Backstory Page 17

  For as long as I can remember, there’d been plans to tidy up these tired acres. The land itself, thanks to its waterside position, was extremely valuable and as the Ministry of Defence began to loosen its grip on other sites around the city, developers began to inquire what might happen to Harry’s gateway site. The new Gunwharf development was pulling in crowds of gawkers from all over Southern England. The harbourside apartments had been snapped up at eye-watering prices. Surely there was money to be made at Tipner?

  This possibility fascinated me because it coincided with a very public collapse in people’s trust in what Blair and his courtiers once called “the New Labour project”. Tides of scandal were lapping at the government’s door. Ministers were sitting in the laps of big business. There was, said Peter Mandelson, absolutely nothing wrong in making yourself filthy rich. This was provocative stuff and when Lord Levy, the Prime Minister’s tennis partner, was arrested for his alleged part in the honours-for-loans scandal, the dam burst.

  Here was a guy who’d raised £41 million for a political party that was effectively bankrupt. Most of those loans appeared to be soft, thus breaking the government’s own law, introduced only six years ago. Worse still, the government seemed to have abandoned a growing army of men and women nearing retirement who’d been robbed of their pensions after the collapse of company after company. Elected as agents of change, pledged to re-establish fairness and opportunity after the me-first chaos of the Major administration, New Labour had turned its back on the people who had put it into office. Since 1997, membership of the party had nearly halved.

  As chillier winds began to cool the economy ahead of the Lehman’s collapse, I pondered what kind of book might find space for this growing sense of disgust at what our political masters were up to, and the more I thought about it, the more certain I became that the tastiest fictional opportunity lay in Harry’s scrap yard site. This, after all, was most people’s first glimpse of Pompey. What was the council planning to do about it?

  I made some phone calls. I had a number of contacts inside the Civic Centre because I’d worked on projects for the Strategy Unit over the years, and within days I was the road back to Pompey.

  Mike Mortimer was the guy heading the Tipner Regeneration project. His office walls were jig sawed with site plans and those wonderful architect’s drawings peopled with figures who’ve never seen the inside of a Custody Centre or one of the rougher inner city pubs. We talked about the history of the place. Way back in the seventeenth century it had been a musket range. Since, then successive wars had dumped countless layers of toxic gunk including gunpowder, saltpetre, diesel fuel, glue residues, asbestos, tars, and sundry other chemicals. It was going to cost £53 million for the clean up alone and for that kind of money the only kind of development that would make any kind of profit would have to be residential.

  This was where the conversation quickened. Mike talked me through the figures. On top of the clean-up bill, the developer would be looking at construction costs of between £200 million and £220 million, including infrastructure costs plus offset Section 106 planning gains (don’t ask). On a rising market, given the trophy waterside views, that would still leave a profit of around £40 million.

  This, to little me, seemed a decent return for the kind of freewheeling property developers I was beginning to develop in my head, though Mike warned me of the other problems they’d face. Negotiations over the site would be complicated by the sheer number of public bodies involved: Portsmouth City Council (the local authority), The South-East England Development Agency (the strategic authority), the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (for Regional Planning), the Department of Transport (for the motorway links), and the Ministry of Defence (which owned adjoining land). All this was grist to my fictional mill – a light seasoning of planning-speak always gives a scene a bit of authenticity – and the realisation that there were so many governmental fingers in the Pompey pie was a real windfall. My book, after all, would hopefully be holding New Labour’s feet to the fire. What better location than Pompey’s front door?

  Leaving the Civic Centre that morning, I was certain that the book was a runner. My property developers, Mallinder, Benskin, would be bidding for the Gateway site. One of these two men would bung a sizeable sum of money into the pot for a local Academy school. I’d already obtained the going rate for these kinds of contributions from the Bow Group website, and for his £2.5million, Jonathan Mallinder would be hoping for considerable leverage with the Ministry of Defence. The rifle ranges which adjoined the Gateway site were, according to Mike Mortimer, the real icing on the development cake. To date, the MOD were resisting all suitors but if the land was ever released it would earn the successful bidder a fortune.

  Sadly, Mike’s knowledge didn’t extend to the on-going pensions scandal but that didn’t matter because I was about to meet another guy for lunch. Six years later he still prefers to remain anonymous so we’ll call him Peter. Peter was a friend of a friend who’d hit hard times. He’d spent most of his working life with a big chain of department stores. Every month, in the belief that the money was safe, he’d paid into the company pension scheme. Now, faced with the company’s abrupt descent into bankruptcy, he’d lost not only his job but – it seemed – all prospect of the pension to which he was entitled. He was 64 years old. For the rest of his life he’d be relying on whatever he could scrape up from the state. I was buying lunch.

  We met at a pub in Old Portsmouth. Peter had made an effort to look disaster in the eye – bowls club blazer, crisp white shirt, Rotary tie – but the last couple of months had left an indelible mark. His face was pale and gaunt and there was a hint of deadness in his eyes. He’d been a buyer in the men’s department. Everyone had known that trading was tough, and probably getting tougher, but no one had foreseen the coming disaster. It had happened so quickly. One day he was getting up and dressing for work, as usual. The next, he was desperately scanning the Jobs Vacant pages in the local rag, wondering whether he was too old to be working in a call-centre.

