Craven Conflict

by David Cooper

  “Your Honour, there’s no evidence of this in the bundle. You can’t allow this line of questioning.”

  But Soraya was ready with an immediate response.

  “It’s a matter of public record, Your Honour. My instructing solicitor has copies of the relevant Whois entry to distribute. If the witness had not given such an unconvincing answer to my previous question, I need not have introduced the point.”

  Lennie handed the copies to Soraya, who passed one to Collins and two more to the judge’s clerk. Judge Banks did not take long to understand what was in issue.

  “I think your point is proved, Miss Modaresi. Shall we move on?”

  “Thank you, Your Honour. Mr Davenport, before you sent your email to Ripple, did you have any contact with Mr Avery in the previous week or on the Monday of that week?”

  “No, I’m pretty sure I didn’t.”

  “Can I take you to Mr Avery’s phone records. You will find them in the blue binder.” Soraya turned to the last document she would need to show Davenport. “There is a letter D in the margin of that page of records. Is the mobile phone number beside it yours?”

  “Yes, it is.” Davenport replied.

  “By my count, I make it seven calls from Mr Avery to you between Friday the fifteenth and Tuesday the nineteenth, which was the day of your email to Ripple. None of them less than two minutes long. Would you concur with that?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “So when you told me moments ago that you were pretty sure that you didn’t have any contact with Mr Avery before your email to Ripple, that was a lie, wasn’t it?”

  Davenport found a way to evade admitting his untruthful answer.

  “I must have forgotten. We were mates anyway.”

  Soraya debated an attempt to trap Davenport into the same error as Thompson had made over Avery’s drinking preferences, but decided not to overdo it. She had a further line of attack that was just as good.

  “With the exception of one of those calls, Mr Davenport, they were all on weekdays and during working hours. I’d suggest he was calling you to entice you away from Ripple and switch your allegiance to him.”

  “I don’t agree with you.” Davenport replied. Soraya noticed his reluctance to make eye contact either with her or with the judge. She decided that further questions would be superfluous.

  “I’m finished with this witness, Your Honour.” Neither the judge nor Collins had any questions of their own. Collins rose to his feet again as he heard the warning that Davenport was not to leave court.

  “Your Honour, I am informed that Mr Davenport is due at a job interview at midday…”

  “That’s his problem, Mr Collins. I have made my order and am not minded to relax it until the evidence of the next witness has been heard. Excuse me.” Judge Banks leant towards her clerk, who delivered a rapidly whispered message.

  “Mr Collins, Miss Modaresi, my clerk informs me that Mr Rider is nowhere to be found, and he has left no message with the usher. I shall rise for ten minutes to enable your instructing solicitor to step outside, Mr Collins, and make whatever enquiries may be appropriate. If Mr Rider is not ready to be called by then, I will debar him from giving evidence, and you may wish to ensure that Mr Squire is alerted to the fact that he may be needed earlier than anticipated. Mr Craven too. I shall again make it quite clear that neither Mr Thompson nor Mr Davenport may leave court without my express permission.”

  It was perhaps just as well for Judge Banks that she would never find out that Thompson had committed a blatant act of contempt ten minutes earlier, by texting the single word ‘Flee!’ to Rider while he had been sitting outside in ever increasing apprehension. Rider had heeded Thompson’s advice immediately and had quickly left the building.

  Ten minutes later, throughout which both opposing sides had remained sitting in the courtroom in uneasy silence, Judge Banks returned. Collins was immediately on his feet.

  “Your Honour, there is no sign of Mr Rider, and he is not answering his phone. I have no option other than to forego the opportunity to call him, and can only invite you to attach whatever weight you may think appropriate to his statement.”

  “Indeed I will.” It was quite obvious from Judge Banks’ dismissive tone that the amount of weight would be token at best. “Is Mr Squire here?”

  “Not yet, Your Honour. I am informed that he is on his way.”

  “Good. We will still be ahead of schedule once he is here, now that Mr Rider will not be giving evidence in person. I will rise for a further fifteen minutes. Mr Thompson and Mr Davenport are now released.”

