Ian nods. Worth a try though. Sometimes you have to know when to pay up.
Ian takes an envelope out of his pocket. ‘All right, Bogdan, fair’s fair. Here’s three grand. That do you?’
Bogdan looks weary. ‘Three grand, sure.’
Ian hands it over ‘It’s actually two thousand eight hundred, but that’s near enough between friends. Now, I wanted to ask you about something.’
‘Sure,’ says Bogdan, pocketing the money.
‘You seem a bright lad, Bogdan?’
Bogdan shrugs. ‘Well, I speak fluent Polish.’
‘Whenever I ask you to do something, it gets done, and it gets done pretty well, and pretty cheap,’ says Ian.
‘Thank you,’ says Bogdan.
‘So I’m just wondering. You ready for something bigger, you think?’
‘Sure,’ says Bogdan.
‘A lot bigger, though?’ says Ian.
‘Sure,’ says Bogdan. ‘Big is the same as small. There’s just more of it.’
‘Good lad,’ says Ian, and drains the last of his tea. ‘I’m on my way to fire Tony Curran. And I need someone to step up and take his place. You fancy that?’
Bogdan gives a low whistle.
‘Too much for you?’ asks Ian.
Bogdan shakes his head. ‘No, not too much for me, I can do the job. I just think that if you fire Tony, maybe he kills you.’
Ian nods. ‘I know. But you let me worry about that. And tomorrow the job’s all yours.’
‘If you’re alive, sure,’ says Bogdan.
Time to go. Ian shakes Bogdan’s hand and turns his mind to telling Tony Curran the bad news.
There’s a consultation meeting down at Coopers Chase, and he has to listen to what all the old people have to say. Nod politely, wear a tie, call them by their first names. People lap that sort of thing up. He’s invited Tony along, so he can fire him straight afterwards. Out in the open air, with witnesses nearby.
There is a ten per cent chance that Tony will kill him on the spot. But that means there is a ninety per cent chance that he won’t, and, given how much money it will make Ian, he is comfortable with those odds. Risk and reward.
As Ian gets outside, he hears beeping and sees a woman on a mobility scooter furiously pointing at his Range Rover with a cane.
I was there first, love, thinks Ian, as he steps into the car. What is wrong with some people?
As he drives, Ian listens to a motivational audiobook called Kill or Be Killed – Using the Lessons of the Battlefield in the Boardroom. Apparently it was written by someone in the Israeli Special Forces, and it had been recommended to him by one of the personal trainers at the Virgin Active in Tunbridge Wells. Ian isn’t certain if the personal trainer himself is Israeli, but he looks like he’s from there or thereabouts.
As the midday sun fails to force its way through the illegally tinted windows of the Range Rover, Ian starts to think about Tony Curran again. They’ve been very good for each other over the years, Ian and Tony. Ian would buy up tattered and tired old houses, big ones. Tony would gut them, divide them up, put in the ramps and the handrails, and on they’d go to the next one. The care-home business boomed, and Ian built his fortune. He kept a few, he sold a few, he bought a few more.
Ian takes a smoothie from the Range Rover’s ice box. The ice box had not come as standard. A mechanic in Faversham had fitted it for him, while he was gold-plating the glove box. It is Ian’s regular smoothie. A punnet of raspberries, a fistful of spinach, Icelandic yoghurt (Finnish, if they are out of Icelandic), spirulina, wheatgrass, acerola cherry powder, chlorella, kelp, acai extract, cocoa nibs, zinc, beetroot essence, chia seeds, mango zest and ginger. It is his own invention, and he calls it Keep It Simple.
He checks his watch. About ten minutes until he gets to Coopers Chase. Get the meeting done, then break the news to Tony. This morning he had googled ‘stab-proof vests’, but the same-day delivery option had been unavailable. Amazon Prime? They must think he’s a mug.
He’s sure it will be fine, though. And great news that Bogdan’s on board to take over. A seamless transition. And cheaper, of course, which is the whole point.
