Craven Conflict

by David Cooper

  ‘Karen,

  Following on from what you said to me last week, you’ve clearly not changed your mind today about what you’re likely to inflict upon me in a few days’ time. So I’ve come to the conclusion there’s no point in staying here any longer. I think it’s best that I move on right now. Yes, right now. Work wise, it’s so quiet that I can’t see any point in arguing with you. It’s plain enough too that you wouldn’t be desperate for me to serve out my notice. Best that we go our separate ways today. Agreed?

  I’ve attached a list of my key active matters, in the sense of scheduled candidate interviews with firms (three), second interviews pending (one, and frankly I wouldn’t hold your breath over that one) and CVs with firms waiting for responses (four). The rest, as far as I can see, are all nothing better than speculative mailshot fodder. I’m not due to see any new candidates right now either.

  I won’t pretend this is enjoyable for either of us, so it’s sensible we keep it as painless as possible.

  Wayne.

  PS. Have also signed form to resign Ripple directorship too, effective today. On my desk in front of me as we speak. You can file it.’

  Karen read the email twice more and gaped at the screen. Remembering that she was not alone in her office, she pushed the corner of the monitor to enable Dawn to read Avery’s email for herself. Her mind racing, Karen’s eye fell on the cashflow spreadsheet that the two of them had been working through. She had tentatively earmarked the next month’s anticipated profits to be severely dented by the need to pay out Avery’s redundancy and notice entitlement…..but if he’s taking the initiative to walk out now, she thought, surely he’s just blown his severance pay altogether?

  Karen was spared from further confusion as the door opened and Avery stood in the threshold. There was a curious grin on his face, which Karen found jarring.

  “Bit of a stunner, isn’t it? Thought it would be. I can’t see any other way, though. Let’s just call it a day. Clean break here and now.”

  The cocky arrogance of Avery’s comment only added to Karen’s disbelief. Thoughts were still running through her mind about how much of a financial windfall it would be for the firm, if he was serious about resigning then and there without waiting for any redundancy payment. She stood up.

  “Wayne, have you thought this through properly? You’re really wanting to leave straight away? What about…..”

  “Straight away.” The interruption saved Karen from having to concede that she had little enthusiasm to talk Avery out of the course of action upon which he was clearly fixed. “It’s got to be for the best. As long as you’re happy circulating your massive client base with the bad news. I’ll leave you to it.”

  Offended as she was at Avery’s sarcasm, Karen refrained from rising to the bait. She glanced at Dawn and was met with a blank look. As it finally sunk in that Avery’s shock decision might be the best outcome for which she could ever have hoped, she offered Avery her hand.

  “OK, Wayne, straight away it is.” The handshake was a pale shadow of Avery’s usual style, fine tuned by years of networking, and Karen noticed that he could not now bring himself to look her in the eye. “Do you want to clear your desk and go right now?”

  “Not much left to clear. Should take me all of five minutes.” He bent down to embrace Dawn, who had not stood up, and kissed her on both cheeks to her evident discomfort. “I’ll put my head back round the door when I’m done.”

  In a moment he was gone. While Dawn flicked her hair back into place and pulled out a mirror from her handbag, Karen fell into her chair once more.

  “Tell me I’m not dreaming this.” She read Avery’s email once more. “I’ve spent the whole weekend bracing myself to go through with my first ever sacking, and face up to the price I’d have to pay for it. Now this has just happened.”

  “I’m just as amazed as you are. I thought there was something in the air.” Dawn hesitated. Karen wondered if she was finally going to share some more information with her, only to be let down as she changed the subject. “I’d better tell the payroll people. And we’d better get back to this cashflow.”

  “I guess so. Let’s see if we can get it done before Wayne comes out to say his goodbyes.”

  They both returned to the task in hand. But it was not long before their concentration was broken by a loud crashing sound, supplemented by a torrent of foul language. Karen hurried down the corridor with Dawn not far behind. She pushed open the door to Avery’s office, and saw him shoving a filing cabinet drawer back into place with needless force, another cacophonous impact echoing round the thin office walls.

