by Penny Avis
‘Yes it does,’ said Rosa.
‘Great, let’s get out the ones we need then, make copies of them and then put them back. Then we can use the copies to build up the sales analysis.’
Rachel helped Rosa for a while and then headed back to the project room to carry on with her own work, looking at the average ages of the client base. She still hadn’t spotted a single celebrity name in the information she’d been looking at and was determined to try to find some. She sat down and went back over the analysis she’d been doing over the past few days. The most common age group was coming out at twenty-five to thirty years, which was younger than she’d expected. She’d thought that most people would be having something done to them in their forties. It was probably something to do with the fact that breast augmentation was their most popular procedure. Rachel made a note to chat to Tom about it next time they met.
She moved on to look at average price per procedure, starting with breast augmentation. There wasn’t really that much of a range. Most of the patients had been charged somewhere between four and five thousand pounds. But as Rosa had found, quite a few of the sales records just showed ‘other’ for the procedure type.
It took Rosa two days to find and copy all the invoices they needed.
‘That was a rubbish job!’ she declared as she came back into the project room clutching a large pile of paper.
‘Well done,’ said Rachel. ‘Right, let’s have a recap as to where we are, shall we? AJ, why don’t you talk me through where you’ve got to?’
‘Right,’ said AJ. ‘I’ve been looking at the growth rates of procedures outside of the top five. Some of the fastest growing areas include light treatments for things like thread veins and age spots, Botox and fillers, as you might expect, and also um, um…’
AJ stopped talking. He had started to go red.
Rachel and Rosa looked at each other in amusement.
‘Also what?’ Rachel asked.
‘Well, it’s er, well, um,’ AJ stammered.
‘Spit it out, man!’ Rachel said. ‘You’re going to have to present on this soon enough. No point being embarrassed.’
‘Alright, one of the other fast growing areas is vaginoplasty,’ said AJ eventually.
As he spoke, Rachel and Rosa burst out laughing. He looked cross at first, but soon starting laughing too. They were all still laughing when the door of the project room suddenly opened. It was Tom Duffy. They all stopped immediately.
‘What’s all the hilarity?’ Tom asked.
For a moment none of them said anything as they searched for an answer.
Then Rachel said, ‘Oh, er, AJ was just telling us about a funny best man’s speech that he heard at a wedding he went to at the weekend.’
AJ looked at Rachel in horror.
‘Oh yes, what was that AJ?’ Tom asked.
AJ froze, seemingly totally unable to think of a reply.
Rachel stepped in quickly. ‘He was telling us about the best man who, as it happens, also has a bit of a drug habit.’
AJ looked even more horrified.
‘And he stood up and started his speech by saying, “I had prepared a couple of lines for this speech but I’m afraid I’ve snorted them both.” The young people at the wedding thought it was hilarious but it didn’t go down too well with the bride’s family!’ Rachel said.
Tom laughed loudly. ‘Ah yes, very good, very funny. And what nice company you keep, AJ. Anyway, I’d just dropped in to check that you’d got the information you needed from the invoices you had to pull out.’
Rosa patted a large pile of paper. ‘Yes thanks,’ she said. ‘All here.’
‘Right good, don’t want Equinox to think we can’t keep our books properly. Also, we’re having an all-party meeting on Monday for the deal advisers, bankers, lawyers, et cetera. You guys need to be there to give us an update on your progress. I’ll email you the details. Is that alright?’
‘Yes, no problem,’ said Rachel.
‘Good, I’ll see you then.’ And he left, shutting the door behind him.
‘Why on the earth did you tell him that wedding story?’ AJ said. ‘He’ll think that I’m a right loser now who mixes with a load of druggies!’
‘I’m so sorry, it was just the first wedding joke that came to mind. Anyway, you weren’t exactly leaping in to help and I could hardly tell him that we were laughing at you saying vaginoplasty.’
As she said it AJ winced and they started laughing all over again.
