Death's Bright Angel

by Janet Neel

  ‘Excuse me.’ A solid dark man, practically square, with a boxer’s broken nose and hair on the back of his square hands, had followed Hampton through the door. ‘Mr Peter Hampton, the Managing Director? I have a writ to serve on you. Thank you.’ He pushed a brown envelope into Hampton’s hand, nodded contentedly and disappeared through the swing door, leaving the two Britex people staring after him.

  ‘I’m ever so sorry, Mr Hampton, I didn’t see him. Where’d he spring from?’ The security man looked round wildly, visibly rattled. ‘I don’t usually let people like that through the door.’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t.’ Hampton spoke heavily. ‘That’s why he followed me in. Not your fault, lad.’

  The security man watched him run lightly upstairs, and reflected that he must tell the manager of the firm he worked for that all the rumours about Britex were right enough. Management did not seem to be panicking, but someone must be having real difficulty getting paid if he was using that particular bunch of heavies to serve a writ.

  Peter Hampton, carrying two briefcases under one arm, waved the writ in greeting to a pretty secretary he passed in the corridor, and she looked wistfully after him. Like most of the girls in the building she found him extremely attractive, and in particular she wished she were working for him rather than for the distinctly middle-aged and portly Sales Director. She watched him covertly as he stopped to talk to one of the accountants, whom he topped by a head, and smiled involuntarily herself as he laughed at something the man said, the bright blond hair and blue eyes very vivid against the clear pale skin. He clapped the man on the shoulder and swung round to go into his own office, with the easy fluent, all-in-one movement of the good athlete.

  Hampton dumped both briefcases on his desk, and tore open the envelope. The writ was from their second largest supplier, Alutex, who were by no means their largest creditor or the one whose bill had been outstanding longest. It took the form of a petition to the court to wind up Britex Fabrics PLC. Peter Hampton swore; this was not, of course, a serious attempt to bring down his company, indeed no one would be more horrified than the Directors of Alutex if the Directors of Britex were to respond by putting the company into receivership, but it was an effective way of getting a bill paid. He dropped the envelope on the Chief Accountant’s desk in the office next to his own, anchoring it with a substantial glass ashtray; irritated beyond measure by this particular demand, he added a scribbled note suggesting the supplier be told to put the writ where the monkey put the nuts.

  He went back to his own office and stood gazing out of the window, thinking about his empire. The buildings were freshly painted and shone in the clear thin air; a detached eye would have judged it to be a German or Scandinavian factory. The impression of bustling efficiency faded on closer inspection: inside the main spinning and weaving areas the labour was thin on the ground. Only about onethird of the looms were working, and those minding them were not fully occupied. Small gossiping groups could be found at the end of the long rows of looms, lifting one earmuff, in strict defiance of all regulations, and leaning close to each other to talk. Close up, people looked anxious and sullen, oppressed by the silent looms and the lack of light. Only half the factory was lit, a logical but depressing piece of economy.

  In the equally modern and sparkling office building there was less obvious anxiety. The clerical workers did not have before their eyes the silent looms. Nor had their ranks been reduced to the same degree as the manual workers in the factory. When a manufacturing concern falters it is the people engaged in making the goods who get sent home first, laid off but not made redundant in the hope that their hands will be needed again quickly. The office staff, particularly sales people, are slower to feel the draught. It is only when the managers have perceived that they cannot sell their goods that real inroads are made into staff numbers. It is also true that staff as opposed to manual workers cost more to make redundant; and it is a fact of industrial life that managers are slow to waste money, as they see it, on redundancies even where these would be useful and productive.

  Hampton sighed, common sense superseding rage, and rescued the writ and his note from the Chief Accountant’s desk. Once writs were issued they could not be ignored, and he would have to negotiate. He picked up his phone, but was distracted by his own secretary, a pretty, bossy, cheerful girl, well married to the local bookmaker and unimpressed by Hampton’s considerable attractions.

  ‘Excuse me, Peter. Is what the girls are saying about Bill Fireman right? Has he been in an accident?’

