by Steve Hester
CHAPTER 9
Manchester isn't a big city by global standards. Compare it to somewhere like New York would be like trying to compare a child's sand pit to the Sahara. Considered by many to be England's second city it's dwarfed by London, even if its suburbs stretch for many miles to the peaks of the Pennine Mountains.
The city centre packs a lot in for its size. The Arndale shopping centre, Museum of Science and Industry, two universities, several national television companies, theatres and as many choices of nightlife and dining experiences; there’s enough to suit anyone's palette. It even has a few towers.
It would be wrong to call them sky scrapers because skyscrapers conjures up images of concrete canyons and men sat on girders eating their lunch, swapping cigarettes and trying not to become a permanent feature of the pavement below. It conjures up thoughts about buildings going up 100 plus stories that sway slightly when the wind picks up.
The tallest in the city was the Beetham Tower, which rose from the city like a middle finger to the heavens. Part apartment block, part hotel and with a bar slapped right in the middle, it's unusual in that it's wider at the top than the bottom giving anyone who happens to be passing a feeling like it's going to topple over. It also has bathrooms with urinals next to ceiling to floor windows and nothing says quality like waving your bits out the window twenty-three stories up.
Across the city were other, smaller buildings and most were banking institutions. Some might comment on this as some attempt to compensate for other shortcomings.
Nestled in this small group of towers stood the offices of Cambridge Industrial. It wasn't the biggest, the flashiest or most impressive building but it didn't need to be. While the banks had been busy causing a recession and losing lots of money C.I. had very quietly weathered the storm and carried on making it.
It was hard to pin down just what a company like this actually did. It had its fingers in so many pies that if it were human you could swear one of its parents had been an octopus. Construction, finance, retail and online businesses, overseas development, food production the list just went on and on. Its lack of focus on one particular avenue of business or product could have been what saved it when the financial crisis hit the world. The company was so flexible it meant that if one of its enterprises failed there were always more to take its place.
The real key to it all however was currently sat in the boardroom on the 30 floor. Gregor Ventriss was in his late forties and greying in a particular way from the ears upwards. If he had a beard the effect would be of a chocolate sponge cake filled with cream. The rest of his appearance was carefully cultured and crafted to be a general statement about his wealth whilst avoiding talking about the specifics.
His suit was finely tailored, his tie the best silk. On his wrist was an expensive Cartier watch, he wore a gold tiepin and his nails were expertly manicured. He wore the trappings of the boardroom like a knight would wear armour, each day getting ready for battle. He was everything the board members currently sat around the conference table wanted in a CEO. He was ruthlessly efficient and deliberate, everything he ordered done was carefully weighed and analysed in that greying head of his.
It was just such a pity, they thought, that he made them all so damn uncomfortable. There was something in the way he looked at you that made you feel like he was stripping away your flesh and working out how much your soul was worth. Some of the older board members thought that it was a trait he'd inherited from his father, the previous head of the company, who had died just before Gregor took over. They didn't know how close they were.
Everyone in the boardroom was in darkness except for one of the lower level managers at the front who was talking everyone through a PowerPoint presentation being projected onto a whiteboard and like all PowerPoint presentations it was painfully dull. Facts and figures popped up one by one, sometimes they were accompanied by a bar chart and just when things looked like getting exciting he'd drop a pie chart into the mix as well just to reassure everyone that it wouldn't.
Glazed expressions looked back at him along with the occasional stifled yawn and one or two had started doodling on their notepads. Gregor sat though with a look of keen interest at everything that came on the screen, his eyes making the poor sod at the front feel even more uncomfortable.
His name was Gordon. His surname had washed over the rest of the board and it would stay that way until the time he started to become a threat to their jobs. At the moment he was sweating profusely even though he could feel the soft purr of the air conditioning blowing on his face. He'd stumbled on his words, was sure he'd left out a lot of important stuff and at one point he'd realised that he'd mixed up a couple of the slides.
