‘Women!’

  ‘Yes, women’s shoes.’

  ‘So he upset a few women, and hell hath no fury…’ I stared out of focus.

  He added, ‘His ex-wife and daughters were hidden to him, so his neighbours consider.’

  ‘They ran away and hid, because he was violent?’

  He closed his eyes again for a moment. ‘Another police officer, at the scene, he hides his intent, he intends to hide video film of something, the dead man featured. It is … ah, the father raping the daughters.’

  ‘How old are the daughters now?’

  ‘Twenty and twenty-two. They are tall and fat.’

  ‘Do what you can, please, to see that the daughters left no evidence and that they get away with it.’

  ‘If they do, it will appear as if an Italian-style mafia murder was effected there…’

  ‘The newspapers will suspect that he was silenced and punished by fellow police officers, which suits me.’

  ‘As you wish.’ He studied me. ‘The mass poisoning of mafia groups in Italy…’

  ‘The entity, at my request.’

  ‘I had considered her, given the lack of evidence.’

  ‘Have the police there drawn any conclusions?’ I asked.

  ‘No, other than it’s a mystery mafia murder and that they have better things to do with their time.’

  ‘She gave Higgins a heart attack as well.’

  ‘Ah, the man behind the building, and behind attacks upon you.’

  ‘Who will take over from him? I asked.

  He again closed his eyes for a few seconds. ‘He has three sons, none of whom wish to run the business, but his eldest will appoint a proxy management team, a legal friend to run things.’

  ‘Any criminal intent?’

  ‘No, and they have no clue about their father, theirs was a distant and cold relationship.’

  ‘And his wife?’

  ‘Has no desire to be involved, and is mostly retired to their country home – she hates London.’

  ‘So I may be spared from attack for a while…’

  ‘From him and his cabal – as you put it – yes. But someone will take over eventually, they always do.’

  ‘But maybe that someone will have less of a childish mentality, and desire business more than conflict.’

  ‘Such men are rare,’ he scoffed. He stood. ‘Cassius took over from Agustus, and stated an end to the in-fighting in Rome.’

  ‘And … what happened to Cassius?’ I asked as I stood.

  ‘They poisoned him the next day.’

  I shot him a look before he vanished. ‘Fucking Romans! I think we got their political system!’

  Slum landlords

  In the morning I called a meeting in the old offices, the main two Swedish men from the new offices invited down, Glen in on the meeting along with our roving house purchase manager, a manger who purchased rundown old properties for us around The Midlands. My estate agent lady was also in on the meeting.

  Finally all here, I called order. ‘Gentlemen, and lady, we’re here to discuss the rental property market, and our role in it. I am … tempted to become one of the largest landlords in the UK, and we’ll soon have hundreds of council houses up for sale, here and then in Manchester and elsewhere.’

  I turned to my estate agent lady. ‘How do our rental prices compare to fair market value?’

  ‘We’re under market value, we could get more for them, and we furnish them well - just that we furnish them to be idiot proof and damage proof to some degree.’

  ‘And the feedback from our tenants?’

  ‘They’re all happy, they get a good place for a reasonable price, and we answer queries and we address issues quickly.’

  ‘Which issues?’

  ‘Had a burst pipe above one of our apartments, fixed quickly, tenant handed a bottle of wine for the inconvenience. Had a fire below some of our apartments, a night in a cheap hotel for one lady, so she was happy with us.’

  ‘So no bad comments…’

  ‘Had one guy on drugs, but we got rid of him, police took him, and a drugs charge invalidates the rental agreement. We cleaned the place well afterwards and rented it out to someone else, locks changed.’

  ‘Good work,’ I commended. I took in their faces. ‘When the council houses are up for sale, we’ll buy some and renovate them with a view to selling them, a modest profit sought.

  ‘But we’ll also renovate some and rent them out, but … we can offer our rental tenants extras, as we do the loans company customers.