  ‘Oh Jesus. Is the news round already? It’s worse than that, Jenny — I’m afraid he’s dead. I understand he was mugged, in London, near where he was staying, and died in hospital apparently. Barry went down and identified him — I didn’t even know until midnight because I was on my way back here in the car, and the phone’s on the blink again — get Fred to take it away and fix it, will you, while I remember? Oh hell, I’d better get an announcement out, then; I was going to tell the Board first at the noon meeting. What time is it? Well, that lot won’t be out of bed by now, will they?’

  ‘Shall I get Mike and Jim?’ Jenny did not make the mistake of taking Hampton’s strictures as applying to the executive members of the Board.

  ‘Yes please, Jenny, now. Oh, and Les as well — the Chief Accountant has to know. Barry isn’t in yet, I assume — he must have come back on the morning train.’

  He got restlessly to his feet as Jenny left the room to round up the rest of the top management, who arrived looking anxious and enquiring. Peter Hampton rarely summoned people to his office, preferring to discharge some of his restless physical energy by walking round to their offices. He nodded to them all.

  ‘Sorry, just before we start … Jenny, get William Blackett on the phone, ask him to get here about twenty minutes before the meeting — I want a word first, tell him. Then find out where Simon Ketterick is and say I want to talk to him on the phone in about half an hour. Thanks.’ He waited till the door had closed behind her.

  ‘I have bad news, which some of you may have heard. Bill Fireman died last night in London — he was mugged, I understand, and died of his injuries. Barry went down to identify him, and he’ll tell us more when he gets here. I was only told very late last night, and I decided not to get you all up to hear that kind of news.’ He went on incisively to delegate responsibility for getting out a notice to the work force, and to appoint Fireman’s deputy in his place. The group round the table were shocked, but not, he noticed, particularly grieved. Fireman had been ten years older than any of them, and his meticulous, pernickety conscientiousness had annoyed more than one harried man round the table over the last year.

  ‘What a thing to happen just after he got the gold watch, though,’ Michael Currie, the Sales Director observed, as the meeting broke up. ‘When was it — Friday, the presentation? The watch must still have been in its box.’

  ‘No, he put it on straight away. Pleased as Punch he was. Didn’t you notice?’

  ‘Did they find it?’ Mike Currie had spoken idly, but blushed scarlet as he heard what he was saying.

  ‘Dunno. Can’t ask for it back, can we?’ Hampton was grimly amused. He waved the group out of his office, and the phone buzzed as the last of them went through the door.

  ‘I have Mr Ketterick for you.’

  ‘OK.’ He waited, unmoving, while the box on his desk said it was just putting him through and he got Simon Ketterick on the line. ‘What are you bastards at Alutex doing putting in a writ on the September bill? Do you want to lose the order?’

  ‘Peter, for Christ’s sake, I’m having difficulty telling the Directors the order’s worth having. Not much point in an order if the customer doesn’t pay. And you know as well as I do, I don’t see a penny till you pay.’ Hampton, well familiar with the principle that a salesman does not draw his commission until the customer has actually paid, observed impatiently that he had been in textiles for the last ten years.

  ‘In any case
, Peter, there’s something up here … strangers around, you know what I mean, and meetings where only the blue-eyed boys are invited. My bet is the shareholders are trying to sell while there is something to sell, know what I mean?’

  ‘So they don’t want too many old debts. Won’t help them much if we go bust, though, will it? What are we, 20 per cent of your turnover?’

  ‘Close,’ Ketterick’s flat Yorkshire voice reluctantly confirmed, and Hampton mentally noted that Britex must then be nearer 25 per cent than 20. ‘Anything you can do, Peter, and I’ll try and get the writ withdrawn. Half of it? £100,000, then?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Hampton considered the desk in front of him. ‘You heard Bill Fireman died last night, as a result of being mugged in London?’

  ‘Did he now? Sorry to hear, of course.’

  ‘That invoice. Maybe we are in dispute with you about it, that’s why it’s not paid?’