  “Wayne, what on earth’s wrong?”

  Avery spun round.

  “Lost one of my tapes. Can’t find it anywhere.”

  Karen realised that he was referring to the concealed recording device that had graced the previous week’s meeting.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes, of course it does!” The venom within his response took Karen by surprise. Avery sensed that he had overdone it and tried to backpedal. “I mean – it had something pretty important on it, and I can’t find it anywhere.”

  It must be the tape from last week’s redundancy consultation, Karen thought. But it’s water under the bridge now. Why the fuss?

  “Well, if it turns up, Dawn will get it back to you.” Dawn nodded. “Can’t you at least leave on a more harmonious note than this?”

  For a brief moment, Avery’s look was thunderous. But it changed in an instant to an oily smirk.

  “I suppose so. Just find it for me, Dawn. There’s a good girl.”

  Avery made a point of quietly closing all of the cabinet and desk drawers that still remained open. He placed an ornate desk diary into his executive case and closed it shut.

  “Well, I guess this is where we really do go our separate ways.” With one last comment, Avery made to take his leave. In an instant it was over, with a perfunctory handshake for Karen and a brief and emotionless kiss on the cheek for Dawn. The main glass door to the outside corridor closed behind Avery for the last time as Neeta emerged from her office.

  “What was all that crashing and banging? I was in the middle of an important call.”

  “Wayne’s gone.” Karen explained quickly. “Didn’t he tell you anything?”

  “Not a word. Good riddance, if I’m allowed to say things like that. He never liked me, and to be perfectly frank I never liked him either. As far as I’m concerned, if we hear anything from him again, it will be far too soon and far too regrettable.”

  Karen had no idea how accidentally prophetic her management accountancy specialist’s words would turn out.

  * * * * *

  “For Dawn? Is that it?”

  “Yes, no second name.”

  “And the address?”

  “Ripple Recruitment, Second Floor, Regal House, Temple Street, Birmingham.”

  “OK, let’s run over the message again. ‘Thank you for all your help last week. Everything worked out really well. I’d love to meet up with you again some time.’ Don’t you want to add your own name? Or a pet name, or something?”

  “No, just leave it as it is, thanks.”

  “Whatever you say. They’ll be with her first thing tomorrow.”

  Tuesday 19 th March

  What should have been an ordinary working day for Dawn was derailed by two early and wholly unexpected interruptions.

  She had only just sat down at her desk when the entry buzzer sounded. A delivery driver stood outside, holding an enormous bunch of flowers. Dawn was pleasantly surprised to discover that she herself was named as the recipient. Putting the flowers on her desk, she read the anonymous message card with curious interest.

  “Taking the mickey again, Wayne?” She addressed thin air as the courier closed the door behind him, then thought again. There was someone else, this time last week…..who could it have been? Turning to her monitor screen, she called up the firm’s central diary, only to find that the entry
she knew had been there for the previous Tuesday had been erased. As she frowned in disbelief, she thought about the paper copy she had taken when –

  “Bloody hell. Look at this!”

  Dawn spun round as Karen stormed up to her desk. It was obvious that something had tipped her all too volatile temper over the edge. She took the sheet of paper that Karen held out and quickly read it, realising straight away what had provoked her.

  ‘Dear Ms Rutherford

  In the light of your company’s restructuring, I have decided that my interests in looking for a new job are best served by severing my connections and putting my trust in a new agent, namely Wave Recruitment.

  Please do not send out my CV to anybody else. I am ending our business relationship with immediate effect.

  Regards

  Chris Thompson’

  Dawn passed the email back to Karen. She needed no reminder about the financial consequences of Ripple losing opportunities to place candidates and to gain commission from doing so.

  “You reckon Wayne’s put him up to this?”