  ‘We could offer to sell them a computer cheaply, on credit, a marriage between our loans company and the rental side of things. It keeps the tenants happy, keeps our turnover up, and we make a few quid as well on the loan interest.

  ‘For the people buying the houses we could offer a furniture pack, things we import in bulk, and from the same loans company.

  ‘Part of that would be done to increase our turnover in things that we’ll also use for nursing homes and prisons, but … part of my reasoning is to help low-income families that are closest to the so-called rich-poor divide, and the narrowing gap on the chart that is disposable income in this country.’

  Lucas cut in, ‘In the northeast of England that disposable income is close to zero, as calculated by Experian. For poor families living in the south that gap has closed already.’

  I nodded at him. ‘It’s a trend that will lead towards disaster, and … I’m wondering about the glut of council houses, and if a few unscrupulous landlords have ideas to force people into rental poverty, a trap.’

  I pointed at Bill. ‘He brought me a building in London where the tenants had been beaten up for complaining about the cesspit the building had become.’

  ‘Slum landlords,’ my estate agent noted. ‘A few of those around. And now we see these Interest-Only and Buy-To-Let mortgages for landlords, so the rental market is spreading.’

  ‘I want to reverse that trend. So, we could buy many of the surplus council houses, we can buy shitty old apartment blocks and clean them up, and we could become Britain’s largest rental agency, perks for our tenants.’

  Lucas put in, ‘Such an approach, but in London, would make us good money, where the social inequalities are largest. If we charge less than the market but enough we can make money in other areas, such as furniture and computers.

  ‘If we have a large apartment block, and on the ground floor is our pharmacy and our food shop, we make good money and also offer a ten percent discount to tenants. But that will tie up a great deal of capital for … thirty years or more, or however long we hold them.’

  ‘I can find more investors, since this is bricks and mortar and not some risky venture.’

  Lucas responded, ‘It is a safe bet, yes, and for us very safe because we have secondary sales avenues to our own customers. Our competitors will have loans and mortgages, and no secondary sales avenues. They cannot beat us.’

  Bill asked me, ‘And fifty percent mortgages?’

  I responded, ‘Yes, to those that want them, but after two year’s rental income first and a good credit record built up.’

  Lucas noted, ‘If they are with us for loans, we have their credit record and details already, and that is then available for the mortgage company. It saves time.’

  I asked, ‘How long does it take for a rental house to cover costs?’

  Lucas began, ‘We never think of it in that way. You buy a house for fifty thousand pounds, you spend two thousand on renovation, two thousand on basic furniture, so your cost is roughly fifty-four thousand.

  ‘Ten years later we have made a modest margin on rent, less some repairs, but we own a house now worth seventy thousand. So we make a capital gain, and we gained the rental money, and we still have the house.

  ‘That house asset sits on our books, but you think of it like buying wood and making a chair, and how much profit did we make. We make the chair and we keep the chair, and people pay to sit on it.

  ‘If you built a house, then rented it out, it would be fifteen to twenty years to make enough rental income to cover the cost of the house, assuming that the house disappears. But it won’t disappear.’

  I explained, ‘I’m thinking about the investors, and them taking money out, as with the nursing homes, some investors wanting a shorter term profit. If we don’t sell any houses … we don’t have cash to pay off investors.’

  ‘For those types of investors we could isolate properties that have made a good capital growth but too good, and we sell now and use the money before prices correct and drop.

  ‘And if the rental market in a town drops we sell a few houses, till the remainder have tenants, the gap closed. If there is a need to raise cash … houses can be sold.’

  I noted, ‘If I was an investor, I might see the high capital growth in the property and want to cash-in…’

  Lucas responded, ‘Some properties will increase in value better than others, some rental areas will boom when others fall, so we can always adjust things if we have a wide and diverse portfolio.’

  ‘London is the best rental area?’ I asked. ‘Despite higher costs there?’

