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his workers before the building even opens.’
    ‘Like he gives a fuck. He’s Russian remember life’s not so much cheap as worthless there.’
    ‘But these are English workers who are dying in these accidents not cheap foreign labour no one gives a shit about. Hasn’t anyone questioned him?’
    ‘Like who, the police? A few accidents happen during the construction of a prestigious new building on the banks of the Thames who cares? Shit happens and besides it’s not as if any of them have been in suspicious circumstances, is it?’
    ‘But there’ve been so many.’
    Hadley shrugged.
    ‘It happens all the time in other countries and no one gives a shit,’ he muttered. ‘Just because it’s happening in London doesn’t make it special.’
    ‘But it’s the way they’ve been happening,’ Jess persisted. ‘Accidents that never should have happened.’
    ‘You’re trying to make a story where there isn’t one, Jess.’
    ‘Well, don’t you think some of the stuff that’s been going on there is a bit weird?’
    ‘You always had an over-active imagination,’ Hadley said, dismissively.
    ‘Bullshit,’ she grunted. ‘More than seventy people have died during the construction of that tower. I think someone somewhere skipped the safety regulations or paid for them to be overlooked. Normally a site would have been shut down with that many fatalities, Unions would never have allowed work to carry on. Someone was paid off, I’m sure of it but how we prove that I don’t know yet.’
    ‘I think that the stuff leading up to the construction itself was weird, I’m not sure about a series of accidents having as much significance as you’re trying to attach to them.’
    ‘What do you mean leading up to the construction?’
    ‘The way Voronov got planning permission so easily when the Mayor of London and half the fucking House of Commons had been so violently opposed to it. Christ, there were even petitions from residents and property owners in the area protesting about the fucking place being built. One day there were ministers all ranting on about how he’d never be given permission to build and the next they were all queuing up to suck his dick, saying what a wonderful addition to the city the building would be and how many extra jobs it would create. That kind of bullshit.’
    ‘So how do you think he got the go ahead? Bribes? Threats? He’s been linked with the Russian Mafia hasn’t he?’
    ‘All Eastern European businessmen are linked with Russian Mafia,’ he told her.
    ‘Do you think he leaned on the right people?’ Jess smiled. ‘Perhaps he made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.’
    Hadley managed a thin smile.
    ‘He did something, whether it was legal or not,’ he told her. ‘Guys like Voronov usually get what they want one way or the other.’
    ‘Didn’t you do a piece on him a couple of years back?’ Jess remembered.
    ‘I met him,’ Hadley told her.

TEN
     
    Jess sat forward in her seat.
    ‘Just the once and with his bodyguards and press agents everywhere,’ Hadley went on. ‘I knew a PR girl who worked for him, she got me in. It wasn’t exactly a candid off the record conversation more a PR exercise when he bought controlling interest in The Ritz.’
    ‘Didn’t he sell that a couple of years later?’ Jess asked.
    Hadley nodded.
    ‘So what was he like?’ she enquired.
    ‘It was a press conference, Jess.’
    ‘But you spoke to him?’
    ‘Me and about a dozen other journos. He didn’t invite me round for afternoon tea you know.’
    Jess smiled and sipped her tea.
    ‘What was he like?’ she wanted to know.
    ‘He seemed ok for a guy who’s been linked with everything from the Russian Mafia to human trafficking. He was born here you know or at least some of his family came from this country originally or at least lived here.’
    ‘I thought he lived in Prague.’
    ‘He did. And Moscow and Warsaw. I think he’s still got places there now as well as his homes here in