No Place in the Sun (38 page)

‘You see, you’re starting to tell the truth now. I bet you never told that to anyone outside the business before now.’

‘You’re right. I’m not sure why I told you.’

‘That place we stopped, it’s beautiful. I gather that you’re going to sell property there. It shouldn’t be hard to sell that and tell the truth as well. I mean, it’s a fabulous location, and anyone who buys it will see that as well.’

‘Depends on the price though, doesn’t it?’

‘I always heard that something was worth what someone was willing to pay for it, no more and no less. Any buyer that gets a place there will love it though.’

‘I guess so, I wouldn’t buy there myself, but I could see how others might be tempted.’

The woman stood up and gathered her belongings. ‘I have to go; the bus will be here in five minutes. Thanks ever so much for the lift, the car was lovely and comfortable.’

‘It was very nice to meet you, Pauline, have a good holiday.’

‘And you mind yourself, and remember what I told you, truth sets you free. Try it.’

She turned and waved as she joined the crowd of people filing on to the ancient bus. Tom waved back and got into the front of the Mercedes. The car was cold, almost too cold. Haddad sat upright and put on his seatbelt. ‘We go?’

‘Yes please.’

The driver paused as he faced the car out of the dusty parking lot. ‘We have plenty of time; do you want to see other places?’

Tom looked at his watch. ‘Is there anything else to see around here?’

‘Not really, but if you like....’

‘Where does that road go, if we turn right?’

‘No place, at the junction over there the right turn goes into Tyre, straight on goes to the border with Syria; you can go all the way to Damascus if you have time, but who would want to go there?’

‘And the other way?’

‘Back to Beirut.’

‘Ok, let’s head that way, back to the airport.’

The show was starting to fill and Andrew was panicking. ‘Did you see Tania, Tom? There’s a TV crew here.’

‘Leave it with me, Andy, I’ll find her.’

Tom called Tania’s private mobile number; it answered after two rings.

‘Something urgent?’

‘The place is hopping, Tania, are you far away?’

‘I’m in the hairdressers; what’s the panic?’

‘You were in the hairdressers yesterday.’

‘I’m in the hairdressers every day, Tom, I have to look my best for my media appearances. You don’t want my roots showing, do you?’

‘There’s a TV crew here, doing a piece for the evening news about property, do you want me to handle it?’

‘Tell them to wait for an hour.’

‘Don’t be daft, Tania, these guys want to get in and out and get the item done; they won’t hang around. Is the hairdresser far from here?’

‘I can’t get there in less than an hour. You’d better do the piece yourself, but be sure to mention me.’

‘Ok.’

The camera crew looked bored; they wanted an interview and they had a list of questions already written in big letters on a pad on the clipboard that the young assistant was waving about. ‘Can we speak with your spokesman Mr. Murphy? We need to get this in the can in the next ten minutes; there’s a statement from the agriculture minister due in half an hour and we have to cover it.’

‘Ok, I’ll do the piece for you; Doctor Sherry is detained in a meeting and won’t be here for an hour.’

The cameraman clicked the legs of the tripod into place and focused on Tom as he sat behind the desk. The assistant wasn’t happy.

‘No, not there, over here in front of that big display, the pictures of the Spanish things.’

The cameraman raised his eyebrows; he moved his equipment and resumed focusing. The reporter peered into the lens and squinted at her image on the tiny screen as she touched up her makeup; she began to read the page that the assistant was holding up behind the camera.

‘We’re here at the Scorpio Properties investment seminar, and we’re looking at the phenomenon of Irish people investing abroad. Hold the fucking thing up where I can see it, Meghan.’

The assistant sighed in an exaggerated manner and held the clipboard higher, and the reporter started again.

‘We’re here at the Scorpio Properties investment seminar, and we’re looking at the phenomenon of Irish people investing abroad. At a time of unprecedented wealth in the country, is it the right strategy for us as a nation that we should invest so much of our hard-earned cash abroad? I’m here with Tom Murphy, sales manager of Scorpio Properties. What’s your view, Tom?’

Tom was tired; it had been a long week with all the travelling and he wasn’t in the humour for all this nonsense. For some reason, the words of the girl he met in the Lebanon kept interrupting his thoughts. ‘Tell the truth, it will set you free.’

He looked at the camera. ‘It might be a good strategy, and then again it might not. Maybe it’s not for everybody.’

The reporter was thrown by his answer, but she stuck with her list of questions. ‘So, where is the best place right now for an investor, what will give the best return?’

‘Hard to say. Spain maybe, that’s still doing ok, more or less.’

‘And Bulgaria, Scorpio is the biggest Irish company operating in Bulgaria. What about these ski apartments in Malko, in Bulgaria, how do you rate these as an investment?’

Tom was still stuck in truth mode; he was finding it hard to lie to the reporter. Maybe the woman was right; if you told the truth then people would trust you and buy lots more from you. He looked back to the reporter.

‘They’re all right, I suppose; if you like skiing they’re fine.’

