by Rob Sinclair
‘Shut the door,’ he said, looking down at some papers.
I did as I was told, trying to keep calm. I knew, deep down, that I was best riding over whatever was to come, but I was on edge. There was so much going on in my life that I wasn’t sure I could keep my anger bottled up.
‘Where were you yesterday?’ he asked, his tone flat.
I looked over at him. His jagged features. His piercing, deep-set eyes behind rectangular glasses. His ruffled grey and brown hair that sat clumsily on his head – a deliberate style for sure, though I couldn’t understand why anyone would choose it.
‘I was on leave,’ I said. ‘It was in my diary.’
‘Stephens, you can’t just skip off for the day whenever you feel like it,’ he said, still calm but condescending, a schoolteacher talking to an eight year old. ‘That’s not how it works here.’
‘It’s been in my diary for weeks,’ I protested. ‘It was hardly last minute.’
‘But you didn’t tell me. You should have made it clear to me on Monday that you were taking the day off.’
‘You weren’t here on Monday.’
‘I have a phone! I have email. Stephens, I’m trying to be nice here. Don’t get smart with me.’
‘Okay. Is that it?’
‘No, that’s not it. You left me in the lurch on Sandpiper.’
‘Left you in the lurch? You’ve been on the project with me for six months.’
‘But I expected you to be there yesterday to meet with the board. How dare you embarrass me like that?’
‘I wasn’t there. If you embarrassed yourself, that’s your problem.’
Rottweiler pursed his lips. Clearly the meeting wasn’t going the way he’d planned. What had he expected? That I’d grovel because I’d spent a day mourning and visiting my dead wife’s grave?
Although he was trying to appear calm, authoritative yet in control, I could see the rage building inside him. His cheeks were red. His face was creased. But he didn’t say a word, and I was impressed that he kept it in. I’d seen him blow his top many times and I’d felt sure he’d been about to this time. In some ways I’d wanted it. I was up for a fight.
‘This is just another minor indiscretion in a long list for you, though, isn’t it?’
‘Well, I agree it’s minor,’ I said. ‘I’m really not sure what the issue is.’
‘That’s the problem. You never do see the issue. I’m not sure if that’s down to ignorance or incompetence. Either way, it’s just not good enough.’
Incompetence? I felt like answering back and reminding him how I’d saved his arse countless times in the past.
‘I’m recommending you enter into a performance monitoring plan,’ he said, smiling.
I clenched my teeth tightly, feeling a surge of rage and trying my hardest to keep it bottled up like he had done. Being on a PMP basically meant I was on my way out unless I turned things around. I’d be heavily scrutinised for the next six months to make sure my performance was meeting expectations. If not, my time with Ellis Associates was up. And I was positive he would do his damnedest to make sure I failed. Some turnaround for the guy who was being touted as a future partner not so long ago.
In all honesty losing the job wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, given how much I’d fallen out of love with it. But to have it taken away from me by that prick was a big deal. I couldn’t let him have the last laugh.
‘Is there anything else?’ I asked, just wanting to get out of there.
‘I’ve reported this to Whitely already,’ he said.
James Whitely. The managing partner.
Rottweiler was now enjoying himself. ‘He’s aware of the situation. I’m sure you can imagine how disappointed he is.’
I shut my eyes and nodded. That was a stab in the back I really didn’t need.
‘You should be happy I went with PMP,’ he carried on. ‘I’d mulled over whether this was a formal disciplinary issue.’
‘Disciplinary?’ I said, my eyelids springing open. ‘Are you crazy? I took a day off to visit my dead wife’s grave. It would have been her birthday yesterday.’
‘But it’s not just that, Stephens,’ Rottweiler barked back. ‘It’s all of your shit that I have to deal with. The constant disappearances. The failed deadlines. The sloppy reporting. And don’t think this is just me with an axe to grind. We’ve had complaints from Sandpiper about your lack of responsiveness lately.’
