The Price Of Darkness (7 page)

‘The name of this firm?’ The question came from Barber. Benskin was looking at the notebook open on her lap.

‘What’s the form here?’ He addressed the question to Faraday.

‘It’s an interview, Mr Benskin. We ask the questions; you tell us about your partner. You’ll appreciate our need to know. At this stage in the inquiry, to be frank, we’re pretty much in the dark about what your firm’s been up to. Pretend we know nothing. Just make that assumption.’

‘I never make assumptions. Is this on the record?’

‘D/C Barber keeps notes but you’re not under caution so none of this is admissible.’

‘In court, you mean?’

‘Of course.’ Faraday offered him a cold smile. He wanted to know more about Benskin, Mallinder. Had Benskin been operating on his own before Mallinder’s arrival?

‘No. I was with another company. Not Mallinder’s outfit.’

‘So the business started with the pair of you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Equal shares?’

‘Down the middle. Jonno bought one kind of expertise to the table, me another. We were a perfect fit. That’s the way I saw it from the off and that’s the way it played out.’

‘What was Mallinder’s …’ Faraday frowned ‘… special talent?’

‘Negotiation. Face to face, he was awesome. He could strip the flesh from your bones and you’d still be smiling when they carted you off. To be frank, I never quite worked out how he did it. Maybe it’s a Jewish thing. Maybe it’s in the blood. When he needed to be, he was ruthless as hell. But you still loved the guy, regardless.’

‘And your special talent?’

‘Pretty much everything else. Sorting out the money side. The legal side. The contracts. Jonno was the guy for the big picture, the headline coup. That stuff, it’s all vision and timing. Some people love it. Jonno adored it. It’s like the Lord Mayor’s Show. He needed to be in the golden carriage, he needed the attention. Me? I swept up afterwards.’

‘Was that ever a problem?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Mallinder grabbing the limelight?’

‘Christ, no. At the end of the day it’s about profit, and like I say we carved the turkey fifty-fifty. Jonno was a class operator, don’t get me wrong, but most of these deals turn to ratshit unless you get the small print right.’

‘And that was your job?’

‘Exactly.’

Faraday nodded, waiting for Barber’s racing pencil to catch up. He’d stationed a cassette recorder on his desk and cued it before the interview, but psychologically there were advantages to writing the key facts down. Benskin was on the record and he knew it.

‘Talk me through those first few years,’ Faraday said.

‘Why?’

‘Because it may help. Unless, of course, you’ve got a problem with any of that …’ The smile again, even chillier.

Benskin shook his head, said it didn’t matter. Once they’d got the business up and running, he and Jonno had cut their teeth on small brownfield sites in prime commuting country around London. Already it was obvious that New Labour had a big problem with the lack of new housing starts and a business opportunity was staring them in the face.

‘It all boils down to votes,’ he said. ‘The punters who’ve moved out to the country don’t want some bloody great new estate spoiling their view. But the people left behind in the cities can’t find anywhere to live. So what can politicians do without pissing anyone off? Easy. First off, they commission a survey. The survey finds all kinds of wasted space in what us lot call the urban environment. Derelict land, old warehousing, knackered shops, whatever. Each of these little bits of land could support half a dozen starter homes or a smallish block of flats so next they pass a bunch of laws that force local authorities to start taking this kind of shit seriously. They
have
to find room to house people. So they start looking round for likely sites and - hey - guess who’s got there before them?’

‘You.’

‘Exactly.’

Benskin was beginning to relax now. This was his story, the narrative that had shaped his professional life, and it wasn’t hard to sense a boastful pride in the way Benskin, Mallinder had set about turning a housing crisis into a personal fortune.

‘What kind of scale are we talking here?’

‘We started with a couple of punts in Enfield. Horrible area but they worked a treat. We assembled four parcels of land, sold them on to a builder or another property developer, and made money on the turn. This wasn’t rocket science but pretty quickly we realised where we were going wrong.’

