Influence

by Chris Parker

  Marcus relaxed back into his chair. He saw Simon relax, too. Marcus waited for a brief moment before speaking again, letting Simon follow his silent lead, waiting until Simon was completely in sync with him before saying, ‘Those people who fail to achieve their potential – and that is most of the human race – do so because their negative personal beliefs blind them to the positive feedback they receive that not only challenges those beliefs, it actually proves the opposite to be true. You took so long to achieve this outcome with Cassandra because of your negative self-beliefs. That’s OK, sort of, as long as you recognise the feedback, accept it, and change your behaviours accordingly. You do understand, don’t you?’

  Simon nodded again. Marcus remained silent until Simon felt obliged to ask, ‘That’s what I have to do, isn’t it, if I want to become like you?’

  ‘It’s one of the things, yes. And it’s one of the most important things. Everybody talks and writes about the need to get and learn from feedback. However, only the very best are willing, and know how, to really do this. To respond to feedback appropriately and powerfully means being willing to let go of things you have previously held dear. The paradox is that sometimes the feedback is flawed. So even though that feedback challenges our beliefs we have to ignore it. It requires as much training and skill to be able to deliver great feedback as it does to interpret and respond to feedback. If we seek to become great we need to know how to manage both. The person who gets the balance right rules the world.’

  ‘You are one of those people.’ Simon offered this as an acknowledgement rather than a question.

  Marcus nodded. ‘Yes. I can achieve anything I set my mind to.’ He looked at Simon very differently to how he had looked at Peter. Now his breathing was low in his stomach. He felt as if he was living in his spine, from his coccyx to the back of his head. He was, he knew, creating a very different outcome. He said, ‘Truthfully, no one is safe around me.’

  They both understood that in different ways. They both smiled.

  When Simon left work he felt more confident, more sure of himself and his future, than ever before.

  The third killing changed everything completely and irreversibly.

  PART THREE

  Listening

  37.

  Everything changes. Always. That is the only certainty. Sometimes people learn because of change, sometimes they create change because of what they have learnt. Change is inevitable. Learning is not. I learn through the changes I am creating.

  I am so very different from the herd. The herd is made up of individuals who have forgotten – actually, they never realised nor went in search of – their own potential. Instead they chose to lose themselves in the wasteland of conformity. The herd is made up of pack animals. They hope, individually, that they won’t be noticed, that they won’t stand out. They make noise, they talk as if they know how everything should be and yet, at the same time, they explain how they would do it all differently if they could have their time again. They tell themselves and everyone who will listen what they would do, what others should do, whilst they only follow the herd.

  They speak only to hear their words reinforced. They have no idea how to truly listen to the sounds around them or the sounds they create. They do not know that listening is the greatest and most challenging art. One cannot look deeply and with true insight until one has learnt how to listen, how to see the brightness, the variety, in sound.

  Despite the significance of what I am doing – of what I am going to do – none of you will see clearly. Despite the way my actions will echo throughout time, none of you will hear clearly.

  Most people fear losing their sight more than they do their hearing. Those people are wrong. The other senses compensate for loss of sight far more readily and easily than they do for loss of hearing. That is because there is no compensation for loss of hearing.

  The tragedy is that most people are deaf and they don’t even realise it.

  Most people – people like you – keep their gaze down and their ears tuned in to the collective murmur of the herd.

  I am not a pack animal, a member of the herd. I am a predator simply because I seek to learn. I am successful because I have mastered the art of listening. That is why I see with such clarity the things that others do not. That is why I am ready to see what no one else ever has.

  If you wish to step away from the herd and begin your own development, you need to understand this one thing:

  Creation begins with sound.

  In the beginning was the Word – and that only had power because it could be heard. That is the secret meaning in the writing. Words don’t have power if they can’t resonate. That requires a receptacle, a listener.

  I am that listener.

  I select my prey with care. I talk to them so that I can listen. I listen so that I can see.

  You cannot imagine what it is like to live behind my eyes.

  You cannot imagine how colourful my hearing is.

  And don’t ever think – don’t you dare ever think – that you hear me now. Don’t you dare ever think that I either want or need you to. I know the breadth of your failings. I know who I am communicating with.

  You don’t.

  38.

  Peter Jones was standing in the private garden at the rear of Harts Hotel. He was looking out over The Park where Marcus Kline lived, and beyond as far as Ratcliffe on Soar Power Station. He was sipping a glass of sparkling mineral water, trying to make sense of what was going on inside his head. He had decided that he wouldn’t have another glass of red wine, or any other alcohol for that matter, until the investigation was over. He needed to be mentally alert, at his very best, day and night for as long as it took.

