THE GLORY AND THE GREED

A Powerful Football Novel

THE GLORY AND THE GREED is a Norman Giller novel about the glamour, the tension, the traumas and the corruption of football at the top Take THE CHAIRMAN, who is rich, revengeful and ruthless ... his WIFE, trapped, desperate and in love with another man ... THE MANAGER, with a personal crisis about to engulf him as his team pushes for promotion to the Premier League ...

THE PLAYER, a genius with a ball at his feet, a fool with a glass in his hand ...

And THE AGENT, handing out hundreds of thousands of pounds in bungs ... and you have a mixture for an explosive cocktail of a book about the modern game of football that is as fresh as today’s headlines.

A story told by an author who knows the truth. Norman Giller’s 92 previous books include collaborations with footballing legends like Gordon Banks, Sir Geoff Hurst, George Graham, Billy Wright, Kevin Keegan, Tommy Docherty, plus 19 books in harness with Jimmy Greaves. He knows the game from the inside.

In this powerful novel he tells it as it is, with the real identities changed to protect the innocent and to avoid legal fisticuffs with the guilty.

This is an eBook adaption of The Glory and the Greed ahead of the paperback version yet to be published. © Norman Giller 2012 You are entitled to just one downloaded version for your payment and it is illegal to pass on a copy or the link code to anybody else.

For best results, read it on screen from this base with the auto turning screen facility; alternatively you can download it and read in full screen mode on Acrobat Reader (If you do not have the program, it is available as a free download from www.adobe.com) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the Publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue for this title will eventully be available from the British Library ISBN 978-0-9567711-0-0 Typeset and designed for the screen by NMG Enterprises, Dorset, UK All the main characters and events in this novel are the creation of author Norman Giller’s imagination, and any resemblance to any real people or events are purely coincidental.

Warning: Please note that the book contains ‘industrial’ language and adult themes.

It is the season after next, and United are battling for promotion to the Premier League.

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 1. THE CHAIRMAN

HARVEY SLATER was surprised at how emotional he felt as the giant wrecker ball swung through 37 Marstell Street and in minutes flattened the council house where he had been born in the middle of one of the last flying-bomb attacks on London. The Blitz bombardment earlier in the war had made a mess of the nearby docks alongside Tower Bridge, but had missed Marstell Street. Now Slater’s demolition workers were succeeding where Hitler’s bombers failed. They were razing his street, his birthplace to the ground to make way for a football stadium. His football stadium.

He lifted his glass of malt whisky in a silent toast as he watched the beginning of the destruction from the comfort and leather-laden luxury of the back seat of his burgundy Rolls Royce.

‘Sorry to see it go, sir?’ Tompkins asked, the shiny peak of his chauffeur’s cap glinting in the strong March morning sunshine that signalled the approach of spring.

‘No, the place was a bloody slum,’ Slater replied, ignoring the tears stinging the back of his eyes. ‘Just think what’s going to be standing in its place. The greatest bloody football ground in Europe.’

He pushed a button in his armrest and the communication window between he and Tompkins slid silently closed. Slater wanted to be alone with his thoughts.

It had taken two years of the toughest negotiations of his life to get to this point. First of all there had been interfering Dockways county councillors, who had opposed his plan for a reconstructed United stadium. They claimed the docklands area was no place for a football club and that it should be relocated somewhere in deepest Kent. Slater silenced them by organising a petition from die-hard United supporters, who threw in a threat about where their next council election votes would go if the rebuilding plans were not passed. A little matter of £120,000 spread between six planning committee councillors further guaranteed the chances of the plans being voted through.

Slater smiled to himself as he recalled what he had dubbed, The Night of the Long Envelopes. The loyal Tompkins had driven him to the homes of each of the six councillors at the dead of night to personally dish out their sweeteners in readies. Slater joked that he delivered better backhanders than Roger Federer.

‘Backhand’ Slater was a nickname that had stuck with him from the time in the 1960s when, still in his early twenties, he started out as manager of the then unknown pop group, The Dock Rockers. He had failed an audition to play with the group because he could stretch to only two of the three chords that accompanied their songs, ripped off from a little Liverpool outfit called The Beatles. Slater volunteered to organise booking their gigs, and took over as unofficial manager. In those days he was known as Dick Slater, but he changed his name to Harvey because he felt it sounded more suited to show business.

He took his managerial responsibilities beyond the call of duty when he manoeuvred himself into a leg-over situation with the startlingly ugly daughter of the owner of the Playdisc record label. She celebrated the loss of her virginity by talking her father into giving The Dock Rockers a recording test. Slater took the demo disc, of a song called We Love to Love Love Love, to pirate radio DJ Johnny Hawke, who was enormously underwhelmed by it until the persistent manager pushed a fistful of fivers into his pocket along with a sheet of LSD tablets.

Hawke made We Love to Love Love Love his record of the week, introducing it with the line, ‘I just love love love it.’ This illicitly purchased air time, coupled with a team of the band’s relatives and friends driving

around the country buying the record, was enough to push the disc not only into the Top 10 but all the way to number one.

The Dock Rockers, with Slater now the official manager, had four successive Top 10 hits before disbanding after the lead guitarist had been arrested for putting a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl into something more permanent than their fan club. Slater had shrewdly and slyly negotiated himself fifty per cent of all profits, and made enough during their eighteen months of fame to start a property-developing business.

By the time he was thirty, Slater – then into platform shoes, multicoloured shirts and garish kipper ties – owned six London development sites and had made his first million. He loved the platform shoes because they raised him effectively above his five foot five inches, and when the fashion died out he kept his new-found stature by having discreetly raised shoes made exclusively for him. Slater knew that behind his back people mocked his short physique, but he had the satisfaction of being bigger than any of them where it really mattered, in the wallet. He also knew that none of them would dare ridicule him in his hearing because they feared his temper that, when uncorked, even frightened himself. Just a month earlier he had completely lost control and wrecked the boardroom of his construction company office when his directors, hand-picked as ‘yes men’, had the temerity to try to block his attempt to transfer the company’s deposit account to United.

As he watched the wrecker ball thunder down into the walls of 39 Marstell Street, next door to his old home, he winced at the memory of Joyce Shenton, and he found himself wishing that she was still in the house as the roof came crashing down. Joyce had been his childhood sweetheart, and he and her brother, Jack, used to go regularly to stand on the terraces at the United ground that was just a goalkick’s distance from their adjoining Marstell Street houses. Slater married Joyce when he was twenty-three. It was to be one of the costliest mistakes of his life. She caught him out in a meaningless affair with one of his secretaries, and went for the jugular. They divorced after a stormy eight-year marriage and she managed to take much of his first million with her, along with their son, Sam. This hurt him much more than being parted from his money. He had settled with Joyce away from the courtroom after she had

threatened to go to the Inland Revenue and/or the police with secretly compiled files she had kept of his back-door deals. ‘Thanks for the lesson in how to do business,’ was her parting shot.

Slater continued his close links with her brother, who ran the construction division of his development company. Jack Shenton had thought the divorce would have meant his being kicked into touch, but Slater told him: ‘I never let emotion get in the way of business. Anyway, I want you pissing out of my tent not into it. Like your sister, you know too much about my business dealings.’

It was Shenton who had led directors of the construction company in their revolt against his plans to switch the deposit funds to United.

Slater had already decided that Jack’s days of feeding off his fortune were numbered. Shenton would go the way of his sister when the time was right.

From the day of his divorce, Slater played everything so close to his chest that nobody but he himself knew what, where and with whom he was dealing. By the mid-1970s he was a multi-millionaire, with his fortune spread out in a maze of off-shore accounts.

He was sick of a Labour government that was allowing him just sixpence of every pound profit that he dared show. The winter’s day in the 1970s that he was unable to bury his mother because of a strike by cemetery workers was the day he decided to quit Britain. He realised that his mother was the only woman he had truly loved. She had brought him up virtually single handed after his father, also called Dick, had been killed in an accident at the docks in the first year after the war. His mother had received an insurance pay out of £1,750, which she put into a trust for her son. It helped him launch The Dock Rocker, and to buy his first property, a run-down terraced house that he had renovated before selling it at one hundred per cent profit. For the last ten years of her life his mother lived in a luxury bungalow that he bought for her in the exclusive area of Meads in Eastbourne, but she always pined for ‘the good old days’ of Marstell Street.

After finally burying her in the same East London cemetery where his father lay, Slater sold his opulent townhouse home in Regent’s Park and moved to Majorca, where he bought a sprawling villa for himself,

two tourist hotels and a British-based travel agency. The package holiday business hit a peak, and he made another killing. Jack Shenton took over the running of his British property companies, and with the arrival of the Thatcher government they started to boom again.

In 1980 Slater found himself coming under the spell of Gloria Tillis, an American travel writer who was in Majorca for a feature she was compiling on Palma. They married in 1981 and divorced in 1983. She took one of the hotels in settlement. He realised that he had been a sitting target for Gloria, who had felt attracted only to his wallet. ‘From now on,’ he silently vowed, ‘I will screw women but never let them screw me.’

Slater liked the sounds coming from the Thatcher government so much that in 1985 he returned full time to Britain. He bought a flat in Mayfair and a Regency manor house in Brighton, and started to take some of the workload off Jack Shenton. Then, what he considered the best thing that had ever happened to him, his son, Sam, came back into his life. They were reunited after Sam had walked away from his mother because, he claimed, she was putting too many restrictions on him. Joyce had become an alcoholic recluse after losing most of her money in the Lloyds Names scandal that made holes in the fortunes of many celebrity investors. Slater had refused to bail her out. The file evidence she had on him was long out of date, and as far as he was concerned she was getting the deal from the devil that she deserved.

Sam Slater was twenty-two, the same age Harvey had been when he first managed The Dock Rockers He had been public school educated, and openly winced at his father’s unadulterated Cockney tones and habitual swearing that had been no handicap to him in the free-and-easy sixties, when the likes of David Bailey, Twiggy and Michael Caine were the style icons. ‘It ain’t how you talk in the business world that matters, son,’ Slater told him. ‘It’s the sound your money makes that’s the only thing what matters. I can make more noise than half of those fucking City wankers put together.’

He put his son on two of his boards as a junior director, bought him a yuppie penthouse apartment overlooking the Thames in Wapping and started going with him to watch Sam’s favourite team play football. This was how Slater became re-united with United.

Sam got fed up hearing his father tell him how he had been born just a goal kick away in Marstell Street, and how he had watched them when they could really play football. ‘They was in the First Division then,’ he explained, crunching the grammar gears. ‘Right through the fifties and sixties, they was up there with Man United, Wolves, Liverpool, Everton, Man City, Arsenal, Spurs and Leeds. They could ’old their own against teams with players like Best, Law and Charlton, Moore, Hurst and Peters and Blanchflower, Greavsie, White and Mackay. Now look at ’em. Down in the Fourth Division and playing a load of old bloody rubbish. I’ve seen better football on ’ackney Marshes.’

‘They had their best years in the seventies,’ Sam countered. ‘That’s when I first started supporting them. They had three great seasons in the First Division when Roy Masters was skipper. United have never had a better player. He could make the ball sit up and talk.’

From watching United once a month, it soon became once a week – home and away. A hobby was becoming an obsession. It was Sam who said quite casually one afternoon in the spring of 1989 following a crushing 3-0 home defeat by Darlington in front of a crowd of barely three thousand, ‘D’you know what, Dad. You like this club so much, you should buy it.’

‘I can think of better ways of wasting my money than chucking it into a football club,’ Slater replied. ‘That’s the fast track to bloody bankruptcy.’

Slater had a motto: ‘Take risks with other people’s money, never your own.’ Football would be too big a gamble. Anyway, he was too busy smartly side-stepping the ramifications of the recession to give serious thoughts to investing in the bottomless pit of a football club.

A thunderbolt of change in his thinking came in the summer of 1991 when he read that the top clubs had agreed on a breakaway Super League.

A Premier League. It would kick off in 1992, and television companies were fighting each other for the rights to screen the matches.

The remaining Football League clubs, including United, would continue in three divisions, with Premier League places as an inducement for the three top clubs in the new First Division after play-offs. Slater had seen the way television money had revolutionised sport in the United States,

where he was a frequent visitor on business. His balance sheet of a brain told him that the same was about to happen in English football.

Now he suddenly did like United so much he wanted to buy the club.

He put his accountants to work to find out the exact financial position of United. It was perilous. The club was £3 million overdrawn at the bank, and the ground was mortgaged. Even with one of the lowest wage bills in the League – £76,000 for fourteen full-time professionals plus £35,000 for the manager and his assistant – the club was losing £1,000 a week on average gates of 3,700. Slater knew from his early supporting days that there was a potential for a regular 40,000 attendance right slap there in the heart of London.

Quietly, and within the space of twenty-four hours, he bought out the shares of three of the club’s four directors for an all-in £90,000. They thought Christmas had come early because they considered their shares worthless in a club on the brink of bankruptcy. Slater made his move while Crispin Tomley-Smith, the long-serving club chairman and holder of 51 per cent of the shares, was on holiday in the Caribbean. He flew out to Barbados to meet the chairman, and told him he was prepared to take on United’s debts and the club for a nominal fee.

Tomley-Smith, an octogenarian who had inherited his shares from his father, said that it was a matter of family honour that he would not give up his interest in United and that he intended passing the club on to his son. From his sniffy attitude, Slater realised that the Old Etonian looked on him as ‘a vulgar nouveau’.

Slater explained that he wanted to buy the club for his son even though it meant an obscene loss of money. He sweetened the old boy with a discreetly delivered back hand that contained a briefcase holding £120,000 in used banknotes. As far as the official books were concerned, the transaction showed that Tomley-Smith had agreed to pass over his shares and the club’s crippling debts in return for the United presidency and a Havana cigar worth five pounds.

Harvey Slater was the new owner of United.

He installed Sam Slater, barely thirty, as one of the youngest chairmen in the League, with himself as the chief executive and Jack Shenton as the vice-chairman. The first appointment they made for United’s relaunch

into the new Third Division was Sam’s boyhood hero, Roy Masters, as the manager. He was lured from his job in Spain with a salary of £150,000 a year, which was more than the entire annual wage bill that they had inherited. Masters was being paid Premier League money down in the Third Division. He was given a four year contract, and was told that money was no object in the bid for promotion. The long-term target, the only target, was the Premier League.

While Slater watched Marstell Street being reduced to rubble, his son was squeezing the last moments of fun from an all-night rave at his penthouse apartment. Sam was sandwiched in bed between two lap dancers he had hired to entertain his party guests, who ranged from old schoolboy pals now flying high in the City to low-billing soap actors attracted by his plentiful supply of cocaine.

Five United players had accepted his invitation to this Wednesday night/Thursday morning bash, and now just one was left. Jairdono, the club’s top marksman, had made it a foursome in the bed and was trying to score for the third time since joining the party.

He was just starting to lick at the stand-out nipples of one of the appreciative girls when Sam shoved him off the bed. ‘Bugger off home you brainless Brazilian,’ he said as Jairdono landed with a bump and grinned drunkenly from the floor. ‘No hat-tricks for you. For goodness sake save something for the match against City on Saturday.’

‘No problemo,’ Jairdono said in his broken English. ‘I could beat British defences with my eyes closed.’

He tried to clamber back on the bed where the two lap dancers were now entertaining each other.

‘Go home,’ Sam ordered. ‘See how you are after a shower. If you don’t feel right phone the club straightaway. Tell them you’re going to miss training because you’ve got a cold.’

‘I always have a cold here,’ Jairdono said. ‘I hate British weather, but I love British women.’

He made another attempt to get back on to the bed, but Sam was now driven by selfish motives to get him out of the apartment.

‘Listen, Jair,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to go. I’m not supposed to have you

players at my parties anymore. You’ll get me shot. Roy Masters will go potty.’

He helped the Brazilian dress, draped his Armani overcoat around his shoulders and then pushed him out of the front door. ‘Drive carefully,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you after the game on Saturday and I’ll get more girls lined up for you. Provided, of course, that we win.’

‘No problemo,’ Jairdono said as he staggered off with his overcoat clutched tightly around him against the sudden invasion by what he considered a freezing March morning.

Sam returned to the bedroom where the two girls had got each other in an orgasmic state and were oblivious to him. He stomped off to the guest bedroom and tried to sleep off the effects of the wild night. As he searched for the release of sleep, he counted the people he hated rather than sheep. For a start, there was his father’s latest wife, Helen. Stuck up cow. Sam knew she was putting the knife into him. She and Uncle Jack Shenton, he was sure, had talked his dad into taking the chairmanship away from him. He had been demoted to just a director’s role after a nightclub party he had given for the United players had got out of hand.

It was not his fault that a couple of them had wanted the same girl. That had led to an almighty punch-up, and the police had been called. There were lines of coke that had still not been snorted, and these were found decorating a marble ledge in the cloakroom. This threatened to become a bigger issue with the police than the brawl, but his father had got him off the hook with a few discreetly dropped back handers.

Sam’s mind wandered to his Uncle Jack. He despised him because of the way he had virtually abandoned his mother, his own sister. She had told him bitterly how her brother had chosen to cut her out of his life so that he could continue to feed off his father after their divorce. Sam was convinced that Shenton and Helen Slater were turning his father against him. Why else would he have taken the chairmanship away from him after all he had done to get him to buy the club?

He had also developed a strong dislike for Roy Masters. Sam idolised him as a player, and he had talked his father into flying out to Spain to sign him as the new United manager. But Masters had turned against him just because he did not like him mixing with the United players. He

seemed to forget that it was his father who paid their wages, and he had never shown Sam any gratitude for getting him the United manager’s job.

The arrogant way he behaved, Sam mused, anybody would think that Masters owned the club. He sensed that the manager had also worked behind his back to get him removed as chairman.

Above all, Sam hated his father. It was a feeling he kept buried because he wanted to take every possible penny from him, but deep down he would never forgive him for the way he had turned his mother into a drunken wreck. She had told him over and over again about his womanising when they were married, and about how he would beat her up in jealous fits of rage. He was showing the same behavioural pattern with his latest wife, and Sam could understand just why he wanted to hit her. She had laughed derisively when he offered to give her what she was obviously missing in bed.

As he finally drifted off into a fitful sleep haunted by images of his enemies, Sam was thinking how he could get Jack Shenton out of the club and Helen Slater out of his father’s life. He was convinced she was a gold digger standing between him and his father’s fortune.

The wrecker ball was now hammering like a giant iron fist into the last house still standing in Marstell Street. Slater’s burgundy Rolls Royce was caked in dust, but he was content sitting and watching the destruction of his past because of what it meant to his future. He had been to see his accountants twenty-four hours earlier, and the news was grim bordering on catastrophic. The Inland Revenue were demanding a £10-million payment in back taxes, and Slater’s vast fortune had been whittled down to just £15-million because of his personal investment in United that now topped £55-million. Even with average thirty thousand crowds that had followed United through from the Third Division to near the top of the First the club was still losing money every week because of an astronomical wage bill. As well as bankrolling the incoming transfers of a squad of international players, Slater had spent another £4.5-million on buying up every house in Marstell Street. He had to pay nearly double the market price for each of the forty-six houses to persuade the people to move out of homes that were practically falling down.

A handful of defiant occupants had held out for months before becoming depressed at living alone in what had become a ghost street of boardedup houses. Slater needed the room to extend United’s present ground that was due to be demolished ready for the construction of a state-ofthe-art stadium that would seat 55,000 spectators under cover. The bank, a supermarket and a conglomerate of sponsors were prepared to put up the money, provided United clinched a place in the Premier League.

If United failed to get promotion, Slater was facing the possibility of personal ruin.

‘Sometimes I think you’re married to United rather than me,’ his third wife, Helen, had said to him that morning just before he set off to the accountants in a preoccupied frame of mind. She was another reason that everything was weighing heavily on him as he witnessed the final moments of Marstell Street.

Despite all the promises he had made to himself about avoiding romantic entanglements, he had fallen hopelessly in love with Helen Foster, a stunningly beautiful former fashion model. She had recently come out of a broken marriage when he first set eyes on her. This vision of beauty called at his Brighton home for a donation to a charity organisation for which she was working, and he was instantly hooked. Helen was fourteen years younger than Slater when they met just after his fiftieth birthday, and within six months they married while on a cruise in the Caribbean.

She had insisted on signing a prenuptial agreement after he had told her how his two previous wives had burrowed deep into his wallet on their way out of his life. Helen wanted to prove that she was not a gold-digger marrying him for his money.

Their marriage had been wonderful for the first year or so, but the passion drained out of it as he became more and more engrossed in the affairs of United. He had quickly got smack-in-the-eye evidence that he could not trust Sam to run the club unsupervised. His son, he discovered, was more interested in acting the playboy than club chairman, and had broken the golden rule of mixing socially with the players. Six of them had got involved in a fight in a nightclub, and it took a flurry of backhanders to keep it out of the press that Sam was among the instigators of the fracas, although he swore on his mother’s life that he had not supplied

any of the players with cocaine. The oath went down with Slater like a lead balloon. ‘The captain must never leave the bridge to mix with the men on the lower decks,’ he told his son. ‘You get too close to the players and they’ll bloody well eat you alive.’ He was just repeating the advice that had been given to him by United manager Roy Masters.

Slater had now taken over the day-to-day running of the club as chairman and chief executive, dropping Sam to a director role until he had proved he had matured enough to take on the responsibility of making executive decisions.

Jack Shenton was too busy trying to hold together the shell of a property business to pay any attention to club matters. Slater had ransacked all his other businesses to prop up United. Time and again Shenton had urged him to find a wealthy partner to help take the strain, but Slater was determined that he, and only he, would benefit from the killing that was to be made by going public once the club was in the Premier League.

Now potential buyers were hovering like vultures. They were not looking to bail Slater out but to buy him out at a rock-bottom price.

Every waking hour was given over to United as the last stretch of the season beckoned, with the club lying second in the First Division table and the Premier League within shooting distance. Slater knew that he was neglecting Helen because of the sheer weight of work at United where ground reconstruction had already started. This had meant closing off half the stadium, and so cutting off half the club’s income. The club shop was barely ticking over as supporters held on to their money ready for the explosion of Premier League football and inevitably increased prices.

Because of his in-born distrust of people, delegation had never been one of Slater’s strongest suits, and he was now paying the price of trying to do everything on his own. He had grown up with the motto that you should retaliate first, convinced that everybody was as driven as he was in squeezing the most out of any opportunity.

Slater often deliberately dropped the names of the notorious Kray Twins into his conversations to give a sense of menace, although he was still at school when the Krays – from down the road at Bethnal Green – were terrorising London’s gangland. He had yet to go down their violent road,

but thought nothing of walking a tightrope with tax avoidance that many would have interpreted as illegal tax evasion. His off-shore accounts were spread far and wide, and he used a different firm of accountants for each pot of gold, so that he was the only one who knew the exact whereabouts of his hidden fortune.

The second he had time to think straight, Slater realised his first priority would need to be to appoint a commercial manager who could maximise the club’s off-pitch earning potential. That would all come together in the Premier League. The income from television companies alone was twenty times that collected down in the First Division, and shirt sponsorship and replica shirt sales would be huge earners. He already had companies queueing to have the new ground in their name as with the Emirates at the Arsenal across London, but Slater was determined to have it called the Harvey Slater Stadium.

He had acquired all the trappings of wealth, but here he was approaching pensionable age able to count his friends and close confidants on the fingers of the Venus de Milo.

In the moments that he could come up for air from the pressures of his work at United, Slater sensed that Helen had become distant to the point where they had little or no lines of communication. He spent more and more time alone at his Mayfair apartment, while she seemed content to potter around at the Brighton house where they had first met.

She detested the world of football, and had no interest whatsoever in the fortunes of United. It led to increasingly furious arguments between them, and in drunken rages he had recently been resorting to hitting her to stop her nagging him about the club and about Sam’s life style. What the hell was that to do with her?

He was finding it difficult to have any sort of reasoned conversation with her, and that natural distrust of his came nagging to the surface as he wondered and worried whether she was having an affair. That was something he would not tolerate. Loyalty came even before love in his book. He had put a private detective on discreet surveillance work, and now he waited for his first report. She would regret it for ever if he caught her cheating on him.

A final cloud of dust rose from the remains of Marstell Street as the

bulldozers attacked the last wall, and a startled Slater thought he was hallucinating as he saw a figure in black coming slowly towards him out of a wreath of dust. He was convinced it was his mother.

The woman, old and bent, walked right up to the Rolls Royce, and Slater’s thumping heart slowed as he realised that it was Mrs Tolchard, who had been one of his mother’s best friends and neighbours when she lived in Marstell Street. He pressed a button, and the rear electric window slid down. Mrs Tolchard pushed her heavily lined face forward until it was filling the window frame. Dust from the destroyed houses formed a light mask on her features and she had the look of an old witch.

‘Dickie Slater,’ she said, her face twisted with hatred, ‘you should be ashamed of yourself. What would your mother say? Look what you’ve gone and done to our street.’

She then spat full in Slater’s face.

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 2. THE MANAGER

ROY MASTERS sat silently and sullenly in the United manager’s office watching a curtain of dust rise above Marstell Street like a shroud. He wondered if the effect was a portent of things to come. Soon after the giant wrecker ball started on its destructive path Masters had received a telephone call that plunged him into a mood of black despair. It was the club doctor, who worked at the local Whitechapel hospital, telling him United’s Brazilian striker, Jairdono, had just been pulled from the wreckage of his crashed sports car and brought in on a stretcher. He had windscreen glass in both eyes and a broken right leg. The fact that he was three times over the legal drink limit and that he had been on his way to his Dockways club apartment after an all-night party was minimal in the United manager’s thoughts. All he could think of was the fact that he had lost his leading goal scorer with just five and a half weeks of the season left. He could not imagine a more depressing situation.

Masters looked at the United calendar on the wall. It showed Thursday, March 16, seven days before the transfer deadline after which no club could register a new player for that season’s League matches. Where was he going to get a replacement of Jairdono’s quality in barely a week? It had taken a three month search of the world leagues to come up with Jairdono, who had arrived six weeks into the current season on a free transfer but at the cost of £65,000 a week in wages plus a personal present from the chairman of £300,000 paid into a bank account in Rio de Janeiro. His silky skills and eye for a half chance had made him an

instant success in the First Division, and he had averaged a goal a game.

It made him worth every penny as he played a prominent part in pushing United to a promotion-challenging position. Now he was lying in a Dockways hospital battling for his sight and with a broken leg. It added, horribly, to an injury list of first-team squad players that was already of crisis proportions.

The first thing Masters did when he got the call from the hospital was telephone his righthand man and coach Geoff Parkinson at United’s Boxleyheath training ground to tell him to take the morning training session on his own. ‘Don’t let on to any of the players what has happened to Jairdono until they’ve finished training,’ he said. ‘I’ll get there as soon as I can, and we’ll sort out what we are going to do for the City game on Saturday. Work on set pieces, with Joe Roper playing Jairdono’s frontstriker role.’ Roper was an industrious, big-hearted player, but he was like a carthorse compared to the thoroughbred Jairdono.

Masters instructed his secretary, Rita, in the outer office that he was not available to speak to anybody from the media. He knew that every football and sports news reporter in London would be descending on the ground when the full facts of the Jairdono incident surfaced. It was a two-edged story guaranteed to pack the front and back pages for days.

Matthew Brinkley, the United club secretary, agreed to put out a brief statement through the Press Association to the effect that Jairdono had been injured in a car crash on the way to the training ground and that he was being treated in St George’s hospital from where a bulletin would be released later in the day. He added the protective line that “United manager Roy Masters will be making no comment until he has the full facts from the player and from the hospital.”

Masters knew that his next call should be to club chairman Harvey Slater on his car phone, but for the moment he could not face it. How was he going to tell him that his Premier League dreams may have ended in the tangled wreckage of an Italian sports car following a party apparently organised by the chairman’s waste-of-space son? It was also severely damaging to a dream of his own.

He had deeply selfish motives for wanting to clinch promotion. It was going to earn him a £500,000 bonus that would help set him up in a

new life. Masters had, in consultation with the special woman in his life, already secretly decided that this would be his last season with United, whether or not they reached the Premier League.

The fact that the woman was Helen Slater, the wife of his chairman, made for what he saw in his flippant way as a fairly complicated scenario.

The romantic intrigue apart, Masters had become disenchanted with the game of football that had been his life, and sick to the stomach of the man he had to call ‘Mr Chairman’. Slater was too much of a Hitlerite character for his taste. He was a little dictator, who wanted all of the glory but none of the grief that went hand in hand with running a major football club.

Alongside the calendar, Masters found himself staring at a framed photograph of himself in United’s blue and white shirt holding up the old Fairs Cup, forerunner of the Uefa Cup. He had been, at twenty-one, the youngest captain to lift the trophy in what had been a memorable season for him. He won the first of his eighty-one England caps, and in the same year married the children’s television presenter Jayne Flynn.

She had gone on to a couch-interviewing role in breakfast television, while he concentrated on orchestrating United in midfield as one of the finest passers of the ball in the League.

Any of today’s footballers transported to that world, he reflected, would have felt they had landed on another planet. His weekly wage in those early 1970s was £110 a week, plus £60 for a win and £30 for a draw. Now, certainly in the Premier League, a footballer would not get out of bed for less than £50,000 a week. Several of the players he knew for certain were picking up more than £100,000 a week, which would have covered an entire team’s wages in his day and left plenty over for the reserves. Even in his First Division team the average wage was more than £10,000 a week.

The football profession, the increasingly cynical Masters believed, had gone mad. It had become an undesirable pressure cooker of a world of the haves and have nots. If you were outside the Premier League, you were a relative pauper, and it was only Harvey Slater’s seemingly bottomless pocket that was keeping United afloat. Masters could not understand how

half the clubs outside the Premier League survived, and he was aware of at least a dozen that were just a bank manager’s call away from closure.

He knew that it was just a question of time before he would be answerable not only to the demands of the chairman and the supporters but also to shareholders, whose one concern about the club would be whether their stocks were rising. United had been a friendly familyrun club when he first joined them as an apprentice professional, and the chairman, the tweed-suited Crispin Tomley-Smith, had been more interested in what wine was being served in the boardroom rather than whether any silverware was in the cabinet. Now he was certain that there was a hidden agenda to float United as a public company the moment they made it into the Premier League. It was, he realised, the only way Slater could get his money back. He had sunk a fortune into the club, and it was not for philanthropic reasons. The bottom line was that the chairman was interested only in profit, and the only way he could make a profit was to have his nose in the Premier League trough.

Masters smiled as he looked at a framed action photograph of himself scoring a winning goal at Wembley. Snapping away at his heels was none other than the legendary Norman ‘Bites Yer Legs’ Hunter. It amused him when today’s players complained about tackles that would have been considered little more than tickles in his day. He had come in at the back end of the careers of notorious hard men like Tommy Smith, Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris and Nobby ‘The Toothless Tiger’ Stiles, and had crossed swords with hit-and-hurt merchants of the calibre of Billy Bremner, Peter ‘Cold Eyes’ Storey and Big Jim Holton [‘He’s six-foot two, got eyes of blue ... Big Jim Holton’s after you,’ they used to chant at Old Trafford].

Masters had the ball skill to keep out of trouble in an era during which the tackle from behind was perfectly legitimate. When you were tackled by a Tommy Smith you felt he was with you for the rest of the week. The pampered, over-paid, over-protected players today did not know what a full blooded tackle was.

He would love to be playing at his peak in today’s game. Even now in his late 40s, he had better ball control than half the players he employed.

His ball skill had first been sharpened in kickabout matches in the street next to the East End block of flats where he had been born and raised.

Nowadays, he never saw kids playing in the traffic-congested streets and he wondered where England’s future footballers would come from. The sad thing for him was the way so many of the English players thought that once they had made it into the first-team they had arrived and had no more room for improvement. Most of the overseas players coming into the English game, he noticed, were anxious to work on their ball skills long after the scheduled training programmes were over, while some of their English counterparts looked for the nearest snooker hall, golf course, betting shop, boozer or bed.

When he had managed the League championship winning Rovers team in the late-1980s, he did it with a side consisting entirely of British-born players. Now few of the major clubs had less than half a dozen foreign players in their squads. He got used to working with a multi-national team when he moved to Spanish club Torrero following an overblown scandal that wrecked his marriage. During an overseas European Cup trip to Germany with Rovers he fell for flattering remarks from a pretty translator, who claimed she was employed by the local club. He finished up in her hotel bed, and the following Sunday discovered he had been the naive victim of what was literally a below-the-belt newspaper set-up.

It turned out that she was a freelance reporter, and the huge front-page banner headline in the Sunday rag trumpeted, ‘Randy Rovers Boss Fails to Score in Bed.’ The reptile of a reporter revealed how she had given him nought out of ten because he failed to rise to the occasion. The story was supported with snatched photographs of him going into the girl’s bedroom. It caused an irreparable rift in what had been a solid marriage to Jayne. She could have just about handled him having the one-night stand, but the tone of the article led to endless ridicule and cost her several television presenter bookings. Every time he went to an away match for the rest of the season, Masters was greeted with sickeningly obscene chants of, ‘Have you got your fucking scoredraws on?’ The foul-mouthed fans were another reason for his disillusionment with the game.

He and Jayne mutually decided to end their childless sixteen-year marriage, and Masters went off to Spain for four years to avoid the blowtorch publicity and pillorying in England. He had been ready to sign

a new contract with Torrero when he got an offer he could not refuse from new United owner Harvey Slater.

The loud, aitch-dropping tycoon descended unannounced on him at his Spanish villa and talked such telephone numbers that he would have been a fool not to have accepted the job as manager of his old club. He had found Slater a man who always put money where his mouth was, and the chairman had supported him all the way in bringing in a procession of highly priced players. In four years, United had won the Third and Second Division championships and were now knocking on the door of the Premier League.

During a champagne celebration of United’s Second Division championship win at the Café Royal, Slater had become incensed when an official from the supporters’ club had made a rambling speech in which he poured praise on the players and Masters, without a single reference to the part played by the chairman. Slater could not contain his rage as he stood up and made an unscheduled speech to the gathering of players, supporters and guests from rival clubs, ‘Never ever forget that it’s my fucking pocket what has paid for this do tonight, for promotion and for every bugger here,’ he said to a suddenly deathly quiet audience. ‘Without me, you’ve got eff all. ’Arvey Slater’s the name. Without me the club’s nothing.’

Masters wished that he could make the excuse that Slater was, as usual, under the influence, but he had barely drunk a glass of champagne. He was just obsessed with it being his show.

It worried Masters that Slater seemed to be almost blindly taking it for granted that United would make it into the Premier League at the first time of asking. As he looked out at the cloud of dust now mushrooming above nearby Marstell Street it emphasised how Slater had dived head first into a multi-million pound ground rebuilding programme, and was digging deeper and deeper into his pocket. Yet promotion was still distinctly more possibility than probability, and the news of Jairdono’s broken leg meant that the Premier League might suddenly be beyond injury-wrecked United.

