by Lee Wood
The car in front stops suddenly and he bumps into the back of it. He gets out and sees there isn’t much damage, especially to his car. He walks forward to the driver’s door ready to have a go at the idiot who, in his opinion, is at fault for stopping so quickly. Upon reaching the other vehicle, he discovers a female driver.
“Bloody fucking typical. You stupid bitch. You shouldn’t be allowed on the road.”
Unfortunately, the woman decides to answer back. “Don’t speak to me like that,” she says as she makes the mistake of getting out of her car.
When she utters words about exchanging insurance details, Dave sees red and he hits her squarely in the face with a full punch. Then, as she lies on the ground, he kicks her in the face. The sight of blood pouring from her nose only seems to get him more worked up. One final kick to the head and he gets into his car, turns around, and drives off smiling to himself. She certainly won’t stop suddenly again.
Pumped up from the altercation he decides a visit to the gym followed by a relaxing massage will help him let off some steam and lower the blood pressure his doctor had told him was on the high side during his last medical examination.
The gym is part of a leisure complex based on a modern business park less than five minutes’ drive from the hotel. The location means there’s room for a wide range of facilities including tennis, badminton and squash courts plus indoor and outdoor swimming pools.
It is now one thirty pm and Dave is heading for the first floor café bar within the gym complex. He finds a table by the front window overlooking the other buildings across the business park. He watches as a vast range of cars and vans come and go from the wholesale cash and carry warehouse opposite. As he stares out of the window, his mind returns to that fateful day when he visited the convenience store and purchased the Lotto ticket.
He wasn’t even meant to be in the centre of town. He was only there because of his mother’s birthday and the present he had ordered for her online not arriving. If only he had been more careful and checked his ticket after bumping into the tramp.
His line of thought is suddenly broken by the waitress asking if he is ready to order his meal.
After finishing his meal and leaving the gym complex, he decides to make his weekly visit around the three businesses used as a front to launder the money he makes from his illegal activities.
Although one or two of his employees suspect the businesses are a smokescreen for other things, it’s not in their own interest to risk upsetting him and especially today when he seems to be in such a foul mood.
After seeing everything is running smoothly, he returns home and starts on an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels.
The rest of the day will be a blur.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
JAMES
Everything seems to be going really well. Stoneman’s, the solicitors, have confirmed that the Charity Commission have approved the first stage of our application to become a charitable Housing Trust. The name I have chosen is MJA Housing Foundation, the initials of my lovely wife and two kids.
My offer for The Albion has been accepted and is a couple of days away from completion. Once the contract is signed, I have a specialist hotel refurbishment company lined up to go in and establish what can be done to keep the character of the hotel whilst updating the décor and improving any outdated facilities. The budget for the work is estimated to be in the region of three million pounds.
Stevie is now working in the office and proving to be a human dynamo. What’s more, Susan has taken to him and the pair are working really well together. It truly pleases me to see them both getting on and being so committed to the project.
The charity has taken on another staff member. As well as Jill Dean, we have a new Public Relations Manager called Alison Crook who is already putting together plans to promote the charity in its best light. We’ve also engaged the services of a local graphic design company and they are close to finishing all the plans and illustrations of how the completed Asbury Park project will look. It’s very exciting.
From what Susan has been able to discover from her contacts inside the council, it seems the bidding for Asbury Park will be a two-horse race between our charity and a local consortium called DR Social Housing Ltd. Susan’s contacts on the Planning Committee have told us the other bid is in the region of thirty million pounds. Although this is far more than we originally thought, it will be worth it so we’re going to increase our bid to thirty-five million.
The council planning committee meeting to decide which bid will be accepted takes place in two weeks’ time. The press release we put together before Alison joined the team went down very well. We hoped it would attract the attention of the local newspaper and they would run a favourable article explaining that the local man who won £168 million on the Lotto is planning to invest thirty-five million of it in purchasing the Asbury Park site. The newspaper ran it two days after the deadline for bids on Asbury Park had closed. The article was almost word for word as we had written it and it has already enabled us to become friends with many influential people around Trentbridge.
Everything seems to have worked out far better than we expected.
On top of the thirty-five million pounds, the cost for the bridge and road infrastructure is estimated at forty million. Therefore the project is estimated at seventy-five million.
Alison Crook is making all the right noises about creating follow up publicity bursts to keep everything in the public eye. She told us she is creating plans to roll these out as soon as the council announces our bid as the winner.
Yes, it’s all looking good at the moment.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
DAVE
Alison Crook’s work colleagues at MJA Housing Foundation are unaware she is the niece of the Head of the Town Planning Committee, Mr Peter Hogan. Neither do they realise that she is planning to feed inside information to him about their plans.
