by David Cooper
Wayne Friday 15th March @ 17.23
Hi babes, strictly in confidence, if I jumped and set up on my own, how about joining me? Reckon I can make it happen sooner than you’d think. Golden future and all that. Guess you’re still at work, but give me a call later. Not a word to K, of course : - ) Wayne
Me Friday 15th March @ 17.56
Wayne, you’d better do whatever you think is right for you, but I’m happy where I am. Just leave me in peace, and don’t be unfair to Karen. Have a good weekend. Dawn
Wayne Friday 15th March @ 23.41
Respect babes, your choice. Always a place with me if you change your mind. So much happier now that I’ve decided to go it alone – eating again too, pizza and Stella of course. Decent night’s kip ahead thankfully. As ever, you’ll know some things must stay strictly between you and me (oYo) Wayne
* * * * *
The last line made Karen sit bolt upright, lost as she had been in the struggle to reappraise what she had assumed all along to be Avery’s impulsive decision to jump ship. She was familiar with the world of emoticons, even those of a more earthy nature, but never expected to see anything of that kind on an exchange of text messages where one of the participants was her long trusted PA.
“Dawn, I don’t want to pry, but what’s that about?”
There was an uneasy silence before Dawn found her voice once more.
“Let’s just say that on that night at my house, before I hit him, my blouse had come unbuttoned. Don’t get me wrong, just the blouse. But it was how he caught me off guard. Next thing I knew, amid all that wine, he’s got his left arm round my shoulders and…”
Karen knew better than to interrupt, as Dawn took a deep breath.
“…he whips out his phone and takes a selfie.”
“Oh God.” Karen gaped, expecting Dawn to dissolve into tears. But Dawn quickly regained her composure.
“Yes, that’s why I belted him. Then he promised the very next morning that he’d erased it. But when I saw that text, I knew damned well that he’d lied to me. Him and his electronic tricks. Thinking he’d always have something hanging over me. Something to make me toe the line, and not breathe a word to you about these texts. Well, he guessed wrong. Brian still doesn’t know about that night. But if it comes out now, so be it. I’ll give him back as good as I get. I only wish I’d belted the little shit a lot harder than I did.”
“You and me both. I think we’d better stop getting mad and start trying to get even. Let’s think. How about forwarding all those texts to me first. Then let’s put the phone on the copier and see if we can blow up a screen shot as well. I’d better give Lennie a call…”
“Just a minute, there’s something else that you might want to take a look at.”
“What’s that? Not more texts?”
“No, let me just find it.” Dawn reached into the bottom drawer of her desk, finding a plastic wallet with some sheets of paper inside. “This is a copy of Wayne’s desk diary.”
“Are you serious?” Karen’s mind raced once more at the thought that she might be on the verge of finding something else useful. “How did you get that?”
“First thing on that Monday morning, I deliberately came in half an hour early. After that last text message, I just wanted something I might be able to use as leverage against him, if that selfie was ever to see the light of day. Only trouble was he’d locked his desk and the cabinets. All I found was the diary, right on top of the desk. I thought there might be something in it that he hadn’t put in the intranet diary. So I copied the lot. I don’t think there’s much in it, though.”
“Only one way to find out.” Taking the set of copies, Karen flicked through them in reverse order until she found the final entry.
11th April, 10.00. Dale R, Matthews Carter, TBC.
“I reckon that’s the last defector. Dale Rider. Looks like an interview.”
In the meantime Dawn had called up the intranet diary on her screen.
“Yes, that one’s been entered here too. Last Thursday.”
“And of course I haven’t heard a word about that, assuming it happened. If it did, Wayne obviously sweet talked the interviewer after he’d sweet talked Dale Rider.” Karen read on. “How about Rod Hillier, WMD, 27th March at 5.00? New one on me, can’t be weapons of mass destruction…”
“Nothing to match that one. Let’s find the candidate file entry…” Dawn struck a few more keys. “Only an initial signing up interview here for Rod Hillier, ten days before Wayne quit. Solicitor, insolvency law specialist. Nothing else. I’d better check whether our terms have been signed.”
“Wonder if he’d deleted any entries before that Thursday? He couldn’t have erased anything after then. I put a stop on all his permissions, just in case.” Karen continued to look through the pages. “God, it’s pathetic. He really didn’t have much work on at all…right, what’s this?”
Karen pointed to the entry that had caught her eye, two days along from the large black smear that appeared to indicate an overzealous crossing out on the Tuesday of that week.
14th March. 2.00. P.C. BASTARDS
“What on earth’s that?”
Following the direction of Karen’s pointing finger, Dawn read the inscription in bold capitals.
“Haven’t a clue.”
“Nor me. If it wasn’t so serious, I’d ask myself why he was interviewing a policeman with such an unfortunate name.”
Dawn laughed weakly, before a further thought occurred to her.
“That date, it’s the day when you broke the bad news and gave him the rest of the day off, isn’t it?”
“Yes, you’re quite right. And he said he didn’t have anything on at the time, so it can’t have been…no, I’ve no idea.” Karen finished reading the remaining copies. “Not much the wiser. At least we’ve got that Dale Rider entry. I’d better get these over to Lennie too. And there’s something else about those texts.”
