by Nick Laird
He caught the almost empty 76 bus from the end of Sofia Road. He wasn’t cycling home knackered at four in the morning. The bus route ran straight down Kingsland and into the city. At Moorgate he got off by himself and walked along London Wall to cut through to Cheapside. The city was as deserted as it ever really got. Passing the merchant banks and law firms and brokerages, Danny’d look in to see an occasional figure glancing up from behind a reception desk or steering a huge motorized mop across a marble lobby, shiny and sterile as an operating theatre. On London Wall he heard the ringing assertion of bells, and when he turned onto Wood Street realized they came from the church tower that sat abandoned on the traffic island in front of him. It was only a tower: whatever church had been attached to it had long since disappeared. Nor did it seem to have an entrance though sometimes, late at night, Danny had noticed lights on in the windows just below the belfry. He walked carefully round it. The sound was enormous, peal upon peal to summon an imaginary congregation to imaginary worship. Danny reached the building site at the end of the street. A digger sat abandoned in front of scaffolding badged with billboards and hoardings. He thought how advertisements were the only things left singing praises.
On Cheapside the shops and coffee bars were all closed and the only people around were cleaners or security guards arriving or leaving. Two African women sat companionably in silence at a bus stop. As he passed behind them the 25 pulled up, and opened its doors in a loud exhalation. The African women got on. Dan looked at the bus’s windows–there wasn’t one white face. These were the dark ghosts of the City of London, those invited to the party but only if they arrived at the back door, ate nothing, and left before it began.
When Danny worked late, which he usually did, a cheerful man in the regulation navy polo-shirt, which appropriately signified Monks & Turner’s blue-collar staff, would appear in his corridor around eight o’clock. He would be pushing an enormous red wagon, a movable skip, and collecting every office’s rubbish, before replacing each bin-liner with one slipped from the wad of white plastic bags he kept tucked in his belt. When he came into the room to empty the bin he wouldn’t speak until Danny had said something, though then he was friendly. José was from Nicaragua, specifically from Managua, the capital, and his favourite line was You work too hard, yes? Danny’s response was to widen his eyes and nod in agreement, but then to suffer the curious guilt of accepting pity from someone paid to empty his bin, and someone who’d fled from hurricanes, earthquakes, poverty and war. The Nicaraguan, though, was continually grinning, and he had a smile that made Danny respond in kind. It was not pretty–José possessed about double the usual number of teeth–but it was unforced and so generous that Danny would find himself sitting up in his seat and beaming happily back.
On the days that he worked through the night a Nigerian cleaner would appear in his office along with the dawn, around six or so in the morning. She would bustle about him and refuse to make eye contact, and by that stage Danny would be too tired to stretch to the effort of speech. Those were the nights when he would stumble out to the street at seven o’clock to transact Starbucks’ first sale of the day, a latte and still-warm croissant. It was always the same pretty Italian girl serving, and she was always brusque, though there was never anyone waiting behind him. The cleaner, whose name he didn’t know, would wipe the keyboard and telephone handset (provided he wasn’t using them), and place a wet and folded, lemon-scented tissue (the kind reminiscent of aeroplanes and Chinese restaurants) under the mouthpiece of the phone. Once she’d prodded him awake as he lay slumped over the desk, his forehead being embossed by the lid of a pen, because a small pool of saliva was growing on top of a file. Normally she was kind enough to let him sleep.
His corridor tonight, for 5 p.m. on a Sunday evening, wasn’t too busy. Vyse’s office was empty. Danny paused in the doorway and looked at the photographs of the happy Vyse clan on the far wall. It occurred to him that he could easily deface them: add beards and glasses, scrawl obscenities. He could unpick a few threads from the seam on the seat of every pair of his trousers, or dribble a neat coffee stain onto the ties. He could tangle his Archimedes’ balls. But all of those things would be disrespectful and childish, and besides each corridor had CCTV. He felt entitled to vengeance. It was as if all of the casual agony and hassle Vyse had previously caused him had now been given a specific hook on which to hang his hate. Ellen. The lovely Ellen. Vyse had spoiled everything.