One of his colleagues from the South had been due to come to the office yesterday and help prepare the presentation but there had been no sign of him so Gordon had worked through the night trying to save it. He'd done a pretty good job but he knew there were mistakes. Any other time and he'd be able to fix them on the fly but not here.
It was that look coming from the end of the table that kept putting him off. It was the look that a wolf might give if it found a lone sheep wondering by itself in the woods and had the urge to play with its food.
He found it best to try and address everyone else and to focus on the board as each new slide came up but try as he might he found himself being drawn back to the figure sat at the end of the table. He paused and took a sip from a glass of water. His tongue felt like it was several sizes too big and even though his mouth was dry he was very paradoxically self-aware that he was spitting while he talked.
As he was internally beseeching any available deity to intervene the final slide dissolved onto the whiteboard. The breath that he'd been holding in for the last twenty minutes was slowly released. He swore to himself that after this he was going to get a job as a trawler man. Meeting an ancient, multi-tentacled leviathan in the open ocean held no terrors after this place!
A slide came on marking the end. There was a general murmuring from round the table along the lines of “well done, very good, good erm, stuff to know that” that was half hearted at best. As he switched the lights back on however there was applause. He looked back and Gregor was clapping him.
“Very well done, Gordon. Very well done indeed.” He said in slow measured tones
Gordon stood alone at the end of the table unsure of what to do. He managed a short nod and an almost inaudible “'nk you...”.
“Very eloquent.” said Gregor. “We must remember you for next time.”
Gordon tried to hide the sagging of his shoulders. “ 'es sir.”
Gregor looked around at the members of the board, his hands slapping the table as he laid them flat.
“Plenty to think on there gentlemen. It all comes down to branding at the end of the day. Theirs is good, very good; ours needs to be better. I want you to start to look at possible improvements and I want it by next weekend. OK? So, is there any other business..?”
A general silence broke only by the odd cough descended on the room. The board members shook their heads, just like Gordon they wanted to be as far away from their boss as possible.
The meeting broke up. Gordon quickly disconnected his laptop from the overhead projector and was trying to measure his departure. Quick so he could get away back to the relative peace of the twentieth floor as soon as humanly possible but not so fast as to appear ungrateful to the board for being allowed the opportunity to sweat profusely in front of them for the last half hour.
The other members slowly put their notepads and such away in the same way he noted. No one wanted to leave before Gregor Ventriss. Gordon guessed, quite rightly as it happened, that the best place to keep him was in front of you. He had heard stories about his father and grandfather, how they had built the company up by never giving anything away that they had to and making sure that dead wood was routinely pruned. As he looked at the faces round the table he could tell that a few were starting to feel like an overgrown privet he
dge at the moment.
As Gordon made his exit he passed by Mimi, Gregor's secretary. There were, he knew, outfits sold in certain upmarket adult amusement shops where a woman could dress as a sexy nurse, police officer or naughty secretary. Mimi looked like she'd taken the idea on board and then turned it up to eleven. She wore a tight pinstripe pencil skirt, white blouse and waistcoat that was open just enough around the cleavage to trap the unwary with forbidden promises. This was topped off with a pair of thick-rimmed black spectacles and hair that was tied up in a tight bun, held in place with a six inch black plastic hairpin.
She wafted past him in a haze of perfume that reached down to some very primal part of his mind and started to flick some very interesting switches that at any other time in Gordon's life would have necessitated a very cold shower and a lie down. He watched her as she strode into the conference room on heels that could have been used as a very offensive set of weapons before shaking his head and retreating to safety the elevator at the end of the hall.
Mimi started to collect Gregor's files from the table, noting that she was now the centre of attention in a room of mostly middle-aged men with high hopes and low golf scores. The only one who didn't bother her was a man who ran the acquisitions department called Richard Mace. He'd been too engrossed in watching Gordon leave.
Gregor's documents safely tucked under her arm, she took hold of the handles of his wheelchair and pulled it out from under the table. A few shook Gregor's hand as they left the conference room and out into the hall and then found their blood pressure dropping for the first time since the meeting started.
