Acts & Monuments

by Alan Kane Fraser

  Except that – what if it was all a con? What if no one was watching? Barry had stopped himself from using the cash machine because he’d believed he would be filmed and that someone, somewhere, would see that he had used Christian Malford’s bank card. But what if, actually, no one really cared? What if the police were simply too busy to follow up on all the cases, especially ones where there was little money involved and the bank would pay it back anyway without anyone even bothering to check the CCTV?

  Looked at in that light, using the cash machine to check the balance on Chris Malford’s account – even in the full glare of a CCTV camera – didn’t seem that risky at all. After all, checking the balance was hardly a crime. And the footage would be wiped in a few weeks anyway. In that respect, at least, thought Barry, CCTV is a rather inadequate replacement for God.

  “Do I win anything?” Barry asked, looking at his scratch card in blank incomprehension.

  The young girl scanned it. “Oh, you’ve won £3! Lucky you.”

  Barry took his winnings. He felt like he was on a roll, and so he turned and marched purposefully over to the cash machine. He got Chris’ bank card out of his wallet and quickly checked the grey translucent slip with the PIN on. He keyed the number in and waited. He still hadn’t decided to steal the money – or at least, not all of it – but he wanted to know if the transfer had happened. Just out of curiosity.

  “Please wait whilst we process your request.”

  After what felt like an age, the message eventually changed.

  “Your current balance is: £8.52.”

  Barry’s heart sank. Of course, he knew that the odds had always been against the payment getting through. But, somewhere in his heart, he had believed that maybe – just maybe – it would. In retrospect, it occurred to him that his scratch-card winnings were not an indicator of future good fortune, but were instead a consolation prize. It was typical of his luck, Barry mused, that he would end up with £3, rather than the best part of 50,000. Barry slipped the card back in his wallet and headed disconsolately back to his car.

  He was surprised at how disappointed he was. But, as he thought about it, Barry realised that what he was really trying to do was dispel the belief that had haunted him since he’d been at school and the other kids – the ‘cool kids’ in his class – had taken it upon themselves to flush his head down the toilet for fun. It was this: Barry was a loser. He was so obedient, so compliant with those above him, simply because he recognised that he needed their goodwill in order to survive. He was deferring to them because he recognised that they were winners and he wasn’t.

  He hadn’t got the director’s job, but, for the first time, it struck him that he was never going to get the director’s job at Monument – or the director’s job anywhere. Because people like Barry didn’t win prizes like that in life. Something in the fabric of the universe decreed that they weren’t allowed to. The most they could hope for was a £3 win on a scratch card.

  He turned the key in the ignition of his car and drove off toward home where his wife would be waiting for him. It was enough to make him want to cry.

  Eighteen

  Sally flopped into her chair and sighed. It had been a long day. Jamal, The SHYPP’s concierge, had called her in what felt like the middle of the night to let her know he’d found a body, and she’d come straight in. And here she was, nearly fifteen hours later, still there.

  But, of course, the world had not stopped turning in all that time. Emails had come in, phone messages had been left, post had been delivered – and there, in the midst of all the chaos on her desk, right on top of Sally’s keyboard where she couldn’t miss it, was a handwritten note and some papers with a fluorescent sticky note stuck in the middle marked: “URGENT!” It was from Marilyn.

  Sally,

  I know that you’re busy at the moment and I didn’t want to bother you again, but I didn’t want to leave this over the weekend, so I thought you should know the following:

  1.The invoice from Monument (which you’ve already approved for payment) is officially due for payment at the end of the quarter. We are therefore currently in breach and we only have one calendar month to remedy breaches.

  2.I know we usually wait until the next payment run to pay it, but the new housing director wants to do things differently and is asking for it to be paid as above; i.e. by today!

  3.I couldn’t find the letter you said you’d received, but I’ve checked with Barry and he’s confirmed that their payment details have changed.

  Barry suggested we might want to pay now as Langley could try and use us not paying as an excuse to end the agreement – today is a month from quarter end, so, technically, we will have failed to have remedied a breach within the correct timescale, according to Barry.

  Anyway, I’ve drawn up an authorisation letter for a CHAPS payment to be made. It’s got the new payment details on, from the invoice. I’ve signed it, but it needs your signature too. All you have to do is sign it, scan it and email it over to our bank.

  Obviously, it’s your decision, but I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.

  Have a great weekend. See you on Tuesday.

  M

  P.S. It costs £24, but it’s guaranteed to be there the same day. Barry said it’s your call as to whether you trust Langley or not.

  Sally was annoyed at the prospect of having to pay an additional fee, but her primary concern was the choice posed by Barry – did she trust Langley or not? The answer was obviously ‘not’. He’d always wanted The SHYPP to be managed directly by Monument, and now he clearly thought he’d found a way to achieve that goal.

