You dont want to argue with that tone of voice, Richard chipped in like the Dormouse at the Mad Hatters tea party. Dennis screwed his face up like a man eating a piccalilli sandwich, but he handed over the papers.
It looked like a bog standard lease to me. It was for a shop in the Arndale Center, the soulless shopping mall in the city center that the IRA tried to remove from the map back in 96. As usual, they got it wrong. The Arndale, probably the ugliest building in central Manchester, remained more or less intact. Unfortunately, almost every other building within a quarter-mile radius took a hell of a hammering, especially the ones that were actually worth looking at. As a result, the whole city center ended up spending a couple of years looking like it had been wrapped by Christo in some bizarre pre-millennium celebration. Now it looked as if part of the mall that had been closed for structural repairs and renovation was opening up again and Dennis had got himself a piece of the action.
There was nothing controversial in the document, as far as I could see. If anything, it was skewed in favor of the lessee, one John Thompson, since it gave him the first three months at half rent as a supposed inducement. I wasnt surprised that it wasnt Denniss name on the lease. Hes a man who can barely bring
What I couldnt understand was what he was up to. Somehow, I couldnt get my head round the idea of Dennis as the natural heir of Marks and Spencer. Karl Marx, maybe, except that theyd have had radically different views of what constituted an appropriate redistribution of wealth. I folded the lease along its creases and said, Looks fine to me.
Dennis virtually snatched it out of my hand and shoved it back in his pocket, looking far too shifty for a villain as experienced as him. Thanks, love. I just wanted to be sure everythings there that should be. That it looks right.
I recognized the key word right away. Us detectives, we never sleep. Looks right? I demanded. Why? Who else is going to be giving it the once-over?
Dennis tried to look innocent. Ive seen hunter-killer submarines give it a better shot. Just the usual, you know? The leccy board, the water board. They need to see the lease before theyll connect you to the utilities.
Whats going on, Dennis? Whats really going on?
Richard pushed himself more or less upright and draped an arm over my shoulders. You might as well tell her, Den. You know what they say its better having her inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.
I let him get away with the anatomical impossibility and settled for a savage grin. Hes not wrong, I said.
Dennis sighed and lit a cigarette. All right. But I meant it when I said its not criminal.
I cast my eyes upwards and shook my head. Dennis OBrien, you know and I know that not criminal doesnt necessarily mean legal.
Too deep for me, Richard complained, reaching for another bottle of beer.
Lets hear it, I said firmly.
You know how I hate waste, Dennis began. I nodded cautiously. Theres nothing more offensive to a man like me than premises
Shop-squatting, I said flatly.
What? Richard asked vaguely. You going to live in a shop, Den? What happened to the house? Debbie thrown you out, has she?
Hes not going to be living in the shop, dope-head, I said sarcastically.
You keep smoking that draw, youre going to have a mental age of three soon, Dennis added sententiously. Of course Im not going to be living in the shop. Im going to be selling things in the shop.
Take me through it, I said. Denniss latest idea was only new to him; he was far from the first in Manchester to give it a try. I remembered reading something in the Evening Chronicle about shop-squatting, but as usual with newspaper articles, it had told me none of the things I really wanted to know.
You want to know how it works?
Silly question to ask a woman whose first watch lasted only as long as it took me to work out how to get the back off. Was Georgie Best?
First off, you identify your premises. Find some empty shops and give the agents a ring. What youre looking for is one where the agent says theyre not taking any offers because its already let as from a couple of months ahead.
What? Richard mumbled.
Dennis and I shared the conspiratorial grin of those who are several drinks behind the mentally defective. That way, you know its going to stay empty for long enough for you to get in and out and do the business in between, he explained patiently.
Next thing you do is you get somebody to draw you up a moody contract. One that looks like youve bought a short-term lease in good faith, cash on the nail. All you gotta do then is get into the shop and Bobs your uncle. Get the leccy and the water turned on, fill the place with crap, everything under a pound, which you can afford to do because youve got no overheads. And the
What about criminal damage? I asked. You have to bust the locks to get in.
Dennis winked. If you pick the locks, youve not done any damage. And if you fit some new locks to give extra security, wheres the damage in that?
