by Jo Iles
Jessie’s desk phone rang, providing her with a welcome distraction from second-guessing what Charlie’s reaction would be that morning.
‘Hello, Jessie speaking,’ she answered clearly.
‘Hi Jessie. Charlie here. Please come to the large meeting room as soon as you can,’ Charlie said, sounding official.
‘Okay, I’ll just print out the final version of the shadow banking report.’
‘Don’t bother. Just bring yourself,’ he said curtly and hung up.
Great. So Charlie hadn’t taken yesterday’s events too well. He obviously wanted to talk things through with her and express to her his disappointment in her poor treatment of him. Jessie crossed her fingers, hoping it wouldn’t be so bad, and also that Jack wouldn’t be there. This was her workplace and she really didn’t want to pollute the relative stability of her work environment with the sordid state of her personal affairs.
Jessie knocked and entered the meeting room fully expecting to see Charlie running his hand through his hair, probably standing at the window. She was shocked to see the room full of serious-faced suits. She recognised a few of the senior bigwigs who she’d been introduced to briefly when she’d first arrived. And Charlie was there. Of course. They were all looking stone-faced and unfriendly. Jessie propelled herself forward, feeling like she had been summoned before the headmaster and his cronies. Not that she’d ever been summoned before the headmaster in her life, but she guessed that this was what it felt like.
‘Take a seat, Jessie,’ Charlie said formally, gesturing to a seat across from where the half-dozen sharks were sitting.
‘What’s going on?’ Jessie asked, making a concerted effort to look at each of the sharks in the eye. She gave Charlie an extra long look, trying to see if his poker face would give anything away. Nope. Nada. Charlie must be a good poker player, she concluded to herself.
‘We have a few questions to ask you,’ Charlie replied—with the barest hint of a smirk, Jessie noted. Charlie was clearly loving his newfound position of authority as chairman of the sharks.
‘Okay,’ Jessie replied, unable to hide the puzzlement from her face.
‘It has come to our attention that some information of a delicate nature has mysteriously vanished into thin air,’ began Dennis Chan, who, if Jessie remembered correctly, was the Director of Human Resources.
‘Okay,’ Jessie repeated, still looking lost.
‘We believe this information disappeared at the weekend, sometime on Saturday. I can also tell you that the information was taken from a locked filing cabinet in my office. Is there anything you would like to tell us?’ Mr Chan asked, giving Jessie a tight smile.
‘Umm, not that I’m aware of,’ Jessie started. And then the penny dropped. She’d been in the office on Saturday working. Jesus, did they think she’d been stealing company information? ‘Well, I was in the office on Saturday,’ Jessie added. Dammit, she thought to herself. Why couldn’t she have just behaved like a normal person for once in her life and not have gone to work on a Saturday? This is what she got for being conscientious. Now she had no alibi and she’d admitted to the sharks that she was at the scene of the crime around about the time the crime had been committed. Good one, Jessie.
‘What were you doing in the office on a Saturday?’ Mr Chan asked, his tight smile gone. Now Jessie felt his eyes boring into her. ‘The bank operates a five-day working week,’ he added for clarification.
‘I was working, Mr Chan. I’ve been working on a report this past week and I thought I’d make some good progress with it in a quiet office. Charlie was here as well. Surely he can vouch for me,’ Jessie replied, flicking her eyes to Charlie, whose own eye contact had now become woefully poor.
‘Mr Davenport?’ Mr Chan queried, turning towards Charlie with a raised eyebrow. Obviously Charlie had been keeping quiet about that little golden nugget of information.
‘That’s right. I popped in for a minute to collect my phone charger and saw Jessie then. She was sat at her desk and appeared to be working’ Charlie answered Mr Chan matter-of-factly before he gave Jessie a brief look of disgust. Jessie was stunned. What the fuck was Charlie playing at? He’d been shagging her not so long ago and now he was looking at her like she was a piece of dog shit on the bottom of his shoe. Not to mention that she had appeared to be working. What the fuck was that about? Surely Charlie of all people knew that she was two hundred percent dedicated to her job. Or perhaps he didn’t. Wasn’t that part of the problem and one of the key reasons why she’d gone so off him in the past day?
