The Borough

by Steve Dockray

CHAPTER TEN

  The next morning, Winner walked to work, glad of the exercise to loosen up his stiffening muscles. The only injuries that were on show were his grazed hands, but it wouldn't be too difficult to keep his palms out of sight for a day or two.

  In the general office there was a noticeable change in the atmosphere. It was as if by common consent that the funeral the day before had marked the end of official mourning. The boxes of Christmas decorations had been retrieved from the storeroom and someone had borrowed a set of steps from the caretaker.

  "Morning, Mr Winner." It was Christine Tucker. "Are you going to chip in for some new Christmas decorations? We thought a pound each for senior officers and above."

  Winner was about to reach into his pocket for a pound coin, but changed his mind and went for his wallet instead, pulling out a ten pound note.

  "I'm feeling reckless," he said. "Let's have a proper tree this year."

  "Oh, great. Can we come in and put some decorations in here for you?"

  "Wait until I go out about ten o'clock, then I won't be in your way."

  There was no point in objecting to the time wasted on Christmas decorations each year. It was part of the office culture that you interfered with at your peril, irrespective of how much more important work there was waiting to be dealt with. Winner closed the glazed door to cut out the noise and concentrated on the papers he hadn't got round to reading the night before. It was only a meeting to open the sealed bids for contract work, but he liked to be well informed, whatever meeting he was at. By the time he left his office, the main room was already looking over decorated and they were still pulling more stuff out of the boxes. In the main corridor there was a commotion as a small office clerk tried to manoeuvre a large mass of vegetation through a doorway. Despite the ravages of inflation, you could apparently still get quite a lot of Christmas tree for ten pounds.

  Up in the conference room a handful of councillors and officers were gathered for the formal tender opening session. Winner sat in to note down the various figures. Barry Freeman would usually have attended, but he was off at an Audit Group meeting at County Hall.

  The first tender envelopes to be opened were for the printing of the annual report and monthly committee minutes. Nobody in the room was too concerned who won the contract. Two years ago the in-house printing manager would have been sitting nervously at the back of the room, but his section had already fallen victim to the economic squeeze when he hadn't been able to compete with the lower wage rates and higher productivity of commercial printers. Besides, half his customers were doing work that used to be his on their office photocopiers. Winner noted down the name of each company and its tender figure as the envelopes were opened. A firm from Slough put in the lowest quote. Some saving that would be. Before long some officers would have thought up reasons why they had to visit the printers. Their expenses would soon outweigh the slight cost advantage of the Slough printers compared to the local quote.

  The chairman countersigned the figures in the official register and asked the Committee Clerk to move on to the next set of envelopes. This was the big one today. A contract for the maintenance of a major part of the Council's buildings, including the Town Hall. The Council's own Direct Services Organisation would have a tender in for this one. The government had put them in an almost impossible position. Unlike their competitors from the private sector, they could only compete for Council business. They couldn't bid for commercial work to mop up any spare capacity that they had. If they failed to win one or two major contracts, the remaining work had to support an increased percentage of the fixed costs such as running the depot and central stores. With each hike in oncost rates the chances of them winning the next contract on offer were severely reduced. The DSO manager in Sharmouth had mostly got his tenders right, but in some nearby districts the domino effect of a few lost contracts had wiped out the council's workforce.

  As chance would have it, out of the four tender envelopes the DSO's was the last to be opened. Winner looked around at the DSO manager seated at the back of the room as the figures were announced. If he was worried, it didn't show too much. His apparent confidence was borne out by a tender that came in just below the competition.

  There were two more tenders to be dealt with before the meeting closed. Perhaps this would be all local government consisted of in a few years' time. Just a small team with the responsibility for getting private companies to do the work.

  Back in the office, the decorating works must have just finished. This year they had excelled themselves. The Sharmouth accountants' decorations were about as far removed from good taste as possible. Instead of throwing away the old streamers when they got new ones, they just added to the stock and mixed them together, fixing them wherever there was a convenient place, so that the eye was met by a vulgar excess of erratic colour. The 1950s streamers were even knotted together in places. A lack of convenient fixing places resulted in a bunching up of streamers in certain parts of the office. Where the sensory deprivation would have been too great, sticky tape was used, which over the years had created bald patches where the emulsion paint had been pulled away. Every morning there would be repairs needed to re-fix detached streamers.

  At regular intervals around the walls were bunches of balloons, hung in neat groups of three. As always, two small round ones with a long one stuck up between them. Before long some explosions and partial deflations would be the source of a variety of ribald jokes. Blocking the centre walkway through the office was an inappropriately large tree smothered with a gaudy display of assorted baubles and a fairy that bore an uncanny resemblance to Maurice Westerman in a tutu.

  Winner's office hadn't escaped the onslaught. The walls were festooned with streamers and the front of his desk was embellished with a large picture of an inebriated looking Santa. For the next couple of weeks he would have to good naturedly put up with using a telephone handset with tickly pink tinsel sticky-taped round the edges. He didn't need to go out into the main office to know that there would be a sign over his door saying 'This way to the fairy grotto'.

  In the afternoon Westerman made a rare visit to Winner's office. Some years, the only time he entered the accountancy office was on a pre-Christmas circular tour of the department.

  "I hope I'm not interrupting anything," he said. "You must tell me if you're due anywhere else."

