Altered Life

by Keith Dixon

CHAPTER TWELVE

  LAURA TOOK ME to the largest room I’d seen in these offices—an airy boardroom containing one long table, laid out with creamy writing pads and long, sharp pencils. An end wall was almost completely filled by a huge flat screen showing the Brands logo animated as a screensaver. I could barely take my eyes off it. I suddenly realised that Brands had an image that it would be trying to protect in the world outside. The directors and staff would be under extraordinary pressure not to let anything slip that would be detrimental to the company or its clients. I wondered what impact that was having on how people dealt with me and on what they said.

  Laura sat with her back to a row of cathedral-like windows, through which there was a view of the roofs of those Waverley houses that would forever be too expensive for the likes of me.

  ‘How are you doing?’ I asked.

  She looked startled. ‘You do surprise, don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t expect any thoughtfulness from a working-class Yorkshireman? We’re not all flat-caps and Yorkshire pudding you know.’

  Now she was quietly embarrassed. Her pale skin took on a tint of rose and she smiled. ‘We didn’t meet many people from other cultures where I grew up.’

  ‘Where was that? Mars?’

  ‘Might as well have been – Guildford. And I thought my accent was natural, you know, ordinary. When I go back now and hear people talking about going to the ‘bas stop’ to catch ‘the bas’ I wonder what the hell they’re talking about. And all my relatives wonder what on earth I’m doing up here, near the Arctic Circle. I can’t win, can I? You think I’m posh and my folks think I’m tobogganing down-market faster than the royal family.’

  ‘Where do you want to be?’

  ‘Somewhere I belong,’ she said simply.

  I looked around at the expensive furnishings—the glass-topped tables, the original prints of abstract art on the wall, the personalised coasters for holding china cups full of Earl Grey tea.

  I said, ‘My dad lived in the same house he was born in till he died. Three years ago next month. Miner’s house. Built by the mining companies to house their workers. No inside bathroom. Big jugs of water standing in bowls on tables in the bedrooms to wash in of a morning. Two cooking ranges, one in each downstairs room. One of them not used, because it was the parlour. You only went in there with permission. When I was a kid I’d watch the miners walking home past our gate, black as dominoes, because there weren’t any pit-head baths. My mum still lives there.’

  ‘So is that where you belong?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’ve moved on. Yorkshire and me don’t see eye-to-eye any more.’

  ‘I bet you thought you were too good for it.’

  ‘A place like that can really screw up your view of the world. Everyone’s got an opinion. It wears you down in the end.’

  ‘So you got out.’

  ‘Some time ago. I went into the Civil Service, then Customs and Excise as an investigator. Worked in fraud, then drugs, based in Liverpool. Kicked out after ten years.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  I stood up and walked around the shiny table to the windows. ‘It’s high up here, isn’t it?’

  She followed my gaze. ‘I like it. Above the crowds. Does it bother you?’

  I felt myself frowning. ‘When I was young once we visited relatives in Coventry. I went into town with some cousins and we went up the spire of the old Cathedral. It’s right next to the new one with that spindly spire on top that looks like a TV mast. You climb a hundred steps or more. Then you’re on a small ledge with a wall that comes up to your waist, looking out over the city. It’s cramped and doesn’t feel safe and you think it could all crumble away under your feet. I remember just wanting to lean out and fall into ... well, I don’t know. There’s probably a psychological name for it. Vertigo or something.’

  ‘Most people get over that,’ she said.

  ‘Not me,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’ I turned to her. It was time to be frank. ‘Brands is in trouble, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Until six months ago you were winning new clients and new business regularly. Lots of name checks in the business section of the Manchester Evening News. The London papers quoted your managers and sales people and carried interviews with Rory. Your consultants were travelling all over Europe, and you were hiring more people every week.’

  ‘Sam—’

  ‘Now your head count is down and you’re not bragging about new business. Some of the companies you listed as clients a year ago aren’t shown on your web-site any more or in your company magazine. So far this year you haven’t sponsored any charities or any exhibitions, and you’re not on the exhibitors list for either the IPD exhibition in Harrogate, or the HRD fair in London, which I’m told are the big showcases for companies like yours.’

  ‘If you’d just—’

  ‘Last year you exhibited at three IT fairs, this year none. And as far as I can tell, no one’s bought any licences for Compsoft yet. Is that a fair picture?’

  She appeared stunned. She looked down and picked at a thread on her skirt with the embarrassment of a child caught in a lie.

  ‘I’m not going to pretend to you,’ she said quietly. ‘Trading conditions haven’t been great this year. But we’re getting a grip now and things are looking better.’ Her round eyes gazed at me frankly. ‘I didn’t really need you to come in and tell me things I already know about this company.’

  ‘You knew these things but you didn’t let me in on the secret. I would have appreciated a little more honesty.’

  She shrugged. ‘I apologise. The financial condition of the company didn’t seem relevant to the murder of its boss. Seems odd when I put it like that, but that’s what I thought at the time.’

  ‘Never mind. We are where we are. What did Rory think when things began to go downhill? Did he do anything to stop the rot?’