  ‘It’s three months old, Peter, and you’ve not said a dicky bird. It won’t wash with my guv’nors, know what I mean?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll do what I can.’ Hampton pressed the cut-off button, and sat, mouth compressed. He might find £100,000 to keep this particular creditor at bay, given a bit of indulgence from the bank, but it was time and beyond time for the meeting of the full Board arranged for later in the day. It would inevitably cause gossip to have a meeting so soon after the last one, attended by all eight directors; and there was no hope that the outside non-executive directors would have the sense to arrive quietly. They would, as usual, arrive in the Rollers, with the best and most conspicuous table in the local hotel booked afterwards. Little pleasure as there was in the situation, there would be some to be derived from watching those plump and privileged burghers face a future without fat directors’ fees for doing not very much and without their dividends. And, he thought with particularly malicious satisfaction, all their wives, mothers, cousins, aunts, ex-wives moaning at them because they too would have to do without the dividends that had kept them in decent houses and the children at good schools without Daddy doing too much by way of hard work. On the heels of this thought, William Blackett, son of the present Chairman, presently Sales Director of Alutex and, for historical reasons, non-executive director of Britex, was announced.

  ‘Wheel him in, Jenny.’ Hampton rose to greet his visitor, in order to give himself the momentary advantage conveyed by his six feet three inches. William Blackett was a stocky five foot ten and at fortythree, only five years older than Peter Hampton, he looked a good ten years more. Black haired, thinning from the crown, skin reddened with livid patches over the broken veins over the cheekbones, the whole face was cast in the sullen, downward lines of the depressive who also drinks too much. Hampton, shaking hands, decided the man was looking fatter and more out of condition even in the three weeks since the last Board meeting.

  ‘I’ve been talking to Simon Ketterick,’ he said as Blackett disconsolately accepted the offered coffee, having looked all round the office in vain for something stronger. ‘As you should bloody well know, we can’t pay that bill just yet. You’re his Sales Director, you tell him. It’ll look pretty odd if Alutex brings this company down, when you are a director of both companies. And it won’t do any of us any good.’

  ‘Why the hell can’t we pay?’ The livid colour in the cheeks flamed, and Hampton observed with interest but not surprise that Blackett, although a director, had really not understood the depth of Britex’s difficulties.

  ‘Because the bank would bounce the cheque if I was fool enough to write one.’

  Blackett gaped at him. ‘You mean we can’t find £300,000? But Hampton — bloody hell, I’m not supposed to tell you this and you’ll have to treat it as confidential — but our shareholders at Alutex want to sell. To Smith Brothers, who won’t want any of the senior management. So I won’t have a salary from there pretty soon.’ He stared at the desk, unseeingly. ‘I need a drink,’ he said abruptly, without apology. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘In the boardroom. Just wait a minute, will you? That’s not the only news — Fireman was mugged last night and died of his injuries.’

  ‘I’d heard.’ William Blackett rubbed both hands down his face. ‘Sad loss, of course,’ he added, perfunctorily.

  ‘Where did you hear from?’ Hampton asked, casually.

  ‘The old man. Barry whatshisname told him — rang him this morning.’

  Hampton nodded, resignedly. Feudal habits ran deep in this part of the world, and it did not amaze him to hear that his Director of Personnel had taken it upon himself to inform the Chairman, rather than leaving that task to the MD. He considered, exasperated, the fidgeting man the other side of the desk.

  ‘You worked here long enough, William; you should have known what a shambles the place was when you got me here as MD.’

  ‘When my father got you here, you mean. When I was here, we could sign the fucking cheques without worrying whether they would bounce.’

  ‘So you borrowed in the good years, and we’re paying the price now.’ Hampton, who had been determined not to be riled, felt himself going red.

  ‘You and my father got me out of here, and you can get us out of this fuck-up. I’ve got to have a drink, bugger it.’

  ‘I’ll get Jenny to take you to the boardroom, I’ve got to go through the numbers.’ He looked with exasperation at the sodden figure opposite him. ‘I’ve done better than you had any right to hope, Blackett. You drank yourself out of a job here, and I came at a drop in salary because I was given share options. At 25p — and the shares haven’t been above 13p since the day I could exercise the options. I know when you sold, and I wish we’d all been as lucky.’ He stopped abruptly, angry with himself for whining, and pressed his bell. ‘Jenny, will you take Mr Blackett to the boardroom, and see he has everything he wants? Call me when Sir James arrives.’