  I felt very sorry for Peter, as anyone would. He’d played by the rules for his entire working life in the mistaken belief that either his company, or the pension fund which held all the contributions, would look after him in his old age. Now it turned out that every penny of those contributions had somehow been swallowed up. By the time the company declared itself bankrupt, the pension scheme was at least £14m in the red. Where had all that money gone? And how come he and other members of staff had no redress?

  Peter had been in touch with pretty much everyone who might conceivably be able to help. His MP had been sympathetic but his hands were tied because the government, despite all their blather about helping out, didn’t really want to know. Their Financial Assistance Scheme, which they claim to have capitalised at £2 billion, in fact amounted to a quarter of that figure. That £540m had to support around 10,000 pensioners of whom barely 400 had so far received any money at all. It was, said Peter, all smoke and mirrors. Politicians lied all the time. They’d say anything to get your vote but the moment they found themselves in power it was a very different story. Only last week, James Purnell, the Pensions Minister, had ruled out any further state help for the 125,000 people of working age – people like Peter – who’d lost their prospective retirement pot when their employers went bust.

  We were still on the main course. Peter had barely touched his roast beef. I asked him how he felt about Mr Purnell. Peter lifted his head and looked me in the eye.

  “Is that a serious question?”

  “It is.”

  “Then I’ll give you a serious answer. I’d like to kill him.”

  I nodded. I understood. I could feel his anger. For once, it wasn’t necessary to make a note.

  That evening, still in Pompey, I had a couple of beers with an old mate. His name was Tim Peters and he made ends meet by offering professional coaching lessons on the indoor tennis courts beside th
e university. He’d also trained as an actor and I’d been flattered to have him in the recording studio to read the Faraday series for the audio versions. Tim had good connections in the city’s underworld and was on drinking terms with a number of guys who’d prospered in the cocaine biz but what made him fascinating company were his other connections on the sunnier side of the tracks.

  Tim had just come back from Barcelona, where he’d been coaching a bunch of rich kids on clay courts while their mums went shopping. These were 12 and 13 year olds from the wealthier parts of Southsea and Tim’s responsibilities, for which he was well paid, extended to overseeing their accommodations. They were all housed in a kind of Portacabin near the clay courts. Tim had a bed in the corner and had been alarmed to discover what they got up to in the evening. Not sneaky visits to the bright lights round the corner but the private excitements of hard-core porn downloads on their smart phones.

  Tim is hard to shock. He’s seen a great deal in a rich and busy life and there isn’t much that doesn’t amuse him but this was something different.

  “These are just kids,” he said. “And the stuff they were watching was beyond belief. We’re talking horses, Alsatians, horrible stuff. When I told them to pack it in they just laughed. I told their mums next days, told them to do something about it, get a grip, and you know what? They thought it was funny, too.”

  We had another pint and changed the subject but that story stuck with me for a long time. In ways I still find hard to describe it seemed utterly in keeping with the slow motion car crash over which New Labour appeared to be losing so little sleep. Guys like Peter facing the rest of his life on benefits. Little rich kids getting off on Alsatians fucking the arse off some bimbo. And guys like Jonathan Mallinder helping himself to millions and millions of windfall profits from the scrap yard down the road.

  I’d decided by now that Mr Mallinder wouldn’t survive beyond the book’s opening pages. His family home would be up in London somewhere. During the week, as negotiations developed for the Gateway site, he’d be living in a rented house in Port Solent. Late one evening, a man with a gun would pay a visit and leave most of Mallinder’s head splattered over the master bedroom wall. But who is this person with a gun? And what kind of debt has he (or she) come to settle?

  I stayed in Pompey for nearly a week. Next day I was due to see a guy called Brett Rennolds. He’d appeared on the radar after another friend had told me he might be up for a conversation. This was a bright Pompey boy who’d had his problems at school, rebelled a bit, and later found himself working out his frustrations in the nether reaches of Outer Mongolia. On that first occasion he’d told me about the job he’d found for himself. He’d been a logistics manager in a mining encampment. The company he worked for were prospecting for gold and copper. Brett lived in a container, pretty much on his own, but month by month he’d come to understand a little of the Mongolian mentality.

  “It’s got to do with the wind,” he told me. “And the silence. When I first got out there I was wound so tight I thought I’d explode. I was like a stick of TNT. I was so fucking angry. I was living with Rach and we both felt pretty much the same about the world we saw around us. No way would we ever have kids. Why not? Because everywhere we looked, it was just so shitty. People, attitudes, the materialism, the ignorence, the indifference to others, totally vile. And so off I went. To get my head back together.”

  It worked. Brett learned about Mongolian customs, about the way you look out for others, about the way you share. Above all he learned about Mongolian time.

