Never Mind The Botox: Rachel

by Penny Avis

  Rachel felt that Shali was rather enjoying her crisis manager role, but she didn’t mind. In fact, she really needed her help, more than Shali probably realised.

  ‘Do I need to add “talk to Shali about Rowan” to this list?’ Shali asked, trying to look serious.

  ‘No, I think that can wait until next week,’ said Rachel, grinning.

  It took them about an hour to write the list and work out Rachel’s diary for the rest of the week.

  ‘Shit, that is officially the week from hell,’ said Rachel as they sat and looked at it. ‘Well, I’d better not drink any more if I’m really going to see Carl first thing. What the hell am I going to say to him?’

  ‘How about, “Are you having an affair with Audrey Fox from Beau Street?” That would wake him up,’ said Shali.

  ‘I can’t just pile in with that! I need to explain to him what I’ve found first,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Right, good point,’ said Shali, smiling. ‘I’ll make some notes, then you can go through them again on the tube tomorrow, prepare yourself a bit. What are you going to say about the pages you copied out of the black appointments book? Could you maybe say it was left out somewhere? That might be a bit better than saying you broke into his desk.’

  ‘No, I’m going to tell him the truth, however bad it is,’ said Rachel, resigned to the fact that it was going to be pretty awful. ‘I should have said something straight away, dealt with it properly, you know. Then maybe I wouldn’t be in this mess.’

  ‘Okay, the total truth it is then,’ said Shali, taking a deep breath and picking up a pen.

  When they’d finished, Rachel read over the notes, nodding her head as she read.

  ‘Enough?’ Shali asked.

  ‘Yes, enough.’ Rachel looked up at Shali. ‘Thank you. I couldn’t do this without you.’

  ‘No problem. We’ll work it out, you know. It will be fine in the end,’ said Shali, trying not to sound hesitant.

  ‘I’m not quite sure how, but let’s see,’ said Rachel. ‘I think I need to go to bed.’

  The two friends hugged as Shali left.

  ‘Call me tomorrow, as soon as you can,’ said Shali.

  Rachel nodded and shut the door wearily. She slowly tidied up and climbed into bed, dreading the next morning but at the same time desperate for the sleep that would take her there. Fortunately the combination of hours of crying and several glasses of wine meant that it didn’t take long for that sleep to come.

  Chapter 15

  For a few moments when Rachel first woke up, she felt quite happy. She wriggled around, enjoying the warmth and familiarity of her bed, and looked at the alarm clock. Time to get up.

  Then, as the realisation of what the day ahead would be like came into focus, Rachel felt quite sick. Butterflies leapt around in her stomach like they’d suddenly grown kangaroo legs. She looked at the space next to her in the large double bed and her mind immediately turned to Harry. She buried her face in her pillow. God, she missed him already.

  After a few minutes her tears turned to irritation at the impact he was able to have on her, and Rachel forced herself to get up and get ready for work.

  On the way to the office she texted Rosa to say that she had an urgent meeting with Carl, she would be in mid-morning and could they get on with the presentation. Rachel knew they’d be somewhat alarmed by her having an urgent meeting they knew nothing about, but there was nothing she could do about it. In her week from hell diary, Carl had to be first. She would tell Rosa and AJ later.

  Rachel sat staring at the neatly written notes Shali had written to help her prepare for the meeting. Just below ‘Tell him the total truth’, Shali had written ‘Good luck, mate’ and drawn a smiley face next to it. Rachel smiled to herself and then felt a bit ashamed of how she’d been treating Shali, blaming her for the whole Rowan incident. Maybe she had overreacted. Shali had been a total star last night.

  As soon as she arrived in the office, she went to see Carl’s secretary.

  ‘I need to see him urgently this morning, as soon as possible. Can you sort something out?’ she asked as Carl’s PA peered unhopefully at her computer.

  ‘He has appointments until lunchtime so the earliest you can see him would be about one o’ clock,’ replied the PA rather haughtily.

  Rachel peered over her shoulder and looked at the entries in his diary.