Ian had worked out very early on that he needed to take his business upmarket if he wanted to make real money. The worst thing was when clients died. There was admin, rooms left earning nothing as new clients were found and, worst of all, you’d have to deal with the families. Now, the richer a client was, by and large the longer they would live. Also, the richer they were, the less often their family would visit, as they tended to live in London, or New York, or Santiago. So Ian moved upmarket, transforming his company, Autumn Sunset Care Homes, into Home from Home Independent Living, concentrating on fewer, bigger, properties. Tony Curran hadn’t blinked an eye. What Tony didn’t know he would quickly learn, and no wet room, electronic key card or communal barbecue pit could faze him. It seemed a shame to let him go really, but there it was.
Ian passes the wooden bus stop on his right, and turns into the entrance to Coopers Chase. As so often, he follows a delivery van over the cattle grid, and is stuck behind it all the way up the long driveway. Taking in the view on the way, he shakes his head. So many llamas. You live and learn.
Ian parks up and makes sure his parking permit is correctly and prominently displayed, on the left-hand side of his windscreen, with permit number and expiration date clearly showing. Ian has been in all sorts of scrapes with all sorts of authorities over the years, and the only two that have ever truly rattled him are the Russian Import Tax Investigation Authority and the Coopers Chase Parking Committee. Worth it, though. Whatever money he had made before, Coopers Chase had been in another league entirely. Ian and Tony both knew it. A waterfall of money. Which, of course, was the source of today’s problem.
Coopers Chase. Twelve acres of beautiful countryside, with permission to build up to 400 retirement flats. Nothing there but an empty convent, and someone’s sheep up on the hill. An old friend of his had bought the land off a priest a few years before, then suddenly needed some quick cash to fight off extradition proceedings due to a misunderstanding. Ian did the sums and realized this was a leap worth taking. But Tony had done the sums too, and decided to make a leap of his own. Which is why Tony Curran now owned twenty-five per cent of everything that he built at Coopers Chase. Ian had felt compelled to agree to the terms because Tony had never been anything but loyal to him, and also because Tony had made it clear he would break both of Ian’s arms if he refused. Ian had seen Tony break people’s arms before, and so they were now partners.
Not for long, though. Surely Tony knew it couldn’t last? Anyone can build a luxury apartment really – strip to the waist, listen to Magic FM, dig out some foundations or shout at a bricklayer. Easy work. But not everyone has the vision to oversee someone building luxury apartments. With the new development about to start, what better time for Tony to learn his true value?
Ian Ventham feels emboldened. Kill or be killed.
Ian gets out of the car, and as he blinks into the sudden glare of the sun, he just catches the aftertaste of beetroot essence that was one of the key obstacles to him launching Keep It Simple as a commercial proposition. He could leave the beetroot essence out, but it was essential to pancreatic health.
Sunglasses on. And so to business. Ian is not planning on dying today.
6
Ron Ritchie is, as so often, having none of it. He is jabbing a practised finger at a copy of his lease. He knows it looks good, it always does, but Ron can feel his finger shaking, and the lease shaking. He waves the lease in the air to hide the shakes. His voice has lost none of its power, though.
‘Now here’s a quote. And it’s your words, Mr Ventham, not my words. “Coopers Chase Holding Investments reserves the right to develop further residential possibilities on the site, in consultation with current residents”.’
Ron’s big frame hints at the physical power he must once have had. The chassis is all still there, like a bull-nosed
truck rusting in a field. His face, wide and open, is ready at a second’s notice to be outraged or incredulous, or whatever else might be required. Whatever might help.
‘That’s what this is,’ says Ian Ventham, as if talking to a child. ‘This is the consultation meeting. You’re the residents. Consult all you like, for the next twenty minutes.’
Ventham sits at a trestle table at the front of the Residents’ Lounge. He is teak-tanned, relaxed and has his sunglasses pushed up over his 1980s catalogue-model hair. He is wearing an expensive polo shirt, and a watch so large it might as well be a clock. He looks like he smells great, but you wouldn’t really want to get close enough to find out for certain.
Ventham is flanked by a woman around fifteen years his junior and a tattooed man in a sleeveless vest, scrolling through his phone. The woman is the development architect; the tattooed man is Tony Curran. Ron has seen Curran around, has heard about him too. Ibrahim is writing down every word that’s said as Ron continues to jab in Ventham’s direction.
‘I’m not falling for that old bull, Ventham. This ain’t a consultation, it’s an ambush.’