“What’s that?”
“Remember the card you showed me, the one that came with those flowers? If it was from Wayne after all, he must have been really offended that you’d turned him down. Fancy saying ‘thanks for all your help’ and ‘love to meet up again’. Sarcastic creep.”
* * * * *
Not for the first time since restarting his legal career, Craven found himself facing another difficult situation. He had again been on the receiving end of what he felt to be unjust and undeserved criticism, this time from a client.
Early that morning, the MDV Precision Midlands expert report had arrived, in the form of an advance pre-publication copy. The expert was asking for a final clerical review before signing off the report ahead of the service deadline.
In the course of carrying out this exercise, and copying the draft to the clients for their own scrutiny as the expert had requested, it had not been lost on Craven that the report was far from favourable to the client’s case. Evidently the components they had supplied were likely, on balance, to have fallen short of the required specification. Over and above this, the expert’s analysis of the client’s production records had led him to conclude that corners had been cut, whether accidentally or knowingly. It seemed entirely natural to Craven, especially as the technical background had been of great interest to him, to pick up on those conclusions in his forwarding email to the client.
It came as a shock to Craven to see how badly the client’s production director had reacted. The scathing initial comment, that he was perfectly capable of reading the draft for himself, had given way in turn to a diatribe about how much had obviously been missing from the firm’s instructions to the expert. He had gone on to demand an explanation from Craven as to why they had engaged such a disloyal expert rather than a team player. He had finished by proposing that a number of items within the report should be ‘toned down or sexed up’.
For his own part, Craven knew very well that an expert’s ultimate duty was to the court, not to the lay client. If the case was weak, the expert could
not be expected to brush that uncomfortable fact under the carpet. And the contemporaneous letter of advice that Caroline Shore had sent to the client, when the court had first ordered that expert reports were to be obtained, had made those very points, although not as clearly and comprehensively as Craven himself would have preferred.
He felt a sharp sense of injustice. The production director’s forceful view that the report’s conclusions were not what he had wanted to hear was bad enough. But the fact that he had gone on to treat Craven as the nearest convenient scapegoat was particularly hurtful. Craven’s unease was all the more acute following the news that Caroline Shore had gone off sick that morning, amid suggestions that she might not now return to work at all with her official maternity leave date coming ever closer. And he was equally troubled by Squire having made it plain to him an hour earlier that he did not want to become involved.
As he sat at his desk, wondering how best to go about approaching the short tempered corporate partner who had slapped down his concerns about the firm’s costs exposure, there was a tap on the open door. He looked up to see an unfamiliar face.
“Are you Paul Craven?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“You won’t know me. I’m Jackie Browning, from property. Ruth Gough’s assistant.”
Craven’s visitor offered her hand. Despite feeling put out at the interruption, even he could appreciate that her manner was a lot more warm and friendly than he had encountered from many of the new colleagues he had met over the previous two weeks. He half rose, shook hands and awkwardly sat down again, only to be thrown off balance by her next remark.
“Cheer up, it might never happen.”
“What - what do you mean?”
“You don’t look very happy. Don’t you like Mondays either?”
“No, it’s not that, it’s just a work problem. I’ll cope.” Craven pointed to the MDV Precision Midlands file in front of him.
“Fair enough.” Jackie was still smiling. “I think you can help me. I’m looking for the file of copy deeds on Dillingford Hall. The Mansells’ house.”
Craven realised that she was referring to another of his problem cases, this time the neighbour dispute. He had thankfully not been troubled with that one again ever since his first faltering attempts to advise the clients about the proposed joint meeting of experts on site.
“It should be up on that shelf.” He pointed to a row of lever arch files. It did not occur to him to ask why Jackie was looking for it, but she spared him the need.
“I’ve been asked to look at the scope of an easement across the grounds. Something to do with utilities. Nowhere near the dodgy boundary.” She found the file, and lowered her voice. “Between you and me, and strictly off the record, I think they’re right up themselves. Too much money, not enough sense.”
“Who?”
“The Mansell family. It’s just another world. They behave like landed gentry, and all they’ve done is coin it in from mobile phones and phone cards. Fraser Mansell used to be Sid Mansell when he was still in his council house. You can take the man out of Oldbury, but you can’t take Oldbury out of the man.”
The aphorism was a mystery to him, but Craven could just about work out what Jackie meant. It seemed to tie in with his own views of what was fuelling the neighbour dispute.
“It’s interesting you should say something like that.” He explained why he thought his clients were acting in such an obstinate and senseless way over issues he believed to be trivial. “It’s not the kind of case I’ve ever had to deal with before.”
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” Craven nodded in answer to Jackie’s question. “Where are you from?”
“Stafford. I used to work in Stoke on Trent, but my firm was taken over.”
“I’m not that far away. I live in Lichfield. How do you find the trains?”
They chatted for a few more minutes, until Craven realised that he had not yet decided what to do about the MDV Precision Midlands file and the downbeat expert evidence.
