‘When the kids’ prison section is open, use it for the trouble makers, but keep the secure areas here for a good child that throws a wobbly and hurts someone.’

  ‘They won’t send the murderers to us here, but we do have a boy coming that stabbed someone without remorse.’

  ‘I’ll sit and talk to him.’

  ‘You he’d listen to, no one else.’

  I faced Bill. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’d put the stabbing bastard in a prison, not here. Unless it was self-defence. And even then I’d want him away from society till I was sure about him.

  ‘The girl that kills her father, she should end up here not in prison.’

  I nodded at that, thanked our guides and set off back, thinking about kids in prisons.

  Back at the new offices, I contacted David Hutton to contact our architect, to add a kids’ place to the Mental Health section of our prison, an adjoining walkway.

  Chatting to the twins on the phone that evening, they were keen on Corsica, a weekend break, and they would try to find flights.

  Lee Tong also called me, the final stock taken over, a great profit made. He was now accumulating Barclays stock, and the money – my cut of the takeovers - had been kindly sent to my Lake Valley company. I called my partner down there.

  I began, ‘Money has been transferred, for construction and land, from my Asian partners. Find a few prime pieces of land, big enough for fifty luxury villas, and sign it over to Lee Tong. Commission a road if there isn’t one, and make a start on the villas, you can use the new Irish builders to speed things up.’

  ‘There is now a camp of them, and they assist with roads and drains, and start on a worker’s village.’

  ‘More will be arriving, so take fifty for this project, and ask about men that can finish and decorate a villa. Ask my architect there to design a villa, same as Mandoch Valley more or less, five bedrooms upstairs and two downstairs.

  ‘Each needs a good pool and terrace facing southwest, and a basement room to keep people cool. That basement room should have small bedrooms for staff.

  ‘Have the Irish start with drains and electrics, then foundations and basements, then the villa, one complete then they move on, red tiled roof as usual. After they do the first they’ll get quicker.

  ‘Then, a few miles away, the exact same thing for my bank in Britain, fifty villas. The bank will pay later.’

  ‘How much will we charge for land and building?’

  ‘We charge the new owners two hundred thousand for the land, a third of the money to the Prefect, and the build cost would be around two hundred thousand. But Lee Tong will pay a million for each finished villa.’

  ‘A good margin,’ he noted.

  ‘How are the fish?’

  ‘The water rises quickly, and each week they release more fish. Near the dam itself the water is not so brown any longer, just near to where they dump the mud. And now there are many palm trees alongside the road.’

  ‘Find a petrol station owner to open a place for us,’ I suggested.

  ‘I know a man, and he will open a place soon.’

  ‘When he does, build a small café next to the petrol station, a large car park, and benches for people to sit, a shop. Everything we do there must look good, that main road. Have him open a place in the middle of the valley.

  ‘How’s the dam coming along?’

  ‘Soon to be finished, then the road across it, then the channels below and the turbines and the electric cables down the mountain. But they also make small dams below, for the canoe course, and a new road south.’

  ‘Great, some progress.’

  A quick trip

  The next day I packed ready, but I had booked myself a private jet with twenty-four seats through Ross Daniels, to fly from Stanstead Airport near London, and I sent the details to Tony Blair.

  There were spare seats, David Hutton and his girlfriend wanted to come along, so they were now packing in a hurry. It would be good relevant experience for my EU lady, Emmanuelle, so she was also soon packing a bag.

  Thinking, I had a BBC cameraman with a shoulder camera invited, and one from Sky News. They would come on condition that they did not ask tough questions – of anyone other than me - or bother people.

  After spending most of the day in the surgery helping people, I checked my own bag, Bill and Ted enjoying themselves in Stockholm and not wanting to come along. Ross Daniels would provide two bodyguards for me and two for the Prime Minister.

  In the morning, I set off with Pat, Dingle, David Hutton and his girlfriend, Emmanuelle and Bonza, Bonza promising not to fart in polite company, but he was better these days.

  At Stanstead Airport, I said goodbye to Pat and Dingle for a few days, and they would camp out in the new London apartment. I handed them both two hundred quid “beer money”.

  In the private jet section we met some of Blair’s people, hands shaken, and the Social Security Minister was here along with the Health Secretary and their aides, but all dressed casual.

  Blair turned up with his wife and two advisors in tow, but not with Campbell, a relief.

  Boarded in fine weather but in a stiff breeze, the passengers settled themselves after I pointed Blair and his wife to the centre seats with tables, and I sat opposite them with Bonza.

  ‘Are you a good flyer?’ I asked Blair as we taxied.

  ‘I’d be in trouble if I wasn’t, the job requires a lot of flying.’

  At altitude, and looking down at Dover, the BBC crew asked if they could film. Seats moved, and the BBC cameraman and Sky News were on my left as I sat opposite Blair and his wife on the right, notepads on the table between us.

  ‘Ready,’ came from the BBC cameraman.

  I began, addressing Blair, ‘I had a quick look at my new three-phase kids’ home a few days ago, but I’m now definitely leaning towards putting the kids that murder people and stab people in a soft prison section, next to the mental health section.

