Dot Matrix

by Jack Binding

  Dot Matrix

  Jack Binding

  Copyright © 2017 by Jack Binding

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  www.jackjbinding.com

  For Alan

  Contents

  Dot Matrix

  About the Author

  Also by Jack Binding

  Dot Matrix

  I’m sitting in a glass-walled meeting room with three people who hate each other. A plate of biscuits and two bottles of sparkling spring water sit untouched on a glistening marble table. I should be paying attention, I should be working out something smart to say, but the only thing rattling around my head is this: I want to kill Ross Baker.

  Kill … I think. Is kill too strong?

  Euthanise.

  That’s it – I want to euthanise Ross Baker. Pop him on a flight to Switzerland and have some doe-eyed nurse pump him full of morphine. Christ, I’d even hold his hand and whisper sweet words of comfort as the lights went out.

  You see, Baker’s fucked up, and at Fripp PLC, fucking up isn’t acceptable. It seems Baker is always at the centre of some catastrophe or other. I’m surprised he’s lasted this long. Regardless, he’s elbowed his way up the ranks and snared himself Head of Marketing.

  Head of Marketing.

  Jesus, now there is a job title with clout. It shouldn’t fit him, and it irks me that it does. Maybe his appearance helped him get there; he looks like a mean bastard. Six eight, stocky and bald, like a Bond henchman. You’d expect him to talk with a Russian accent, but Baker is from Essex, which is a long, long way from Moscow.

  Baker’s mistake – if you could assign it such an anodyne word – was to mail a group of clients a letter that breaches multiple financial regulations. The numbers are screwed: The tax thresholds, the yields, the dividends, shit like that. Shit that you need a doctorate in economics for to realise they’re pretty crucial.

  I’m not the only one in the meeting room who believes Baker needs a one-way trip to the land of clocks and Emmental. Big Bob Conley – Director of Sales, known behind his back as Cuntley – is trying to burn a hole into Baker’s skull with a piggy, bloodshot glare. Cuntley’s pissed because he’ll have to deal with the fallout from the clients – a slew of mean, wily, high-net-worth individuals.

  But Cuntley is all candy floss and roses compared to Amanda Fisher. She’s God, Jesus and the Devil wrapped up into one prim, pencil-skirted, cropped-haired package.

  Her face hardens.

  Here it comes.

  Buckle up, kiddo.

  ‘So Ross,’ Fisher says, all pursed lips and clipped words, ‘how the fuck did the fucking mail go out wrong? Do you realise how many regulations we’ve broken? God, we’ll have the FCA crawling around in our assholes for a year.’

  Baker says nothing, just scratches at a patch of sweaty skin underneath his Rolex. Is his silence some sort of protective strategy, like a tortoise retreating into its shell?

  You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.

  Cuntley turns to me. ‘You fucked it up, too, Hawthorne.’ Really, I don’t even know what I’m doing here. This meeting is far beyond my minuscule pay grade. Lawrence Hawthorne, Data Analyst. I’m a minnow. Why was I invited?

  ‘I fucked it up?’ I protest.

  ‘He got the numbers from you,’ he says, jabbing an accusatory sausage-like finger in my direction.

  The penny drops. Baker’s the reason I’m here. He added me to the meeting. I’m his fall guy. He’s the sniper on grassy knoll and I’m his Lee Harvey Oswald.

  I shoot Baker a look. ‘My numbers were correct.’ Although I feel a creeping uncertainty at the pit of my stomach.

  Was it right?

  Did I check it?

  ‘And why didn’t you check them again before he sent the mailing out?’

  ‘It’s not in my remit.’

  Remit.

  What a word. If it’s not in my remit, you can shove it sideways up your urethra.

  Baker breaks his silence. ‘Yeah, Lawrence should really have supplied me with the correct data. I mean, our mailing is only as good as the information we’re given. That’s always my caveat.’

  Fucking caveat. There it is. He doesn’t know what it means, just shoehorns it into every conversation thinking it’ll make him seem smarter.