“Er…I don’t want to be rude, but I think I need to deal with this file before I go home.”
“That’s OK. I’ll catch up some other time.” Picking up the binder of property deeds, Jackie turned to leave. “See you around.” Her smile on this occasion did not pass unnoticed, and for almost the first time in two weeks Craven felt a touch of disappointment that someone had left him on his own in his office.
Tuesday 16 th April
“Hello, Gemma, I’m Karen. Pleased to meet you at last.”
“You too. Sorry about that Friday. Just one of those things.”
It was not at all unusual for Karen’s meeting with her new candidate to be taking place at seven thirty in the morning. Sometimes her clients would be reluctant to use up precious holiday entitlement for interviews, or to contrive a medical excuse, or simply to take a chance on not being noticed when missing. The lunch hour was frequently a means of solving the problem. But this particular candidate was based in Edgbaston, two miles away, and had decided not to push boundaries by coming down to the city centre on a pretext during the working day, even though she was already working her notice.
Karen looked at the updated CV that Gemma Gabriel had forwarded by email a day earlier, and felt a brief stab of annoyance to see that her current employer was the Lewis Hackett division of BLH Solicitors, so soon after the court defeat that the firm had inflicted upon her on Avery’s behalf. But she quickly banished the thought and decided to tackle Gemma’s ideal future role first, taking detailed notes of her particular skills and experience in the practice area. Eventually Karen asked what had led her new candidate to engage Ripple’s services in the first place.
“I’d been told to relocate to the city centre and answer to a new boss. Seb Finnie, by name.” Karen nodded. “I didn’t like the sound of him. One of these whizz kids who made it to partnership not long after he’d qualified, all because he could work the rooms and suck up to the movers and shakers. No real talent other than being in the right place at the right time.”
“I take your point. We all know the kind.” Karen was well aware that many of the major city centre law firms had partners within their ranks whose mediocrity as lawyers was balanced, if not wholly outweighed, by their ability to win new clients. Not that they would then admit that keeping those clients would, before long, be just as much down to the juniors who ‘did the grunt work’ from then on. “I doubt that you’ll have any interview problems with that, as long as you put it discreetly.”
“Fair enough. Anyway, they said my relocation was only going to be temporary, but in truth it was all part of a merger. We’d pretty much outgrown our Edgbaston office, and Bastards had an option on two extra floors…”
“Bastards?” Karen was taken aback. Not only for the unexpected description of the other firm, but also because of something else…what was it? Of course, the conversation with Dawn yesterday about that diary entry…
“Oh, sorry, I mean Bastables. Long standing in joke at Birmingham Young Solicitors. Haven’t you ever heard of it?”
“No, I can’t say I have…” Karen tailed off again as an unpleasant thought from the not too distant past drifted into her mind, then recovered as she noticed her candidate’s puzzled expression. “So that’s who Lewis Hackett were merging with? I must have missed it. I’ve never dealt with Lewis Hackett…”
“Yes, that’s right, and Bastables was the place where Seb Finnie was all set to get his claws into me. Not. And I didn’t see how I could stay put at Lewis Hackett when I’d have burnt my boats ahead of the merger…”
Twenty minutes later, Karen had concluded what she felt was a reasonably successful interview, despite the involuntary distractions. She already had some ideas for at least two discreet approaches to firms with a view to finding her latest candidate a new role. As she stood to open the door, she could sense that Gemma herself was pleased with the interview.
“So how did you find out about us?” Karen as
ked.
“You were recommended. You’d helped one of my old friends from law college. That’s why I stuck with you when I got the cold call from Wave Recruitment, rather than switch to them.”
Karen almost dropped her notepad on the floor in her amazement.
“You had a call – from Wayne Avery? My ex-employee? When was that?”
“Oh, some time just before Easter.” Gemma replied. “He was really persistent. Said he knew I was unhappy where I was, and how much I could benefit from giving him exclusive rights to promote me to the recruitment market. He got really uptight when I refused to give him my private email address. I just hung up on him in the end. I couldn’t believe how he’d found out about me, and how he’d managed to get my mobile number. Or why he was calling. Did I tell you why I cancelled the meeting I’d fixed up first time around?”
“No, we didn’t speak. I only had a message from my PA.”
“I’d decided to take a career break. Go to Australia for six months with one of my best friends. I only changed my mind when she got cold feet and dropped out.”
“Can I ask you a favour?” Karen quickly explained how her dispute with Avery had already led to a court appearance. “Can you put all that in an email? He’s not supposed to have approached you anyway, but it’s far more serious if he’s been stealing my data.”
“I guess so. I’d rather keep out of it, but he really did get on my nerves.”
Having shown Gemma out, Karen was soon back at her desk. She decided to tackle her latest candidate’s future employment prospects straight away, rather than allow herself to be distracted by the litigation yet again. She was in the middle of a phone call when Dawn came in, holding a copy of the Birmingham Post. Instead of retreating and looking for a suitable moment to return when Karen was free, she sat down and patiently waited for the call to end. Karen could see that Dawn was holding the newspaper open at the weekly Legal and Financial section, and realised that something must be troubling her.