For all his backing of him as a manager, Masters could not stand Slater and he positively detested his arrogant son whom he knew to be a playboy

coke-head. He had made continual complaints to the chairman about Sam being too close to the players and a bad influence on them, but he could do little wrong in his father’s eyes. ‘Look,’ he told Masters, ‘I’ve lost my boy once, and I’m not going to risk losing him again. The last thing I want to do is drive ’im back into the arms of that lush of a mother of his. ’e’s a good boy at ’eart, and will learn with experience. I’ve told ’im to keep away from the players, but ’e’s a United fan and gets carried away by his enthusiasm.’

Harvey Slater was too motivated by money for the manager’s taste, and he seemed to think that anybody could be bought. ‘Everybody has his price,’ was his favourite saying. He had a matter-of-fact way of dealing with people, and believed that an envelope stuffed with money could solve any problem. Masters hated the fact that he had in effect bought him, and for three successive seasons he had taken the fat rises on offer.

He was now earning £650,000 a year plus bonuses, and was in Slater’s pocket. Only half a dozen managers in the Premier League had a better deal.

Jack Shenton was the only director with whom he had a rapport, and he got the distinct impression that he shared his strictly private view of the two Slaters, father and son. Sam would always refer to him as Uncle Jack, but with a sarcastic edge to his voice. Masters had never known Shenton make any sort of reference to his sister, Sam’s mother, and it was obvious that there was an undercurrent of tension between Jack and his nephew.

Harvey Slater was the only member of the board who made decisions that mattered, and it struck Masters that he would have been happy to run everything – including the team – on his own. He had made the mistake of trying to poke his nose into the team selection process during the first season of Masters being in charge at United. When his manager reacted by offering his resignation he quickly learned that this was one area of the club business where his interference would not be tolerated.

He backed off, but from then on was never slow to make crippling criticisms of the management team and the players when United were beaten. He just could not handle defeat. Slater had made front-page news the previous season after an FA Cup loss to non-League Ryehampton on

a mud-patch of a pitch that made every step a challenge. It was a classic case of mud being a great leveller, and United had literally slipped out of the Cup to a disputed goal that looked yards off-side. Slater, who had arrived at the ground half cut, was close to legless when he burst into the referee’s dressing-room after the match. Masters dived in after him, but not quickly enough to stop his drunken chairman from punching the referee as he sat in the bath. The Football Association called for a full report after the story had been leaked to the press, but, astonishingly, the referee said that it had all been wildly exaggerated and that he and Mr Slater had merely exchanged strong views. Slater was let off with a warning about his conduct, whereas striking a match official would have almost certainly led to a ban from football. It was no surprise to Masters that when he next saw the referee he was driving a spanking new Mercedes. Everybody had their price.

The only thing that Slater had that Masters envied was a beautiful wife.

He had already made up his mind that Helen Slater would be part of the new life that he planned to start at the end of the season. She had an appalling existence with Slater, who liked to keep her under lock and key like a slave, and he knew that he did the unforgiveable. His chairman knocked his wife about. That was a cowardly act that Masters just could not accept. He had seen her with black eyes, and had wanted to beat Slater to a pulp. But, as Helen pointed out, that would have meant sinking to his level. He quietly satisfied himself that at the end of the season he would hand Slater the biggest defeat of his life by taking his wife away from him, and no amount of money would put it right. He and Helen had often discussed their escape plans in bed during their stolen moments together.

The news of Jairdono’s car crash had torpedoed his scheduled afternoon rendezvous with Helen. He looked at his watch and realised it was too early to call her to cancel their date. First of all he would have to bite the bullet and ring her husband. It was not going to be easy telling him that his Premier League plans may have been literally wrecked.

He was just about to ring the chairman’s car phone when Rita came on the intercom to tell him there was an urgent call for him.

‘I know you’ve told me to block all calls,’ she said. ‘But I think you’ll

want to take this one. It’s The Dutchman.’ ‘’Okay, Rita,’ he said. ‘Put him on. Then I must ring the Chairman.’

Rita put Johan Grokke through.

‘It will have to be quick, Johan,’ Masters said. ‘I’ve got my hands full here.’

‘I am calling about the new goal scorer that you now require,’ Grokke said in the precise manner he used as Europe’s leading international football agent.

The manager’s eyebrows shot up as if pulled by invisible strings. ‘How the hell d’you know that?’ he said.’I’ve not even told our club chairman yet.’

‘It is on the Internet, old chap,’ Johan said. ‘Jairdono has unfortunately broken a leg in a car crash. You are looking for a replacement, and you must move quickly. I just happen to have got the perfect man for you.’

There was a pause.

‘Well, go on,’ said Masters. ‘Surprise me.’

‘Dennis Baker.’

Masters was not just surprised. He was stunned.

‘I’ll come back to you as soon as I’ve spoken to the chairman,’ Masters said. ‘Where are you?’

‘My Monte Carlo number. Or my mobile. I will wait for your call. But hurry. Everybody will want to buy Baker. Everybody.’

Masters rang the chairman’s car phone. He got the answering service.

‘Ring me urgently, Mr Chairman,’ Masters said. ‘I’m at the club. We’ve got problems. Big, big problems.’

Over Marstell Street the billowing dust looked even more like a shroud.

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 3. THE PLAYER

DENNIS BAKER’S mouth felt like the bottom of a parrot’s cage. All that red Italian vino on top of the eight or so German lagers had not been a good idea. But what the hell, you only live once and he was determined to enjoy himself. It had been a cracking party, what he remembered of it. He had celebrated Tornado’s Serie A victory over Lazio, and in particular his winning goal, with a pack of English football writers and photographers visiting the Adriatic to make their regular reports on his progress in the Italian league.

The journalists had formed a club, Baker’s Dozen, and they met after every home match at the Belladora nightclub in Romini that had become their unofficial headquarters. Baker was always the guest of honour, and it was agreed that this was one night when everybody was off duty and no accounts of the evening would appear in their newspapers.

They were, however, going to be hard pressed not to break their code of silence after what had developed into yet another night of mayhem and madness that seemed to continually envelop the player variously described as a genius of a footballer and a buffoon of a man. His nickname said it all: Bad Boy Baker.

As he lay still fully clothed on top of his bed in a luxury apartment looking out on the Adriatic, Baker tried to piece together the blurred details of what had gone on in the early hours of that morning. He could vaguely recall the caribineri being called, and something about him being

reported for dropping his trousers in the main piazza. That and stealing the municipal flag from the pole on top of the town hall. How he had managed to get up there, Baker had no idea. Sober, he was terrified of heights. All the photographers had taken flashlight pictures of him scrambling up the pole, and it was the flashing bulbs that had alerted the town hall night porter who in turn called the police. They were going to make him spend the night in jail, but the President and owner of Tornado, Luigi Graziani, just happened to be the mayor’s brother and he was let off with a severe warning.

He seemed to remember the Tornado owner turning purple and screaming something at him about, ‘Finito.’

Baker was into his second season in Italy after his transfer from Rovers for what had proved a giveaway three million pounds. On ability, he was worth at least ten times that. But his off-the-pitch conduct was so wild and undisciplined that few clubs dared touch him, and Rovers were relieved to sell the then twenty-five-year-old Yorkshireman at a cut price even though they were losing their top goal scorer.

He had become one of the Great Untouchables after being dropped permanently from the England team following an appalling incident on the flight home from a World Cup qualifying match in Bulgaria. Baker had managed to fetch up the contents of his previous evening’s liquid meal into the lap of the wife of the head of the Football Association delegation.

It was the latest in a long catalogue of disgraceful behaviour, and it was unanimously agreed that he should never again be allowed to wear the international shirt of England.

That was the hardest punishment Baker had ever had to take during what seemed a life time of warring with authority. Above all else, he loved representing his country and was genuinely proud to play with the three lions on his shirt. But pride was not high on his agenda in other areas after a deprived childhood that could have come out of a Dickens novel.

While at school in his home town of Leeds he had played truant so many times that some of his teachers did not even recognise him. He was only certain to attend on games days when his performances for the school football team were so exceptional that he had scouts from more than twenty clubs queuing at his door.

From as early as nine years of age, Baker knew that he was going to be a professional footballer. He used to sit in front of the television watching England play and would tell his mother, ‘One day that’ll be me scoring for England. Just you see.’

He had no father to talk to. He had never known him. For that matter, neither had his mother. Baker was the product of what was literally a casual one-night stand in which neither partner exchanged names. When she discovered she was pregnant, his mother could remember little of the conception other than that she was very drunk and that the man having his way with her against the wall had a Scottish accent and was, she believed, a travelling salesman.

Baker took his mother’s surname, and his father was registered on the birth certificate as ‘unknown’. It was not the greatest start in life.

Those columnists and experts who queued to condemn Baker’s behavioural problems rarely took into account that from day one he lacked a father’s authority and guidance. His mother had herself been brought up in a children’s home, and there were no uncles or aunts or grandparents to help give him family roots and a sense of direction or of belonging.

He talked the language of the streets that he had picked up while waiting outside pubs for his mother to finish her drinking sessions before taking him home to a cold, cheerless council flat in a run-down area of Leeds.

She allowed him to roam free, and he discovered that his best friend from almost as soon as he could walk was a football. He continually had one at his feet, and could run rings round anybody who tried to take it off him. A football never argued with him or told him what to do. He was its master. Baker may have seemed the stereotype footballer with his clichécluttered speech, but he was unique in the way he could express himself on a football pitch.

After all the freedom and casual discipline of his childhood, it came as a shock to him to find that when he started playing in organised school matches there were rules to be followed and obeyed. Team-mates with a third of his ability expected him to pass the ball to them, and schoolmasters who could hardly kick a ball told him where he should position himself.

‘Tackle back!’ they used to scream at him from the touchline. ‘Pick up your man.’ All Baker ever wanted was to have the ball at his feet.

Worst of all, there was a nasty man in black telling him what he could and could not do. It was the beginning of his calamitous collision with referees. Throughout his career he could never get on the same wavelength as the man with the whistle. His favourite trick when in possession was to rush directly at the referee and nutmeg him, pushing the ball through his legs and then dancing around him. Spectators loved it, but referees saw it as undermining their authority. Even in school matches, he was sent off so many times for showing dissent that he did not win a single representative honour even though he was far and away the most prodigiously talented schoolboy footballer of his generation.

It was not until he joined Rovers as an apprentice that he started to get some discipline into his game, and to harness his talent. He elected to join Rovers because their chief scout had organised the purchase of a new house for his mother by putting down a deposit, and an interest-free mortgage was set up that would be paid from Baker’s salary once he was on first-team wages. Others had offered suites of furniture, holidays, a motor car, and even envelopes stuffed with money. His mother had accepted one of the envelopes, and there was an almighty row when he decided to join Rovers rather than the club that had paid the £5,000 in fifty pound notes.

‘You’re reet daft, you are,’ he told the scout in an accent as thick as Yorkshire pudding ‘You’ve bought my mam with that money, not me.’

The main reason he chose Rovers was that they had just appointed one of his heroes, Roy Masters, as manager. He had watched Masters in action for England and United, and admired his skilful way of playing.

His beautifully weighted passes were always perfectly placed, and Baker used to copy the way he would bend the ball round a defender into the path of a team-mate.

Masters was one of the few people who could get through to Baker with commonsense talk. He would quietly explain to him that football was a team game and that he needed to accept that he had a responsibility to his team-mates. But while making him conform, Masters never shackled his individual flair and encouraged him to be selfish in the penalty area where he had the rare gift for being able to make space for himself. ‘Scoring goals is about the law of averages,’ he told Baker. ‘If you have five shots you have more chance of hitting the net than if you have only three. With

your natural finishing ability, I want you to take every opportunity to shoot when you’re inside the box. But outside the penalty area I expect you to play your part in the team effort.’

Baker started to adapt his game under the careful scrutiny of Masters and coach Geoff Parkinson, and by the time he was twenty he had developed into the most prolific goal scorer in the First Division. Defenders found out that the only way to stop him was by using illegal methods, and they soon discovered how to make him lose his short-fuse temper. The fastest way was just to breathe the word ‘bastard’ in his hearing. He was shown more cards than a magician’s assistant, and it was only the protective support of Masters that prevented him getting kicked out of the game.

When Masters moved to Spain, Baker lost his way and he looked for an answer to his problems in the bottom of a glass. It was an inherited reaction to any crisis in his life. Baker’s mother had died in a home for incureable alcoholics when he was into his third year at Rovers.

His humiliation over being axed from the England team after the worst of his drinking disgraces was a disaster waiting to happen, and Rovers could not get rid of him quickly enough when Tornado came in for him with their bid of three million pounds. It was a deal set up by his agent Johan Grokke, a Dutchman recognised as the top international players’ representative in Europe. Grokke had organised a £500,000 ‘loyalty’ bonus, to be paid once Baker had completed two years with Tornado. He also received an annual salary of £750,000, plus a £3,000 bonus every time he scored a goal. His goal against Lazio was the twenty-fifth he had scored since signing for them. That was an extra £75,000 in his kitty, but Baker had seen little of it because of the number of fines he collected for indiscipline on and off the pitch.

The Italian newspapers had a love-hate relationship with Baker, and called him the English Circus Clown. Even the best English-speaking journalists among the Italian football writers struggled to understand his heavy Yorkshire accent when interviewing him, and shrugged at such comments as, ‘Ref’s a reet pillock.’ They loved his footballing skill and his goals, but hated his loutish conduct on and off the pitch.

The English newspapers treasured him because of his circulation value.

He was what was known in Fleet Street as ‘good copy’. Any Dennis Baker

story was always certain to help sell papers. Those football reporters who got close to him described him as an amiable man-child who wanted to be liked by everybody. He had an impulsive, generous nature that spilled over into foolishness, and he was an easy touch for anybody with a hard luck story to tell. Baker was always first and last to the bar, and was continually getting up to schoolboy pranks, mainly because he found it easier to try to make the hangers-on in his company laugh than concentrate on in-depth conversations to which he could make little contribution. It never used to bother him that he was usually humiliating one person to make everybody else around him laugh at their expense.

A typical Baker trick was to superglue the sleeve of an unsuspecting customer to the bar. Then he would nudge-nudge-wink-wink his drinking pals into watching the result of his childish behaviour. He was completely lacking in judgement, and had once gone right over the top with a prank involving a team-mate, whose car bumper he tied to the collar of a dog belonging to the Rovers groundsman. The dog was dragged yelping for one hundred yards before his team-mate was waved down. The incident was reported in the newspapers, and Baker had to make a donation of ÂŁ10,000 to the RSPCA to stop them taking him to court. Dog lovers throughout the country never forgave him, and he was bombarded with letters of protest.

To the immature Baker, it was just a joke that had gone wrong.

He was thrust even more into the spotlight when he moved to Italy, and the English journalists who were willing company with him at the bar were unable to protect him from their editors at home They wanted headline-making stories about his reckless life in the fast lane, and it did not take too much digging to find them. There was a regular column in one of the Sunday papers called, ‘The Crazy World of Bad Boy Baker’, and Brian Higgins, an English freelance journalist based in Romini, had been able to swap his Fiat for a Ferrari since the Mad Englishman had dropped on to his patch.

Tornado put two full-time minders on duty with him to try to curb his outrageous behaviour, but he found it easy to give them the slip and he was time and again poured out of Romini nightclubs and bars. Tornado coach Gianni Benvenuti was at a loss what to do with him. He was far and away his most consistent goal scorer, but he was a bad influence on the rest of the

team because he was continually missing training sessions. Benvenuti kept fining him, but the infuriating Englishman just shrugged, smiled and said bewilderingly, ‘Eeh, it’s only brass.’ He had worn out three interpereters, who were unable to get to grips with his Yorkshire dialect. ‘What is this “eeh ’eck’s the like”?’ wailed one when giving up the job.

Baker had found a way around his initial homesickness by making constant calls home — to a London bookmaker. He would watch the horse racing on satellite television, and gamble hundreds, sometimes thousands of pounds just so that he could have a cozy chat with whoever took his bet. In no time at all he was heavily in debt to the bookmaker.

Living up to his Bad Boy Baker nickname, he naturally managed the triple whammy that kept the tabloid newspapers deliriously happy in the field of alliteration: betting, booze ... and birds. Baker, as if trying to follow in the footsteps of his unknown dad, had fathered two illegitimate children during brief affairs while with Rovers, and he had Italian fathers with shotguns warning him to stay away from their daughters. He had paid out thousands in paternity costs, and had at least two other girls claiming, perhaps falsely, that he was the father of their babies.

There were always football groupies throwing themselves at Baker, and he made no attempt to throw them back. It was hardly his looks that attracted the girls. His nose was spread across his face after he had been deliberately head butted by a defender he had been taunting during one of his early League matches, and he hardly looked a pretty picture when removing his false teeth before going out on to the pitch. A prematurely worn face was best described as having character, and his shoulder-length hair made him look as if he had been left over from a seventies rock group.

Yet the Italian girls, just like their English counterparts, went wild for him, and had formed a fan club called Darling Dennis.

When he first arrived in Romini he was put up in the best hotel in the town centre, but was quickly invited to find accommodation elsewhere by the management after he and partying friends on a visit from England had virtually wrecked a room during a drunken orgy. The evening’s entertainment included Baker having sex in a darkened room with a willing but unsuspecting girl from his Romini fan club while his mates looked on from inside the wardrobe. Baker made the excuse that he was going to

the bathroom, and minutes later one of his mates took his place on top of the girl. Four of them took turns to please themselves and the girl before she realised that Baker was not a superstud but was calling on substitutes at regular intervals. It was all quite hilarious until the girl just happened to mention in faltering English that her father had strong connections with the local Mafia boss. Baker’s ‘friends’ melted away before the night was out, and he had to call in his agent Johan Grokke to dig him out of trouble. It cost £20,000 to buy the girl’s silence, which was a great coup for her because the nearest her father had ever been to a Mafia boss was when watching The Godfather at the cinema.

Another member of his fan club managed to hide herself in the back of his Alfa Romeo and he nearly had a heart attack at the wheel of his car when she suddenly grabbed his cock while he was sitting at traffic lights.

It just happened that this was the day that a London television crew were following him for a documentary, ‘A Day in the Life of a Footballing God.’ They were shooting from ahead of his car, and the cameraman could not understand why there was a smile on Baker’s face until he zoomed in to pick up a head moving up and down on his lap. The video pictures did not make it on to the television screen, but were a big hit at the independent film company’s Christmas party.

Baker’s success with the girls did not help his popularity with his teammates, and there was an undercurrent of jealousy in the Tornado dressingroom. It was reluctantly accepted among his clubmates that he was a class above most of them when it came to playing the game and putting the ball into the net. They were well aware that it was his goals that boosted their wage packets most weeks. But they did not like the way he continually got away with flouting the club disciplinary rules. They knew that the fines he was being hit with made no impact on him because he was knee deep in Euros.

Several of the players tried getting close to the Mad Englishman, but quickly retreated from his reckless world of late-night drinking and debauchery because they had the sense to realise it was a life style that could damage their careers. Goalkeeper Nino Rettini, famous in Romini for his vino capacity, decided to put the silly oaf in his place by challenging him to a drinking contest. Their team-mates looked on like ringside

boxing fans, and huge bets were struck as to which of them could drink most bottles of Italian wine. Baker would have preferred a beer-guzzling battle, but Rettini insisted that as the duel was being fought on his home turf he should have the choice of drink. Chianti was the chosen ‘weapon’.

The rules were that a half-litre glass had to be emptied with one tilt of the head, each contestant taking it in turns until he could drink no more.

Rettini, a giant of a man who had the physique of a grizzly bear, won the toss and took first swallow. They went comfortably head to head for five quickly knocked-back glasses. Then the pace started to slow, and home favourite Rettini threw up during his eighth glass. All eyes were now on Baker as he picked up his eighth glass. The Italians were convinced they were in the company of a genuine lunatic when the Yorkshireman stood and sang a quick chorus of On Ilkla Moor Baht ’At before comfortably sinking the glass for victory.

For a while the performance helped Baker’s popularity in the dressingroom, but he hit the self-destruct button again and wrecked the new spirit of acceptance. On a night out with the team after an away match in Milan he had started to flirt outrageously with the pretty girl sitting opposite him in the restaurant. It turned out to be Nino Rettini’s girlfriend and future wife.

The goalkeeper, usually as cuddly as a big bear, erupted into a jealous rage when the Englishman started to rub his foot up and down the girl’s legs.

He picked Baker up as if he was a sack of potatoes and threw him across the restaurant. He damaged back ligaments as he landed against the bar, and was out of action for a month. Rettini was sold following the incident, and Baker’s team-mates held him responsible for the popular goalkeeper being transferred. They started to starve him of the ball on the pitch, and there was the extraordinary sight of him tackling his own team-mates to get possession. It was only a question of time before Tornado would have to let their leading goalscorer go, even though he was an enormous favourite with the fans. Coach Gianni Benvenuti reported to the club President that Baker’s presence at the club was beginning to have an adverse effect on the team spirit.

Stealing the municipal flag was an insult too far. It had now reached the point with Tornado where they just could not take any more of his indiscretions. He had almost quite literally driven them up the pole. The

morning after his drunken celebration of the victory over Lazio, Luigi Graziani quietly telephoned a Monte Carlo number and spoke to The Dutchman.

‘It is time,’ the exasperated Tornado owner said, ‘that you took your mad Englishman elsewhere. All we want is the same price that we paid for him. Three million pounds sterling, or the equivalent in Euros if they are yet sophisticated enough to talk in the currency of this new millenium.

Oh yes, and, of course, a little something for me as a private measure of your gratitude for smoothing the transfer through.’

Meanwhile, Bad Boy Baker lay on his bed with his hangover, giggling like a schoolboy over the trouser-dropping lark. The Italian housewife he had shocked with his prank was not so amused. She was with a lawyer discussing what she could claim in damages.

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 4. THE AGENT

JOHAN GROKKE had mixed emotions when he put down the telephone on Luigi Graziani. There was a considerable profit to be made out of a Dennis Baker transfer, but where would he find a club desperate enough to take him? Everybody in the game knew that he was like a stick of dynamite to handle. It had been hard enough persuading Tornado to take a gamble on him when Rovers first put him on the market, and a lot of palms had to be crossed before that deal was finalised. He recalled with a shudder how Baker had nearly blown it by turning up half drunk when he flew out to Italy for talks. The deal only went through when he convinced the Tornado owner that the Englishman had been drinking purely to drown his fear of flying. Baker had since proved that he would use any excuse to take a drink. One of Europe’s finest footballing talents was a long way down the road to becoming an alcholic.

No Italian club would touch him with a gondola pole after his misadventures with Tornado, and Grokke knew he would have to fish elsewhere following his latest crazy escapade with the town hall flag and the dropped trousers. The English transfer deadline was only seven days away, which gave him little time to persuade one of the major clubs to invest in a player whose name was like poison to the soccer establishment over there. Spanish clubs that could afford him would not want to risk the Mad Englishman upsetting their regimes, and both Rangers and Celtic were overflowing with s­trikers. Even at three million pounds he was beyond

the financial range of most European clubs because of the wage demands that he would be making. Japan, he thought, would be a possibility. They were football mad down there, and their league had become a profitable resting place for international players winding down their careers. The prospect of signing a player like Baker, who was still at the peak of his powers, might appeal to them. But they, too, would be well aware that he was a problem player. It was while on a club tour of Japan with Rovers that he had tried to prove he could sink saki by the pint at a nightclub where he had finished up falling head first through the karaoke screen. He told team-mates that he had been trying to kiss Madonna.

Grokke wondered if it had dawned on Baker that Tornado were cutting him adrift before they were contracted to pay him his ÂŁ500,000 ‘loyalty’ bonus. His pranks in the piazza with the flag and the trousers were going to cost him a fortune, and, worse still, Grokke would miss out on his twenty per cent cut. His face, described by a newspaper columnist as boyish, was suddenly lined as he grimaced at the thought of his loss.

He tried to think positively. On the plus side, he knew he was representing a thoroughbred player who was a proven goal scorer at the highest level.

There were few footballers in the world who could match him when it came to the priceless gift of putting the ball into the net. Baker had no problems playing the game. It was just living his life that proved somewhat difficult for him.

Grokke lit his morning joint, fresh in from Amsterdam the previous day, and relaxed on the balcony of his apartment with its spectacular panoramic view of the exclusive Monte Carlo marina. This was how he liked to start the day, alleviating any stress from on-going negotiation work. The call from Graziani had dropped a cloud on his daily meditation session.

The Dutchman, as he was known throughout football, always gave the impression of being laid back almost to the point of being half asleep. But this was a deliberate front to mask a calculating mind that was constantly performing mental gymnastics to make sure he kept ahead in what he considered the rat race of life. The king rats, in his view, were the tax investigators of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, who were now working in tandem trying to pin him down for tax dodging.

They had already turned over his homes in Amsterdam and Suffolk

in the search for evidence, and their computer detectives were tracking the world’s banking system in the hunt for hidden accounts. The Inland Revenue auditors had the slight problem that Grokke never ever did a deal that involved paperwork with his name on it. He performed all his transfer negotiations verbally, and sealed deals with a handshake. Contracts were drawn up by the clubs and only their representatives and the players signed them. He was always careful not to put anything in writing. Early in his career as a football agent he had made the mistake of writing a note to a manager about the amount of cash he was prepared to pay him to help push through a transfer. The deal had gone wrong, and the note had been passed on to the local football association. Only some hastily delivered cash gifts had prevented him being suspended. He was let off with a reprimand, and from that day on never again committed himself to anything in writing.

Grokke had been slipping through the tax net by spending less than three months a year at any of his homes in Amsterdam, Suffolk, Monte Carlo, Florida and Hong Kong, where he had opened the floodgates to the Asian transfer market. The tax men suddenly started taking a close interest in him after a Dutch newspaper had published a series by a former lover of his exposing him as the ‘Mr X’ of what had become a shadowy football transfer market. It was revealed how he was the middle man in international deals in which millions of Gilder – all currencies for that matter – exchanged hands outside the knowledge or jurisdiction of the tax authorities. The series of articles had been syndicated, and football clubs throughout Europe were having their books probed. The net was closing in on Grokke, but he was confident that he could keep several steps ahead of the snooping tax inspectors.

He always insisted on his cut of any transfer fee being paid into an account in Jersey and with a different company name each time. From Jersey, most of the money was immediately transferred to an account in the Cayman Islands. Every four months he ‘visited’ his money, sending a small percentage back to Monte Carlo by banker’s order and drawing the bulk out in US dollars. He would then fly to Zurich and deposit the cash in three separate numbered accounts. At the last count, he had more than $3-million in each account.

The Dutchman liked to keep as low a profile as possible, and saw himself

more as a broker than an agent. ‘I am a matchmaker,’ he told his clients. ‘I just perform the introductions. Whether you consummate the relationship is up to you. Then, and only then, will I present you with my bill.’ He had adopted ‘no deal, no meal’ as his satirical slogan.

His method was to agree the selling price with the club letting a player go. He would then approach potentially interested clubs, and take as his commission whatever he could negotiate above the required fee.

As an incentive to get each deal done and dusted, Grokke offered what he described as ‘unsolicited gifts’ of cash to key participants in the negotiations. He had been advised to use this protective phrase by his lawyer. There was a queue of managers throughout Europe and Asia who had gratefully accepted secret cash gifts from Grokke, who either paid their rewards into off-shore accounts or handed the money over in holdalls with false bottoms. To ease their conscience, he always told them that the money was for work they had carried out on his behalf in getting him established in the transfer market. He would never say that the money was for a specific individual deal. That way, both he and the manager could swear on oath that money had not exchanged hands between them over a particular transfer.

Grokke had made a procession of golden killings in the fifteen years since switching from a career as history master at the Elite Dutch-English school in Amsterdam to his football representative work. It all started when he helped one of his pupils, Arie van Jeeskens, get fixed up with Heyenoord, and he realised he had a gift for negotiating on behalf of others. What helped was a photographic memory that brought him honours-student status when studying European history. Now he used his total recall to store all his transfer records in his head. As a back-up he wrote them in code on a megabyte storage computer disk kept in a safe in his Monte Carlo apartment. He gave each of his contacts a name from history, and instead of noting how much cash he had handed over he substituted divisions of soldiers. Rovers manager Peter Watson was listed on his disk as Peter the Great, the Russian emperor who had the balls to shift the capital from Moscow to St Petersburg. He had 120,000 soldiers under his command.

This translated into £120,000, and was Watson’s reward following the transfer of Dennis Baker to Tornado.

Grokke combined teaching and agent duties for five years, until attaining millionaire status after over-seeing the £12-million transfer of Van Jeeskens to Sporting Madrid. He then switched full time to representing international footballers, and he had now built up a stable of sixty-five of Europe’s leading players. Dennis Baker had given him bigger headaches than the rest of them put together.

The Dutchman drew deeply on his cannabis spliff, and went into the floating mode in which he did his best thinking. He had smoked joints since his student days, and much preferred them to the vastly more dangerous tobacco substances. Grokke had never gone in for hard drugs, although coke-snorting parties were all the rage with his high-living Monte Carlo neighbours.

He grew up in an environment in which cannabis was smoked without a second thought. His Surinam-born father and white Dutch mother, a mix responsible for his coffee-coloured skin, both smoked pot at home and did nothing to dissuade him when he took up the habit at eighteen.

In fact the only time his father had ever hit him as a boy was when he caught him smoking the butt of a tobacco cigarette he had picked up in the street. ‘You daft idiot,’ he had roared. ‘Don’t you realise smoking that stuff can kill you.’

Grokke just wanted to relax a couple of times a day, but was determined never to be dependent on drugs­ – or on people. He had been badly let down by his former live-in lover, who had exposed his transfer dealings after failing to sell a story about a brief fling he had once had with a Dutch international footballer. The newspaper feared legal comebacks and decided not to print it. Not that it would have worried Grokke, who never tried to hide his sexual preferences. ‘It’s a free world,’ he observed. ‘I do as I please.’ He was more concerned for the reputation of the footballer, who was now a leading manager and married with children.

Grokke considered the story exposing his transfer business far more damaging. The betrayal by his former lover, now a hopeless heroin addict, had made Grokke wary of forming any sort of permanent relationship, and he satisfied himself with occasional rent-boy sex. He used a false name, and always insisted on hotel rooms rather than his home. There were several of his footballing clients that he secretly admired, but he never allowed

pleasure to get in the way of business.

Much of his life had been spent studying European history, yet no amount of knowledge of the past could have prepared him for dealing with Dennis Baker. If he had to pair him with a famous person from history he decided it would have to be England’s King George III. Baker was barking mad. He had paid for him to have psychiatric treatment, but these sessions finished when he turned the couch upside down and punched the psychiatrist on the nose for ‘asking prying fucking questions about my father.’

He could play football like a dream, but was a walking, talking time bomb likely to explode without warning. Money had always come so easily to him because of his footballing ability that he had no appreciation of it.

Baker spent it as fast as Grokke put his away. If there were two opposite people on this planet, it was the player and the agent.

The Dutchman’s meditative mood was somewhat disturbed as he recalled how he had been summoned to Romini on at least half a dozen occasions to bail the Mad Englishman out of trouble. Just a month ago he had received a call from Baker pleading for his help after he had been threatened by an aggrieved father, claiming he had deflowered his fifteen-year-old daughter.

The father, not yet into Euro-talk, was demanding two hundred million lira in compensation, the rough equivalent of three months’ of Baker’s income. He had been warned that a Sicilian knife would be used on his manhood if the girl was not immediately compensated. Grokke drove to Italy with a bagful of Euros prepared if necessary to pay out hush money, but with a gut feeling that something was phoney about the case. If the girl was really under age, any truly caring father would have gone to the police rather than the player.True Sicilians did not make threats but got on with the deed when family honour was at stake. And could you put a two hundred million lira price on a daughter’s virginity? Before leaving Monte Carlo, he contacted a local detective agency in Romini. They did some quiet background work for him, and by the time he arrived to do the deal they had discovered that not only was the girl seventeen but that she was promiscuous to the point where Baker was at least the sixth Tornado player who had enjoyed her favours. Grokke confronted the father, who quickly capitulated when he was threatened with exposure to the police for blackmail and extortion.

It was all part of Grokke’s minder work for Baker who, because of his fast-lane life style, was a tempting target for the vermin of the world seeking an easy quarry. Many of the stories circulating about this larger than life character, Grokke realised, either had their foundation in halfcocked rumour or were maliciously invented. He did manage to get into more scrapes than ten other people put together, but he was certainly not as loathsome and detestable as some of his critics painted. Anybody who got close to him and past the public image found a strangely undeveloped person who was desparately keen to be liked and accepted. What amazed Grokke was Baker’s ability to laugh off and shrug at situations that would have driven normal people to despair. For all his stunning ability as a footballer, he had been dealt a poor hand of cards in life yet seemed immune to the sort of pressures that would have brought most players to their knees. His deprived childhood had somehow given him an inner strength that enabled him to take the knocks of life in his stride. From his teaching experience, The Dutchman knew that deep inside Baker there was an intelligent person trying to get out. He had just not had sufficient formal education to release his learning capabilities.

While nearly half his 44 years on earth had been taken up with studying, Grokke got the impression that Baker had never studied through a complete lesson in his life. His general knowledge was abysmal, and he could barely read and write. Yet for all his shortcomings, The Dutchman was fond of the Mad Englishman. He could not help laughing at his daft sense of humour, envied him his incredible football skill and quietly admired his determination to be an individual in an increasingly grey world of robotic footballers. It was the demon drink that was his biggest enemy, and Grokke wondered if it was already too late to save him from himself.

Each morning after his joint he would surf the Internet to pick up the latest football news and gossip across the world. Without leaving his Monte Carlo apartment, he could be as well informed about what was happening as anybody in the game. No matter where he was on the planet, he was able to keep in touch with what was happening in every footballing country. He surfed through the English daily newspapers on the net, and found nothing to suggest there was a potential opening for Baker in his homeland. Just before switching to the French reports, he dipped into the first edition of

the London Evening Standard web site, and instantly struck oil. The main front page story was that United’s Brazilian striker Jairdono had broken a leg in a car smash. He had found his desperate club.

Grokke made an immediate call to United manager Roy Masters, a man who knew his way around the transfer trail as well as he did. He could do business with him. In fact he was listed on his computer disk as Montgomery of Alamein. Interestingly, he had turned down the offer of 125,000 ‘soldiers’. This followed a transfer transaction when Masters was in charge of Torrero in the Spanish league. He gave the impression of being a man who could not be bought. Grokke was ready to put him to the test again.

After making contact with Masters, he busied himself calling in some favours. He telephoned the managers at Sporting Madrid, Düsseldorf 1888, Paris Olympique and Heyenoord, and requested that they leak to their local newspapers that they would be interested in bidding for Dennis Baker.