Mimi strode along pushing her boss through the corridors and into an elevator. Everyone got out their way. People nodded as they passed in a very conflicted way, not wanting to keep looking at Ventriss and not wanting to take their eyes off Mimi. As they waited for the elevator to finish its ascent to the next few floors she took out her smart phone from her waistcoat pocket.
“Alright Mimi, what do I need to know?”
Tap tap.
“Marchmont needs to reschedule for Wednesday, his daughters sick.” She said.
“Tell him we need him here. If he's not there at three the deal goes south. We pay enough for him to come down AND for private care! I’ll pay for it if it comes to that! I need him in that boardroom!”
She tapped a note into her phone as the doors opened. She pushed him out into the hall.
“What else?”
Tap.
“You have a message from Sarah Edmontons about the Anderson site, all seems to be going well and we should know about the planning permission by the end of the day.”
“Good. Tell Smith that if anything goes wrong I'll have his head on a spike.”
She took one hand off the wheelchair and made a note. From anyone else this would just be rhetoric but somewhere deep inside her she could almost believe that he meant it. They turned the corridor and ahead were the deep mahogany doors leading to Gregor's office.
“Very good sir, that seems to be everything I have at the moment. Will you be needing anything else?”
She moved ahead of him and opened the doors wide before pushing the wheelchair inside.
“Not right now Mimi. That's all.”
He took over control of the wheelchair and rolled his way up a small ramp that led to his desk. Mimi nodded and pulled the door closed behind her before retreating down the corridor back to her own desk.
Gregor sighed and turned his wheelchair round. His office was set in one corner on the buildings upper floors and offered a spectacular view across the city. Two full-length windows stretched across most of the walls and met at a point behind the dark modern desk that was set on a raised platform several inches higher than the rest of the office space.
He loved that little addition. Anyone sitting in the two leather chairs in front of the desk would have to look up at him and if the sun was in the right place it would shine over his shoulder, silhouetting him against the sky. There were times he felt like a high priest at a solstice or even... Him.
He allowed himself a slight chuckle and felt under the desk for a moment. His fingers found a couple of switches. There was a slight thunking noise from the door as he pressed the first one, locking it. The second one tinted the windows behind him, making it impossible for anyone to see in. He was high up but there was no sense in being careless.
The chair was wheeled back out from under the desk and He stood up. As far as the world knew Gregor Ventriss had lost the use of his legs some years ago. Ha, let them think that. Let them think you're weak, let them underestimate you. He'd been letting people underestimate him for many years now but that was all part of the plan. It always had been.
He walked round the desk and across the office floor to a wall that was covered in the same dark mahogany as the door and pressed one corner of a panel. It opened and instead of revealing a hidden passageway leading to a secret lab full of diabolical weapons, inside was a fridge. He picked up a bottle of chilled water and took a long drink. He let out a sigh and turned back to his desk, his hand in his pocket.
He checked his watch. Yes, should be any minute now. As if on cue he heard a faint scratching coming from the locked drawer of his desk like a quill on particularly rough piece of parchment. He waited until it had finished and then took a small key from the pocket of his waistcoat and unlocked the drawer.
It was empty save for a small notebook bound in deep red leather, which was locked by a metallic clasp that didn't have a keyhole. He picked it up, sat down in his wheelchair again and stroked his thumb across the clasp, which opened with a faint click.
The pages inside were filled with very strange writing, there were runes and symbols that seemed to shimmy and glow slightly as you read them. The paper itself had an odd pattern to it as well as if the cover wasn't the only thing that was made of skin...
Finally he came to the most recent page and read. A small grin came to his mouth as he did. It wasn't the grin of someone who was amused, much rather it belonged to something that swum up behind you in the sea and saw your leg as a tasty snack. His choice had been the right one, there were only two left now and very soon there wouldn't be any.
He closed the notebook up again, clasp and all, and locked it back in the drawer. He picked up the bottle of water and stood again, turning to look out at the city below him. Tiny steps but they have to be made somewhere and tiny steps had lead to this.
As he stared out across the horizon he started to hum a little nameless tune to himself.