Terminal Reaction

by Dawn Marsanne

  ‘Shit,’ said Brett.

  ‘My sentiments exactly,’ concurred Piers, ‘this is extremely serious and I really hope that nobody in here is guilty. If that’s the case I will make sure they never work in the industry again.’

  Chapter 11

  Nick and Kirsty were having another meeting. It was now a couple of days since their last acrimonious discussion and they were both making an effort to remain calm and businesslike. Nick had taken time to find evidence to present to Kirsty and they were going to come up with a plan on how to improve.

  ‘Kirsty, let’s just go through a couple of your recent experimental write-ups,’ said Nick, showing her some printouts.

  ‘Look, for this reagent, you should have listed that it was particularly hazardous, and noted the assessment 3B which covers it,’ and he highlighted the chemical he was talking about. ‘You used a much larger quantity than you should have done without getting approval from either myself or Billie.’

  ‘Yes, I see, sorry, I just forgot. I can’t get used to checking against the different assessments.’

  ‘I know it’s a pain and you just want to get on,’ said Nick, hoping that this would show some empathy towards Kirsty rather than just telling her off. ‘But there are special precautions stated in that assessment and they are for good reason.’

  ‘I am trying, it’s just there’s so much to get my head around.’

  ‘Also, you forgot to cool your reaction the other day, it could have caused a fire,’ added Nick, ‘luckily I was around.’

  ‘I know why that was,’ replied Kirsty, ‘I set up the reaction, then Caroline asked me why there were no more of the plastic ties, you know the ones you use to fasten tubing and cables and so on. So she went down to the storeroom and couldn’t find them. So I said there must be some and she was looking in the wrong place but when I went down there were none. Then Kevin came in and he said there was a supply problem and we couldn’t get away and that must have been when my reaction overheated.’

  ‘Well I see, that’s unfortunate, but all the same, you must check before leaving the lab as you might be away longer than you expect.’

  ‘Yes, sorry,’ said Kirsty contritely.

  ‘Well, hopefully, I can help you more from now on Kirsty,’ said Nick. ‘I’m going to check your write-ups so we are complying with the safety regulations.’

  ‘OK, well thanks,’ said Kirsty, ‘I’ll try to do better, I want to do well I really do, I like working here.’

  Nick felt some sympathy towards Kirsty, after all, it could be difficult to get away from Kevin but he’d been interested in what she’d said, that was another item that was out of stock. What on earth was Kevin doing, the storeroom used to have everything in good supply, now it was pot luck whether you could find what you wanted. After this meeting, he would go and check whether the items Kevin had promised would be in today had actually arrived. There was something odd going on and he would find out. He hoped it wasn’t what he suspected.

  **

  Polly’s day hadn’t started well. She’d had trouble with her laptop, she couldn’t understand why she couldn’t connect to the network, then she found that someone had slightly pulled out the ethernet cable under her desk so her docking station wasn’t connected properly. She thought she’d detected a slight smirk on Phyllis’ face at one point but she remembered that she mustn’t be paranoid about every facial expression she observed. Polly felt rather embarrassed after phoning IT support as someone had actually come over to her workstation only to find that it was a loose cable.

  She was starting to look through the policy and procedure documents for procurement, they were in a complete jumble. It was hard to follow, such was the confusion. Procedures had developed and had additions had been added as the university had mushroomed over the past five years. As a result, there seemed to be so many people with a range of signing authorities. Some even had what was called a pre-paid card, not really a card but it meant they had an allocated amount of money and they could basically spend it as they saw fit without recourse to a rigorous approval mechanism. Surely that could lead to serious losses if not managed properly thought Polly. Even the most junior staff seemed to have signing limits of five thousand pounds without having to request approval from their seniors.

