by John Samuel
I refrain from putting my hand down my trousers and guiding the thing under the waistband of my boxer shorts so it’s not digging in quite so much. The reason I don’t is that Oliver here, and the others for that matter, are watching me with great attention. I am certainly not going to give them an excuse to send me home if they can’t find one for themselves.
Returning to Nicholas’s point, re the messing about in times of delicacy, I tell him, ‘My view of the situation, Nicholas, is that I am the one being messed about here. So why don’t you just let me get back to work? As I keep telling you, I’m fit as a fiddle.’
‘Fine,’ he says, although clearly it’s not. ‘But if you are going to insist on being here then I must tell you …’ he ventures a quick glance in the direction of Oliver who inclines his head as if to confirm that yes, this is, unfortunately, our position, ‘… that I shall be permanently removing you from the InviraCorp account. I do this as a matter of routine based on the events of recent days – as you know, we are experiencing acute difficulty with this client and they have asked for a completely fresh team on the account.’
He checks that his assistant is committing each and every one of these solemn words to record. She is.
When her pencil stops, he adds, with visible reluctance, ‘This is not, in any way, a measure of your fitness to work.’
Her hand springs back into life, the words lace across her pad in a filigree of corporate compliance.
‘The moving finger writes,’ I observe, ‘and having writ, moves on.’
‘Be that as it may,’ Nicholas says, with an arctic smile, ‘you may rest assured that there will be a full review of the handling of the InviraCorp account. No stone,’ he almost hisses at me, ‘shall remain unturned. And if, my lad, it transpires that –’
‘Thank you, Nicholas.’ This interruption is the first thing Karen has said. Everyone turns to look at her. Will’s slackening member starts awake like a sentry caught drowsing at his post.
‘Will …’ she makes a feline movement from her seat on the window sill and slides into one of the empty chairs opposite me ‘… I think every one of us in this room is acutely aware of, and a little exercised by,’ she glances at Nicholas, ‘the damage that recent press coverage has caused our agency. It comes at a critical time for our business and, as I am sure you realise, the reputational risk is worn by ourselves as much as InviraCorp.’
‘As the apologists for black-hearted wickedness?’ I venture.
She scans my face for a second, not unkindly, just genuinely curious. I think she’s wondering if that was a joke. When she sees it wasn’t, though, her tone becomes less conversational.
‘As Nicholas has stated here for the record, Will, the Abel-wood Board and the managing partners have launched a formal review into the InviraCorp account. The terms of reference are to ascertain how this very grave breach of client confidentiality has occurred.’
I decide it’ll be in everyone’s interests (well, mine anyway) if we stop pussyfooting around like this.
‘It wasn’t me,’ I announce, clear as a bell.
She doesn’t like that. None of them do.
‘For the avoidance of doubt, Will,’ she stammers, ‘no one was suggesting that you were in any way …’
‘Cut the crap,’ I tell her. My turn to interrupt.
Nicholas starts with, ‘Look here, young man …’
I silence him with my hand.
‘For the record,’ I address this directly to Nicholas’s mousey little assistant, who seems to have gone into temporary paralysis, ‘I shall state this as plainly as I can: I was not the one who leaked information about this agency’s client to the press. Sorry,’ I beam at them all, ‘but I’m not your man.’
Technically, of course, this isn’t a lie. It was Will. Although, admittedly, there was some gentle encouragement from me – okay, there were some coruscating transfusions of raw spiritual plasma from me – but what do you expect? This is serious business.
Since no one else looks like they’re about to speak any time soon, I decide to do some light probing. I’m certain that Nicholas knows about the real problem – but I wonder who else does.
‘In some ways,’ I continue breezily, ‘you’ve got off pretty lightly so far. I guess you’ll just have to hope that whoever’s doing the leaking doesn’t have access to all the dirt on InviraCorp. I mean, that would be an unholy mess – if you know what I’m saying.’
Well, Karen and Alex definitely don’t know – they’re almost as nonplussed by what I’ve just said as the security guard. A little disconcerted, perhaps, but in the dark, for sure. Nicholas, on the other hand, and his proctor are ashen-faced.
Good to know.
‘Okey-dokey,’ I clap my hands together, ‘I think this little conversation is now officially over. Time to get back to work.’
Several documents have been laid before me during the course of this meeting, explaining the agency’s various contractual responsibilities. I leave them sitting on the table.
I’m the first to leave the room but Karen is following close behind. With a light touch to my elbow, she suggests that we go to her office for a quiet chat. I glance over at Will’s desk. His computer is up and running, I notice, and there’s a cup of coffee next to it. Just as I am wondering who this might belong to, its owner appears, a nondescript man with all the pallid, socially inept hallmarks of an IT worker.
‘Not right now,’ I tell her.
I march across and demand to know who he is and what he thinks he is doing at my desk. He begins to form an answer, which he directs at my shoes – the first words are I have been told to – until Karen arrives within safe interrupting distance.