‘Oh dear, we’ve got to get a grip,’ said Rachel, wiping a tear from her eye. ‘We really can’t start laughing every time we talk about these things. We need to be professional about it.’
‘I think we need some practice,’ said Rosa.
Yes, we really do, thought Rachel, with an all-party meeting in a few days’ time.
The rest of the day flew past as they worked through the rest of the information they had.
‘I think we’re just about ready to start interviewing the doctors,’ Rachel said. ‘I still need to go through these papers, but I’ll take them home with me tonight and finish them.’
That evening, Harry was in the kitchen in Rachel’s flat cooking pasta while she was working at her desk. Rachel had the pile of ‘other’ invoices that Rosa had pulled out from the filing cabinets and she was going through them, separating out those that were for breast augmentation. She started putting the cost for each one into the analysis of average cost per procedure that she’d prepared earlier. As she did, she began to notice that the cost of each one was much higher than those she’d taken from the normal records. Some were as high as nine thousand pounds. Rachel took out her notebook and checked the list prices for breast augmentation. The highest list price was five and a half grand. Why would they be charging so much above the list price? These were just records that hadn’t been coded properly. There would be no reason for them to have different prices to any other records.
Harry peered over her shoulder. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked. He picked up an invoice. ‘Breast augmentation? I assume that’s a boob job. Eight thousand seven hundred quid! Wow, that’s not cheap!’
‘Put that down,’ said Rachel. ‘And yes, it is expensive, which is a bit odd actually. It’s more than it should be.’
‘And they paid in cash,’ said Harry, putting the invoice down. ‘Flash gits.’
Rachel picked the invoice up and looked at it. He was quite right. In the method of payment box it simply said ‘cash’. She picked up a few more invoices and looked at them. They were all paid in cash too. How often did people pay for this sort of thing in cash? That didn’t seem right. Rachel sighed and leant back in her chair, stretching her neck and back. It was gone nine p.m. and supper was ready. She’d look into it in the morning.
The first thing Rachel did when she got into Beau Street the next day was to look at the other sales records that had the procedures properly noted on them. Not a single one had been paid in cash. Maybe this was another computer glitch caused by the new system. Rachel took a couple of cash paid invoices and headed to the accounts department. Tom had introduced her to most of the team and she was pretty sure which one of them looked after the cash books. She approached a smiley lady in her fifties who was sitting at a desk near the window.
‘Hi, Chris,’ said Rachel in a friendly tone. ‘I’ve got a couple of invoices here that say they were paid in cash. We’ve had a few bits of information missing that may be down to when you moved onto the new computer system. I just wanted to check whether these were actually cash payments. Can you have a look for me?’
‘Sure,’ said Chris. ‘What’s the invoice number?’
Rachel read out the number and Chris checked the bank records.
‘Yes, definitely a cash payment. It was paid in over the counter at our local bank.’ Chris checked the next one. ‘Yes, that one too.’ She glanced at the invoices. ‘By the way, they’re both the same doctor, if you want to talk
to someone about them.’
‘How can you tell?’ Rachel asked.
‘The first three letters of the invoice number are a code for each doctor. These both start with six-zero-two. Shall I look up who that is?’
‘Yes please, that would be great, thanks,’ said Rachel.
‘Six-zero-two is Lloyd Cassidy,’ said Chris.
‘Okay, thanks. I’ll go and talk to him.’
Rachel went back into the office the team were working in. She looked through the list of documents that had all been coded with ‘other’ as the procedure type. They all started with code six-zero-two.
‘Right, time we started meeting the doctors, I think. Where’s the list?’
AJ handed it to her.
‘I’ll speak to Tom’s PA and start getting appointments set up. Hopefully we can start later today.’
She picked up the phone and dialled Tom’s PA.
‘Hi, Linda, it’s Rachel Altman. We’re ready to start meeting the doctors now. Would you be able to sort out making appointments for us?’ There was a pause, then, ‘Great, thanks, you can split them between us but could you schedule me to see Lloyd Cassidy? Okay, thanks. See you shortly, bye.’