Doesnt the landlord try to close you down? Richard asked. It was an amazingly sensible question given his condition.
Dennis shrugged. Some of them cant be bothered. They know well be out of there before their new tenant needs the premises, so theyve got nothing to lose. Some of them have a go. I keep somebody on the premises all the time, just in case they try to get clever and repo the place in the night. You can get a homeless kid to play night watchman for a tenner a time. Give them a mobile phone and a butty and lock them in. Then if the landlord tries anything, I get the call and I get down there sharpish. He lays a finger on me or my lad, hes the criminal. Dennis smiled with all the warmth of a shark. Im told you get a very reasonable response when you explain the precise legal position.
I can imagine, I said drily. Do the explanations come complete with baseball bat?
Can people help it if they get the summons when theyre on their way home from sports training? He raised his eyebrows, trying for innocent and failing dismally.
Profitable, is it? I asked.
Its got to be a very nice little earner, what with Christmas coming up.
You know, Dennis, if you put half the effort into a straight business that you put into being bent, youd be a multimillionaire by now, I sighed.
He shook his head, rueful. Maybe so, but where would the fun be in that?
He had a point. And who was I to talk? Id turned my back on the straight version of my life a long time ago. If Dennis broke the law for profit, so did I. Id committed burglary, fraud, assault, theft, deception and breaches of the Wireless and Telegraph Act too numerous to mention, and that was just in the past six months. I
These days, I wasnt quite so sure.
Chapter 4
MOON SQUARES MARS
An accident-prone aspect, suggesting she can harm herself through lack of forethought. She is far too eager to make her presence felt and doesnt always practice self-control. Her feelings of insecurity can manifest themselves in an unfeminine belligerence. She has authoritarian tendencies.
From Written in the Stars, by Dorothea Dawson
Anyone can be a soap star. All you need is a scriptwriter who knows you well enough to write your character into their series, and youre laughing all the way to the BAFTA. Id always thought you had to be an actor. But two hours on the set of Northerners made me realize that soap is different. About tenper cent of the cast could play Shakespeare or Stoppard. The rest just roll up to the studios every week and play themselves. The lovable rogues are just as roguish, the dizzy blondes are just as empty-headed, the salts of the earth make you thirst just as much for a long cold alcoholic drink and the ones the nation loves to hate are every bit as repulsive in the flesh. Actually, theyre more repulsive, since anyone hanging round the green room is exposed to rather more of their flesh than a reasonable person could desire. There was more chance of me being struck by lightning than being star struck by that lot of has-beens and wannabes.
They didnt even have to learn their words. TV takes are so short that a gnat with Alzheimers could retain the average speech with no trouble at all. Especially by the sixth or seventh take most of the Northerners cast seemed to need to capture the simplest sentiment on screen.
The main problem I had was how to do my job. Gloria had told everyone I was her bodyguard. Not because I couldnt come
Besides, members of the public werent allowed on the closed set of Northerners. The storylines were supposed to be top secret. NPTV, the company who made the soap, were so paranoid they made New Labour look relaxed. Everyone who worked on the program had to sign an agreement that disclosure of any information relating to the cast characters or storylines was gross misconduct, a sacking offense and a strict liability tort. Even I had had to sign up to the tort clause before I was allowed into the compound that housed the interior and exterior sets, as well as the production suite and admin offices. Apart from location shooting to give the show that authentic Manchester ambience, the entire process from script conference to edited master tapes took place behind the high walls that surrounded NPTVs flagship complex.
A fat lot of good it did them. Northerners generated more column inches than any other TV program in the country. The fuel for the flames had to come from somewhere, and tabloid papers have always had deep pockets. Theres not a tabloid journalist Ive ever met who couldnt explain in words of one syllable to a nervously dithering source that the NPTV legal threat of suing for civil damages was about as solid as the plyboard walls of Brenda Barrowcloughs living room.
But NPTV insisted on their power trip, and Id persuaded Gloria it would be simpler all round if we were upfront. The downside of being out in the open was that everyone was on their guard. Nobody was going to let anything slip accidentally. If my target was a member of the Northerners team, theyd be very careful around me.