  “Bloody right I do. It’s outrageous. What the hell does he think he’s doing?”

  “God only knows...” Dawn hesitated, not wanting to risk aggravating Karen any further. “Let me just look this candidate up.” A few keystrokes later, Dawn had the records on her screen.

  “Chris Thompson, paralegal. Looking for a job in personal injury. On the books for ten weeks, roughly. CV sent out five times. No interest in him yet.”

  Karen scowled at the thought of a lost client. Although paralegal placement was a far cry from the more lucrative work involved in finding new roles for experienced solicitors, it was still a source of income not to be spurned. Many paralegals were in fact law graduates, on the lookout for any chance to get a foot in the door once their studies had finished, knowing full well that there was an acute shortage of training contracts in what had become an oversupplied profession. It was never far from Karen’s mind that if she was the one who had helped a grateful paralegal take a step onto the first rung of the ladder, she might be assisting in a more rewarding career move at a later date.

  “What about Wave Recruitment, then? If that’s not a deliberate play on Wayne Avery…..”

  “Let me find out.” Dawn called up the firm’s direct access to Companies House records and was soon looking at a list of names. “Wave Recruitment UK Limited. Established twelve years and based in Portsmouth. It’s the only one that sounds close, but it surely can’t be his.”

  “I know. It sounds as if it’s something to do with shipping. Try Wayne himself.”

  A few keystrokes later, Dawn had produced a search result for company officers with the target name.

  “Only one Wayne Avery, at least. Two directorships. One’s us, of course. The other’s a company called Isabel Dennis Limited. Let’s take a look at that…” Her fingers flew over the keyboard. “Right, this is interesting. He only signed up as a director yesterday and we can’t download the filed record yet. The company’s less than a year old and it hasn’t lodged any accounts yet. Want to hear who the other directors are?”

  “Go on.”

  “Dennis Harold Avery and Isabel Margaret Avery. I’d hazard a guess that they’re his parents.”

  “That sounds right.” Karen thought for a moment. “So what’s his game? When he left yesterday, he had a dormant non-trading company in his back pocket. Today he goes on record as a director. And I’ve just lost a candidate to him. He must have set up on his own. What’s he been trying to hide?”

  Dawn glanced down to the floor, not answering. Karen was oblivious as she carried on thinking out loud.

  “I suppose this Chris Thompson bloke might just be a mate of his. Someone who’d follow him wherever he went. I’d better just keep a close eye on it.” Karen finally noticed the newly delivered flowers. “What’s all this about? Don’t say you’ve got a secret admirer.”

  “I thought it was Wayne playing practical jokes. Half expected a poisonous snake in the middle.” Dawn passed the card over. “No clues from this. For all I know, you might be right. Not that my husband would be too impressed, not in the week before our tenth wedding anniversary.”

  Keen as she was to find a clue to the paralegal’s defection, Karen drew a blank.

  “I see what you mean. This message isn’t obviously anything to do with Wayne. Any idea who else it might have been?”

  “I did wonder whether it was some bloke who came in this time last week. Soaked to the skin. Said he’d run all the way from New Street Station because he didn’t want to be late for his interview. I dried his jacket for him while he was seeing Wayne.”

  “Sure you didn’t dry his trousers too?” Karen’s anger had finally died down as they shared the joke. “Not another disappearing paralegal, I hope.”

  “No idea. The diary entry’s vanished.” The phone rang and Dawn picked it up to answer. “For you. Fiona Bingham, from Hunters.”

  Recognising the local firm from whom she had not heard for many months, Karen gestured towards her office and hurried away as Dawn transferred the call, the lost candidate temporarily forgotten.

  Twenty minutes later, Karen was grateful for the new instruction to search for a five year qualified family law specialist. She thought once again of the email she had received earlier that morning from the defecting paralegal.

  If Wayne put him up to that, surely he’s broken his contract?

