No Place in the Sun (18 page)

Rooney to Giggs.

‘Oh yes, Tommy.’

Giggs back to Rooney.

Yes, Tommy, don’t stop, don’t stop.

He plays it down the field.

Oh yes, Tommy.

Here comes the cross, there’s nobody in the goal.

‘Tom darling?’

‘Yes, Tania.’

‘How much will you charge me to sell the block if I buy it?’

What a question at a time like this. ‘Eight percent, eight percent.’

Goal!

The alarm on his mobile phone seemed to be coming from somewhere far away. His head throbbed and his throat was raw, he was never going to drink wine again. He looked at his watch on the bedside table; it was eight o’clock and he had to get the client to the airport by half past nine. First problem would be to get her up; he turned over in the bed but she wasn’t there. He hadn’t heard her get up; he must have been out for the count.

Tom crawled out of bed and headed for the shower; she wasn’t in the other room either, where the hell had that woman got to?

Five minutes under the hot shower and he felt a bit better; he switched on the coffee machine and got shaved and dressed; the face looking back at him from the mirror was haggard and his eyes were bloodshot. It was true what Walter always said, stay away from the wine and stick to the few pints; it pays on the morning after.

The coffee pot was almost full when the doorbell rang. Tom tapped the intercom button and saw Tania Sherry’s face looking back at him on the small monitor screen; he pressed the key button and let her in.

‘It’s a lovely morning out there; I had a great walk around the area. You live in a classy part of town, Tom.’

‘It’s not bad.’ He wondered at her cheerfulness, she had drunk a lot more than he had, and she was as fresh as a daisy. He wondered whether to mention the fact that they had ended up in the same bed; he was embarrassed and he hoped that nobody ever got to hear of it. Harry and Walter would never let him live it down.

‘Are you ready to drop me to the airport?’ She was all business again; it seemed that she wasn’t going to mention last night.

‘As soon as I finish this coffee.’ And not a minute too soon; it would be a relief to get rid of her and have the day to himself to finish his business in Spain before the evening flight. Just get her to the airport and see the back of her; her and her bloody artificial tits.

The journey to the airport was strained. Tom was studiously avoiding any mention of last night’s transgression, and Tania was talking business as if nothing had happened. He dropped her outside the departures door and took her bag from the back of the car.

They shook hands. ‘Thank you, Tom. I’ll be in touch in a week or so, as soon as I have digested all the information.’

‘Ok, I’ll call you on Monday week.’

He drove back towards Marbella and onwards to Playa Verde, making a mental note as he passed the restaurant to drop in on the way back and pay the bill. It was going to be embarrassing meeting Pepe after the display by that crazy woman last night, but he would have to bite the bullet and do it. He knew that Pepe and his staff were far too polite to even mention the antics of the night before, but he was still cringing at the thought of having to meet them. At least there had been nobody in the restaurant who knew him; that would have been the pits. It was bad enough that Carmen had probably already told everybody in the saxophone bar that he was now sleeping with old women; he knew that the story would have improved with the telling. Carmen would get her own back for being dumped.

Marco was in the site office when he arrived at the site. The developer was happy to see him; Tom and Harry were selling more apartments than he had ever thought possible, and they were already talking of future plans when Playa Verde project ended. He stood up to greet Tom and called an assistant to bring coffees.

‘Tom, I want you to meet somebody. This is Juan Carlos, he is developing a small project just down the road and he would like to speak with you about marketing.’

The older man stood up and extended a hand in greeting. ‘Hola, Senor Tom. It is good to meet with you; Marco tells me many good things about your company.’

Hello, Juan Carlos, I’d be interested to see what you have on offer. We are doing very well with Playa Verde, but it’s always useful to have another string to our bow. What are you building?’

‘Just down the road, Playa Hedor, we make a small project with just twenty apartments, maybe twelve not sold and it is almost completed. Maybe it will suit somebody who wants an apartment immediately, and it is not so expensive also.’

Tom liked the look of the developer, he seemed to be an honest and open kind of guy, and he was obviously a friend of Marco’s. ‘Give me an hour here with Marco and I’ll drop by your site and have a talk, say twelve thirty?’

‘Ok, Ha’ Luego.’

Marco gestured in the direction of his friend’s departure. ‘Nice guy, normally I would say that his problem is his problem, but maybe it’s no harm to help him a little. I think we sell the full project easily anyway, especially if the Irish woman buys the full block. You think she will buy it?’

‘I’m not sure, I’d be hopeful though. I mean, she would hardly have come out here for two days unless she was serious.’

‘Yes, when she is spending her own money to view the project, is not for fun, no?’

‘It wasn’t her own money, it was ours.’

‘Oh, that is not so good, but we live in hope, yes?’

Tom almost drove past Playa Hedor, but spotted the half-hidden sign at the last minute and turned down the gravel drive to the small site office. This was no Playa Verde, no fancy marketing suite and tarmac site roads, but the apartment block was well designed and looked to be well built, low rise and in a horseshoe shape around a small garden with a pool. The landscapers were hard at work, using a mobile crane to hoist large palm trees into position; this would look like a mature site in a matter of weeks.

