‘And with a hundred thousand drivers, and the map software and the Northern-style software to control trucking businesses?’

  ‘Then it pays well enough, yes.’

  I faced the manager. ‘After a month, sit and work out the annual running costs of this place, but we’d trim the costs as we progress, we’d know how many staff we need, probably too many to start.’

  ‘Many of the warm bodies in here are not our staff, the bulk cost being the call centre girls.’

  I shrugged at him. ‘On a wet Monday in January you may need just six girls, so we wait and see. And the two girls you have testing the messages, they’ll go eventually.’

  He nodded.

  ‘So don’t trim the waste yet, just make a note, and then after a month we can trim the waste. What you won’t have in your figures here … is the benefit to the people of this country, so when that has been quantified - and reported in the media - I’ll ask the government for a million quid a year.’

  ‘Worth it for them,’ he noted. ‘We save long queues of traffic.’

  Up the road, I popped into the work house, finding it busy, but the guy dressed like a woman, make-up and all, was a bit freaky. I quietly asked the instructor, a huge black guy, about the transvestite.

  ‘We get all sorts, sent by the courts for community service. Dorris there, he likes a bit of shoplifting for ladies’ clothes.’

  ‘Any trouble?’

  ‘A few want to lay down and fall asleep, some pushing and shoving, some bad words, but they know that if they screw around they go over the road to the hotel.’

  I smiled.

  He added, ‘I tell them: you want a stay at the hotel?’

  Over the road, but not checking-in to the hotel, I met with the manager and his assistant. ‘How are the children behaving?’

  ‘We’re just about full, a waiting list, not too much trouble from the local idiots – they don’t want their stay extended. Had trouble with a guy on remand, but he was facing a long stretch anyhow, little to lose.

  ‘Most of the violence comes from the lady shoplifters and lady druggies, they go nuts. And the medical bay is lively on weekends.’

  ‘When you have a few months data, look at costs and then look to see where you can trim some costs.’

  ‘Now that we’re at capacity we can do the maths and see, but we could drop two guards, we’re a bit top heavy. If they sit in the Command Room and watch the CCTV they can keep an eye out well enough on the soft boys.’

  ‘Is food wasted?’

  ‘Not really, they eat the plate clean usually, no message from the chef of wastage so far, some old bread not used.’

  ‘Any ideas, on cost per day per man?’

  ‘We have a pencil figure of around eight grand a year, not including building upkeep.’

  ‘I want a figure that includes everything, including building upkeep, but not the capital costs of the building. Include average monthly costs for pens and paper and staff bog roll.’

  ‘Then we’d be at around eight thousand seven hundred, we did work it out, got a spreadsheet from Lucas.’

  ‘Government claims it’s twenty grand a year, but I don’t know if that includes any heavy building upkeep costs.’

  ‘The old prisons are falling down, tens of thousands a year in upkeep,’ he noted.

  ‘You went to see the holiday camp…’

  ‘Yeah, and we gave Bill and David our verbal report. It’s big, could hold up to six hundred men comfortably, but you’d need some fences and sections so that they all don’t come together in one place.

  ‘Café is great, but it needs walls, again different sections, there’s a pool, the Ferris wheel is old and rusted, the offices are fine as they are, and the old disco could be indoor five-a-side or basketball.

  ‘The sewage and electrics is enough for a thousand people, so no change to it, just need some fences.’

  Back in the office I sat with David, Lucas and Bill, Glen sat in to simply to listen and learn. ‘The holiday camp towards Coventry seems suited.’

  ‘They want two-point-six million for a quick sale, as is, meaning that we move any crap that we want moved – at our expense,’ David began. ‘And moving the Ferris wheel and the other crap will cost us quite a bit.’

  ‘I met the Grafton Road prison boss, he likes the holiday camp, and he said that it just needs fences and sections.’

  ‘That’s cheap enough,’ Bill cut in. ‘We get a good rate on fencing and barbed wire.’

  ‘Have my uncle put in strong glass walls in the café, three sections with three doors maybe, security glass on the office, then we need a gate hut.’