The reporter was in a dilemma; this wasn’t going according to the script, but she had to get the minister’s statement and time was passing. She decided to stick with the list of questions on the pad. ‘So, overseas investment is definitely the way to go for us as a nation, it’s the best strategy for personal and national wealth creation going forward?’

‘Not necessarily, but some of it is probably ok.’

‘Thank you, Tom. And there you have it. This is Kerry Miles here at the Scorpio Properties investment seminar, and now it’s back to you, Jerry.’

What the fuck were you thinking when you said all that shit? Have you lost your fucking marbles?’

‘Don’t you see, Tania, if we tell people where the bad stuff is, we can sell them the good stuff and they’ll trust us, we’ll have an edge on all the other outfits.’

‘I really think you’ve lost it. What good stuff for fucks sake? Surely you of all people know that ninety nine percent of what we sell is absolute shite?’

‘Not all of it, Tania, be fair.’

‘Tom, you know yourself that we have puffed up the prices of everything we sell by a huge margin. If any of our customers were to try to resell anything we sold them, assuming they could sell it at all, they would lose half their money. You know this; you were the one that created these rental products.’

‘They’re not all bad, some of them are ok.’

‘Some of them are worse than others, you mean.’

‘Well yes, I suppose so. Malko is absolute rubbish, I’ll give you that.’

‘Of course its rubbish, but it’s the place that’s paying you and me a shed load of money every week; it’s still our big banker and the mafia doesn’t have a slice of it either. You need to keep your focus and start shifting it again; that news report is going to do us damage.’

Tom sighed. ‘Ok, I admit that it might have been an error of judgment, maybe I’m getting cynical about the whole thing.’

‘Maybe it’s time that you weren’t involved?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Maybe you’ve come to some kind of a crisis, losing your bottle for this game. I can manage fine without you, I can do the business with Mickey as the front man, and Andrew can manage the sales, he’s doing most of it anyway.’

‘You want to get rid of me?’

‘Now that you put it that way, yes. We’ve been having one disagreement after another the last few weeks. Yes, let’s just call it a day before we start having a war with each other.’

‘Just like that?’

Her voice softened a little. ‘No, Tom, not just like that, but let’s say you stay with us for the rest of the show this weekend, and I’ll give you a very generous severance payment, just to show that there’s no hard feelings.’

‘How generous?’

‘I’ll give you the entire take on this weekend’s show, the whole nine yards. Every penny of profit we make between now and Sunday, and everything we made this afternoon, it will all be yours. You just have to sign a contract that you’ll stay out of the business for at least two years; I don’t want you working for Harry again, or even for someone like Simpson.’

Tom felt a sense of relief. It would all be over; no more looking over his shoulder and worrying about having it all crashing down on him. He was still shocked at how things had turned out, but maybe it was all for the best.

‘Tania, you have a deal. I’ll give it my best shot tomorrow and Sunday, and then I’ll walk away. You can do what you like with it all after that.’

It had been a hell of a long day. Tom’s heart wasn’t really in it, but he knew that he had to get as much money on the meter as possible in order to give himself a good paycheck. He still had a feeling that if he could somehow tell the truth to people, he could convince them to buy the better projects and ignore the rubbish like Malko, but that strategy didn’t seem to be working. Business was down on previous weeks, and the people who did come to the show had all seen the piece on the news the night before. They had questions to ask.

‘Are you sure that this place is worth buying?’ The woman was suspicious of the sales pitch.

‘Of course, madam, we wouldn’t be selling it otherwise.’

‘I saw you on the news last night; you didn’t seem too enthusiastic yourself. You said it was all right if you liked skiing yourself.’

‘But that’s true, I would like to think that buyers would buy there with a view to getting some use out of it sometime.’

‘Use it myself? Do you really see me on a pair of skis?’

‘Why not?’

The woman snorted. ‘I can hardly walk with my weight, not to mind ski. Anyway I have no interest in going somewhere that’s that cold; I’d rather go somewhere warm.’

‘Then can we interest you in something in Spain? It’s warm there.’

‘I thought that Bulgaria was warm.’

‘It is, but Spain is warmer still.’

‘I don’t like it too hot. I get a rash.’

‘Then maybe you’d like something in Sunny Beach North; we have a few left there, and it’s close to the beach.’

The woman rose from the chair. ‘I’ll think about it, I’m not so sure at all.’

Andrew caught Tom’s eye from across the room. He tapped his watch; it was time to call it a day. Tom gathered his papers from the desk and stuffed them into his briefcase; one more day of this, then freedom. It felt good in a way, but he would miss it too.

The girl with the buggy and the little boy was talking to Andrew as he was trying to close the door. She wore blue jeans and a leather jacket, and the boy was trying to wriggle his way out of the straps in the pushchair. Andrew let her pass and she strode purposefully towards Tom.

‘Sorry, we’re closed for today.’ Tom had enough, he wanted to catch up with the lads in the Willows and get a couple of pints inside him.