  Sally quickly checked the management agreement and confirmed that Barry was right. Payment was indeed due in arrears at the end of each quarter. Failure to make payment on the due date was classed as a ‘default event’. Failure to rectify a default event within one calendar month would put the defaulting party in breach of the agreement. As it was nearly 6.30pm and she’d been in the office for fifteen hours, Sally didn’t flick forward to schedule five of the agreement, which detailed what had to happen then. If she had, she would have seen that both parties had to sign up to a long and tedious process of independent arbitration before either party could terminate the agreement. Instead, she concluded that, for once, the normally useless, fat lump from Monument was actually being helpful. Langley was clearly intending to terminate the agreement if he didn’t receive payment forthwith. Sally knew she could try to fight it, but her basic premise in life was to only fight the battles that she had a chance of winning and this didn’t appear to be one of those.

  She carefully checked the details on the CHAPS authorisation against those on the invoice and saw that they were the same. Everything appeared to be in order. Reluctantly, therefore, she signed the authorisation, scanned it and emailed it over to the bank. They’d all have gone home, she realised, but the payment could still be in Monument’s account before Langley had a chance to draft the termination notice, she assured herself. So, as she shut down her computer, Sally felt confident that she’d done enough to thwart Langley’s plan.

  Nineteen

  “Barry, I was wondering if you could come up to see me and Langley. We’re in the boardroom,” Angela said.

  “Right. Sure. Not a problem,” Barry replied, somewhat flustered.

  It had proved to be a long weekend. One of the things that Barry had noticed was that, without Lauren in the house, there didn’t seem much for him and his wife to talk about – apart from the obvious. And she didn’t seem keen to talk about that at all. There was a fragility to their marriage now that surfaced whenever Christopher threatened to enter a conversation. It was as if it were a derelict house and any unauthorised intrusion by their son might cause its sudden collapse. So, they’d finished watching the David Attenborough box set in silence instead.

  But the conversation that Jean had urged Barry to
have with his wife still hadn’t happened. If he were being honest, Barry felt she didn’t seem ready for that kind of talk. Whenever he built himself up to trying to broach the subject, she looked at him with eyes that seemed filled with warnings.

  He’d finally plucked up the courage on Saturday evening to tell her that he hadn’t got the housing director’s job, but had got no further when his wife announced that she was going upstairs. When she didn’t come back down, Barry decided to follow her up to see if they could continue the conversation, but, as he walked across the landing, he heard what sounded like crying. Barry didn’t want to interrupt, so he hurried back downstairs and watched Match of the Day. He hated football, but he preferred it to having to deal with a crying wife.

  October was giving way to November, and its solemn skies spent Sunday soaking Walmley with rain of such ferocity that Barry was pinned inside the house. He didn’t know what to say, and so the day was spent in carefully orchestrated manoeuvring around his wife. The hurried darkness of the late autumnal evening felt as oppressive as the summer heat, and, without the distraction of hope that Friday had provided, there was nothing to prevent Barry from fretting about what might await him at work on Monday morning.

  Now, following Angela’s call, it appeared he was about to find out. He hoped that he was being invited up to talk about his VR application, but, as he made his way to the boardroom, the thought did occur to him that perhaps something had been picked up at The SHYPP and he was being invited in to explain why he had attempted to use Chris Malford’s bank card. His heart was pounding as he entered the boardroom, but, in order not to make himself look guilty, Barry decided to take his anxiety, wrap it up, and shove it behind the sunniest smile that he could manage under the circumstances.

  “Barry, come in. Sit down,” Angela said.

  As Barry sat down, Langley gently swivelled his chair from side-to-side. It almost felt as though he should be stroking a white cat.

  “Is this about my VR application?” Barry asked.

  “Yes it is,” Angela replied.

  That, at least, was good news, but she was avoiding direct eye contact and instead was studying some notes in front of her intently. Even before she opened her mouth, Barry could tell what she was going to say.

  “Well, as you can imagine Barry, we had a lot of good people apply for voluntary redundancy, and we’ve had to make some very difficult decisions.”

  *

  Back at his desk, Barry flopped into his chair and let out a weary sigh. The chair beneath him expelled a wisp of air too, as though sighing in sympathy. Barry would not, it seemed, be leaving Monument under the terms of their generous voluntary redundancy scheme. Of course, Angela had emphasised all the positive things Barry brought to Monument. Langley had been less effusive. He’d merely said that, as there were currently two area manager posts vacant, they needed “boots on the ground at the moment”. He didn’t seem bothered about whose boots they were particularly. But Barry had taken his pointed mention of “at the moment” to be a sign that that his current indispensability was not indefinite.

  The fact that Barry had missed out on £22,000 was bad enough, but things had then got even worse. Langley had explained that he was “not comfortable” with Barry receiving a company car when the other area housing managers didn’t. Angela had added that it was intended that the level of remuneration for the post would allow area managers to provide their own cars and then claim the standard mileage allowance for any business use.

  Barry had asked – politely, he thought – whether the intention, therefore, was to take his company car from him.

  At which point, Angela had quickly cut across Langley and said that “No final decision has been taken as yet, but we are looking to open up a consultation process with you about the issue, and that will be our proposal. Obviously, you will be entitled to present a counterproposal, but we have to consider the affordability of any arrangement to the business, Barry. And we have to be fair to all the other area managers.”