  Lucas put in, ‘We need six hundred sets of bedding times three, and a few hundred new mattresses plus spares.’

  ‘Ask Rolf about the German supplier, a bulk order, cost it up. How many guards for this place?’

  ‘Based on the existing Nottingham soft prison, I’d say up to forty on the day shift,’ David answered. ‘If we were at capacity.’

  ‘Seems like a lot? Could we have the category sections eat and exercise at different times?’ I asked.

  ‘That would help,’ David responded. ‘Three shift patterns for them. One lot eat breakfast at 8am, one at 9am, one at 10am. And we’d use up a shit load of electricity on hot showers and heating.’

  Bill reacted, ‘Traditional prisons are less affected by snow in the winter, but those huts will be fucking cold.’

  I told them, ‘The Grafton Road Hotel manager reckons on eight thousand seven hundred a year running cost, no capital repaid…’

  ‘Way cheaper than what the Government claims,’ David noted.

  Bill scoffed, ‘Our old prisons need major upkeep - that pushes up the cost, and prison staff have pensions. Those pension payments get added in, and the admin overhead, which is a sluggish bunch of people sat around.’

  ‘Do G4S offer a pension scheme?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ David replied. ‘Opt in, but not much. They don’t pay it out though, they just handle it. All Government institutions suffer with pension payments.’

  I nodded. ‘If we get thirty grand a year per prisoner, then our airfield soft prison will pay off the capital costs quickly.’

  ‘Makes it worthwhile,’ David agreed.

  ‘So … what if we hold prisoners till they’re old and sick and then just slide them across to our nursing homes?’

  My staff laughed.

  I added, ‘And we’ll soon do Three-Phase foster homes, so it’s a cradle to grave approach. Anyway, go ahead and buy the holiday camp, and call it … The Coventry Holiday Camp. Then get a shit load of fencing. Keep the pool for summer use and the pond for fishing.’

  Bill put in, ‘Architect and builders met, they have the plans for the second social home here, a copy of the first one, some changes, and they’ll cut ground soon. And the AIDS hospice is now all dust and shit everywhere as they gut it.’

  ‘Bonza’s uncle?’

  ‘Is doing the houses, yeah, but they’re not too bad. Staff quarters will be designed, and the architect did some drawings for nice apartments overlooking the lake.’

  David put in, ‘The holiday camp has a crèche…’

  Faces smiled.

  ‘Not needed,’ I told him. ‘Find a use for the building, a TV room maybe. I want a cinema in there, pool tables, the men kept occupied and not fighting.’

  ‘A training centre?’ Bill asked.

  ‘Yes, woodwork and brick laying, we’re supposed to offer them the chance to learn a skill, the end of term prisoners.’ I turned to Lucas. ‘Did Marc hire more people for London?’

  He shot me a look. ‘Many more, they go crazy down there, walk-in trade at a thousand units a day!’

  ‘Advertise for an assistant for yourself, a National Rentals Contracts Manager, and an assistant for that guy – or lady.’

  ‘At the moment my assistant at the old units does much of it, but I will find someone, yes. And it is all on computer anyhow.’

  ‘Control it from here in Leicester, copies of databases to Rolf always.’

  He nodded his agreement. My secretary took a call, and Doc Naval was here. We soon welcomed him in, tea and coffee made, Doc Klein sent for, and we had enough seats as Bonza stood behind me listening in.

  Introductions finished, and we all sat apart from Bonza.

  I told Doc Naval, ‘Make sure we cover all your expenses flying around.’

  ‘I got the tickets from Lars down there,’ came in a mild American accent.

  ‘How’s he getting on?’

  ‘Stressed, so many people enquiring about the nursing home, and now they take questions about your holiday village, and they even have a few people asking about Mandoch Valley.’

  ‘And Dave Maurice in marketing?’

  ‘Is flat out busy already. I met him and Michelle at the hotel and we had a chat, now I have an office in the warehouse drug section and a local apartment big enough for my family, but we’ll move again in September.’