  Left alone, Peter Hampton finished the summary of the Chief Accountant’s figures. He had got rid of this man’s predecessor a year ago. The young accountant who had replaced him was not yet on the Board, though he had been promised a seat within the year. Hampton reflected sourly that Les Graham had not recently sought to remind anyone of this commitment; no one, of course, wanted to be a director of a company when it went into receivership, the personal risks as well as the problems of explaining in the future being far too difficult. He double-checked the figures and considered them again, tight-lipped.

  His secretary put her head in to tell him that the Chairman had arrived, plus the dim local solicitor and a Blackett cousin who sat on the Board to look after other local investment interests. She volunteered to fetch Michael Currie, the Sales Director, and James Finlay, the Production Director, who made up the rest of the Board. Hampton waited a deliberate few minutes before going into the boardroom. Like the rest of the building, it was pleasant, furnished well but without extravagance: a large board table made by a local firm, a few reasonably pleasant portraits of past chairmen, and a magnificent view of the surrounding Yorkshire hills. He nodded to the Company Secretary, a bright local boy in his late twenties who was there to take the note.

  ‘Morning, Sir James, morning again, William.’ He shook hands with Sir James, who at sixty-eight was in better shape than his son, less red, thinner and, in Hampton’s view, a great deal more intelligent. ‘Shall we start, Chairman, if you are ready?’ The courteous formality pulled William Blackett up, and drew prompt attention from all the executive directors.

  ‘Always means trouble, when you start saying “Chairman” in just that way,’ Sir James volunteered, helpfully.

  ‘It is trouble, I’m afraid. First I should tell those members of the Board who have not already heard that we have suffered a sad loss. Bill Fireman, our Purchasing Manager, died last night, as a result of a criminal attack.’ He paused to allow explanations and condolences, and for Sir James to move that a message of sympathy be sent to Fireman’s daughter, sons, mother and sister. ‘And flowers, of course, Hampton — Jane and I will send some personally,
but I imagine the Board will want to send some from all of us. Let me know about the funeral arrangements.’

  These niceties exhausted, Hampton, at a nod from Sir James, went on to the main business of the meeting, addressing the Board as a whole. ‘I spoke last night to Sir James and he felt we should meet this morning. Morningtex have withdrawn — Mike Reece spoke to me yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘Why for God’s sake? What have you been saying to them?’ William Blackett heaved himself up in his chair, flushing even redder with indignation and surprise, leaving Hampton silently noting that Sir James had not forewarned his son before this meeting. Well, he could deal with the situation now, blast him. Hampton turned deliberately towards Sir James.

  ‘Well, Willie, they have.’ Sir James was unflustered. ‘I spoke to their Chairman myself just before this meeting, to make quite certain that this was not simply a negotiating position. They have decided that they don’t really want the thermal-wear business at any price, or at least not at any price that would be useful to us. At a price of less than about £6m we can’t make the sums add up, can we, Hampton?’

  ‘No. The bank has a charge on all our assets for £10m. The assets involved in the thermal-wear business are in the books at £7m. The bank might have agreed to release the assets if they got £6m. At £4m odd, Morningtex’s last suggestion, there is no chance.’

  ‘The bank won’t pull the rug just because that sale hasn’t gone through. If they do, they won’t do much business in Yorkshire from now on.’ William Blackett spoke confidently, and Peter Hampton reflected that William had all sorts of enlightening experiences coming his way if that was what he thought.

  ‘I agree that the bank would hold the position, provided it did not get any worse,’ Sir James said judiciously. ‘Unfortunately, as I understand it, the position does get worse.’ He raised his eyebrows at Hampton, who nodded.

  ‘Yes. I have a cash flow here — it’s handwritten, for obvious reasons.’ He handed round sheets of paper and waited patiently while his Board worked their way through it, confirming as he waited a previous view that William Blackett had no idea how to read the document, and indeed appeared to be trying to add the final income line to the final expenses line.