The Dutchman had created a market. United would soon know that they had competition for Baker’s signature. This would put £1-million on Baker’s fee, and another hefty sum into Grokke’s Zurich accounts.

His boyish face relaxed into a satisfied smile.

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 5. THE WIFE

HELEN SLATER carefully hung her silk Versace dress on one of the wire hangers in the wardrobe, and then lay back on the bed, looking for all the world as if she were posing for one of the lingerie advertisements in which she used to regularly feature. She picked up the remote control from the bedside table and switched on the television for the lunchtime news. Within seconds she discovered why Roy Masters had not yet arrived as the news reader revealed that the Brazilian Jairdono had undergone an operation following a car crash. Roy was an hour late, and she now wondered whether he was going to be able to keep their date.

Helen tried calling him on his mobile, but it was permanently engaged.

She dared not ring him on his office number. The chairman’s wife ringing the chairman’s manager. That would have been a short-cut to the gossip factory. The football affairs of United went completely over her head. She detested a game that she considered played by simple active people for the satisfaction of simple inactive people. All that booting a silly ball around a field, the mindless, often vulgar chanting and the hooligan behaviour.

Where on earth was the pleasure in it? Her interest in the club stretched only to the contrasting moods and personalities of the chairman and his manager, but she knew enough to realise that the injury to Jairdono was dramatically serious for both the men in her life.

She wondered how it was affecting them. Her husband, as she knew to her cost, was obsessed with getting United into the Premier League, and had invested heaven knows how much into making his dream come true. While losing her husband to United, she and his manager had been drawn together like magnets and become infatuated with each other. She hated these snatched meetings with him in back street hotels at which

they always arrived and left separately. It was surely, she thought, only a question of time before her husband and/or Fleet Street found out what was going on between them. Roy Masters did not exactly have a face that was anonymous.

Helen was terrified of her husband finding out before she and Roy had finalised their plans for a new life together. He could be violent and vindictive, and she knew he would do everything in his power to break them up. This was not because he loved her – that emotion had long since died – but because he could not accept anybody getting the better of him.

He looked on Helen as a possession, and his attitude was certain to be that nobody, particularly Roy Masters, would be allowed to take her away from him. Slater had already had two marriages turn sour on him, and he would not be able to face up to another humiliation, particularly now that he was such a publicly recognised figure as the chairman of United. The fact that she was cheating on him with his manager would send him into an apoplexy. Just the thought of his reaction petrified her. He had beaten her up several times in drunken frenzies for little reason, so God knows how he would respond when there was justification for his anger.

As she lay back on the hotel bed watching the hospital spokesman issuing a bulletin on the condition of Jairdono, Helen thought back to the day she decided to marry Slater. Her first marriage had broken up only ten months earlier. She had married fashion designer Rookie Davis, who had been employing her as his top catwalk model. They had been the best of friends and live-in lovers before the wedding, and then became the worst of enemies once the ring was on her finger. She was thirty and it was agreed that the time was right to give up the catwalk, and take over the booking of the models and the organisation of his fashion shows.

They had not been married a year when the recession bit deeply into the rag trade. Rookie’s fashion house, built on the foundation of a huge bank loan, quickly went into bankruptcy. He lost complete confidence in himself, and started to hit the bottle and in his worst drunken moments blamed her for the collapse of his business. She tried to go back to modelling, but at thirty-two was considered over the hill. Their marriage just could not survive his loss of purpose and her loss of pride, and they finally divorced after a trial separation.

Helen returned to her home town of Brighton where she moved back in with her parents while deciding what to do with the rest of her life.

It was while helping friends organise a charity dinner in Sussex for underprivileged children that she met Harvey Slater. She had been sent to see him at his Brighton mansion home to coax him to make a donation and put his name to the charity committee. ‘You can ’ave my money but not my time, luv,’ he had told her in heavy Cockney tones that she found quaintly amusing after mixing with so many people who spoke with marbles in their mouth as they tried to make an impression.

She liked the way Slater talked without pretence. Even his constant swearing seemed a novelty. It was a take-me-or-leave-me attitude that appealed to her, and when he started making advances she did not resist.

She was certainly impressed by the almost casual way he wrote out a cheque for £25,000 as a donation to the charity, but she convinced herself that the attraction was not his money. What took her attention was his power. He would pick up the telephone, issue a curt order and it would be carried out immediately. His snapped fingers brought waiters running, his chauffeur picked her up for every one of their dates, and he surrounded her with luxury and the best things that money could buy.

Helen was fourteen years younger, but found this an easily bridgeable gap. His maturity was refreshing after the juvenile behaviour of Rookie, who acted like a spoilt child when his business started to go wrong. The fact that she stood five inches taller when Slater was out of his built-up shoes gave her no problems. All the hang-ups about size were strictly with him. They had been going out together for only three months when he confided that he had lost confidence in relationships with women because of the way his first two wives had, in his words, ‘ripped out my ’eart and gone for my wallet.’ He added bitterly, ‘They weren’t marriages. They was bloody muggins.’

She sensed he wanted some sort of assurance that she was not a gold digger, and was happy to tell him she was not interested in his money.

When he proposed to her two months later it was her idea she should sign a prenuptial agreement that would stop her taking any of his fortune if things did not work out. The love and the security that he offered was more than enough to convince her that a marriage between them would work.

They married during a romantic cruise of the Caribbean, and she could not have asked for a more caring or attentive husband in their first year together. He was then into his early days as owner of United, and he assured her it was just a sidelines hobby to keep his son, Sam, happy. But gradually United became like a mistress between them. He started to channel not only all his energy but also much of his money into the club. From paying her flattering attention and trying hard to satisfy her in bed, he began to take her for granted. She hardly saw him during the football season, and in the summer months all his concentration was on what could be done the following season in what had become a blind obsession to get United into the Premier League.

Helen did not know the Premier League from the bottom of the garden, but she soon understood that it had become the be-all-and-end-all for her husband. He had let slip during one of their increasingly fierce arguments that if United failed to reach the Premier League he was staring the possibility of bankruptcy in the face. She had been down that road with Rookie, and never wanted to experience the nightmare again.

The biggest concern for Helen was that she now discovered that Slater was a Jekyll and Hyde of a character. More and more often he was showing a violent side that had never surfaced during their first months together. He continually insulted her with the vilest language, and had once wrecked their Mayfair apartment in a blind rage after she had made what was meant as a gentle warning about the way his son was neglecting his job as chairman of United.

At first, Slater had been content to let Sam run the club while he concentrated on his property business empire. He was able to do that work within conventional office hours, and he and Helen had a full social life.

But he soon had to accept the fact, just as she had warned him, that Sam was making a mess of running United. Helen could have told her husband that he was not up to it from the first moment she met Sam. She had been surrounded by coke-heads in the fashion world, and knew within an hour of being in Sam’s company that he was hooked. It was not the sort of thing she could have discussed with his father because Sam was the light of his life, and he was blind to his many weaknesses.

She tried hard to get on a happy wavelength with her stepson, but he

made little secret of the fact that he resented her presence in his father’s life. Helen was only a few years older than Sam, but he was like a spoilt little boy and made her feel twice his age. He had inherited his father’s sawn-off physique and all the hangs-ups that went with it. One night, motivated by either drink or drugs, he had propositioned her, and she made the mistake of laughing in his face. Suddenly, from being just resentful Sam was now a sworn enemy.

Helen made an attempt to warn her husband of the potential problems of giving Sam too much responsibility, and it led to an almighty row in which he accused her of being jealous of his son. That was one of the nights that he gave her a black eye. Even he, however, could not ignore the danger signals when Sam got involved in a nightclub scandal with half the United first-team players. As usual, her husband bought the silence of people who knew that Sam had been the originator of a mass fight that broke out over girls that Sam had provided. He had also supplied the drugs on which the players were high.

At last, Slater realised that Sam was neither mature enough nor knowledgeable enough to run United. His reliable but over-burdened partner, Jack Shenton, had been telling him this for months, but Harvey was deaf to criticism of a son who was his weapon against his first wife, whom he hated with a vengeance that made Helen shiver. She could see how Shenton was secretly tortured by the way Slater treated his sister. He had stayed as Slater’s righthand man after their divorce, and was hopelessly compromised by the situation. Sam was utterly contemptuous of Shenton, and took every opportunity to sneeringly play his relationship with his drunken mother against both his uncle and his father.

Slater used the nightclub scandal as his excuse to push Sam to one side.

He took over the full-time command of United, and from then on their marriage slowly went into an unstoppable decline. Helen was approaching forty, and frightened stiff of what she saw as a slow-death future. How could she escape the prison of her marriage in which she had become little more than a trophy on Slater’s arm at abysmal United club functions? Then she met Roy Masters.

It was her husband who introduced them at a Player of the Year dinnerdance that she dreaded attending. She was seated next to Masters, and it

was the first time she had met him after watching him pontificating on television with his views on boring football issues. In her young modelling days she had been vaguely aware that he was a celebrated footballer whom several of her friends found attractive, but she was not interested in any footballers because they clearly had their brains in their feet. Know wot I mean, Brian? She recalled how the break-up of his marriage to television presenter Jayne Flynn was hitting the headlines at just about the same time as things were going wrong between herself and Rookie Davies. Now, like her second husband, he seemed married to bloody United.

Helen was surprised, meeting him in the flesh, at what a handsome man he was, and she realised why he had been the talk of the catwalk girls when he was playing and she was modelling. His nose, broken by a Brazilian elbow during a World Cup match, was a prominent feature of a rugged face that had the foundation of a strong, dimpled jaw. His blond hair was just giving way to trespassing grey that was the only sign that he was six years older than Helen. He looked fit enough still to be playing.

They had sat patiently through the long, boring speeches and the awards ceremony when Helen was literally pushed into his arms by her husband after the band had started playing for the evening’s dancing. ‘’Ere, Roy, do us a favour,’ Slater said, ‘push ’er round the dance floor for me. I’m not into all that pussyfooting nonsense. She’ll nag me to bleedin’ death if she don’t get a dance.’

Helen was surprised at how good a dancer he was as they quick-stepped round the floor. She felt comfortable in his arms and they stayed on the floor together for the next dance, a waltz. ‘I’m astonished,’ she said.

‘What, at the fact that I can dance?’

‘That,’ said Helen, ‘but also that you have not mentioned the f— word since we’ve been together this evening.’

Masters looked at her mischievously. ‘The f— word,’ he said. ‘You do mean football, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Helen, feeling her face flush. ‘I thought it was the only subject you would be able to talk about.’

‘Brains in the feet,’ said Masters. ‘The hackneyed image of the football man. I’ll have you know that I can talk the ears off an elephant about subjects as diverse as the battles of Erwin Rommel, the songs of Sinatra

and the novels of Charles Dickens. The f— world has never been the beall-and-end-all for me.’

Their conversation and their dance was suddenly interrupted by the crashing sound of a very drunk Sam Slater falling head first on to the top table, and bringing glasses and bottles smashing to the floor. Two waiters helped his father pull him to his feet. ‘I’ll see ’im ’ome,’ Slater told Helen.

‘You stay on ’ere as my representative. Roy, you won’t mind bringing her to my place at Mayfair will you.’

It was not a question. It was an order.

By the time Masters drove her home at two o’clock in the morning, the seeds of their romance had been sown. They had danced and talked non-stop after Slater had left, propping up his drunken son with the help of his chauffeur, Tompkins. Helen gradually coaxed from Masters that he shared her loathing for her husband, and once that bridge was crossed it was easy for them to find common ground and a magnetic attraction for each other.

Masters lightly kissed her good night when he dropped her off at the Mayfair apartment, but within a week they were sharing a bed together in the first of what was to become a regular afternoon hotel rendezvous.

They used half a dozen different hotels in the back streets of Bayswater and Paddington, and Masters always booked them in by telephone as Mr and Mrs John Millard.

He was a wonderfully considerate lover, and she was being fully sexually satisfied for the first time in her life. So much for the Sunday tabloid ‘no score’ story that wrecked his first marriage. ‘That,’ explained Masters, ‘came about simply because my conscience got the better of me when I followed her into the bedroom.’

Helen had wondered what to expect on their first tumble into bed together.

Despite her contempt of what she read in the newspapers, it had still been locked into her mind that perhaps he suffered with some sort of impotency problem. But the thought disappeared within moments of getting under the covers with him. That stiff rod she felt rising between his thighs was hardly the machinery of an impotent man. He was thoughtful enough to slip on a condom before sliding deep inside her with a slow powerful stroke that wonderfully took her breath away.

They made love at first like two hungry people suddenly let loose at a banquet table, and it took only minutes for them both to reach a frenzied climax as he pounded into her in the missionary position. It was her first orgasm in months, and Roy confessed that he had been celibate for nearly a year after the break-up of a romance with an old flame. They talked softly about their sexual experiences for ten or so minutes, and she made him laugh by describing Harvey as being ‘short all over’. Masters was delighted to hear it. ‘So he really is a little prick,’ he joked. By comparison, Helen rated Roy as having the penis of a bull. He confided that Jayne Flynn had been quite frigid in bed, handicapped he believed by a Convent education that had given her all sorts of hang-ups about what he considered the perfectly natural act of having sex.

Secrets exchanged, they then started to tenderly and silently explore each other’s bodies with smooth caressing of the hands, and light kissing. She felt fires burning inside her as Roy lightly ran his tongue over her nipples and gently guided his fingers through her pubic hair, bringing her juices pouring out as he expertly massaged her sensitive clitoris. Most partners she’d had passionate moments with thought the clioris was a mountain range in Albania. Roy, she was delighted to discover, knew where all the right buttons were and appreciated that the ignition needed to be turned on before the motor would start.

No condom this time. Both felt a total trust in each other. They managed three positions in their next slow climb to a mutual climax, with Helen finishing on top as Roy gratefully accepted the rapid thrusts of her hips.

There had been a foundation of lust in this first bedroom encounter, but a much more lasting and rewarding feeling quickly followed.

As good as the sex was, their relationship went much deeper than just playing around, and they were soon swearing undying love for each other and plotting how they could spend the rest of their lives together.

Masters had promised that he would quit United and English football at the end of this current season, whether or not he gained promotion to the Premier League. Their plan was to set up home together in Spain where Masters was going to buy a bar/restaurant that would be run by a manager while he and Helen settled down to life away from the f— game. To achieve this, he needed the massive bonus that promotion to the Premier

League would bring. She had her doubts whether he could stay away from the game that had been his life, but he assured her that he had become thoroughly disillusioned with it.

As the television news bulletin finished, Helen tried Roy’s mobile number again. This time she got through. ‘Can you talk, honey?’ she asked.

‘Sorry I’m not there, darling. I’ve got major problems here at the club.’

‘I know. It’s been on the news about Jairdono. The poor boy.’

‘Poor idiot, you mean. He was out of his head at the wheel. That cretin of a stepson of yours had been pouring God knows what down his throat into the early hours of this morning. We’ve now got major problems. Sorry, darling, but I’ve got to call off today.’

‘I understand. The sooner we don’t have to have snatched meetings the better.’

‘It’s killing me, too. We’ve just got to be patient. I’ve got the lovely job now of telling your husband that he needs to find another few million pounds or we are out of the Premier League race and all his plans will be up in the air..’

‘I don’t envy you talking to that pig,’ Helen said, reluctantly ending the snatched conversation. ‘Good luck, honey. I love you.’

‘Same here, darling. ’Bye.’ Helen got out of bed, went to the wardrobe and slipped back into her silk Versace dress, while outside the hotel private investigator Hamilton Scott took camera shots of everybody entering and leaving, including women.

He was convinced on this first day of surveillance that Mrs Slater was having an affair, but he had yet to discover the identity – or the sex – of her partner.

After watching her leave the hotel alone, he went to work on the receptionist. Using a false CID card and posing as a Detective-Inspector Grey, he gleaned that she had booked in as the wife part of Mr and Mrs John Millard. To the best of the receptionist’s knowledge, Mr Millard had not arrived.

Scott returned to his car and prepared his first report for Harvey Slater.

The United chairman’s suspicions were well founded.

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 6. THE CHAIRMAN

THE f— words were falling fast and furiously off Slater’s tongue as he barged into the manager’s office seconds after Masters had finished talking to the chairman’s wife on the mobile. ‘What sort of fucking discipline have you fuckingwell got among your fucking players?’ he roared from the doorway. ‘They’re even pissed on the way to fucking training.’

Masters counted to ten, showing the self control that had got him through his playing career without once being sent off. ‘It would greatly help matters if your son didn’t organise all-night mid-week parties,’ he said quietly.

‘That’s it!’ said Slater. ‘Take the easy fucking way out. Blame Sam. Your players should know that all parties are out of bounds at this crucial stage of the season.’

‘I would appreciate it if you’d pass that instruction on to Sam,’ Masters said, smarting inwardly at how the players became ‘yours’ when there was anything wrong and ‘my players’ when there was any glory going. ‘’Ow come I ’ave to ’ear about Jairdono’s accident on the fucking radio?

‘Your car phone was switched off. I left a message.’

‘Well you know I was only a couple of fucking hundred yards away in Marstell Street. I’m disappointed in you, Roy. You should have got news like this to me immediately. What the fucking ’ell are we going to do now?’

‘It would help, for a start, Mr Chairman, if you’d calm down. Screaming and swearing at me is not going to get us anywhere.’

The f— word was, as fly-on-the-wall TV documentaries had proved, part and parcel of the industrial language of football. That was in the dressing-room. Masters reckoned Slater used far more swear words in the boardroom.

‘We need to have a serious talk because we’ve got one hell of a crisis on our hands,’ the manager said firmly.

Slater slumped down in the leather seat facing Masters, who was sitting behind his desk. ‘So come on, get to the fucking bottom line,’ he said.

‘What’s it going to cost to get a replacement?’

‘It’s not so much the money as the time,’ said Masters. ‘We’re only seven days off the transfer deadline. Goal scorers like Jairdono don’t exactly grow on trees.’

‘Tell me about it. I had to make six trips to Rio to clinch the deal for Jairdono. Now he’s not going to play again this season. What a fucking choker.’

‘Maybe never again,’ Masters said solemnly. ‘He’s going to do well to see again, let alone play. He’s in a terrible state, and can’t remember a thing about what happened.’

‘Stupid bastard,’ said Slater with the sort of callousness that won him so many friends. ‘Fancy being as pissed as a pudding at that time in the morning. The media will scorch ’im and us over this. What are we doing to keep it out of the papers?’

Masters shrugged. ‘What can we do? It’s only a question of time before they get the full story from their police contacts. The police are going to have to press charges for dangerous driving while under the influence. Just thank God that nobody else was injured in the crash, otherwise he would be looking at a stretch inside.’

Slater stood up and started pacing around the office. ‘’ow bad is it, Roy?’ ‘Well, his right tibia is fractured and ...’

‘No, I mean ’ow bad’s the picture as regards promotion? Fucking ’ell, we’ve lost our top goal scorer. In fact our only bloody goal scorer. We ain’t got anybody else on the books in his class. We’re going to ’ave to find somebody quick.’

‘Well we can forget British clubs for a start,’ said Masters. ‘There’s just

nobody of any quality available. We’ve got to look abroad, and time is right against us.’ ‘’Ave you got anybody in mind?’

‘Well I’ve already had one interesting call.’

‘Yeah? Who from?’

‘The Dutchman.’

‘That conniving bastard. He’s got ’is fingers in more pies than effing Jack ’Orner. Who’s he got up his sleeve?’

Masters took a deep breath. ‘Dennis Baker.’

Slater stopped pacing. ‘Dennis Baker?’ he said, his voice going up an octave. ‘Are you off your fucking trolley? ’Ere we are facing fucking ridicule because our top goal scorer’s been dragged pissed as a newt from a crashed car, and you want to replace him with the world’s number one footballing piss head. Get a grip of yourself, Roy.’ ‘That was my initial feeling when The Dutchman rang,’ said Masters. ‘’Ow did the fucking Dutchman find out before me?’

‘He picked it up on the Internet.’

‘On the Internet! Well don’t that take the fucking biscuit. There am I minding my own business all of two hundred yards away in Marstell Street.

And the fucking Dutchman in Amsterdam ...’ ’Monte Carlo ...’

‘Oh, that makes all the fucking difference,’ said Slater, slipping into heavy sarcasm. ‘Monte Carlo. I mean, he’s sure to find out quicker than me being down there.’

‘Look, Mr Chairman, let’s stop wasting time. I’ve gone through all the pros and cons about Dennis Baker, and I think we should at least find out what the position is with him.’

‘I’ll tell you what his position is,’ said Slater. ‘Tompkins was reading The Sun in the car this morning, and who was all over the front page but Dennis bleedin’ Baker up some Italian flag pole. That’s where Dennis Baker is. Up the fucking pole.’

‘It’s because of that Tornado are prepared to let him go.’

‘I bet they fucking are. ’Ow much are they prepared to pay to get rid of ’im?’ ’I don’t know the fee.’

‘No, you misunderstand me Roy. I said ’ow much are they prepared to pay not receive. Nobody will touch ’im with a bloody barge pole.’

‘Let’s look at the positive points for just a minute ...’

‘That’s ’ow ’e always breathalyses. Positive.’

Masters ignored his chairman. ‘Dennis Baker is without question one of the finest goal scorers in Europe, if not the world.’

‘When he’s sober.’

‘I was his manager at Rovers for four years and hardly had a spot of bother with him.’

‘That was before he became an alcoholic. It’s well known that he can’t get through a day without trying to drink a bar dry. Pity he can’t pass a pub like he can a ball.’

‘It’s all wild exaggeration,’ said Masters. ‘He does go off the rails every now and then, but I’m confident I can still handle him.’

‘Like you handled Jairdono?’

Masters gripped the sides of his desk, and wished it was his chairman’s throat. ‘I refuse to take the blame for what’s happened with him,’ he said firmly. ‘I can’t watch the players twenty-four hours a day. What chance have I got when they’re being enticed to drink and drug parties by a member of the club board?’

Slater’s face turned a shade of purple. ‘Don’t you dare ever again mention drugs and my son in the same fucking breath.’

He walked out of the manager’s office, slamming the door shut behind him.

Masters felt like using a spray freshener to clear the blue air as the chairman made his angry exit.

Slater stormed into the deserted boardroom and sat at the huge mahogany table where he was accustomed to dominating meetings with directors who were little more than puppets. He composed himself, and began to get his businessman’s brain working. Despite his grave doubts, he started to think of a scenario involving Dennis Baker in a United shirt. Masters was right in his assessment that there was not a finer goal scorer in Europe. With less than six weeks to go to the end of the season, his goals could make all the difference between reaching the Premier League and missing promotion.

Failing to go up would be a monumental disaster for Slater. He could

easily become bankrupt if United failed to get into the Premier League.

It had to be now or never. Goals were the only currency that counted in football. Dennis Baker was the player who could provide the goals that would save Slater’s business life.

He picked up the intercom and buzzed Masters. ‘Roy, I’m in the boardroom,’ he said, his temper and tongue now under control. ‘Let’s talk business.’

Masters came in with The Dutchman’s telephone numbers on a pad.

‘What have you decided, Mr Chairman?’

‘Are you convinced about Baker? You really could ’andle ’im?’

‘I think that I’m one of the few managers who could. He’s as silly as a box of lights, but deep down he loves his football. And I know he would want to play for me.’

‘And ’ow about for United?’

‘Yes, and for United. He would really give us a lift on the pitch just in time for the run-in to the end of the season.’ ‘’Ow would we ’andle the press? Can you imagine the stick we’ll get when we announce that we’re buying the piss artist Dennis Baker to take over from the pisshead Jairdono?’

‘Take it from me,’ said Masters, ‘the newspapers and the television and radio boys will love it. It would really spice up their season, and be great for newspaper circulations. Nobody makes better newspaper copy than Dennis. And, more important still, our supporters will, to coin a phrase, be over the moon. Let’s face it, Mr Chairman, we’re going to get roasted over the Jairdono incident regardless. If we bring in Dennis, it will give them something else to train their thoughts on and fill their space. For the English media, it will be the biggest transfer story of the season. Dennis ‘Bad Boy’ Baker back. It will cause an earthquake of excitement.’

‘Right, you’ve sold me on it,’ said Slater. ‘I just ’ope it’s not going to cost me an arm and a leg. This club is bleeding me dry.’

‘Let me telephone The Dutchman, and find out the bottom line.’

Masters dialled the Monte Carlo number from the boardroom. It was engaged. Then he tried the mobile number. That was also engaged.

It took twenty minutes before he finally got through. ‘Johan,’ he said. ‘I’m in the United boardroom with the chairman. We want to talk business.’

Grokke hoped his smile could not be seen down the telephone line. ‘Fine, Roy,’ he said, ‘but you’re down the queue I’m afraid. Since we spoke this morning I’ve had calls from Sporting Madrid and Paris Olympique. Both are very interested in Mr Baker.’

‘What’s the asking price?’

‘Now now, Roy. You know that’s not the way I do business. You tell me what you’re prepared to pay, and I’ll tell you whether it’s nearly enough.’

‘Come on, Johan. Don’t start your silly games ...’

Slater snatched the telephone. ‘Johan, Harvey Slater. You’ve done enough business with United to know that we don’t mess about. Tell us the fee, and we’ll say yes or no. It’s as simple as that.’

‘But I’m afraid it’s not that simple,’ said Grokke, lying through his teeth.

‘I’ve got three clubs in three countries prepared to buy Dennis, who has proved week in and week out in Serie A that he is the finest goal scorer in the world. There is nobody to touch him for putting the ball into the net.

Goals that for you would have Premier League written all over them.’

‘So why are Tornado busting a gut to get rid of ’im?’

‘Well it is no secret that he has had his behavioural problems. That is mainly because he is homesick, and why I would like to do business with you on his behalf. But equally, I owe it to him to find out what sort of terms are being offered by the other interested clubs, Sporting Madrid and Paris Olympique. You will, of course, keep it confidential that those two clubs have made approaches to me.’

‘You’ve got my word on that,’ said Slater. ‘I couldn’t give a monkey’s about them. All I’m interested in is finding out what Dennis Baker will cost us, and then doing a deal as quickly as possible. Our transfer deadline is just seven days away.’

‘Really?’ said Grokke, forcing surprise into his voice. ‘I had not realised.

Goodness me, that means we really must get a move on. Let me talk to Tornado and also the other two clubs, and then I will come back to you.

Tell Roy that I will telephone him later today or first thing in the morning.

I understand the urgency.’

Slater put down the telephone. ‘He’s going to let us know the score later today or first thing in the morning,’ he said. ‘But we’ve got competition

from Spain and France.What did Baker cost when he went from Rovers to Tornado?’

‘Three million. And he’s been worth three times that to them.’

‘So I say again, why are they so keen to let him go?’

‘Simply because they don’t know how to handle him. I do.’

‘Well if he’s such an ’eadache to them, they must be ready to let ’im go at a reasonable price. I mean, they wouldn’t want more than three and ’alf for him, would they?’

‘It all depends on how serious Madrid and Paris are. Their interest could push the fee up to five million.’

‘Fuck me,’ said Slater. ‘The bank won’t let me go a penny higher than that. Now I’ve ’ad Marstell Street demolished, I’m up to my ear’oles in commitments. One thing I know. I’ll be much ’appier about our chances of promotion if Baker is in our attack. He’s an arse’ole of a bloke, but ’e can really play the game. I’d love to see him running out in a United shirt.

Just wait until I tell Sam. ’e’ll be like a kid at Christmas.’

That seemed a good point for Masters to leave the boardroom, pondering on the fact that the chairman was prepared to buy Bad Boy Baker for his son.

Slater picked up the telephone and rang home. Helen answered.

‘Where ’ave you been all morning?’ he said in greeting. ‘I’ve phoned ’alf a dozen times.’

‘I’ve been out shopping.’

‘Spending more of my money. Wish you’d stay down in Brighton. You make bank raids when you come to Mayfair.’

‘What did you want?’

‘I just wanted to know where you were, that’s all. You seem to be out a lot these days.’

‘Well I’d go mad with boredom if I waited for you to take me out.’

‘You’re welcome to come here on Saturday. We’re playing City.’

Helen was about to tell him what to do with his football, when she realised it would give her a chance to see Roy, even if it was from a distance.

‘I’ll take you up on that.’

‘Blimey, don’t tell me you’re getting interested in United at last. Wonders will never bloody cease.’

‘I just want to see what all the fuss is about.’

‘D’you know where Sam’s staying at the moment?’

‘How would I know. I’m the last person he’d tell about his movements.

Have you tried the betting shops?’

‘Don’t be bloody funny, ’Elen. It don’t become you. Everybody keeps telling me tales about Sam boozing, birding, taking drugs and gambling.

Bloody ’ell, if he did ’alf the things everybody says ’e would be an exhibit in a laboratory. ’e’s sowing ’is oats, that’s all.’

Slater put down the telephone receiver, and then immediately got another line and called Sam’s Wapping flat. His son answered in a snappy voice.

‘Blimey, who’s rattled your cage?’ his father said.

‘Oh, hello Dad.Thought it was another press man. They’re getting on my tits. Been troubling me since first thing this morning.’

‘What do those snivelling gits want?’

‘It’s about Jairdono. As if I know what he did when he left here last night.’

‘So ’e wasn’t at an all-night party at your place?’

‘Course not, Dad. As if I’d keep players up all night. He was fine when he left here. It was well before midnight. God knows what he got up to.

He must have fallen in with bad company.’

‘What are you telling the press?’

‘Nothing at all Dad. Just “no comment” and then I put the phone down on them.’

‘Good boy. Those guttersnipes will twist anything you say. Now I’m going to tell you something in the strictest confidence, and it’s going to make your day. Guess who we’re after as a replacement for Jairdono?’

‘Goodness knows. Batman? Robin?’

‘Don’t be sarcie, son. ’e’s one of your very favourite players.’

‘Who does he play for?’

‘Well he don’t play in this country at the moment.’

‘So you’re buying another Johnny Foreigner.’

‘No ’e’s English. The best goal scorer in Europe.’

‘Bloody hell, Dad. Not Dennis Baker?’

‘You’ve got ’im in one.’

‘Wow, that’s going to blow a few minds.’

‘You’ve got a birthday coming up, son. Count it as a present.’

Sam Slater put down the telephone and returned to bed. ‘Guess what,’he said to the two naked blondes who were helping themselves to a line of cocaine, ‘my old man’s going to buy me Dennis Baker.’

They could not have cared less. But for Sam Slater the news meant he could almost certainly look forward to Premier League football with United next season. That would really be an excuse for a party.

He picked up his mobile telephone from the bedside table and rang his Fleet Street pal, Ryan Jones. A Dennis Baker for United exclusive should be worth at least two grand. He would put it on the favourite in the threethirty at Newbury.

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 7. THE MANAGER

A HUGE posse of press photographers, television cameramen and radio and newspaper reporters were parked at the gates to the United ground.

They jostled and pushed to get closer to Masters as he pulled up alongside them in his powder-blue Mercedes that came with the job. There were few among the media scrum that he recognised, and he realised that the hardnosed newshounds had been let loose on the Jairdono story instead of the more friendly football reporters. He would have to be ultra careful not to say anything that, as his old press-hating United manager Harry Buckley used to state, could be ‘twisted and later used in evidence against you’.

Things had changed out of sight from Buckley’s day. The media pack was now ten times larger, with satellite, cable-TV, local radio, phone-in and magazine journalists joining the quote-hungry throng, and there were Twitterers and Facebookers, as well as fanatical fanzine and website bloggers who tried to outdo each other with their butchering criticism of the club and the team. There were scores of United web sites on which every Tom, Dick and Harriet could have their say.

Buckley’s strict “spout nowt” policy was unacceptable in this soundbite era when the media could make or break you. Even print-word journalists had taken to pushing tape recorder microphones into his face.

The shorthand notebook and sharpened pencil were rarely seen, and the

questions were just as likely to come from a girl reporter.

Masters walked a tightrope with the media. He had a handful of trusted football reporters he had known from his playing days with whom he carefully planted stories to mutual benefit, but he kept the large majority of journalists at a safe distance while feeding just enough scraps of information to satisfy them. Keep them too hungry for news, he realised, and they would eat him alive. He still carried the deep scars of what one particular Sunday tabloid had done to help break up his marriage to Jayne.

‘Who are you going to buy to replace Jairdono?’ was the first question to hit Masters as he lowered his electric driver’s-side window.

‘Look fellers ... and ladies,’ he said as they gathered around his car like vultures. ‘I know you’ve got a job to do, but I just can’t help you at this moment. I’m on my way to our training ground to discuss things with our coach Geoff Parkinson.’

‘Are you going to fine Jairdono for boozing all night?’ asked one of the rotweilers.

Masters ignored him.

‘Do you make a habit of letting your players go to all-night parties just three days before a major game?’ was the follow-up question.

‘You seem to know more about what happened than me,’ Masters said, forgetting the “spout nowt” Buckley rule. ‘Were you at this alleged party?’

‘The police say he was more than three times over the limit. That’s a criminal offence.’

‘I’ve yet to hear anything official from the police, and until then I’m making no comment whatsoever. All I will say is that my thoughts are with Jairdono, and I hope and pray he makes a full recovery.’

He slipped the gear lever to ‘Drive’ and was about to pull away when one of the few football reporters managed to make himself heard.

‘Have you decided on buying a replacement?’

‘No,’ said Masters, knowing that he needed to put a brake on his tongue.

‘I’ll be discussing the situation later today with the chairman. This close to the transfer deadline, it looks as if we’ll have to make do with the playing squad that we’ve got.’

‘Would you agree that this has wrecked United’s chances of promotion to the Premier League, and is, for you, a resigning matter?’ shouted a rotweiler at the back of the pack. He was holding a radio microphone towards Masters, and was clearly trying to goad him for the titillation of his listeners.

The United manager treated him with the contempt he thought he deserved. ‘See you tomorrow, gentlemen ... and ladies,’ he said as he pretended that he had not heard the question and drove off to United’s training ground five miles away in Boxleyheath.

Coach Geoff Parkinson had, on the instructions of Masters, kept the players back after the morning’s training session. Parky was the most dependable person in his life. He lived and breathed football, and was the eyes and ears at the club that every manager needs as a protection against the back stabbers, the dressing-room lawyers and any players with grievances. He and Parky had been a tandem team in midfield in the days when England were bold enough to play with a 4-2-4 formation. Masters was the play maker with his precise passing, while Parky had been the rock-solid anchorman, winning the ball with firm tackles and then releasing it into the path of his partner for the creative input. This was how they now operated in management.

Parky did the foundation work, making sure the players were as fit as could be and drilling into them the fundamentals, while Masters concentrated on the more sophisticated side of the tactics. No team in the League were better primed for inventive set-piece situations, and their passing movements bore the Masters hallmark in an era when many sides were reverting to hoof-it-and-hope long-ball tactics in a bid to scramble into the Premier League. It was another reason he had become disenchanted with the game.