  ‘He’s doing an appraisal first thing − can’t you move that? This is very important; it’s about the Beau Street project. Please, Margaret.’

  ‘Stop looking at his diary; it’s private,’ said Margaret, and then seemed to notice Rachel’s pale and worried expression. ‘Look, I’ll see what I can do. Give me ten minutes.’

  Margaret rang Rachel a few minutes later.

  ‘He’ll see you now, and by the way, he wasn’t best pleased, just so you know.’

  Great, annoyed before we start, thought Rachel. She headed to Carl’s office, knocked on the door and went in.

  ‘Right, yes, what is it, Rachel? Margaret said you needed to see me urgently. I thought everything was going fine on Beau Street?’

  Rachel looked at his furrowed brow as he glared at her and almost lost her nerve. Her voice shook slightly as she spoke. ‘There’s an issue at Beau Street that I need to discuss with you,’ she said.

  ‘What sort of issue?’ Carl asked. ‘I thought our work was pretty much done.’

  ‘Well, do you remember when I came to see you to give you an update a couple of weeks back and said that we’d found a few issues with sales records not having the right information on them?’

  ‘Yes, something to do with the new computer systems. And I thought we’d agreed to write that up as a minor recommendation for improvement?’ said Carl.

  ‘Yes, we did. But since then I’ve found out that it’s a bit more than that. One of the doctors, Lloyd Cassidy, has been charging his patients well above the list prices in return for being booked in under false names, so that no one can ever find out that they’ve had cosmetic surgery. Mostly it seems to have been offered to celebrities or other people who are in the public eye.’

  Carl looked genuinely shocked. ‘When did you find this out?’

  ‘Well, about a week ago.’

  ‘A week ago! So why am I only hearing about this now? For God’s sake, we’re presenting to Equinox on Monday.’

  ‘I know. I’m so sorry, Carl. It’s totally my fault. You see, the thing is, the way I found out wasn’t exactly straightforward, and I couldn’t decide what I should do about it. So in the end I did nothing, until now, anyway.’

  ‘What do you mean not exactly straightforward?’ Carl asked.

  ‘I stayed late one evening and saw an actress I recognised arriving after the offices were shut. So I hid and watched where she went. I saw her meet Lloyd Cassidy and his nurse Audrey Fox.’

  Rachel immediately noticed a reaction in Carl’s face at the mention of Audrey’s name.

  ‘I saw them writing in a manual black appointments book, which Lloyd locked in his desk. After the meeting finished, I went into his office, got the key from its hiding place and got the book. It was a record of the real names of the patients and then the false name they were going to be booked in under, plus how much they were going to pay. I photocopied a couple of pages and checked the names against the proper records. Only the false names appear in the records and the payments were all made in cash so they couldn’t be traced back to the real patients.’

  ‘I can’t believe you crept around clients’ offices after hours breaking into locked desks! What were you thinking?’ Carl looked furious.

  ‘I know, really stupid. It was just a spur of the moment thing as I knew something wasn’t right. Then I was really worried about the impact it might have on the deal if I told anyone, and that I’d probably be in trouble too. So I decided to say nothing and leave it as it was, noted in our report as a minor issue with record keeping,’ said Rachel.

  C
arl stood up and paced around his office, thinking. After a few minutes, he asked, ‘How do you know that there’s only one doctor involved?’

  ‘Well, I don’t for definite. But all of the invoices we found that didn’t show any details of the procedure that had been performed, the ones that just said “other”, were ones raised by Lloyd Cassidy. They were also paid in cash, which is unusual. I guess there could be more but we didn’t find any.’

  ‘Would the celebrities not be recognised when they came in?’

  ‘I think that they’ve been seeing them in the evenings, when everyone has gone, including when they do the surgery, which is why Lloyd needs his nurse in on it,’ said Rachel, waiting for Carl to react again to the mention of Audrey.

  He looked at her sceptically, then said, ‘They’d need an anaesthetist in on it too, if that’s the case.’

  Rachel thought for a moment. ‘Yes, you’re right. I guess they must do.’