  Fisher, who despite being a mere inch north of five foot, rises to her feet, towers over the three men and says, ‘Lawrence, I think we’ve found the weak link here.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You are the weakest link, goodbye,’ says Baker.

  ‘Shut up, Ross,’ Fisher snaps. ‘Tonight, Lawrence, I want you to stay behind and double check the data.’

  ‘I did double check it.’

  ‘Then fucking triple check it.’ Fisher lowers her voice and softly says, ‘I want you to go through each file and then fill out a quality assurance report’.

  ‘That’ll take—’

  ‘I don’t care. I want the QA reports in my inbox by tomorrow morning.’

  Cuntley rubs his red eyes. ‘You really dropped the ball on this one, Lawrence.’

  ‘But it’s five now. I’ve got plans.’

  I don’t have plans. I very rarely have plans. All I do is commute, work and sleep.

  ‘Tell your boyfriend he’ll have to suck his own dick tonight,’ Baker laughs.

  ‘Why are you still here?’ Fisher snarks over her horn-rimmed glasses. ‘Fuck off and get to it.’

  I straighten my tie and stand up.

  ‘Tomorrow morning,’ Fisher says.

  ‘Tomorrow morning,’ Cuntley echoes.

  Baker flashes me a huge, professionally whitened grin. Perhaps he’s not as dumb as all that.

  It’s 21:58. I’m the only person left in the office. The cleaners have emptied the bins, dusted the desktops and hurried back to their Zone 4 hovels. From my ninth-floor window, I gaze out onto the ass-end of Liverpool Street Station. Revellers below move from bar to bar. Colleagues. My corporate kith and kin. White-collar workers. Traders and fund managers. Receptionists and accountants. Thursday night. The rigid corporate veil falls and the City dissolves into a stew of adulterous fumbles and warm champagne. Cigarette cherries dance outside the bars in the night air.

  With one third of Fisher’s QA reports finished, I estimate that if I keep up this pace, I’ll be done by sunrise (05:57, according to Google).

  The ceiling’s strip lights flicker off. They’re done for the evening. I am not. Back to it.

  Fucking Baker.

  Ten years at Fripp. Rumour has it that he started out in the post room. And now he’s Head of Marketing. This is the world we live in. A world where a fucking postman gets a six-figure senior management position at a FTSE 250 company. What next? Alvarez, the lowly IT grunt bumped up to Director?

  You see, I simply run the statistics. I’m the numbers guy. Small fry.

  Data Analyst.

  What does that even mean? Just two vague words combined to create one bullshit job title.

  It doesn’t really mean anything, I guess.

  ‘Fuck ‘em all,’ I hiss to myself. ‘Fuck Baker. Fuck Cuntley. Fuck Fisher. Fuck the lot of ‘em.’

  My words fade and it somehow seems even quieter in here than it was before. I’m not the sort of person who talks to himself. I’m of sound mind. Solid
. But for a second I picture myself post-breakdown. I’m wandering the streets of Hackney five years from now, clutching a bottle of budget scotch to my chest and mumbling nonsense, my hair matted, a few dead teeth rotting away in my fetid, bloody mouth.

  Happens here more often than you think. City fatigue. Burnout. Will Fripp will be the death of my sanity? I always thought I was better than that … I always thought I was—

  A buzzing breaks the silence. A distant electronic stutter.

  Christ, someone’s heard me. I’ll be hauled up in front of HR for crimes against humanity.

  ‘Hello?’

  Click.

  Stammer.

  Buzz.

  ‘Anyone there?’

  I stand up and take a look around. No unfamiliar shadows lurking in the office but there’s something here with me. I can feel it.

  I walk toward the sound. Two banks of desks behind me, at a deserted workstation sits an old Dot Matrix printer. What’s it doing there? Is some work-experience idiot using the empty desk as a dumping ground for pieces of decommissioned kit?

  The printer’s head slides back and forth. It’s alive. A sheet of paper judders through. I crouch down to read it.

  Ross Baker. What an asshole.

