At four o'clock, I left Beckenham.
I drove to a restaurant in Mayfair. Not Beckenham, not a hotel, not any location connected to Crystal Palace. A quiet Italian place on a side street behind Berkeley Square, the kind of restaurant where conversations were private because the tables were spaced far apart and the waiters had been trained to disappear.
Jessica had arranged the meeting. Sánchez's agent was already seated when I arrived. A man in his fifties, tanned, well-dressed, with a Patek Philippe on his wrist and a phone face down on the table.
He stood when I entered and shook my hand with the practiced warmth of a man who had been shaking the hands of football managers for thirty years and had learned that the handshake was the first negotiation.
"Danny. Thank you for coming."
"I want to be clear about why I'm here," I said, sitting down. "I'm not buying Alexis Sánchez. I'm not negotiating. I'm listening."