Much of the football that he watched was crude and unimaginative.

There were just half a dozen teams in the First Division playing what he considered ‘proper’ football. The rest were too driven by the fear of failure to risk anything but kick and run. Even in the Premier League, where they were awash with money from television and sponsorship, fewer than half the teams played a progressive passing game. Most of the others were

negative and nervous, reflecting the attitude in the manager’s office and boardroom where surviving in the Premier League was the only thing that mattered. This was a world in which the word and worries of the Bankers carried more weight than that of any director.

Parkinson was one of the few people Masters trusted with his innermost thoughts. He was a creature of convention who had a solid marriage, and he and his wife, June, were always trying to pair him off with ladies they thought suitable for what they considered the pleasures and security of matrimony. Parky had started to suspect that there was somebody special in his life, but this was one secret the United manager was not yet ready to share with him. When the time came for him to know it was the chairman’s wife, he would have a fit.

Parky was waiting for him at the training ground car park, still wearing his tracksuit and windswept after taking the morning’s session.

‘I gave the players a break for lunch, Boss,’ he said in greeting. ‘They’re due back in twenty minutes.’ Parky always called him Boss, even back in their playing days when he regarded him as the senior partner. It was also his preferred title with the players.

They walked towards the chalet-style dressing-rooms at what used to be an army barracks. Plans had been passed for the building of a pavilion with proper changing facilities, but everything had been put on hold pending the outcome of the promotion race. ‘How did they react when you told them about Jairdono?’ Masters asked.

‘They were shocked and stunned,’ said Parkinson. ‘First of all they felt sorry for Jairdono, and then you could see them starting to feel sorry for themselves as they sensed the possible loss of their promotion bonuses.’

‘That bastard Sam Slater!’ Masters fumed. ‘What does he think he’s doing inviting players to mid-week parties at this stage in the season? He should be locked up. Did any of them admit being at the party?’

‘I asked, but they all quickly clammed up once they knew what had happened to Jairdono. I sense that several of them were there for at least part of the time.’

They sat in the tin-roofed administration office that had once been the company commander’s headquarters.

‘What are we going to do, Boss?’ Parky asked as he poured two mugs

of tea. ‘We’re in terrible trouble without Jairdono. I’m afraid Joe Roper, as hard as he tries, is not the answer. His ball control under pressure is just not good enough, and his passing is appalling.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ said Masters. ‘We’ve got to get a replacement, and quickly, what with the transfer deadline next week. I’ve already opened talks for a player.’

‘You have?’ Parky almost spilled the tea as he handed a mug to Masters.

‘Well don’t keep me in suspenders. Who are we going for?’

‘Dennis Baker.’

Parky looked hard at Masters. ‘You’re not joking are you.’ It was a statement.

‘What d’you think?’

‘To be honest, I’ve got mixed emotions. I’m happy at the prospect that we could have one of the best strikers in Europe in our attack.’

‘And ...?’

‘I’m nervous about whether we can handle him. Judging from the stories coming back from Italy, he’s out of control.’

‘You and I had no trouble with him when we had him at Rovers.’

‘He was just a kid then, Boss. But let’s be honest, all the signs were there that he would be a handful if let off the leash. It was only your strict discipline and the fact that he looked up to you that kept him in check.

Look what happened soon after we left Rovers. He started to go off the rails, and he’s hardly been back on them since.’

Masters sipped his tea, studying Parky’s face over the rim of the mug. He knew him better than a brother, and he could see the excitement shining in his eyes.

‘Come on, Geoff, be honest. You can’t wait to see him in a United shirt.

If anybody can score the goals to clinch promotion, it’s him.’

Parky grinned. ‘You’re right, Boss. If we could just have Baker the footballer I reckon nobody could stop us. But it’s the baggage he brings with him that worries me. How far down the road are you with the negotiations?’

‘Both the chairman and I have had preliminary talks with The Dutchman earlier today. Sporting Madrid and Paris Olympique are interested. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Dennis is homesick and is apparently

desperate to come back to England to play.’

‘What sort of money are they talking?’

Masters shrugged. ‘You know The Dutchman. He plays it closer to his chest than a Las Vegas card sharp. I would be surprised if it’s a penny less than five million.’

‘What does the chairman say to that?’

‘He’s more desperate for promotion than any of us. I’m pretty certain he’ll cough up because if we don’t make it into the Premier League he’s facing one hell of a financial crisis. He has had Marstell Street knocked flat this morning. God knows what that’s cost him to buy all those houses.

He’s already ordered the demolition men in to knock down the South Stand and plans have been passed to extend the stadium back as far as Marstell Street. The construction work is due to start the day after our final home match of the season.’

‘Can you imagine the fuss the media will make if we sign Dennis after losing Jairdono because of a drink-driving accident? Are you prepared to be burned alive?’

‘If it means getting promotion, yes. Between us, we can protect Dennis from the media.’

‘That’s the easy part,’ said Parky. ‘It’s the protecting Dennis Baker from himself that concerns me.’

He clasped his mug as if warming his hands. ‘But I’ll tell you what, Boss,’ he added, ‘it will frighten the life out of our promotion rivals if we manage to sign him. Even I would pay to watch us play with him in the attack.’

United’s squad of first-team players, reduced to just fourteen by injuries and suspensions, sat in the barracks that had been converted into a dressingroom. Masters stood in the centre of the room as if delivering a team talk. What he was actually doing was trying to find out what happened the previous night. The chairman had told him that Jairdono had left his son’s apartment before midnight. He decided to try devious tactics to get to the truth.

‘Right, lads,’ he said, ‘I know exactly which of you were at last night’s party with Jairdono. If I know, it’s certain that the police also know and

they will be wanting to question you. Now to make sure we all get our stories correct, I want each of you to stand up this minute and we’ll sort something out.’

Masters stared hard at the players, and waited in silence. First goalkeeper Frank Williams got slowly to his feet, followed reluctantly by defenders Jerry Harknett and Marcel Famechon. Finally, skipper Paul Crosby stood up.

‘Thank you,’ Masters said, struggling to disguise his disappointment that his captain was among them. ‘Now, I want no lies. Jairdono is badly injured and may never see again, so this is a very serious business. What time did he leave Sam Slater’s apartment?’

Paul Crosby elected himself spokesman. ‘He was still there when we left, Boss. We all shared a cab and left Jairdono behind with, um, a girl he met at Sam’s place.’

‘What time was that?’

‘Just after midnight.’

‘Just after?’ Masters said it in a tone that conveyed his disbelief.

‘Actually, Boss,’ said the giant Frank Williams, ‘it was nearer one o’clock. I suppose you could say it was about one fifteen when we finally piled into the taxi.’

‘Did any of you think of telling Jairdono to be sensible and not to drive himself home?’

‘We tried to take his keys off him, Boss,’ said Cockney central defender Jerry Harknett. ‘But he was convinced he’d struck lucky with the bird, He wanted to drive her back to his place, but we knew he was wasting his time. She was a right slag, one of Sam’s specials who was interested only in the ...’

Harknett’s voice trailed away as his team-mates shot him warning looks.

‘I know, I know,’ said Masters. ‘She was interested only in the cocaine.’

Harknett stared down at his feet in embarrassment ‘I could not care less about what was being drunk and taken at the party,’ the manager continued. ‘That’s a matter for the consciences of Sam Slater and all of you. What I want to do is get something straight for the record.

The police are going to want to know exactly what time Jairdono left Slater’s place.’

‘But we don’t know, Boss,’ said Crosby. ‘Honest, he was still there and we didn’t see him leave.’

‘This is true,’ said Marcel Famechon, the Frenchman whose sweeper performances had given United strength and stability at the back of the defence. ‘When we leave, Jairdono was having a very good time with the girl. We knew it was getting late and that we should be back in our beds.’

‘And at exactly what time?’ Masters repeated. ‘Exactly.’

‘All right, Boss,’ said Harknett. ‘On my life, it was no later than two o’clock. I ordered the cab, and he said he’d be there at one thirty. But he was late.‘ ‘Thank you,’ said Masters, bowing to Harknett. ‘It was like pulling teeth, but that’s what I wanted to know.’

He now had ammunition to prove to Slater that his son had been responsible for Jairdono drinking and, quite probably, drug-taking the night away.

Masters was deliberately silent for a full minute, like a judge considering his verdict. The four players started to shuffle uneasily as they continued to stand.

‘You have let down not only yourselves and the club but also your team-mates,’ he said finally. ‘If I had the players in reserve to replace you all four of you would be out of the side on Saturday. Here we are on the verge of promotion and into the last vital weeks of the season, and you go pissing it up. What sort of professionals are you? It’s an appalling way to behave.’

‘But Sam Slater said it would do us good to wind down,’ said Crosby, lamely.

‘And if Sam Slater said you should put your head in the gas oven you’d do it, would you? I’ve warned all of you before about Sam Slater and his parties. Well you’ll think twice before going to any more. I’m going to fine each of you a month’s wages, and any repeat of this sort of behaviour and you’ll be out of this club so fast your arses will make sparks. And you, Paul, I’m relieving you of the captaincy. What an example to set.’

‘Sorry, Boss,’ Crosby mumbled, close to tears. ‘I know it was stupid. I only meant to go along for an hour but I got caught up in the atmosphere, and in no time at all it was after one o’clock. All I can say is that I’ve been kicking myself, Boss. You can count on me to give it one hundred per cent to help get us up.’

Masters shook his head sadly. ‘I think you should all be thanking your lucky stars,’ he said., ‘Any one of you could have been in that car with Jairdono. His career looks as if it’s finished. All for the sake of a few beers, maybe a snort and a quick grope. It’s time you all grew up ...’

He was interrupted by the ringing of his mobile telephone in his inside pocket.. It was The Dutchman.

‘Just one second,’ he said into the mouthpiece.

‘Geoff,’ he said, ‘take over the team meeting, and discuss Saturday’s match and how we’re going to cover for the absence of Jairdono.’

He returned to the administration office. ‘What news, Johan?’ he said.

‘It’s looking good for United,’ The Dutchman said. ‘I have discussed it with Tornado and they are happy to do business with any club that will meet their price. I will be seeing Dennis in Romini tomorrow, and I will do my best to persuade him that a move to United is the best thing for him and his career.’

‘Thanks, Johan. Now what about the price?’

‘I am sorry, Roy, but I am not prepared to discuss such crucial matters over the telephone. As time is of the essence, I suggest that you and your chairman fly out here to Monte Carlo to see me on Sunday. If we can come to an agreement on terms, I will have Dennis here on Monday morning to sign contracts.’

‘But you can’t expect us to do business like this, Johan. We don’t want to come all the way out there and then find that you’re talking silly money.’

‘Between you and me, Roy, I can promise to make it worth your while to come here to Monte Carlo and clinch the deal. In fact I can guarantee you a personal, confidential payment for your co-operation of, let’s say, two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. A simple cash transaction just between you and me. Just a little thank you from me to you for all that you have done for me in the past.’

Masters was temporarily lost for words. Then caution got to him. ‘You’re right about not discussing this on the telephone,’ he said, deliberately making no comment on the staggering sum that he had just been offered.

‘I shall talk to my chairman, and then come back to you to make a date for Sunday. In Monte Carlo. But I’ll tell you this, Johan, if the fee rises above five million you can count us out of the market.’

‘Fine,’ said Johan. ‘We’re thinking along the same price range. I look forward to your company on Sunday when we must find the time to have a little one-to-one discussion. Incidentally, does the name Ryan Jones mean anything to you?’

‘He’s a weasel of a Sunday newspaper journalist who is always coming up with United stories,’ said Masters ‘Why d’you ask?’

‘I had a call from him an hour or so ago. He asked me whether you had been in touch about Dennis Baker.’

‘There’s no way he can know,’ said Masters. ‘He must be guessing.

What did you tell him?’

‘I said that I had not spoken to you in more than a year, and put down the telephone.

‘Well done, Johan. I’ll be in touch about Sunday, and if you’re talking to Dennis tell him that both Geoff Parkinson and I send our warmest best wishes. And add – and I’m serious – that I said, “Behave yourself.”’

Masters switched off the mobile, and sat down. Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. He had always prided himself in his younger days on nobody being able to buy him. Now he found himself in Harvey Slater’s pocket. Would he be strong enough to say ‘no’ to The Dutchman’s offer?

Or was it one that he could not possibly refuse? It was well known on the football circuit that Grokke liked to dish out handfuls of cash to help push through transfers. He had refused his offers of back-handers in the past, but a quarter of a million pounds. Slater was fond of saying that every man has his price. Had The Dutchman found his? With that sort of money, he could start his new life with Helen regardless of whether United made it into the Premier League. But could he live with himself if he accepted what was, no matter how it was wrapped up, a bribe? Or, as it had become known in football-speak, a bung. He had a lot of thinking to do.

First of all he telephoned Slater. ‘It looks on, Mr Chairman,’ he said,

finding himself excited at the prospect. ‘The Dutchman wants to see us in Monte Carlo on Sunday.’ ‘’Ow much?’ was Slater’s immediate reaction.

‘He won’t commit himself, but I think that you can take it that five million is the ballpark figure.’

‘Fuck me,’ said the chairman. ‘’Ow can he be worth two million more than Rovers sold him for less than two years ago? With his track record in the boozing stakes, nobody’s going to pay that sort of dosh.’

‘Sporting Madrid and Paris Olympique are already in for him. Like me, they can only see his goal-scoring record. He’s one of the top marksmen in Serie A this season. You can’t do better than that. Both Geoff Parkinson and I are confident we can handle Dennis. We helped make him the great player he is, and he gave us very few problems.’

‘But ’e was a kid then, and hadn’t discovered that booze was his lifeblood.’

‘It’s like petrol in his engine. He needs it, but Parky and I are sure we can make him drink only in moderation. Let’s face it, Mr Chairman, we only need him to do the business for us in the last seven matches of the season. His goals could make all the difference, particularly if we have to go into the play-offs. Only you can decide whether it’s worth investing another five million pounds to virtually guarantee a place in the Premier League.’

There was a long pause as Slater considered his decision.‘Right, get Rita to book two first-class tickets on the first available flight to Monte Carlo on Sunday. We’ll go for it. Let’s see if we can knock a few quid off The Dutchman’s price. We might be able to sweeten him with a little back’ander.’

Masters smiled to himself. This was going to be a meeting of football’s two master back hand players.

‘Great, Mr Chairman.We could pull this off, y’know. But we’ve got to keep it strictly between us. Any number of clubs could nick him from under our noses. What surprises me is that Ryan Jones is already on to the story.’

‘What, that bum from the Sunday scandal sheet who’s always creeping around Sam?’

‘That’s the one. He’s been on to The Dutchman asking if I’ve made any approaches for Baker. It can only be guesswork, because I’ve not mentioned my interest in Dennis other than to you.’

There was a silence that could be measured in fathoms.

‘Well I’m ’ardly likely to tell ’im, am I, and I ’aven’t mentioned the deal to anybody else part from Sam’ said Slater. ‘We don’t want this getting into the press until we’ve clinched the deal. Otherwise it’ll put another million on the price.’

Masters decided to be cheeky. ‘D’you think Sam would have a word with Jones for us? Warn him off, and promise him an exclusive later in the season in return for his co-operation.’

‘That’s a good idea, Roy. I’m not sure whether Sam knows ’ow to get in touch with ’im, but I’ll certainly put it to ’im.’

‘By the way, Mr Chairman, when you’re talking to Sam can you tell him that the police have discovered that Jairdono was at his party way after two o’clock in the morning. Also tell him that I have fined the other four players who were drinking until the early hours with him a month’s wages each.’

‘Somebody’s telling porky pies. Sam assures me that Jairdono left before midnight. ’e knows better than to get the players tanked up. Who were the other piss’eads?’

‘Frank Williams, Jerry Harknett, Marcel Famechon and, I’m sorry to say, Paul Crosby.’

‘Fucking ’ell. What sort of an example is that for a club captain to set his team-mates?’

‘I’ve already been down that road with him. I’m taking the captaincy away from him. Charlie Hastings will skipper the side against City on Saturday. But I’ve got to play the four of them. We just don’t have anybody in reserve who I can put in their place.’

‘One month’s wages? I think you’ve let the players off lightly. We’ll bomb ’em all out of the club once the season’s over.’

Even over the telephone, Masters could sense that the chairman was embarrassed. It was his son who needed to be bombed out.

‘Changing the subject, Roy,’ said Slater. ‘Does the name Millard mean anything to you? John Millard?’

It was the turn of Masters to feel embarrassed. No, stunned was how he felt.

‘Millard?’ he repeated. ‘No, can’t say it rings a bell. Who is he?’

‘Oh, just some friend of the wife’s. Don’t worry. I’ll track ’im down myself.’

Masters felt as if the walls were suddenly closing in on him as he switched off the mobile. He was desperate to talk to Helen, but dare not ring her.

How had the chairman found out about John Millard? It could mean only one thing. He was having his wife followed, and for all he knew her telephone might be tapped as well.

How could he stop her from calling him? This, Masters realised, was a much more worrying problem than his team selection for the match against City.

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 8. THE PLAYER

IT was The Dutchman who, in his exact way, informed Dennis Baker that Tornado had decided to release him. ‘You have gone a bad joke too far,’ he told him during a fleeting visit to Romini. ‘The club President is hopping mad over the latest incidents. There will be no forgiveness this time, and he has decided to sell you. I am here to see how you feel about a transfer back to England.’

‘England?’ said Baker, hardly able to believe his ears. ‘I’d swim back to play at home. Thought I were finished there. Which club?’

‘It is not a Premier League club, yet,’ said Grokke, testing Baker’s enthusiasm for a move to a club outside the top flight. ‘I have opened negotiations with United.’

‘Eeh that’s reet champion,’ Baker said in pure Yorkshire not in any way impaired by his sojourn in Italy. ‘It’d be great to be with Roy Masters again.

He and Parky are t’best in t’business. I’d play for them for nowt.’

Philanthropy was not one of The Dutchman’s strong points, and he was sufficiently acquainted with Baker’s Yorkshire accent and his abandonment of the definite article to understand that he would be prepared to play without pay. He had always been told at school when at his English lessons to carefully enunciate every single word, and he often wondered just who had taught Baker to speak his mother tongue.

‘Listen to me carefully, Dennis,’ he said. ‘You are walking a tightrope with your career, and there is no safety net. I am amazed that I have managed to find one club that is willing to take a chance with you. It is taking me every trick I know to convince United that there is a stampede for your signature. You must try to comprehend the seriousness of your situation. By letting you go now, Tornado are escaping the clause in which

they are contracted to pay you a half-a-million pounds loyalty bonus after two years.’

‘I’m entitled to summat, aren’t I?’ said Baker. ‘I’ve stuffed t’bloody ball in’t net for them enough times. I’ve done eighteen months. It’s been like a prison sentence stuck here in’t flat all on me own and not knowing what anybody’s talking about.’

Grokke glanced round Baker’s luxuriously furnished apartment and at the view of the Adriatic lapping at the beach a hundred yards away. Some prison, he thought.

‘Tornado will not pay you a penny piece,’ said The Dutchman. ‘I will have to negotiate it at the other end, and get at least part of the lump-sum money for you from United. Would you settle for two hundred and fifty thousand pounds as a signing-on fee, which may have to be spread over your contract?’

Baker, still wearing his dressing gown even though it was the middle of the day, stared out of the window as if doing some calculations. ‘If it means going home, aye, that’ll do me,’ he said finally. ‘Like I told ’ee, I’d play for United – for Roy Masters – for nowt.’

‘Not while I am representing you,’ said Grokke, with an empty smile.

‘You must understand, Dennis, that this could be the last time that you are in a strong negotiating position. This is the peak period of your career.

I will see what I can squeeze out of United for you, and if I am happy with the terms I will want you to come to Monte Carlo on Monday and sign a contract. If things go well, you should be a United player and off to London next week.’

‘That’s greatest news I’ve had for years,’ said Baker.

‘There is one big hurdle we still have to clear here in Romini,’ warned Grokke. ‘That trouser-dropping business. You are in serious trouble because the woman you insulted wants to press charges. If she goes ahead it could mean you being refused permission to leave Italy pending a court appearance and possible trial.’

‘It were only a lark,’ Baker protested. ‘It weren’t as if I touched her or anything. Just a quick flash, that were all. It were a laugh.’

‘Not to the woman involved. She wants compensation for what would be described in court as indecent assault.’

‘But I never laid a hand on her, honest.’

‘Maybe not, but I can assure you, Dennis, that in a court of law it would be considered a case of gross indecency. Before I return to Romini, I will visit the lady and see what it will cost to get her to drop the charge.’

Baker looked down at his feet in sudden embarrassment. ‘There’s another problem,’ he half mumbled. ‘I daren’t move to London without settling a little, uh, debt that I’ve run up, like. I’m on a promise to have my kneecaps smashed.’

The Dutchman could sense his golden deal slipping away. ‘What are you talking about? What is the debt?’

‘Horses,’ said Baker. ‘The gee-gees. I owe a London bookmaker forty grand.’

‘Forty thousand pounds?’ Grokke was incredulous. ‘How have you managed to run up that sort of debt?’

‘I hit a bad run,’ said Baker. ‘I kept doubling my stakes to try to get out of trouble, and just went in deeper and deeper. I’ve been in dispute with t’bookie because he cheated me with t’odds on a win treble that came up, and I’ve told him I’ve no intention of paying him t’full whack. He sent a messenger to see me after t’game in Rome last week. I were told very clearly that I’m in serious trouble if I don’t pay up.’

Grokke wondered how much longer he could put up with being Baker’s minder. He had helped sort out distressed mothers of assaulted daughters, aggrieved football officials who had been insulted, hotel managers whose rooms had been wrecked and now this, an avenging bookmaker. It all strengthened his resolve to make a killing on the transfer, because it was likely to be the last one in which the Mad Englishman could generate a large fee.

‘I will clear up this matter with the bookmaker,’ he said. ‘But, for your own sake, you must stop this gambling nonsense. It is the quickest way to the bankruptcy court.’

‘I know,’ said Baker. ‘I were only betting because I were bored out of my head. Once I’m back home I promise I won’t gamble any more.’

‘It is crucial, Dennis, that you do not mention to a single soul this possible move back to England,’ Grokke stressed, protecting his negotiating position. ‘If it were to leak out, United might back off and it would be

virtually impossible to find you another club so close to the transfer deadline.’

Baker wanted to talk to only one person about the move. Once The Dutchman had gone, he rang United and, slipping into a Chico Marx-style Italian accent, asked to speak to Roy Masters.

‘Mr Masters is not available at the moment,’ the switchboard operator told him. ‘Can I take a message?’

‘Ask him to ring Signor Romini,’ Baker said. ‘My telephone number is five seven three, two six eight.’

‘What code is that?’ asked the operator.

‘He’ll know. Just tell him Signor Romini.’

The clown that was never far below the surface could not resist signing off in pure Yorkshire, ‘That’s reet kind of thee, lass.’

Baker had already been contacted by the Tornado club secretary telling him not to report for training, and that he was suspended pending an investigation into his behaviour following the Lazio game. ‘We will issue a statement that you have a slight injury and will miss Sunday’s match against Genoa,’ he said. ‘You are not to discuss the incidents with anybody from the media.’

He laughed at that instruction. There had been a dozen British football reporters and photographers as witnesses, and pictures of himself on the town hall roof were plastered all over the newspapers. Thank goodness, he thought, that none of them had caught him dropping his trousers. Even now there were at least six cameramen parked outside his apartment block.

He wondered about mooning at them from the lounge balcony, but for once good sense got the better of him.

Following the warning from The Dutchman, Baker did not want to do or say anything that might frighten United away from going through with the transfer. He was desperate to get back to England, and the thought of playing for United, and in particular for Roy Masters, excited him. A London club was just what he needed. Playing for Romini was too much like living in a goldfish bowl. It was the only club in town, and everything he did was under the microscope of the media. In London, he would be able to disappear from the public eye between games. There was a maze of nightclubs in which he could swim in champagne if he wanted, but he

had made a private promise to himself to get treatment for what he now recognized was a serious drink problem. The best specialists were in London, and he knew that Roy would help him get sorted out.

Baker had been sent to several shrinks and therapists to try to beat his dependence on the bottle, but it had always been on the insistence of somebody else. He was now prepared to make the effort himself, and knew from his brief flirtation with Alcoholics Anonymous that this was a vital step. The only time when he felt he had been in some sort of control of his life was in the days when he was under the influence of Roy Masters and Geoff Parkinson at Rovers. It was after they left the club that he slipped into bad company, and started to lead a life in which his thoughts, taste and thirst were dictated by the demon drink. He had nobody that he felt he could turn to and trust for sympathy and counsel when his mother died in the home for incurable alcoholics, and he often woke up at night in a sea of sweat after dreaming that he was going down the same nightmare road.

The move to United, he felt sure, was going to be a turning point. Roy and Geoff would get him right on and off the pitch, just like in the good old days at Rovers. He kept closely in touch with what was happening in the football at home, and he knew that United were second in the First Division and within reach of the Premier League. Baker had seen on the satellite news that their top scorer, Jairdono, had been seriously injured in a car smash, and he was as excited as a kid at Christmas that Masters had decided on him as the replacement.

With all the journalists camped outside his apartment block, Baker felt trapped. He went to the fridge and got himself a can of lager and a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits, and decided that he was best off back in bed. He had just got himself comfortable, with the television remote control in his right hand, the can of lager in his left and the packet of biscuits balanced on his stomach, when the telephone rang.

The voice in his ear brought a grin to his face.

‘Dennis, you young rascal. It’s you know who.’

‘Hello, Boss,’ he said, instinctively using the title by which he had always addressed Roy Masters.

‘I’m not making this call, understand? I don’t want to be had up for making an illegal approach.’

‘Eeh, ’eck, I know Boss. It’s just that I wanted to tell you it would be reet grand to play for you again. I’ve told Johan Grokke that I’d play for nowt.’

Masters laughed.‘I see you’re still talking native Yorkshire.’

‘Aye, they don’t understand bloody word I’m saying out here. Any one would think I were talking a foreign language.’

More laughter from Masters before the serious stuff. ‘What I need to know, Dennis, is whether you are right both physically and mentally for the job we’ve got for you at United.’

‘I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, Boss. I can’t wait to get back to England.’

‘I know better than anybody that you’ve got the ability, son. But looking at the latest pictures of you on a town hall roof does not fill me with confidence that your behaviour has improved since you went out there.’

‘You know me, Boss. Anything for a laugh. I didn’t mean any harm. It were just a prank, that’s all.’

‘Well it’s got our chairman worried stiff. He’s the man who’s putting up the money for this transfer, and he wonders if he’s best off leaving his hand in his pocket.’

‘Look, Boss, you know and I know that United need goals if they’re to make it into the Premier League this season. Tell your chairman that he can count on me to give it everything to make sure United get those goals.’

‘That’s what I wanted to hear. There’s a lot of negotiating to be done yet, but at least I know you’ll have your heart in the job. We’re seeing The Dutchman in Monte Carlo on Sunday.’

‘He were here this morning. I’ve been told to stand by to come out on Monday.’

‘You’ll need a medical, of course, before the final contract is signed. Is everything in working order?’

‘Aye, Boss, touch wood. I’m as fit as a fiddle.’

‘How about the booze? You don’t seem to have that under control.’

‘I promise I’m going to cut it down. In fact, I were going to ask you and Parky to help me. I’m determined to beat it this time, Boss. Honest. Just get me home, and you’ll see.’

‘You know you can count on Geoff and me. We’ve both got a soft spot

for you, and we want to see you straight. Must go now, Dennis. We’ve got City tomorrow, and Geoff and I have got to decide our team. Just wish we could pick you.’

‘Me too, Boss. Hopefully next week, you can.’

Baker put down the telephone receiver, picked up his can of lager, took a bite of chocolate digestive and switched on the satellite racing preview programme. He would spend the rest of the day here in bed. That way he could not get into any trouble. He would not even have a bet.

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 9. THE AGENT

THE Dutchman arrived back at Nice Airport late on Friday evening after his day trip to Romini. As he settled into his Holland-orange Maserati sports car he felt elated at the ease with which a small fortune was falling into his lap. There was every possibility that he would clear more than one million pounds sterling on the deal for a player that he had been convinced nobody dare touch.

It never ceased to amaze and amuse him at how simple it was to buy people with their own money. Every under-the-counter payment that he offered a participant in one of his transactions was financed by the buying or selling club. As he drove along the coast road from Nice to Monte Carlo he calculated how the fee for Baker would be distributed. He was confident he could pin United down to paying five million pounds, three million of which was earmarked for Tornado. That left two million. He would reward Graziani with £400,000 as an incentive to do future business. Baker would be paid a quarter of a million, minus the £40,000 gambling debt and the £15,000 The Dutchman had agreed to pay an extremely grateful Italian housewife to drop her indecent assault charge.

He had already decided to set a further £250,000 aside for Roy Masters as an insurance that he would encourage his chairman to push the deal through. That left the grand total of £1,100,000 as his personal cut. It was so easy that it was obscene.

In his days as a history teacher, Grokke had taught his students about how greed and corruption had helped bring down the Roman empire. He wondered how long it would be before the same twin evils cut away at the

rotting foundation of the football empire. What he knew was that by the time it crumbled he would be as free as a bird to live anywhere he wanted in the world. He had set himself a nest-egg target of twenty million US dollars before he dropped out of sight, and the Baker deal would lift his Swiss bank account savings past the halfway mark.

Grokke reflected on how the historic Bosman ruling of 1995 had made it even easier for agents like himself to fill their treasure chests. He always remembered to drink a silent toast to Jean-Marc Bosman, an obscure thirtyyear-old Belgian midfield player who had won a ruling in the European Court of Justice that brought an earthquake of change to the football world.

It gave out-of-contract players in the European Community the right to become free agents, bringing footballers into line with other EU workers.

In its wake came the judgement that in future clubs within the EC could field as many European players as they wished. Grokke immediately saw how this unrestricted movement of players was going to be like an oil gusher for him, but at the same time he could envisage huge problems for the less well-off clubs. They relied on transfer fees as their lifeblood, but in future most of the money would be going into the pockets of players – and their agents. Here’s to you, Jean-Marc.

As he brought his super-charged Maserati snorting into the Principality of Monaco he was deep in memories of how Dutch ‘total football’ in the 1970s ­– graced by Cruyff, Krol and Neeskens with Ajax, Van Hanegem, Jansen and Israel with Feyenoord – had been described as the golden age of soccer. Now, thanks to Bosman, this was the golden age for agents.

Grokke tried hard not to be a hackneyed agent. There were some he had watched at work, particularly in England, Italy and Eastern Europe, who made him shudder with their oily, tasteless way of doing business. They tried to give the impression they were as important as their clients, and craved a high profile. The Dutchman preferred the softly-softly approach, and few people outside the game knew of his existence.

Unfortunately for him, the tax investigators were among those who were aware not only of his existence but his whereabouts. There were two of them, looking for all the world like Gestapo agents in their belted blackleather coats, parked on his doorstep when he arrived at his apartment block in Monte Carlo shortly after ten o’clock. One served him with a

subpoena that demanded his appearance at a tax investigation hearing in The Hague the following month, while the other made it clear that failure to attend would lead to the immediate issuing of a warrant for his arrest.

His ex-lover had apparently been digging the knife into him, and there was a string of transfer deals on which both the Dutch and English tax authorities wanted detailed reports.

Grokke broke out in a cold sweat as he sat alone in his apartment considering the consequences of the investigation. If they could pin him on just one of the charges of tax evasion and avoidance and, most serious of all, fraud, he knew they would throw the book at him as an example to others. It only needed them to get just a handful of the scores of people to whom he had made cash payments to give evidence against him and he was in deep trouble. He was looking at the prospect of a minimum six years in prison. That was no place for him to slip into middle-age. He had other plans.

Checking his watch, he worked out that it was now five o’clock in the afternoon in Washington. He switched on his computer, opened his Netscape program and started to compile a coded e-mail message to an old boy friend of his who worked in the State department. Grokke had decided to bring forward the disappearing act he had planned for two years’ time. He would have to content himself with starting his new life on ten million US dollars, rather than the twenty million he had set as his retirement target.

On receipt of the coded message, his handsomely rewarded friend would arrange for the clearance of an entry visa and an all-important Green card for a Dutch history professor by the name of Willem Kalff, a name borrowed from a masterful still-life artist from his favourite 17th-century period. He would apply for a part-time post lecturing on European history at one of the west coast universities, and make occasional visits to Zurich to visit his money.

It would mean goodbye to the boyish features. Grokke took from his safe the passport that had already been prepared ready for this moment. He needed to start immediately growing the beard and moustache that featured on the passport photograph, and he checked that the frames of the tinted, horn-rimmed spectacles still felt comfortable on his ears. The diamond

stud earring in his left ear would have to go, and he decided to buy half a dozen English tweed jackets and bowties to go with his new professorial image. A Sherlock Holmes style pipe would give the finishing touch, but it would not be tobacco that he would be packing into the bowl.

Grokke returned to the safe and took out the 88 megabyte disk on which he stored all his transfer dealings in the code of figures from history. He pushed it into the disk drive slot and studied the files in the menu. There were one hundred and sixty entries, ranging from Napoleon ‘invading’ Germany (Claude Humez going from Paris Olympic to Düsseldorf 1888) to Nelson battling with the Spanish (Harry Matthews going from United to Sporting Madrid). The biggest ‘army’ – one million two hundred thousand men representing $1,200,000 – was marked down alongside Mussolini, the code name for Athletic Zapoli coach Gianni Peppola, who had been paid in cash for his part in pushing through the transfer of Italian international Dino Fiarro to F.C. Soville. Grokke had handed out sweeteners totalling more than $10-million. The most Grokke had earned from a single transfer was a sterling commission of £1,600,000 for the sale of England international midfield schemer Arthur Richardson to Real Marbella.

He took one last glance at the list and then sadly selected ‘Erase Disk’ from the menu-bar. The safety-net message appeared on his screen: ‘Are you sure you want to erase this disk? All information will be deleted.’

Grokke spotlighted the ‘Yes’ button, and there was twenty seconds of whirring as eight years of transfer business disappeared into oblivion.

Even in code, he decided that the details could be broken down, analysed and eventually used in evidence against him.

The Dennis Baker transfer would be the last that he would conduct. He went to bed and fell asleep calculating how he could manage to squeeze two million pounds out of the deal. It would be extremely satisfying to finish with a personal record.

The Dutchman was wakened on Saturday morning by the buzzing of the downstairs front door intercom. He studied the picture on the security screen in his kitchen. There was a close up of a man’s face that he did not recognise. He pressed the two-way talk control. ‘Who do you want?’ he asked in French.

‘My name is Tompkins,’ the stranger said in an unmistakeable London accent, putting his face close to the intercom and shouting . ‘I’m a courier from Mr Harvey Slater. He has asked me to make a personal delivery to Mr Johan Grokke.’