She is working with Dave and her uncle to create a bad publicity campaign which will enable Peter Hogan to persuade his fellow Planning Committee members to vote in favour of DR Social Housing Ltd, even though their bid is much lower.
Dave Rex has already spent a lot of time planning what to do to retrieve the money he feels is owed to him from the Lotto ticket. He is contemplating ways to let people know his ticket has been stolen and also methods of getting his hands on the £168 million – or what is left of it.
He also wants to make sure that James Sheldon’s charity doesn’t win the bid for Asbury Park. His plans for the area will make him a lot of money, even after he manages to get back his Lotto winnings. It is a matter of principle, and he wants James Sheldon out of the way. He wants him dead, just like his wife and two kids.
So now Dave is ready for war. A war to recover the money he is owed, and to destroy James Sheldon in every way possible.
He’ll start with the negative publicity campaign.
After all, the council wouldn’t wish to be seen to be connected to someone who courts bad publicity. The council think their public image shows they have a high moral profile and that needs to be maintained at all costs. The truth is the members of the committee are not unduly concerned about Asbury Park.
Too bad if the council receive a lower amount for the site. It doesn’t affect them. They can simply put word out that they have sold the site to the best bidder within the long-term interest of the town. All they are interested in is keeping their seats in the council. After all, the power and advantages to each member are extremely beneficial. The official dinners, the trips to the town they are twinned with in France, the fact-finding trips with all expenses paid and various other benefits.
Yes, even if selecting the lower bid doesn’t go down well with the voters now, it will all be forgotten about in a few days. Just like the bus shelter which cost £30,000 to build, but not one single bus actually stops there. That was front-page news for a couple of days, but now it’s forgotten.
As long as the pub
licity doesn’t affect them, then it really doesn’t matter, and in the higher chambers of the council, it’s understood you stick together, even if you know maybe one or two of your colleagues have an agenda because they probably are aware of things you’ve done in the past. Everyone covers for everyone else.
Dave intends to make sure that the council doesn’t even consider Sheldon’s bid. Alison Crook has prepared all the ammunition for the bad publicity campaign and has passed it onto him via her uncle, Peter Hogan. With just a couple of weeks to go until the council make their decision for the purchase of Asbury Park, Dave decides to put the first stage of his plan into operation.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
THE PRESS RELEASE
Alison has carefully prepared the document to cause the maximum damage and dent the credibility of James Sheldon and the charity:
“Homeless Man Stole My Lotto Ticket & Idea”
A well-respected local businessman has come forward after discovering both his winning Lotto ticket and plans to help the local community have been stolen.
In his report to the police, local entrepreneur David Rex says he was about to go on a two-week business trip to Spain when he purchased his Lotto ticket, using the same set of numbers as he did on a regular basis, from Tindall’s in Market Street.
He goes on to say that as he left the store he recalls being tripped up and left dazed and confused and that subsequently he discovered both his Lotto ticket and a file containing detailed plans of his bid to the council for the redevelopment of the Asbury Park estate had disappeared.
As he was about to leave for the airport the same evening, he says he did not notice the theft until airborne and did not report it until after his return, when he read the story about the homeless man winning the Lotto and recognised him from the photos in the newspapers as the man who had assaulted him at the store.
To his astonishment, he has since discovered the same individual is behind the rival bid regarding the redevelopment of the Asbury Park estate.
Mr Rex says hard work has been the key to successfully building up his business empire up over the past twenty years. He currently employs over thirty people and his plans to form a charity and develop the social housing scheme for Asbury Park are his way of giving back to the local community.
He goes on to say that he believes the rival plans for Asbury Park are a smokescreen and the real idea is to transform the estate into a private development, creating a millionaires’ row of large houses which will not provide any benefit to the local community.
When asked to provide proof of his allegations, Mr Rex says his bid to the local council had already been made before he went on his business trip and therefore was in place a month ahead of the rival one. He also offers proof of playing the winning set of numbers on a regular basis.
The local Planning Committee Chairman, Peter Hogan, states that he can bear out the facts presented by David Rex.
He says, “The idea to refurbish and repair the 880 houses on the estate and offer them to local families at rents substantially below those being charged by private landlords is a magnificent gesture from a well-respected figure in our community and I would not like to see such plans upset by someone with ulterior motives. This plan will give struggling local families a chance to build a future and bring up their children in nice houses with their own gardens. The council totally supports Mr Rex’s project.”
Mr Rex also confirms he has taken advice and is currently in the process of issuing legal proceedings. With the overwhelming amount of evidence, including an independent witness to the theft of the ticket, he says he is in no doubt he can prove he is the legal owner of the winning ticket and believes the courts will agree.
