Authors: Nick Stone
Now I remembered.
Stratford was where VJ had planted the cornerstone of his property empire and raised the flag on his illustrious career.
I’d read about it in
Business Age
in 1999.
VJ had made the cover – standing on a stretch of bare ground, loose bricks and tufts of wild grass about his polished shoes, and the Canary Wharf tower, meagrely lit up in the background. It was still big on space and short on takers then, a white elephant disguised as a robot’s darning needle.
Inside was a profile of a dozen of the UK’s future captains of industry – whizz-kids judged ‘most likely to succeed’ in the new millennium. They had one thing in common, apart from being youngish, hungry go-getters. They’d all set up their headquarters in or around Docklands – then still very much a wasteland of rubble and rusty cranes and derricks, after the much-vaunted regeneration programme had stalled when the bottom fell out of the property market in the last recession.
In the article, VJ had talked about his new investments. He’d bought up most of the land he was photographed standing on; an area off Pudding Mill Lane, known as the Kite. So named because that’s exactly what it looked like in aerial photos – a quadrilateral divided into four individual plots by two roads.
The remaining segment belonged to the Stratford Society of Friends, a Quaker group that ran a hostel and soup kitchen for the needy in what had once been a warehouse.
The side of the building featured prominently in the photograph of VJ inside the magazine. Its wall was covered in a faded and flaking mural of the Quaker Oats cereal packet logo – the plump, rosy-cheeked face of a middle-aged man in a black hat, with thick white hair covering his ears and a smug smile playing on his lips.
The reason the article came back to me so clearly now was because it was there that I’d found out that VJ and Melissa were married. In his interview, he’d said he was buying the land in Stratford in lieu of setting up a trustfund for his future children – such was his faith in the area’s potential.
Boy, had
that
hurt.
I stepped out of Stratford station and walked into one great big busy building site.
The Olympics were coming to town next year and much of it was taking place right here, in the heart of the East End. Construction was in overdrive. The 80,000-seater stadium, 10-million-litre Aquatic Centre, and a 370 ft commemorative steel sculpture that looked like a barbed wire helter-skelter were all going up simultaneously to the left. Further away, to the right, the 2800 apartments comprising the Olympic Village were being built from scratch; while almost on top of the station loomed the soon-to-be-opened Westfield shopping centre – a hybrid of beached cruise liner, car park and aircraft hangar. Even the station itself was being altered and expanded around the commuters, with new extensions, entrances and walkways being bolted on and blasted in.
I headed for the Kite.
The sun was out and a warm breeze was blowing gently through the neighbourhood. It reeked of wet cement and raw metal, and tasted of fine dirt and chemicals.
VJ’s property was fenced off with high steel netting, topped with razor wire and plastered with security company placards illustrated with the heads of German shepherds. That hadn’t deterred people from using it as a dumping ground for everything they could heave over. The lower part of the fence sagged under the accumulated weight of broken furniture and household appliances, much of it pre-plasma coffin TVs and pre-flatscreen computer monitors not even charity shops wanted.
The Stratford Friends House stood at the far end, a huge square brown-brick building with big windows and outside metal stairs and gangways. It looked deserted going on uninhabitable, the sort of place where you’d expect to find the detritus of a staved-in roof when you opened the door.
A white food van was parked near the front of the building, the side flap open. People were queued up outside, in a short line. All tramps, in heavy overcoats, despite the heat. The main door was open, and they were taking whatever was being doled out at the van and walking into the building by way of a concrete ramp.
The Friends House was in far worse shape, the closer I got. The walls were fissured and most of the windows boarded up.
I queued at the van. A couple of the tramps turned to look at me weirdly. I didn’t blame them. I was the outsider here, in my suit and tie.
A stout middle-aged woman with sweat running down her brow was serving. I smelled curry coming from the big steel pot on the stove.
‘Bread?’ she asked, pushing a polystyrene cup my way. Thick bright yellow soup with something paler floating in the middle, that was either a piece of boiled potato or a clump of rice.
‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘Is the manager around?’
‘Go inside and ask for Fiona.’
Despite being a wide-open space with a high ceiling, the warehouse smelled close and musty, and much of it was steeped in semi-darkness. The front and back doors were open, as were most of the windows, but the light only came through in solid concentrated slants and didn’t dissipate.
The warehouse was empty, save three long dinner tables set up in the middle, slabs of wood balanced on packing crates, and the benches flanking them were variations of the same. A few tramps were sitting and eating, miles apart from one another.
They were outnumbered by men and women of various ages – the Quakers, I assumed – most in jeans and T-shirts, some in shorts. They were eating and talking quietly among themselves. A few heads turned as I passed and all nodded or smiled at me.
I asked one of them for Fiona. He pointed to the back of the hall, where someone was sitting alone.
When I reached her, I saw she was working through a stack of paper, tapping away on a calculator and jotting numbers down on a pad.
I introduced myself and said I wanted to talk about Vernon James.
She asked me to take a seat, she’d be with me in a moment.
I watched her work, head down.
She was a small woman with a pair of large square specs whose frames reminded me of old portable TVs. Her hair was straight and black and tied up in a bun. She was wearing a man’s shirt with a frayed button-down collar, open over a plain white T-shirt. Her fingers were rough and calloused and her hands were veiny.
Beyond the door the artillery of construction work was drowning out the sound of passing trains.
After a few minutes, Fiona stopped what she was doing.
‘You’re defending him, you say?’
‘I’m part of the team, yeah.’
She appraised me, quickly. Clothes, bearing, demeanour. She had my position in the pecking order all figured out by the time her eyes found mine again.
‘How is he?’
‘It’s not easy for him,’ I said.
‘I can only imagine,’ she said. Her voice was quiet and calm. ‘We were all very surprised when we heard the news. Shocked, really.’
‘You know Vernon?’
‘We’ve met a few times over the years. He’s been a good friend to us, to our community.’
I noticed the grey glinting in her hair, the lines around her mouth, the paleness of her skin, her general thinness.
‘How so?’
‘Support, donations, advice. He always had time for us.’
‘So, not just at Christmas, then?’ I quipped.
‘Quakers don’t celebrate Christmas, Terry,’ she smiled. ‘Every day’s special to us.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, feeling a blush shooting up my neck.
‘It’s OK. The only thing people seem to know about us these days is oats.’
I laughed and she joined in.
‘Vernon wasn’t –
isn’t
– your typical businessman, only interested in his profits,’ she continued. ‘When he bought the land around here, he came to see us before he called in the diggers, to let us know what was happening. That was required, but he did something else too. He rented a space for us, not too far from here, so we could carry on our work. Not many people would have done that, let alone taken us into consideration. He truly valued –
values
– what we do here.’
Not as much as he values your land, I thought.
VJ had seen these people for what they were – decent, selfless sorts – and played them accordingly; seduced them with kindness and charity, softened them up. Mr ‘Compassionate Capitalism’?
My arse
.
‘That was good of him,’ I said.
‘Yes it was,’ she said. ‘How can I help you exactly?’
‘We’re looking into Vernon’s affairs, before his arrest. Ongoing deals he had. That sort of thing. Just routine, really. Checking things off.’
‘OK?’ She frowned.
‘I understand he was in the middle of negotiations with you, to buy this place?’
‘No, he wasn’t.’
‘I thought he was.’
‘He did discuss it with us, once, last year, when we told him we were thinking of selling up. But it never went beyond that.’
‘So he never made an offer?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Ah…’
Had Dodgy Dave bullshitted me?
‘We were surprised he didn’t bid,’ she said. ‘He owns the rest of this land. And he would’ve been our ideal buyer.’
Now it was my turn to frown.