  It was pretty clear what that meant.

  They’d asked him if he had anything to say, but he hadn’t. There was nothing to say – who could argue against the concept of affordability? What counterproposal could Barry possibly table to the principle of fairness?

  So, as he sat at his desk, Barry mentally scanned the horizon of his life for some good news that he could cling on to, but none was to be found. He cultivated his burgeoning sense of grievance, whilst responding to another of Langley’s apparently endless stream of email queries. Everything seemed to be going wrong and it was all Monument’s fault. At which point his phone rang.

  “Barry. It’s Sally here. Sally Hedges.”

  Barry’s heart leapt into his mouth, but he tried to remain calm.

  “Oh, hi Sally. How can I help?”

  “I’ve just phoned to tell you that you’re getting your money today – but I’m not happy.”

  The second part of this comment was not unexpected. But the first…

  “I know exactly what Langley is trying to do,” Sally went on, “and I’ve authorised a CHAPS payment today, solely in order to deny him the satisfaction of achieving it. So tell him he can pull that termination notice out of the post room, if he’s already drafted it.”

  “Well, I’m not sure it’s fair to say—”

  “This is not what we agreed with Neville, Barry, and you know it. It’s not the spirit of the agreement at all. This will cause us real cash-flow challenges, and I will be making that point forcefully to Andrew before the next quarterly invoice.”

  “Right. Well, I’ll be sure—”

  “In the meantime, if you’re going to insist that we pay exactly at quarter end, can you at least issue the invoice in good time, so I don’t have to pay an extra £24? It’s ridiculous that we didn’t even get the invoice until three weeks after the day you say we had to pay by!”

  “Well, I know that’s something that Langley is very keen—”

  “As you know, we’ve got a lot to deal with here at the moment, so, on this occasion, I’m going to give Langley what he wants.”

  “That’s very gracious—”

  “But tell him from me that this is not over – not by a long chalk – so he shouldn’t get any ideas that it is.”

  “Right. I’ll pass that—”

  “Your money will be with you in the next twenty minutes. Tell Langley, I hope he chokes on it!”

  Before Barry had a chance to formulate a response, Sally ended the call.

  He sat in stunned silence for a moment. “Your money will be with you in the next twenty minutes.” Had she really just said that?

  Langley had emerged from his office and was standing by Barry’s desk. “Who was that? It sounded as though you were getting a real ear-chewing.”

  “Sally… Y’know what she’s like,” Barry replied, still in startled disbelief.

  “Oh good, I was going to ask you about that. What’s she said about our payment?” Langley asked with a hopeful look in his eyes.

  “It’ll be with us in twenty minutes.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  Langley ripped up the letter he was holding. “Damn! That’s a shame.”

  And, from the way he said it, Barry honestly thought Langley would rather the money wasn’t going to be there. So he didn’t feel too guilty about the fact that it wouldn’t be.

  Twenty

  Molloy was astute enough to have picked up that PC Ali ‘Bongo’ Khan hated him (although not, it seemed to Gemma, astute enough to have worked out that it was because he insisted on calling him ‘Bongo’). So, he confided in his colleague, he was absolutely confident that Khan would have no hesitation in dropping him firmly ‘in it’ with the boss when he wrote up his report on Shana Backley’s death. Gemma agreed that, although PC Khan didn’t hate her, he would r
egard her as unfortunate, but necessary, collateral damage in his overall campaign to get Molloy into trouble. The two constables had therefore agreed that it was necessary for them to try to submit a report to their boss before PC Khan did. They would be absolutely open about what they had discovered and be clear that they had headed over to The SHYPP to question Adam Furst as soon as they reasonably could. It was just a matter of whether Inspector Davis would interpret the forty-eight-hour delay between receiving the CCTV footage and actually attending The SHYPP as a missed opportunity to arrest Adam Furst – a missed opportunity that had contributed to Shana Backley’s untimely death.

  “So, you mean to tell me that you are given CCTV footage showing a known felon and suspected drug dealer leaving the flat of a man who you know subsequently died of a drug overdose, and you didn’t think to go round and interview him for forty-eight hours?”

  It appeared that they had their answer.

  “No, sir,” said Gemma after a long pause, during which it became apparent that Molloy wasn’t going to say anything.

  “To be fair, sir,” Molloy said, “we hadn’t received any toxicology reports to confirm—”

  “He was found with a bloody needle in his arm!”

  “PC Molloy suggested going round on Thursday, sir, but I was due in court. We went round as soon as we came on shift on Friday.”

  Having provided some cover for Molloy, Gemma hoped that he would return the favour and explain that she had suggested that they go round to The SHYPP immediately on the Wednesday afternoon. It was to prove a forlorn hope.

  “That’s right, sir. I wanted to go on the Thursday, but PC Rathbone said she wasn’t available, so we couldn’t get there until the Friday, sir. It wasn’t until we got there that Bongo told us—”