His lawyer has commented that it is only a matter of time before the case goes to court at which time he fully expects his client to be able to claim the Lotto winnings.
Mr Rex is quoted as saying “Of course the money is nice, but what really hurts is the fact this project including the plans to build a doctors’ surgery and school could benefit many hundreds of people in our community. I would hate to see Asbury Park being turned into a gated community for a few wealthy individuals. My legal team and I are working around the clock to ensure this doesn’t happen.”
The article makes the front page of the local newspaper The Trentbridge Times three days after the article taken from James Sheldon’s original press release.
Two days after this damaging article appears in the local newspaper, Alison ensures it starts to reach the national press and Dave sets step two of his plan in motion. He has previously given his lawyers instructions to issue a High Court writ against James and once again, thanks to a damning press release written by Alison, copies reach the news offices of the local and national newspapers, all of whom have run the previous story.
The next step is for Peter Hogan to contact other Planning Committee members and begin stirring things up, telling them he has received phone calls and messages from many highly influential people who want nothing to do with James Sheldon’s charity bid and that they should seriously look at accepting the alternative, even if the offer is lower.
Things are beginning to go Dave’s way. With just a week to go until the council award the bid, the newspapers are questioning whether James Sheldon really won the Lotto or if he’d stolen the ticket.
Yes, things are looking up for Dave Rex. And what’s more his illegal activities are also going from strength to strength.
Chapter Forty
JAMES
Today is not a good day. In fact, it is probably the opposite of the day I found out I had won the Lotto.
Further correspondence has arrived from Dave Rex’s lawyers, which seems to indicate he will win the court case and I will have to return all the winnings. The thought of losing the money is not what’s worrying me. I’ve never been after riches – you don’t join the police to become rich. It’s the horror of realising that all the people who could be helped with the Asbury Park Housing Trust would lose the opportunity to have a decent home at a price which gives them a chance to make something of their lives.
I remember the encounter in the mini-supermarket with the person who is now claiming the ticket is his. Did it happen that way or is this man trying to trick me into thinking that’s the way it happened? After all, he’s the person who burned the twenty-pound note in front of me when I was homeless.
I still keep going over it in my mind. Did I really pick up the wrong ticket? Is it really his money? I’m honestly not sure.
All this worry is not what I had hoped to experience. My head is starting to spin and I can feel one of my migraine headaches coming on. I haven’t experienced a bad one for a long time but now they are back. I’m trying to figure out what the best course of action would be. Should I fight the case or should I save myself all the aggravation and expense. I’m really not sure what to do for the best.
One of the things I need to do is to explain the situation clearly to Susan and Stevie. They’re the people who matter to me; the people who have helped me put the entire plan for Asbury Park together. I couldn’t have done it without them and they deserve to know the facts.
Perhaps one option could be to work with Dave Rex, to try and form some sort of partnership and see the project come to fruition. Maybe if I give the money back, I can get a written agreement the project will be completed. Or perhaps he’ll settle for fifty per cent of the winnings.
Out of the £168 million, I’ve given two million to Martin Hammond for giving me the two-pound stake money. I am also about to spend twenty-one million on buying The Albion Hotel. All other expenses to-date have been covered by the amount of interest received from the commercial savings accounts the money is held in, so there’s still £145 million from the original winnings still left in the bank. If I offer him seventy million that will leave the seventy-five million I intended to invest in Asbury Park.
Hopefully Dave Rex isn’t too greedy. Maybe he’ll think taking sev
enty million now would be the best option instead of having to wait two years which the lawyers have envisaged.
Perhaps I should consider these options for a couple of days and then make Mr Rex an offer. Yes. Maybe he will accept seventy million and then things can progress as planned. Of course, this won’t leave anything for redeveloping the houses or refurbishing The Albion Hotel but at least the nightmare will be over. I need to speak with lawyers who specialise in this kind of thing and get them to send an offer to Dave Rex’s lawyers and test the water. Perhaps I could start by offering fifty million pounds and see what happens?
Perhaps it will work, or will Mr Rex want it all? If it really was his ticket then he is entitled to it.
I need time to think it over. My head is spinning. If it weren’t for the Asbury Park project I would hand over every penny, but this is so important to me. I remember the tiny first floor council flat I grew up in. No garden, damp patches on the walls, neighbours from hell and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I can’t let everyone down. All those 880 families deserve to have a better future.
Chapter Forty-One
DAVE
Life is still looking better for Dave.
As well as the publicity campaign against James Sheldon gaining momentum, business is booming – in fact he is meeting the two Russians tomorrow for the biggest deal he has done so far. His order for this fortnightly meeting is £40,000 worth of cocaine. The business with the girls is also on the increase and the profits are rolling in.