  ‘Not unless you count ranting and raging and sacking people every which way. He met every piece of bad news as if it were a personal slap in the face, and he’d want to hit back.’ Now she stood up and walked to stand next to me, staring out over the rooftops. ‘We tried to keep him calm, get him to focus on winning business, but he kept interfering.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Lots of things. He’d call a meeting of the senior management team and we’d all have our backsides kicked. Then he’d go out and meddle again in the software development project. He had all of us testing it when it wasn’t in a fit state to test. The consultants hated it because it took them away from their proper job. But Rory couldn’t keep his fingers out of the pie. He was a perfectionist in a time and place where it was completely inappropriate.’

  I looked at her profile, which was straight and clear, her round eyes focused straight ahead. ‘What did the consultants think of the program?’

  ‘They didn’t like having to put the time in to the testing. But most of them liked the program itself. What there was to see. It wasn’t in a useable state and still isn’t, really.’

  ‘I’ve heard Rory was picky.’

  ‘He had to get things right. And he had this habit. One of the consultants called it corrective hindsight. When he talked about decisions he’d made, he could always put them in a context where they made perfect sense. Nothing was ever his fault, despite the fact that everything was his fault. He set things up to fail because of the person he was. It was like watching a ship heading towards an iceberg—you could see it coming a long way off but it was too big to avoid.’

  ‘Did everyone in the company know things were in such a mess?’

  ‘Some knew, others guessed. He liked to think he ran a tight ship, if I can carry on that simile or metaphor or whatever the hell it was—but in fact this is a company of very bright people. And of course everyone had an exit strategy. There were CVs flying about all over the place.’

  ‘What about Tara—what did she do? Was she still the supportive wife?’

  She glanced at me. ‘Good question. Yes, she stuck by him. But we could see the
strain she was under. She’s a sales person. She knew we weren’t selling enough to keep a pipeline of income on the go.’

  I felt a sudden empathy for her. Working in a failing company would sap anyone’s confidence. The thought came to me suddenly that I should tell her I’d been married to Tara—but it seemed irrelevant. Besides, she’d learn soon enough.

  I said, ‘When we spoke the other day you didn’t seem happy about Compsoft. But you didn’t say anything. Why didn’t you tell me the company was so shaky and Compsoft wasn’t working?’

  She turned and looked at me. ‘You’ve never mixed with consultants, have you?’ she asked. ‘What do you think consultants do?’

  ‘Tell you things you already know in a language you don’t understand.’

  ‘I used to think like that – the cynic’s view. But you have to remember consultants come from all walks of life – we’ve had an ex-jockey, people from the forces, salesman, all sorts. And the reason they end up in consultancy is that they’re optimists to the bone. They think things can be improved, so they’re always waiting for something to turn up, like that character in Dickens. And of course it’s feast and famine in this game. When the feast comes you never think you’re going to have enough people or resources to do the job properly. When the famine hits you wonder if you’ll keep going till next month. You learn to be hardy—and optimistic.’ She raised her arms and let them fall limply. ‘Against all the evidence.’

  I saw in her again a quality of humour that surfaced when she was talking about difficult subjects.

  She said, ‘You know Tara says she’s sacked you, and at the moment she’s the boss. I can’t really argue with her, especially in these circumstances.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘How am I supposed to know?’ she said. ‘I didn’t want this responsibility. People keep telling me I could do well in this company. But is that what I want?’ She threw a look in my direction. ‘And you’re not exactly helping.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You’re making me feel defensive about Brands when I don’t want to be. I just want everything out in the open. I don’t like politics. I don’t like keeping things from people in the company—it’s the old socialist in me.’ She grinned. ‘I didn’t tell you that, did I? I studied economic history at Uni – turned me into a right Communist. Never dreamed I’d end up working in the beating heart of capitalism, management consultancy.’

  ‘Everyone has to make a living. The rest is between you and your principles.’

  ‘You’re right. I suppose I want you to understand that I don’t take all this very seriously – there are more significant things going on in the world than management consultancy’s going to fix. But that doesn’t alter the fact that every time you have a prod at the company I feel a burst of loyalty.’

  ‘I have that effect on people,’ I said. ‘I’m told I make it easy for people to dislike me. But I don’t want to make things awkward between you and Tara.’

  She seemed to make a decision. ‘This is from my budget,’ she said. ‘Keep out of her way and she needn’t know. We’ve heard nothing more from the police, though God knows we’re still all over the news. I know they’ve got an incident room and loads of people out asking questions and so on, but that all takes time. As a business we don’t have time. We need to sort this before clients get jittery and pull the plug on us. There are over fifty people working here, Sam. Their jobs are on the line.’

  ‘No pressure, then. But I’m not exactly on Tara’s Christmas card list, so how will you get this past her?’

  ‘She won’t know if you don’t tell her.’ She moved to the door. ‘All this digging you’ve been doing—does all the financial jiggery-pokery give you any insights as to who might have killed poor old Rory?’

  ‘I’m making progress,’ I said. ‘Lots of notes.’

  ‘What do you think is going on?’

  I reached out a hand to shake hers, and held on to it for just a moment longer than necessary.

  ‘That’s for me to know and you to pay for,’ I said.