Rachel turned to AJ and Rosa. ‘Linda will drop round appointment times for us in a bit,’ she said.
She spent the next hour or so planning a standard agenda for them to follow when they met the doctors and talking AJ and Rosa through what she’d found out from Chris.
‘Okay, so this is the plan when we meet each doctor. We need to know what areas they specialise in, what types of clients they have, the level of repeat business they get and what they see as the next big growth area.’
Linda popped in with the list of appointments and Rachel was scheduled to see Lloyd Cassidy at four p.m. that afternoon. Good, she thought. She wanted to get things sorted out as quickly as possible so they could get on with preparing their presentation.
When Rachel arrived outside Lloyd Cassidy’s office at exactly four p.m., his assistant’s desk was empty, so she went ahead and knocked on his door.
‘Come in,’ said a low voice.
Lloyd Cassidy was sitting behind his desk looking through some papers as Rachel went in. He was smartly dressed with neatly cut silver hair and a light suntan. His office was a mixture of plush luxury and medical functionality. Oak-panelled cupboards and heavily framed pictures sat alongside a hospital-style bed and a trolley covered in instruments. The surfaces and walls were covered in impressive looking certificates and industry awards.
‘Hello, I’m Rachel Altman from Payne Stanley,’ said Rachel, holding out her hand.
‘Well hello, Rachel Altman,’ said Lloyd in slightly flirty way. ‘Please do sit down.’
‘Thank you. I’m not sure how much Tom has explained to you about what it is we’re doing here?’
‘He’s told us most of it, I think. We’ve been briefed on the interest from the Equinox Practise and that you guys are here to write a report giving us the all clear, so to speak. Is that about right?’ Lloyd asked.
‘Well, yes, sort of,’ said Rachel. ‘As part of producing our report, we’re speaking to all the doctors so we can understand a bit better where your work comes from and what sort of thing you’re best known for.’
‘I’m known for being good at many things,’ said Lloyd. ‘But I assume you’re focusing solely on my medical abilities.’ He smiled at her.
Ugh, how smarmy, thought Rachel. She half-smiled back. ‘Yes I am. Would you mind telling me a bit about your work?’
‘Yes, of course. I’m one of the longest serving doctors here at Beau Street Group. I’ve been qualified as a plastic surgeon for more than ten years and was a general surgeon before that. Let me give you a copy of my CV.’ He opened his desk drawer and took out a printed information sheet. ‘This is what I give to my patients. You can keep that copy.’
Rachel looked at the sheet. It had a large picture of Lloyd in the top left-hand corner that looked more like a photo of an actor than a surgeon. She sensed that Lloyd rather liked giving out his CV.
‘I do a lot of facial cosmetic surgery − face lifts and so on − but I also do a number of our other main procedures, such a breast augmentation. I’m particularly well known for my short-scar or mini facelifts, which are very subtle and have much lower levels of scarring than a more traditional facelift.’
Rachel nodded as she wrote her notes. ‘Where do your clients mainly come from?’
‘A combination really. I’ve lectured quite extensively around the world, which means that I’m pretty well known in the industry. As a result, I have quite an international client base. Many clients come from word of mouth referrals from satisfied customers and then there’s a reasonable level of repeat business.’
‘I see,’ said Rachel.
‘You’ve probably seen my sales figures,’ said Lloyd. ‘I’m sure they will look good on one of those pretty charts you people always end up producing.’
Rachel bit her lip. ‘Yes, we’re just going through those and it’s clear that the business has been growing pretty quickly,’ she said, not able to bring herself to flatter him directly. ‘There is one thing that I wanted to run through with you. It’s about some of your sales records − they don’t seem to have the procedures noted down on them correctly. Do you know why that might have happened?’
‘Ah, we will have to bring in my lovely assistant at this point. She takes care of all my paperwork,’ said Lloyd. He picked up the phone. ‘Audrey, would you mind popping in? Thanks.’