‘Come up to the second floor, apartment four,’ Grokke said, pushing the door-release button. ‘You will find the elevator immediately ahead of you.’

The Dutchman had his Chinese silk dressing-gown on by the time the English courier arrived at his door. He was carrying a black sports hold-all, the type that Grokke used when making his gift payments.

‘Have you come from England today?’ he asked, showing his visitor into the lounge.

‘No,’ said Tompkins. ‘I arrived late yesterday afternoon and came straight here, but there was nobody in.’

‘I was in Romini,’ explained Grokke. ‘What brings you here?’

Tompkins handed him an envelope from his inside pocket. ‘I have been instructed to give this to you personally,’ he said. ‘Mr Slater requests that you read this letter, and I am to wait for your response.’

He continued to hold on to the bag. ‘Please sit yourself down,’ said Grokke, waving at an armchair. ‘I will be with you in a couple of moments.’

The Dutchman returned to the kitchen, and opened the envelope. It contained a one page handwritten note from Harvey Slater on United notepaper.

‘Dear Johan,’ he read, ‘This envelope will be handed to you in person by my representative Tompkins. He is bringing to you a personal gift from me to you as a mark of my personal gratitude for your work so far in setting up the transfer of Dennis Baker to United. Please open the hold-all out of sight of anybody. There is a release button under the manufacturer’s label.

See you at the Schiro Palace hotel in Monte Carlo on Sunday to finish the business. Harvey Slater.’

Grokke went back into the lounge and took the hold-all from Tompkins.

He carried it into his bedroom, pulled the door to and then released the catch on the false bottom of the bag. Packed tightly inside were dozens of packs of fifty pound notes. He counted fifty bundles, all with a Bank of

Jersey seal. In an envelope on top was another note from Slater. ‘There’s a quarter of a million quid here,’ he had written. ‘It’s yours to keep. No questions asked. All I ask in return is that you do everything that needs to be done to ensure that United sign Dennis Baker before next week’s transfer deadline. One other thing: I cannot and will not pay a penny more than five million. Do your best Johan. Incidentally, only you and I know about this gift, and it will stay that way.’

The Dutchman roared with laughter. Slater was doing ‘a Grokke’ on him.

He showed Tompkins to the door. ‘Tell Mr Slater that the delivery was gratefully received,’ he said. ‘I look forward to seeing him and Roy Masters at the Schiro Palace.’

Grokke started to prepare his morning joint, and had just lit up when he decided to make a telephone call. He dialled a private Düsseldorf number, and got the answer phone. ‘Wolfgang, this is Johan,’ he said in German.

‘Please call me on my mobile as soon as possible. I want you to do me a favour.’

The coach of Düsseldorf 1888 could help him beat his personal commission record.

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 10. THE WIFE

THE wild March wind blowing across the virtually deserted Brighton beach this Saturday morning did not deter the golden-haired labrador from lolloping over the pebbles, retrieving the stump of wood and returning it to a frozen Helen Slater. The dog, Laddie, did not have her full attention.

She was still confused and concerned over the previous night’s attempted phone conversation with Roy. He had one of those mobiles on which you can identify the number of the person making the call, and before she had time to utter a word he said, ‘The chairman’s not with me. I suggest you try him on his car phone.’

Then the line went dead. There was a chilling abruptness in his voice that spoke volumes. Something was wrong, but what? She dare not ring him again, and just hoped to snatch a word with him after the match against City that afternoon.

Tompkins was off somewhere on an assignment for her husband, so she would have to drive herself to the ground. She had no desire to watch the game, but was desperate to see Roy, even if only for fleeting moments.

Helen had considered staying at the Mayfair apartment overnight, but Harvey had been in such a foul mood that she returned alone to their Brighton home rather than put up with his bad temper.

The news of the Jairdono accident appeared to have pushed her husband close to some sort of crisis of confidence. She had never known him so irritable, and he hardly had a civil word for her. It was almost as if he were blaming her for the problems he suddenly faced. She wanted to tell him that he had put his own head in the noose by throwing all his money at a stupid football club, and then trusting his imbecile of a son with too much responsibility. He had now reached the point of no return by bulldozing

the street where he was born to make way for a new stand at the cost of millions of pounds.

Helen put his morose mood down to the fact that he was desperately anxious over the financial catastrophe he faced if United failed to make it into the Premier League. ‘The bank ’as now got me by the balls,’ was how he described his situation in that blunt way of his. Before freezing her out of any conversation, he had told Helen that only a flotation could save him. ‘In the Premier League, just half my shares would net me fifty million quid and I would still have controlling interest,’ he said. ‘As a League club, the shares would be virtually worthless.’

In the last two days Slater had communicated only by a series of grunts, and could hardly be bothered to look up as she left the Mayfair apartment on Friday afternoon to catch the train to Brighton. Later that evening she began to wonder if she had misinterpreted why he was so surly and offhand with her. Alarm bells started ringing after the brusque way Roy had dismissed her on the telephone. Could it be that Harvey had found out something about their affair? She gave an involuntary shiver as she stood on the beach, and it was not caused by the biting wind.

A pair of binoculars were trained on Helen as she slipped the lead back on to Laddie’s collar and prepared to walk him home before driving to London for the match. Hamilton Scott had half expected her to meet her lover, whoever he was, on the beach. He was disappointed.

Helen sat alongside her husband in the main stand at the Dockways stadium that was packed to capacity for what was apparently a crucial promotion match. City were third in the table, a point behind United in second place.

Just a minute before the kick-off Roy, wearing a three-quarter length brown sheepskin coat to keep out the cold, came into the directors’ box and took his seat on the right-hand side of the chairman. He gave Helen the briefest of nods in greeting. She was separated from him only by her husband. How ironic, she thought.

Neither her husband nor her lover gave her a moment’s attention as they became engrossed in a match that, judging by the excited reactions of the crowd, was a thrilling affair. But it was all lost on Helen, who found it impossible to get emotionally involved in what to her eye was

a disorganised mess of men running in untidy patterns and chasing the ball to and fro across the pitch. She had been better entertained watching Laddie lollop on the beach.

Every time the ball went near either goal her husband moved to the edge of his seat, and made strangled cursing noises. He jumped at one point punching the air, but then came down like a deflated balloon. ‘Fucking linesman,’ he shouted. ‘Stick the flag up your arse.’ Charming, Helen thought. It was not only the fans who were foul mouthed. She kept casting glances past her husband at the intense face of Roy, but he never once took his eyes off the pitch to catch the message of love that she was trying to send. He hardly moved in his seat, while Slater did not stop fidgeting and kicking out as if the ball was at his feet. ‘The referee’s a bastard,’ he kept saying every time the whistle blew when the ball was at the City end, and he kept up a non-stop flow of insulting remarks about the performances of United players.

Helen just could not see where the enjoyment came into all this as she sensed her husband being driven almost to the edge of a nervous breakdown.

On her left, one of his yes-men directors kept joining in the juvenile chants of ‘U-ni-ted, U-ni-ted’ that punctuated every quiet moment on the pitch.

She really understood what it was like to be alone in a crowd.

Half-time came with neither team having scored. ‘Tell them to wake their fucking ideas up,’ was the chairman’s contribution as his manager dashed off to the dressing-room to deliver a tactical talk. Helen followed her husband to the outer boardroom for tea and biscuits while the Tannoy boomed out ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ that had been adopted as the United anthem. It was not, Helen thought, quite like the Last Night of the Proms.

Sam Slater was in the far corner of the boardroom drinking brandy with a group of his cronies. He raised his glass when he saw Helen walk in, but it was more of a sneer than a smile that crossed his face.

His father busied himself acting as a host to the visiting directors in the men-only inner board-room, leaving Helen standing alone pretending to be interested while studying framed sepia photographs of old United teams that decorated the wood-panelled walls. She wondered what the chances were of snatching a conversation with Roy after the match. So far, apart

from the curt nod of greeting, he had not even given a hint that he knew she existed. He was not usually this off-hand when her husband was around, and often made her nervous by being too attentive. The match, she decided, must be taking every ounce of his concentration.

‘We don’t often have the pleasure of your company, Helen,’ a voice said, startling her out of her private thoughts. She turned round to find herself looking into the flushed face of Jack Shenton.

She gave him light brush kisses on both cheeks, and was surprised to detect a strong smell of whisky. ‘I thought I would have seen you in the directors’ box,’ Helen said.

‘No, that’s been commandeered by the chairman and Sam,’ he said with a distinct slur to his speech. ‘By the time they get their VIP guests and hangers-on in there’s no room for the likes of me.’

He waved a hand in the direction of Sam Slater and his friends as he put the emphasis on the description ‘hangers-on’.

‘I much prefer it in the stand with the peasants,’ he added. ‘You get a better type of person there.’

Helen was surprised by the sarcastic tone in his voice. ‘You don’t sound very happy, Jack,’ she said.

‘I suppose I’m still suffering nostalgiaritis after seeing my old home knocked to the ground,’ he replied, pausing to drain a large whisky with one quick tilt of his head. ‘Nothing’s the same anymore. This place is going to the dogs. We’ll be in a helluva mess if we don’t go up. There are people here who seem hell bent on wrecking the club. We’ve got enemy within, Helen. Enemy within.’

Helen was shocked and embarrassed by the bitterness pouring from Shenton, who was, as far as she was aware, not usually a heavy drinker.

He was making no attempt to keep his voice down, and was attracting side-glance attention from everybody in earshot.

He stared with naked hatred across the boardroom in the direction of Sam Slater and his companions, who all looked as if they had stepped off a conveyor belt of City yuppies. ‘Given any good piss-up parties lately, Sam?’ he said loudly, for all to hear.

The buzz of conversation stopped as all heads turned towards Shenton.

‘It looks as if you’ve just come from one, Uncle,’ Slater said.

‘Well at least at my parties there are no drugs, and nobody gets half killed on the way home. I don’t know how you live with yourself.’

Harvey Slater came hurrying out of the inner boardroom. ‘What’s occurring?’ he said. ‘Sounds as if somebody’s looking for trouble.’

‘It’s just Uncle Jack being his usual stupid, attention-seeking self,’ said Sam. ‘I suppose it’s cheaper than hiring a half-time cabaret act.’

His cronies laughed as if on cue.

‘Excuse me, Helen,’ Jack said, politely. ‘There’s something I’ve got to do.’

He walked unsteadily around the table laid out with cocktail snacks and stood directly in front of his nephew. ‘Somebody should have done this to you a long, long time ago,’ he said. It all seemed almost in slow motion as he pulled back his right fist and threw it on a hooking path to the point of Sam Slater’s nose.

Sam fell back into the arms of one of his associates as his father rushed over and pulled Shenton away.

‘What the fucking ’ell d’you think you’re doing, Jack?’ he yelled as he pushed Shenton to the wall.

‘That boy of yours has been asking for it for years,’ Jack said. ‘He’s caused his mother nothing but heartache, and now he’s destroying our club.’

Slater’s eyes bulged, his temper suddenly on self destruct. ‘It’s not OUR club,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘It’s MY club. And it’s certainly nothing more to do with you. You can piss off, Jack Shenton. I got rid of your fucking sister. Now I’m getting rid of you.’

That was the signal for Jack to start throwing punches again, this time at Slater Senior. Harvey gave back as good as he got, and they wrestled each other to the floor as if in a reconstruction of the fights they used to have as schoolboy neighbours in Marstell Street. They were pulled apart by directors of the City club, who could not quite believe what they were witnessing.

The buzzer sounded to signal that the second-half was about to start. ‘I’ll fuckingwell sue you if you try to step foot in this club ever again,’ Slater said to Shenton. He was back in control of his temper, and he dropped

each word like a hand grenade. ‘I want you out of my club and out of my life.’

‘You can stick the club and you can also stick your businesses,’ said Shenton. ‘You’ll be getting a compensation claim from my solicitor on Monday. I helped build your business empire, and I’ll help break it.’

He half bowed towards Helen as he attempted to make as dignified an exit as possible. ‘Goodbye, Helen, my dear,’ he said. ‘This rat does not deserve you.’

Sam Slater was holding a handkerchief to his bleeding nose.

‘You do know how to entertain, old chap,’ said one of his pals. ‘All this and footie, too!’

Sam joined in the laughter as they returned to the directors box for the resumption of the match.

Helen followed her husband to their seats. He was white and trembling.

Surely, Helen thought, half-time intervals were not always like this.

Just as the teams were about to kick off Roy slipped into his seat. He leaned across the front of the chairman. ‘Here you are, Helen,’ he said.

‘You might at least try to find out which team is which.’

He pushed a match programme into her hands. It was her only contact with him.

The game had been going about an hour when Roy suddenly got up and raced out of the director’s box to make tactical changes from the touchline.

It was still goalless, but United were a man down after having one of their players sent off for throwing the sort of punch that Sam Slater had taken on the nose. Helen opened the programme to see which player was having a red card waved at him by the referee. It was number nine. She looked at the United team to discover that it was Joe Roper, the player deputising for Jairdono.

Helen was about to put the programme back on her lap when she noticed a scrawled sentence in Roy’s handwriting. ‘Ring tonight from a call box,’ she read.

As she folded the programme and slipped it in her handbag, there was a sudden roar from the far end of the ground where City’s supporters were celebrating a goal.

Her husband slumped in his seat as if he had been shot.

‘What a fucking disaster,’ he said to nobody in particular. ‘We’ve got to get Baker here or we’ve ’ad it. This lot couldn’t put the ball into the net if it was a mile wide.’

The match ended United 0, City 1. Slater seemed to have aged ten years as he walked heavily back to the boardroom just in time to hear a voice on television reporting that the two teams immediately below United had both won. They had slipped to fourth in the table.

Slater’s shoulders slumped, and he looked close to breaking point.

‘I’ll be going then,’ Helen said, knowing that her husband could not have cared less. He was too preoccupied with what was happening to United, his mistress.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’m off to Monte Carlo in the morning with Roy. Back Monday.’

Slater gave her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. He might just as well have been kissing the wall for all the feeling it contained.

Helen drove out of the United ground and joined the bumper-to-bumper match traffic as she headed south towards Brighton in her Jeep Cherokee, which Harvey had bought for her last birthday when they were still talking.

It was after eight o’clock when she finally reached the outskirts of the coastal town, and pulled into a lay-by alongside a public telephone box.

She rang Roy’s home number.

‘Roy, can you talk?’

‘Where are you calling from?’

‘A phone box just outside Brighton.’

‘That’s all right. Sorry about all this, honey, but I’m sure Harvey’s having you followed.’

‘How on earth do you know?’

‘He asked me on Thursday if I knew of a John Millard.’

Helen went cold. ‘What did you say?’ ‘’Said it didn’t ring any bells. He described him as a friend of yours.’

‘How could he have found out?

‘There’s only one way. He must have had somebody following you to the hotel on Thursday. I’d booked the room for us as Mr and Mrs John Millard by telephone. Luckily I didn’t show up, or whoever was trailing

you would have had more than just a name to pass on to your husband.’

‘What do we do now?’

‘Play it very low key. No more meetings for a while I’m afraid, and only use public call boxes when you ring. If he’s got a proper detective on your tail it’s odds-on that he’ll be tapping your telephone.’

‘But, darling, how long before we can be together? I can’t stand not seeing you. It was agony not being able touch you at the ground today.’

‘Let me get this season out of the way. That’s less than six weeks. Then we’ll make the break, and start afresh in Spain.’

‘What do I say if Harvey asks me about John Millard?’

‘Just play dumb. He doesn’t exist, so you’re not lying if you say you don’t know who he is.’

‘He’s been really hostile the last two days. Now I know why. He frightens me, Roy. God knows what he’ll do if he finds out about us.’

‘He will, but only when we’re ready. Please, darling, just be patient.’

‘I suppose you know what happened at half-time today?’

‘I’d have given a month’s wages to have seen it. Sam Slater getting punched on the nose. Great. I would have aimed much lower. Not that he’s got any balls.’

‘Is Jack finished with the club?’

‘Your husband says he’s finished with him. Period. In future, they will talk only through their lawyers. It’s very sad, and all because of that bum Sam.’ ‘How serious was today’s defeat?’

‘Just about as bad as it could be. If we don’t start picking up points, we could even struggle to make the playoffs. It’s now imperative that we clinch the deal for Dennis Baker tomorrow. If we don’t sign him, we’re bang in bother.’’

‘Two days away with Harvey. Aren’t you the lucky one.’

They continued chatting for another ten minutes before Helen reluctantly said good night, and continued her drive home to the Brighton house.

Hamilton Scott made a note of the phone box call, and wondered if she had realised that her home telephone was being tapped. ‘Not to worry,’ he said to himself. ‘All I’ve got to do is get a list of the telephone calls she’s been making over the past couple of months. That will lead me to

the mysterious Mr Millard.’ Helen made herself a tea-and-whisky nightcap and went to bed after switching off the television highlights coverage of the United-City game.

Once was more than enough, thank you very much.

She lay in bed playing everything over and over in her mind, and was unable to conjure up a vision of Roy and herself living happily together in Spain. The image of her husband losing his temper kept dominating her thoughts and she became more and more frightened. She had seen his violent moods increasing as the pressure of the United situation crowded in on him. He was like a volcano waiting to erupt, and when he found out about her love affair with Roy it would, she was sure, make him completely uncontrollable.

It was the early hours before she finally cried herself to sleep.

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 11. THE AGENT

THE Sunday papers made dramatic reading for Slater and Masters as they sat side by side aboard the 8.05 BA flight from Heathrow to Nice.

The chairman was featured on the front page of each of the tabloids, with lurid accounts of his boardroom bust-up with Jack Shenton. His son was widely quoted, saying that Shenton had started the trouble after drinking heavily at the boardroom bar. Slater had avoided all inquiries from the media, while Shenton just made do with a veiled threat. ‘I shall have my say in my own good time,’ he told the papers. Slater realised that he was going to have to buy his silence. His former brother-in-law and boyhood pal knew enough about his business dealings to crucify him.

United matters were also prominent on the back pages as football reporters speculated as to what Masters intended to do to replace Jairdono.

Only Ryan Jones got close to the facts with a lead story in which he revealed Dennis Baker was the target. So much for Sam Slater, who had said that he would use his influence to suppress the story. The charming intro to the Jones exclusive read, ‘United are going to substitute one drunkard with another. Manager Roy Masters and his chairman Harvey Slater will fly to Romini today to sign Dennis ‘Bad Boy’ Baker as the replacement for drink-drive casualty Jairdono.’

‘Great,’ said Masters. ‘This will tip off every club in Europe. We’ll be lucky to pull this one off without some strong competition. I can’t be the

only manager convinced that Baker’s goals can make all the difference to the season.’

‘At least he got the venue wrong,’ Slater said as he read the story. ‘The reporters will be waiting at the wrong airport for us.’

Wrong! A Heathrow baggage handler in the pay of a news agency spotted the United chairman and manager at the Nice flight check-in desk, and tipped off his paymasters. There were a dozen reporters and photographers waiting for them when they came through the customs exit at Nice.

‘Where are you meeting Dennis Baker?’ was the opening question.

‘We are not here to meet Dennis Baker or any other footballer,’ said Masters. ‘That story was pure speculation.’

‘Then why are you here?’

‘It’s a business trip,’ said Slater.

‘Why bring your manager?’

‘Mind your own fucking business,’ said Slater, beginning to lose his temper.

‘Will you be suing Jack Shenton for assault on your return to London?’ asked another reporter on a different agenda to the transfer story.

‘Jack and me will sort things out privately. It was an ’eat-of-the-moment thing, and you boys ’ave blown it out of all proportion.’

‘Well our London office have a story that Shenton will be suing you for millions. He says that he helped build your business empire and that you were going to have to pay heavily to get him off your boards.’

Slater took a deep breath. ‘As I said, Jack and me will sort this out privately.’

‘With your fists?’

‘Ha, ha fucking ha.’

Masters was relieved to spot Tompkins at the back of the press pack. He had stayed in Monte Carlo and had hired a car to drive the chairman and manager to the Palace Schiro.

‘Come on, Mr Chairman,’ Masters said. ‘Here’s Tompkins.’

‘If you’re not here to buy Baker, who are you going to buy?’ asked a reporter desperate for a football angle.

‘We have not yet decided whether we are going to buy a replacement for Jairdono,’ Masters replied. ‘If we do make any definite decision we

will put out a statement through the club website.’

‘But why come to Nice? Are you buying a French player?’

‘Possibly,’ said Masters, happy to put out a smoke screen. ‘There are several exceptional strikers playing in the French league. My chairman and I have an open mind.’

He put an arm round the chairman’s shoulders and they barrelled their way through the media scrum and followed Tompkins to a hired Mercedes.

‘I’m sure they’re going to try to follow us,’ said Slater. ‘Drive as if we’re ’eading for the Italian border, and then double back for Monte Carlo.’

Tompkins made a detour, risking a speeding ticket, and delivered the chairman and manager to the Schiro Palace hotel just after the two-thirty appointment time. An unshaven Grokke was waiting for them in the reception lobby.

The Dutchman shook them both warmly by the hand. ‘Excuse my unkempt appearance,’ he said. ‘I have a skin rash and am unable to shave.’

‘It suits you,’ said Masters, laughing. ‘But I still don’t fancy you.’ He knew all about Grokke’s sexual preferences, and it did not bother him one bit.

Slater did not join in the laughter. He hated poofters.

‘I have taken the liberty of booking each of you into a room for the night,’ The Dutchman said. ‘If we can, as I am sure, come to some sort of agreement today, Dennis and an official of the Torndado club will come here early tomorrow afternoon to sign contracts.’

Slater and Masters checked in at the reception desk. ‘What I suggest,’ said Grokke, ‘is that you go to your rooms and freshen up, and then we will meet in thirty minutes in the small conference room on the second floor that I have booked for our talks.’

‘I’d like a word in private before our meeting starts,’ Slater said quietly to The Dutchman as they walked towards the lift. ‘Come to my room.’

‘Fine,’ said Grokke. ‘I will see you there in fifteen minutes.’

First of all, The Dutchman wanted a private meeting of his own. He followed Masters to his room that he had deliberately booked on a different floor to Slater’s.

Masters was unpacking his overnight case when Grokke tapped on his door. He was not surprised to find The Dutchman standing there.

‘Come in Johan,’ he said, and he then shut the door behind him.

‘Have you given any thought to what I said on the telephone?’ Grokke asked. ‘About the unsolicited gift?’

‘Yes, and I don’t think I can accept it.’

‘But why ever not? You have never taken a penny from me in all the transfer deals that we have negotiated. I admire your honesty, but now you are being plain stupid. Look at it as a personal and private gift for all that you have done for me over the years.’

‘I like having a clear conscience, Johan. I have never dirtied my hands in the transfer market, and I don’t intend to start now.’

‘But this is a private “thank you” from me to you for all the help and advice you have given me over the years. Let me be straight with you, Roy.’ Masters laughed. ‘Are you going back in the closet?’

Grokke held up his hands. ‘I could have picked my words better. The fact is that midway through our talks today the deal is going to hit a little difficulty, and I will need you to help me persuade the chairman to still go through with it. I will be counting on you, Roy, to talk him into clinching the Dennis Baker deal.’

‘Well obviously it will be in my interests to do that. I need Dennis in our attack if we are to clinch promotion.’

‘Yes, but your chairman will not be keen to pay the extra money. It is a considerable amount.’

‘What are you up to, you rascal?’

‘You will see,’ said The Dutchman as he took from his back pocket a small envelope. ‘In return for your help I would like you to have this.’

He handed the envelope to Masters.

‘What is it?’

‘It is a numbered and secure key to a luggage deposit box at Nice train station. Inside there is a sports bag. Beneath the manufacturers’ label on the bag is a small catch that triggers open a false bottom. The bag contains two hundred and fifty thousand pounds in fifty pound notes. That is yours, regardless of whether the Dennis Baker deal goes through.’

‘But I have already said that my conscience will not let me accept it,’ Masters said with a mixture of anger and anguish.

‘Maybe not today,’ said Grokke. ‘Maybe not tomorrow. But one day you will realise that you need the money. It is there waiting for you.’

The Dutchman opened the door. ‘I’ll see you downstairs in the conference room in twenty minutes. We will never mention this little talk again.’

He closed the door behind him, leaving Masters with the luggage box key in his hand. After staring at the envelope for several minutes, he finally put it in the inside of his wallet.

This was the nearest he had ever been to accepting a bung.

The Dutchman next visited the chairman. ‘Ah, Johan,’ said Slater, ‘I’m glad I’ve got this chance to talk to you alone. Did you get my prezzie okay?’

‘Yes thank you, Mr Chairman. I was extremely grateful to receive it. I have already deposited it in a safe place. I promise you that it will be put to good use.’

They both laughed, the agent laughing loudest because he knew he had passed the gift on to his manager..

‘I’ve said nothing to nobody about the gift,’ said the chairman. ‘Roy ain’t in to this sort of thing, and wouldn’t understand. So there’s no need for us to discuss it in front of ’im. All right?’

‘Anything you say, Mr Chairman. Roy is a very noble man, and has never to my knowledge involved himself in giving or taking gifts.’

‘Yeah, ’e’s clean as a whistle. But the dough I pay him for managing United, ’e don’t need no backhanders. Not like you agents. Golden palms, you lot ’ave got. You’re all bunged up.’

‘I did not ask for anything from you,’ said Grokke, feigning that he was hurt.

‘Don’t start taking it personally. At least you’re a gentleman to deal with.

You should see some of the agents I’ve had to stomach. Parasites they are, feeding off football like vultures. You’ve got a bit of class, Johan.’

‘That’s very kind of you, Mr Chairman. I always take the view that one day I will have to come back to do more transfer business with you, so why rip you off for a quick profit. There is enough money going around for us all to benefit.’

‘Quite bloody right, and a lot of it is my money! Now don’t forget the deal that we’ve got. You’ll make sure we get Dennis Baker for not a penny more than five million. Okay?’

‘I will do my very best.’

‘You must do more than that, Johan, my son. This bit of transfer business must not go wrong. I know the way you work, and that you have the complete freedom from that crook Graziani to do the deal for Tornado. Well I don’t want the fee going up to butter ’is bread. D’you understand?’

‘I fully understand,’ said Grokke. ‘Let us talk downstairs and I will give you the full facts and figures.’

‘Right oh. But remember, I’m counting on you. We must do business today.’

The three of them sat round a conference table big enough for twenty people. ‘Right,’ said The Dutchman, opening the talks. ‘I am here representing both Dennis Baker and Tornado and have the full blessing of the club President to make decisions on his behalf. It is necessary only for us to come to an agreement on a fee and the player’s terms, and contracts can be signed tomorrow.’

‘Okay, Johan,’ said Slater. ‘Get to the bottom line. ‘’Ow much.’

‘The fee,’ said Grokke, ‘is four and a half million pounds sterling. Or, if you prefer, three million, three hundred and seventy five thousand Euros.’

‘Stirling will be fine, thank you very much,’ said Slater. ‘They can stick the Euro. I’ll make out a cheque in good old pounds right ’ere and now.’

The Dutchman put up a hand. ‘There is a problem,’ he said. ‘An extra five hundred thousand pounds must be added to cover the player’s loyalty bonus.’

‘Loyalty bonus?’ Slater repeated. ‘Fucking loyalty bonus? ’E’s not been at the club five fucking minutes. ’Ow does he qualify for a loyalty bonus?’

‘That is how much he is entitled to receive if he stays at Tornado until the end of the season,’ explained Grokke.

‘Fucking ’ell,’ said Slater.

‘So what you’re saying, Johan,’ said Masters, ‘is that if we do not agree

to pay the bonus at our end there can be no deal.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Grokke, ‘but you can see that it would be crazy for Dennis to leave Tornado when he is within reach of a sum big enough to clear his debts and leave him a considerable amount to invest.’

‘Debts?’ said Slater. ‘What debts ’as ’e got, for gawd’s sake? The boy’s been copping a fortune.’

‘Oh, I thought you knew,’ said The Dutchman. ‘Since arriving in Italy he has been running up a daily gambling debt with a London bookmaker.

There is a little matter of one hundred thousand pounds to be cleared before he dare step foot in London.’

‘Fuck me!’ said Slater. ‘That just about does it. I want no part of the little turd. I was ready to turn a blind eye to ’is boozing. I didn’t know he was a mad gambler an’ all.’

‘It is all due to his home sickness,’ said Grokke. ‘I am positive there would be no more problems if he could return to England. In fact he has promised me that the minute he gets home he will be having treatment for his drinking habit.’

‘And what about his gambling?’

‘That was purely because he was bored. He hardly ever used to bet when he was with Rovers.’

‘This is true,’ said Masters. ‘I don’t think the gambling’s a problem, and Parky and I are ready to help him overcome his drink problem.’

‘Problems, fucking problems,’ said Slater. ‘We would be buying a fucking problem, that’s what.’

‘I can understand your concern,’ said Masters, earning his bung. ‘But the fact remains he’s the one player we know is available almost guaranteed to score the goals we need. I’ll be frank with you, Mr Chairman, I do not rate our chances of even making the play-offs with the team I had to put out against City.’

‘They couldn’t hit an elephant’s arse from five fucking yards,’ said Slater.

‘I wouldn’t back them to score in a brothel.’

‘Let’s look at it this way,’ said Masters. ‘Without Dennis Baker, our chances of making it into the Premier League are no better than ten to one.

With him in our attack, I would say we would be evens to go up.’

‘Fucking ’ell, have you got the betting bug now?’

‘It’s just an easy way to illustrate why I recommend that we sign him.

But it’s entirely up to you, Mr Chairman. All I can do is recommend that you do.’

‘Is the five hundred grand negotiable?’ asked Slater.

The Dutchman shook his head. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I have assured Dennis that I will get this for him. I must not break my word.’

‘So we’re looking at an all-in fee of five million,’ said Slater. ‘What about the player’s terms? What does the greedy git want?’

‘He is prepared to settle for exactly what he is being paid by Tornado.’

‘That’s generous of ’im. Go on, and ’ow much is that?’

‘He receives an annual salary of three million pounds, plus a three thousand pounds bonus every time he scores a goal.’

‘You must be fucking joking,’ said Slater.

‘That’s top Premier League wages,’ added Masters.

Grokke smiled and shook his head. ‘Sorry, gentlemen, but that is considerably less than what five of my players are earning in England, admittedly in the Premier League. And that is where United will be if they sign Baker. He is a Premier League quality player, and must be paid Premier League wages.’

‘Sorry, Johan,’ said Slater. ‘We are wasting our time. The five million I’ll reluctantly go along with, but the player’s terms are ridiculous. Sixty grand a week plus three grand for every goal. It’s fucking daylight robbery.’

‘Surely there is some sort of compromise deal we can do?’ said Masters, fighting to hold the deal together. ‘How about a starting wage of forty thousand pounds a week for this season only, rising to sixty-five thousand next season if United are in the Premier League. I go along with the three thousand pounds goal bonus because every goal will be like gold dust for us.’

Grokke put his hands to his temple as if receiving a signal from the beyond.

‘Okay, gentlemen,’ he said finally. ‘This is what I propose. Pay Dennis a weekly wage of fifty thousand pounds for the remaining seven weeks of this season, plus three thousand pounds for each goal. Then add a two year contract with a one year option in which, provided United are in the Premier League, he will be paid sixty-five thousand pounds a week and

an incentive bonus of five thousand pounds a goal.’

He allowed the two United representatives to do their sums. ‘In addition,’ he added just as they were about to nod their approval, ‘I want you to pay him a two hundred thousand pounds bonus if, or should I say, when United are promoted.’

‘I bet you squeeze every last drop out of your toothpaste,’ said Slater.

‘You certainly know how to squeeze a man’s bollocks.’

Grokke led the laughter as the full implication of what Slater had said sank in.

‘Can you give Roy and me a couple of minutes to consider this on our own?’ the chairman said.

‘But, of course,’ said The Dutchman. ‘I will come back in ten minutes.’

‘He’s got us by the bollocks,’ said Slater. ‘What d’you think?’

‘You’re the man with your hand on the finances, Mr Chairman. Talking from my point of view as manager, I would urge you to clinch the deal. I know Dennis Baker well enough to be convinced that I can get the best out of him. Baker at his best will bounce us right up into the Premier League.

Of that I’m certain.’

‘Well that would put my finances right overnight,’ said Slater, half to himself. ‘If we’re not in the Premier League, we’re as good as dead. I’m going to tell The Dutchman ’e’s got a deal provided ’e agrees that we can insert a behaviour clause. We’ve got to ’ave something in the contract to protect us in case the mad git gets pissed out of his ’ead and ruins everything.’

When Grokke came back, Slater went to him and shook him by the hand. ‘You’ve got a deal, Johan,’ he said. ‘There’s just one thing though.

We want a behaviour clause in the contract.’

‘What exactly do you mean?’

‘We want it in writing that if Baker gets up to ’is usual piss-head tricks, the contract becomes null and void.’

‘Tornado would not go along with that,’ said Grokke. ‘Once the deal is done, the deal is done.’

‘I wouldn’t expect them to give us our money back,’ said Slater. ‘But I just want to have some sort of ’old over Baker that gets us out of jail if he

goes off on some crazy bender.’

‘Put the clause in by all means,’ said Grokke. ‘But I don’t think words on a piece of paper have ever meant much to Dennis. All he understands is how to dribble the ball past a defender and shoot it into the net. That, gentlemen, makes him quite priceless in this daft world of ours.’

Grokke opened the door. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘I think a bottle of champagne is called for.’

‘Good idea,’ said a visibily relieved Slater. ‘But first let me go to my room and call my lawyer. I want ’im to draw up a contract and ’ave it out ’ere by tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Yes,’ said The Dutchman. ‘And I must call Dennis and tell him to get here as soon as possible.’

The waiter was just about to break open the bottle of Dom Perignon for the three celebrants when Masters saw a familiar figure walking towards them in the bar that overlooked the marina. He felt himself gape. ‘Roy Masters, you old devil you,’ was his greeting in perfect English. ‘We have not kicked each other for twenty years.’

Masters shook him warmly by the hand. He then introduced him to Slater. ‘Mr Chairman, this is Wolfgang Hecht,’ he said. ‘Former captain of West Germany, and current manager of Düsseldorf 1888.’

‘Coach, not manager,’ said Hecht. ‘We have businessmen managing. We dumbkopf footballers are trusted only with what happens on the pitch.’

‘Quite bloody right,’ said Slater. ‘You know our ’ost, Johan?’

‘Everybody in football knows Johan,’ said Hecht, shaking The Dutchman’s hand. ‘He is the reason I am here. Can I please just take him away from you for no more than five minutes?’

The Dutchman gestured to the waiter to pour the champagne. ‘I will be just moments. Please enjoy the champagne.’

‘What the fucking ’ell does ’e want?’ said Slater as soon as they were out of earshot.

Masters shrugged. ‘The Dutchman handles dozens of players,’ he said.