  The main Swedish guy put in, ‘I read a study. The investor found an old building with a nice façade, and in an area where he knew they would build new offices and new modern tower blocks.

  ‘He renovated, he created double-size apartments, a secure lobby with a guard, and he rented out thirty apartments for rich people, which became popular when the building work nearby was complete.

  ‘His rental income was excellent, compared to the purchase price and renovation costs. He could have paid off those costs in ten years or less.’

  I nodded. ‘So he did what we’re doing, and he checked the local area and neighbouring streets.’ I faced Glen. ‘Send that idea to our new property company.’

  ‘It’s what they did before, looking for the right building in the right location.’

  ‘So … ten years from now, what location will be up and coming?’ I asked Glen.

  ‘Docklands,’ he adamantly stated. ‘It will be where all the young high earners will live. We can look at the planned train tracks, the shops, new office blocks, and build new places – there’s very little left to renovate, the land was cleared. But every investor has the same idea right now.’

  ‘So where else?’ I posed.

  ‘You have to scout around, men on foot, a good building then the analysis of the surrounding area. They have to play detective. And old buildings with a good façade are popular.’

  My estate agent lady put in, ‘There are investors interested in the ex-council houses here, and they have a few quid. They want to buy up the houses and rent them out to poor families, the council having to subsidise the poor families.’

  ‘So the council is right back to square one!’ I complained. ‘And we have a new slum landlord!’

  ‘Can’t stop them buying houses,’ she noted.

  ‘Could do,’ David Hutton put in. ‘What if the council were to lump them all together into a single deal, highest price at auction, two hundred houses. Are these slum landlords going to have the money?’

  I told him, ‘David, you’re a sneaky shit,’ the people assembled here laughing. ‘And you’re supposed to be a solicitor.’

  ‘Just practical business sense,’ he insisted with a grin.

  I called the council, getting the head of the council as my staff listened in. ‘Got a minute?’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘I’ve heard that many a slum landlord wants to buy your council houses when they become available, get poor families in that default on the rent and have to be bailed out by you, which seems like going backwards.’

  ‘That would be going backwards, yes.’

  ‘So how about … you lump all the ex-council houses together, a job lot, sold at auction to the highest bidder.’

  ‘No one but you would have the money,’ he realised. ‘And we had considered that, we don’t want to sell one a week for ten years.’

  ‘Check the legality and let me know, set a price for minimum bid.’

  ‘I’ll look at that today,’ he promised.

  Call cut, I said, ‘No one trust David with their stapler.’ The group laughed at David.

  Bill noted, ‘Two hundred houses at thirty grand a piece is six million quid, and few slum landlords would have that.’

  Lucas began, ‘If you can get the price down, renovate, clean up the gardens and the street, move in people with reasonable cars, you can push up the price quickly.

  ‘People want to live in a nice area, nice cars seen, nice gardens, no abandoned houses.’

  I nodded at him. ‘We cleaned up Drug Alley here in Leicester, now the houses there sell well.’

  Bill asked, ‘We’d sell the council houses?’

  ‘No, we’d renovate them, basic but solid furniture inside, gardens done, roof done, and we’d encourage the tenant family to use our loans company.

  ‘Then, after a year or two, they have the option of a fifty percent mortgage with us, and they’d be our customers thereafter, good deals for them, a helping hand on the undulating road of life.

  ‘If they fall on hard times we could buy it back and they go back to renting. We’d be the caring landlord, not the slum landlord.

  ‘Lucas, get prices on private houses sold lately but near to council houses, use our super estate agent lady here, and then look at what houses sell for within half a mile that are in better condition, and what typical local rental prices are.

  ‘Create a spreadsheet … and let’s think about purchase cost, renovation cost, furniture cost, then rental income, then value-added-schemes such as our loans business.

  ‘Allow for two terms of a Labour Government and a house price increase of five percent a year, each year.’

  ‘A housing boom?’ David Hutton asked.