Their mistake, he said, was selling for cash. On a slowly rising market that would have made sense. But post-9/11, once the world had settled down, house prices had gone barmy. On average a competent builder could throw a block of six flats up in under a year. But within that time, you might have been looking at a 15 per cent rise in the market.

‘So what did you do?’

‘We started selling for cash plus.’

‘Plus what?’

‘Plus a slice of the proceeds of sale. Gross, of course.’

‘How big a slice?’

Benskin looked at Faraday, disbelieving, then shook his head.

‘That’s commercial. In confidence. I’m here to help you out with Jonno. Why would you need to know this kind of detail?’

‘Because it might help.’

‘With what?’

‘The bigger picture.’

‘Really?’ He thought about the proposition then shook his head. ‘No way. Sorry, guys.’

‘OK.’ Faraday shrugged. ‘But it made you money?’

‘Of course it did. That’s what businessmen do.’

‘A lot of money?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what did you do next? More of the same?’

‘Of course. Because the situation, deep down, hadn’t really changed. People still needed somewhere to live. Plus we were getting swamped with immigrants, especially round London. They were pouring in. More heads. More roofs. Most politicians live in la-la land. They haven’t a clue what’s going on out there, they’re a complete waste of space. People like us were different. Jonno and I lived and breathed it every day of our working lives. We’d developed a business model you wouldn’t believe. We couldn’t stop making money. Still can’t, actually.’

Tracy Barber had put her notebook aside for a moment. Faraday gave her a nod.

‘I’m not quite clear about this business model of yours,’ she said. ‘What exactly was so special about you two?’

‘We travelled light.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means we never got suckered into full-blown development. We didn’t have huge offices. We kept staffing levels incredibly low, just a handful of the kind of people we really needed. Businessmen talk a lot about vertical integration. That means land purchase, outline planning permission, full-spec drawings, sorting out a builder, advertising for punters, the whole kaboodle until the moment Mister and Missus step into their nice new house. There are loads of people in that game, loads of them, and we always thought they were carrying too much fat. The truth is, vertical integration can be a pain in the arse. Every day you’re looking at another hassle - builders, planners, the utilities people, punters, you name it. Jonno and me? We spotted opportunities, assembled land, got outline planning permission, cast a fly or two and then moved on. You know what they started calling us in the business? The Ghost Squad. Brilliant. Jonno loved it.’

Tracy nodded and reached for her pad. Faraday’s turn.

‘And it’s stayed that way? Land assembly? Selling on?’

‘Basically, yes. Though naturally we became more ambitious.’

Three years ago, he said, they’d got wind of a town-centre parcel of land in Farnham in Surrey. Not a huge site but absolutely prime commuting country. Within a month or two some neighbouring land came on to the market. Put the two bits of land together and they were tantalisingly close to a fourteen-townhouse development.

‘That’s significant? Fourteen houses?’

‘Very. Put up more than fourteen houses and you had to make provision for social housing. Nowadays it’s worse. Nowadays it’s only ten houses. But either way, that means getting the scrotes in, and
that
means lowering the tone. In a fourteen-unit development in the middle of Farnham we were talking 450K a pop, easy. Ask people to live alongside families on benefit, and you’d be lucky to see 300K. Aggregate the difference and you’re talking over two million quid. We can all do the maths. It’s simple. It’s just a fact of life.’

‘So what happened? In Farnham?’

‘Jonno went back to take another look. It turned out there was a shop exactly where we needed the land, a hardware store, an old family business. Jonno asked around a bit, like you do, and pretty quickly he discovered that this shop was in the shit. The big out-of-town operations were crucifying them. Why would you buy white gloss at twenty pounds a tin when B&Q are knocking it out at twelve ninety-nine?’

‘So what did you do?’

‘We bought the place.’

‘As a going concern?’

‘Yeah. Except it wasn’t.’

‘And then?’

‘We tacked it on to the other bits of land and got planning permission.’

‘For fourteen houses?’

‘Of course. Within a week we had two developers and three builders on the phone. It was an auction. You couldn’t go wrong.’

