Influence

by Chris Parker

  Marcus waited for a tram to pass and walked over Middle Hill onto Weekday Cross. Nottingham Contemporary, one of the city’s newer art galleries, was hosting an exhibition titled, Kafou: Haiti, Art and Vodou. Marcus had visited the exhibition when it first opened in October. The mixture of paintings, sculptures and sequin flags provided a representation of Vodou in Haiti from the 1940s to the present day. It was, according to the marketing material, a reflection of Haiti’s historical experience through the supernatural.

  Vodou or, as it was more commonly spelt in the West, Voodoo, was a spiritual belief system that was followed by the vast majority of the Haitian population. Marcus had been aware of its origins and practises before he visited the exhibition. Religion in its different forms had long been a fascination of his.

  Voodoo was rooted in West African religions and incorporated aspects of Catholicism, Islam, European folklore and even freemasonry. In Marcus’ opinion Voodoo, like all religions, was man-made, born out of a mix of social and geographical influences to serve a powerful and primal purpose. He had always viewed religion as one the most significant – if not the most significant – provider of meaning ever created by human beings.

  And Marcus knew that those people who created meanings that were shared and accepted by the masses shaped both the present and the future.

  Shared meanings led to shared behaviours, agreed rules and a sense of belonging. Shared meanings created and underpinned society. They were an essential and very powerful form of influence. Whenever a politician convinced the electorate that he or she shared their common values and understandings, that politician always increased their power base. When the man on the street said, ‘Do you know what I mean?’ and his audience nodded in agreement, a community, no matter how small, was being either built or reinforced.

  What most religious believers failed to realise, Marcus felt, was that meaning was both created and shared through human communication. There was no divine message. And, therefore, there could be no divine messengers. An Almighty God had not created the world; rather great communicators had built it over centuries of carefully planned, and often selfish, influence.

  Every generation in every culture always had a need for special, talented influencers who could operate in ways that were not understood by the rest of their society. Prophet. Magician. Shaman. Whatever the label, the meaning and the role were the same: to influence, shape and lead the masses. Voodoo was no longer a powerful force in most parts of the world because its leaders had not known how to adapt. Now it was confined mainly to art galleries and lecture halls. The most powerful modern-day shamans did not perform ancient rituals or sacrifices. They wore Canali, Armani, or Boss.

  They were people like him.

  Marcus glanced at the art gallery as he passed. He could see only three people studying the exhibits. Last week Simon Westbury had said, ‘Words are the real Voodoo!’ and everyone in the office had chuckled in appreciation. Once upon a time Marcus might have said the same thing. Now he knew that the real Voodoo, the real God or whatever else people wanted to call it, was the Subconscious. The ultimate universal power lay within those parts of the brain that were still beyond the understanding of even the greatest neuroscientists. Space travel, he thought, whilst providing interesting information, was going in entirely the wrong direction. The real journey of discovery was inward, into the human brain. It was a journey that would eventually reveal what human beings were truly capable of, how communication created the neural networks, the associations, which shaped experience and defined and developed our world.

  Marcus smiled at the fact that an exhibition of Voodoo art was surrounded by the traditional Christmas symbols and greetings that had taken over the city. ‘Tidings of zombies and joy,” he thought to himself as he walked up High Pavement.

  Influence: The Marcus Kline Consultancy was based on the south side of the street within a Grade II listed building that dated back to the late eighteenth century. High Pavement was one of Nottingham’s earliest city streets. In the Georgian era High Pavement had been one of the most fashionable places to live in Nottingham. Now it was essentially a place of work or pleasure, with The Lace Market Hotel, modern and trendy, reflecting the upmarket nature of the area, and providing accommodation for business people and tourists alike.

  Accommodation of a very different kind was also offered by the oldest building on High Pavement. It was the Church of St Mary the Virgin, with a mention in the Doomsday Book and a history tracing back to Saxon times.

  Marcus loved the street. He loved the way it looked, the mix of buildings, the way it was fashionable and relevant just as it always had been. He loved its situation, close to the very centre of the city and yet removed, part of a discreet area with its own sense of identity and value.

  For Marcus, High Pavement was an architectural reminder that, if you were skilled enough, you could always see the experiences and lessons of the past, etched in the lines of the present. The street was like a lined face, all its secrets hidden in plain view. Every time he walked to his office Marcus looked at it anew, as if for the first time. It was another part of his daily practice.

  As Marcus neared the Galleries of Justice a group of students came out of the building, congregating on the pavement ahead of him. Their teacher followed them out. ‘Leave space on the pavement, please,’ he said as he saw Marcus approaching. The man’s voice was soft and hesitant, his tone rising slightly at the end of the sentence.

  Marcus automatically moved onto the road. The students, as he expected, stayed where they were. The raised inflection meant that the teacher had made a request rather than given an instruction. His hesitancy had made it at best a very weak request. Given the excited chatter of the group nothing less than a clear order was ever going to move them. Marcus passed by on the cobbled road, nodding in acknowledgement at the teacher’s raised open palm of apology.