  Karen reached into a desk drawer and extracted the file containing Avery’s employment history. The first two items, his job application and the copy of her offer letter, were stark reminders of better times long gone. Dismissing them with a baleful glare, she soon found what she was looking for.

  ‘Service Agreement – Rutherford Professional & Legal Recruitment (Birmingham) Limited and Wayne Avery.’

  As she recalled the bright and promising future that she and Avery had once enthused about together, when they had signed the Ripple contract, Karen shook her head. She quickly flicked through the document to find the clause that had triggered her latest train of thoughts.

  ‘Post Termination Restraints

  21. It is a condition of your employment that for a period of twelve months immediately following termination of your employment for any reason whatsoever, you will not, whether directly or indirectly as principal, agent, employee, director, partner or otherwise howsoever, approach any individual or organisation who has during your period of employment been a customer of ours, whether a candidate or a prospective employer of a candidate, if the purpose of such an approach is to solicit business which could have been undertaken by us.’

  So you’re banned from poaching my clients for twelve months. And that covers employers as well as candidates.

  Instinctively Karen reached for the phone, but she caught herself. For the sake of one paralegal, she thought, who might be some drinking buddy of Avery’s anyway, it was really not worth spending money she could ill afford to lose on legal advice that she might not need. The amount that she had been charged, and was still being charged, by the solicitors involved in the winding up of her mother’s estate seemed exorbitant in comparison with what the firm actually seemed to have done.

  Karen glanced once more at the clause in Avery’s contract. She was convinced Avery had deliberately ignored the bar on poaching her clients, rather than simply forgotten that he was bound by it. Once more she thought about making a call. She knew that the solicitor who had drafted Avery’s service agreement on her behalf had become a good friend in the course of Karen’s brief quest for a political career, and could soon point her in the right direction. But she was interrupted when Dawn called through to let her know that her first appointment for the day, a new candidate, had turned up ten minutes early.

  Many hours later, Karen was about to call a halt to what had turned out to be a more demanding working day than expected, when a new email announced its arrival. She opened it, and stared in disbelief.

  ‘
Dear Ms Rutherford

  In the view of your company’s restructuring, I have concluded that my interests in looking out for a new position are best served by severing my connections and placing my trust in a new agent, namely Wave Recruitment.

  Please do not submit my CV to anybody else. I am terminating our business relationship with immediate effect.

  Regards

  Mark Davenport’

  The jarring note struck by the opening phrase ‘in the view’ was all that Karen needed to confirm her suspicions. She quickly retrieved the email that had arrived earlier that day from the paralegal who had switched his allegiance to what was evidently Avery’s new business, and compared its wording with the one she had just received. She counted seven alterations, but the structure of the latest email was otherwise exactly the same as the earlier one. And there was something else too…

  The font.

  Despite the fact that the email heading was in standard Arial 10 point, the contents were unmistakeably written in Times New Roman 12 point, a font that Karen herself regularly used in more formal letters and documents.

  Karen realised that Dawn had already left for the day. She called through to Neeta, who was still in her office. Once Neeta had compared the two emails, she was in no doubt.

  “You’re right. I think this is a cut and paste job from a template, with some deliberate amendments. And it’s obvious that this man Davenport didn’t stop and read it properly before he sent it. Fancy starting off a serious email with ‘in the view’ – silly idiot.”

  By now Karen was becoming more heated. “This has got to be Wayne’s doing. I think he must have knocked off a copy of our database. The treacherous bastard. This means war.”

  Neeta thought for a moment.

  “Why don’t you ring Davenport and ask why he’s done this? And whether Wayne put him up to it?”

  “Nice thought, but I’m pretty sure it would be futile. He’d probably bar the call. Or talk off a script. Let’s check him out…” Karen soon had the details on her screen. “Another paralegal. Another personal injury merchant. Three months on our books. One interview early on, failed, and a few mailshots since then without a bite. Not much different to that one from this morning. This has got Wayne’s filthy pawmarks all over it.”