  Who’s fucking with me? It can’t be Cuntley; he’ll be in some hotel room screwing whoever he’s having an affair with right now. Regular Tuesday night. Besides, he doesn’t have the technical skills. Dumb asshole doesn’t even know how to photocopy a sheet of paper.

  ‘Hello? Anyone there?’

  My words fall on dead air.

  The printer starts up again.

  Fancy getting Ross out of the way?

  ‘What?’

  You know …

  ‘Stop dicking around.’

  I’m not dicking around.

  What do you say?

  ‘You mean kill him?’ I whisper.

  ‘Euthanise’ is a better word for it, don’t you think?

  ‘Okay, whoever this is, stop the fucking games, okay?’

  You know he’s got a nut allergy?

  ‘Not funny.’

  Peanuts. They’re the worst. Or the best, depending on your point of view.

  ‘Enough!’

  And Fisher has a packet of peanuts in her desk drawer. Dry roasted. Been sitting there for a month.

  ‘And so you want me to steal Fisher’s dry roasted and offer them to Baker?’

  Don’t be stupid. No, crush them up. The heel of your shoe should do it. Then mix them into the jar of sweetener Baker spoons into his coffee every morning.

  I tear the paper from its feed and throw it into the confidential waste bin.

  ‘I’m getting back to it, now. Hilarious practical joke,’ I shout.

  No one replies.

  Midnight. My eyes are lifeless dark circles in my skull. Down below, the bars have kicked out and the stragglers stumble toward the Underground, grappling with phones and travel cards.

  Me? I’m thinking about Baker. In the last year alone, he’s racked up a five-hundred-grand regulatory fuck-up. His latest debacle will cost even more. Someone should put him down.

  I’m also thinking about Fisher’s dry roasted peanuts. And Baker’s coffee sweetener. And how in my last bonus meeting, Cuntley told me that ‘Revenues were fucked,’ and that was why I wasn’t getting anything this year. And I’m thinking bonuses might be higher if there were less people like Baker at Fripp and more people like me.

  I wander over to Fisher’s empty desk and rummage around in her unlocked drawers. I find a toothbrush, a pair of white and red stilettos (Louboutins, of course), a small box of mints, a fraying phone charger and – yes – a bag of dry roasted peanuts.

  ‘Euthanise’ is a better word for it.

  I take out the nuts and crush the bag under my heel. They break into a mush of kernels and salt.

  A short walk to Baker’s desk. I spin on his swivel chair. The sweetener sits next to a picture of his wife. She’s blonde. Petite. And while she’s no Brenda from compliance, I suppose she’s pretty, in an ordinary sort of way. She looks … Well, she looks nice. In the photo she appears happy. If it was Baker on the other side of that lens, Christ knows why.

  He’ll be sleeping next to her right now.

  His house, he often brags, overlooks a deer sanctuary. My (rented) flat looks out onto a Tesco car park.

  I have nothing but a night of QA reports ahead. No sweet, musky breath on my neck. No spooning. No deer munching on Chrysanthemums or whatever the fuck it is deer eat.

  He needs to go.

  I pour half of the nut mixture into the sweetener jar and shake it. I figure Baker must have an EpiPen, so I open his drawer and there it is. It looks like magic marker. I take it out.

  Light-footed, I walk back to my desk and stash the EpiPen in my drawer. I work until dawn.

  I awake to the clink of Alvarez dissecting a PC a few desks away. Its innards lie in front of him and he mutters to himself.

  ‘Buenos días, Mr. Hawthorne.’

  I rub my stinging eyes. ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘Shit.’

  I pour a coffee and spray myself with deodorant from the gym bag under my desk that I never use. Reports complete – I didn’t fuck up and all the data is verified. I give them one last check and send them on to Fisher, proof that it wasn’t me but Baker who fucked up.

  —Relief.

  Cuntley turns up early. He’s wearing an Hermes scarf and a white Burberry trench coat that’s too big for him.

  ‘Reports?’

  ‘Fisher’s inbox.’

  ‘All nighter?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Any issues?’

  ‘Not on my side.’

  He grins and slaps me on the arm. ‘We’ll make a man out of you yet.’