  Less than a minute later he was stepping into the reception of his offices. Emma greeted him with the same, genuine smile that she had for the last three years. Wonderfully, the greeting she gave to total strangers was only slightly less genuine. Marcus found himself, as he always did, returning her smile and feeling immediately very, very good at being back in his professional home. He had no intention of going into his office without talking to her first. Rituals were an important part of every person’s and every organisation’s life, and spending two or three minutes chatting to Emma when he first entered the office was one of Marcus’s more obvious workplace rituals.

  ‘How are you this fine winter’s day, Em?’

  ‘Slightly poorer since I came to work, thank you for asking.’

  ‘You and everyone else I hope.’

  ‘Indeed. Payments to the charity box all duly made.’ Emma flipped open a notebook on her desk. ‘That takes the total from the office and associated folk to £1,480 for this calendar year. Overall, with all the other contributions you’ve persuaded people to make, we’ve raised just over eighty thousand since January. At this rate the school will be built and up and running on schedule.’

  ‘I never doubted it. And I bet we can get the office intake up to at least a nice, round one thousand five hundred in the next five minutes.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Emma closed the notebook. She tried to resist asking the question and gave in almost immediately. Marcus’s decision to establish a charity with the sole purpose of raising money to build one new school every year in the most deprived parts of the African continent had been made the previous Christmas. It had come as no surprise to Emma who found the charitable part of his nature a compelling counterpoint to what others often referred to as his arrogant genius. ‘Go on then, what’s the bet?’

  ‘That I know exactly how Simon has spent the last five minutes or so.’

  ‘And he hasn’t already shared that information with you?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘And you didn’t leave him a
list of things for him to do this morning.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘So…?’

  ‘So if I’m right you and Simon put in a tenner each and if I’m wrong I’ll put in forty.’

  Emma sighed, picked up her phone and keyed in a single digit. In an instant Simon appeared through the door that led into the main office. He reddened when he saw Marcus.

  ‘Yes…Yes, boss?’

  ‘Ah, so polite now that we are face-to-face.’ Marcus flashed a grin and went on quickly. ‘Simon, I’m sure you will be pleased to know that The World’s Most Humble Man is taking yet another minute out of his frantic schedule to raise even more money for charity.’

  ‘I paid my tenner even before the interview started!’ Simon looked to Emma for support. ‘Honest! That poor TV interviewer – what was his name, Charlie? – never stood a chance. He was always going to say whatever you wanted him to.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about the interview. However, now that you’ve mentioned it, how precisely did I get him to say that I was the spokesman for the silent programmer?’

  Simon shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Yet. I haven’t had time to really study the recording. To be fair, though, I think it was one of your more one-sided bets. I know it’s all for a good cause, but this time I think you should have offered odds.’

  ‘Then you’ll be delighted know that for the current little wager Em has just volunteered you for, I am offering odds of two to one.’

  Emma frowned and shook her head in denial.

  Marcus continued, ‘The bet is that I mysteriously and miraculously know how you have been spending the last five minutes. Which, of course, would seem to be an impossibility given that you haven’t shared that information with me.’

  ‘You haven’t, have you Si?’ Emma asked.

  ‘Of course not. Why would I help him win?’

  ‘Fair point.’ Emma nodded, her gaze fixed on Simon. ‘Then why are you so nervous? Even I can see that you look like you’re guilty of something.’

  ‘The question,’ Marcus said, ‘is what exactly is young Simon feeling guilty about? And, I’m delighted to say, the answer to that question is the answer that wins me the bet.’

  ‘What have you done?’ Emma’s gaze hardened on Simon.

  The young man’s face flushed. ‘I…erm…I’ve just been on the phone.’

  ‘He called Dean Harrison,’ Marcus said, ‘one of our oldest and most beloved clients, to explain to him what a spade is.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Emma’s attention was suddenly all on her boss. ‘Why would Simon want to talk to the owner of a law firm about garden tools?’

  ‘A spade in a manner of speaking. Simon actually felt the need to have a full and frank conversation rather than let Dean work something out for himself.’

  ‘How can you know that?’ Simon blurted. ‘Has Mr Harrison called you?’

  ‘How could he? I’m guessing you’d only just finished talking to him when I got here.’

  ‘Then you can’t know, because…because…’ Simon spluttered.

  ‘Because what?’ Emma demanded.

  ‘Because he told me not to call him under any circumstances.’

  Emma switched back to Marcus. ‘So how did you know he’d ignore you?’

  Marcus shrugged. ‘Do we agree that I have won the bet and that you both owe the charity box another donation?’ The pair nodded. ‘Excellent!’ Marcus rubbed his hands. ‘Let’s be cheerful people! After all, the Christmas season is the season for giving. And that’s precisely what I did with Simon when he phoned me about Dean’s predicament. I gave him some very powerful instructions.’

  ‘To not phone Mr Harrison,’ Emma said.