Faraday nodded. Benskin, Mallinder, he’d concluded, were a pair of commercial magicians, conjuring huge money from little more than a handful of phone calls and a great deal of conversation.

‘And Mallinder? He was the one who negotiated all these deals?’

‘Yes.’

‘So how many people did he upset?’

‘None.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Fine.’ Benskin shrugged. ‘That’s your privilege. But like I told you before, Jonno never left a meeting without making a friend. The guy was a genius at it. He should have gone into social work. Or the Church.’

Faraday glanced over at Tracy Barber. The brief history of Benskin, Mallinder seemed, on the face of it, all too plain. They sniffed the wind. They stalked their target. They pounced at a time of their choosing. No wonder, in the development game, they’d become such big beasts.

‘Competitors? Rivals?’

‘Everywhere.’ Benskin conceded the point with a smile. ‘When the other guys start bitching, that’s when you know you’ve got it right.’

‘What does bitching mean?’

‘It means snidey articles in the trade press. It means blokes turning their backs in the pub or at some poncy do. It means loads of badmouthing and innuendo. Some of the braver ones even do it to your face.’

‘Names?’

‘You’d be wasting your time.’

‘Why?’

‘Because these people are all talk.’

‘Isn’t that a judgement we should be making?’

‘Of course, and I’m sure you will, but if you’re looking for me to grass these people up then I’m afraid the answer’s no.’

‘Grass up?’

‘Sure. Believe it or not, there’s a kind of protocol here, a code if you like. We fight tooth and nail, of course we do, but at the end of the day it’s just a game. If I thought there was a real problem with any of these guys, then I’d sort it. But there isn’t. Believe me.’

Tracy Barber stirred.

‘I thought you said Mallinder didn’t make enemies?’

‘He didn’t. Not amongst the people he was dealing with. Your mate here was asking about rivals. But even then enemies is too strong. It’s envy. And you know why? Because most of them can’t be arsed to put the effort in. Talent is cheaper than table salt. It’s hard work that makes the difference. You reap what you sow. That’s the secret of getting rich.’

‘Or ending up dead?’

‘Very funny.’

A perceptible chill had settled on the interview. At length, Faraday mentioned the Tipner project. He wanted to know the strength of Benskin, Mallinder’s interest.

‘Tipner was a one-off for us. I never liked it from the start. It was Jonno’s baby, to tell you the truth.’

‘So why the reservation? On your part?’

‘The place is a dump. Literally. It’s been used and abused for years. Horrible stuff, asbestos, heavy metals, you name it. You know the bill for the clean-up? Fifty-three million quid. And that’s before you pour a foot of concrete. And there’s something else, too. We’re off the pace.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means we’ve been beaten to it. There’s already a preferred developer in place. They’ve done the heavy lifting. And the fact that they might be in the market for a buyer tells me there can’t be that much profit in it.’

‘So why was Mallinder so keen?’

‘Good question.’

‘You must have asked him.’

‘Of course I did. In fact it became a kind of running joke.’

‘And?’

‘He said it was partly about the city itself. I’ve never been able to pick it up but he said the vibe down here was really good, really promising. Gunwharf. The new Northern Quarter development. The university. The history of the place. The Trafalgar celebrations. All those sexy events on the harbour. Some days, to tell you the truth, I thought he was working for the council.’

‘So there was more to his interest than Tipner? Is that what you’re telling me?’

‘Yes. I think maybe there was.’

‘Are we talking other sites? Or other people?’ It was Barber.

‘Both, probably. But I just don’t know.’

‘But you were close,
really
close. Or at least that’s what you said.’

‘Sure. And he’d come back with stuff - one or two development possibilities, bits and pieces of MoD land. It all made sense, I’m not blaming him, but compared to the returns you can make around London, the sums just didn’t stack up.’

‘So it must have been something else, musn’t it? To make him that interested in Portsmouth?’ Barber wouldn’t let go.

‘I don’t know.’