temporal o mores!’
‘What!’
‘What times! What customs! You know the super-rich and all that.’
‘You’ve been reading again Pat.’
Kennedy was too thick skinned to be touched by Fitzwilliams’ sarcasm. On the
other hand it was true that Kennedy was becoming more pensive, perhaps even a
little bookish, spending more time trying to reflect on what it was really all about.
‘Not only that, you’re not exactly poor either.’
‘Fitz!’
‘Forget it Pat.’
‘I’m talking about Ronny Gould’s new development on Cheney Walk.’
‘Ah.’
‘Top of the market apartments for the very rich.’
O
‘Why, you’re thinking of buying one?’
‘Out of my range Fitz. The penthouse is going for over one hundred million.
More suitable for Sergei.’
That afternoon Kennedy had attended a press conference Gould had called to
keep the media up to date with his projects. The event commenced with an open
bar for cocktails to get journalists in a good mood before Gould made his entrance.
When the PR man judged the moment right, he step onto the dais, lifted his hand
for silence, and the property mogul appeared.
As always impeccably dressed, he wore a Savile Row suit cut by Spencer Hart
and Richard James and sported handcrafted Berluti shoes. His eyes swept across
the room filled with a crowd of fawning journalists. He was like a Roman emperor,
about to announce another of his unquestionable edicts, before his captive court.
He smiled, his lips opening to display two rows of perfect whitened teeth, which
one journalist was to describe as those of a shark.
The hard-headed tycoon was known as astucious investor with an almost
infallible ability for timing. Follow Gould if you could, went the saying, because
when he moved it was a sure signal to follow suit. The project he announced was
of an entirely different nature to his Gould Tower landmark development in the
City. Chelsea was the home of the fashionable elite and Gould’s Cheney Walk
Gardens development was designed with their lifestyle in mind.
At the head of a multi-billion pound portfolio one could say Gould had come a
long way, and his humble beginning in the East End of London was a constant
reminder to him. His property empire stretched from London to Hong Kong and
Cheney Walk Gardens was just an addition to the long list of his prestigious
developments in central London.
The esteem of those who knew Gould well was tempered by a mixture of
admiration and fear. Behind the glamour of being a successful tycoon were his
brutal methods, a way of doing business that paid. He had learnt to use coercion on
the hard way up, when he used men like Sid Judge and George Pike to do his dirty
work; little had changed, though he was careful to cultivate a generous public
image, concealing the less savoury aspects of his business from public scrutiny.
He had not hesitated to accept the money of doubtful petro-dollar dictators to
finance his schemes; for Gould there was no such thing as dirty money. However,
as he became one of the City’s success stories, he was forced clean up his game, to
the begrudging admiration of the financial establishment. As Cool Britannia
blossomed under New Labour led by Tony Blair, Gould turned his attention to the
prospects offered by Middle Eastern potentates and Russian oligarchs, who flocked
to London as the City opened a perspective of vast investment opportunities with
few awkward questions.
Sensing the coming boom he hitched his wagon onto that of Blair’s, building a
vast property empire essentially run from Monaco. Gould like others took
advantage of the boom years whilst paying as little taxes as possibly, always one
step ahead of the Inland Revenue services. Admired and condoned by the City
press, he was in reality nothing more than a robber baron reaping the rewards of
tax-exile status and indulging in the pleasures of his eighty metre yacht, moored
alongside that of Tarasov’s in Monte Carlo.
Gould’s London apartment overlooked the west side of St James’s Park. A triple
Georgian town house, a stone’s throw from his London base in Victoria Street,
remodelled with a basement pool, wine cellar, panic room and CCTV surveillance.
His motto, paraphrased from the words of one of founders of Rolls Royce, Sir
Henry Royce, was: ‘Strive for perfection. Take the best. When it does not exist,
build it.’ It was the case for Gould Tower.
At sixty, the planned City landmark was to be his crowning achievement.
However, the crisis had threatened to put a brake on his plans, that is until he was
seen cosying up to Saif Gaddafi in Montenegro; it was rumoured that the newly
respectable Libyans were investing in his project via one of their offshore façades.
Access to capital was one of the keys to success of his opaque business structure,
and as always, when it came to the crunch, he was not too particular about where it
came from.
From Monaco, Gould managed a number of offshore companies situated in the
Caymans, the British Virgin Islands and Gibraltar, which he used to channel capital
into his different projects. The financing arrangements for the Gould Tower site
was initially planned through an Icelandic bank, in what had been touted as one the
largest property transactions ever undertaken in the City. However, when Iceland
went belly-up, he was forced write-off the losses and turned to an offshore fund
based in the Caymans, rumoured to be controlled by the Gaddafi family. For the
construction of the tower itself was financed by a pool headed by the INI
Europa Property Fund.