And I will be free, thought Mr Fox as he watched the elderly detective head off in the distance. No matter how many I have to kill to remain so.
19
UNBURIED
I’m only coming along to make sure you don’t say anything inflammatory,’ warned John May as he and Arthur Bryant picked their way across the torn landscape of the building site. Around them, Caterpillar trucks burrowed and strained beneath a mean-spirited sky. ‘But it’s as far as I’m prepared to go on your stag-man. After this I’ll be helping the others, so you’ll be on your own. Okay, what are we looking at?’
‘This is the head office of the Albert Dock Architectural Partnership Trust,’ Bryant explained, checking the brochure April had given him. ‘ADAPT is in charge of planning the entire area. The contract was awarded to a single company so that the new town would “observe a single cohesive vision of design,” it says here. I imagine they want to avoid any more ghastly balls-ups like the Paddington Basin.’ Paddington, another derelict area bordered by canals and railways, had been filled with a mixture of offices, retail outlets and community housing, but the resulting confusion of styles had ended up satisfying no-one.
Bryant leaned back and looked up, holding onto his hat. ‘Nice building,’ he said. ‘It’s a pity they pulled down all the others like this.’
They had reached the doors of a huge two-floor warehouse restored in reclaimed yellow brick. The former jam factory was one of the few surviving industrial units left in an area that had once been filled with foundries, flour and timber mills, varnishers, laundries, hat manufacturers and beer-bottle washing plants. Cobbled courtyards had been sandblasted, interior walls removed, roofs renovated and steel walkways added to create a modern version of Victorian architecture, lighter and airier than anything imagined by their ancestral counterparts.
‘Who are we seeing?’ May asked.
‘A woman called Marianne Waters. She’s one of the senior partners, certainly the one with the highest visibility. She made a fortune in the city during the eighties, set up this company, the ADAPT Group, with her two former bosses, and became one of the biggest property developers in the city. She’s leading the way toward more ecologically responsible building, and has the ear of the environment minister. Their children go to the same school. She wrote a self-help book about running companies while being a single mother.’
‘Now give me the bad stuff.’
‘Well, ecologically sound architecture comes at a price, and Marianne Waters has a habit of running behind on her projects. This one is no different. They’ve been slipping back their deadlines; the new shopping mall in the centre of the development was supposed to be finished by now. Before she saw the green light Waters was a great pal of Maggie Thatcher’s, and unfortunately, London’s arch-villainess, Lady Porter. There are stories about her that she doesn’t enjoy seeing repeated in print. They mostly involve persistent rumours about her involvement in the “Building Stable Communities” scheme.’
Councillor Dame Shirley Porter’s infamous secret policy was the stuff of London legend. She sold off Westminster council properties and shifted homeless voters from marginal wards because they were less likely to vote Conservative. Despite being described as the most corrupt British political figure in living memory, the disgraced council leader still protested her innocence. ‘There’s also been talk about the strong-arm tactics being used by property developers like ADAPT to seize the leases of buildings that stand in their way. Critics say that Madame Waters’s concern for the environment is just PR spin. This is ADAPT’s biggest project, and any negative reaction to the company’s plans, mainly posted by community groups, is usually met with a barrage of lawsuits. So if you’re asking me whether she belongs to the forces of good or the powers of darkness, I’d have to say that the jury is still out.’
‘It’s not our job to make a judgement call,’ said May, ‘but a little background material is always helpful.’
The detectives were greeted by two security guards, a receptionist, a personal assistant, a group organiser and finally the lady herself. Marianne Waters was in her late forties, with the strong features of a county-bred woman and a cropped coiffure in a thoroughbred shade of chestnut. She looked as though she had what it took to survive in the modern business world. Encased in an open-collared black dress that reset her body to a younger age, she wore surprisingly tall heels for a woman who regularly crossed muddy cobblestones.
‘Mr May.’ She greeted him with a stern voice and a firm, dry handshake. She looked puzzled by Bryant’s presence, as if Harold Steptoe had brought his father along to the meeting.