  Only he didn’t feel at his best. He felt as if he was being pulled in different directions. He was angry with Marcus, annoyed with himself, scared about what was going to happen next, and all too aware of the mounting political pressure the case was creating. All he had, the source of his strength, was his sense of professionalism and process, his belief in what it meant to be a detective, his trust in his team and his determination to win.

  In the past that had always been enough – more than enough. Now, though, Peter was feeling more emotional pressure than ever before. After all, Marcus was a person of interest in the investigation. Dammit! He was a possible suspect. He was a potential victim. He was a man who could read your face, your mind, like it was an open book. Peter knew that however skilled he was as a detective, he couldn’t hope to beat Marcus in a war of words. He couldn’t possibly interview, influence or negotiate with him successfully.

  So what should he do?

  Peter drank from his glass and took in the view. He felt as if he was above the noise of the city. Below him, and for as far as he could see, thousands of lives played out their span oblivious to the challenges he faced; oblivious often, he suspected, to the challenges they faced.

  Peter came here whenever he needed to get an overview of a complex investigation. He had never needed it more than he did now. Only now the power of Marcus Kline, his relationship with Marcus Kline, was blurring his vision. He was finding it almost impossible to dismiss Marcus’s voice from his mind. And he needed to.

  Peter looked out to the distant horizon and let his mind wander. His thoughts drifted back to the first time he had knowingly put his life at risk in pursuit of a criminal.

  Karl Brent had been in charge of a major drugs empire. Clever enough to have built a successful legitimate business, Brent had chosen a very different endeavour and lifestyle. A calculating, ruthless and determined professional criminal of the old school, Brent had shared Peter’s understanding of the game the two men were engaged in. They had treated each other with what could only have been described as a form of mutual respect, and yet both recognised they were playing for the very highest stakes.

  Peter knew with the right eviden
ce and a skilled barrister Brent would be facing at least twenty five years in prison. He also knew that Brent wanted him dead.

  The game between them had gone on for over two years, a constant and dominant thread running through their working lives. During that time Peter investigated and solved several other significant cases, but his patient information gathering and, at times, deliberate baiting of Brent continued throughout.

  Sometimes he would make a point of having a drink in Brent’s local pub. Sometimes he would visit the criminal at his home. Whenever the two men were face-to-face, they each shared a silent promise with the other and neither man blinked. Peter came to know Brent’s face better than he knew his own.

  Such was the acknowledged level of risk that Peter and every member of his team had a panic alarm fitted in their homes. If pressed it would automatically summon an armed response unit. Peter had downplayed the threat with Nic. Indeed, he had actually believed his own line that, ‘Brent would only come after me as a last resort. He’s a top-rate professional. He knows that I’m only doing my job, just as he believes that he’s only doing his. And he knows the heat that would come down on him, and stay down on him, if something happened to me.’

  Nic had not been reassured. ‘How am I supposed to stay calm during this?’ He had asked.

  Peter’s initial reply, ‘Try using it creatively; write it up as a film script,’ had not been well received. The two years had been an increasingly testing time for their relationship. They had made it through though, and it had helped them realise they could get through anything together.

  It had been vital, of course, that Peter win the game. And he did. Brent’s trial had been a high security affair, with armed police escorting the criminal to and from the courtroom, stopping traffic en route to ensure a clear path, whilst a helicopter stayed overhead observing everything that was happening. Armed police guards stood outside the court throughout the trial and armed detectives sat in the actual courtroom. The evidence against Brent had been compelling. The security measures served not only to deter any attempt to break Brent free, they also told the jurors in no uncertain terms that this was a significantly dangerous criminal. Both factors combined to ensure a guilty verdict. The expected twenty five years were duly administered.

  Peter’s reputation as a fearless and unrelenting detective was established as a consequence. He also learnt something important about himself. He could manage challenging new experiences as if he had encountered them before. The secret, he realised, was to always act as if you are doing something for the second, third, fourth or even fifth time, but never as if for the first. That way you never show vulnerability and you inspire confidence in those around you.

  It was one of the secrets upon which he had built his success.

  Now, as he looked over the treetops to the grey, threatening clouds that spewed from the power station’s unrelenting towers, Peter asked himself the necessary question, ‘Just what would I do with this situation, with Marcus Kline, if I had experienced it before?’

  The answer popped into his mind with surprising ease. ‘Be his friend, not a detective. Whenever you are with Marcus forget that he is a person of interest. Never consider that, God forbid, he might be the killer or the next victim. You cannot hide your thoughts from him, so don’t try. Just be his best friend – which, after all, you are. Let your team investigate Marcus and make them do so, wherever possible, from long-distance. That way he has nothing to interpret and no one to influence. That’s how you win this game.’

  Peter nodded. The smoke from the power station was blowing to the east, away from the city. Patches of blue sky were showing through the November cloud. Peter found the hint of colour somehow reassuring. He was ready to go back to work. He had a way forward now. He finished his drink and saluted the horizon.