Joyce decides to chip in. ‘You tell him, Ron.’
Ron fully intends to.
‘Thanks, Joyce. You’re calling it “The Woodlands”, even though you’re cutting down all the trees. That’s rich, old son. You’ve got your nice little computer pictures, all done up, sun shining, fluffy clouds, little ducks swimming on ponds. You can prove anything with computers, son; we wanted to see a proper scale model. With model trees and little people.’
This gets a ripple of applause. A lot of people had wanted to see a scale model, but according to Ian Ventham it wasn’t the done thing these days. Ron continues.
‘And you’ve chosen, deliberately chosen, a woman architect, so I won’t be allowed to shout.’
‘You are shouting though, Ron,’ says Elizabeth, who is two seats away, reading a newspaper.
‘Don’t you tell me when I’m shouting, Elizabeth,’ shouts Ron. ‘This geezer’ll know when I’m shouting. Look at him, dressed up like Tony Blair. Why don’t you bomb the Iraqis while you’re at it, Ventham?’
Good line, thinks Ron, as Ibrahim dutifully writes it down for the record.
Back in the days when he was in the papers, they called him ‘Red Ron’, though everyone was ‘Red’ something in those days. Ron’s picture was rarely in the papers without the caption ‘talks between the two sides collapsed late last night’. A veteran of picket lines and police cells, of blacklegs, blacklists and bust-ups, of slow-downs and sit-ins, of wildcats and walkouts, Ron had been there, warming his hands over a brazier, with the old gang at British Leyland. Ron had seen, first-hand, the demise of the dockers. Ron had picketed Wapping as he witnessed the victory of Rupert Murdoch and the collapse of the printers. Ron had led the Kent miners up the A1 and had been arrested at Orgreave as the final resistance of the coal industry was crushed. In fact, a man less indefatigable than Ron might have considered himself a jinx. But that’s the fate of the underdog, and Ron simply loved to be the underdog. If he ever found himself in a situation where he wasn’t the underdog, he would twist and turn and shake that situation until he had convinced everyone that he was. But Ron had always practised what he had preached. He had always quietly helped anyone who had needed a leg-up, needed a few extra quid at Christmas, needed a suit or a solicitor for court. Anyone who, for any reason, had needed a champion, had always been safe in Ron’s tattooed arms.
The tattoos are fading now, the hands are shaking, but the fire still burns.
‘You know where you can shove this lease, don’t you, Ventham?’
‘Feel free to enlighten me,’ says Ian Ventham.
Ron then starts to make a point about David Cameron and the EU referendum, but loses his thread. Ibrahim places a hand on his elbow. Ron nods the nod of a man whose work here is done and he sits, knees cracking like gunshots.
He’s happy. And he notices his shakes have stopped, just for the moment. Back in the fight. There was nothing like it.
7
As Father Matthew Mackie slips in at the back of the lounge, a large man in a West Ham shirt is shouting about Tony Blair. There is a big turnout, as he had hoped. That’s useful, plenty of objections to the Woodlands development. There had been no buffet service on the train from Bexhill, and so he is glad to see there are biscuits.
He grabs a handful when no one is looking, takes a blue plastic seat in the back row and settles himself in. The man in the tightly fitting football top is running out of steam now and, as he sits down, other hands go up. Hopefully this was a wasted trip, but it is far better to be safe than sorry. Father Mackie is aware that he is nervous. He adjusts his dog collar, runs a hand through his shock of snowy-white hair and dips into his pocket for a shortbread finger. If someone doesn’t ask about the cemetery, perhaps he should. Just be brave. Remember he has a job to do.
How peculiar to be in this room! He shivers. Probably just the cold.
8
The consultation over, Ron is sitting with Joyce beside the bowling green, cold beers glinting in the sunshine. He is currently being distracted by a retired, one-armed jeweller from Ruskin Court, called Dennis Edmonds.
Dennis, to whom Ron has never spoken before, wants to congratulate Ron on the very salient points he made during the consultation meeting. ‘Thought-provoking, Ron, thought-provoking. Plenty to chew on there.’
Ron thanks Dennis for his kind words, and waits for the move that he knows is coming. The move that always comes.