  As Judge Banks swept out via the door behind her podium, Davenport shook his fist at her retreating back, oblivious to the stares from everyone around, before bolting to the exit. By unspoken consensus, Collins ushered Avery’s entourage outside, leaving Soraya to turn to Lennie and Karen once more. Lennie wasted no time.

  “Well, I make that three-nil to you so far. Or if we’re talking boxing, they really should have thrown in the towel on those two clowns ages ago.”

  Karen did not take long to add to Lennie’s jovial summary of Soraya’s triumph over Thompson and Davenport.

  “I haven’t enjoyed myself so much for ages. Watching Wayne’s face just then was a real treat!”

  Soraya knew that it would be best to take nothing else for granted.

  “Thanks. If only I could promise you that the next two are going to be like that. I really don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade yet, but beating those two up isn’t guaranteed to win us the injunction. Squire and Craven are going to be something else.”

  Earlier that morning

  Craven had made doubly sure that he would not be late for his meeting with Frank Wharton in Edgbaston. He had caught a local train from the city centre to the nearby Five Ways station and briskly walked the rest of the way, congratulating himself on finding the former Lewis Hackett office without difficulty and on managing to arrive fifteen minutes early.

  “Yes, Mr Craven, we’ve been expecting you.” The receptionist’s greeting was cordial. “Mr Wharton’s already called to let us know he’s on his way. You’re in meeting room three. Take a seat in there and I’ll ask one of Mr Wagstaff’s PAs to bring you some coffee.”

  Craven dutifully went inside and unpacked his papers. He was fairly confident that he understood as much as he could about the financial dispute that Wharton’s draft report had addressed. As his thoughts drifted to his court appearance later that afternoon on Avery’s behalf, and the hope that it might somehow improve his future career prospects, he heard a tap at the door. A young secretary with a streak of crimson hair and a sullen expression came in, bearing a drinks tray.

  “How do you take it? One lump or two?” The question was perfunctory and the tone verging on insolence, but Craven did not notice.

  “I don’t take sugar, thanks. Just milk.”

  “OK.” The secretary poured the coffee, placed the cup in front of Craven and looked him up and down. “I’m Shannon. Don’t tell me, you must be Raymond Babbitt, the Rain Man?”

  Craven looked at Shannon in abject horror before burying his head in his hands and slumping to the table. An involuntary shake from his shoulders gave away the impact that the remark had unknowingly inflicted upon him. Shannon was astounded. She had deliberately insulted Craven by associating him with one of the most famous autistic characters in cinema history. But she never expected such a reaction.

  “What have I said? What have I done?”

  Craven slowly raised his head. His usual emotionless appearance had given way to obvious distress, as memories of a raging personal demon played havoc with his thought processes. Tears had begun to well up in his eyes. It took great effort to summon up the will to answer.

  “The last time anyone called me that…..I was dumped about thirty seconds later. I’ve been terrified of hearing that name ever since I had to tell people here about my Asperger’s Syndrome…”

  The ringing of the meeting room
phone cut across Craven’s hesitant response. Shannon quickly picked up the receiver, listened to the message and put it down.

  “I’m sorry about that. I couldn’t have known. Listen, Frank Wharton’s here. Do you want me to stall him for five minutes?”

  Craven hesitated.

  “Come on, you can’t see him while you’re still like that. I’ll tell him you’ll be out in a bit. You’ll be OK. I’ve dealt with Frank Wharton before. He gives everyone the benefit of the doubt. For someone stuck in that damned wheelchair, he’s amazing.”

  Shannon made Craven’s decision for him by leaving the room and closing the door. Craven was left on his own as excruciating recollections from the past descended upon him. With only a week to go before his redundancy, he had brought himself to share his detailed knowledge of his condition with his then girlfriend, a healthcare worker. She had noticed him attending his support group meetings and taken the initiative to introduce herself. Her interest was sincere and welcome, and he had begun to regret never sharing his troubles before.