In his own office, Danny had a bundle of e-mails demanding responses. The whole corporate team working on UW appeared to be in, down on the second floor, including Freeman, the nasty abbot, and Tom Howard, the managing director of Syder. They were all at work on the bid. It had to be made by 10 a.m. Danny was supposed to have his report already done. He felt his head itch slightly above both ears. This meant he was getting hot and he was getting hot because he was getting worried. He pushed at the smooth patch of skin between his eyebrows with the middle finger of his left hand while searching the online info-bank for a precedent.
He began drafting. Scott’s notes on his part of the diligence were thorough but needed reorganizing and polishing. There were no real reasons for not bidding on the company. There were no poison pills hidden in the articles or main contracts, no change of control clauses, no crystallizing financial liabilities or options that kicked in and altered the capital structure of the company. Ulster Water had become a lost cause. The law that applied to it now was the law of the jungle. Syder would bid, UW would be taken over, and the bloodbath would begin. It would be a natural cull. Business was business. Danny bullet-pointed the issues raised. There were minor quibbles on copyright and outsourcing contracts but nothing of any substance. A pack was only as fast as its slowest member. The lame couldn’t be saved. Danny daydreamed for a moment about making up a provision in the company articles that meant the issue of a new class of share capital, to a charity say, in the event of a takeover. It was a stupid idea. They would all have copies of the company’s articles. There was nothing for it. Hunt or be hunted.
He searched the intranet’s Who’s Who for Freeman’s details and the photo of his sacerdotal face appeared on the screen. Danny dialled the number listed and after one ring it was picked up–snatched was probably more accurate–and Freeman said, impatiently, ‘Yes?’
‘John, it’s Danny Williams here. I just wanted to ring down…’
‘Where’s the report? We’re waiting for it.’ Danny purposefully coughed loudly into the phone and pressed on regardless.
‘…and let you know that I’ll have the final version of the due diligence report ready in a few hours.’
‘Anything in it?’ Freeman spoke like he had his coat on, and Danny had caught him just nipping out the door. He hadn’t of course. Freeman would have his shirtsleeves rolled up and his little bulbous head would be glowing sunset-pink with stress. He was going about his business. Soon, probably, he would die.
‘A few minor issues, no deal-breakers, at least not in the contracts I saw.’
‘Good. No deal-breakers, glad you think so.’
There was a mordant edge to everything Freeman said. It was the corrosion caused by having too much money and too little time.
‘John, I wanted to ask about when…’
He’d hung up.
Danny lifted the plastic ribbed bottle of Evian from the shelf above his desk and walked down to the facilities room. There were three other lawyers in the corridor. All of them were, like Danny, contravening the firm’s open-door policy. He held the bottle under the water cooler as it noisily filled, pulled two plastic cups from the dispenser and headed back to his office. The Black Bush was nesting in his lockable drawer, among his clean gym clothes, and he poured out a small peat-coloured shot, watered it down to a tawny hue and went back to the document open on his screen.
By midnight Freeman had rang him eight times. Danny still hadn’t quite finished the report and was now dangerously close to being drunk. Everyone else in the corrid
or had gone home. He had printed out a fairly coherent thirty-page draft and was taking it by hand to the Corporate team. To get to the lift Danny had to walk along his own and then another corridor, both bookended by security doors requiring a pass. Danny pressed the release button by the doors at the end of his, forgetting that his security card was sitting on his desk, propped against the base of the Anglepoise light. He walked through the doors and, just as they clicked shut behind him, realized that he couldn’t get out.
He was stuck in a vestibule that boasted the facilities of a disabled toilet and views along three empty corridors. No one was around. There is nothing lonelier than an empty corridor. It is not like an empty field or a forest, where humans are neither expected nor wanted. A corridor exists for the traffic of people, and without them is as bereft as a dry riverbed. He sat on a plastic crate that someone had left outside the toilet and set the report on the floor. Then he dragged the crate to the centre of the CCTV’s view, sat on it again and waved at the camera. After a while he stood up and rattled each of the doors. It was already past midnight. 12.27. For fuck’s sake.