‘And this must be your son?’ says Dennis, turning towards Jason Ritchie, also cradling a beer. ‘The champ!’
Jason smiles and nods, as polite as always. Dennis extends his arm. ‘Dennis. I’m a friend of your dad’s.’
Jason shakes the man’s hand. ‘Jason. How do you do, Dennis.’
Dennis stares for a beat, waiting for Jason to start a conversation, then nods enthusiastically. ‘Well, a pleasure to meet you, I’m a huge fan, seen all your fights. We’ll see you soon again, I hope?’
Jason nods politely again and Dennis ambles off, forgetting even to pretend to say goodbye to Ron. Father and son, well used to these interruptions, resume their conversation with Joyce.
‘Yeah, it’s called Famous Family Trees,’ says Jason. ‘They’ve researched the family history and they want to take me round various places, tell me a bit about, you know, family history. Great-granny’s a prostitute and all that.’
‘I ain’t seen it,’ says Ron. ‘What is it, BBC?’
‘It’s ITV; it’s really very good, Ron,’ says Joyce. ‘I saw one recently, did you see it Jason, with the actor? He’s the doctor from Holby City, but I’ve also seen him in a Poirot.’
‘I didn’t see it, Joyce,’ says Jason.
‘It was very interesting. His grandfather, it turns out, had murdered his lover. A gay lover as well. His face was a picture. Oh, you should do it, Jason.’ Joyce claps. ‘Imagine if Ron had a gay granddad. I’d enjoy that.’
Jason nods. ‘They’d want to talk to you too, Dad. On camera. They asked if you’d be up for it, and I told them good luck shutting you up.’
Ron laughs. ‘But are you really doing that Celebrity Ice Dance thing as well?’
‘I thought it might be fun.’
‘Oh, I agree,’ says Joyce, finishing her beer and reaching for another.
‘You’re doing a lot at the moment, Son,’ says Ron. ‘Joyce says she saw you on MasterChef.’
Jason shrugs. ‘You’re right, Dad. I should go back to boxing.’
‘I can’t believe you’d never made a macaroon before, Jason,’ says Joyce.
Ron knocks back some of his beer, then motions over to his left with the bottle.
‘Over by the BMW, Jase – don’t look now – that’s Ventham, the one I was telling you about. I ran rings around him, didn’t I, Joyce?’
‘He didn’t know if he was coming or going, Ron,’ agrees Joyce.
Ja
son leans back and stretches, a casual look to his left as he does so. Joyce moves her chair to get a better view.
‘Yeah, nice and subtle, Joyce,’ says Ron. ‘That’s Curran with him, Jase, the builder. You ever come across him in town?’
‘Once or twice,’ says Jason.
Ron looks over again. The conversation between the men looks tense. Talking fast and low, hands aggressive and defensive, but contained.
‘They having a little barney, you think?’ he asks.
Jason sips his beer and scans across to the car park again, taking the men in.
‘They’re like a couple out on a date, pretending they’re not having an argument,’ says Joyce. ‘In a Pizza Express.’
‘You’ve nailed it there, Joyce,’ agrees Jason, turning back to his dad and finishing his beer.
‘Game of snooker this afternoon, Son?’ says Ron. ‘Or are you shooting off?’
‘Love to, Dad, but I’ve got a little errand.’
‘Anything I can help with?’
Jason shakes his head. ‘Boring one, won’t take long.’ He stands and stretches. ‘You haven’t had any journalists ringing you up today, have you?’
‘Should I have?’ asks Ron. ‘Something up?’
‘Nah, you know journalists. But no calls, no mail or anything?’
‘I had a catalogue for walk-in baths,’ says Ron. ‘You want to tell me why you’re asking?’
‘You know me, Dad, they’re always after something.’
‘How exciting!’ says Joyce.
‘See you both,’ says Jason. ‘Don’t get drunk and smash the place up.’
Jason leaves. Joyce turns her face up to the sun and closes her eyes. ‘Well, isn’t this lovely, Ron? I never knew I liked beer. Imagine if I’d died at seventy? I never would have known.’
‘Cheers to that, Joyce,’ says Ron, and polishes off his drink. ‘What do you reckon’s up with Jason?’
The Thursday Murder Club Page 3