‘So your way of dealing with that is to belittle me and punish me? Don’t you ever stop to think about how people feel? About what troubles I might be going through in my life that perhaps I need help with?’
‘Stephens, we’re talking about your work performance here, not your personal problems. If you need psychological help, I’m not sure I’m the best person to give you advice.’
‘Damn right you’re not.’
‘Okay. I think we’re done here,’ he said, getting to his feet and pointing to the door.
‘Yeah, looks like we are.’
I turned and opened the door and cursed him under my breath as I left the room. Just loud enough so he’d hear it. The f-word was in there. The c-word too. I don’t know why I did it. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And I wanted to have the final say.
‘What did you just say to me?’ Rottweiler boomed. I glanced around to see him jumping up from behind his desk.
I didn’t look back again. I carried on walking over to my desk, aware that every eye in the office was now on me.
‘Ben Stephens, come back here!’
When I reached my desk, I turned calmly to face him. He was standing outside his office, arms folded, face like thunder. He was fuming. Yet he looked entirely helpless. In a way, I think he knew it too.
I pulled my hand close to my chest and very casually gave him the finger. I heard gasps from my co-workers. I saw Rottweiler’s eyes bulge, his mouth open in shock. He was going to explode any second. I stood and waited for it. I’d just signed my own death warrant, but in the moment I didn’t care. Everyone held their breath, waiting for the inevitable.
‘Ben Stephens! Get in here, now!’
I jumped at the thunderous voice. My insides vibrated and shook and then curdled from the bass growl. All eyes turned to where the order had come from. It wasn’t Rottweiler. It had come from the other side of the office. James Whitely.
CHAPTER 21
I kept my head down as I scurried behind Whitely into his office, my tail well and truly between my legs. Biting back at Rottweiler was one thing, but I had more than one reason to want to keep Whitely on my side.
After all, he wasn’t just the managing partner, the boss of all bosses. He was also Gemma’s dad – my father-in-law.
He strode over to his desk and looked out of the wall-to-wall window at the city. The offices, on the ninth floor of a modern block, had panoramic views, a big selling point whenever clients came to visit. That said, the interior was sparsely but professionally decorated. Rather than luxurious, it was modern and chic according to the designers, who had probably charged an eye-watering fee for their services. If you asked me, it was dull and monotonous and lacking in any creativity.
‘I’m sorry, James,’ I said, comfortably referring to the big boss by his first name. This was a consultancy in the twenty-first century, after all. In the casual modern office where we worked it was the only way. Except for Rottweiler, who seemed to take some deranged satisfaction from only ever referring to his underlings by their surnames.
Whitely was James to his face at least. Behind his back, he was Boris, a nickname not because of his looks but his ability to come out of any situation unscathed. Teflon had been a lesser-used name for him, but Boris had stuck (no pun intended) due to the fondness of a few of the guys in the office for the film Snatch, featuring an impossible-to-kill Russian known as Boris the Blade. In his role of selling numerous often-controversial services to businesses, Whitely had been through the ringer countless times with negative PR campaigns aga
inst him and various bouts of litigation. But he’d always come out on top. He was a master at it. In many ways I admired him, though I’d never wanted to be like him.
‘What?’ Whitely snapped, turning to face me. ‘Oh, yeah, that. Whatever, Ben. I know you’ve got your problems with him – who doesn’t? Just try to not bring the whole office down when you take him on, yeah? It’s hardly the way a senior manager should be behaving.’
‘Yeah. Sure, of course,’ I said, a little dumbstruck that I was apparently being let off so lightly. Rottweiler certainly wouldn’t have been happy if he’d been in the room to hear Whitely brush my indiscretion aside like that.
‘That’s not why I called you in,’ he said. ‘We’ll deal with that separately. Sit down.’
I did as I was told and he sat too.
‘I spoke to Gemma last night,’ Whitely said.
My heart jumped. I knew she’d made the call. She’d told me so when we’d finally got rid of Dani the day before. Gemma had told me simply that her dad was mulling it over. Well, it looked like whatever he had decided, I was about to find out the answer.