  ‘And they presumably don’t have proper medical histories for these patients either if everything is under false names.’

  ‘No, probably not,’ said Rachel. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘Seems like there have been quite a few things you didn’t think of,’ said Carl sharply.

  Rachel looked at the floor, not quite sure how to respond.

  Carl sat back down and opened his drawer, taking out a large notebook. ‘Right, let’s start again. Right at the beginning. Tell me everything that happened, what documents you have, who you saw, on what dates − everything.’

  Rachel felt like she was in a police interview for the next half an hour as Carl fired question after question at her and wrote copious notes in his book. She couldn’t decide whether that was a good or a bad thing.

  When they had finished, Carl sat upright in his chair. ‘Right, I think I have the full picture,’ he said.

  ‘What are we going to do now?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘We’re going to have to sit down and take Tom Duffy through everything’ said Carl.

  ‘Are we going to put this in our report for Equinox too?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘No, not at the moment. I want to talk to Tom about it and agree how we handle it. You’d better brief AJ and Rosa and get as much information as you can to support what we know.’

  ‘I think we’ll probably need to talk to Lloyd Cassidy and Audrey Fox again to do that. Perhaps we could do that together?’

  ‘Well, let’s see, shall we,’ said Carl. He didn’t seem keen on that idea. Funny that.

  She had to ask him directly about Audrey. She took a deep breath.

  ‘A week or so ago, I was meeting my brother for lunch at The Brook Hotel and I saw you there with Audrey Fox. You seemed − well, how can I put it − somewhat friendly. Are you having a relationship with her?’

  There, she’d said it.

  Carl looked shocked, sat back in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair.

  ‘That’s none of your business,’ he said.

  ‘It is when she works for our client. You’re meant to declare any client relationships,’ said Rachel.

  ‘So you’re now the expert on client ethics, are you? Maybe you should have remembered a few more of the rules before you started sneaking about client offices,’ Carl retorted.

  ‘You haven’t answered the question,’ said Rachel, ignoring his dig at her.

  ‘Audrey and I have known each other for years. I met her through Tom Duffy. We’re old friends, no more. Now you need to watch your step, young lady. Running round accusing people of unethical behaviour really isn’t a very good idea. Don’t forget I’m on your promotion panel in a couple of months.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’ Rachel asked, somewhat incredulous.

  ‘No, it’s just a reminder,’ said Carl. ‘I want you to do well at the panels, Rachel. You’re ready to be a director. You just need to show that you’ve calmed down a bit. This sort of knee-jerk reaction to things doesn’t help.’

  Shit, thought Rachel, this isn’t exactly going as planned.

  ‘Sorry, I just got a bit worried when I saw you, that’s all,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Well, I think we have enough to worry about already, so let’s focus on that. Can you make sure that we can see Tom Duffy first thing in the morning?’

  ‘Okay, I’ll call you later to confirm he can see us,’ said Rachel.

  ‘As you’re here, there’s something else I’d like to raise with you,’ said Carl. ‘As you probably know, we had a complaint from the venue where we held the summer party about some inappropriate behaviour by some of the guests and I’m leading the investigation into it.’

  Rachel nodded, not sure what was coming next.

  ‘Well, I’ve received the descriptions given by staff who saw the people concerned. Apparently they opened the door to a small conference room from an adjacent room to get some extra chairs and saw a couple having sex on a table.’

  Oh my God, Shali and Rowan had been seen! Rachel couldn’t believe it. She was sure they didn’t know that anyone had come in. Shali would be mortified.

  ‘They gave a description of an Asian woman in a silver dress and a tall dark-haired man in a dinner suit. The man is a bit hard to identify, could be anyone. But doesn’t the woman sound a bit like someone you might know? Sounds rather like Shali, don’t you think? She had a silver dress on. And didn’t she bring your brother as a guest, the stumbling drunk I seem to remember? He was tall with dark hair.’

  Carl leaned forward across the desk.

  ‘Do you think I’m getting close?’

  ‘Er, I don’t know, really, no, I don’t think so,’ Rachel mumbled.