‘It’s just a routine part of the review,’ she announces in a pitch-perfect Reasonable Voice.
This seems to be her principal function, applying the company whipcord to the frayed ends of other people’s ramblings.
‘Anyone,’ she warbles on, ‘who’s had any involvement with the InviraCorp account will be getting a file audit in the next twenty-four hours. It’s nothing to worry about.’
‘I’m not worried.’
It’s true, I’m not. He’s not going to find anything on there. My fingers, though, are itching to get hold of that memory stick. It can only be about five feet from where I’m standing. But I need to just relax and bide my time. He’s not going to find that either.
‘How about we let him get on with his job?’ She half turns, to remind us both that we had in fact been heading off for that quiet chat she wanted.
Will’s colleagues have given up trying to feign a lack of interest in all this. They are openly staring.
‘Fine. Whatever,’ I say, as much to them as to her.
We end up climbing four flights of stairs to get to her office. I’m not sure why. Perhaps she thinks the lift will trigger some violent reaction in me. Or perhaps, looking at her, she’s just one of those athletic women who likes to bound up flights of stairs to keep her calories-in, calories-out ledger in the black. As I’m thinking this, I realise that to my extreme annoyance I’ve lapsed once again into a lustful trance. The spell is broken, though, when a man passes us on his way down. I scarcely look at him, but it’s enough. His hands are all that I really notice – thin, finely haired claws protruding from his suit. They remind me of a hermit crab feeling out of its shell. He disgusts me, and when my gaze flicks back to Karen, she disgusts me too. The flex of the muscles in her calves as she walks, the scent of her as she heats up from climbing the stairs.
‘Here we are,’ she tells me as we arrive at a door with a large number nine on it. We walk through into an altogether more serene environment than the floor we were just on. The offices up here all have closed wooden doors, no more of that glass and open plan; the ‘all in it together’ look has vanished, this is very much the ‘shut up and mind your own business’ floor. The carpet’s thicker too. It’s all nice and hushed.
This might have been where I was taken after the j
ump-in, come to think of it. It has more of that new smell, of which there is only a whiff downstairs where everyone has been traipsing and sweating and stressing a lot more.
‘Just in here,’ she guides me into her office with another delicate touch to my elbow. By the looks of things she’s probably the boss of what she does, which is pretty impressive – I reckon she’s only about mid-thirties.
She shuts the door behind us and we settle ourselves in the casual seats rather than at her desk, so we remember that this is not in any way a formal interview.
‘I like what you’ve done with the place,’ I say.
By way of reply she pats the swanky leather arm of her chair (one of those wing-backed ones) and shifts her legs, which are tanned and ever so slightly shiny and crossed in a way that makes her skirt drift up to about mid-thigh level.
There is an awkward silence.
She’s the first to break it. ‘Can we talk about your health?’ she asks me gently, ‘Off the record.’
‘My health? Oh you mean what happened this morning?’ It doesn’t come off sounding as casual as I’d wanted. It just sounds high-pitched. Nevertheless, I soldier on. ‘That really wasn’t anything to worry about. It probably looked way worse than it was. I have this blood sugar thing – I really ought to keep a better eye on it.’
‘Will.’ The way she says it is more like Oh Will, Will, Will …
I raise my eyebrows, all innocent. What?
I love this part, the physical pantomime of conversation. The off-the-ball manoeuvring, as it were. It’s such fun. Easy to overdo, though. I bring my eyebrows back down again.
‘I want you to think about the last time you had an episode, Will. I hope you’ll remember that we did everything we could to support you through that.’
An episode – that sounds interesting. Although not surprising of course (by the time someone’s ready for a jump-in it usually means they’re right at the feathered edges of what would normally be considered reason or sanity). That said, I have been lucky with Will – and I mustn’t lose sight of that. It’s rare to get such a solid bind on the first go. Most people fry out on you pretty much as soon as you jump in. It’s just too much for them to carry. When I think about the amount of attempts I had to make last time, before I eventually hit on The One, and that was with all the proper support too.
So yeah, all things considered, I’ve landed on my feet with Will. He’s a sturdy vessel. Could be a little tougher physically perhaps – but that’s just splitting hairs. He’s strong in the head, where it counts.
Anyway, back to this.
Karen is still talking. She has parked (as I think I may have just heard her phrase it) the subject of my health for a moment and is digressing into a little spiel about the company’s duty of privacy to its clients. That, she emphasises, is at the core of our offering. Again, her phrase, not mine.
‘Oh really?’
‘Yes, Will,’ a single, sincerely vertical groove appears above her nose. ‘Really.’
We both mull this over.
‘Did Oliver give you some papers downstairs?’ she pipes up after a minute or two. Glancing at my empty hands, she decides he can’t have done. ‘Not to worry, I can print them out for you.’
She goes off to her computer and clicks the mouse around a bit, the printer on her desk rattles out a couple of sheets.
