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