  As the morning progresses, the office fills up. Inane pleasantries are exchanged.

  Nice evening?

  Terrible weather.

  Busy on the Central Line.

  Crap like that.

  Fifteen minutes after he’s supposed to, Baker saunters in. I peer over the top of my dual-screen monitors.

  He puts his briefcase on his desk, empties a spoonful of sweetener into his empty coffee mug and wanders over to me. Can I do this? Can I kill him? I mean, sure, he’s a certified dickhead, but he’s got a wife, maybe a family. Does he really deserve this?

  ‘Long night?’

  ‘Ross, I—’

  ‘Your hair’s a mess. Tidy up. Can’t have you dragging the tone of the place down. That’s my caveat.’

  ‘Your caveat?’

  ‘Yeah. Caveat. Look it up.’

  Caveat.

  He walks away and joins the queue to the coffee machine. He chats to a gaggle of middle-aged, three-day-a-week divorcees. They chuckle and coo. It’s mandatory to laugh whenever a senior manager cracks a joke. It’s probably in the HR policy somewhere.

  Baker stirs his coffee with a biodegradable plastic spoon – at Fripp, we do our bit for global sustainability – and wanders over to his desk. The women whisper as he walks away, no doubt discussing how repulsive his shiny, domed head is and how he doesn’t know the meaning of the word caveat. I guess I’ll be doing them a favour, too.

  His PC flickers to life. He sniffs the coffee and gingerly dips a pinkie into the cup.

  Too hot? A nutty aroma, perhaps?

  He wipes the finger on his suit and opens up Facebook.

  Alvarez sidles past my desk. Regulation IT uniform of a loose tie and untucked shirt; he’s dressed like an oversized schoolboy.

  ‘Alvarez,’ I say. ‘That ancient printer a few banks down.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘What’s it doing there?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, man. I just work here.’

  ‘Can you get rid of it?’

  ‘Larry, I just do what I’m told. Nobody told me nothin’ about that old printer, so I’m gonna leave it sit. You know why?’

  ‘Why?’
/>
  ‘Because if I do something I haven’t been told to do – I mean, specifically told to do – then I’ll get pulled up on it. Line manager. Verbal warning. HR bullshit. I’ve got a wife and family to support, you know?’

  ‘It’s like a clampdown on initiative in this place, right?’

  ‘Yeah, man. Whatever you say.’

  ‘Listen, can I put a request in—’

  I’m cut off by a shriek. Brenda from compliance stands over Baker as he convulses on the floor.

  Baker’s face has turned the colour of vacuum-packed beetroot. Brenda screams, ‘Get him a bloody EpiPen! His drawer. His drawer!’

  Cuntley waddles over to the rescue. ‘Stand back, everyone. Give him some room. His drawer, you say?’

  He rattles around in there, although, I must say, not with the sort of urgency he should have. ‘Nothing here. Has anyone called an ambulance?’

  ‘Sir,’ says Brenda. ‘He’s dead.’

  I stare at Brenda’s perfect ass as she bends over Baker’s corpse.

  I’m sitting in Fisher’s office, waiting for her to apologise for keeping me up all night. She flicks a dial on her on her desk and the transparent walls dim to a frosty matte grey.

  ‘Between you and me,’ she whispers, even though it’s just us in the office, ‘Baker was for the chop, anyway. I mean, it’s sad and everything. His poor wife … Which reminds me.’

  She picks up her phone and stabs the keypad. ‘Leighton, send Baker’s wife a bunch of flowers with a note from me about how sorry I am and how he was not only a colleague but a friend. Shit like that. You know what I mean, right? Good boy. Anything under twenty quid. And double check with HR we’re not liable to be fucking sued by the widow for some sort of accident-in-the-workplace bullshit.’

  She puts the phone down. ‘Right, so you’re the numbers guy.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘And I’m satisfied you didn’t fuck up the last mail out. How about filling in for Baker. Interim Head of Marketing. Think you can handle it?’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘Don’t fuck me around. Yes or no?’