She brings me a document with the words client confidentiality in its title and lingers at my side while I leaf through it. She is clearly of the view that I need some help finding the salient passages and decides to perch next to me, on the arm of the sofa. Her hair brushes against my suit as she leans down to look over my shoulder. I get an apricot waft of women’s shampoo.
‘There,’ she says, her voice so close to my ear, her finger resting lightly on the page I am holding. She is pointing to some subsections littered with quasi-legal language. She then slinks back to her chair and waits for me to read it.
After a suitable stretch of silence, she gives an exploratory nudge.
‘Penny for your thoughts?’
On a whim, I decide to actually tell her.
‘I was thinking about Azazel.’
‘Is that a contact of yours?’ she asks hopefully.
Well, yes, actually – used to be. The late, great Azie. But there’s a limit to how truthful you can be with people – I have, at least, learned that much since my last go-round.
‘No,’ I tell her. ‘He was one of the Grigori – a Watcher.’
‘I don’t …’
‘An angel – from the Old Testament.’
Oh God her expression seems to say.
Quite so.
‘But watching wasn’t enough for Azazel,’ I explain, ‘he needed to get involved – you know?’ She doesn’t know. ‘He needed to get down to the ground floor, in the mix with mankind. Of course, he was repeatedly told not to,’ (by me too, by the way – we all warned him it would end badly), ‘but he did it anyway, and he showed the people of the earth a thing or two – he taught them how to do all kinds of crazy stuff.’
I leave a dramatic pause, during which she glances at the door.
‘But that wasn’t the worst part of it – he had another, far more disruptive agenda.’ I lower my voice to a conspiratorial near-whisper. ‘Azazel harboured a bit of a soft spot for the ladies – or come to think of it,’ I chuckle, ‘quite the reverse in fact. He spawned dozens of these semi-angelic children – massive creatures, hundreds of ells high – and they just went raging around the place like gigantic toddlers, uprooting things and destroying everyone’s stuff. You’ll have seen a reference to them in the Old Testament – the mighty men. No? The men of renown? Still no? Well it was a big deal at the time, and it basically left God with no choice – He had to reboot the whole thing.’
I shake my head ruefully. A sad day for us all.
‘That’s when He pressed the button on The Flood,’ I tell her. ‘Washed it all away. Back to zero. And as for Azazel – he got his too. Slung into a bottomless pit.’
(That last part’s not exactly right, but it’s not like she’s going to know. Anyway, it captures the spirit of the thing.)
I lean back, making it obvious that I’ve finished.
She doesn’t move a muscle.
‘All in all, a bit of a watershed moment,’ I quip.
Apparently, though, it’s not as funny as I think it is.
I gaze out of the window behind her desk. We’re on the same side of the building as Alex’s office, which means the tiny men are visible to me once more, this time from an even more impressive elevation.
‘Why did you tell me all that, Will?’
‘Mm?’
My attention is no longer in the room. There really is something about those little guys. It’s mesmerising.
‘What was the point of that story you just told me? Do you think we at Abelwood are “fallen angels” …’ she air quotes this with her fingers ‘… or do you …?’ She doesn’t know what might be a suitable end to this question. She looks to me for help.
‘You asked me what I was thinking about,’ I mutter absently. ‘So I told you.’
Again a little pause. I’m still looking out of the window, but it’s no longer the pleasurable experience it was downstairs. Something’s not the same. Is it the sky? I can’t quite put my finger on it. It might just be this new angle – it makes them look more ant-like, a little sinister even.
‘Do you mind me asking,’ she begins, then carries on regardless of whether I mind or not, ‘if you have had the chance to see a healthcare professional, after what happened this morning?’
‘A healthcare professional.’ I repeat the admirably circumspect phrase to myself. ‘Could that mean a psychiatrist?’ I wonder aloud.
‘It could mean a psychiatrist…’ She floats this confirmation in a tone so gentle and trustworthy that for a second I feel a little disarmed, like I could confide in her some of my real problems, the things that are corroding the real me. I need to s
top looking at that building.
‘No, Karen, I didn’t.’ I put my attention fully back on her. ‘I was just tired, run ragged by work – I’ve been under a lot of stress and strain here.’
She’s not crazy about that answer; she’d like to edge it back round to safer ground. She has a stab at it.
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘work can certainly be demanding. And that’s why we would be keen for you to perhaps speak to a doctor and see if there is anything that can be done to help you achieve the right relationship with stress, for example.’
‘Did you just say “relationship with stress”?’
‘Yes.’ There is not the remotest trace of embarrassment. ‘We would like to see if we can help you manage that. We have worked through this kind of thing before, Will – and we did it together. We just need to know if you have been involving any other … parties … in the agency’s business …’
But I can’t keep my attention on what she’s saying. There’s a problem with the tiny men. A few minutes ago, they were in the process of guiding into place two girders, right on the top of the structure, but now they’ve stopped midway through and left the I-beams hoisted at an angle across each other. The sun is firing them from behind, catching the hard flashing edges.