  But this had unexpectedly fuelled an argument when Craven had expressed little enthusiasm for the thought of travelling to London to spend Christmas with her parents. He had suggested that she should stay with him in Stafford instead. The argument had quickly escalated to the point where she had thrown the cinematic insult forcefully in his direction, screaming that she had ‘no desire to sit in an empty house on Christmas Day watching the Rain Man reading the telephone directory’. Craven had spent the whole of that Christmas alone, and had never seen her again.

  Craven’s meeting with Frank Wharton took much longer than he had expected. His attention to detail was nowhere near his normal standards, and he was grateful for Wharton’s patience. When the meeting was over, Craven politely held the main door open for Wharton to leave, and was all set to gather up his papers and hurry back to the city centre, only to be met with an unexpected interruption.

  “Can I have a few words? I really need to speak to you.”

  Craven was taken aback to see that Shannon had come out into the reception area, an obvious expression of concern on her face. He looked at his watch, and decided that he had time to spare after all.

  “OK.” Craven found himself escorted back into the meeting room that he had just left.

  “Have a seat – Paul. I thought I’d better explain myself. I’m really sorry I spoke to you like that earlier on.”

  “That’s all right. I won’t hold it against you. You couldn’t have known how upset I’d be when I heard that phrase again.”

  “Thanks. I’ve got something to show you. But let me just say my piece first.”

  “OK.” By now Craven had finally become aware that Shannon was dressed in a more provocative and revealing manner than any of the other legal secretaries he had encountered at the firm, or at his previous workplace.

  “I’m working out my notice. By the end of this week, I’ll be out of here and I won’t be Wagstaff’s junior PA any longer. I’m really pissed off about that, in one sense. When they took me on, just over a year ago, there was all this talk about how it wouldn’t be long before that old frump across the corridor retired. How good it would be for someone of my age to be working for one of the partners so early on in my career.”

  Shannon paused.

  “What happened?” Craven spoke up.

  “Two things. First up, the old frump decides she’s not going to retire after all, and she tells them that she’s still perfectly capable of doing her job, and if they shift her out of what she’s done for the last twenty years, working for Wagstaff, she’ll have them for age discrimination. So that’s my dream job gone for a start.”

  “Couldn’t you have worked for one of the other partners, or an associate?” Craven asked. “Or moved to our office ahead of schedule?”

  “I thought I could. But that brings me to the next problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Right. You’ll love this. Or maybe you won’t. But here goes.” Shannon reached for the nearby coffeepot, poured herself a cup, and grimaced at its lukewarm taste. “On the Thursday before the Easter break, there was a drinks party at the new office, the one where you work. Celebrating the two firms merging, all that. Great chance for everyone to get to know each other. Trouble is, someone took it upon himself that he wanted to get to know me a bit more closely.”

  “What do you mean?” Craven was beginning to feel uncomfortable, but knew that it was only polite to ask.

  “I’m standing there having a drink and a chat, minding my own business, and suddenly I get felt up from behind.”

  “Felt up?”

  “Oh come on, I don’t have to go into detail. Roving hands where they shouldn’t have been. So I spin round, and there’s two of them standing there grinning and pretending nothing’s happened. Didn’t have the balls to own up, whoever did it. So I put in a grievance.”

  “A grievance?” Craven’s thoughts flew to the unpleasant practical joke that had been played on him only a few days earlier.

  “You bet I did. They couldn’t have known that I have a really good eye for detail. A really good memory for faces. That’s going to help me no end when I start on the West Midlands Police induction course in four weeks’ time, but that’s another story. Anyway, I was convinced that one of them was a partner. Either the groper or the sidekick. Youngish bloke, bit of a wideboy…”

  Craven was on the verge of naming Seb Finnie, but held back.

  “OK, so they do all the HR stuff, call me for a meeting, promise they’ll investigate, usual claptrap. Then it goes quiet for a few weeks. And the next thing I know is that there’s a redundancy letter on my desk. No consultation, no selection pool, just some guff about better technology reducing the need for secretaries. Cast iron excuse to get rid of the old frump, if you ask me, but that’s beside the point.”

  “Can’t you claim unfair dismissal?” Craven asked.