‘It could be something to do with any one of them.’

‘It had better not be Baker. I’ll go bloody potty.’

‘Don’t let’s jump to conclusions,’ said Masters. ‘It’s probably just

coincidence that he’s here at the same time as us. Don’t forget The Dutchman does business all over Europe, all over the world for that matter.’

Twenty minutes went by and the champagne bottle was nearly empty by the time Grokke reappeared. His stubbled face was a mask of anxiety.

‘My sincere apologies,’ he said. ‘I am afraid we have a major problem.’

‘What the fuck’s gone wrong?’ said Slater.

‘Wolfgang Hecht has been sent here by his club to make an offer of six million pounds for Baker. I am duty bound to consider it.’

‘No fucking way,’ stormed Slater, causing heads to turn in the bar. ‘We’ve fuckingwell shaken on it.’

‘No, Mr Slater. YOU shook on it. I walked into the room and you shook my hand before I even knew what decision you had arrived at. I could never again represent Tornado in transfer negotiations if I did not give this deal my full attention.’

Grokke turned to Masters. ‘We appear to have hit a little difficulty,’ he said pointedly. ‘What am I to do?’

It was time for Masters to earn The Bung. He now realised that the negotiations in the conference room had just been a dress rehearsal.

‘Does Wolfgang know about Baker’s personal terms?’

Grokke nodded his head. ‘They are no problem to him whatsoever.’

‘I think you must give the chairman and myself time to talk this over between us,’ Masters said. ‘Meantime, please do not discuss the situation any further with Wolfgang.’

‘That is fair enough,’ said The Dutchman. ‘I shall go to my room. Please contact me there when you are ready to give me a decision. Wolfgang is expecting to talk to me again in one hour.’

‘The conniving bastard,’ said Slater. ‘This smells worse than Billingsgate.’

‘All I can tell you, Mr Chairman, is that if you judge Baker purely on ability, then he is worth fifteen million pounds by current transfer values.

It’s only his off-the-field behaviour that has stopped a stampede for his signature. I’ve been half expecting Rovers or one of the other major Premier League clubs to come in for him.’

‘But the boy’s a piss artist.’

‘And a ball artist. That, as The Dutchman says, makes him quite priceless in this daft world. Only you know the financial state of United and your own funds. You’re the man who has to keep digging into your pocket, and I have to say, Mr Chairman, that I have never known a man more prepared to put his money where his mouth is. But if you think Baker is a bridge too far, I’ll quite understand. You have to weigh up whether it is worth paying an extra million pounds to guarantee that place in the Premier League.’

‘No, Roy. It’s an extra effing six million smackers. The Dutchman is going back on our understanding that it would not cost me a penny more than five million.’

‘You had an understanding?’ Masters said, with raised eyebrows.

Slater took a sip of champagne to hide his embarrassment. He had not meant to let that slip out. ‘It’s nothing for you to bother your head about, Roy,’ he said. ‘It was just a private little bit of business between The Dutchman and me.’

He looked vacantly out towards the marina as he did some quick financial calculations.

‘I’ll have to sign my Brighton ’ouse over to the bank to cover the extra million quid,’ he said, as if thinking aloud. ‘What with the Taxman, that bastard Shenton after a cut and the overheads at United, I’m just about on my fucking knees.’

Masters felt as if he was intruding on private grief.

‘Let’s suppose we pull out of the deal and then Baker starts banging in goals in the Bundesliga,’ he said. ‘How would we feel? If you’re going to stretch to five million, might you not just as well make it six?’

‘That’s fucking easy for you to say, Roy. You’ve not seen your fortune being eaten away by a poxy football club. I always knew it was the quickest way to bankruptcy. I told Sam a hundred times that we would finish with our fingers burned. But it’s not only my fingers, but my arms and legs as well. If we don’t go up, Roy, I’m fuckingwell finished.’

Masters made allowances for the fact that it was the champagne that was talking, but he was inclined to believe that his motor-mouthed chairman really was on the edge of a disastrous financial earthquake. No wonder, he thought, that Helen was concerned about how he was going to react when she left him for his manager. That would be the real killer blow. And he

looked forward to delivering it.

‘If things are that bad, Mr Chairman,’ Masters said, ‘I think you should pull out all stops and go for Baker. He’s your guarantee of a passport to the Premier League. Without him, I’m afraid to say that the chances are slim.’

The Bung had been well and truly earned.

Slater suddenly stood up. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to The Dutchman’s room and get this over. I’m not ’aving some Kraut come in and nick Baker from under me nose. They tried bombing me when I was born. I’m not going to let them destroy me now.’

‘This time I WILL shake hands on the deal,’ said Grokke after Slater had agreed to pay six million pounds for Baker. He had to fight to keep any signs of triumphalism out of his voice. ‘You are very wise. You can now look forward to Premier League football and all the advantages that will bring. Dennis is very keen to play for Roy ...’

‘And for United,’ added Slater. ‘... and I am sure he will not let you down. He will be here early tomorrow afternoon and then we can have the contracts signed. I will want the money transferred by banker’s order in equal two million pound sums to three separate accounts, one in Jersey, a second in the Cayman Islands, and a third in the Bahamas.’

‘Fucking ’ell, Johan, you do believe in spreading the load.’

‘Tornado do not want anybody knowing their business. It will be up to them what they disclose to the tax authorities. I am just the intermediary, and I merely pass on the relevant bank account numbers to the President.’

‘Graziani scores again!’ said Slater. ‘And ’ow about you, Johan? Come on, what’s your cut?’

‘Ah, that will remain confidential between Tornado and myself. You would not expect me to tell you that.’

‘And what about our little understanding that the fee should not go above five million?’

‘I tried in all good faith to keep to that figure. It was very unlucky for you that Wolfgang Hecht arrived when he did. I was quite prepared to settle at five million. But it is the market that dictates the fee. Who knows,

perhaps tomorrow Sporting Madrid and Paris Olympique could come in.

They have already made enquiries.’

‘You wouldn’t fuckingwell dare,’ said Slater.

‘Of course not, old chap,’ said Grokke, putting a friendly arm around the shoulders of the chairman who quickly shrugged him off. The Dutchman and Masters laughed.

‘Now that I have shaken hands on the deal,’ he added, I would not listen to another offer. Come, let us return to the bar and our champagne.’

They were halfway through their second bottle when Wolfgang Hecht came by to say farewell. ‘The best team won, eh Roy?’ he said smiling, and shaking his hand. ‘I would have very much liked Dennis Baker in my attack, but then maybe he is too much trouble. Good luck with him.’

As he left for Nice Airport and a flight back to Düsseldorf, both Slater and Masters could not help noticing that Hecht was carrying a sports hold-all.

The Dutchman waved him goodbye. ‘What a player, he was,’ he said.

‘What a player.’

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 12. THE MANAGER

IT was seven o’clock in the morning when Masters slipped quietly out of the Schiro Palace hotel and into a taxi. He left a message in Slater’s pigeon hole at the reception desk that he had gone to Nice to see an old friend, Michel Sneyers, who coached there. It was highly unlikely that the chairman would surface before he returned. The last he had seen of him was just after midnight when he disappeared, virtually legless, into the hotel lift and accompanied by a hooker who looked as if she could wrestle alligators. He would keep that little episode to himself. What Slater did in his private life was his own business, and he would not dream of telling anybody, least of all Helen.

The cab dropped him outside Nice railway station, and he went nervously in search of the luggage locker. He felt like a contestant on Deal Or No Deal, but there was only one box to open. When he found the locker he fumbled with the key as shakily as a safe breaker on his first job. He was new to The Bung business, and felt as guilty as hell. But he had managed to convince himself during a sleepless night that he really did deserve the payment after all the help he had given Grokke in helping set up transfer transactions, and without his input he was sure the Baker deal would have

fallen through. ‘Everybody else is at it,’ he told himself. ‘So why not me?’

With this so-called unsolicited gift from The Dutchman, he would be able to set up a new life with Helen in Spain irrespective of whether United made it into the Premier League Just as Grokke had said, there was a sports hold-all in the locker. Masters lifted it out, and without opening it walked back to the station concourse and climbed into another taxi and returned to the Schiro Palace. He had been gone barely two hours and, as he guessed, there was no sign of the still-sleeping Slater.

He collected the message he had left for the chairman and screwed it up, and then went to his room. The chambermaid was about to start her cleaning work, and Masters asked her to leave it for an hour. Once she had gone to the room across the corridor he slipped a ‘Do Not Disturb’ card on to the handle and locked his door from the inside.

With a feeling of nervous excitement he then opened the hold-all. He pushed a finger under the manufacturer’s label on the false bottom and slipped the catch. Masters then tipped the bag upside down on to his bed and watched open mouthed as stacks of fifty pound notes cascaded on to the covers.

They were packed in bundles of one hundred fifty pound notes, with a Bank of Jersey seal around each of the fifty stacks. Masters had never seen so much money at one time before. He now knew how the Great Train robbers must have felt as they counted their takings. It was not the sight of the money that excited him so much as the prospect of what it would do for him. With this he could buy a nice little bar/restaurant in Spain, and he and Helen would be free to settle down to a new, relaxed way of life away from the pressures of football.

If United could clinch promotion to the Premier League, he would have another, legitimate, half a million pounds to invest from his promised bonus. Now that Baker was coming to United, he felt confident that the odds pendulum had swung to make promotion more probability than possibility.

Masters was just fighting the strong temptation to call Helen when he was startled by the sudden ringing of the bedside telephone. His immediate instinct was to start scooping the money back into the bag as if it were

stolen loot. He shook his head at his guilty reactions, and picked up the receiver.

It was The Dutchman, calling from his apartment just half a mile away.

‘I am just checking that everything is all right for our meeting this afternoon,’ he said.

‘The chairman hasn’t surfaced yet,’ said Masters. ‘But we’ll be waiting in the reception area at two o’clock. The United lawyer will be here by then.’

‘Fine. I am picking up Dennis and Tornado club secretary Mario Benetti at the airport at one o’clock. We should have everything sewn up by teatime. What time is your flight back to London?’

‘Seven o’clock this evening.’

‘Oh, you will make it comfortably. I will see if I can get Dennis booked on to the same flight as you and the chairman. I envisage no problems now thanks to you. I am extremely grateful for all that you did yesterday to help clinch the deal. I hope that you now feel justified in accepting my little gift.’

Masters looked at the money decorating the bed. ‘I am still considering it, Johan. But the key is in a safe place. Just take it from me that I truly appreciate your thought. One day you must tell me how you managed to persuade Wolfgang to make the trip here on the day his team had a vital Bundesliga match. He had as much interest in signing Dennis Baker as I had of joining the French Foreign Legion.’

‘That is a confidence I would never break,’ Grokke said firmly. ‘This is why you are safe taking that present. I would never dream of telling anybody about our private arrangement, and I promise you that there is nothing in writing. The same goes for Wolfgang and I. Just let us say that he did me a favour, and it worked the way I wanted it to. But it was your persuasive words with the chairman that finally swung it. So please, Roy, take your just reward. That, as far as I am concerned, is the end of the subject.’

There was a moment’s silence as if allowing for a barrier to drop on the subject of unsoliticted gifts.

‘Now then,’ Grokke asked, ‘what time did you finish up last night?’

‘I saw the chairman into the lift just after midnight, and then I went to my room.’

‘I am surprised that Mr Slater was able to stand. He was ordering a fourth bottle of champagne when I left. But then, he had something to celebrate. Let us face it, it is not every day that you sign a player of Baker’s quality.’

‘You can stop the sales talk now, Johan,’ Masters said with a chuckle.

‘The deal’s done.’

‘I am being serious. Dennis is as good as any player on my books, and I deal only with the best international footballers. I am confident that you will be able to sort out his behavioural problems. He really respects you, you know, and will listen to anything you tell him.’

‘The first thing I’ll be telling him, Johan, is to score a winning goal for us against County on Saturday.’

Masters replaced the telephone, and then carefully restacked the money in the bottom of the hold-all. He put it in the wardrobe alongside his overnight bag. He would tell Slater that he had been out that morning and bought some casual sports clothes.

The temptation was still there to ring Helen, but even if he used guarded words it would be easy for anybody listening in to trace the call to Nice.

That would be a dead giveaway. He did not want Slater finding out through an eavesdropping private detective that he was the mysterious John Millard.

Masters wanted to choose his own time and place to tell the chairman that he was taking his wife. It needed to be when he could threaten least harm to Helen.

He picked up the telephone and rang Geoff Parkinson instead, and told him that the Baker deal was all but signed and sealed.

‘Yes,’ said Parky, ‘I already know. It’s all over the papers here. We’re getting some terrible stick along the lines of signing one boozer to replace another, but we guessed that would happen. It’s a helluva gamble we’re taking on Boss, but I’m confident we can make it work for all of us.’

‘After Saturday’s peformance, we both know that without Baker we’ve had it,’ Masters said, as much to himself as to Parky. ‘Hopefully he will be training with us by Wednesday and we can concentrate on our tactics for the match at County.’

Masters found himself whistling as he went downstairs for a late breakfast. The combination of signing Baker and having a quarter of a million pounds in the bag, so to speak, did wonders for his appetite.

It was not only Baker and Benetti who arrived at the Schiro Palace with The Dutchman, but a horde of journalists who had followed them from the airport. The story of United’s transfer deal had broken in both London and Romini, and so many media reporters and cameramen descended on the hotel that the Palace publicity officer talked Slater and Masters into agreeing to an official press conference once the contracts had been signed.

Masters and Baker greeted each other like long-lost father and son.

‘Thanks for rescuing me, Boss,’ the player said. ‘I were dying a slow death out there.’

‘Well now you’ve got to rescue United, Dennis,’ the manager said. ‘We’re counting on you to help us win promotion.’

Slater, who had surfaced at noon looking distinctly hung over, was introduced to Baker by Masters. ‘It’s good to see you sober young man,’ the chairman said, the taste of the previous night’s champagne still on his tongue. ‘Make sure it stays that way.’

‘You don’t have to worry about that, Mr Slater,’ Baker said. ‘I’m through with drinking. From today, I’m on’t wagon.’

‘What about your gambling?’ the chairman said bluntly. ‘Are you still stupidly going to throw your money at the bookies? That’s the biggest mug’s game of all, that is.’

Baker was clearly uncomfortable, and looked to The Dutchman for help. ‘As I have already told you,’ Grokke said, ‘Dennis was gambling only out of boredom. He has finished with betting now that his debts have been cleared.’

The player nodded his head.

‘Glad to hear it,’ said Slater. ‘The money we’re paying you, we want all your attention on playing football for United. All you’ve got to do, son, is bang the ball into the net for us.’

Baker was standing just out of Slater’s eyeline, and both Masters and Grokke had to fight to stifle laughs as he poked his tongue out at the

chairman and crossed his eyes.

It took an hour for Slater’s lawyer to run through the contract clauses with Grokke and Tornado representative Mario Benetti, and then the bank transfers were prepared for The Dutchman’s three nominated overseas accounts. Benetti, the lawyer, Slater and Baker signed the contracts, with Grokke looking on but following his principle of keeping his signature off any piece of paper.

The final clause in the contract was that the transfer would become null and void if Baker failed a medical examination to be carried out within twenty-four hours. Only then would the bank transfers be activated.

The press photographers were called in for a staged signing, and Baker posed for pictures toasting his transfer with a glass of milk.

Several members of the Baker’s Dozen club were at the press conference, and were intent on asking purely football questions. But they were outnumbered by sensation-seeking news reporters more interested in the private lives of both Baker and the chairman.

After soft preliminary questions about how Baker felt about playing in the First Division after the challenge of the Italian league and his tactical role with United, the real interrogating started.

‘Which nightclubs do you most look forward to visiting in London?’

‘I’m interested in only visiting United football club,’ said Baker, holding up the glass of milk in the direction of the questioner.

‘Is there rum in that milk?’

‘I’m on’t wagon. My boozing days are over.’

‘You said that before your last game for England.’

‘This time I mean it. I’ve discussed things with Roy Masters, and he’s going to help sort me out.’

‘How would you say you behaved during your stay in Italy? What sort of example did you set the young fans who look on you as a role model?’

‘I were a reet pillock, but now that’s all behind me. You’ll see a new Dennis Baker at United. From now on, football comes first, second and last.’

‘How do you feel taking the place of a player whose career has been wrecked by drink-driving?’

‘I feel reet sorry for the Brazilian lad. It could happen to anyone.’

‘Only anyone who has had a skinful and then got behind the wheel of a car. Do you condone that sort of crazy behaviour?’

Masters took the microphone from Baker before he could reply.

‘Can we just have football questions, please gentlemen.’

‘Mr Slater, are you going to settle Jack Shenton’s compensation claim?’

Slater’s hangover suddenly felt worse. ‘We’re here to talk about the signing of Dennis Baker,’ he snapped. ‘There’s nothing else on the agenda.’

‘But Shenton says that you owe him millions.’

‘That’s a matter only for Jack and me. So do me a favour and keep your big nose out of it.’

Masters regained the microphone. ‘Gentlemen, if you cannot stick to just football questions I am afraid I’ll have to call this conference to a close.

Now is there anybody with a sensible question to ask?’

One of the Baker’s Dozen stood up. ‘Dennis, how would you rate United’s chances of getting promoted to the Premier League this season?’

‘A lot better now that I’m with them,’ Baker said to a background of laughter. ‘I’ve kept in close contact with t’scene back home, and feel that t’only thing United lack is t’finishing touch in front of goal. That’s what I’ll be providing. I could not have a better gaffer than Roy Masters, and I’m looking forward to teaming up again with Parky. They’re t’best management team in t’business.’

Baker paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. He was surprised at how emotional he felt. Masters gave him a reassuring smile.

‘It’ll be just like t’old days when we were together at t’Rovers,’ Baker added, recovering just before tears showed in his eyes..’ I would not be signing for United if I didn’t think they would be going up at t’end of t’season.’

‘Have you given yourself a target for the number of goals you hope to score to help clinch promotion?’

‘All I’m concerned with is helping United win their remaining matches.

It don’t matter who puts t’ball in t’net, as long as it’s United who are scoring, and I’ve got every confidence in the Gaffer to make sure I get t’proper service.’

‘Are you confident you will pass your medical examination?’

‘I have no problems.’

‘Not even with your liver? And how about the Dockways town hall flag.

Is that safe from you?’

‘Okay, gentlemen,’ said Masters. ‘That’s the end of the conference. I would just like to say that we’re delighted to have signed Dennis, who is without question one of the world’s outstanding strikers. We’ll now give all our concentration to moulding him into our team, and hopefully we will quickly regain the momentum necessary for us to gain promotion.

Thank you for your attention.’

‘One last question,’ said a newshound. ‘Is Mr Slater aware that his son, Sam, was responsible for organising the drinking party at which five United players got legless and from which Jairdono was allowed to drive away while drunk out of his head?’

Slater snatched the microphone. ‘I’ll sue your fucking trousers off you if you print that muck,’ he roared. ‘If Jack Shenton is spreading that story, I’ll break his fucking neck.’

Masters wrestled the microphone away from him. ‘That’s it, gentlemen.

See you at the County match on Saturday.’

He reckoned he had now thoroughly earned his reward.

Baker and Tompkins joined the chairman and the manager on the nineteen hundred hours BA flight back to Heathrow. Masters carried the sportsbag as hand luggage, and Slater’s chauffeur could not take his eyes off it. He was convinced it was the same bag that he had delivered to The Dutchman.

It had been tied to his wrist for four hours, and so he got to know it well.

There was even the same scuffed logo on the side of the hold-all.

Tompkins had no idea what was in the bag that he handed to The Dutchman, but from the ‘guard it with your life’ warnings he got from Slater he would bet that it was a large bundle of readies.

He had often been the chairman’s trusted messenger with ‘gift parcels’ for business associates during the six years that he had been his chauffeur.

Grateful to Slater for giving him a job when he was made redundant from the docks, he always gave total loyalty to a man who had helped him when he was down.

As the BA 767 taxied to a halt at Heathrow Tompkins was first to his feet. He reached up to the overhead luggage compartment and deliberately got hold of the bag that Masters had brought on to the plane. It felt the same weight as the hold-all that he delivered, and he was now completely satisfied that it was the same bag. He decided to report this later to Mr Slater. It might win him some brownie points with the chairman, who had used the flight back from Nice to try to sleep off his hangover.

Masters took the sportsbag from Tompkins as carefully as if handling a baby. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘There are breakables in there.’

Dennis Baker was standing between them, ‘You’ve brought back something neece from Nice,’ he said with a chuckle.

‘Yes,’ Masters thought to himself. ‘It’s certainly something nice, something very nice indeed.’ +

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 13. THE PLAYER

DENNIS BAKER was prodded and probed, x-rayed, measured and scanned for two hours before a team of medical experts at the Sportsmasters Harley Street clinic finally pronounced him fully fit. He was now officially a United player, although the liver specialist nearly caused a last-minute breakdown in the deal when he warned, ‘If you don’t stop your excessive drinking, you will be a prime candidate for sclerosis before you are thirty-five.’ This was reported back to Slater, who gave the go-ahead for the bank transfers once he had satisfied himself that the liver crisis was not imminent.

The warning sunk in with Baker, who was genuinely determined to stay on the wagon. He had now gone seventy-two hours without a drink, which was some sort of personal record since starting his boozing habit in his late teens. He had moved in temporarily with United coach Geoff Parkinson and his family. It was Parky’s idea because he feared the many temptations that could trip Baker if he was booked in alone into a London hotel.

From Harley Street, Baker was whisked by Tompkins to the Boxleyheath training ground where Masters and Parky introduced him to the rest of the United players,h who were genuinely as pleased to see him as he was them. They could see their promotion bonuses back on the horizon.

Baker might have had a pea-size academic brain, but he was an intellectual when it came to football logic. It was his idea that he should play just behind the front two strikers in a 4-3-1-2 formation, and in the first full-scale training match he notched three goals with stunning ease.

Both Masters and Parky noticed an immediate relaxation among the other players, who had been becoming taut and argumentative in the build-up to the final matches of a gruelling season. They now had somebody who could not only help carry the load but deliver it.

The tomfoolery with which Baker lifted the pressure on himself was like a breath of fresh air in the dressing-room, and even when the manager and the coach were the stooges for his pranks they did not mind, because the laughter of the other players was just the tonic they needed. They were unsuspecting victims of a classic double piece of mischief by Baker when he came stumbling into the dressing-room after a training session with blood streaming down both legs. ‘Help! I’ve been knee capped, boss,’ he said as he fell to the floor. Masters and Parkinson were into the foothills of blind panic when Baker started to scoop the tomato-sauce ‘blood’ off his legs and licked his fingers. ‘This is-a the best-a pasta sauce in the wide-a world,’ he said in a heavy Italian accent.

Baker knew he needed urgent help to keep him away from the bottle, and Masters and Parkinson brought veteran United right-back Vic Hardstaff in on their confidential talks. Hardstaff, who had pulled himself together after booze binges had helped break up his marriage three years earlier, gently persuaded Baker to join him at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. He had been to several meetings before, but never with the commitment that he now felt. Baker told the respectful gathering of recovering alcoholics, ‘My name is Dennis B, and I am an alcoholic.’ It was the first time he had voluntarily faced the fact that he had a problem, and he was warmed and encouraged by the words of support he got from people who had been down his dark road and were on their way back to ordered lives that were not dictated by drink.

Inevitably, the story of Baker’s battle against the bottle leaked into the press, but Masters convinced him that this was a good thing. ‘Everybody is going to be watching you in no doubt that you will soon be back on the booze,’ he said. ‘What greater incentive can you have than proving them

all wrong. If you can stop yourself taking the next drink, it will be the greatest victory of your life. And here’s an extra incentive for you. I’ll give up drinking, too. Let’s make sure that neither of us crack.’

Masters made a public demonstration of his complete faith in the rejuvenated Baker by announcing at the Friday press conference before his debut against County that he would be the new skipper of United. He knew that by handing him responsibility he would show his new maturity on the pitch. ‘I won’t let you down, Boss,’ Baker told him. ‘I’m reet proud to wear the captain’s arm band. I’ll stuff the words of all my critics down their throats. Just you see.’

He did just that in his debut for United. The relief he felt in being back home in England, and at last starting to break away from the demon drink, manifested itself in his performance at County. He scored a spectacular solo goal and created two others in a magnificent 3-0 victory that lifted United to third place in the table. United’s travelling army of supporters were ecstatic and encouraged him with the chant, ‘Good Boy Baker, Good Boy.’ The Bad Boy image was, he hoped, about to be destroyed.

What pleased Masters as much as his match-winning skills was the way he encouraged the players around him with a quiet word or, when necessary, a clenched fist. But most of all he inspired by example, and his stunning skill on the ball and his penetrating runs sparked an all-round improvement in everybody’s form.

His home debut was against sixth placed Athletic, the south coast club that had come down from the Premier League the previous season and were now deep into a financial crisis. They were desperate to go straight back up, and had adopted if-it-moves-kick-it desperation tactics to maintain their promotion challenge. Their defenders tried every trick in the book to upset Baker as he systematically took them apart with darting, weaving runs that left them chasing his shadow. He scored an incredible first-half goal, walking the ball around the goalkeeper after bamboozling two defenders with a shimmy of his hips that sent them running into each other.

Athletic central defender Terry Brennan, notorious for not taking prisoners with his crude tackles, resorted to verbal abuse when he realised he could not get within a yard of Baker with his brutal challenges. He was fuming and frustrated at the way the United master was continually

pushing the ball through his legs and making him the laughing stock of the fans. ‘Mind your backs, I’m coming through,’ Baker kept saying as he went past defenders as if they were not there. He was thoroughly enjoying himself after the tight man-to-man marking he had faced in Italy where the defenders were much better drilled and disciplined than here in the First Division.

He nearly added a second goal midway through the second-half after sending the hapless Brennan the wrong way with an outrageous dummy.

The giant defender got within calling distance as Baker turned after narrowly missing the far post with his shot. ‘Take the piss out of me once more,’ he warned for Baker’s ears only, ‘and I’ll break your fucking leg ... you Yorkie bastard.’ He put all the emphasis on the word bastard, knowing the effect this usually had on the wild man of football.

Bad Boy Baker would have lashed out with a fist, but the new Good Boy Baker laughed in his face. The next time he got the ball, he took it slowly and deliberately towards Brennan and challenged him to come and get it.

As Brennan took the bait, Baker slipped the ball to the left and skipped to the right. He put deep bottom spin on the ball so that it came rotating back into his path as Brennan tackled thin air. There was a mixture of laughter and cheers as he then curled a low shot around the advancing goalkeeper from the edge of the penalty area to make it United 2, Athletic 0.

Ten minutes from the end he attempted a repeat performance. This time Brennan ignored the ball and went flying at Baker with both feet raised, catching him on the shins with his raised studs. Baker cried out in agony as he crashed to the ground. ‘I warned you, you fucking flash bastard,’ Brennan snarled at the writhing figure of Baker as the referee arrived on the spot flourishing a red card.

There was pandemonium as United physio Dai Davies came racing on to treat Baker. The blood soaking his stockings was not tomato sauce.

Brennan was walking back to the dressing-room with the jeers and boos of the United fans blistering his ears when an irate spectator cleared the small wall surrounding the pitch and attacked the Athletic defender.

Brennan lashed out in self defence and sent the supporter crashing back into the arms of two stewards. On the far side of the ground fighting had broken out among United and Athletic fans, and the referee led the players

off while the police tried to restore order. Baker was carried off on a stretcher, his arms folded across his face as photographers raced alongside snapping the next day’s back-page pictures.

Masters sprinted down from his seat in the stands and came racing into the dressing-room to survey the damage. Parkinson greeted him with the report, ‘Nothing broken, Boss, but he’s got two gashes in his shins as deep as the Grand Canyon. We can count him out for the next month.’

‘Next month?’ spluttered the stunned manager. ‘There’s only five weeks of the season left.’

Baker lay stretched out on the treatment table, his face contorted with pain. ‘Sorry, Boss,’ he said. ‘That fucking Brennan should never be allowed out of his cage.’

Masters patted him on the back in silent sympathy. He was lost for words.

The match was resumed after a break of twenty minutes and as many arrests. United maintained the 2-0 lead given to them by Baker against their ten-man opponents and with a defender substituting for the injured goal hero. Baker did not witness the victory. He was having twelve stitches inserted into each of the gashes on his shins.

The doctor confirmed Parky’s instant assessment. He would not be able to play for a month.

Masters looked for positive facts. The six points United had picked up from the two matches in which Baker played had lifted them to second place in the table. At the worst they should now be able to make the playoffs, by which time Baker would be fit again. The crucial thing now was not to lose any more games.

He decided he would go against his principles and play defensively over the crucial three-match Easter period that would virtually decide whether United would still be in with a chance of winning a place in the promised land of the Premier League..

Then came the bombshell news. The Football Association disciplinary committee, concerned at increasing outbreaks of hooliganism, decided they needed to make an example of United over the crowd disturbance, and they sat in judgment the following week. Their verdict was that United should be fined fifty thousand pounds and have their three points deducted.

This dropped them back to fourth place. And Baker could only look on from the sidelines.

Baker, his legs heavily bandaged as a precaution, suffered a thousand agonies as he watched United scramble a goalless home draw in their Monday night game against Rangers. He was the worst spectator in the world, and hated every second of sitting in the stands watching the desperation football. The injuries had sent him into a morose mood of helpless frustration because he so badly wanted to help United clinch promotion. He craved to do it for Masters and Parky as much as for himself.

Looking on from the sidelines made him feel as useless as, in his words, ‘a spare prick at a wedding’.

It was at Parky’s insistence that he should come and watch the game rather than sit around moping in front of the television set. In truth, he would have preferred to stay in and catch up with what was happening in Coronation Street rather than endure a match to which he could make no contribution.

Sam Slater sidled up to him in the boardroom after the game flanked by his usual gathering of City cronies. ‘You know I’m responsible for you being here,’ the chairman’s son told him.

‘Really,’ said a singularly unimpressed Baker, trying hard to pretend to himself that he was content to have a glass of orange juice in his hand.

Slater was too intent on wanting to impress his pals to grasp that Baker was in no mood for company, particularly his.

‘Dad wanted to know who was the man we needed to clinch promotion for us,’ he said, as much for the ears of his companions as Baker’s. ‘I told him there’s only one. Dennis Baker. He went straight out and bought you on my say-so.’

‘You learn something every day,’ said Baker, sipping at his juice. ‘I thought it were Roy Masters who decided to sign me.’

‘Masters is just the manager,’ said Slater dismissively. ‘My Dad and I run this club.’

Baker had been told all about the chairman’s son by Geoff Parkinson, who was a good judge of character and dismissed him as a ‘useless and dangerous piece of work.’ He did not like him on sight.

‘The chaps here will tell you that I give the best parties in town,’ said Slater.

The hangers-on nodded their agreement.

‘Why not come and see for yourself? The manager for some stupid reason has made my place out of bounds for players until the end of the season, but as you’re not fit to play it won’t apply to you. I’ve told my friends here that the great Bad Boy Baker will be joining in tonight’s fun and games. I’ve got lots of orange juice in just for you.’

He winked. ‘I’ve also got some top-notch crumpet lined up. They’ll be dying to meet you and welcome you home.’

The old Baker would have jumped at the invitation. ‘Thanks but no thanks,’ he said. ‘I want to get home in one piece and still able to see ... and walk.’

‘You’ve been listening to too many whispers,’ said Slater, suddenly on the defensive. ‘Jairdono’s accident was nothing to do with me. He’s a big boy and knows what he can and can’t do.’

‘Well I’m on’t wagon, and I’ve been warned that I’ll soon fall off if I ’ave owt to do with thee.’

‘Owt to do with thee,’ Slater said, mimicking the Yorkshire accent. ‘Eeh bah gum, lad, thou’ll have nowt to worry about if you come oop to my place.’

The cronies fell about laughing.

Baker never minded people laughing with him, but hated anybody laughing at him.

He just happened to have a small palm-size tube of his favourite superglue in his pocket that he had planned to use in the dressing-room. He had found a more deserving victim. While Slater had his back turned watching the television results sequence, Baker squeezed a coating of glue on to the boardroom bar on which Slater had been leaning.

As if on cue, he put an elbow on to the glued area while ordering another round of drinks.

The sycophants surrounding him looked on open mouthed while Slater appeared to be having a fit as he tried to pull his elbow from the bar.

It was only when Baker started laughing that they realised it was one of his notorious pranks. He had the satisfaction of having them all laugh

with him at the chairman’s son.

‘What’s oop with thee lad?’ said Baker in deliberately heavy Yorkshire.

‘Hast thou been given t’elbow?’

Sam Slater joined in the laughter while making a mental note to strike Baker off his party invite list.

There was no way that Baker was going to hang around in the boardroom with these toffee-nosed cretins. A three-year drink-driving ban imposed on him while he was with Rovers was still in force, and he decided to take a taxi back to the Parkinson home rather than wait for Geoff, who was locked in tactical talks with Roy Masters.

It was while sitting in the back of the cab that the thirst struck. He was looking aimlessly out of the window as the taxi cut through the back streets on the way to Parky’s Boxleyheath home when he found himself staring at an illuminated billboard advertising a lager. It showed a crowd in a pub watching a weepie film on a large television set. They all held glasses of frothy beer. ‘There’s not a dry throat in the house,’ read the slogan.

Baker leant forward and tapped on the communicating window of the black cab. ‘You can drop me here, please pal,’ he said. ‘The walk will do me good.’

The cab driver watched him walk to the nearest pub, and then drove off.

Baker was into his fifth pint by the time Geoff Parkinson got to the pub, with his AA sponsor Vic Hardstaff in tow. Parky had been tipped off about his port of call by the cabbie, who had an account with United.

Between them, Parky and Hardstaff talked Baker into leaving the pub and returning to Parkinson’s home. They sat up half the night talking through his problems and the despair of not being able to play. He begged Parkinson to open his cocktail cabinet and let him have another drink.

‘Just one,’ he pleaded. ‘That’s all. Just one as a nightcap. I promise that will be my last drink.’

Parkinson opened the cocktail cabinet and showed him that it was empty.

‘Sorry, Dennis,’ he said, ‘but you’re in a dry house. The cocktail cabinet is here simply because it’s a nice piece of furniture.’

In truth, the Parkinsons had removed all the bottles from the cabinet when they knew Baker was coming to stay with them. The fewer temptations,

they thought, the better.

By the time he went to bed Baker was promising that it had been just a temporary fall off the wagon. But he was already finding out the painful lesson that Hardstaff had learned during his battle to beat the bottle.

One drink is too many. Twenty is not enough.

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 14. THE AGENT

THE Dutchman wrapped the pink rubber banding round his left upper arm, thumb-tapped a vein to make it swell and then inserted the syringe needle.

He lay back on the couch in his apartment and watched as his rich red blood oozed down the tubing and into the plastic bottle that he had bought from the pharmacists. Once he had produced half a litre, he removed the syringe and lay back with his arm bent until the flow of blood had stopped.

