The Borough

by Steve Dockray

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Winner walked along the corridor towards the Personnel Section. There was to be another top level budget meeting later in the day and Forbes had asked him to liaise with Pat Johnson to make sure that the department heads had costed their cutbacks properly. As he went in through the door he was struck by how gloomy the place seemed, despite the bright winter sunshine outside. He quickly noticed that one of the three windows was now covered over with a large sheet of shuttering plywood, a temporary repair for the damage caused by the recent photocopier fire. The walls had presumably been wiped down, but everything had a sort of grey tinge. The staff, still in their thick winter sweaters, were now reduced to sitting on plastic stacking chairs while their regular upholstered chairs were away for cleaning. Winner remembered to side-step round the bucket that was still positioned below a sagging damp portion of ceiling.

  "Don't say anything," Johnson said. "I told Forbes that this is really the last straw. If this place isn't fully sorted out by the end of the month, I've promised him we'll be taking over his office."

  "Why don't they just get on with the repairs?" asked Winner.

  "It's something to do with them scheduling jobs so as not to overspend on the contract. I thought the fire mess would be dealt with quickly as an insurance job, but it seems we now have a five thousand pound excess on the fire insurance policy."

  "I've come about the cutback schedules."

  "You'd better leave us, Betty," said Johnson to the only other occupant in the office. "Go and have a cup of coffee or something for ten minutes."

  The clerk left the office, not too concerned to be having an enforced break.

  "We don't normally have too many secrets in this office," continued Johnson, "but we've never had anything like this before."

  "No, it's bad isn't it? I don't suppose more than four or five of us know the complete picture yet. It's not much fun having to deny all knowledge of it when you know that the person you're talking to is due for the chop."

  "Yes, and people you've worked with for years, as well. Some of the people who are over fifty might not mind being pensioned off early, of course. It really depends on their personal circumstances."

  "Have you double checked the figures?" Winner asked her.

  "Yes, they're all correct. It was just a relief not to see my name on the list."

  Back in his office, Winner kept the list of names locked up in his briefcase. Rumours were already rife around the building, but it would be a black mark against him if he was the cause of a major breach in security. Sally appeared in the doorway.

  "I've managed to spare a couple of hours for hunting through the minutes," she said. "Do you think I'd be missed this afternoon if I took a little time to visit the Sharmouth Daily News archive, to look through old editions?"

  "What did you find in the minutes?"

  "I've got the dates for when there was all the fuss about the Prince of Wales estate."

  "We'll say you're working on some confidential budget papers out of the office. There are so many secret meetings going on at the moment that nobody will be surprised."

  "I'll tell you what I find there when we get back home this evening. Have you got all the redundancy names now?"

  "Yes, but everyone will know them in a day or two. I'd far rather not know them myself, to be honest. They should give the final go-ahead at this afternoon's meeting."

  "Well, have fun this afternoon with the Chief Executive."

  "I shall be keeping a close eye on Cavendish, if he's there. You have fun at the newspaper."

  Winner went off to lunch a few minutes early, taking advantage of the brighter weather to walk down to the quayside. Just out of curiosity, he had earlier in the day signed on to the Council's computerised debt collection system and searched for the name Cavendish. The only matching records were for special refuse collection arrangements and an account for mooring fees in the marina. Now he was stood leaning against the railings where the marina moorings were nearest the shore, munching a ham sandwich and methodically searching his way through the nameplates on the boats to see if he could spot 'La Mouette'. He had moved on to a crunchy green Granny Smith before he finally saw what he was looking for. He mentally kicked himself for wasting time looking at the names on the small boats. He should have known better than that. If he'd started with the largest first, he would have spotted La Mouette in seconds.

  It was a large vessel, easily big enough for going out to sea and certainly suitable for crossing the Channel. Probably a couple of cabins and a saloon as well as the rear deck area, thought Winner. At the back, a tender like a small rowing boat was hanging sideways, suspended above the water.

  Winner would have liked to take a stroll out along the floating walkways for a closer view, but the access from the quayside was controlled by a security guard who sat in a small hut next to an electrically controlled gate, so he had to content himself with the distant view. It was a clever arrangement. The slatted wooden walkways were supported on pontoons that rose and fell with the tide and the main access ramp from the gate was hinged where it met the gate and the first pontoon, so that as the tide fell, the approach just got a little steeper.

  It was strange how few people there were to be seen anywhere within the controlled area. All these millions of pounds worth of boats seemed to spend the greater proportion of their lives deserted and unused. The more successful a person became, the more expensive a yacht he could afford, and the less time he had available to spend on it.

  Winner tossed his apple core to one of the ever watchful seagulls and started back towards the High Street. Whatever Cavendish had spent his life doing, he had certainly ended up well off. The problem was how to find out more about him without drawing too much attention to the enquiries. Perhaps Sally would turn up something at the newspaper offices.

  Two-thirty, and the special budget group was back around the table in the Chief Executive's office.

  "What have you got for us, Maurice?" asked Forbes.

  "Mr Winner has a file with all the proposed staff cuts. Each of the department heads is well aware of his own proposals and I can confirm that in total they add up to the required saving. As far as this matter is concerned, the purpose of this meeting is to give the go-ahead to the cuts. I don't think there's a need for any more people to know the individual names until the people concerned have been notified."

