he killed himself. There were marks on his windowsill, scratches, like someone was trying to pull themselves up while someone else was holding them down."

A murmur rippled through the room. A young midfielder, Danny Osei, looked like he might be sick.

"Nail marks," James continued. "The kind you leave when you're fighting for your life. Reeves was fighting. Someone staged his death to look like a suicide, and they did it to shut him up before he could talk about what he knew."

"Why should we believe you?" The voice came from the back. Liam Croft, the club's highest earner, a striker whose goals had kept them in the league for three seasons. His arms were crossed, his face hard. "All we've heard for weeks is you going after dead men and secret files. And now people are actually dying. Reeves is dead. A load of players from the old regime are implicated. The League's about to hammer us. What's left, James? What's the endgame?"

James walked toward him, stopping a few feet away. "The endgame is that this club doesn't die. Not on my watch, and not on yours."

"Reeves is already dead. The club is in the ground."

"Reeves died because he knew something. Because the people behind this—the same people who've been skimming funds, laundering money through transfers, running illegal agent deals that we're now being punished for—they needed him gone before the League's investigation got any deeper."

"So what do we do? Play on? We've got a points deduction coming. We've got no money. The fans are outside the stadium right now, and half of them think you're either a hero or the man who got our CFO killed."

James pulled a chair into the center of the room and stood on it. From here, he could see every face. Forty-one players. Twenty-three staff. A club on its knees.

"This club was founded in 1888 by dockworkers from the East End who pooled their wages to buy a strip of land and a set of red shirts. They didn't have money. They didn't have power. They had a conviction that something worth building was worth fighting for. That conviction carried this club through two world wars, through relegation, through bankruptcy in the nineties, through everything this league has thrown at it for over a century."

He paused, letting the names sink in.

"Those dockworkers didn't know about agent fees or sponsorship clauses or financial fair play. But they knew what I know, and what you know: that this club is not a balance sheet. It's not a portfolio asset. It's a community. It's the kid in the stands who's never missed a home game. It's the old man in the pub who watched his father play in the fifties. It's the families who scrimp and save for season tickets because this team is theirs in a way that nothing else is."

Mercer was nodding slowly.

"And the people who are trying to take it from us? They don't care about that. They never have. To them, this is just a vehicle for moving money. A way to clean dirty cash through transfer fees and sell-on clauses. They think we're too broken to fight back. That we'll accept whatever deal they offer because we're desperate."

He stepped down from the chair, landing softly on the floor.

"I'm not asking you to trust me. I'm asking you to trust yourselves. To remember why you put on this shirt every week. Reeves was murdered because he had answers. I'm going to get those answers. And when I do, I'm going to bring this whole rotten house down around the people who built it."

He looked at Croft. "You've got a game on Saturday. I need you to play like those dockworkers built this club for you. Because they did."

Croft held his gaze for a long moment, then gave a single nod.

"Now get out of here," James said. "Train hard. Be ready."

The room cleared slowly, players filing out in twos and threes, some stopping to shake his hand on the way. Rachel lingered until the last one had gone.

"That was good," she said. "Did you mean it?"

"Every word." He ran a hand through his hair. "Except the part about having answers. I don't. Not yet."

"You'll find them."

"I'm running out of time. The board's postponed the vote until tomorrow, but Pierce is still circling, the League's still breathing down our necks, and now there's a dead man in the building who I'm pretty sure was killed by someone on our own payroll."

Rachel's phone buzzed. She glanced at it, then looked up sharply.

"It's Eddie."

James took the phone. "Tell me you've got something."

"Maybe." Eddie's voice was tinny through the speaker. "I found an old contact in Madrid who says he's seen a man matching Marcus Webb's description. Runs a quiet bar near the Atocha station. Uses the name Martínez now. Doesn't talk much, doesn't leave the neighborhood, pays cash for everything."

"You're sure it's him?"

"Not sure. But my contact described a scar over his left eyebrow. Webb had one from a playing accident in the nineties. It was in his old club file."

James checked his watch. The board vote was scheduled for tomorrow at eight fifteen. Pierce's meeting right after. If he went to Madrid and came back empty-handed, he'd have wasted his last shot.

"Book me a flight," he said.

"James—" Rachel started.

"He's the key. Every thread leads back to him. Reeves is dead. Foley is dead. Daniel's mother is dead. Marcus Webb is the only one left who knows where the bodies are buried, because he helped bury them."

"You're walking into a trap," she said.

"Maybe. But it's the only lead we've got." He turned to the phone. "Eddie, send me the address. I'll be on the first flight out of Heathrow."

The flight landed in Madrid at nine forty-five. James took a taxi to Atocha, walked the remaining three blocks through narrow streets that smelled of coffee and exhaust, and found the bar just before eleven.

It was called Bar Deportivo, a cramped room with dark wood, a worn counter, and a handful of old men nursing small beers. Football scarves hung from the rafters—clubs from across Spain, and in the corner, almost hidden, a single red scarf with a crest James recognized.

He ordered a coffee and waited. Ten minutes later, a door at the back opened and a man stepped out. He was in his late fifties, grey-haired, with the build of someone who'd once been an athlete now gone soft. He walked behind the counter and began wiping glasses without looking at James.

"You're a long way from London," the man said in Spanish-accented English.

"You're a long way from the Premier League."

The man's hand paused on the glass. Then he set it down and finally looked at James.

"Who're you?"

"James Okafor. Sporting director of West Ham United."

Marcus Webb's face flickered, and for a moment James saw the scar over his left eyebrow, pale and thin against his tan.

"You're the one who's been poking around," Webb said. "The one who found my son."

"I found him in a warehouse in Rotterdam. Chained to a pipe because you sold him to people who thought he knew more than he did."

Webb's jaw tightened. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Then tell me. Tell me what really happened to your wife. Tell me why you faked your own death. Tell me who you're protecting, because it sure as hell isn't your son."

The old man's eyes dropped to the counter. He picked up the glass he'd been wiping and set it down again, then reached under the bar and pulled out a bottle of whiskey, pouring himself a shot with a hand that wasn't quite steady.

"You want the truth?" he said, not looking up.

"That's the only thing I'm here for."

Webb drank the whiskey in one swallow, then finally met James's eyes.

"Then you better sit down. This is going to take a while."