‘The sale wasn’t just about money,’ she said. ‘We needed to find the right person. We’ve had a presence in Stratford for over two centuries. We didn’t want someone just coming in and building luxury flats here. We wanted someone who’d give something back to the community. Continue – if not our actual work – then something of our tradition. Even if it was just affordable housing.’
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘Have you found this person?’
‘Yes, I think we have.’
‘Who?’
‘The deal hasn’t been finalised yet, so I can’t go into that. Sorry,’ she said, politely but firmly.
It didn’t matter anyway, because I’d come here for nothing.
I thanked her for her time and picked up my bag, mulling whether to go back home or to the office. Neither appealed. The flat would be empty and the alternative was Adolf and mundane phoning around.
Suddenly I thought of Melissa, of calling her, seeing her again, just dropping by. I crushed it quick.
Fiona walked me out, talking as she did about how full the Friends House used to be, the beds they’d once had for runaway kids and women who’d fled abusive relationships. Stratford had changed a few years ago, gone more upwardly mobile as Docklands had sprouted into the high-rise global financial centre it was now, and its workforce had bought up the area. New money had washed away the old casualties, further out towards the Essex borders. She sounded almost rueful as she spoke, seeming to miss the old days, but then she perked up as she told me they’d be relocating to Walthamstow once the deal was done.
I wished her luck. I meant it. I liked what she did here. Genuinely good people were hard to come by anywhere, but in twenty-first-century London, they were an endangered species.
‘Can you please pass on a message to Vernon from… us?’ she said, as we reached the door.
‘Of course.’
‘Please tell him he’s in our prayers.’
No, I wasn’t going to tell him that, because he didn’t deserve her, these people or their prayers.
‘I’ll do that,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it’ll mean a lot to him.’
Heading back to Stratford station, I turned my phone back on.
Moments later it started ringing, the tone playing the theme from the
X-Files
.
That meant number withheld/unknown caller.
‘Hello?’
‘Is that Terry?’
‘Yes?’
‘This is Ahmad Sihl. Are you free to meet up?’
The person Janet had dubbed ‘
the
top corporate lawyer in the country’ wasn’t much to look at. But then very few people’s professional reputations complement their physical appearance. Same goes with mass murderers. You go in expecting gods or monsters, and you come face to face with the likes of Ahmad Sihl.
He
was
sort of god-like in looks, I suppose. Think a Buddha in a pinstripe suit and you’ll pretty much get the idea. His body was piled up, puffed out and compressed together, compensating in girth what it lacked in height and stature.
He thanked me for coming at short notice, asked if I wanted anything to drink, praised the glorious day, and then motioned me to sit in the chair opposite him.
There were no hide-bound legal megatomes in Sihl’s seat of power. In fact there were no books here at all – legal or otherwise. His office was a trading-room on the upper floors of the NatWest Tower, in the heart of the City. The plasma TVs on each available wall were set to Bloomberg, CNN and BBC 24 News, the volume muted. On his desk a four-panel computer screen showed technical analysis graphics and share prices. He was either monitoring his investments or projecting an image, telling his clients he was exactly like them.
He switched to smalltalk, all of it about me. How long had I been at KRP? What had I done before? I stuck to my most recent CV for answers.
That pretty much ended the prelims. All the while I’d sensed he was coming in low and easy, feinting while he checked me out. His eyes were the tell. Nothing soft and flabby about those. They were a brown so dark I couldn’t differentiate iris from pupil, and they didn’t look at you, so much as hover, moving in dips and zigzags, searching for somewhere to settle.
‘What did you want with Dave Stratten?’ He had a Scottish accent, shorn of its thickness and much of its burr, yet still berthed in the Glens.
‘Didn’t he tell you?’
‘He said you asked about the Quaker building.’
‘That wasn’t what I was seeing him about,’ I said.
He waited for me to continue, but I didn’t know how to proceed. I’d answered without thinking. I should’ve lied.
If I told him the truth, it would look beyond bad. Here I was, wasting critical time playing petty office politics, while his good friend and top client was in prison. No way.
‘This a bit embarrassing…’ I began.