‘I have to say,’ Whitely continued, ‘this is a fine mess you’ve got yourself into.’
His tone was placid but I could see something close to vindication in his eyes. He didn’t feel sorry for me and I doubted he really wanted to help me. He was probably pleased that finally he’d been proved right in thinking that I wasn’t good enough for his darling daughter.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No, you’re not,’ Whitely said, his tone as blunt as his words. ‘You’re never sorry, are you? You hop from one problem to another, dragging everyone else along with you, always on the lookout for the next lump to bail you out.’
I was taken aback by Whitely’s sudden, unexpected criticism, but I knew I wasn’t really in a position to retort. He was right.
I didn’t know exactly what Gemma had told him or what questions he had asked of her, but I knew she wouldn’t have mentioned O’Brady. She knew so little about him herself, and letting on to her father that I was indebted to a crook wouldn’t have been a winning formula. Regardless, I wasn’t about to put my foot in it by giving away to Whitely more than he knew. Not unless I absolutely had to.
‘Well, this time the lump is me,’ Whitely added. ‘But this is the last time. You understand me?’
‘Yes,’ I said, unable to look him in the eye. ‘Thank you.’
‘Whatever.’
Whitely opened a desk drawer and grabbed his cheque book. He scribbled in it and then tore out a cheque, which he thrust out to me. I leaned forward and grasped hold of it. Whitely took a couple of seconds and I wondered whether he might be about to have a sudden change of heart. He released his grip and I took the cheque and stared down at the eye-watering figure scrawled on it: one hundred thousand pounds.
‘I … I don’t know what to say,’ I said. I could actually feel a tear in my eye.
‘Whatever you’ve got to say, I don’t want to hear it. Don’t think for a second I’m doing this for you. You’re my daughter’s husband and the father of my grandkids, so I have to put up with you one way or another.’
I knew Whitely had never been my biggest fan. Not since Gemma and I had got together at least. At one stage, many years ago, I’d thought he liked me, when I was just a high-flying employee. But as a husband to his beloved daughter, whom I’d met only because he’d employed her as an office assistant, Whitely had always looked down on me with dissatisfaction.
‘I’ll pay you back,’ I said. ‘I promise. I’ll do everything I can to pay you back as soon as possible.’
‘Oh, I know you will,’ he said. ‘I’m going to break your fucking back to make sure you do. You need to pull your socks up and start working, sonny. Rottweiler wants you out of this place and I have to say, based on recent performance, he’s got a point. But you owe me a lot of money now. I’m not going to throw you out and jeopardise that, or spoil the relationship I have with my daughter and grandkids. For some reason she loves you no matter what I do or say. You need to get your act together and make this right.’
‘Yes, of course, I will.’
‘Go home for the rest of the week,’ he said. ‘It won’t look right to the rest of the team if I don’t at least throw you out of here to cool off. ’
‘Thank you. I really mean it.’
‘Just go.’
I took my wallet from my trouser pocket and carefully folded the cheque inside, then walked out of the room. Whitely remained at his desk, not looking up at me. I felt great relief, but it was regret that dominated my mind as I walked through the open space, not making eye contact with the many people I knew were staring at me.
Outside I took a deep breath of cold, fresh air and tried my best to feel upbeat. Could this really be the turning point? Could I finally lay some ghosts to rest and get my life and my relationship with Gemma moving again? I really hoped so.
Yet, deep down, I already knew that was nothing more than a pipe dream. Something would go wrong. It always did.
CHAPTER 22
I didn’t want to wait another minute. I didn’t know whether O’Brady would even be around, but if he wasn’t, I would sit and wait for as long as it took.
I walked the by-then-well-trodden roads to O’Brady’s favourite place of business. In the many years I’d known him he’d branched out his interests quite drastically, just as he’d told me he had intended to do when I’d first met him. I’d helped him along the way, giving him the information he needed to set up connections that he could exploit for gain. O’Brady owned bars and restaurants across the Midlands, not to mention a healthy portfolio of apartments and commercial premises that he rented out and a number of businesses that he owned or had stakes in – everything from a cleaning company to a car-parts manufacturer.
