The hotel lift gently levelled out and a muffled ding sounded. The doors slid back.
What Moses Swaibu saw next has stayed with him ever since.
"We were going to the room at the end of the corridor," he says.
"I just that colour red, it was a really royal type of colour.
"And the place smelled expensive, you took a breath in and it was like 'damn this environment ain't how outside is'. It felt like a film set."
Swaibu, having drunk a whisky cocktail for courage in the bar, was at The May Fair hotel in central London, walking towards the biggest decision of his life.
As he strode down the corridor, Swaibu didn't know exactly what was behind that final door.
But he knew enough. It would be a criminal, cash and a career that betrayed everything he had worked for.
Once he crossed that threshold, there would be no turning back.
But, by the time Swaibu reached the door, any doubts had long since gone.
"Going into that meeting, there was nothing that could have got in the way," he tells Confessions of a Match Fixer, an eight-part podcast on BBC Sounds.
"I knew there may be 60 grand there and I was willing to take it by any means necessary."
Swaibu knocked and entered.
Swaibu ed Crystal Palace's youth set-up as a 16-year-old, having not been previously connected to a professional club
Not all doors opened as easily for Swaibu.
Back in his youth, after his parents split up, Swaibu and his older brother were raised by their father in Croydon in south London.
It was a strict upbringing. Swaibu's father insisted on respect, manners and hard work.
"I never really had the best relationship with my dad," says Swaibu.
"My school would finish around three o'clock and he would tell me that if I wasn't back home by 4:30, the door would be locked.
"That door didn't open until 9am the next morning."
Often Swaibu would miss the curfew.
He spent evenings playing football, before riding London's night bus network, criss-crossing the city. He slept in stairwells. Or relied on neighbours to let him crash on their floor.
"One house I went into, I slept on a mattress and could see loads of needles on the floor," he says.
"You have to I was 12 or 13, you don't know what things like that are."
Swaibu did know football though.
Battling his brother in small-sided games gave him a mentality beyond his years. Quiet and shy off the pitch, he relished a tackle on it.
Aged 16, he was plucked out of a trial game, and did well enough during pre-season training with Crystal Palace to earn a youth contract.
He ed a talented crop of prospects.
A few years below, John Bostock had clubs all around Europe plotting to sign him. Victor Moses, who would go on to play for Chelsea and Liverpool, was also in the system.
A couple of weeks after his 18th birthday, Swaibu was alongside both in a marquee on the Selhurst Park pitch. It was Palace's annual awards evening and the whole club - first team, office staff, grounds staff and a select few die-hard fans - were there.
Swaibu was the only attendee to be called to the stage twice though, winning Young Player of the Year and Scholar of the Year.
Swaibu poses with Crystal Palace's Vice Presidents Young Player Of The Year award at the end of the 2006-07 season
"I the chairman at the time came up to my mum and said 'we've really got big plans for Moses'," says Swaibu.
He made his Selhurst Park debut for Palace's first team three months later, coming off the bench in a pre-season friendly against Premier League Everton.
Mikel Arteta and Andy Johnson were among the opposition. There were 20,000 fans in the stands. Swaibu replaced future Portugal international Jose Fonte for the final 10 minutes.
"I thinking 'this is the moment I have worked so hard for, so much has happened in my life, please God protect me in this game'," he says.
It never got better than that though.
Managers changed and Swaibu's stock dropped. New boss Neil Warnock thought Swaibu was lightweight and too easily dominated in the air.
After a loan spell at Weymouth, he was released by Palace in May 2008 - just a year on from his awards night success.
Swaibu was picked up by League Two Lincoln City and spent two years with the club, a spell during which he says he was approached by match-fixers, but didn't rig games
The May Fair hotel wasn't the first time Swaibu had been approached by match-fixers.
Eighteen months before, in January 2011, he had sat at the back of the Lincoln team coach with a duffel bag containing £60,000-worth of euro notes.
It had been offered to Swaibu and three of his team-mates by "a guy who looked like something stereotypical from a film, a scary Russian bad guy". It was theirs to keep if they could ensure Lincoln were 1-0 down against Northampton at half-time of their League Two match.
Unbeknown to the rest of the team, Swaibu and the other three brought the money into the changing room.
Ultimately, they didn't fix the match, in fact most of the potential conspirators were on the bench for the game anyway.
They returned the money and stayed quiet.
By August 2012 though, Swaibu, now 23, had slipped further down football's ladder. He was playing for Bromley in the National League South - the sixth tier of the English game. The profile was lower, but the pressure was personal. Swaibu's girlfriend was pregnant.
"In my mind, the most important thing in my life was making sure that I could pay for everything that I was under pressure to provide," he says.
"My daughter couldn't come into the world while I am on the back foot."
So when, during a post-training warm-down, a team-mate asked him if he wanted to come to a "meeting" the next day, Swaibu got on the front foot.
He agreed. He travelled into London. He strode down the hotel corridor. He crossed the threshold.
"I opened the door and this guy - the guvnor, the main guy - was like 5ft standing up," re Swaibu.
"He sat down on the bed, turned his back to us, lit up a cigarette and started doing something on his laptop.
"I thinking 'bro, you can't smoke in this hotel'.
"He didn't speak English so there was a translator - probably 20, slim, glasses. He offered us a drink and then he got straight to the point."
The point was simple. Bromley had to lose the first half of their forthcoming match against Eastbourne 2-0. Do that, and the syndicate's bets would have come in. And, in the second half, Swaibu and his four fellow fixers could play normally.
The bribe would be £100,000 to share.
"I knew my team-mates were hesitant, but, leading up into that game, I was like 'I am doing it'," says Swaibu.
And he did.
Swaibu wins a header during a 2013 spell with Sutton United
In front of 655 fans, Bromley conceded a penalty in the 40th minute of the first half - given away by a player who knew nothing of the fix - and, into stoppage time before the break, were penalised for a handball in the box.
Eastbourne converted both spot-kicks and Swaibu had cashed in.
"We went into the dressing room at half-time and the gaffer says, 'what the hell is going on">