And then another penny dropped. What with all the love-triangle issues that had ensued over the weekend, Charlie’s odd behaviour in the office had completely slipped Jessie’s mind. How stupid could she have been? That was one of the reasons Jack made his epic transcontinental journey to comfort her. The cynic in Jessie reared her objective head and now she wondered if Charlie’s late-night appearance at her hotel room was something more than just him looking for beer and sympathy. Charlie was trying to make Jessie a scapegoat for whatever it was he’d been up to this past week in Hong Kong.
‘Well thank you, Miss Slaymaker. We’ll be in touch,’ Mr Chan said, clearly dismissing her. Uh-oh, thought Jessie, that sounded final.
‘Look, I can assure you, all of you, that I had nothing to do with this… theft,’ Jessie added, trying her best to sound earnest, but she was conscious that she sounded desperate.
‘Thank you for your time,’ one of Mr Chan’s fellow sharks said, and gave Jessie a look which she interpreted as get-the-heck-out-of-here-now.
Jessie barely had the door closed behind her back before she heard raised voices coming from the sharks. She could make out Charlie’s voice as the loudest amongst them. Jessie was sure she could hear him say something like, I didn’t think it was relevant, but she couldn’t be a hundred percent sure. As Jessie returned to her desk, she didn’t have a clue what to make of what had just happened in the boardroom. She couldn’t tell if she was their prime suspect or if they had simply wanted to check what she’d been doing, just for the record. One thing she was sure about, though, was that she felt uneasy about it all. It was the same uneasiness she’d felt on Saturday when she’d seen Charlie in the office obviously up to no good.
Jessie tried to keep her face neutral as she pondered that thought for a moment. Had Charlie really stolen something from the director’s office she’d seen him in? Was Charlie really capable of doing something like that? Jessie had seen him in the office with her own eyes, and he’d lied to her, and again to the sharks in the boardroom, about just popping in to get his phone charger. She knew he’d been in the office for some hours doing whatever it was he’d been doing. Jessie felt she had to check whether the HR Director’s office was the one she’d seen Charlie rummaging around in. Just to be sure.
Jessie casually got up from her chair, on the premise that she was going to get some coffee. Last time she’d checked, it wasn’t a crime to go and get coffee. She walked past all the worker bees, who barely blinked as she went past, so dedicated to their tasks they were. Jessie glimpsed a few Facebook pages open, being carefully scrutinised by some of the staff. They were definitely taking their Monday morning tasks seriously.
Jessie continued walking around the office, heading for the general direction of the pantry. However, she stopped when she got to the point where she’d spied Charlie in whomever’s office, and started to play with her phone. Between her and the office door in question were several desks whose occupants were all working hard—or doing an excellent job of hardly working. Jessie couldn’t really tell. She wondered how she was ever going to find out who the rightful occupant of that office was. The door was firmly closed and she’d lost her bottle to get any closer. She couldn’t very well wait where she was all day, playing with her phone and hoping that the office occupant would eventually either go in or out. Jessie’s less-than-mediocre plan had failed. She exhaled and continued on her way to collect her much-needed caffeine fix.
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Jessie spent a longer than necessary amount of time preparing her drink, and after as much procrastination as even she could manage she headed back to her desk. As she passed by the office she glanced across, but the door was still most definitely closed. Just then she felt a tap on her shoulder which made her jump out of her skin and spill half her coffee onto the carpet tile.
‘Ah!’ she cried—a combination of hot coffee on her hand and surprise—as she wheeled around to see Mr Chan facing her.
‘Jesus, you scared me,’ Jessie said, a little dramatically and rather too loudly. A sea of heads looked up from their monitors and gazed in her direction as though her display was something to be studied.
‘Are you okay, Miss Slaymaker?’ Mr Chan asked, looking unimpressed.
‘Fine,’ Jessie replied, her voice higher than usual as she shook her scalded hand.
‘May I have a word in private?’ Mr Chan actually asked, rather than commanded.