  ‘Now the thing is, I need to tell the rest of the partner group whether I have enough details to work out who it was.’ Carl waved a piece of paper across the desk at her. ‘It would be much better for those concerned if they came forward and owned up to knowing who was involved.’

  Rachel didn’t say anything. She wasn’t going to admit anything without talking to Shali first.

  ‘Well, you have a bit of a think about that, why don’t you,’ said Carl. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Rachel left Carl’s office feeling even more worried than before she’d gone in. Had she wrongly accused him of having an affair with his client? She was sure she’d been on the right track about Audrey. And what a nightmare about the summer party. Carl wanted her to own up that she knew who it was. She texted Shali: Went v badly, urgently need to meet u. Lunch?

  When Rachel arrived out at Beau Street she made an appointment to see Tom Duffy the next morning, then sat down to brief AJ and Rosa. They both sat very quietly as Rachel told them about Lloyd Cassidy.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us before?’ AJ asked.

  ‘I wanted to talk to Carl first, agree how we should handle it,’ said Rachel. ‘It wasn’t the greatest decision of mine to get the black book out of his desk. It was a bit of a, well, knee-jerk reaction. But anyway, we know now, and provided we’re right then it won’t be too bad. However, not one for you guys to follow, okay?’

  They both nodded, looking rather excited by this unexpected turn of events.

  ‘So, we need to gather as much information as we can on this before my meeting with Tom Duffy tomorrow morning. Rosa, why don’t you help me for a bit? And AJ, you finish the presentation. It’s nearly done, isn’t it?’

  AJ nodded.

  Rachel got out the two photocopied black book pages that she had carefully hidden inside her notebook. She also took out a copy of the June Mayfield/Lisa Albrecht invoice that she’d found earlier. She sat down next to Rosa and talked her through what was recorded in the black book.

  ‘This shows the link between the real name and the false name, you see? And then this is the invoice under the false name where it shows it being paid in cash.’

  Rosa looked at the invoice. ‘The invoice amount isn’t the same as the amount in the black book.’

  ‘Isn’t it
?’ Rachel looked at the two documents. The black book said six thousand eight hundred and fifty pounds, but the invoice was for five thousand eight hundred and fifty.

  ‘God, I hadn’t noticed that,’ said Rachel.

  ‘What’s happened to the difference?’ Rosa asked.

  Rachel and Rosa looked at each other. Rachel was pretty sure they both knew what the answer was: it was in Lloyd Cassidy’s pocket. If so, that was far more serious. The fact that he was using false names was one thing, but this was fraud: stealing from his fellow partners.

  ‘Right, we need to trace each of the invoices for these two pages as quickly as we can,’ said Rachel.

  Rachel and Rosa worked furiously for the next hour, looking up each of the false names listed and then finding the invoiced amount. Rachel did the searches and Rosa recorded the findings on her laptop. There were twenty-eight entries on the two pages covering a period of a couple of months.

  ‘Right, the total amount charged per the black book is a hundred and ninety-four thousand six hundred pounds, but the total amount actually invoiced is a hundred and fifty two thousand two hundred. That’s forty-two thousand four hundred pounds short, assuming that the clients actually paid the amount in the book,’ said Rosa.

  ‘Wow, in two months? That’s not good,’ said Rachel.

  ‘How do we know what cash the clients actually paid him? This handwritten book doesn’t prove anything,’ Rosa asked.

  Rachel sat and thought for a few moments.

  ‘To be honest, I don’t think we do − not without asking the clients to confirm it, and they’re hardly likely to do that seeing as they chose to pay extra to make sure there were no records with their name on. We’ll just have to report what we know.’

  Rachel felt quite sick. The size of the fraud could be huge and she’d nearly missed it. How could she have convinced herself that it wasn’t that important? God, what a wakeup call this project was turning out to be.

  Chapter 16

  Rachel couldn’t decide how best to break the news to Shali that she and Rowan had been seen, so in the end she just blurted it right out. As she’d suspected, Shali was horrified.