Juan Carlos led him through the apartment block and pointed out the features of the units. All were well finished, and all had a southerly aspect with views towards the sea in the distance. The place lacked the scale of Playa Verde, and didn’t have the golf course and hotel, but it wasn’t bad at all.

‘This is very good, compares well with Marco’s place, and all south facing. Everyone wants south facing, should be easy to sell these, I reckon. Nice job.’

The Spaniard beamed with pride. ‘I am a small operator, not like Marco, but I am a builder all my life and I like to build good projects.’

‘So, how much do you want for these, and how much commission are you paying?’

‘I think maybe ten percent less per square meter than Playa Verde, and I pay of course the normal two percent.’

Tom smiled. ‘There’s no way we could do it for that kind of money, but maybe we can come up with a plan to get you your money and give us our ten percent.’

‘Ten percent! No, no, Senor Tom, never could I pay this kind of commission; it is most of my profit you understand. No. I am sorry, I can get local agent to sell for me at two percent.’

‘Yes, but they haven’t sold it for you, have they? I think we can solve your problem and also ours.’

The older man shook his head. ‘Ten percent, not possible.’

‘Let me explain my idea.’ Tom was beginning to form a strategy that would give the developer a better price and at the same time provide Sunspots with a decent commission on any sales that might arise. ‘We can market Playa Hedor as an exclusive development, at say twenty percent more than Playa Verde, and we take ten percent of the selling price. You make a lot more money as well.’

The Spaniard rubbed his head in amazement. ‘You really think people will pay so much, this is just a normal project, not exclusive at all; why would people pay more?’

‘People always think that more expensive is better. When I used to sell cars, and we had maybe three cars the same, we always marked one of them more expensive and it always was the one that people wanted. Do you want to try my idea? After all, you are selling these too slowly and you need to clear them out and get on to your next job.’

‘Ok, I try your way. What do I have to do?’

‘Nothing, we will do it all. I’ll take some pictures and you need to give me any artist’s drawings of the project and any other publicity material you have. Also, you must immediately remove the project from the local agent and get him to delete it from his website; we have to have exclusivity and we can’t have it on sale at two prices.’

Juan Carlos smiled broadly. ‘Ok, Senor Tom. We try it your way for three months, but we need sales badly, so do your best please.’

Tom shook hands with the Spaniard. ‘Six months or nothing, but we will sell it, don’t worry.’

The big billboards along the motorway were more frequent than he had remembered from the last time; they advertised new developments all along the coast. There was definitely a surge of new projects coming on stream in the Costa del Sol. A lot of them were now being built out close to the motorway, away from the beach but surrounded by new golf courses. There would be no shortage of product if the demand for Spanish property kept growing.

He braked and turned off at the Calahonda exit; there was plenty of time to spare before the flight and he wanted to check out the timeshare project at Pueblo Alto Blanco, to see if it was nearly finished and whether Alan and his sales team were still working there. A couple of minutes brought him to the narrow road leading up the hill, and he swung the rental car off the road and into the car park of the Pueblo.

The sales office was closed, no sign of Alan, and all the signs had been removed from the windows. The second and third blocks looked to be more or less complete, and the site fence had been moved back to the front of the fourth building. The builders were busy on the site, and Tom was glad to see that all the apartments looked like they would be delivered, and quite soon at that. He peered in through the window of the sales office to see if there might be anyone around.

‘That’s him, that’s one of them.’

Tom didn’t realise at first that the woman was referring to him; he was stepping back from the office when he saw her reflection in the glass. She was rushing towards him, an elderly grey-haired woman in pink shorts and a yellow tee shirt, followed by a woman of similar years in a floral print summer dress who was waddling from side to side as she struggled to keep up with her.

He turned away from the building and looked in astonishment at the woman who was hurrying in his direction. She looked to be in her late sixties, at least, and from her accent it was clear that she was English. She didn’t look too happy.

‘You, you’re the one, bloody crook. I’m getting the police for you, you thief.’

‘Are you talking to me? What are you talking about?’

The woman was breathless from running, and she found it hard to get the words out.

‘You stole. Our money. Thief!’

‘I stole nothing. What are you talking about?’

By this time the other woman had arrived to join them. She was calmer, and she spoke quietly.

‘You sold a timeshare to my sister and her husband, and now he has passed on and she needs to sell it back. She really needs the money.’

‘So, what’s stopping her? I’m not a thief; she got what she paid for didn’t she?’ I don’t like being called a thief. I’m sorry about your husband madam by the way.’

‘Thank you. But what about my money? Will you give it back to me?’

‘I only worked for the company, I don’t know anything about resales, you’ll have to talk to them. I don’t work for them any more.’

‘Stop pretending that you don’t know about it, it was a deliberate crime, the police know about it. You’re all going to jail.’

‘I’m not aware of any crime, we sold fractional ownerships of apartments here, that’s all I know.’

‘You did, and you sold a lot of them twice too. That’s how you swindled us.’

‘Twice? That’s the first I heard of anything like that. Are you serious?’

‘Bloody right I’m serious, sorry for the swearing, but we’ve lost our life savings and I’m going to lose my house in England because I can’t pay the mortgage on my pension. I doubt very much if you don’t know about it.’