Soccer Supremo - A Sports Progression Fantasy

Right, yeah. That’s why I was thinking about meals and dishes. Emma had booked a table in the fanciest restaurant in the area, which was great, but it would make things hairy when it came to me affording Deformation 2 before the Birmingham match. I’d done some calculations and I would be cutting it tight. I had to buy the perk, though; it could be the difference between Chester getting to the playoffs or not. The stakes were two million quid - fancy steaks could wait.

I brought the note to the fridge and placed it there. Friday was ages away. This morning I needed to meet the Brig, Briggy, and Dylan to discuss our next steps, and it had to be somewhere quiet, somewhere remote, somewhere the narcs wouldn’t have wire taps all over the place.

I texted the Brig.

Me: There’s an industrial park in Oakenholt that’s perfect for a clandestine meeting. Little cafe there does builder’s tea and sausage baps for truckers. Let’s meet there at oh-eight hundred hours. Bring a hi-vis jacket so we don’t stand out.

Brig: Sounds glorious. Let’s meet in the kitchen in ten minutes to discuss codenames.

Emma was having a lie-in, so I closed the door quietly behind me, and walked along our garden path. The spring warmth was very much waking things up. The tulips were popping and the willow was doing bits. Had it made its move too soon? To my left were a couple of pampas grasses we’d planted.

One absolutely loved his new life and had shot up to two metres tall and had metre-long fronds sticking out of the top. These fronds were fluffy and delightful and caught the sun and wind in fascinating ways, very much giving us what gardeners call ’year-round interest’. Emma and I called this delightful being Wibbers.

The other grass was half the size of its mate and had never shown any interest in putting on a display. It was a selfish, self-absorbed little prick. I called it Emiliano.

I went through the gate and crunched across the gravel outside Ruth’s house. I thought about going round the back to a fence that I could jump over, but decided to be normal. As I was walking to the front, Briggy turned up. I held the door open for her like the classic English gentleman I was.

The kitchen was warm and smelled of freshly-made coffee. The Brig looked like he had been doing push-ups since 5 o’clock. He made Briggy a coffee without her needing to ask. Ruth looked less daisy-fresh, but gave me a smile. ”John tells me you have used the word clandestine four times in six messages. Do you want me to leave?”

”Nah,” I said. ”It’s your house. We’re waiting for Dylan, anyway.”

The Brig poured tea from a pot into a Chester mug. ”Dylan will not be joining us, Max. You wouldn’t pick Dylan to play in a high defensive line against a team with fast forwards, nor would I pick Dylan to work on a case involving gambling.”

”What?” I said, worried. ”I know he likes a flutter, but...”

The Brig added milk to the tea, stirred it, and pushed the mug towards me. ”Is he a problem gambler? No. Is he susceptible? Yes. If this is to do with a gambling ring...” He shrugged.

”No Dylan. Fine.”

Briggy said, ”Do you think it’s about betting?”

I sipped the tea, which hit the spot big time. ”It’s the most likely, right? We want to think the sport’s totally clean but there was that case in Turkey a couple of years back where they suspended a ref for betting on matches. That got some headlines on its own but then they found that three-fifths of refs had betting apps on their phones and a quarter placed bets on a regular basis. Major, major scandal.

”If it’s not gambling, it’s something political. The Premier League doesn’t want Chester to go up. The EFL want to punish us for making them look like fools. I mean, the other angle would be someone from Ipswich paying the ref, but I’d be amazed if it’s that. It seems easy to find out. Hack his phone, check his bank for shady deposits. I’m gonna get Pradeep and Spectrum to look into this ref’s games to look for strange decisions like we got yesterday. We’ll attack it from the football angle, you from the real-life spy angle. How much will your side cost?”

Briggy said, ”Less than you’d think.”

I wanted a ballpark figure. ”Fifty grand?”

Briggy pulled a face. ”Not even.”