As he rested, Grokke did a mental calculation of what he had earned from the Baker deal. Within an hour of the confirmation that the player had passed the medical examination, and that the money had been paid into the three off-shore bank accounts, he arranged the transfer of three million pounds to Tornado. He briefly toyed with the idea of not paying the four hundred thousand pounds ‘thank you’ donation to Graziani, but concluded that it would be best not to make an enemy of somebody with heavy connections in the Mafia world.

Apart from Graziani’s cut, his outlay included one hundred and ninety thousand pounds to Baker, fifty thousand pounds for Wolfgang Hecht’s day trip from Düsseldorf, and twenty-five thousand pounds for the cooperation of Tornado secretary Mario Benetti. The quarter of a million pounds gift to Masters had been, unknowingly, provided by the United chairman.

Grokke’s share from the six million pounds transfer was a personal record

of two million three hundred and thirty thousand pounds. All the money had circulated without The Dutchman once having his name connected to any of the transactions. Each of his cash transfers was generated by coded messages tapped out on his Internet banking communication lines.

Now Grokke was using the Internet to send a suicide letter.

He had prepared an e-mail letter and lodged it in his Internet post box, timed for delivery to the Amsterdam Telegraf twenty-four hours after his carefully planned disappearing act. His letter to the Editor read: ‘By the time that you read this e-mail letter, I shall be dead.

I have been driven to this final solution to my problems by the heartless hounding tactics of the Dutch and British tax authorities.

In all my representative work for an international network of footballers and football clubs I have always been meticulously straightforward and scrupulously honest in my dealings, and have given the authorities full access to my accounts both in Amsterdam and Monte Carlo. They have chosen not to accept my version of things, and have preferred to blindly believe the word of a former associate of mine, who is well known to be a heroin addict, and who has been vindictive towards me ever since I stopped giving him money to feed his habit.

Both the British and Dutch tax investigators have used Gestapo-style tactics to try to prove that I have hidden funds, to the lengths where I have had my properties both in Holland and in England ransacked in my absence. I have had enough.

Quite possibly my depression has been caused by a recently diagnosed illness, but it is the constant intimidation by the tax authorities that has finally brought me to this state of complete despair.

I wish this letter to serve as a final will and testament.

There is a total of eight hundred thousand US dollars in my accounts in Monte Carlo and Amsterdam. I would like this

and the proceeds of the sale of my properties in Amsterdam, Monte Carlo and Suffolk, England, to be shared equally between the World Wildlife Fund, Amnesty International and the ACET AIDS Charity.

Please do not let the tax department claim any of it. They are not entitled to anything. My intention in writing this letter is to draw to the attention of all fair minded people the abhorrent behaviour of the tax authorities. There needs to be a curb on their seemingly unchecked freedom to persecute innocent people, making their lives unbearable. I cannot take any more.

Farewell. Long live democracy.

Johan Grokke, Monte Carlo.

Grokke stroked his thickening beard and smiled as he reread the letter.

He was particularly pleased with the line donating his money to the combination of charities. The tax authorities would struggle to get their paws on what he was leaving behind. He had deliberately put in the reference to a recently diagnosed illness because he knew the way their minds worked in the ‘straight’ world. They would immediately assume that he had some form of AIDS, and that would satisfy them that he had reason to kill himself. Grokke had a carefully concocted plan to strengthen their assumptions.

He was distressed when he read on the Internet about the injury to Dennis Baker, but he had to accept that all his footballing links were about to become history.

The Dutchman made one final call in his role as a football agent. It was to Roy Masters.

‘I was devastated to hear about Dennis,’ he said.

‘I bet you don’t feel as bad as me,’ Masters said. ‘He had been playing and behaving like a dream. I really feel sorry for the lad. He was starting to get it all together.’

‘Please give him my best wishes, and tell him I always rated him.’

‘You don’t have to talk in the past tense, Johan. He’ll hopefully be back in time for the last week or so of the season.’

‘I just want you to tell him that I forgive him for all the headaches he gave me, and that he should do all in his power to stay on the wagon. And you, Roy, make sure you get something out of life and not just live in that narrow little football world. Suddenly things can happen that turn your life upside down, and you will wonder why you did so little with your life. Live while you can.’

‘I can’t believe this is you talking, Johan. You don’t sound your usual self.’

‘You will understand one day,’ Grokke said, being deliberately mysterious.

‘Understand what?’

‘You will see. The reason I am ringing, apart from inquiring about Dennis, is just to reassure you that I have not put anything in writing about you know what.’

‘I know I can trust you.’

‘You will also be able to trust me after I’ve gone.’

‘Gone where?’

‘Who knows. I don’t know ...’ He let his voice tail off.

‘Are you feeling all right?’

‘To be honest, Roy, things are getting on top of me. But you have nothing to worry about. No matter what happens, our little transaction will remain a secret. That I can promise.’

‘What’s wrong, Johan? I’ve never known you so depressed. Is there anything I can do to help?’

‘No, you’ve done enough, Roy. One day soon you will understand. Thank you for everything, my friend. Look after yourself. Goodbye.’

Grokke then replaced the receiver, leaving Masters puzzled and perplexed. He knew that the United manager would be questioned about when he last talked to him, and he wanted him to say how strange and depressed he had sounded. For more than a week now he had kept out of sight of friends and neighbours. He did not want any of them reporting that he had grown a beard and moustache, both of which were already quite luxuriant. To everybody he talked to on the telephone he dropped

the ‘things are getting on top of me’ line into the conversation.

It was time to kill off Johan Grokke, football agent.

The Dutchman slipped quietly out of his Monte Carlo apartment at three o’clock in the morning carrying his plastic bottle of blood, and with his new passport and tinted, horn-rimmed spectacles in a lightweight shoulder bag.

He drove his orange Maserati to a small, unlit quay a mile outside Nice.

Grokke deliberately left the driver’s door wide open to draw attention to the car at daylight. He looked around to make sure he was unobserved, and then moved swiftly and silently down the quay steps to a rubber dinghy that he had moored there earlier. After rowing for twenty minutes he came to a small motor launch that he had anchored off shore.

He took from his jacket pocket a pair of rubber gloves and pulled them on, and then unscrewed the cap on the plastic bottle. From his shoulder bag he carefully lifted a sealed phial that had been supplied to him by a laboratory assistant friend in return for a payment of twenty thousand US dollars. It contained blood in his group that was HIV positive. He broke the seal and poured the contents into the bottle and shook it to mix the two bloods together.

Grokke poured the now contaminated blood on to the floor of the dinghy, and then dropped a razor blade into the thick, red puddle. He wanted to encourage the police to assume that he had cut his wrists with the blade, and then gone over the side.

After climbing aboard the motor launch, he leaned over the side and attached the dinghy rope to the stern. He towed the dinghy out for a mile and then released it, leaving it empty and abandoned as he made his way to a small harbour ten miles along the coast.

Grokke dropped anchor and then rowed ashore in another dinghy belonging to the launch. Parked close to the harbour was a hired Renault which contained in its boot a suitcase brimming with tweedy English clothes and half a dozen books on European history that he would use as a refresher course for himself.

It was Professor Willem Kalff who drove across the border into Italy as dawn was breaking. Five o’clock that afternoon he was sitting on an Air Canada flight bound for Nova Scotia. He would take the train down

to New York State and then catch a domestic flight to California and his new life as a lecturer on European history.

A report of the apparently abandoned orange Maserati with its open door was the first alert that the police had that something mysterious had happened. Six hours later a fishing trawler brought in the empty, bloodsoaked dinghy. The police quickly tracked down the Maserati to being owned by an international football agent called Johan Grokke. Neighbours said they had not seen him for days.

Early the next morning a Dutch journalist from the Amsterdam Telegraf contacted the headquarters of the Monte Carlo police and read them a letter that had arrived by e-mail from Johan Grokke. The forensic department had reported that the blood in the dinghy and on the razor blade was HIV positive. A check with medical records revealed the blood was from the same group as Grokke’s.

‘It can be safely assumed,’ the head of the police investigation confided to the journalist, ‘that Monsieur Grokke took his own life while depressed not only because of the inquiries of the tax authorities but also because he was in fear of developing full-blown AIDS.’ Professor Kalff would have told them: ‘Johan Grokke is history.’

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 15. THE MANAGER

IT was now more than two weeks since Helen had seen Masters, and she was daily dropping deeper and deeper into a dark depression. She felt a prisoner in the Brighton home where she had only Laddie and housekeeper Kathleen for company, while her husband pointedly stayed every night in the Mayfair apartment. For the first few days of knowing that she had a private detective on her tail she had fun leading him on false trails. But she quickly tired of popping into small hotels just for a coffee. Helen wanted only one thing, and that was to be with Masters who had now even warned her off calling him from public call boxes.

Knowing that all her home calls were probably being recorded, she had become paranoid about using the telephone and had stilted conversations no matter who she was speaking to. She felt that it was like being stalked on line.

Three days after United had been held to a goalless draw by Rangers, she was startled to read in the evening newspaper a story about international football agent Johan Grokke apparently committing suicide. She had never met him, but knew that he was the man who had set up the Dennis Baker deal. As Helen read the details about how his empty dinghy had been found stained with HIV-positive blood, Slater’s Rolls Royce, driven

by Tompkins, pulled into the driveway.

She looked through the lounge window and was astonished to see that Roy was getting out of the back of the car along with her husband. Her

face flushed and she went weak at the knees.

Slater greeted his wife with a peck on the cheek, and was much warmer in his embrace of the excited, tail-wagging Laddie. ‘I’ve brought Roy back with me,’ he said. ‘We’re playing down the road at Albion tomorrow, and we can keep out of the way of the media ’ere. Tell Kathleen that we’ll both be staying for dinner tonight.’

Masters shook Helen by the hand, and she gave him a brush-kiss.

She still had the evening paper in her hands. ‘Have you seen this?’ she said, indicating the news page headline FOOTBALL AGENT IN MYSTERY SUICIDE ‘That’s why we’re ’ere and not at the team ’otel,’ said Slater. ‘The press ’ave been chasing us all day because we were the last people to deal with The Dutchman. What a bloody stupid waste of a life.’

‘Did you get any indication that he was suicidal?’

‘Not in Monte Carlo,’ said Masters. ‘But I had a weird telephone call from him at the weekend in which he talked about things getting on top of him.’

‘They’d get on top of you ’n’ all if you had AIDS,’ said Slater. ‘That’s the punishment you get for doing unnatural things. Anybody who mucks about in the sex line gets what they deserve. And I do mean anybody.’

Masters broke the uneasy silence. ‘Sorry to drop in on you like this, but the hotel is besieged by press men wanting quotes about Grokke and also about how we’re going to cope without Dennis Baker.’

‘How bad are his injuries?’ Helen asked, as she poured a whisky and soda for her husband.

‘With any luck, we might have him back for the last couple of games of the season. He’s got twelve stitches in both shins, but I suppose he’s lucky not have had both legs broken. It was one of the worst two footed tackles I’ve ever seen.’

‘The referee should not just have sent that fucking assassin Brennan off, ’e should have sent ’im to prison.’

Helen asked Masters if he would like a drink. ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ve joined Dennis Baker on the wagon so that I’m practising what I preach.’

‘How is he getting on with his drink problem?’

‘He had a bit of a fall off the wagon on Monday,’ said Masters. ‘But

he’s fighting hard to beat it. He’s finding it very difficult, but at least he has accepted that he has a problem.’

Slater was slipping the lead on to the ecstatic Laddie. ‘’e’s what I miss most of all about staying in London,’ he said, without any thought for Helen’s feelings. ‘I’m going to take him for a run down the beach before the tide comes in. I’ll be about an hour. We’ll have a chat when I get back, Roy, about the match against Albion. I’ve got an idea I want to put to you.’

As Laddie dragged Slater down the driveway, Helen and Masters watched through the lounge window. No sooner was he out of sight than she pulled Masters down on to the sofa and kissed him passionately.

‘I’ve missed you so much, honey,’ she said. ‘I think of you every second of every day. My life is just torture without you.’

Masters looked in the direction of the kitchen. ‘What about the housekeeper?’ he said. ‘Can’t she hear us from out there?’

‘Kathleen’s gone down to the supermarket to get some extra vegetables,’ Helen said. ‘We’ve got just a short time to ourselves.’

They made love on the sofa with the same speed and hunger as when they first climbed into bed together. There was no time for what had become their usual long and lingering preliminaries. Roy pulled her white lace panties down to her ankles, and then entered her with a roughness that excited her so much that she was quickly releasing a muffled scream as she climaxed while he was still pumping deep inside her.

As Roy withdrew after an orgasm that seemed to last for a full minute, they took it in turns to go to the bathroom to tidy themselves up. It was all over inside ten minutes, and they were giggling like naughty schoolchildren.

‘Sorry that I acted like an animal, darling,’ Masters said. ‘I’d missed you so much.’

‘Me too,’ Helen said. ‘I’ve been desperate to touch you, feel you, hold you. At least I still know you want me.’

‘Silly girl,’ Masters said, stroking her face. ‘I want you every moment of my life, and soon that will be possible. I’ve got great news. The Dutchman insisted on giving me a present for all my help with transfer deals over the years. It’s enough money to help us start our new life together. That

strange phone call I had from him was all about the secret of the gift being safe with him. To be honest, I could not make head nor tail of what he was talking about. He was really rambling as if he’d a lot on his mind.’

‘D’you think he really has killed himself?’

Masters shrugged. ‘He always struck me as being a man totally in control of his life. But I suppose if he did find out that he had contacted the AIDS virus it might have unbalanced him.’

‘Was he definitely gay?’

He laughed. ‘Is the Pope Catholic? Johan never tried to hide his sexual preference. Despite what your husband says, he found it quite natural. If he has topped himself, it’s a terrible and sad tragedy. But if it’s some sort of clever scam to beat the tax authorities, then I say good luck to him. I’ve rarely met anybody with such a calculating brain. It would not surprise me one little bit to find out that he is alive and well and living somewhere like Brazil.’

Helen was quickly tidying the sofa and pumping up the cushions to hide any tell-tale signs of their wild moment of passion. ‘What’s the agenda for us now, Roy?’ she asked. ‘I can’t wait to get away from here. I‘ll go quite mad if I have to stay here much longer living in fear of my crazy husband.’

‘There are just four more matches including tomorrow’s game. If we have to go into the play-offs, which is looking increasingly likely, then it will take us into the third week in May.’ Helen caught her breath. ‘That sounds like a life time away,’ she said.

‘How am I going to keep away from you for that long?’

‘Sorry, darling, but that’s the way it’s got to be. If I can clinch promotion for United, it will mean we have the best possible start to our new life.

There’s the little matter of a half a million pounds bonus. Just think of the foundation that will give us along with the cash I collected from poor Johan.’

‘What if United don’t go up?’

‘Thanks to The Dutchman, we shall be all right. But God knows how Harvey will survive. If we don’t make it to the Premier League he faces financial ruin.’

‘He deserves every rotten thing coming his way,’ Helen said with a

bitterness that had got deeper during the last two lonely weeks. ‘Look at the way he’s treated Jack Shenton, who’s done more for his businesses than any hundred other people put together.’

‘Don’t worry about Jack. He’s got more balls than I thought. He’s told Harvey that if he doesn’t get a ten million pounds settlement, he’ll fry him in court.’

‘I’m really frightened, Roy,’ Helen said, burying her head in his chest.

‘You don’t know Harvey like I do. He’ll want to take everybody down with him. He’s the most vengeful person I know.’

Masters rubbed the nape of her neck. ‘It’s all right, darling. Just hold out a few more weeks, and then we’ll be as free as birds. I’ve got my own little plan how to handle that megalomaniac husband of yours. Trust me, he will get his desserts.’’

Down on Brighton beach, Hamilton Scott was filling Slater in with the latest report on his wife’s movements. ‘I’ve tracked her to a lot of small hotels in Brighton,’ he said, ‘but so far I’ve not caught her in anybody’s company.’ ‘’Ow about this fucking geezer Millard you’ve told me about? Any trace of ’im yet?’

‘No. The track’s gone cold, but I’ll soon be able to trace all her recent telephone calls.’

‘I thought you were tapped in.’

‘Yes, but I’m more interested in the calls she was making before I came on the case. The recordings I’ve made so far give no hint of an illicit affair.

Since I’ve been tailing her she’s made several calls from public telephone boxes. Would that strike you as odd?’ ‘’Course it fuckingwell would. I’ve given ’er ’er own mobile. Why would she want to go into a call box? D’you think she’s twigged what we’re up to?’

‘Only if somebody has told her. I pride myself on being like the invisible man when I’m on surveillance duty.’

‘Well I certainly ain’t opened my trap to anybody. I’ll give you a month to get to the bottom of what the cow’s up to or you’re off the case.’

Laddie came bounding from the water’s edge and jumped up and made

contact with his muddied front paws on the detective’s white, belted macintosh.

Slater laughed like a drain. ‘Now you know what it’s like to be tackled

by Terry Brennan,’ he said.

Hamilton Scott was not amused.

A very drunk Slater and a cold sober Masters were playing snooker in the games room. ‘What we need against Albion,’ the chairman said, ‘is an iron curtain defence.’

He potted a red and nominated the green. As it disappeared for three points, he looked up at Masters and gave a crooked smile. ‘Three points would come in very ’andy tomorrow. But I think we should go into the game settling for a draw.’

‘It would be suicidal to play with a totally defensive attitude,’ Masters said firmly.

‘Look,’ Slater said as his break ended with a clumsily missed red, ‘without Baker in our attack we’ve got as much chance of scoring goals as I ’ave of making a maximum break. All we’ve got to do is string all our players across the front of the penalty area and strangle the life out of the bastards.’

Masters potted a red, a blue, a red and a black before missing a third red. It gave him time to give a considered reply.

‘Mr Chairman,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to trust me. If we play a totally defensive game Albion will eat us alive. They’ve got the best attacking force outside the Premier League. That’s why they’re top of the table.

But their defence is vulnerable if you put them under pressure. We’ve got to try to score, and then – and only then – would I consider going on the defensive.’

‘You’re the manager,’ the chairman said, missing an easy red.

‘Correct.’

‘But I think you’ve got it wrong.’

They were interrupted by Helen coming in with a tray of coffee and brandies.

‘Ah, you are good for something then,’ said Slater, who had already drunk three-quarters of a bottle of whisky.

Helen ignored the remark, and served the coffees including one for herself.

‘Who’s that for?’ said Slater, watching her pour a third cup.

‘Me, of course,’ she replied.

‘Oh, I wondered if it was for John Millard.’

Helen hoped the sudden heat she felt did not show on her face.

‘Who?’ ‘You heard,’ her husband said. ‘John Millard.’

She called on all the composure she had learned on the catwalk. ‘Who on earth is John Millard?’

‘Don’t give me that crap,’ Slater snarled. ‘You’ve been seeing a geezer called Millard. John Millard.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

She glanced at Masters, who was standing in the corner of the games room out of Slater’s sight. He gave her a wink of encouragement.

‘Let me tell you this, Missy,’ Slater said, his words slurred, ‘I’ve been having you followed.’

Helen acted indignant. ‘You’ve what?’ she said.

Slater laughed. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I know what you’re up to, and I’ll warn you now ... I ain’t sharing you with anybody.’

‘You’re drunk,’ she said.

‘Maybe I am, but I ain’t stupid. You’re mine, and you’d better remember that.’

‘You talk as if I’m one of your properties,’ Helen was brave enough to say.

‘That’s exactly what you fucking are,’ Slater said, his eyes bulging as his temper spun out of control. ‘If I ever come across this John Millard I’ll break his fucking neck. Yours ’n’ all if you’ve been cheating on me.

I won’t fucking stand for anything like that.’

He was holding his snooker cue and snapped it in half in uncontrolled anger.

Helen flinched with fright. Masters came forward and got hold of Slater by the shoulders. He was surprised at how short he was, and realised that he was wearing carpet slippers and had shrunk three inches without his built-up shoes.

‘Come on, Mr Chairman,’ he said. ‘I think it’s best that you call it a night.’

‘All right, all right,’ Slater said, pulling away from Masters. ‘Take your fucking ’ands off me. I’ll piss off to bed, but just tell her, Roy, that I mean what I say. I ain’t sharing her with anybody.’

He shuffled out of the games room on unsteady feet, and walked heavily upstairs to the bedroom in which he would be sleeping alone.

Helen and Roy took their coffees in to the lounge. She was shaking so much that the coffee was spilling into the saucer.

‘You see why I’m frightened of him?’ she said. ‘He’s insane, particularly when he’s had a drink.’

‘Well you won’t have to put up with it much longer. At least it’s obvious he has no idea it’s me who’s going to take you away from him.’

He laughed. ‘And I’ll tell you this, darling, I won’t share you with with anybody either.’

She smiled. ‘I would leave him tomorrow if I thought he’d just let me go,’ she said. ‘But I’ll only have the courage to do it when I know I have you to protect me.’

‘Just one more month, darling. Then we’ll make our escape, together.’

Slater came down to breakfast the next morning as if the previous night’s loss of temper had never happened. John Millard, the broken snooker cue and the fact that he was having Helen followed got no mention at all, and he was interested only in talking about that evening’s match against Albion.

He and Masters sat together eating their scrambled eggs on toast, with Helen sitting opposite them sipping at her orange juice. She and Roy had stayed up until the early hours discussing their escape plan before they had, reluctantly, gone to separate guest rooms.

‘We just can’t afford to lose tonight, Roy,’ Slater said, repeating his script of the previous evening. ‘We should build an iron curtain defence across the front of the penalty area and strangle the Albion attack.’

‘Yes, I understand what you’re saying, Mr Chairman, but if we sit back we’ll be inviting all sorts of trouble. Our objective will be to go on the offensive to try to test their defence, which has looked suspect the few

times they’ve been put under pressure.’

‘But who’s going to put the ball into the net? Baker will be sitting in the stand. We’ve got nobody else capable of scoring.’

‘I’m going to gamble on a 4-2-4 formation, and hopefully get some width into our attack. Joe Roper is back after suspension, and we’re hoping he’ll be able to get on the end of the crosses coming from the wings.’

Slater got up and slipped the dog lead on Laddie. ‘Well I don’t think we’ve got a fucking hope in hell of scoring and should just think about stopping them,’ he said. ‘But what do I know. I’m only the fucking chairman with everybody’s hands in my wallet. Come on Laddie, let’s get some fresh air.’

‘What a Jekyll and Hyde,’ Masters said to Helen after the chairman had been towed off by Laddie. ‘You would’ve thought we had dreamt what happened last night. Not a mention of it.’

‘He can rarely remember the night before, but he meant every word last night. If he gets his hands on this John Millard he will break his neck. So please, be careful.’

If Slater had seen the kiss they then exchanged, he would have broken both their necks.

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 16. THE MANAGER

THE match against Albion was a disaster. United’s strategy of using two orthodox wingers to stretch the Albion defence misfired because the two midfield players in the adventurous 4-2-4 formation were outnumbered and stifled. They were unable to work the ball out to the wings, and by half-time the league leaders had rattled up four goals without reply. Masters switched to a 4-5-1 line up for the second-half in what was little more than a damage limitation exercise, and the final 6-0 scoreline was a fair reflection of the balance of play.

Slater’s face was like thunder when he confronted Masters in the dressing-room after the match. ‘What the fucking ’ell did I tell you,’ he said as he came barging through the door just as the despairing and dispirited players were getting out of their kit and into the bath. ‘We should have played a defensive game and nicked a point.’

‘Then it would have been ten-nil,’ said Masters.

‘Bollocks,’ snarled Slater, who was once again the puppet of alcohol.

Masters realised that he was now hardly ever sober, and turning more and more to the bottle as the pressure mounted. ‘You’ve spent millions of my money to put together a team of fucking ’eadless chickens.’

Masters put an arm on the chairman’s elbow and steered him out of the dressing-room and into the corridor outside. The last thing he wanted was his players being torn apart to their faces. This was the first match in the Easter programme, and a strong team spirit was vital.

‘Listen, Mr Chairman,’ he said intensely, ‘this may be your club, but in that dressing-room you have no say whatsoever.’

‘I’ll speak my mind wherever and whenever I fuckingwell like,’ spat Slater. ‘You ballsed it up today Masters, and you know it. Now we’re even going to struggle to get into the playoffs. It’s an unmitigated fucking disaster.’

All the results had gone against United, and with the three-point deduction and the defeat by Albion they had now slipped to fifth in the table.

‘We’ve got to keep our nerve,’ said Masters. ‘If we can get three or more points out of our last three matches we’ll just about make the playoffs by which time Baker will be fit to return.’

‘Yes, of course, Baker,’ the chairman said, pushing his face so close to Masters that the manager could smell the stench of whisky on his breath.

‘He’s your fucking meal ticket, ain’t ’e.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Don’t give me that innocent “what-d’you-mean?” crap. You must think I was born yesterday. The Dutchman looked after you, didn’t ’e. Bunged you. What d’you get? About a quarter of a million quid, I reckon.’

Masters felt his mouth drying. ‘You’ve had too much to drink, Mr Chairman.’

‘Don’t give me that Mr Chairman bollocks. I can’t prove it, but take it from me that I know you got a tasty backhander from Grokke to push the Baker deal through. All fifty-quid readies with Bank of Jersey seals, was it?’

The United manager was speechless. He had no idea how the chairman could have known, apart from getting the facts from Grokke who had promised that he would not tell a soul. ‘As it happens,’ Masters said, ‘The Dutchman did give me an unsolicited gift, but it was nothing to do with the Baker deal but for all that I had done to help him get established in Spain as an agent when I was with Torrero.’

‘Tell that to the fucking fairies,’ said Slater. ‘You were paid for making sure I dished out six million quid for Baker. Anything you got is rightly United’s money. My money.’

‘As usual, Mr Chairman,’ Masters said, ‘you’re talking out of your arse.’

He turned and walked away down the corridor, hating himself for one, having taken the bung and two, getting caught out by, of all people, Harvey Slater.

Their heated conversation had blistered the walls outside the door leading to the Albion gents toilet. Never had Ryan Jones, ace football muck raker, chosen a better time to relieve himself.

The Easter Sunday exclusive, UNITED MANAGER BUNG SENSATION, caused an earthquake of controversy. The Football Association announced that they would be holding an inquiry, and, worse still, the story was read with relish in the Bristol-based office of the Special Investigation Department of the Inland Revenue.

Masters was horrified to see the facts, real mixed with the imagined, in print. He realised he was in serious trouble, and went to see his solicitor, Giles Johnson, who took him to £1,000-an-hour tax-expert barrister Sir Charles Grosvenor. He gave a full explanation of exactly what had happened in Monte Carlo, and he was told unequivocally, ‘The money legally belongs to United because you are an employee of the club. Anything you receive while under contract to the club is, by rights, theirs. The only course of action I can recommend is that you pass the money on to United, or face serious consequences from any or all of three fronts: that of United, the Football Association and, most dire of all, the Inland Revenue.’

The next morning Masters rang Slater’s car telephone and asked Tompkins to come to his apartment to collect a delivery for the chairman.

He had put the sports bag, still with the fifty pound notes packed beneath the false bottom, in a locked cabinet in his Dockways flat, with the idea of taking it down to Spain with him that summer.

Tompkins could not believe his eyes when Masters handed him the hold-all to which he had once been so attached. Inside was a note to Slater from Masters that read, ‘I have been advised that the enclosed cash, to the sum of £250,000, is an unsolicited gift to which I have no legal claim because it is the property of United.’

Slater laughed so hard when Tompkins handed him the bag, his bag, that there were tears in his eyes. His bung to The Dutchman had come back to him by way of his manager. He just hoped he would have cause to

continue laughing when the season was over. United had just one match left and needed a single point to clinch a place in the playoffs.

Two tax investigators called on Masters at his apartment. They grilled him for four hours about his association with Johan Grokke, and demanded full details of all his transactions with The Dutchman from his first meeting with him when he was manager of Rovers.

Masters was able to say with a clear conscience that he had never financially benefited from any transfer deal involving Grokke. Questioned about the Sunday newspaper story alleging that he had received a two hundred and fifty thousand pounds kick-back from the Dennis Baker transfer, he was in a position to tell them that he had not, personally, taken a penny from the deal. Warned that any false testimony would lead to charges of fraud and tax evasion, he explained about the unsolicited gift and how he had, on legal advice, handed it on to United.

Finally, the investigators asked Masters for an account of his last dealings with Grokke. They were particularly keen to know his mood and his state of mind. He told them about the final telephone call, and how The Dutchman had not sounded his usual self and made references to how things were getting on top of him.

The tax men left, satisfied that the testimony from Masters supported the theory that Grokke had committed suicide rather than face a tax fraud trial and a painful and uncertain future as an HIV victim.

In California, Professor Willem Kalff kept up to date with the on-going story of the Roy Masters bung inquiry on the Internet. He shook his head sadly. ‘This,’ he thought, ‘is unfair. Johan Grokke would never have stood by and let it happen.’

Slater, sober for a change, had a face-to-face showdown with Masters on the eve of the final match of the season against Argyle. Standing alongside him in the United boardroom was his son, Sam. The chairman held out his hand. ‘I’m big enough to shake hands with you, Roy, and say that The Bung business is behind us.’

Masters kept his hands down at his side. ‘I have never taken a bung,’ he said. ‘I was paid for helping a friend in his line of business, and passed his unsolicited gift on to you the minute I knew I was not entitled to it.’

The chairman smirked. ‘A bung, is a bung, is a bung, is a bung, Roy. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been dishing ’em out all my business life. Any ’ow, all I want to say is good luck tomorrow. We’ve GOT to make those playoffs.’

‘Will Baker be fit to play?’ Sam asked.

‘We’re going to give him a fitness test late tomorrow morning. But I’m not optimistic. The best we can realistically hope for is that he will be fit for the play-off final, if we make it.’

‘We’d better, Roy,’ the chairman said almost menacingly. ‘We’d better.’

‘That little shit Baker owes this club some commitment,’ said Sam, who had never forgiven him for belittling him with the superglue prank. ‘We’re paying him a fortune every week for scratching his arse.’

Masters considered ignoring him, but felt duty bound to speak up for the player. ‘If it had not been for his performances in the two games in which he played before the injury, we would probably not be in with a chance of a play-off place.’

‘It doesn’t say much for the rest of the wankers that you’ve signed,’ the chairman’s son said.

For a brief second, Masters was on the verge of landing a Jack Shenton-style punch on his jaw. But good sense got a grip of him, and he contemptuously ignored him. ‘See you at the match tomorrow, Mr Chairman,’ he said, and walked out without as much as a glance at Slater Junior. Or, as he described him to Parky, ‘a shit off the old block.’

There was a confidential special delivery letter waiting for him when he returned to his office. He immediately recognised Helen’s handwriting, and went out on to the deserted pitch to read it away from prying eyes.

‘Dearest Lovelump,’ he read, ‘I’m taking the chance of sending this to you by special delivery in the hope and belief that they have at least not got round to tampering with your mail. I’ve been losing sleep thinking about you and the dreadful gift business. I see that you’ve had to give the money back to the club. Oh well, you were never really happy at accepting it. Don’t worry about it, darling. I will be happy to live with you in a tent if needs be.

Just think, within a week or two we will be together for ever. How are we going to break the news to the maniac? He has not been to our Brighton home since the day of the Albion game. I’ve been half expecting him to show up and try to beat out of me what I know about John Millard. I am so frightened of him that I have even taken to having a kitchen knife within easy reach whenever I am alone in the house. It sounds dramatic, I know, but as you have now seen for yourself he has a vile temper when he is liable to do something quite scary. I hope you make it into the playoffs because I know what it means to you (and, I suppose, to our future). What is your grand plan for our escape together? If you get a moment, honey, please write to me, even if it’s the briefest note. Address any letter to Kathleen Milligan, our housekeeper.

That way, if there is anybody intercepting my mail as well as my telephone calls, you can get the letter through to me. Kathleen understands the situation, and will pass it on. I have had great fun with our detective this week. I now know exactly who he is.

He is about as conspicuous as an elephant at a garden party. I have led him on wild goose chases to the bottom of Brighton Pier, where I spent thirty minutes chatting up an angler I had never seen before in my life, and to my hairdressers where I made a great play of kissing my stylist, Rodney, who is as gay as a daisy.

Today I am going to take Laddie on a three mile walk and will talk to just about everybody I can on the way. I might as well make him earn the wages Harvey is paying him. I’ve just about stopped short of inviting the milkman in. I have now even started expressing undying love on the telephone to extremely surprised old school and model friends. I mean, there has still got to be a chance that I am having a lesbian affair! Oh well, at least it lifts the boredom, and whiles away the hours until I can be with you my darling. For ever.’

Masters returned to his office, and composed a short reply. He was never one for romantic letter writing. ‘Dearest darling,’ he wrote, ‘it was a joy to hear from you. I’ve been up to my ears working with the team and

meeting lawyers and tax snoopers. I have known better times in my life, but I have to admit that I feel better having given that money to the club.

As you know, I was never comfortable with it. What I can’t understand is how you-know-who found out about it. I cannot believe that Johan would have told him. It’s a mystery that he’s taken to his watery grave (or wherever he is). Don’t do anything silly with that knife, darling. He’s not worth it, but I can understand your fear. I will let you know exactly what the plans are if and when we reach the playoffs. We have a s— or bust match tomorrow against Argyle. One point will put us into the playoffs. If we lose, be prepared for me getting in touch with instructions about what I want you to do. I shall close now, darling, and just leave you with this simple fact: I love you more than life itself.’

He addressed the envelope to Kathleen Milligan, and dropped it in a post box near his apartment.

Dennis Baker had an hour run-out late on Saturday morning under the watchful eyes of Masters and Parky. ‘I’m desperate to play, Boss,’ he said at the end of the session of twisting, turning runs, ‘but to be honest my shins are still sore as hell.’

‘That’s all right, Dennis,’ Masters said. ‘I’d rather you be honest with me than go out and break down during the game. We’ll have you right for the play-off final.’

United were as nervous as kittens in a dog pound in the match with Argyle. They were trailing 1-0 until, with just five minutes to go and Harvey Slater a terrified wreck, Joe Roper got his head to a cross from the right wing and steered the ball into the net from five yards. It was United’s first goal for five games, and clinched a place in the playoffs.

Masters and Slater found themselves cuddling each other like consenting adults in the directors’ box as the final whistle blew. It’s a funny old game.

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 17. THE PLAY-OFFS

THE hours leading up to the First Division play-off final at Wembley Stadium were heaving with the sort of tense excitement and nervous anticipation that precedes a long-awaited world heavyweight championship fight. United had qualified after clawing their way to a 1-0 two-leg semifinal victory over City, and were now going head-to-head with Wanderers for the last remaining place in the Premier League. There was pile-driving pressure on both teams, with the winning club promised a fortune at the top table while the losers returned to the relative pauper status of the First Division to start the mountain climb again the following season.