  Peter was right, from his vantage point he was above the noise of the city. He was right about the many lives playing out below and beyond him. He was right about the need to do new things as if they had been experienced before. Ultimately, though, despite his skill as a detective and the many lessons he had learned over the years, he still couldn’t see or hear the detail of what was happening.

  He didn’t know that the killer was killing again.

  He didn’t know that the challenge he was about to face was going to make everything that had gone before seem simple by comparison.

  39.

  Simon Westbury lived alone in a two bedroomed third floor apartment in Castle Quays, a contemporary development less than a thirty minute walk from the offices of Influence. From his balcony Simon had views onto the canal and, even when the weather was chill, he would drink his first and last coffees of the day standing outside enjoying the view. He found that he experienced both a sense of calm and a sense of achievement looking down on the water, observing how it attracted life to its constant, gentle flow.

  Simon was not usually on his balcony in the middle of a workday. He was usually in the office. Today, though, Marcus had given him the unexpected task of preparing a hypothetical workshop for Dean Harrison and his senior management team and, even more surprisingly, he had told him that he could work on it at home. Simon had been embarrassed by the fact that Harrison knew his phone call of a few days ago had been both over-enthusiastic and inappropriate. He wondered if this so-called hypothetical workshop might lead eventually to him actually delivering it. He found it hard to imagine that Marcus did not have a plan and purpose of his own connected to the activity.

  Simon had been working on it non-stop since before 9am and he was now taking a ten minute break, watching people walk along the canal path, smiling to himself at the sheer optimism of the solitary and, presumably, very cold fisherman who sat unmoving, fixed on the subtle interplay between his line and the water.

  It didn’t take much, Simon considered, for people to feel that they had managed to get away from it all. For his own part all he had to do was stand on his balcony and watch the world go by. Or in the case of the fisherman, going nowhere.

  Just associations and influence, he reminded himself. Just like Marcus Kline says. We create associations with places, people, objects – sometimes without even realising that we are doing it – and then they shape our lives. The canal has always been more than just a routeway. It means so many different things to so many different people. It influences without even trying…

  Below him, the fisherman reached into his bag, took out a flask and poured himself a drink. It seemed to Simon that he did it all without once taking his eyes off the water. The young consultant found himself hoping that the fisherman’s optimism and commitment were rewarded – and that, in turn, he released his catch back to the canal’s dark water.

  Simon believed in the value of win-win resolutions. Of course, he wanted to make his mark in the world – he wanted to change it, to be a world leader – but he was sure that could be achieved through creativity and cooperation rather than domination and destruction.

  “Communicating for a Change” had been the title of Marcus Kline’s first international corporate training programme and third best seller. Simon loved both the sentiment and the word play in the title. He had subsequently committed his life to communicating for a change. He wanted to be a warrior of words. He wanted to fight for the things he believed in, to empower people, to improve the quality of their relationships and their achievements through world-class communication. And he intended to do it without ever becoming as arrogant as his mentor. Marcus was a genius and in many ways Simon adored him. He just wanted to be, well, better than his teacher and…softer…too. He shared Marcus’s belief that there was nothing more important in the world than the quality of peoples’ communication. The difference between them was he also appreciated there were many other really significant things people could do that he couldn’t. The world was filled with talented people, capable of doing all sorts of amazing things. Sometimes experts like Marcus Kline
forgot how to appreciate and value the abilities of people beyond their domain.

  Simon turned his back on the canal and the fisherman and stepped into his open plan lounge and kitchen. The killer was stretched out across the two-seater settee, his left leg extended over the second cushion. He looked incredibly relaxed and completely at home, waiting with the calm patience of a man who knew the inevitability of what was about to happen.

  Simon should have been shocked, scared, outraged. Only he felt none of these emotions. Instead he felt as comfortable as the killer looked. And because of this he didn’t ask any of the questions, or take any of the actions, one might expect. Rather, he simply forgot everything he had been observing and everything he was planning to do and gave himself up to the silent, calm, irresistible lead of the intruder.

  Because his conscious mind had been completely stilled, Simon wasn’t able to acknowledge to himself that he was now in the grip of a masterful communicator and influencer. He wasn’t able to think about the amazing skill being demonstrated, about the fact that this was precisely the level he aspired to.

  Nor was he able to identify – and this was a blessing that only some people would come to realise and appreciate later – that this was the first stage in the communication of a change that would end his life.

  40.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down.’ The killer gestured to Simon’s modern, minimalistic, aluminium framed armchair.

  The young man did as instructed. An outsider looking in would have commented on how completely relaxed he looked. Simon was unaware.

  As he sank into the chair his state deepened.

  The killer nodded his approval. He stood up, crossed the room and closed the glass door that opened out onto the balcony. Then he slowly and deliberately pulled the curtain across it.