  ‘At the moment, when a kid murderers someone - usually by stabbing them, it’s considered a mental health issue, and it may well be in some cases, in most cases it’s the result of a violent upbringing.

  ‘They get held for assessment, but how long does it take to assess that a kid was mistreated and beaten and now wants back at society?’

  Blair responded, ‘We need to isolate them from society, yes, and that assessment is down to the medical professionals and psychiatrists, because we can’t have the kid come out and kill again, we have to protect society.’

  ‘At the moment the kid gets lots of sympathy -’

  ‘And what about the family of the person he killed, and the sympathy for them!’

  I nodded. ‘But what takes precedent in the old Labour Party forgiveness machine? The kid’s ability to reform or … isolation from society?’

  ‘I’m not a great fan of being soft with kids because they’re kids, a fourteen-year-old knows what he’s doing when he stabs a girl from school twenty times.

  ‘So that boy must have a custodial sentence to protect society from him, and it must be long enough to both make an assessment and to satisfy society and the victim’s family.

  ‘If the kid is out in a year and seen in the same street, what of the victim’s family? What rights do they have to be protected, and not see him walking down the street?’

  I nodded. ‘I’d be in favour of five or six years, for murder, followed by an order to avoid his home town. But what of the boy who stabs another for fun? I’d sentence them to six months at least.

  ‘If it turns out that he was bullied, that’s different, and if he was abused as a kid and wanted back at society then we can fix the kid in some ways, his abusive father out of the picture.

  ‘But we can never ignore the needs of the family or society, and that month in assessment is no punishment for what happened. And at the moment we have very few places left to send kids, Thatcher closed them all.’

  Blair nodded. ‘We’ll reopen suitable places, and if you tag on a building to your soft prisons then we can use them, a genuine assessment time and a break for society as well.’

  I put in, ‘We’ll have quite a few pressure groups arguing that all you need is love.’

  ‘Those people never had a family member stabbed to death! They have to look beyond their own small views.’

  ‘The kids’ place I created in Leicester city, it has three sections and three cafes, the kids kept separate, so that the bad boys can’t bully the kids that want to study, and most of the kids lined up to go there are orphans through no fault of their own.’

  Cheri asked, ‘And foster parents?’

  ‘I don’t know how many there are out there, or if we have a national shortage. What my people told me was that in a city the size of Leicester we have less than five kids that are full-on psycho killers, and maybe twenty that should be in a soft prison.

  ‘If my new place west of Leicester can hold two hundred kids, then we can take from around the region, and in the future – when a fourteen-year-old kills someone - we have a place to send them.

  ‘So within six months we’ll have that place, and I’ll have a suitable place for kids that are too disruptive to stay at home. They get a nice room - till they misbehave, then they get a room like a prison cell.

  ‘If they behave, they go back to the nicer room, simple as that.’

  ‘Same principle as your Four Phase prisons,’ Blair noted. ‘The carrot and the stick approach.’

  ‘The question will come … of what to do with a pupil that breaks school rules. At the moment the only punishment is expulsion for a week, but because the law requires kids to have an education they get accepted back into school – having punched a lady teacher in the face.’

  ‘That needs looking at,’ he suggested. ‘What about the rights of that lady teacher? How the hell can she walk around school and do her job with the kid back in the classroom?’

  ‘I’d have the kid in a soft prison for a month, a lesson for him, and a deterrent, because a week sat at home watching TV is no deterrent. And a second offence should be three months in a soft prison, or what message are we sending to our kids?

  ‘A fourteen-year-old hits a lady teacher and knocks her teeth out, that’s OK…’

  Blair responded, ‘Well it’s not OK, far from it, and not a lesson for the other kids to learn from. And what about that boy when he leaves school, what does he do then, hit women when they disagree with him?’

  I put in, ‘Soft prisons, and their proliferation, allow us to hand out a short sentence straight away, not wait for a prison place to become available, and that quick sentencing is a deterrent to many in Leicester now, and they know that if they shoplift or break into a house it’s at least thirty days.

  ‘One man, he’s been inside my soft prison six times already, half a year, but during that time he was not breaking into houses. What my staff suggested … was that we offer him a fifty-percent mortgage on his cell.’

  Blair shook his head at me as I grinned. ‘Going a bit far. But if that man keeps reoffending then he keeps going back inside, his choice, society protected from him for a while. What progress have you made with this warm house mortgage fix?’

  ‘I have a senior man from Barclays working full-time in my offices, and he’s worked it out and made suggestions, something that would suit us, Barclays, and the homeowner.

  ‘As it stands, a repossession costs the homeowner thousands, they have to move, the money spent on decorating the house lost, severe emotional upset for the wife and kids. Barclays also lose thousands, perhaps ten thousand in lost interest.

  ‘What we figured was a good settlement … was that Barclays discount us two grand on the deal, we buy at fair market value less that two grand.

  ‘The homeowner gets back his deposit and his capital payments - plus some growth in house price, less interest paid and fees. So the homeowner has not lost as much, Barclays have not lost as much as they might, and I gain a rental property, the hope being that the homeowner pays me rent for a year or two so that I cover my costs.’