Now his eyes stopped moving and fixed on mine. I was staring into twin sinkholes to oblivion. The rest of him was utterly still too, not a twitch.
‘I was helping out a colleague,’ I said. ‘We’re a pretty solid team, the clerks. We always look out for one another. If someone’s overworked or on a tight deadline, we pitch in. A colleague of mine is working on a case, and David Stratten’s name cropped up. She needed to know more about him. I was curious myself, and I offered to check him out for her.’
I’d left myself open to questions, but I was on fairly safe ground. It was the truth, give or take quite a bit.
Sihl glanced over at the grey phone on his desk. He reached for it, then hesitated and withdrew his hand.
‘Do you know what KRP stands for?’ he asked.
‘Kopf-Randall-Purdom?’
He shook his head.
‘Kill-Rape-Plunder. As in: Kill your parents-Rape your friends-Plunder their pockets. That’s your firm in a nutshell. That’s its ethos,’ he said. ‘So you
weren’t
“helping out a colleague”, Terry. That’s bullshit. Because, if it even
occurred
to you to help out a colleague at KRP, you wouldn’t be working there. You’d be somewhere else entirely. The Samaritans, Amnesty International, Save the fucking Whale and Bring Back the Honey Bees while you’re at it. That kind of place.
‘So, let me ask again: what did you want with David Stratten?’
It was too late to come clean, and anyway, I’d look pathetic doing it.
‘A colleague is working on a case indirectly related to something Stratten did for the
Daily Chronicle
.’
‘This to do with Pepe Regan, the footballer?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So?’
‘We’re in the process of putting together Vernon’s defence,’ I said. ‘If things go our way in court, this trial could come down to brass tacks. Vernon’s character will come into play. The prosecutor has a reputation for curveballing. He’ll look at everything and everyone from Vernon’s past – especially dodgy associates with any connection to sex and sleaze. Stratten was a tabloid investigator.’
I paused to check how I was doing. I hadn’t lost him so far. Even though I was winging it, making it up as I went along. Even my vocabulary.
Curveballing?
‘In order to avoid surprises, I decided to check Stratten out, to assess his character. You have to anticipate everything, no matter how small,’ I said.
Sihl rolled his chair back a little, folded his hands on his stomach.
‘There’s nothing linking him to Vernon,’ he said. ‘I employed Dave. And it’s all legit.’
‘I didn’t know that until this morning,’ I said.
He considered that a second.
‘Either way it’s beyond irrelevant. Christine Devereaux would squash that one dead.’
Sihl rolled himself towards the desk.
‘Stratten could’ve been the loose end that tripped us up. He turned out not to be, but better safe than sorry, right?’ I said.
That worked. Back he rolled again.
‘What did you make of Dave?’
‘Tosser,’ I said.
Sihl laughed. ‘That he is.’
I waited for the jolly cloud to pass. I glanced past him and took a hit of the view. It was a lovely afternoon outside. Blue skies, bright sun. This was my favourite time of all in London, not too hot, but far from cold, the sun out and people comparatively pleasant and laid-back.
‘Why did you bullshit me, Terry?’
Now I could tell the truth.
‘I was afraid this would look trivial to you – a waste of precious time, and our client’s money.’
‘It is,’ he said.
‘No, it wasn’t.’
I needed to salvage a little of my reputation. I couldn’t leave him thinking I was the weak link in the defence team, the inexperienced clerk who’d spent three billable hours on a wild goose chase for next to no reason.
‘Didn’t you find it odd that Stratten got robbed the day he was coming to see you?’ I asked.
‘That didn’t even surprise me,’ he said. ‘Dave’s burned more bridges than he’s crossed. He’s got so many enemies they’ve probably got a union. He’s lucky it was just his equipment they took this time.’
‘
This
time?’
‘He’s been beaten up, had guns pulled on him, axes aimed at his head. He’s been hit by cars, even hung off a bridge. I’m sure he deserved all of it. Like you said, he’s a tosser.’