  Once she had managed to get a feel for the way the department operated she would have to examine in great detail the way contracts for various services were set up. This was the area where she envisaged a chance of securing some immediate savings, providing the contracts hadn’t been drawn up to cover too long a duration. A year should be the maximum length of time before costs and terms were re-evaluated. It would also allow for an appraisal of how well the service was being delivered. The whole task seemed daunting, particularly when her workforce were oozing hostility at the moment. How she was going to get them onside she had no idea. The only thing she could do was to take it one step at a time and draw up a steady plan of action. She needed to be systematic and not try to run before she could walk. She made some notes for her afternoon’s work and decided it was time for a break.

  Although there were several eateries on site where she could get lunch she usually took in sandwiches or a salad, as did Nick. They wanted to economise as much as possible as they were saving up to get married. Today she’d taken in some sandwiches and placed them in the communal fridge in the little kitchen off her office. She would take them outside and sit on a bench in the September sunshine. She retrieved her plastic box from the fridge. As she took it out she noticed the lid wasn’t on properly. She was sure she’d snapped it shut properly when she’d left. Perhaps she hadn’t? Hurrying down the steps of the building she spotted a bench with only one other person sitting on it, she could share it. She relaxed against the back of the seat and closed her eyes for a few minutes, the warm sun was comforting after such a tough morning. Opening her box she took out her egg mayonnaise sandwich. She bit into it and started to chew on a mouthful. Suddenly she exclaimed in horror, startling the person on the bench. Someone had added a huge amount of salt into the middle of her sandwiches. She turned away from her companion on the bench and spat the mouthful into a tissue. How disgusting. Someone had been to her sandwich box, opened it and added what seemed like half a salt cellar of salt into her sandwiches. She felt sick, not just at the taste but the fact that such a mean-spirited colleague had violated her food and her personal possessions. She took out her phone to call Nick, then put it down. She didn’t want to worry him at work, he was getting so many headaches at the moment, it would be better to tell him this evening. The problem would be stopping him from marching into her workplace and demanding to speak to the Head of Finance. No, she would make it clear she could fight her own battles. It could be any one of those in the office but she had her suspicions. The question was what could she do about it?

  Chapter 12

  Brett had been due to meet with Melanie on Wednesday morning to talk about her ‘vision’, but due to the bombshell letter from the FCA, it had been postponed. Piers, Jonathan and Melanie were working together to check the documents relating to share purchases and disclosures prior to the visit from the FCA next week. Well, every cloud has a silver lining thought Brett mischievously, but his relief was only short lived as he fully appreciated the seriousness of an investigation into financial conduct. In truth he was quite shocked, could someone on the senior team really have been leaking details in order to profit before the news was made public. He considered the senior team members. Well, it wasn’t him, Melanie had just joined, surely Piers as head of the company couldn’t be guilty, could he? Unless he was a very good actor and had faked the shock of the letter this morning. That left Jonathan Barrow, their Chief Business Officer, but he seemed such a straight-laced sort of chap, sometimes over-cautious in Brett’s opinion. He was so concerned about image and reputation, it surely wasn’t him. Which of course only left their previous Chief Financial Officer, Frank Stevens. Stickler Stevens as Brett liked to think
of him who lived and breathed profit and loss and was reluctant to spend any of BioQex’s money unless absolutely necessary. Well, he’d left rather suddenly but had gone to another job, it wasn’t as if he was sunning himself in the Cayman Islands, not as far as they knew. Of course, there might be nothing in it, pure coincidence perhaps. But Brett along with everyone else knew that the FCA were no fools and wouldn’t be launching an investigation unless there was some evidence or suspicion that they’d already unearthed. They were even coming to visit next week. No doubt as well as examining the books they would be interviewing the senior team. Christ, thought Brett, it’s one thing after the other here. One distraction after the next, it was so difficult to concentrate on the day job. They’d had the police here a few months ago with the unfortunate incident with Zac, surely they wouldn’t suffer that indignity a second time. White collar crime they called it, but this was bigger than that, there was no way around it, this was fraud and the question was how much fraud had been going on under BioQex’s roof​?

