Read Chapter 23: Redwood's Endgame

The text on James’s phone was unsigned, the number blocked. It read simply: *Your sister likes the taste of chloroform. Drop the case or we drop her. You have until full time tomorrow. We will know if you talk to police.*

James read it three times, the words not quite landing, then he was moving. He slammed through the archive room door where Whitmore’s old paperwork had been boxed after the leak, his hands shaking as he tore through banker’s boxes. Amara. His sister. The journalist who was supposed to be landing at Heathrow with evidence against the deputy minister. She had flown into their trap instead.

One of Whitmore’s boxes spilled across the floor, receipts and match programmes fluttering. James froze. He’d been through these files before, looking for financial records, but he’d missed it. A photograph, tucked into the lining of an old leather-bound fixture book. The photo showed Whitmore, younger, standing in front of a wall safe with a triumphant grin. The safe was half-hidden behind what looked like a trophy cabinet, the angles of the room unmistakable.

James knew that room. The old director’s office, now storage for the club’s historic silverware.

He ran.

The trophy cabinet scraped across the floorboards with a sound like tearing wood. Behind it, the wall was discoloured—a rectangle of newer paint where a safe had been. James grabbed a fire extinguisher from the corridor and drove it against the cheap plaster, once, twice, until chunks of it crumbled. The safe was behind it, boxy and black, industrial keypad.

He didn’t have the combination. But he had Marcus Webb’s bank records, and he had Whitmore’s birthday from his HR file. He punched in the numbers. The lock beeped, rejected. He tried Whitmore’s wife’s name, his debut year, the date the club won its last trophy. Each time the green light blinked angrily.

His phone buzzed. Another message: a photo. Amara, blindfolded, duct tape across her mouth, sitting in what looked like the back of a van. The timestamp was from two minutes ago. James let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. She was alive. For now.

“Think,” he whispered. “Think like Whitmore.”

Whitmore had been a coward, but he’d been a prepared coward. He’d kept backups of everything—the leak showed that much. He wouldn’t trust a number he could forget. He’d use something permanent.

James looked down at the fixture book still clutched in his hand. Whitmore’s handwriting on the inside cover: *League Table 1987*. But it wasn’t a table. It was a string of numbers, ten digits, written in a child’s neat script. James had assumed it was someone’s phone number, some old contact. He keyed it in.

The lock clicked. The door swung open.

Inside were cash boxes, but more importantly, bound folders: bank statements, offshore accounts, transfer records with signatures he recognised—Pierce, Whitmore, and crucially, digital timestamps showing the club’s own finance office had processed payments to unnamed shell companies. This was everything. Hard evidence that the consortium had bled the club dry, laundered their betting money, and engineered the fixtures.

“Still useful if I’m dead,” James muttered. He swept the folders into his coat.

His phone rang. A withheld number.

“You found the safe,” a voice said. Not Pierce. Younger, harder. An operative. “You’re smarter than they said. But it doesn’t matter. She’s not in London anymore. She’s on a boat off Grimsby, waiting for a cargo ship to Rotterdam. You have the papers?”

“I have the money paper trail,” James said. “I have evidence that would bury every one of you.”

“Then you know the trade. Come alone to the marina. Bring the originals. We watch you burn them. She walks free. Your game tomorrow? Play it. Win it. Then the club is yours, and our problems are gone.”

“I don’t sign anything,” James said.

The line went dead.

James stood in the ruined office, the weight of the folders pressing against his chest, and fought the urge to call the NCA. But the message had been clear: they would know. They always knew—Whitmore had proven that much. Someone on the inside had been feeding them every move.

He walked out of the club and drove to the marina, not to the police station. The night air bit at his skin as he parked overlooking the dark water. A single boat, lights off, bobbed at the end of the pier.

Amara was on that boat. Of that he was certain.

He also knew the moment he burned these papers, he had nothing. The midnight deadline tomorrow would hit, the consortium would take the training ground, and his sister would still be expendable. They wouldn’t let her go. The evidence wasn’t just his leverage. It was her leverage.

He tapped out a message to Danny Calder, the captain, who’d organised the players to refuse transfers. One word: *Tomorrow.*

The boat’s cabin light flickered. A silhouette appeared at the stern, gesturing for James to come forward with the papers.

James gripped the folders. He had the safe’s contents. He had the truth. And in four hours, when the match began, he would have ninety minutes to expose everything.