‘Why d’you employ him?’
‘He gets the job done. And he’s loyal to a fault – as long as you’re paying.’
I thought of Swayne for a moment. I was seeing him tomorrow. Hotel staff interviews.
‘Stratten had information for you, about the Quaker deal,’ I said.
‘That’s right. But that was also the first thing Vernon crossed off the likely suspects list.’
‘Why?’
‘It wasn’t a high-value deal,’ he said.
‘It’s right next to the Olympic Village.’
‘And Vernon owns all the surrounding land,’ Sihl smiled. ‘That doesn’t mean he wasn’t interested in buying the Quaker plot. Of course he was. Always has been. He’s spent the last couple of years getting close and cosy with the Quakers. He’s been very generous to the hostel they run there.’
‘Buttering them up?’ I suggested.
‘Of course. Why else?’ Sihl said. ‘He knew that sooner or later they’d have to sell up. The building’s close to being condemned. Unfortunately, the Quakers aren’t just about money. They wanted the buyer to honour their legacy in the area, in some way.’
‘Someone of proven ethical character?’ I suggested.
Sihl grinned. ‘You’re a sharp one, Terry.’
What had I just said to deserve that?
I let him think I was as perceptive as he thought I was.
‘Vernon should’ve been a shoe-in for the Friends House,’ Sihl said. ‘Except they had an offer on the table from a man called Hal Peterson. A Canadian property developer. He’s what’s called a “flipper”. He’ll buy up a property, improve it in some way, and then sell it on for a profit.’
‘Exactly the kind of buyer the Quakers don’t want,’ I said.
‘Technically, yes. Except Dave found out that Peterson is a Quaker. He went to a Quaker school here in England. He was classmates with one of the board. His offer was £3.5 million, and he guaranteed he’d build a dozen affordable homes. If you ask me, the offer was way too high.’
‘What was Vernon going to offer?’
‘He wasn’t going to pay above 1.75. But he
was
going to meet the board in person and guarantee to build a new Friends House. Much smaller than the existing one, but they were going to have it completely free, right down to the bills.’
‘Very generous of him,’ I said.
‘Very smart too,’ Sihl said. ‘The Quakers aren’t naive. They know they’re dealing with sharks. But the hostel’d work out cheaper than a bunch of affordable homes.’
‘In other words, there’s more likelihood of it actually being built.’
‘Exactly… Well,
assuming
it was ever going to be built…’
‘Vernon was really going to sell the land on?’
‘Of course,’ Sihl said. ‘His share of the Kite is currently worth twenty times what he paid for it.’
‘He was going to sit on it until the price was right?’
‘Yes.’
I wondered what Fiona Grant would think if she could hear this.
Bastards together, I thought. VJ the manipulator, Sihl the facilitator. What a pair. They truly deserved each other.
I kept my thoughts from showing, and just smiled and nodded.
I thought back to what Stratten had said to me before I’d left his house – that VJ was guilty, and Sihl knew it. I could’ve raised that now, but it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do. It would have prompted Sihl to ask if I agreed. He’d have been watching my every facial twitch for a tell as I answered – and he’d have read my mind; he’d have known.
Sihl looked at his watch.
‘I’ve got a meeting now. But thanks again for coming in.’
‘Pleasure,’ I said.
Well, the view had been.
He stood up to signal we were through. He walked me to the office door, making more smalltalk as we went. Where did I live? Did I go for river walks along Battersea Embankment? He had when he’d lived there, many years ago.
Then, as I was about to step out he clapped a fleshy hand on my shoulder.
‘One more thing…’
I turned round.
‘What was Vernon like, back then?’
‘When?’
‘In Stevenage.’
I’d been expecting a variation of this from the moment I walked into his office. I knew VJ had told him about me. Sihl hadn’t called me here because of Stratten. He wanted to check me out, to see if I wasn’t a serious liability.
‘He was my best friend,’ I replied.