  **

  Nick left it until after lunch to pay a visit to the storeroom. He quickly looked around the shelves, there was no sign of Kevin. He examined the shelves in more detail and noticed that gloves, tissues and paper towels were still in very short supply. He then wandered round to the stationery section which looked in a bit better shape but there were hardly any post-it notes, nor any small notebooks. Kevin’s computer was showing the screensaver, when Nick nudged the mouse it asked for a password. He looked around on the desk, there was a pile of invoices, he started to quickly flick through them. Suddenly someone tapped him on the shoulder and Nick jumped out of his skin. Turning around he came face to face with Kevin.

  ‘Lost something, have you?’ asked Kevin, staring at Nick fiercely.

  ‘Oh, no, I just rushed past your desk and these papers blew off, I was just putting them back neatly,’ replied Nick, trying to stay calm whilst his heart started to race. Kevin continued to hold his gaze, who was going to be the first to break eye contact? After what seemed like ages but was in fact only a couple of seconds, Kevin smiled.

  ‘Thanks, Mr Nick, I could do with one of those old-fashioned paperweights to hold those down, haha,’ he joked. ‘Now, did you find everything you was wanting in the storeroom today?’ he asked, pointedly looking down at Nick who was empty handed.

  ‘Well, er, no actually, I could do with some more medium and large gloves, there are only two boxes on the shelves again. Didn’t the order come in this morning?’

  ‘It certainly did, Mr Nick, but it was the wrong order, had to send it back, they sent a hundred boxes of extra small by mistake,’ and he exhaled loudly, causing Nick to recoil slightly from Kevin’s stale breath. ‘Jeez, they are hopeless at the moment.’

  ‘Oh, I see, well hopefully we will soon be restocked, it’s getting a bit of a nuisance,’ added Nick.

  ‘You’re telling me, I keep wasting my time having to chase up orders and send back invoices. It’s not good enough, I tell you.’

  ‘No, it’s not, well I hope you will give them a telling,’ said Nick jokingly, ‘right I’ll get back to the lab then.’

  ‘Okie dokie,’ said Kevin in a sing-song sort of voice.

  Both men returned to their respective workstations. Nick walked back to his lab, feeling his shirt sticking to his back under his lab coat. He was now sure that Kevin was lying. This was happening too often. What’s more, he’d seen the invoice for the gloves on his desk, so surely if the consignment had been returned the docket would have been sent back as well. He felt Kevin had slipped up but of course he might just have forgotten to enclose the invoice. What he needed was proof.

  At the same time that Nick was evaluating what he’d just discovered in the storeroom, Kevin was also thinking about the encounter. Nick was on to him he was sure, things were getting too close for comfort. He would have to cool it for a while or change tactics. Perhaps he could persuade the company to send someone from the jobcentre to distract attention from him, or even act as a fall guy. It might be an idea worth exploring.

  **

  At 2 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon Brett was chatting to Amanda outside his office when he saw Melanie Granger approaching carrying her laptop and a folder of papers. He held open his office door and they sat down at the small table in the office.

  ‘Fancy a coffee Melanie before we start?’ asked Brett.

  ‘Oh, yes, well espresso please, need to wake up my brain a bit,’ said Mel.

  ‘Coming right up,’ replied Brett, going over to his fancy pod machine. He selected a small espresso cup and popped the capsule into the coffee maker. Making himself the same drink they then prepared to start talking figures and expenditure. Mel opened up her spreadsheet and also produced a sheet which had a list of bullet points.

  ‘Right, OK. Let’s start,’ said Mel confidently. ‘I’ve had a good look at the balance sheets for the last few years and my gut feeling is that my predecessor was just far too conservative.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure,’ interrupted Brett, but he was cut off before he could explain his point of view.

  ‘Basically, as I see it, the company could afford to be much more highly leveraged. I’ve calculated the current debt at only forty-three percent of assets. We could easily take that up to sixty percent without any problem. That would mean borrowing an extra five million and bearing in mind the low interest rate environment at the moment it makes perfect sense. That would enable the company to expand by another ten staff instead of the measly four I think you were planning, well, in fact, the company was only going to increase by three as one of those is a replacement,’ and she paused for breath giving Brett a chance to speak.