  ‘You’d need those two years?’

  ‘To be sure of covering costs and making a small amount, yes, and if the homeowner met our criteria we’d push for a fifty percent mortgage after two years.

  ‘The good thing … is that the family is not disrupted, kids stay in school, same furniture there, they remain settled.’

  ‘That is a good thing, yes, I know that moving house can be traumatic, and especially if you’re being kicked out. How quickly can you move it along?’

  ‘We’ll trial it in Leicester and the Midlands soon, but my people believe that few other landlords and rental agencies would want to buy the house for such a small margin and take it on board.’

  ‘Well … no, your reasons are different to theirs, they’d not want to take the risk. We can subsidise it some, I know that it wastes money for all sides and causes great heartache.’

  ‘If I get a two year rental period my people are happy, we’re not looking to make a profit from it, just save everyone involved the hassle – and maybe pick up a fifty percent mortgage.

  ‘As it stands, we think that few other rental agencies will come on board.’

  He nodded. ‘How goes the building work in Corsica?’

  ‘We’re accelerating, in that the building gangs now have the experience and the skills, and the first couple of hundred Protestant builders are hard at work in the east.

  ‘In Scorfo Valley, where some of the EU delegates will be staying - literally staying in a nursing home, the first two nursing homes are ready, the second two a few months behind. In a year they’ll all be done, all twenty-eight, and we’ll have thirty thousand residents there.’

  He smiled. ‘The EU delegates will be in nice apartments, not a typical nursing home.’

  ‘Very unlike a typical nursing home, but the French authorities are not happy, because now everyone in France wants a place down in Corsica.

  ‘But some of the lower ranking EU delegates may have a bed with side rails fitted to it.’

  He smiled. ‘Safe for them. But how will you cope with thirty thousand residents?’

  ‘We’re working on the assumption that they won’t all go to the beach at the same time! If they do it will be busy. But it is a large beach, and behind the promenade we built a small town, twenty beach clubs – each with a pool and a bar, shops and hairdressers and all sorts.

  ‘There’s a small hospital in the middle, which we’ll probably expand, and a large warehouse at the top of the valley. We also have a seawater canal, full of fish, some quite large, but the lads from Derry admit to trying the lobster they caught.

  ‘But builders from Derry would never appreciate a fine lobster supper.’

  ‘Expensive in London,’ he noted.

  ‘Damned expensive in Corsica. And what I found when I first started to deal with local people in Corsica was that there’s a huge rich-poor divide, and that in the winter they used to have seventy percent unemployment.

  ‘This last winter gone, that was down to zero almost, they all had jobs, hotels stayed open, and I’ve grabbed every builder on the island.

  ‘But I’m now having to renovate old buildings in the towns to help young local people, people who could never afford to buy there, all the houses taken by rich people from Paris.’

  Blair responded, ‘It happens in many countries, that divide, and we see it now in Cornwall, rich Londoners buying up all the houses as second homes. Local first time buyers can’t get on the property ladder.’

  I told him, ‘Well in Corsica a nice four bedroom house might cost you a million quid, as a first time buyer. Not much chance of a college graduate getting a house till they’re … sixty years old!’

  ‘You’ll build social houses?’

  ‘Yes, or we’ll have no builders to build nursing homes. And our first Derry builder gets married to a local girl next month - he has no desire to go back, his brother killed in the troubles, his father living in London.’

  Blair noted, ‘A new life, and in a nice place. What are you doing with conservation there?’

  ‘The dam I built pushed back the water, and they estimated that it would create a thin lake going back six miles, which is filling up now.

  ‘When the water started to rise I asked about fish, for future lakeside residents, then we started a captive breeding programme, many thousands of small fish added to the new lake.

  ‘The osprey are endangered, and they eat the small fish, so we’re helping the osprey, and we’ll add many fish species to the lake, we have eagles there as well that catch the fish.

  ‘The east bank of the lake is very rocky, not suitable for houses, so that area will be for horse trails only, humans kept away from nesting osprey and eagles.

  ‘And we hope, when the lake is full, to allow people to go fishing there, the residents, and we’ll bring in sail boats - we’re building a marina and a hotel there, as well as many posh villas.

  ‘So far we literally have hundreds of millions of pounds worth of orders for villas there, but we also plan to build about twenty nursing homes.

  ‘But we do have free electricity and water, so that helps my margins a great deal.’

  ‘It does,’ he agreed.

  ‘The dam we’ve built will supply free electricity to my nursing homes and my hotel,’ I said with a grin.

  ‘You don’t miss a trick when it comes to business.’

  ‘We even sell our sewage.’

  ‘You sell your sewage?’ he puzzled.

  ‘From the nursing homes. It gets dried, then added to dirt to create artificial soil, sold in bags for potted plants. Good soil is hard to find on the island, it’s all rocks.’

  ‘And the magical spring water?’

  ‘Comes from the ground, is bottled, and it makes me millions each month. But the doctors have complained, because our nursing home residents are all full of energy and getting healthier, which is not what a nursing home is supposed to be about.