Half an hour later Freeman himself came rolling towards him. He was like a little ballbearing, tiny and hard, and Danny’s apologetic grin and open-handed shrug did nothing to temper his scorn.
‘Dan Williams?’
Danny nodded. He knew Freeman would abbreviate his name like that.
‘You prick. You get yourself locked in here?’ His tone was pretend-jovial. Danny nodded again.
‘Sorry, I forgot my security card and…’ He stopped talking. He had nothing to say. Even though it was a Sunday the partner was still dressed for business. He wore a blue shirt, the sleeves, Danny happily noted, rolled up, and high-waisted navy trousers with yellow braces. The fat Windsor knot of his dusky-pink tie seemed a watery reflection of the nose it sat a few inches under. Freeman looked like he drank too much, and he looked angry.
‘Tom wants to see the diligence report before he signs off on the bid. That it?’
The head jerked towards the floor in front of the disabled toilet, where Danny had now spread the report out to spell
Danny nodded again. There hadn’t been enough pages to finish his name and he hadn’t bothered to rearrange it so it worked. Freeman barked, ‘Pick it up, sort it out, bring it with you please.’
Danny was staring at his exceptional head. It was magnificently bald and ridged above the temples where the tectonic plates of his skull met. The partner had reversed and was holding the door open. Danny scrambled around picking up the pieces of paper, and then Freeman started rolling back up the corridor. Danny felt he was being irresistibly dragged along in his wake.
‘And what the fuck happened to your eye?’
‘Oh nothing. Tennis injury. Is the bid all done?’
‘Yes.’ Freeman hardly opened his mouth when he spoke. ‘I’ve sent my team home.’
They were waiting for the lift and standing shoulder to shoulder, figuratively speaking. Literally speaking they were standing shoulder to elbow. It occurred to Danny to ask Freeman whether he was officially a midget. There was a height requirement and he was pretty sure Freeman filled it. It was something like four foot eleven or under. He decided to ask about the offer instead. ‘And what’s next then?’
‘Well, we print it. And then we deliver it.’ Freeman sounded like it was all he could do not to punch Danny in the crotch. Danny wondered if he was married. He looked down, without moving his head, and spotted a gold band embedded on his finger. In that case he hoped he didn’t have any kids, particularly slow ones. He was the type of father who would convince his children of their dumbness on a daily basis, and leave them unable to open a window or envelope without feeling anxious and useless. The lift pinged its arrival and the doors slid back. The raging dwarf strode triumphantly in and Danny followed. Freeman jabbed at the button for the second floor, changed to attacking the one saying Close Doors, and then returned to jabbing the 2 again.
‘Great. All sorted out then.’
‘Almost. As my team’s gone home, you’ll be taking the bid to the printers. I’m going to sit down with Tom and run through this.’ He took the report out of Danny’s hands and turned back to the lift door.
‘Right…What happens if there is stuff in the report that impacts on the bid?’ Danny was thinking what a fucking waste of time.
‘Well, it’s like you said, there were no deal-breakers in it.’ He could detect a smirk in Freeman’s voice. ‘So can you manage to take the offer document to the printers? You won’t get yourself locked in the cab or anything?’
Danny grinned at the side of his head, ready for the partner to look up and smile, but instead Freeman just stood there, facing the door, and staring up at the numbers lighting and fading as the lift descended. Danny smothered an urge to elbow him in the back of the head.
‘Sure, I can do that.’
‘Good. Adam Vyse rang me earlier to see how we were getting on and he said you should take it down. Good experience for you. Adam’s overseeing the bid logistics tomorrow morning.’