O’Brady had made a lot of money on the way. You only had to look at his house, his cars, his clothes and his jewellery to see that. How much of the money he’d made was legitimate it was impossible to know. Yet Full Spread was still his regular hangout, the perfect front for a shady businessman – a largely cash operation was the most straightforward method of laundering ill-gotten money.
The front entrance of the club was locked tight and no bouncers were in sight, so I walked around to the rear of the building to the service entrance, a set of double doors in an eight-foot-tall brick wall topped with barbed wire. I pressed the buzzer on the wall next to the doors and waited. After a few seconds I tried again, and this time I heard a click almost instantly as the doors were unlocked.
The left-hand door swung open and it took me by surprise when I saw O’Brady on the other side.
‘You?’ he said, a dissatisfied look on his face. ‘I was just passing by the back door from the shitter. I thought it might have been one of the girls come to cheer me up.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you.’
O’Brady grunted and turned away from me. He walked off and I followed him to the office, my senses on high alert as I scoped out the area, looking for which of his many crew were also in the building. Not that I had any chance against him and his men if they turned on me. Each of them on their own could probably pummel me into the ground without my even inflicting a solitary blow, but it at least made me feel a bit more at ease to know who was about and where they were.
Unfortunately for me it was a full house. As I walked into O’Brady’s office I counted six other men already in there. I recognised them all.
‘We were just in the middle of a debrief,’ O’Brady said, clearly angered about something. Not the start I’d been hoping for. ‘We had the boys in blue over here last night – it wasn’t pleasant. Some little git was selling coke to the punters. First time it’s ever happened in here – or first time the police have cottoned on anyway. I’m convinced the police put him in here so they could sting us, but there’s nothing I can do about that now.’
The men all stood motionless. No-one said a word.
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‘It’s not good for business,’ O’Brady carried on. ‘People come here to have a discreet night out – not to be making statements to the coppers.’
There were a few nods and murmurs of agreement from around the room. It wasn’t clear whether O’Brady’s comments had been directed to his staff or had been an explanation of the gathering for my benefit.
‘You,’ O’Brady snapped, pointing a finger at a middle-aged man I knew only as Wrafter. He was O’Brady’s head doorman at the club, over six foot with a frame so thick his arms hung at a forty-five degree angle to his body. Even though he was past his physical prime – I guessed he was in his fifties – he wasn’t someone you’d want to meet alone in a dark alley.
In O’Brady’s presence, though, Wrafter’s size and strength were irrelevant – made clear by the sorry look on his face.
O’Brady strode up to Wrafter, took hold of him by the ear and twisted. Wrafter cowered down. It was surreal to watch. The doorman could have quite easily floored the diminutive O’Brady with one fell swoop if he wanted to. He looked like an oversized child being scolded by an angry parent.
O’Brady leaned in close and whispered to Wrafter, ‘What do I pay you for?’
‘To … to run the door.’
‘To run the damn door!’ O’Brady blasted. ‘Spot on. So why was that little fecker in here in the first place?’
‘It was a mistake. It won’t happen again.’
‘Damn right it won’t.’
O’Brady swung back his arm and launched a ferocious back-handed slap across Wrafter’s face. He followed up with a downward hook that caught the man on his chin and sent him down onto his knee.
I glanced around the room at the other men. They were all static, unflinching. I guessed they were all thinking the same thing: I’m just glad it’s not me.
O’Brady thrust up his knee and crashed it into Wrafter’s face. The doorman’s head snapped back as he tumbled to the floor. It looked like Wrafter had passed out, but O’Brady still wasn’t finished. He crowded over the fallen man and then threw a boot down onto Wrafter’s face. O’Brady did it again and there was a sickening crack as Wrafter’s nose caved in.