  "No. Come in. Take a seat." Winner slipped a half eaten sandwich back into his drawer.

  Westerman pulled a chair away from the table and sat down at the side of Winner's desk. He glanced around at the decorations. They always seemed to have Christmas decorations in this office. Perhaps they kept them up all year.

  "I saw Charles Forbes yesterday afternoon and we talked about your budget. Of course, he'd hoped it wouldn't be so high, but I don't think he was too surprised. The fact is - and I'm sure you've realised this, David - that there will have to be some staff cuts. As soon as we're all here after the new year bank holiday, Forbes will call a meeting with the chairmen of the various committees, and I'd like you to be there with me."

  "Yes, whatever you want. Is there anything I can do in the meantime?"

  Winner looked out through the glazed door, relieved to see that the Treasurer's presence had been noted and that all the staff were studiously busy with pens and keyboards. Evans, as ever, was on the telephone. Rumour had it that he was conducting some sort of sideline business. Winner suspected it might be an escort agency.

  "It would be helpful if you didn't say anything about the need for staff cuts. We don't want to start a panic."

  "I'll do what I can, but staff from other departments have been stopping me in the corridor and asking me what percentage might have to go. Even solicitors can do simple arithmetic."

  "Just try to play it down. There'll be some natural wastage and maybe a few voluntary retirements or leavers. There may not have to be too many compulsory redundancies."

  "I think it's more a case of pe
ople wondering what sort of a job we'll be able to do if there are even fewer staff."

  Westerman shook his head. That was the question he wanted to know the answer to.

  "What about this business of the accounts?" asked the Treasurer. "Linda Price didn't exactly say what was wrong. I tried to speak to her on the phone yesterday, but her husband wouldn't let me talk to her."

  "You might say I've identified the symptoms, but not the disease. There are entries missing from the ledger, but I can't say yet whether it's just a technical computer program fault or something more serious. As soon as Sally Travis is in here we'll be able to run query reports that pair up all the credit and debit entries. That way we'll be able to find the odd transactions that don't have a proper double entry. It shouldn't be difficult to pin it down then."

  "You've heard, then? About Sally Travis coming in here, I mean. You must understand that it's not permanent. With the cutbacks we'll have to reconsider the whole structure of this department."

  "Is that from next Monday?" Winner asked.

  "As far as I know, but you'll have to confirm it with Freeman. It would be one thing out of the way if you could sort out the accounting problems before Christmas. Then we'll be able to talk about the money we dropped on the financing transactions. I want to be sure first that the two aren't connected."

  Westerman got up and left and Winner sat looking out of the window. Only three o'clock, but already the light was fading fast due to a thick blanket of cloud. Fifty thousand pounds. Winner tried to think where the cash could have come from. Of course, he could only be confident about the ten thousand being in cash. He didn't know what form the other forty thousand might take. There were only two broad possibilities. The cash would have to have come either from the Council's income, or its expenditure. The Council didn't actually handle big quantities of bank notes, maybe only ten thousand pounds a day at maximum in the Council Tax collection offices. The rest came in as cheques. There was quite a lot of cash income from the car park machines, but that was all coins. Could Stewart have found a way of organising cash withdrawals from the bank? The fact that the money was all in twenties was interesting. Winner wasn't sure what the note mix would be in the Council's cash takings, but he was sure that ten pound notes were what most people drew from the bank when they wanted cash.

  Freeman came in and dropped down into the chair that had been vacated by the Treasurer only a few minutes before.

  "What can I do for you, Barry?" Winner asked him. "Westerman just told me Sally Travis would be working in here from next Monday."

  "It's hopeless, isn't it? I know you need Sally, but I've got hardly any staff left now."

  "It's only temporary, until we can work out a long term strategy."

  "I've heard that before. I actually came up to see what happened at the tender opening this morning."

  Winner flipped open his briefcase and pulled out his notes.

  "The DSO won the maintenance contract," he said, handing over the sheet of paper.

  Freeman looked at it. "It's a very narrow margin again. Was Sanderman there?"

  "He was sat at the back. I was quite surprised. It was a very important contract, but he seemed very cool and confident."

  "That is interesting. You haven't heard anything, have you?"

  "What sort of things?" asked Winner.

  "I shouldn't really be asking you, but how much of an investigation can I conduct if I don't speak to people? There's just a suggestion that somehow the bids are being rigged to make sure the DSO wins."

  "I've only heard the usual gossip from people who're not involved. You know, people joking that it must be a fix, but not meaning it seriously. I'll keep my ears open, though."

  "Whatever you do, don't raise the subject yourself. If anyone is up to something I don't want them to get wind that we're on to them."

  "No, of course not," said Winner, wondering how many more confidences he would be party to before Christmas.

  "It could be someone breaking in and getting a look at the tenders, although they're all locked away. Did you hear about last night?"

  Winner raised his eyebrows.

  "The police were here late in the evening. Someone had seen some nutters climbing about on the roof. I don't know if it was an attempted break-in, but they must have had a fright climbing up. There's a whole section of downpipe ripped away from the wall above the Personnel offices. They didn't catch anyone, though."

  Winner reached into his drawer for the remains of the sandwich.

  "Do you think it could be anything to do with the tenders?"

  "I don't know what to think There seem to be a few odd things going on at the moment that don't really make sense."