‘Now?’ Jessie squeaked again. What was wrong with her? She hadn’t done anything wrong whatsoever, but she was acting all jumpy like she was guilty. Not wanting to incriminate herself further, she gripped her coffee cup with both hands and invoked the five-second rule. The five-second rule involved counting to five after someone asked you something so that you gave yourself enough time to think of a non-incriminating and non-embarrassing answer to the question. And also to give yourself time to moderate the pitch of your voice, Jessie hoped.
Mr Chan nodded and motioned for her to follow him. Mr Chan wasn’t a tall man, but he sure could get from A to B in record time. He veritably scuttled across the floor, which meant Jessie had to almost jog to keep him in sight. This was no easy feat considering she was nursing her coffee and wearing heels.
Mr Chan disappeared behind the office door. So it was his office.
By the time she arrived, Mr Chan was already seated behind his desk. God, he was small, Jessie thought to herself. She wondered if his feet were touching the floor.
‘So, Miss Slaymaker. Are you sure you haven’t been in this office before?’ Mr Chan said, piercing her with stern eyes. Talk about cutting to the chase.
‘No, of course I bloody haven’t,’ Jessie responded, breaking her five-second rule already.
‘Good, that clears that up then,’ he said, intertwining his fingers and resting them on the desk. ‘Who do you think was in here then?’
Whoa, dilemma, Jessie thought to herself. What the hell was she supposed to do now? Tell the truth? And be a grass? Charlie would never speak to her again. But then again, what if he’d done something illegal? Plus, she didn’t really know how much Charlie could be trusted. It already appeared to her that he’d tried to frame her for whatever misdemeanour he’d committed. No, Jessie’s motto definitely had to be to save herself at the moment, which meant the wisest thing for her to do was to tell the truth.
‘Well, I already told you I saw Charlie here on Saturday. But, I don’t think he was picking up his phone charger, if you catch my drift. I don’t think that was the only thing he was picking up anyway,’ Jessie answered, giving Mr Chan what she regarded as a knowing look.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ Mr Chan said, letting his poker face look blank. Jessie visibly exhaled as she realised her knowing look had fallen flat and she was going to have to spell it out. She hoped this conversation wasn’t being recorded, because Charlie would never speak to her again if he ever found out she’d dobbed him in. Another part of her brain also wondered what Jack would think of her dropping his brother well and truly in it. Would some brotherly bond kick in and he’d rise up in Charlie’s defense?
‘I don’t really know how to say this, but I’ve worked with Charlie for more than two years now and I’ve always tried to be a loyal and hardworking member of his team. I would defend him to the grave professionally if I thought he’d done nothing wrong. The fact of the matter is…’ Jessie stalled, wondering whether she should just tell the truth. ‘The fact of the matter is, I saw someone in this office on Saturday. Maybe they had a legitimate reason to be in here, maybe they didn’t, but that’s not really for me to say,’ Jessie rambled.
‘Who did you see, Miss Slaymaker?’
‘A man,’ Jessie replied quietly.
‘Yes…?’ prompted Mr Chan.
‘I didn’t see his face, but it was definitely a man,’ Jessie said firmly, feeling more confident in her testimony.
‘And?’
‘And I heard his voice,’ Jessie said quietly again as she realised it was physically impossible for her to hide all she knew, let alone tell a lie.
‘Mr Davenport?’ Mr Chan asked, mirroring her quiet tone.
Jessie nodded her head rather than actually say the words. The brief head nod seemed sufficient for Mr Chan, who nodded his head satisfactorily and un-intertwined his fingers before intertwining them back up again.
‘Now, moving onto more positive things. Miss Slaymaker, I’ve heard great things about you this week. How have you enjoyed your week here?’ Mr Chan asked, seeming to be genuinely interested. His face had changed instantaneously from one wearing a seriously concerned look to one that was suddenly open and smiling. The little man’s smile was infectious.
‘Oh, it’s been wonderful,’ Jessie began, unable to stop the grin spreading across her face. ‘I’ve really enjoyed the work and I’ve found it really useful to be here on the ground in broadening my understanding for the Asian-based project we’ve been working on rather than being six thousand miles away back in the UK,’ she continued in one breath.