  "We wouldn't want to see them in the Sharmouth Daily News tonight, would we?" said Cavendish, making what was for him an unusual attempt to say something humorous.

  "I'm glad it was one of our members who said that, and not me," said Forbes. "I hope every one of us here realises what an extremely sensitive subject we're dealing with. Some of you here may be independently wealthy, or have secure businesses that produce a dependable income. To someone who's just on a regular salary, the loss of their job could be devastating."

  "Is there any alternative to these cuts," asked Mrs Morris.

  It was Westerman who answered. "To be quite honest, Councillor, I don't think there is, though I think I speak for all my colleagues when I say that I envisage a very difficult future trying to get the work done with a reduced number of staff."

  "There's no more to be said, then," said Mrs Morris. "I vote that we endorse the cutback plans and leave Mr Forbes to deal with the practical implementation."

  "This isn't a committee of the Council," said Forbes. "There's no need for a formal vote. I think members will appreciate that the officers could hardly proceed with such a major policy item without the knowledge and agreement of at least the committee chairmen."

  "I think we all understand the situation," said Avery. "I can understand that nobody wants to take sole personal responsibility for taking away peoples' jobs."

  There was a murmur of agreement from round the table.

  "If there's nothing more to be said, we'll move on to the other matters."

  Winner looked at Forbes, raising his eye
brows questioningly.

  "You stay put for a minute, David. These other items won't take many minutes to deal with and I'd like to have a word with you when the others have gone."

  Winner stayed in his seat while the rest of the day's business was concluded, then waited for the other officers and councillors to get up and leave, speculating for a moment as to whether his name was to be a last minute addition to the redundancy list.

  "I'm sorry you've had to bear the responsibility of collating all this redundancy information," Forbes told him, when they were alone in the room. "The lists did pass through my hands, but I haven't got a copy. I think perhaps I ought to, in case I get drawn into any fuss that might blow up."

  While he had been speaking, Forbes had moved towards the door. Winner gathered up his papers.

  "I'll go straight to the photocopier and run off a set," he said to Forbes' disappearing back.

  Winner stood up and glanced around, unfamiliar with the sensation of being alone in the Chief Executive's office. Something he could probably get used to, he thought. On the far side of the table his eyes came to rest on a slim blue book, just at the place where Cavendish had been sitting.

  With just a glance to the door to make sure that nobody was coming back in, he raced round the table and picked up the book.

  A diary with the initials MC gold blocked on the front cover.

  He stuffed it in his pocket and went straight to the door, his mind a whirl as he tried to work out whether he could be connected to its disappearance. As he walked along the corridor to the nearest photocopier, an idea came to him and he broke into a jog. The small mailing room was empty and Winner stood at the copying machine with his foot wedging the door closed. He quickly ran the redundancy schedules through the copier and stuffed the originals and copies into their manila folder. Then he raced through the diary, copying all the two page spreads that had anything on them that looked at all interesting, and paying particular attention to the engagements and notes for the next few weeks. There just wasn't time to risk delaying any further.

  He folded the copies and slipped them into his inside pocket, hoping that it didn't bulge too much. The corridor was deserted and he ran back along to the Chief's office, only slowing down as he pushed open the door to the secretary's anteroom. The door to Forbes' office was closed again and he headed straight for it.

  "You can't go in," said his secretary. "He's got Councillor Cavendish in with....."

  Winner brushed her protest aside and went on into the room. A very red faced Cavendish was standing at the side of Forbes' desk.

  "I tell you I must have left it on the table." Cavendish was almost shouting.

  Winner skirted round the table, and as he went past where Cavendish had been sitting, he dropped the diary, silencing its fall with a flick from his toe which sent it sliding a little way under the table. Forbes looked towards Winner as he approached the desk.

  "You haven't seen a slim blue diary, have you David?" asked Forbes. "Councillor Cavendish thinks he left it on the table."

  "I'm damn sure I must have left it here,"

  "No, I'm sorry. I just came to give you the copy redundancy schedules."

  Winner pulled the copies out of the folder and put them down in front of Forbes. As he turned to go, he made a show of looking round the room.

  "I'll have to chase after Avery and see if he picked it up," said Cavendish.

  "There's something just under the table there," said Winner, not so far away that he could be accused of x-ray vision, yet not so close that he could be suspected of planting it.

  He started pulling away a chair as Cavendish came over and went straight down on his knees to retrieve the booklet.

  "Thank God for that," Cavendish told them. "I might have missed important appointments if that had disappeared."

  Winner said no more, but nodded to the councillor and carried on out of the room, giving Forbes' secretary a breezy smile as he passed through her office. He took his time going back to his own office, stopping off at the gents so that he could go into a private cubicle and fold up the sheets more neatly. Perhaps he had got away with it. They might not have even looked under the table before he had come in, and even if they had, it was a small book that could easily have been overlooked from certain angles. Yes, Cavendish would assume that he had knocked the book to the floor when he had got up at the end of the meeting. Gradually Winner's heartbeat returned to a more regular, unobtrusive level. He would save looking at the sheets until he was back at home in the evening. He flushed the toilet before letting himself out.