  ‘Hey, let’s just take stock a minute, that would mean an increase of ten staff in twenty-five current scientific positions, that’s a huge percentage and..,’ but before he could continue he was interrupted again.

  ‘The building is very underutilised. I see you have one lab which is kitted out, someone said it was in case you wanted to scale up work. You used it temporarily when the police locked down one lab, that’s what Piers told me.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Before I joined the company the plan was that we would have some larger scale facilities here but we found it was better to contract out to Garsdale Chem down the road, and besides the company found they couldn’t recruit people with the experience in that type of work.’

  ‘I understand all that but it seems that Garsdale Chem has put up its contract prices extortionately for the recent work you’ve sent them, a thirty percent increase over two years ago.’

  ‘Well I wasn’t aware of that,’ replied Brett glumly.

  ‘We would be better using our facilities here, otherwise, that laboratory is just sitting unused most of the time. The three extra labs which are empty could be kitted out, it would be up to you to decide the balance between chemistry and biology of course.’

  Well, that was nice of her, thought Brett, Mel was actually offering him the chance to make a decision, rather than just having to go along with everything she suggested.

  ‘I’m still rather worried that you want to put the company at risk by borrowing so much,’ insisted Brett.

  ‘Yes, but now the market capitalisation has increased so much due to the increase in share price, the ratio of debt to capital is much less. We’ve not increased the borrowing at all. The share price is up thirty-seven percent on last year and we still haven’t increased borrowing. The increase in debt I’m suggesting is a lot less than that increase in share price.’

  Brett stood up and wandered over to the window. She certainly knew how to sell her ideas and these were only the broad brushstrokes. He was sure that once her spreadsheet was finalised it would all be backed up by solid calculations on the balance sheet.

  ‘Well, it’s certainly a radical plan,’ said Brett, thinking this was the most tactful way he could comment on it. ‘I think I need to sit down and consider it in more detail. Can you send me those documen
ts?’

  ‘Absolutely, will do,’ replied Mel.

  ‘One thing I’ve just remembered. Frank mentioned a couple of months ago that our consumables budget was growing rather too quickly. Then we had the unfortunate incident with Zac Milburn and it all got rather forgotten, then, of course, Frank announced he was leaving. So I just wondered if you thought we should scale back or look at our contracts to get better value?’

  ‘As far as I can see Frank was fussing about nothing,’ replied Mel rather pejoratively, ‘I’m glad you mentioned that actually, I think our fixed costs are rather low, well within normal parameters. In fact, I think we could do more to enhance our profile. Splash the cash. An open day perhaps. What about funding a doctorate. Perhaps funding a first-degree student at the university. Collaborate more with the university in general. That’s the way things are moving nowadays.’

  ‘Gosh, well that’s so much to consider, I can’t take it all in,’ apologised Brett. ‘Have you run these ideas past Piers?’

  ‘I certainly have and he was, well I don’t want to sound boastful but he was extremely enthusiastic. I think he’s going to convene a senior team meeting soon so we can discuss and approve them.’

  ‘I see, well thank you, I’ve another meeting in ten minutes so we’ll have to leave it here for now,’ and he headed over to the door to show Mel out. She breezed out confidently and Brett went over to his desk. He had no further meetings that day but he just wanted to be rid of Mel and her spreadsheet. He was overwhelmed by her suggestions, he just didn’t have a good feeling about them. In the past, he’d had a reckless streak but being at BioQex had brought him back to reality. Over the last six months, he’d been impressed by how well the company had progressed from its start-up and it had established itself on a firm financial footing. It was true they had been cautious but surely it was safer not to overreach. What if the share price fell? Mel seemed to be forgetting that they were having a visit from the FCA next week. If their market capitalisation fell then they would look to be operating at an even higher debt ratio. He didn’t like it at all and unless he could convince himself when he examined her projections in more detail he was going to vote against her plans. The only problem was he felt he might well be in a minority and she would get the green light to carry the company forward on what looked to him like a rather precipitous trajectory.