  ‘Labour will spend, and they’ll spend with us as well, and the economy will get a boost. And the current trend is for a loosening of credit card access and mortgages rules, so we’ll become a nation of citizens who are all in debt to the banks.’

  ‘Always been that way,’ David scoffed.

  ‘Be more so ten years from now. And these buy-to-let mortgages worry me, we could see all the excess stock bought up by slum landlords. If you have a house, you can use it as collateral and get three houses, simple as that.’

  ‘So we get in there first,’ Bill suggested. ‘Our credit is good.’

  ‘We’d use the cash, not get mortgages.’

  Bill insisted, ‘But we could get mortgages, low rate, and buy even more houses. If we buy five hundred houses, they’re the leverage to buy another five hundred on these new buy-to-let mortgages.’

  ‘That … I had not considered, I figured we’d use cash. Lucas, do some research, see what we could do.’

  ‘I get our bankers to visit,’ he suggested. ‘And they will be happy to hand us mortgages on houses, very happy, and we could put down a deposit of twenty percent always.’

  Our Swedish consortium guy put in, ‘If we have a billion pounds in the bank, we can get mortgages for three or four billion.’

  I stared at him, images popping up. ‘We could be the biggest landlord, by far, and control and influence the market.

  ‘We could grab twenty thousand council houses, grab twenty thousand non-council houses - fair rent and good conditions for our tenant families, and we nudge most to get a fifty percent mortgage after a few years renting.’

  Lucas noted, ‘After ten years most of the houses are sold, a good profit made.’

  ‘Not all sold, I’d want to have a large number of rental properties and to kill off the slum landlords. People would be queuing up to rent with us.’

  ‘They do now,’ our estate agent lady put in. ‘We offer a better service, and we have a 24hr hotline as well, odd-jobs man available for a leaky pipe or broken toaster.’

  ‘There is one issue here,’ our Swedish manager put in. ‘If you buy so many properties, the price of houses will rise as a result, you will be increasing your own profit by doing so.’

  ‘It’s a big market,’ David told him.

  My estate agent lady jumped in with, ‘Not that big. We see it here, and if you buy-up twenty or thirty houses it has an effect. Buy up a hundred and prices rise, and people panic and pay more, and the owners see the rise and they push up prices even more.

  ‘There are twenty million houses or apartments in this country, and half a million are listed for sale at any one time. Houses change hands at a rate of around thirty thousand a month nationwide.

  ‘If you buy up fifty thousand council houses, and fifty thousand regular houses, you’d force prices up dramatically.’

  ‘Which I don’t want,’ I told them all. ‘That will benefit only the banks. First and foremost I want a good and stable rental market, with a few of our residents going for fifty percent mortgages -’

  My estate agent lady cut in, ‘A mortgage is a mortgage, the house changes hands, fifty percent or a hundred, and that pushes up local prices.’

  Lucas put in, ‘If we do nothing, this trend in buy-to-let mortgages may mean that a hundred thousand people use such mortgages, buy up the spare stock and rent them out, and force prices much higher.’

  ‘I’d lower my rent to try and counteract that effect,’ I told him.

  He responded, ‘Perhaps best to grab the free stock, if you wish to stop these buy-to-let people. We can save money on furniture, they cannot, so our rent can be a little less. We get the tenants, they don’t.’

  Bill began, ‘So our principle aim is to stop these idiots all buying second homes to rent out.’

  ‘Yes,’ I told him.

  Bill added, ‘So we buy the council houses, and we get mortgages on spare stock and rundown places as now, and we buy a shit load of houses and apartments.’

  Lucas added, ‘We spread the loans business and we sell our goods to the rental customers, and we make extra money and keep them happy, cheap wine in a box once a year.’

  ‘Once a month more like,’ Bill told him.

  Lucas added, ‘If we import fifty thousand sets of furniture we save a fantastic amount of money. And, if we secure the rental market and also buy many houses, it is OK to see house prices rise because we assist people with fifty percent mortgages.