VANE:
All right, Ben, enough of the drama. We all know we’re serious about this.
WESTCOTT:
Last autumn, you came to me with your selections. According to the rules of our organisation, we each had a hundred million to invest.
Holyshit. A hundred million pounds each? God. No wonder Davy wound up dead. If I was any of these guys, I’d probably have tried to bump off the other three too. It must have been one of them who did it. Or all of them. £25m each? Worth it.
WESTCOTT:
So now I can present the results of our investment.
I knew it wasn’t a proper charity. I knew five men this powerful and corrupt must be up to something deep and dark. All four of us lean in, ignoring everything around us. Upstairs, Jonny’s ludicrously expensive microphone picks up the tiny sound of Ben Westcott clearing his throat, about to give us the evidence we need.
27
‘One of us has won the prize pot, standing this year at a hundred and fifty thousand pounds,’ Westcott continues. ‘And I am pleased to announce that the winner of the Balham Brats Annual Fantasy Football Association Cup is … Mr Jay Hawthorne.’
A little chorus of sarcastic cheers erupts around the table: ‘Fix!’ ‘Yeah, who’d you get arrested, Jay?’
‘What?’ screeches someone at our table, and the nice blonde family in the neighbouring booth look across, concerned. I realise, too late, that it’s me doing the screeching.
Westcott’s voice continues. ‘Con is second, I’m third, Rob’s fourth. Dave yet again comes a dead last – sorry, poor choice of words there – due to his stupid superstition of fitting players to the same shirt numbers every single year. The mostvaluable individual player this season was Haaland, in whom three of us invested – Con and Jay, plus myself – and the highest goal-scorer was, of course …’
Downstairs, we tune out.
‘That can’t be right,’ Em says. She looks as shocked as I feel. ‘Davy’s notebook. It had all these sums in, all that money … Where is it?’
I dig it out and hand it over to Jonny, who frowns as he flicks to the back page, where the life-altering sums of cash are written out.
‘Ah. Right. So. These letters here, just next to the £6.8m, MØ – that’s Martin Ødegaard.’
‘Who the hell is that?’
‘He’s a Norwegian midfielder, I believe, last seen at Arsenal. And over here for a cool £13.1 million we have MS, or Mo Salah.’
Even I’ve heard of Mo Salah. Oh no, ohno. They were just playing Fantasy Football.
‘Sorry, what were they doing?’