  ‘Quite the opposite. I actually told him to make the call. Under the guise of directing him to say nothing, I gave his subconscious very clear instructions to pick up the phone and have the conversation. I then very quickly called Dean myself, warned him that Simon would ring, explained that it was all part of our young man’s education, and promised to pay for our New Year dinner at Harts, if he would just go along with it all. Fortunately, Dean and I go back a long way and he thought that giving up a few minutes of his time was more than a fair trade-off to help Simon learn – and, of course, for the price of a great meal.’

  Simon groaned. Emma looked down at her desk, shaking her head. In many ways Marcus was a great boss. She wouldn’t have stayed with him for so long if he hadn’t been. Yet he was also the most challenging and contradictory human being. He was the most generous person she had ever met. He was generous with his time, his money and his skills. And he was a genius. And he knew it. And he made sure that everyone else did too.

  It was incredibly demanding being around someone who could make you do things without you realising it and who, Emma felt, could see your deepest secrets.

  In her mind, Marcus was special and that meant the normal rules of human engagement didn’t apply. He could understand and influence people – anyone, she believed – in ways that were normally the reserve of individuals in the closest of relationships, and yet there was always a sense of distance about him, something that seemed untouchable and unfathomable. Something that, despite the fact she felt a most appropriate love for him, made her feel an emotion that played around the edges of nervousness whenever she felt he was focussed solely on her.

  Marcus watched the play of emotions on the face of his two employees. He gave them just long enough to make sense of what he had said and then went on, ‘No harm done with the Harrison account, Simon. Just a learning experience and we can never have too many of those. So let’s go into my office and deconstruct our conversation. You need to understand the language patterns and covert commands that I used to get my wicked way with you.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Marcus crossed the reception, clapping the young man on his shoulder as he passed. ‘Give your money to Em and then we’ll get started.’

  Simon waited until the door had closed behind Marcus before taking out his wallet and handing over another ten-pound note.

  ‘You know that he’ll more than make it up in your Christmas bonus, don’t you?’ Emma said as she took the money.

  ‘I almost wish that he wouldn’t,’ Simon replied. ‘I wouldn’t want to work anywhere else and I feel bad saying this, but sometimes you want the unbeatable to lose just once – or at least come close.’

  Emma patted the back of Simon’s hand. ‘You can’t expect him to be perfect.’

  ‘I know. It would just be nice, though, if he didn’t know how good he was.’

  ‘Then he wouldn’t be the boss.’

  ‘Or he might just be a different type of boss. Instead of being…’ Simon’s voice trailed off for a second before he spoke again, punctuating each word with a movement of his hand as if placing them in the air. ‘…Simply Marcus, Unbeatable Genius.’ He lowered his hand. ‘Or smug, for short,’ he said with a wink.

  10.

  Peter Jones took the phone out of his pocket. He recognised the number. His stomach tingled and twisted with a feeling that was one part anxiety and several parts excitement. One hundred per cent adrenaline, Peter reminded himself as he put the phone to his ear.

  ‘Hi Mike.’

  ‘Morning Jonah.’ Mike Richards was the Senior Controller in the Force Control Room. He was an experienced, reliable guy, with a voice that held a constant pace and pitch no matter what information he was sharing.

  ‘What have you got for me?’ Peter felt the tingle move up the length of his spine as he asked the question.

  ‘A very unusual dead body tied in a chair. I’ve informed SOCO. Two uniforms are there.’

  ‘How did we find out?’

  ‘An anonymous phone call. I’ll forward the address.’

  ‘Ok. Thanks.’

  Peter Jones hung up and gave instructions for
his team to be assembled there. Then he looked at the address Mike had sent. It was nearby. In fact, he and Nic had driven past it only a few moments ago. He dialled his office.

  Peter returned the phone to his pocket. There was a very real chance that this was the it he had been waiting for. The fact that Mike had already alerted the Scenes of Crime Officer and that he had just described the body as unusual meant that the initial report back from the uniformed officers on the scene was clearly indicating foul play. Not that Peter would make any presumptions. He never allowed himself to do that at the scene of a crime or any other step along the way. He observed, asked questions – sometimes creative, challenging questions that no one else would have thought to ask – and let the answers and the evidence speak for him.

  Peter knew how to control his adrenaline rush. He knew how to consider and explore all possibilities in an organised and sequential way. He knew that imagination had to be directed and managed, never allowed to run free, and only ever used to open up avenues of enquiry that could be justified by the information currently available.

  Peter stood still for a few more seconds, looking up into the rain at the grey, dense cloud cover. He felt his shoulders relax.

  Whenever he could Peter always took just a moment to prepare himself, controlling the desire to rush in at the start of what might turn into a major investigation.

  ‘The controlled calm before the possible storm,’ is how he had once explained it to Nic.

  ‘And what if there isn’t a storm?’ Nic had asked.

  ‘Then it’s just good practice. And you can never have too much of that.’ It was an answer that satisfied his partner and steered the conversation away from the fact that violent crimes were as much a part of the landscape as a change of weather. The important difference was that everyone noticed the weather and everyone was touched by it in equal measure. The worst of what Peter and his team dealt with was kept away from the general public as much as possible. It was better that way.