  ‘And you’re wife’s desire for a job?’ I pressed.

  ‘She’ll be free in a few months.’

  ‘The first nursing home may be online by then if she wants a job there.’

  ‘She does, and a home named after her.’

  We all smiled.

  ‘So, today, meet everyone here, even the software guys, tell them what you’ll do for us down there, read the nursing home manual and comment on it to Dick, look at the building plans, and then we’ll have a big pow-wow with the local experts.

  ‘But a few things have changed up here -’

  ‘I saw the news down there, the Asian investors and this old power station…’

  ‘They ran that down there?’ I puzzled.

  ‘It’s about you, so yeah.’

  ‘Well we’ve decided to avoid building single nursing homes and to build clusters, pensioners villages as with Corsica, so Battersea might hold ten thousand pensioners, and here in Leicester we’ll house maybe two thousand pensioners.

  ‘In Manchester we’ll hold up to ten thousand to start and then see how it progresses -’

  ‘I had a look at Scorfo, met the Irish managers, and it’s a big place, would take a man an hour to walk the length of it. Some of them have pushbikes now.’

  ‘How are they progressing?’ I asked.

  ‘Lots of drains dug, like four parallel lines right down the length of the valley, and the promenade has been dug out, beach cleaned up they said, but it’s not very inviting yet.’

  ‘It’s winter, so each day brings in more crap washed-up on the beach. But I’ll have rocks dropped, a breakwater two hundred yards out, safe for swimming.’

  He nodded at that. ‘I’ve made start on the drug pipeline, I’m in touch with Ross Daniels every day, and we have a list of what might be needed, and we have a list of suppliers in Italy, so we can bulk buy and store the drugs when ready.

  ‘To start we’ll have just the pharmacies to sell to, four of them, but the other pharmacies found out what we’re doing and are panicking - and offering to join us or to sell out, so Ross will create franchises with six of them, which could become twenty-six very soon.’

  I told him, ‘Every large hotel has a shop, and they sell sun cream, mild drugs and plasters and anti-septic, so by time spring comes I want us dominating that market.

  ‘If a hotel doesn’t have a shop, suggest it to them - that we stock it for them, sale or return. And I want vans on the beaches selling sun cream, plasters, antiseptic, the works, so source the usual beach items and start stocking it by the million.

  ‘I want fifty vans found and bought, and stocked, as well as franchises with all beach shops.’

  ‘Be a good turnover,’ he agreed.

  ‘When the first nursing home comes online you’ll supply the drugs, then a roll out as the others come online. And if you can supply the other nursing homes on the island, do so.’

  ‘In the north there are about fifty, most quite small and expensive, one big one, a few in the city.’

  ‘Contact them all when you have something to sell, get Dave Maurice on it. How are mundane sales at the warehouse?’

  ‘It’s busy, people getting ready for spring, hotel bookings up sixty percent or more. They now sell a shit load of sugar, flour, milk I saw, and the bedding just started, a mound of ten tonnes of bedding was delivered.

  ‘Oh, and I saw tables and chairs, balcony sets, a mountain of those as well, some on display in the shop, talk of a second shop, and they need it.’

  ‘Tell them that money is no object, and to build what they need, we have investors throwing money at us.’

  ‘A week or two from now the Mandoch Valley road tunnel will have its official opening.’

  ‘Remind me, I should be there. And the spring water?’

  ‘Ross says it’s less crazy but still crazy, and my people in Florida created a concentrate of it.’

  ‘How do you concentrate water?’ I puzzled.

  ‘Slow evaporation, so that the heavier minerals remain and some water evaporates. They have a drink now that has a third of the water for the same minerals, but it tastes like metal, so they’ll make it orange flavoured. It has three times the minerals per glass, and they’re testing it on arthritis sufferers now.’

  ‘And if the patient stops using it?’ I posed.

  ‘Many drugs ease the pain, some ease it for a while after you stop taking the drug, but then the inflammation comes back after a week or so.