  “Sadly not. They started me a week after the qualifying period went up to two years. So all I get is an enhanced notice period up to the end of June, no redundancy pay, no golden handshake, nothing. But I’m not going to take it lying down, am I? No, not when I can threaten to have them for sexual harassment.”

  Craven winced at the sound of the blunt phrase.

  “You mean…because of the grievance?”

  “Dead right. They must have thought it would stay in the long grass where they’d kicked it. They guessed wrong. So I make an enormous threat, and I tell them I’ve gone over every single photo on the firm’s new website, and I’m going to name a partner and a trainee from the Bastables side on the tribunal papers. Next thing I know, HR call me in, and two days later, there’s three grand on the table as long as I sign up to a gagging clause.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Haggled for seven grand and met them half way at five. I shouldn’t be telling you this. And I’m not supposed to breathe another word about what I said in my grievance. But I’ve made it my mission over the last two weeks to push as many boundaries as possible before I’m out of here. Offend as many people as possible. They won’t dare sack me now. So when I knew that you were coming up here, someone from the city centre office who I’d probably never see again, I just went out of my way to let you have it. And I’m really sorry about that.”

  To Craven’s near horror, Shannon threw her arms around his shoulders. He frantically thought for an excuse to pull away, and realised that he had one right in front of him.

  “How did you know about my condition? What made you call me the Rain Man?”

  “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

  Shannon walked out of the meeting room with Craven in tow behind her. They climbed a flight of stairs and made their way into a spacious office.

  “Wagstaff’s in court all morning, and there’s a partners’ meeting at three in the city centre. He won’t be back up here today.” Shannon sat down at Wagstaff’s desk. “I have to confess, I pissed myself laughing when
I read these. That was before I heard your story. So here’s the explanation.”

  Shannon quickly manipulated Wagstaff’s mouse and opened a number of emails on the screen in front of her. She was interrupted by the ringing of Wagstaff’s phone, but reacted by picking up the receiver and immediately replacing it.

  “Take a look at these.”

  Craven peered over Shannon’s shoulder. At that distance, he could not make out who had written the emails she was opening. He wondered if he might once more have been the victim of further ridicule from Hutchings and his social network within the firm, and thought for a moment that their private correspondence might have been discovered at partner level.

  But once Craven occupied the chair that Shannon vacated for him, and began looking at the material that she had called up from the folders, he quickly found himself shocked to the core.

  ‘Wednesday 12 June, 12.06

  From: Rufus Squire

  To: Tony Wagstaff, Seb Finnie

  Subject: Rain Man

  From where I sit, surveying my once happy and efficient department, the Rain Man lurks behind his closed door in the corner, licking his wounds after this morning’s Edgborne Materials almighty screw up. One gold plated gormless idiot hiding behind his supposed disabilities. And everyone’s looking at me as if I’ve just kicked the dog.’

  Craven was speechless. The subject matter of Squire’s message was painfully obvious. Six days earlier, he had attended court to deal with the case that Squire had delegated to him with minimal explanation. Only then had he found out, amid acute embarrassment, that he did not have rights of audience. The plea he had made for mercy in Squire’s office that morning, when he had suggested that Squire ought to accept the blame, had evidently not only fallen on stony ground. It had also been circulated in scathing terms to two other partners by Squire himself. Scathing terms that had spared nothing in ridiculing his mental health issues. Deeply personal issues that he had disclosed to Squire in trust, and in the hope of receiving sympathy and understanding from Squire and the firm in return.

  Pausing only to give Shannon an open mouthed look, which she returned with a knowing nod, Craven read on. Wagstaff had replied almost immediately with ‘The dog in the night time, by any chance? Sounds like a curious incident to me (groan)’, and Finnie had not been far behind with ‘Wish I’d insisted he’d come lap dancing with me and Jerry. We could have gone on to the casino, stuck him at the blackjack table and made a fortune’. Squire had then trumped Finnie’s reference to one of the famous closing scenes from Rain Man, which was agonisingly familiar to Craven, with ‘Suppose I’d better not give him his cards yet. He might start counting them, ha ha’.