Tom Howard was sitting at the oval meeting table in Freeman’s office, papers fanned out in front of him. He was a handsome, cleanly-drawn man in his late forties with the slightly dampened demeanour of a person reformed–alcohol, Danny thought, or possibly gambling–but the heat of his smile when Danny approached made it obvious that Howard detested Freeman as much as he did. The partner bobbed like a spring at his elbow, and thrust Danny’s report back at him. ‘Make two copies of this.’
Ignoring him, Howard reached over the table and offered his hand to Danny.
‘Tom Howard.’
‘Danny Williams.’ Howard had a businessman’s practised grip.
‘You’ve been over in Belfast, I hear.’
He said it like Belfast was just south of Baghdad.
‘That’s right, doing the due diligence.’
‘That where you got the shiner?’
‘Oh no, nothing like that.’ Danny raised his hand to his eye. There was still a slight puffiness.
‘Anything to worry about in the contracts?’
‘Not really. A few small points you should be aware of. They seemed a good team over there.’ Danny lifted his report off the desk.
Freeman snorted, ‘Tom, couple of issues we actually do need to resolve this evening…I’m concerned…’–he sat down at the table opposite Howard and thrust out his hands to hold an invisible bowl–‘…about capital.’ Howard nodded thoughtfully. Freeman gently shook his bowl a few times.
‘I’ll go and make some copies of this,’ Danny said, brandishing his report. As he moved to the door, Howard glanced over at him a little fearfully. The look reminded Danny of something. In the corridor he realized it was the standard look that the abused wife in a soap opera gives the policeman, unable to speak but aware that his imminent departure will leave her alone with her husband.
LATE LATE NIGHT
Security rang through to tell Danny the cab had arrived. The bid–all 173 pages of it–was ring-bound with a plastic coil. He put the blue folder containing it into his leather satchel. The bottle of Bush was nearly empty. He shook it and then squeezed it into the bag alongside the folder. It was 2.37 a.m. He wanted a cigarette. The problem with taxis at this time in the morning was the talkative drivers. Normally his cabbies were terse and polite but in the early mornings, when most fares were presumably trying to fight or fuck or puke in the back of their vehicles, the drivers would invariably want to chat to a sober passenger. Sometimes it was pleasant. Often it was not. The driver would frequently describe a detailed legal case involving a relative. And then ask your opinion. Danny climbed into the cab.
‘Evening…Borough is it? You know the road?’
‘Marshal Street. 224 Marshal Street.’
‘Yeah I know it. Bermondsey side.’
Danny leant back against the seat. The driver pulled away from the kerb.
‘You working late then?’
; ‘Unfortunately.’
‘What? Big court case is it?’
‘No, not really, a takeover.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yep.’
They were driving down Ludgate Hill. Small grey clouds massed on the horizon below an impassive moon. The streets were shrink-wrapped and glossy so it must have rained. There was a cold breeze coming in through his window so he shut it. The lights went red and the cab pulled to a stop. There was no one about. Danny listened as the timer for the green man frantically tick-tick-ticked.
‘You get in a fight?’
‘Smashed my head on a chair,’ Danny said. He could change the story. It was his choice.
‘You drunk?’ the driver continued.
‘No, just clumsy,’ Danny said apologetically.
‘You Scottish?’ This driver has a nice line in question formation, Danny thought, as he accidentally made eye contact with him in the rearview mirror. Both looked away immediately.
‘Northern Irish.’ Danny was trying to unscrew the cap from the bottle of Bush without the driver noticing.
‘Really? My mum’s Northern Irish. Lives in Cardiff now though.’
‘Right.’
‘She’s from Donaghadee.’
Danny kept silent.
‘We used to go there all the time when I was a little ’un. She used to have all these rhymes. Not rhymes. I don’t know what you’d call them. Sayings. Augher, Clogher, Fivemiletown. Funny things to teach kids.’
‘It’s a funny place.’
‘It’s a lovely place. The Northern Irish are really friendly to tourists.’
‘Just not to each other.’ The driver wasn’t listening.
‘She used to say to us If I weren’t so Ballymena with my Ballymoney…’
‘I’d build a Ballycastle for my Ballyholm. I know that one.’