A few moments later there was a knock on the door and a tall, blonde woman came into the room. She was dressed in a white coat teamed with a pair of high gold sandals.
‘Rachel, this is Audrey Fox. She’s my assistant nurse.’
Audrey Fox was probably in her late forties, although Rachel found it a bit difficult to tell. She was very attractive but in a way that somehow spelled trouble. Maybe it was the slightly overdone make-up or the out of place shoes; Rachel couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
‘Could you just explain to Audrey what it is that you wanted to know about my paperwork?’ said Lloyd. ‘She’s boss of that department. Bedside manner is more my forte than paperwork.’
He put his arm around Audrey’s shoulder and gave it a slight squeeze.
Rachel explained the problem again to Audrey.
‘Oh, there could be quite a number of reasons,’ said Audrey. ‘Sometimes the systems are down so we can’t look up all the codes. And we had a new secretary for a while and it took her quite some time to get the hang of things. Or sometimes Lloyd gets so busy that we have to work late and we do the paperwork manually.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Rachel. ‘I also noticed that a number of payments by your clients were made in cash. Is that normal?’
‘As I was telling you earlier, we have quite a number of overseas clients and many of them like to pay in cash,’ said Lloyd. ‘Plus, you know sometimes people save up, cash under the mattress, all that sort of thing.’
Rachel didn’t think that was likely to happen very often, and certainly not as often as the number of cash payments she’d found. But she was hardly the expert here and they both seemed quite certain.
‘Right, okay. And would it also be normal for you to charge people well above the list price?’
‘Well now,’ said Lloyd, puffing his chest out slightly. ‘I don’t wish to blow my own trumpet but I do often charge my clients a premium. They know of my reputation, you see. I do also tend to get referred some of the more complex cases and they’re also more expensive.’
‘Okay, thank you both for your help. I just have a few more questions for Lloyd,’ said Rachel.
Audrey went back to her desk outside Lloyd’s office and Rachel spent another half an hour running through the rest of her questions with Lloyd.
When the meeting finished, Rachel went back to the project room and sat down. She wasn’t totally h
appy with the answers she’d been given, but a bit of sloppy paperwork was hardly a major issue. The business was growing quickly and Lloyd’s sales figures were impressive, as he’d been so quick to point out. Even so, she’d better talk it through with Carl.
Chapter 6
Rachel was sitting at her desk waiting for Carl Stephens to ring. While she waited, she flicked through her Beau Street file and thought about how to raise her concerns about the missing sales details and cash payments with him. She had no real evidence that it was anything more than a minor issue with record keeping, and for all she knew paying in cash might be really common. Both matters were easily fixable and hardly likely to worry the buyers if the basic business was trading well. But her gut feeling was that there was more to it, yet if she raised it again with Beau Street she would effectively be accusing Lloyd Cassidy and his nurse of lying. On the other hand, Carl was bound to want a thorough job. He was a stickler for detail and she had Payne Stanley’s reputation to think of. It would be a disaster if she missed something. Hopefully Carl would help her work out what to do next and without upsetting everyone.
She jumped when her phone rang.
‘Rachel Altman. Oh hi, Carl, yes, I’ll pop round. See you in a second, thanks.’
She spent the first few minutes of their meeting giving Carl a general update on how the project was going.
‘That all sounds like great progress,’ he said. ‘It’s good that they’re getting you the information you need so quickly. That will help us to finish on time.’
‘There’s a meeting on Monday at two p.m. with all the other advisers to go through the deal timetable. I think it would be good if you could be there. I can give them a progress report, so you won’t need to prepare, but I think Tom would like it if you came,’ said Rachel.
Carl checked his diary. ‘Yes, I can just about do that. I need to be away sharpish, though, as I have another meeting at three thirty,’ he said.
‘Okay, that’s good. There are a couple of points that I wanted to just chat through with you now; not problems necessarily, but I’d quite like your advice on how to deal with them,’ said Rachel. She went on to explain her concerns to Carl.