by Nick Stone
‘So I let them in. What choice do I have? Death and taxes, right? Always get you. They start removing everything – computers, hard drives, flashdrives, paperwork, you name it. I complain. I say, “This is interfering with my business. You can’t do this.” And the woman says, “Yes we can, ’cause it’s been authorised by a magistrate. Read the warrant.” So I check it again. There’s an official stamp on it.
‘They took everything. All my gear. The muscle loaded it up in a van outside. They were dead polite, the lot of ’em. Thanks for your cooperation, and all that. The woman gave me a card and told me to call the next day, to find out what the next stage’d be.’
Stratten rubbed his face and made his bristly chin crackle.
‘That fucked me up, let me tell you. Not only was I facing God knows what they were going to throw at me, but they’d just cost me about two hundred grand’s worth of business. One of the computers they took had all my active jobs on it,’ he said.
‘When did this happen?’ I asked.
‘St Paddy’s Day… um…’
‘March 17th?’
‘Yeah, that’s it. Anyway, I called the number on the card the next day,’ he said and smiled again. Shook his head. He’d gone a little red.
‘And…’
‘Have you ever called the tax office?’
‘No.’
‘Consider yourself lucky. I got put on hold for about forty minutes, waiting for an answer. All the while this pre-recorded message is telling me to go on the website! Sorry, I can’t do that. You took my fuckin’ computers!
‘Then someone finally came on and told me an adviser would be with me shortly. “Shortly” took for ever. At this point I’d been on the phone something like two hours.
‘When the adviser came on, I tell ’em why I’m calling. They didn’t say anything. They just transferred me to another department. Didn’t know what it was called.
‘No holding this time. Phone’s answered immediately. I give this woman on the other end my name, NI number and the case reference number from the warrant. “How can I help you?” she says.
‘I asked to speak to Heather Gifford. That was the name on the inspector’s card. “Sorry, no one here by the name.”
‘I told her why I was calling, what had happened. She told me it wasn’t them. First of all, they would’ve written to me before coming round. And they wouldn’t have taken my stuff.’
‘So you got robbed?’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I mean this lot were good. They didn’t even have to give me a fake phone number, ’cause they knew most people lose the will to live trying to get through to the right tax department on the phone.’
He chuckled.
‘They got everything on every case I’ve worked on in the last five years. And I didn’t suspect a sodding thing. Everything about them looked legit. Right down to that warrant.’
‘Weren’t you due to meet Ahmad Sihl on March 17th?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. But he wasn’t the only client I had meetings with that day. The others were much bigger fish with a lot more to lose, if you know what I mean.’
Now my head was churning.
‘Who do you think’s behind this?’
‘Got a list of suspects as long as my dick,’ he said.
‘You said earlier that Ahmad knows who the competition was? He got that from you?’
‘Course. I remembered the names. I had a lot more information that I’d recorded, but the fuckers got all of that.’
I still wanted to know about the Daily Chronicle, but now it wasn’t such a priority. The Quakers’ land deal was. It was too much of a coincidence that Stratten had been robbed the day VJ had been arrested.
‘So you’ve got an actual tax inspection now?’
Dodgy Dave smiled and shook his head again.
‘Here’s the kicker. The minute you ring up the tax office – for anything – you’re on their radar. And I definitely raised a flag, ringing up about a raid,’ he said. ‘A couple of weeks ago I got a letter from an inspector saying they were coming round to look at my books.’
God had a twisted sense of humour, I thought. But He was funny with it too. God had to be Irish.
‘I’ll tell you something for nothing, though, ’bout your bloke,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘He’s guilty.’
‘Why do you say that?’
The bell rang.
‘That’ll be the real taxman,’ Stratten said.
‘Tell me. Please.’
‘Ask Sihl. You’re both on the same side, right?’
37
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 o
f 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.’
&
nbsp; 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?’
38
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.