In all his years in the game, Masters had never experienced a mood like this. It was almost suffocating in its intensity, and he was doing all in his power to keep the pressure from his players. For the supporters of both clubs there was enormous pride and prestige at stake, and many of them would have mugged their grannies for a place in the Premier League.

But their desire for victory was nothing to that of the United chairman and manager, for whom the financial and personal consequences were so critical that each of them felt they were entering a minefield as they arrived at Wembley Stadium.

Masters was banking on the half a million pounds bonus that would help

him lay a suitable foundation to his new life with Helen. He had got a hastily scrawled message to her through housekeeper Kathleen Milligan to make sure she was at Wembley for the match, and had written cryptically that she should come prepared for ‘a long holiday’.

Harvey Slater was counting on a victory in the match to pull him back from the cliff edge of bankruptcy. He had been advised by his lawyers to pay a settlement figure of ten million pounds to Jack Shenton to buy his silence. His former brother-in-law and partner had enough facts on his business dealings to provide evidence that would put him away for years.

He would have to pay him off, just as he had his sister some twenty-five years before when she was threatening to pass a file on him to the police.

The payment to Shenton, on top of the six million fee for Baker, had dropped him so deep into debt that only a Premier League place — and the profit that would generate through a City flotation — could now save him.

There was encouraging news for both Masters and Slater on the morning of the match. After a vigorous hour-long workout, Dennis Baker announced that he was fit to play. It would be his first game since the shin injuries.

The United manager decided to hold back the news until the last possible moment because he wanted to give Wanderers as little time as possible to adapt their tactics. Masters had been putting out a smokescreen all week that he would almost certainly not be fit to play, while he secretly believed the opposite. He sensed that this was one match Baker would not want to miss. The Wembley stage would appeal to the showman in him and, if necessary, he knew he would be prepared to run through a pain barrier.

Masters told only Slater, who in turn told only his son. The United manager nearly kicked in the screen when, on a live lunchtime television preview programme, Sam Slater talked during a sportschat forum about how Dennis Baker would take the Wanderers defence apart at Wembley that afternoon. The element of surprise had been kicked into touch. That’s where Masters would willingly have kicked Sam Slater.

Helen Slater was experiencing a full range of emotions on top of a foundation of stomach-churning fear as she packed two cases full of clothes. The ‘long holiday’ Roy mentioned in his hand-written note was

a code they had decided on to signal it was time to make the break. It meant that at long last she would be leaving her husband and setting up home with Roy, although he had not fully explained how he was going to break the news to Slater. All he had said in the note was, ‘I will meet you an hour after the match in the Wembley hospitality suite, and we will take off together from there.’

Shortly after receiving the note, her husband had made one of his curt telephone calls telling Helen that he expected her to be at Wembley for the match. She was to provide the decoration alongside him when he sat preening himself in the Royal Box. It would not be Royal Box etiquette for him to be seen without his wife at his side. He offered to send Tompkins down to Brighton to pick her up, but she told him that she preferred to drive herself. ‘I suppose you’ll be calling in to see Millard on the way,’ he said.

‘Don’t start that again,’ she said. ‘I’ve already told you that I do not know anybody called Millard.’

‘If ever I find out you’re lying, you’ll be sorry. Just remember that I warned you.’

She was sick of his threats, but at the same time terrified of what he would do when he discovered that Roy was the other man in her life. Helen knew that, as much as her husband now despised her, he would not just stand aside and let his manager take her off his hands. The public humiliation would be too much for him to bear.

All she hoped and prayed was that United would win the play-off final, so that he had something to soften the blow to his pride and, much more important to him, to his finances.

As she placed the suitcases in the back of her Jeep, she was unaware of the binoculars trained on her from a vantage point where Hamilton Scott had a full view of the Slater house. Helen set off for Wembley with her husband’s private detective following on a safe distance behind.

Hamilton was in a lather of excitement because he had that morning received the list of telephone calls she had made from Brighton over the past three months. One mobile number figured prominently. It had been rung two or three times a day, and then the calls suddenly stopped at about the same time that he took on the case.

He had rung the number just before Mrs Slater had come out of the house carrying two suitcases. The voice that answered was unmistakeably that of Roy Masters, the manager of United. Hamilton could not believe his ears.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, ‘wrong number.’

As he followed the Jeep out of Brighton, the detective telephoned his client on his car phone.

‘I am following your wife along the A23 in the direction of London,’ he said. ‘She is driving her Jeep and she has suitcases in the back.’

‘Well done Sherlock,’ Slater said in a sarcastic tone. ‘She just ’appens to be coming to Wembley to join me for today’s match, and she often brings a suitcase when she is staying overnight at our Mayfair apartment.’

Slater was fed up with the incompetent Hamilton and had lost all faith in him. The prat had even suggested that she was having an affair with her hairdresser, who was obviously as bent as a brush.

‘Well listen to this, then,’ said the detective, hardly able to contain his excitement. ‘I think I’ve found our Mr Millard.’

‘And who is ’e? Do I know ’im?’

Hamilton enjoyed suddenly having his client’s full attention.

‘Well, do you know this mobile telephone number?’ he said, dramatically announcing the number on which he had reached the United manager.

‘Of course I bloody do. That’s the club mobile number for Roy Masters.’

‘You’ve got it in one, sir.’

‘Got what in one?’

‘Roy Masters, alias John Millard.’

‘Do what?’

‘Well, I have to admit that at this juncture it’s partly supposition but everything points to it being him. That number was being rung two and three times a day from your Brighton and Mayfair telephones until I came on the case.’

‘Of course it fuckingwell was,’ said Slater. ‘I ring him all the fucking time, you berk. You’re fired!’

The line went dead, and Hamilton lost his concentration, lost the lady he was following and he had lost his job.

He sensed that the pig-of-a-man Slater was also about to lose his wife.

He hoped that he would lose the playoff final, too.

Dennis Baker tingled with anticipation as he sat in the Wembley dressingroom listening to Roy Masters delivering the final tactics talk before the teams were summoned for the kick-off. Wembley was his favourite ground.

He had played six times here for England, and had helped Rovers win an FA Cup Final. Strictly speaking, he should not have been playing in this final because he knew he was not match fit after his five week lay-off. But at least he had managed to start winning his battle with the booze, and he felt in better condition than many times during the last few years when the bottle was his master.

Thanks to the encouragement of Roy Masters, Parky and his team-mate, Vic Hardstaff, he had managed to clamber back on the wagon after his Monday night fall. There had been at least a dozen instances when he had almost fallen back off, but concentration on the lessons he was learning at his regular AA meetings saved him. ‘All I’ve got to do,’ he kept repeating to himself, ‘ is stay sober just for today. Just for today.’

His toughest challenge came when he heard the news of Johan Grokke’s disappearance. He just could not believe that The Dutchman had committed suicide. Baker wept when Masters told him what had happened, and his first instinct was to reach for a glass. But both Masters and Parky stressed to him that the best way of honouring The Dutchman’s memory was to prove how strong he was and to leave the drink alone. ‘That,’ said Masters, ‘is what Johan would have wanted. He worked hard to get you back here to England. Don’t waste all that he did for you.’

Baker’s resolve to remain sober was given vital new strength when he stumbled on true love for the first time in his life. It was an eye-opening contrast to his drink-sodden past when he had been interested only in a quick bang-bang and away. He had never known how to show real affection because he had never been on the receiving end of any himself, and he tended to treat women with a coldness bordering on contempt. Melanie, the mother of the daughter for whom he had been paying maintenance for four years, invited him to see his little girl, Joanne, for the first time. He could not believe how beautiful she was, and so bright and intelligent that he

found it hard to come to terms with the fact that she was his daughter.

Seeing her brought him so much pleasure that he started to make regular visits, and, while out injured, he spent days on end with Joanne and her mother. He travelled around London with them like a wide-eyed tourist, taking them to all the places he had only heard about. The clown came out of him at London Zoo where he had Joanne shrieking with laughter as he performed like a gorilla in front of the gorilla cage. A sharp-eyed visitor spotted him and snapped a picture that appeared in one of tabloids under the heading FATHER BAKER STARS IN PLANET OF THE JAPES. The accompanying story told about how he had been reunited with his daughter, who was helping to keep him sober. For once, thought Baker, the paper had got it right. Melanie, who Baker had first met during a brief fling at a holiday camp, was a qualified nurse who changed the dressings on his stitched shins and generally made a fuss of him. Within three weeks of Melanie being back in his life he had fallen head over heels in love with her. She laid down only one rule on their relationship. ‘I never ever,’ she said, ‘want Joanne to see you drunk.’

That had more effect on Baker than a hundred AA meetings and sessions on a psychiatrist’s couch. He would have killed himself rather than let Joanne see him as he used to see his mother. From as early as he could remember, she used to lie on the floor of their flat in a drunken stupor while he would cry alongside her, begging her to give him a cuddle. No child should be subjected to that sort of painful experience. He vowed, ‘Joanne will never see me drunk.’ From the pain of his past, he had found a way to beat the bottle.

He was ashamed that he could not read Joanne’s bedtime books to her, and Melanie started to help him overcome his reading and writing disabilities that he now confessed had always given him a deep-seated complex. Melanie, he realised, was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Hearing Joanne referring to them as ‘my mummy and daddy’ gave him a sense of joy and belonging that he had never known before. He had got himself a family.

Melanie was coming to Wembley to watch him play for the first time, and he had promised to score a goal ‘for you and for Joanne’.

Masters could not believe the transformation. ‘If you can keep this up,

Dennis, I see no reason why you should not be considered for England again,’ he said. ‘It’s not your football on the pitch that the establishment are monitoring but your behaviour off it. I’m sure they’d be prepared to lift the ban on you if they thought you were a changed person. So just keep your nose clean and I honestly think you’ll be welcomed back into the England team with open arms. They’re desperate for a player of your quality.’

Baker wanted a recall by England more than anything in the world.

‘I could give my shirt to Joanne,’ he confided to Melanie when telling her what Masters had said about the possibility of getting back into the England team.

He knew he would have a much better chance of an international comeback if he was playing on a Premier League stage. It made him all the more determined to help United win the playoff final against Wanderers, who were installed as pre-match favourites because of their greater consistency during the season. At his insistence, Charlie Hastings carried on as captain because he wanted to give every ounce of his concentration to his own performance rather than have to concern himself with team matters. This was a match when he knew there was going to be a need for some selfishness if he was going to make the sort of impact that could turn the game.

Baker could not wait to get on with the action, and to settle a longrunning feud with his former Rovers club mate Bill ‘Animal’ Andrews.

As his nickname suggested, the Wanderers defender was notorious for the ruggedness of his play, and he moved from club to club like a hired gun.

Baker knew that he would have a contract on him, and in the build-up to the final he had been widely quoted as saying that he hoped Baker would play because he had an old score to settle.

They were sworn enemies from their days together at Rovers, an antagonism that had touched rock bottom following a punch-up during a training match. Andrews had kicked him up in the air after he had taken the mickey out of him once too often, and they had to be pulled apart by team-mates after swapping punches. Baker had been sold to Tornado soon after, and they parted the worst of enemies.

Wembley, Baker thought, was a fitting stage for their rematch, but he

vowed to keep his fists to himself. He was determined to get the better of Andrews with his feet.

He kissed the little palm-size teddy bear that Joanne had given him for good luck. She called the bear Daddy Dennis.

Masters had a Churchillian speech prepared to galvanise his players, but scrapped it when he saw how tense and eager they were in the dressingroom. The occasion and the setting were obviously going to automatically lift them, and he did not want to stoke up any more pressure. He had to battle to cloak his own emotions. Only he knew that this was likely to be not only his last match as manager of United, but also his farewell to football. This was a part that he would miss most of all, the special intimacy of a dressing-room before a game during which there was a camaraderie and spirit that was both moving and motivating. It was the off-the pitch politics and the win-win-win attitude, generating a fear factor, that had poisoned football for him. The game itself, in its most basic form, would always have a place in his heart.

His instructions were, as usual, simple and to the point. He had sat bored rigid in many dressing-rooms as a player listening to managers so in love with the sound of their own voice that they did not realise they had lost the attention of the team. He underlined the need for each player to focus on his individual job, and stressed that they should concentrate on doing the basics well.

The one area to which he gave full concentration was the new attacking formation. He had originally intended playing 4-4-2 if Baker had not been available, but changed his mind once he had passed the fitness test.

‘Dennis,’ he said, ‘I want you to play just off the front two in a 4-3-3 formation. You might fancy dropping very deep for the first fifteen minutes or so to kid them into thinking you are playing a midfield role. I’ll leave that to you to decide when you see how the game is shaping. You can bet your boots that they’ll put Andrews on man-to-man marking against you, and you might be able to draw him out of the middle and leave a gap that we can exploit.’

Masters knew better than to saddle Baker with too many instructions.

He had a natural footballing brain, and instinctively knew where to go on

a pitch to make the most telling contribution. He was clearly up for the game, even to the point where he had stopped clowning after having the dressing-room in an uproar on his arrival. He had walked from the team coach to the dressing-room wearing a gorilla mask and with the name Bill Andrews chalked on a board hanging around his neck.

The team talk by Masters was interrupted by the entrance of Harvey Slater, who had clearly been trying to lift the pressure on himself by hitting the bottle. The pre-match dressing-room was usually forbidden territory for outsiders, even the chairman. But he had decided that this did not apply to a final at Wembley, and came and stood alongside his manager.

‘I ’ave just called in to wish you all good luck,’ he said with a distinct slur that caused hidden amusement among the players. ‘There’s a crate of champagne waiting for each of you when you’ve done the business.’

Masters winced, not only because it could be construed as a bribe but because it was so insensitive at a time when Dennis Baker was putting himself through hell trying to beat his drink problem.

Slater stood in front of Baker. ‘I’m counting on you, son, to show just why we bought you from Tornado. It’s about time you earned all that dosh we’re paying you.’

‘Thank you for those kind words, Mr Chairman,’ Masters said, turning him towards the door. ‘Now I must ask you to leave while I finish my team talk.’

‘Throwing me out, eh?’ Slater said, only half joking.

There was an outbreak of laughter behind his back, and he turned round to find himself staring into the face of a gorilla. Baker had put the mask back on and was showing the chairman to the door.

‘I just ’ope we’re all fuckingwell laughing when the game’s over,’ he said.

Masters doubted that very much, regardless of the result.

The game was fifteen minutes old before Baker ventured past the halfway line. He deliberately concentrated on making quick, simple firsttime passes, and parked himself so deep that at times he was patrolling just in front of the United defensive back line. His positioning clearly confused Bill Andrews, who had got himself pumped up for a one-on-one

confrontation only to find that his rival was keeping out of his way. But he was a wise enough central defender not to be drawn out of position.

He had been around too long to fall for that old trick.

Wanderers played with five men strung across midfield, looking to stifle United and then to hit them with quick counter attacks. All the early chances fell to Wanderers, and only a spectacular diving save by goalkeeper Frank Williams stopped them taking a tenth minute lead.

‘What the fuck is Baker doing?’ Harvey Slater demanded aloud in the Royal Box. ‘We’re paying him to score goals not to play in the fucking defence.’

Alongside him, Helen was staring into the mid-distance silently speculating how Roy was going to play it after the match. She wondered if he knew that her husband was drunk even before the match kicked off, and was jumping around so nervously in his seat that she feared that at any moment he was going to explode into one of his uncontrollable fits of rage.

Masters was reluctantly sitting alongside Geoff Parkinson on the touchline bench. He much preferred the overall picture from up in the stand to the restricted view from pitch level, but at Wembley the stand was too far away. The match had started much as he expected, but he was quietly confident that the pressure would soon be on Wanderers when Baker stopped foxing in his own half and purposefully joined in the attack.

There was some ironic applause as he stepped into the Wanderers penalty area for the first time when Joe Roper forced a corner in the seventeenth minute. ‘The chicken’s arrived at last,’ Andrews shouted to his defensive team-mates, making a clucking noise. Baker responded by doing a gorilla impersonation behind his back, and as the crowd noisily contributed a mixture of cheers and jeers the corner-kick was floated to the far post.

Baker and Andrews went up for it together, and the Wanderers defender intentionally stuck out his right elbow. It landed with a sickening thump behind Baker’s right ear and he fell face first to the ground as Andrews headed the ball clear. The referee waved play on, while on the touchline Roy Masters was on his feet joining in the demands of the United supporters for what looked a clear-cut penalty.

Baker was dazed and unsteady on his feet when he got up, and Vic

Hardstaff kicked the ball into touch so that physio Dai Davies could come on and give him the old-fashioned but effective cold-sponge treatment.

‘There’s a lot more where that came from, mate,’ Andrews snarled, as he pretended to steady his groggy rival. ‘Just keep out of this penalty area or I’ll finish off what Terry Brennan started.’ To the spectators it looked as if he was comforting Baker as he wrapped his arms around him, and they applauded his sportsmanship.

Masters ordered his substitutes to start warming up just in case Baker could not continue. ‘How is he?’ he anxiously asked Davies as the physio came racing back after his reviving treatment.

‘He’s badly dazed, but he insists he wants to stay on.’

There was a ringing like Bow Bells in Baker’s ear, and he felt as if he was being bashed by an invisible gong. He did not tell Dai Davies, but he was seeing double. That, he knew, would have meant him being taken off. He decided to take the advice of Andrews and stay out of his way, until the time was right.

Just as he was starting to focus properly from his temporary midfield position, Wanderers took the lead. A speculative high ball into the middle from the right wing was misjudged by Frank Williams, who dropped it at the feet of their centre-forward. He gratefully accepted the gift and scooped the ball into the back of the net from ten yards. Thirty five minutes played.

United 0, Wanderers 1.

Slater was on his feet in the Royal Box yelling insults at goalkeeper Williams. ‘My fucking granny could have caught that,’ he shouted. ‘You need fucking shooting.’

Helen was aware of the VIP dignitaries on her left casting dark-frowned looks at her husband, and she wondered if he might become the first person ever sent out of the Royal Box. She tugged on his sleeve and put a finger to her lips.

‘Fuck off, you slag,’ he hissed. ‘You don’t realise what this game means.

They’re playing for my fucking life out there, that’s what.’

Masters was just wondering whether he would have to take the still dazed-looking Baker off at half-time when he started off on his first positive run of the match. He played a neat one-two with Joe Roper, and then took the return pass in his stride and ran teasingly towards the retreating Bill

Andrews. A double shuffle of his feet sent the giant defender off balance and in a blinking of an eye he was past him and with a clear sight of goal.

The goalkeeper came racing desperately off his line to cut down his angle, and Baker deftly chipped the ball over his head and into the far corner of the net from fifteen yards. It was a classic Baker goal, and the crowd went wild.

Slater was punching the air like a Roman emperor, while Masters and Parky danced an untidy foxtrot alongside the touchline bench. A picture goal at a football match can equal the effects of alcohol in making normally sane people act like fools.

Forty-two minutes played. United 1, Wanderers 1.

As the referee whistled for the end of the half, Andrews jogged past Baker on his way to the dressing-room. ‘I’ll have you in the second-half, you fucking pox-faced cunt,’ he said out of the side of his mouth.

Baker responded with gorilla grunts.

Masters concentrated his half-time talk on calling for tighter marking from his back four. He patted Baker on the back. ‘Another goal like that,’ he said, ‘and England will be wanting you on their summer tour. I suggest you continue to stay deep because it’s frustrating the hell out of Andrews.

He’s lost without somebody to mark. Just come forward when you know we’ve got a man over and they’re completely stretched.’

He tried to think of something profound to say for what would probably be his last instruction as a football manager, and certainly his last in charge of United. Masters smiled inwardly as he settled for, ‘Good luck, lads. Give it all you’ve got.’ He remembered that used to be the sum total of Harry Buckley’s team talk when he first made the breakthrough into League football.

There was a brief, unpleasant ruckus in the hospitality suite when a senior Football Association official boldly took his life in his hands and politely asked Slater to make less of a spectacle of himself in the Royal Box. ‘You can go and fuck yourself,’ was the charming response. ‘If it wasn’t for the money idiots like me pump into the game there wouldn’t be an effing FA. That’s why we always say that the FA stands for Fuck All. Now piss off and leave me alone.’

Sam Slater stepped in. ‘It’s all right, Dad,’ he said. ‘Take no notice.

They’re used to dealing with Royalty here. They don’t understand real football people.’

Arms around each other’s shoulders, they returned to the Royal Box for the start of the second-half. Helen followed on, shrinking with embarrassment.

It was the tenth minute of the second-half when Baker made his second telling contribution of the match. The ball at his feet, he set off on a diagonal run as if heading for the right corner flag and then suddenly checked and altered course for the penalty area. The quick route change sent two defenders floundering, and now it was Baker versus Andrews again in a straight man to man confrontation. It was almost possible to read the thoughts going through the head of the crouching Andrews: ‘Do I take a chance and commit myself to a tackle or shall I hold off and block his path with my body?’ While Andrews was thinking, Baker was acting.

He side-footed the ball through the legs of Andrews and was round him before the defender could react. As he dipped his shoulder and dummied to shoot, the goalkeeper dived for a ball that never arrived. Instead, Baker squared a pass into the path of Joe Roper, who had the simple task of tapping the ball into an empty net.

Fifty-five minutes played. United 2, Wanderers 1.

Only Baker and Andrews were completely certain of what happened next. While the stadium erupted with the United supporters and players joyously celebrating the goal, the old rivals came face to face. Baker was making gorilla grunting noises as Andrews turned the air blue around his ears. ‘You’re still a piss head just like your fucking mother,’ was the last thing Baker heard before a red mist claimed him. He instinctively lashed out with his fists, and a left-right combination landed bang on the point of the unprotected chin of Andrews who went crashing backwards like a knocked out boxer.

Baker did not see the referee’s red card raised. He was already walking off, while the stretcher was being summoned to carry Andrews off. It was all happening as if choreographed to fit the orchestrated accompaniment of a crescendo of boos, cheers and chants from the astounded Wembley crowd.

‘The boy’s a fucking maniac,’ roared Slater. ‘Why the fuck did he go and do a stupid thing like that just when ’e’s got them by the bollocks?’

Helen Slater, cringing alongside him, knew who the real maniac was.

Masters was on remote control as the born football organiser inside him took over and started pointing and gesticulating in an urgent rearrangement of the United formation to allow for being a player short. Deep down he was aching for Baker, because he knew that something horrendous must have been said to him to cause such a violent reaction.

Geoff Parkinson escorted the now weeping player on the long walk back to the dressing-room with a protective arm around his shoulder as the insults and derision rained down from the Wanderers supporters, who were desperately relieved to see the back of the player who had been their main tormentor.

‘Sorry I’ve let you down, Parky,’ he sobbed. ‘That arsehole insulted my mother. Nobody does that and gets away with it. Nobody.’

Back in the dressing-room he emotionally kissed Daddy Dennis the teddy bear. Now he knew he would never win that England shirt for Joanne, and that hurt much more than being ordered off at Wembley.

The ten men of United held out until five minutes from the final whistle when Wanderers equalised with a shot that was diverted into his own net by a distraught Vic Hardstaff.

Eighty-five minutes played. United 2, Wanderers 2.

Extra-time was a painful stalemate, with players from both sides going down with cramp and on the edge of exhaustion. Up in the Royal Box and down on the touchline Slater and Masters suffered a thousand agonies as the game dragged inconclusively to a draw and the dreaded sudden death of the penalty shoot-out. Masters always looked on this system as being like Russian Roulette, with the difference being that firing a blank could blow you away.

He considered it much more sensible to remove both goalkeepers and then play until the first goal had been scored. At least this put the destiny of both teams down to collective footballing skill rather than piling crippling pressure on individuals who would have to live with the consequences of any penalty miss for years to come. When Masters had first come into the

game deadlocked matches were decided on the toss of a coin. That was just stupid. The penalty shoot-out system was just cruel.

Wanderers took the first of the alternate penalties, and scored. Each of the first four nominated players on either side found the net. Then the fifth Wanderers player scored. Next, it was the turn of Joe Roper for United.

Slater was now watching the action through the slats of fingers clasped over his face. Masters stood impassively on the touchline like a man facing a firing squad and resigned to his fate.

Roper walked back five yards, loped forward and shot with all his might.

The ball skidded off the outside of his right boot and went so far wide that he knocked over a photographer seeking a wide angle picture of the shootout drama. The Wanderers supporters and players started the mother of all celebration parties, while United players and fans went into mourning.

In the Royal Box, Harvey Slater sat hunched and silent in his seat like a badly beaten fighter retiring on his stool. Helen Slater was twisting her handkerchief nervously in her hands wondering what the next hour held in store for her, her husband and her lover.

Roy Masters walked slowly back to the dressing-room with a knot in his stomach. What a way, he thought, to start a new life.

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 18. EXTRA-TIME

A LOSING dressing-room, particularly at Wembley, is among the saddest places on earth. It took an hour for Masters to get away from what had become a morgue of broken dreams. He tried and failed to lift the spirit of the players with empty words. Baker, in particular, was inconsolable.

There were tears on the face of the clown as he repeatedly apologised for losing his temper and letting down his team-mates. Football could be the cruellest of sports in its reflection of the ups and downs of life, and this was a part of the game that Masters would not miss. Defeat was often just too painful to take.

He had to force himself to go through the torture of a press conference, when he was obliged to bury his own frustrated feelings and come up with some sort of a defence for Baker. It was obvious that the vultures were gathering to pick him to pieces for his moment of madness. ‘All I can tell you is that something of a deeply personal nature was said to Dennis that caused his sudden loss of temper,’ he said lamely. ‘This is not an excuse but an explanation.’

‘So it was like the Zidane sending off in the World Cup final, caused by verbals?’ one football reporter suggested.

‘That’s exactly it,’ Masters nodded. ‘The tongue can often be mightier than the tackle.’

‘Do you agree that he should never be allowed to play for United again?’ asked one of the poison pen crowd.

Masters shook his head vigorously. ‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘You are all going to be amazed by a new, mature Dennis Baker when next season gets under way. In fact I want to go on record as saying that despite what happened out there today I have a new deep respect for him. He is making an enormous effort to pull his life and himself together, and I just hope that this fleeting loss of control will not be judged too harshly.’

‘What exactly did Andrews say?’

The United manager weighed up whether to tell them, but considered it too private a matter. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but it can never be something that is for public consumption. Just leave it at that. Andrews knows what he said to trigger the incident and it should be on his conscience. I cannot and will not condone violence by any player, but I have to say that on this occasion Dennis Baker has my sympathy and understanding.’

Masters looked out almost pleadingly at the army of reporters. ‘Please don’t tear him apart without taking into account that he must have had reason to act the way he did,” he said. ‘I want to see him encouraged to continue on his recovery route. Our league can only benefit from having a player of his unique talent gracing the game.’

‘Did you say gracing or disgracing?’ asked a rotweiler to sniggers of support from a handful of his colleagues.

That was as much as Masters wanted to hear. ‘Thank you gentlemen,’ he said, and walked out of his final after-match press conference. No more inquisitions.

He took a deep breath, and then went to the lift that carried him up two floors to the hospitality suite where dignitaries mixed with club representatives celebrating their success or drowning their sorrows.

Harvey Slater was in the process of drowning. Masters had not come to throw a lifebelt, but a punch.

‘What’s it like to be a fucking failure,’ Slater slurringly sneered as the United manager came into his alcohol-blurred view. Helen stood alongside him, her eyes brightening as the only man she wanted to see approached with a look of grim determination on his face.

Directors of the Wanderers club wondered if they were seeing an action

replay of the Dennis Baker punches as a left and a right from Masters smashed into Slater’s face and knocked him into an untidy heap on the floor.

‘That’s for all the beatings you’ve given your wife,’ Masters said aloud for everybody to hear. He reached out and took hold of Helen’s hand.

‘Just so that you know, Mister Chairman,’ he added, with a sarcastic emphasis on the Mr, ‘Helen and I are going off together because we appreciate each other’s company. I will treat her with the love and respect that she deserves.’

He pointed to Slater on his knees, and announced to the open-mouthed onlookers that included Sam Slater and his cronies, ‘He is the lowest of the low. A wife beater. You’re welcome to him. The man’s a little prick.’

His long-term plan had always been to humiliate and ridicule Slater for his treatment of Helen. It would hurt him more than the good hiding that he deserved.

As he turned to walk out of the suite clasping her hand, there was a sudden roar of rage from Slater. He pulled himself up and snatched a champagne glass, smashing it against the edge of the table so that he had just the jagged stem in his hand.

‘You fucking bitch,’ he shouted as he ran at Helen as if holding a knife.

Masters instinctively turned and pushed her across the room, and then – all in the same flashing movement recaptured from his playing days – kicked out with his right foot. He landed with full force in the groin of Slater, who collapsed like a winded and wounded bull.

‘Come on, darling,’ he said to Helen. ‘We’ve got a plane to catch.’

It is two seasons after next, and United have just clinched promotion to the Premier League.

THE GLORY AND THE GREED 19. THE FINAL SHOTS

UNITED chairman Jack Shenton stood, arms raised, in the centre of the pitch acknowledging the roars of the crowd jammed into the 55,000 allseater Dockways stadium celebrating the winning of the First Division championship. His shareholders and business partners would be delighted.

He took the microphone from the master of ceremonies. ‘There are several people I want to particularly thank,’ he said. ‘First, there is our manager Geoff Parkinson, who took over in difficult circumstances last year and moulded a team that has won the First Division title with real style and panache. Under his management, I am confident that we will not only establish ourselves in the Premier League but challenge for the championship.’

The United supporters roared their agreement, and chanted ‘Parky, Parky’ as the manager waved his appreciation of their support.

‘It goes without saying that we could not have achieved our success without our magnificent squad of players,’ Shenton continued. ‘I know they will not mind that I single out for special mention our skipper Dennis Baker ...’

The chairman was drowned out by cheers of recognition and endorsement from the fans, many of whom were wearing No 10 United shirts with the name Dennis Baker emblazoned on the back. ‘... who has had his re-establishment deservedly confirmed by his election as Footballer of the Year and his recall to the England squad for the forthcoming European championships.’

Baker waved his teddy bear mascot towards the chanting fans, and in particular in the direction of his daughter Joanne, who was balanced on the lap of his wife, Melanie, at the back of the directors box.

Shenton regained the attention of the crowd. ‘I would also like to take this opportunity to thank our former manager Roy Masters, who is here today with his wife, Helen, on a visit from their home in Spain. It was Roy who laid the foundations for the success we are enjoying today. I can reveal that Geoff and I tried hard to talk him into coming back into football as a director here at United, but he and Helen are happily settled to their new lives, and we wish them all the luck in the world.’

There was another huge roar as Masters stood in the directors box and gave a waved clenched-fist response.

‘Finally,’ said Shenton, ‘I wish to pay homage today to the man who did most to lift United out of the dark days of Third Division football when the club was on the brink of extinction. I refer, of course, to the late Harvey Slater, who poured his heart and soul into this club before his tragic death in a car accident last summer. Today I am happy to announce that, in future, this magnificent Dockways ground that he did so much to help build will be known as the Harvey Slater Stadium.’

The cheers of the crowd could be heard clear across what used to be Marstell Street.

Out in California, Professor Willem Kalff followed the United and Dennis Baker success stories on the Internet. He was delighted to read that Roy Masters had set up a successful sports leisure centre and restaurant business in Marbella, and hoped that the half a million US dollars that had been delivered to him anonymously was of some help. There had been a card presented with the cash that simply read, 'With grateful thanks from The Dutchman.'

The Professor was now thinking of taking time off from his lectures on European history to become involved in the world of American Football.

He was astounded at how much money exchanged hands in their tradeoffs.

The Dutchman stroked his beard, puffed on his sweet-smelling pipe and wondered how best to approach a college quarter-back that he had been watching with growing excitement. Amazingly, his name was Dennis Baker.

PREVIOUS BOOKS BY NORMAN GILLER Full details at www.normangillerbooks.co.uk Banks of England (with Gordon Banks) Footballing Fifties The Glory and the Grief (with George Graham) Banks v Pelé (with Terry Baker) Football And All That (an irreverent history of the game) The Seventies Revisited (with Kevin Keegan) The Lane of Dreams The Final Score (with Brian Moore) ABC of Soccer Sense (Tommy Docherty) Billy Wright, A Hero for All Seasons (official biography) The Rat Race (with Tommy Docherty) Denis Compton (The Untold Stories) McFootball, the Scottish Heroes of the English Game The Book of Rugby Lists (with Gareth Edwards) The Book of Tennis Lists (with John Newcombe) The Book of Golf Lists TV Quiz Trivia Sports Quiz Trivia Know What I Mean (with Frank Bruno) Eye of the Tiger (with Frank Bruno) From Zero to Hero (with Frank Bruno) The Judge Book of Sports Answers Watt’s My Name (with Jim Watt) My Most Memorable Fights (with Henry Cooper) How to Box (with Henry Cooper) Henry Cooper’s 100 Greatest Boxers Mike Tyson Biography Mike Tyson, the Release of Power (Reg Gutteridge) Crown of Thorns, the World Heavyweight Championship (with Neil Duncanson) Fighting for Peace (Barry McGuigan biography, with Peter Batt) World’s Greatest Cricket Matches

World’s Greatest Football Matches Golden Heroes (with Dennis Signy) The Judge (1,001 arguments settled) The Great Football IQ Quiz Book (The Judge of The Sun) The Marathon Kings The Golden Milers (with Sir Roger Bannister) Olympic Heroes (with Brendan Foster) Olympics Handbook 1980 Olympics Handbook 1984 Book of Cricket Lists (Tom Graveney) Top Ten Cricket Book (Tom Graveney) Cricket Heroes (Eric Morecambe) Big Fight Quiz Book TVIQ Puzzle Book Lucky the Fox (with Barbara Wright) Gloria Hunniford’s TV Challenge Comedy novels: Carry On Doctor Carry On England Carry On Up the Khyber Carry On Loving Carry On Abroad Carry On Henry A Stolen Life (novel) Mike Baldwin: Mr Heartbreak (novel) Hitler’s Final Victim (novel) Affairs (novel) The Bung (novel) Books in collaboration with RICKY TOMLINSON Football My Arse Celebrities My Arse Cheers My Arse Reading My Arse (The Search for the Rock Island Line) PLUS books in collaboration with JIMMY GREAVES: This One’s On Me The Final (novel) The Ball Game (novel) The Boss (novel) The Second Half (novel) Let’s Be Honest (with Reg Gutteridge) Greavsie’s Heroes and Entertainers World Cup History GOALS! Stop the Game, I Want to Get On The Book of Football Lists Taking Sides Funny Old Games (with The Saint) Sports Quiz Challenge Sports Quiz Challenge 2 It’s A Funny Old Life Saint & Greavsie’s World Cup Special The Sixties Revisited Don’t Shoot the Manager

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