‘I’m glad you said that, because we are thinking of setting up a research division in Hong Kong. As you know, the majority of the bank’s requirements are currently handled by your office in England,’ Mr Chan responded, smiling even wider.
‘That sounds interesting,’ Jessie said carefully. She wasn’t exactly sure if that was a good thing or not. Did it mean her job was at risk? Work being done in Hong Kong would surely result in there being less work done in the UK. In Jessie’s head this translated as less work for her, and therefore maybe they would regard her role as obsolete. Maybe Mr Chan, HR Director Almighty, had been called in to give her the almighty push.
‘We are still in the planning stages but there would of course need to be some reorganization across the global research division,’ Mr Chan said seriously. Given that the entire global research division of Finance First Bank was UK based, this did not bode well, Jessie realised. Perhaps Mr Chan was just giving her a heads-up rather than punting her out the door there and then. He’d said so himself: things were still in their planning stages. Surely these things would take months, if not years, to organise and come to fruition.
‘Of course,’ Jessie replied meekly, feeling like she was definitely done for.
‘And this is where we thought you would come in,’ Mr Chan said, smiling broadly. For someone delivering bad news, he sure was smiling a lot.
‘I’m sorry… I don’t understand,’ Jessie replied evenly. If he was giving her the boot, she was at least going to make him say it out loud. She wasn’t just going to make his life easy and resign for the sake of his reorganisation master plan.
‘I’m sorry, I thought I’d made my intentions clear. We’d like you to join our Hong Kong office and set up and run the research team here. If you want to remain in England, you can of course do that, but we just thought given your Asian market knowledge and expertise, as well as your sheer enthusiasm that we’ve all witnessed during your stay in Hong Kong, that you’d be the best person for the job.’
Jessie was stunned. Shocked. Silent. She was literally at a loss for words and had the very real fear that if she opened her mouth to talk no words would come out. Only a stream of unintelligible gobbledegook. That wouldn’t impress Mr Chan. So Jessie remained silent. In that moment she was unable to do anything more.
‘I can see you are surprised, Miss Slaymaker,’ Mr Chan said, getting bored of waiting for a response that did not come. ‘I will have
a provisional offer letter drawn up for you to look over, and if you would take the time to read through our offer and at least consider things, that would be most appreciated.’
‘But what about Charlie?’ Jessie blurted out, not exactly sure why that had been the first thing she’d responded with. A polite thank-you may have been more appropriate, Jessie thought to herself with annoyance upon reflection.
Mr Chan’s face clouded instantly at the mention of Charlie’s name. He obviously wasn’t in his good books at the moment.
‘Mr Davenport will be dealt with accordingly, Miss Slaymaker. Thank you for your honesty, and I’ll email you the documents we spoke of by the end of the day,’ Mr Chan said authoritatively as he stood up, making it crystal clear that their meeting was over.
‘Thank you, Mr Chan,’ Jessie said as earnestly as she could, realising her faux pas and trying to salvage her potential job offer.
Jessie got up and smoothed her skirt down before offering Mr Chan her hand to shake. ‘Thank you for thinking of me,’ she said, hoping she was impressing him with her firm handshake and plentiful eye contact. As she reached the door, Jessie hovered, debating internally on whether or not she should ask Mr Chan what it was she’d been dying to know all morning.
‘Mr Chan?’ she said, turning to face him again and forcing herself to be brave.
‘Yes Miss Slaymaker?’ he responded in an unreadable tone.
‘May I ask you something?’
‘Yes, Miss Slaymaker. Ask away.’
Jessie paused whilst she rehearsed the best way of wording what she wanted to say in her head.
‘What is it that you think Charlie, I mean Mr Davenport, may have taken from your office?’ she asked quickly in one breath.
Mr Chan paused for the first time during the meeting, and visibly pondered whether or not to tell her—or at least how much to tell her, Jessie guessed.
‘Some very delicate information has been removed from my usually locked filing cabinets in my usually locked office. As you may or may not know, I am something of a technophobe and have preferred such information to be printed rather than merely in a digital format.’
