‘You should drink that cup of coffee,’ she told Fiona. ‘You should drink it before it goes cold.’
Fiona thanked her and took a brisk swig from the cup.
Immediately her eyes opened wide. She glared at Heather with panicked horror and understanding. The mug was dropped. It struck the corner of the desk and shattered into a dozen wicked-looking shards. Fiona was no longer ‘World’s No. 1 Mum’. She slapped at the desk and clutched at her throat. Her eyes bulged. As she began to vomit, spewing bilious volumes of bloody liquid across her desk, Heather turned her back.
‘You fucking bitch,’ Fiona gasped.
Heather ignored her. She picked up the phone on her desk and rang down to janitorial. ‘Is that Harry Shaw?’ she asked. ‘I think we need a clean-up on the fourteenth floor.’
56
‘Where the hell is Fiona?’ Black demanded.
‘She’s been taken poorly,’ Heather explained. ‘But I’m her assistant. I’m sure I can do whatever it is you need me to do.’
‘You’ll have to do,’ Black grunted. ‘Follow me.’
He led her into his main office and she was introduced to Charlie Raven and a shadowy man who sat in an unlit corner of the room. At first Heather hoped the stranger would prove to be the nice man who had looked like John Skull but, the more her eyes got used to the dim light of the room, the more she realised this wasn’t the man she had seen in the canteen. This was some shadowy man who was clearly held in high regard by both Black and Raven.
‘We’re looking at making a few modifications to our current staffing,’ Raven explained. He smoked whilst he talked, flicking his cigarette ash into a gorilla’s paw ashtray. He was talking to the shadowy man. ‘We’re looking to streamline our workforce here in the city either by downsizing or relocating.’
Black nodded agreement.
‘We’ve got a few names that head the list of excess staff,’ Raven said.
‘Such as?’ The shadowy man’s voice was deep and sonorous. It was a voice that Heather didn’t like hearing.
‘Chloe in personnel is becoming a waste of space,’ Black said. ‘As are Nicola and Shaun from marketing. You can write down those three names.’
Heather wrote the names on her pad. She was surprised to see the letters of each name flare in a blaze of bloody orange. It was almost as though the words had seared the page and left behind a smouldering fragrance of incense. The phenomenon did not strike her as being out of the ordinary for Raven and Skull.
‘I think we can let Tony go from sales,’ Raven decided.
Black nodded.
‘And I’m not sure Rebecca Wilson is pulling her weight, even though that’s quite a substantial weight she has to pull.’
The shadowy man and Black laughed at Raven’s comment. Heather thought they were being mean. She liked Becky even though the woman was a few pounds overweight. Prudently, she kept those thoughts to herself.
‘Cindy from CNS can go. We can lose Geoff Arnold from accounts. I think Richard from legal should also go.’
Heather wrote down the names. Each one burnt its way onto the page. She noticed, each time Raven suggested a name, the shadowy man nodded solemnly as though agreeing with the decision.
Black raised a hand. ‘Richard is married to my niece. I’d rather we reassigned him instead of getting rid of him completely.’
Raven smiled. ‘They’re all being reassigned, Roger.’ Frowning sympathetically he said, ‘Doesn’t it trouble you that Richard is balling the brains out of CNS Cindy at every opportunity?’
Black scowled. ‘Is that true?’
Raven nodded.
Heather was no expert at reading expressions but she thought it looked like this was the first Black was hearing about Richard’s infidelity. He didn’t look happy. ‘Put Richard on that list,’ Roger snapped.
‘Is that it?’ Charlie asked.
Black shook his head. ‘Times are hard. Economic recession. I think it might be prudent to get rid of one more.’
‘Such as?’ asked the shadowy man.
‘Earlier this morning I was beginning to wonder why Fiona needed an assistant,’ Black said.
His mood seemed to have darkened since he discovered that Richard was cheating. He now spoke with an authority that Heather suspected could be vindictive or cruel.
‘I was wondering why Fiona needed an assistant but now, seeing the way this helpful young lady has stepped into the breach, I’m beginning to wonder why Fiona’s assistant needs a Fiona.’
‘Eloquently phrased,’ Raven smiled. He glanced at Heather and asked, ‘Did you get that, sweetheart?’
‘I think so,’ Heather said. ‘You were going to put my name on this list, but now you want Fiona’s name on here.’
Raven nodded. He glanced at Black and said, ‘It looks like you’ve got a new assistant.’ Turning to Heather he added, ‘Congratulations on your promotion, sweetheart. Now, get that list typed up and have a copy forwarded to Moira in accounts.’
‘Moira in accounts,’ Heather repeated as she added Fiona’s name to the list. ‘Will she know what to do?’
Raven, Black and the shadowy man laughed. She wasn’t sure which of them said it but the words stayed with her for long after the meeting had finished.
‘Moira has always known what to do.’
57
‘What a depressing story,’ Tony mumbled. He yawned.
‘And likely as true as anything else I’ve heard round this table tonight,’ Becky grumbled. She checked her wristwatch and groaned. ‘It’s morning. How the hell did that happen?’
‘It’s Monday morning,’ Geoff pointed out.
‘No.’
Cindy pulled herself away from Richard’s lap. ‘Didn’t I tell you that this is what hell is? We spend all week working in that shitty office, then we squander the weekend doing nothing but talking about the damned place. If that’s not a definition of hell, I don’t know what is.’
She started towards the door, unable to stop herself from ambling in a drunken, tired lurch.
‘This can’t be hell,’ Heather protested. ‘Otherwise we’d be doing it for all eternity, wouldn’t we?’
‘Isn’t that what we have been doing?’ Richard asked. ‘Haven’t we been doing this same routine for as long as you can remember?’
As she brooded on the question, Heather began to suspect that Richard might be correct. She began to suspect that they’d been trapped in the same routine for as long as she could remember.
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Raven and Skull Page 25