After an especially difficult conversation like the one he had just had with Wayne, David Carter liked to clear his head with a tot or two of his favourite whisky. He always kept a bottle in stock back at his apartment, and it was waiting for him when he got home. He had hoped he might still have the place to himself, but Felicia was back, wandering dopily around the place wearing only her silk dressing gown. She gave him a vague greeting and kissed him on the cheek. She looked sort of strung-out, and there was an emptiness in her eyes that usually meant she had been burning the candle at both ends.

"What the hell have you been up to?" he asked. He wasn't angry. He found it funny, if anything. She was his girlfriend, but she was also his number-one customer. The fact that most of her coke was bought with his money was just one of life’s little ironies.

"Oh, seeing a few friends, that’s all," she said.

"A few friends, eh? Charlie? Jack Daniels? Am I in the right area?"

She laughed musically. "Oh, you're awful." Both, in other words. She dropped the dressing gown and disappeared into the bedroom, but David wasn't going to take the bait. He loosened his tie and sat down in his leather swivel-chair in the living room. He looked out at the city skyline, which had never seemed so glorious and inviting. A city ripe for the taking.

The frustrating aspect of this fall-out with Wayne was the knowledge that the lad was right. It was all David's fault. And it could have been prevented. But what Wayne didn't understand was that this was all so much bigger than just a father-son drama. There were many other people involved, some he knew and some he didn't. And none of them were to be fucked with.

Once upon a time, in the dim and distant past when London had been a focal point of the industrial revolution, Silvertown was a thriving foundry. Those days were long gone, and it was finally Thatcher's government who had seen the place shut down for good. Now, it was one of those problematic locations that wasn’t a point of historical or cultural interest, but which was just old enough to make demolition a troublesome prospect. What it really needed was renovation; a complete rethink.

Battersea had undergone something similar in recent years, and there had been muted discussions of Silvertown in council meetings and other community hubs. The problem was a simple one: nobody had the money to make a long-lasting difference to the site. It would be such an immense undertaking, and the profit-yield was by no means a sure thing. Who would be willing to take a risk like that? Enter: David Carter.

David was old enough to remember Silvertown's final days as a working foundry. Back then, its chimneys had plumed grey smoke, and it had looked a bit like a Pink Floyd album cover. David had often pictured the unfortunate souls who slaved away in there day in, day out. He was glad that he would never be one of them. But over time he had fostered an affection for the place. To him, it was a symbol not just of British industry, but of a kind of patriotic nostalgia for a world which had never really existed. David was a sucker for sentimentality when it came to recapturing a lost past. Maybe it was because he had been striving all his life to build something that would last. And here, with Silvertown, was his opportunity to build a legacy that would outlive him. He knew one thing for sure: Silvertown was important; he would preserve it if he could.

But he also wanted to make a lot of money; perhaps that went without saying. And while he perceived a lot of potential in the site, it wasn’t something he could enter into alone. He needed investors. People who trusted him and who had the same vision for the future of Silvertown. Fortunately, he possessed a certain charisma which evinced trust in other people. He had an everyman quality that had enabled him to rise to the top, and which allowed him to attract a slew of like-minded money men.

At the end of the day, what set David Carter apart from the crowd was his ambition. Even after all the achievements he had already attained, he was constantly striving, constantly reaching for something bigger and better. In this case, it was five billion pounds. Five billion is one of those numbers which looks fine on paper, but is almost impossible for the average brain to compute. Imagine having that much money!

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But David’s ambition was a kind of paradox. In spite of his insurmountable quest for more, David really considered himself to be an ordinary working joe, no different from a Starbucks barista or a traffic warden. They all had the same thing in common: they wanted an easier life. Well, when the deal went through it would be easy street for the Carters.

Not just the Carters, though. As well as the official investors – the ones who were listed on the books – David had brought in a few "silent partners," faceless shadow-clients who had taken an interest. Each of them could also look forward to a hefty slice of the pie.

David was a visionary, and he had a vision for Silvertown. Not just houses and apartments, but businesses, retail space, offices, restaurants, entertainment centres... he wanted it all. A self-contained community, a high-class setup. A microcosm of the Carter empire. He was like a prophet. He had seen the future, and the future was Silvertown.

Naturally, the Popovs had taken an interest straight away. Anything David did brought the Russians sniffing around like bloodhounds. But they’d evidently thought he was chancing his arm, because they had decided not to pursue it any further. No doubt they’d hoped it would turn out to be a great white elephant.

Unfortunately for them, that was not the case. It took a bit of perseverance, not to mention blood, sweat and tears (none of them his own) before David could finally seal the deal. But when all was said and done, he was looking at a profit of five billion pounds. Five billion! The number had a magical, almost musical quality to it. Sometimes when he was alone he found himself saying it out loud, as though his unconscious mind could not quite comprehend the magnitude of it. Which, of course, it couldn’t. Five billion! The biggest deal he had ever done, and by far the most lucrative, too.

But with a project like this one, there were so many things to be considered and plates to be spun. There was the political side of things, for one. So there was the question of working out in whose constituency Silvertown fell (there was a surprising amount of debate about this) and once an answer had been reached, ensuring the relevant MP was amenable to the project.

This was the easiest part of the whole thing. MPs may not have had the best reputation, but from David’s point of view, this one was worth his weight in gold. All it took was a discreet briefcase crammed with nonsequential notes to guarantee his willingness to give the go-ahead. That was the part of the business that David liked best because it yielded the most immediate, tangible results. You knew where you stood with councils, mayors and MPs. They were all as bent as a nine-bob note.

It hadn’t been hard to sell the MP on the project. After all, the sudden influx of cocaine users to the area, as well as the propensity of homeless drug addicts to settle themselves down in Silvertown, had not only driven down costs, but had made the place as undesirable as humanly possible. Ripe for gentrification. The locals looked on with horror at the rapid degeneration of their beloved Silvertown, and before long they were practically begging for someone to clean the place up. So when the MP heard David’s proposal, he pounced.

Naturally, David was not the only businessman with his eye on Silvertown. The old factory may not have been pretty, but it was still in the heart of London, one of the most thriving capital cities in Europe. At least, that's the way it liked to portray itself. So a few industrialists, entrepreneurs and property moguls had taken an interest when they saw property prices in the area beginning to drop. But, one by one, they gradually withdrew any prospective offers. These men each experienced a prolonged run of bad luck, ranging from the unfortunate to the outright tragic.

The daughter of one of the property men was found dead in the bath of her Chiswick apartment, poisoned by a tainted batch of cocaine. A tragedy, but also a warning.

Soon the friends and family of all these entrepreneurs, not to mention some of the entrepreneurs themselves, went through a slew of almost biblical misfortunes. There were car crashes, inexplicable office fires, high-profile resignations of key staff members. All that was missing was the plague of locusts.

One by one they all withdrew from Silvertown with their tails between their legs – either voluntarily or by force. Before long, David Carter was the last man standing – just as he had intended.

In a way, it was hubris. Everything had been going far too well for David. He might have known that something would crop up at the last moment. Unfortunately, this latest development – Wayne’s injury – had yielded the worst possible outcome. Not just for Wayne himself, but for David too. All the press surrounding Wayne's injury had brought a lot of unwanted attention, and David's investors were beginning to get nervous. They didn't like the idea of anyone shining a light on their involvement with the Silvertown project. So the deal was to be put on ice for a few weeks. David had smashed a few glasses when he heard about that, but he did it behind closed doors. He gave Felicia an awful fright, throwing expensive whisky up the wall. But by the light of day, he was all smiles. He could wait a little bit longer if he had to. But not too long. He needed to make up for lost time.