  ‘My buddies think that the minerals will hang around longer, because they’re not a reactive drug that will be absorbed by the body quickly. Theoretically, the minerals should build up and hang around.

  ‘And my buddies gave a guy four concentrated drinks a day for two days, and they saw a good improvement, no pain drugs used.’

  ‘And if it works, how do we sell it under license?’

  ‘Don’t need a license, it’s just water. The concentrate would have a warning but could be sold without FDA approval.’

  ‘And if it works well, with a long period of pain-free life after they stop taking it...’ I posed.

  ‘Then the concentrate would sell for fifty bucks a bottle, maybe more; the same effect from the drugs would cost twice that. What my buddies reported … was that the mineral mix was like taking a hundred different drug tablets off the shelf, grinding them and dissolving them into a drink.

  ‘It’s a kind of an all-in-one mix, not been seen before, and although the minerals are known about and have been tested at some point, they’ve never been taken in that combination before. This is new ground.’

  ‘So we hope no one has a bad reaction to it.’

  ‘If they ate their greens all day they’d get the same minerals, but in smaller doses. But to get these doses, a human could not eat enough greens. He’d burst.’

  I faced Dick. ‘Have you spoken to those lab people you sent?’

  ‘Last night, and they worry that it’s new and unknown – and unproven; they simply don’t know what effect it will have. But in the doses found in the water it’s harmless, just that this concentrate needs cautious use, and not on kids.’

  Naval replied, ‘My buddies all got waivers signed, and the people using it … they’ll clutch at straws, at least they would if their hands actually worked. These people can’t hold a drink or a pen or a phone.’

  ‘So … how did they sign?’ I asked.

  ‘Video-taped interview of permission with the closest relative present, no signing.’

  ‘Ask your people to ask the test subjects about strong erections.’

  They laughed.

  Naval responded, ‘Most are seventy plus, so if they do get strong erections it will make the news. But there is a mineral present in the water that helps with erections.’

  ‘The Crusaders that landed in Mandoch Valley commended its use. But since the valley only had men and goats…’

  They laughed.

  Naval noted with a grin, ‘The Prefect sold the Demoine treasure…’

  ‘Yes, I got seventeen million quid. And that money will be used to make more money in Mandoch Valley and with the Troleker hotels. Pilgrims still arriving?’

  ‘Airport had queues of them, organised trips, I had to fight my way through the long lines of polite Christians.’

  ‘Where are you staying tonight?’

  ‘Apartment over the road.’

  ‘Just you? It has three bedrooms?’

  ‘Just me for now.’

  I turned to Bonza. ‘You might have to bodyguard him.’

  ‘No problem, but he best stay out the local pubs, a bit lively they are.’

  ‘I’m past my wild days,’ Doc Naval told us. ‘I’m married with kids.’

  I faced Dick Klein. ‘Find him a desk, please, get him up to speed on the nursing homes, but drugs are his main area. Let’s aim for the day after tomorrow for the big pow-wow.’

  People returned to their usual offices, Bonza off to his to keenly study, which was very odd, and not something I would have believed till seeing it.

  Sat again, Lucas began, ‘If you run hotel shops and beach vans it will be a fantastic summer revenue.’

  I responded, ‘We have the imports and the warehouse, so we should make use of them, and make a dollar.’

  ‘More than a dollar, the summer beach trade is huge.’

  A fax arrived from Belfast, a proposal for film funding. I called the number. ‘It’s Roskov.’

  ‘Ah, you got the fax.’

  ‘I was in the office, which is not that common. How much in total do you need, with extras not planned? And cut the crap.’

  ‘We think we can do it all for under a million, it’s all to be set in or around an old school, which we get free use of, and the actors are cheap, no expensive stunts.’

  ‘And my cut?’

  ‘If the movie covers all the costs then the profit would be split, with you getting just about forty percent, the writer getting thirty percent, rest to us.’

  ‘Sounds fair, so send a contract to my guy David Hutton and then make a start, send me the details of a bank account to send the money to.’

  ‘The council said they have money left, from the ten million to clean the city, like seven million still to use.’