  “The sun comes up and the sun goes down,” he told me. “So whatever happens, however tough it gets, you just wait. Every day’s a new start, a new opportunity. These people had very simple beliefs. They believed that things will happen. And you know what? They were right.”

  A couple of years later, after that first meeting, Brett was running an organisation called DreamWall. In some respects it was recognisably the fruit of the mindset he’d brought back from the Gobi Desert: that anything is possible, and that everyone should belong.

  The project was shaped for kids who were in some kind of trouble. Brett and his team took them on four day residential programmes out on the edges of the New Forest and showed them a glimpse or two of the person they really wanted to be. These were kids from broken homes, kids in care, kids who’d never known their blood father or mother, kids who’d put up the shutters and turned away, kids – I thought to myself – like Doodie. Most of them were referrals from Social Services and it was Brett’s job, or maybe mission, to sort them out.

  He talked about the games they played in the gym, pretending rubber mats were ice floes, getting them to mastermind a collective escape from the marauding killer whales. He described the importance of decent food, freshly sourced, properly cooked, of eating around a table, of waiting for others for once in their young lives. He told me about nights out in the New Forest, self-scripted talent shows around the camp fire, games of sneaky-beaky hide ‘n seek scored for laser beams and fake owl hoots.

  Four days, he admitted, might sound like fuck-all time but the truth was that those precious four days could make all the difference in the world to kids like these and he had the evidence to prove it.

  “These kids want a piece of us,” he said. “It’s nothing material, nothing you can sell, nothing you can big yourself up about. What it boils down to is laughter, and commitment, and doing stuff, and being part of something bigger than yourself. These are kids who only ever wanted to fight you. They have no attention span. No belief in anything. Yet we can get them to change because we give a shit and they know it. They’ve never had that before. Never. That’s just how fucking bad it’s been.”

  I came away from that conversation a little changed myself, knowing that I’d found the kind of guy I was looking for, the kind of guy who – pushed to the absolute limit - might take a 44mm automatic and blow Mallinder’s face off. His name would be Charlie Freeth. He’d be an ex-copper. It would be the work of my plot to crank up the pressures around him. And towards the end of the book he’d voice a little of what I’d just heard.

  Freeth is in the interview suite. D/C Dawn Ellis and D/C Bev Yates are asking the questions.

  “You never had kids of your own, Charlie.” He murmured. “How come?” Freeth’s eyes found Yates. Then Ellis.

  “You wouldn’t.” He said at length. “Not in this world, you wouldn’t. Not in this fucking country, the way it is, the way it’s heading. We’ve lost it, totally blown it, and if we’re talking evidence I can give you a hundred names, a thousand, and all of them kids. Kids from broken homes. Kids from the wrong side of the tracks. Kids who never asked to be born. Kids who find themselves up to their necks in the fucking swamp we’ve made for them. No order. No routine. No direction. Not the first bloody clue who they are. And you know why they end up that way? Because we’ve failed them. Totally. Because we’re gutless. Because we’ve let ourselves become obsessed by money, and gain, and all the other shit. Because we’ve given up on decency, and graft, and listening to each other, and trying to make an honest living. Because we lie on our backs and spread our legs and let a queue of arseholes have their way. Kids know that. They see it every day. And that’s important because the people who get really fucked are them, not us. In our sad little lives, we think we can take care of it. Kids can’t. Won’t. And you know what? I’m not sure I blame them.”

  There was a long silence. Suttle, watching the video feed next door, mimed applause. Then Ellis bent forward.

  “Arseholes like Mallinder?” She queried. “Arseholes like the minister who wouldn’t do right by Frank?”

  Freeth looked her in the eye. A ghost of a smile came and went.

  “No comment.” He said softly.

  A couple of days later, still in Pompey, I fixed to meet another detective who plays an important part in this story. His name is Rich John and at the time I first met
him he was a D/I working in the headquarters office of the Assistant Chief Constable for CID and Special Operations, Colin Smith. Colin had been a long-term fan of the Faraday books, and a source of all kinds of information. He lived up in Cowplain and he’d drive down for meets in pubs around Old Portsmouth, often with Rich in tow. All three of us became mates, and that friendship – I’m very glad to say – has survived.

  Rich is a very bright guy. He’s also a little exotic for a serving policeman. His respective parents were Grenadian and Irish and it shows. My guess is that he had to try a little harder than the average copper to make his way through the ranks, and as a result he’s great company, a lovely mix of charm and a laid-back canniness that masks an acute intelligence.

  I needed to talk to Rich about undercover work because by now I knew it was time for Winter to give up on the Men in Blue and make his way across to the Dark Side. That would be a journey fraught with danger on Winter’s part. It would also present me with a series of plot challenges which I’d have to resolve.

  Rich, I suspected, knew a great deal about going undercover. So what did it entail? What were the risks? And what, most important of all, did it feel like?

  We met in our usual pub, the Dolphin in Old Portsmouth. Rich, for once, seemed to have lost some of his spark. I asked what was wrong.

  “The bullshit gets worse and worse,” he said. “This month’s catchphrase is “Delivering Citizen Focus”. I think that means talking to the locals. Big deal.”