Christmas Cat Blues, page 3
Carlos looked interested.
“Why? Is it haunted?”
Jeremy shook his head.
“No, I don’t think so. It’s just dark and dusty. It’s one of the office rules that if anyone has to go down there to fetch anything, they have to tell someone where they’re going in case they accidentally get locked in. It’s got one of those heavy doors that swings shut automatically. It’s usually propped open with a fire extinguisher but they ought to change it really. If you got stuck down there you could shout for hours and nobody would hear you.”
Molly shuddered and handed Carlos and Jeremy a mug of hot chocolate each.
“Come on into the sitting room and dry off, the pair of you. The fire’s lit.”
Molly and Jeremy settled back on the sofa while Carlos took up his usual place on the rug, legs crossed and fingers wrapped around his mug. In the window bay the tiny lights on the Christmas tree twinkled in the firelight. Jeremy dipped his head and took a deep draught. He thought for a moment.
“It’s funny. I didn’t realise before how much I missed working with other people.”
“But you work with other people now, don’t you?” said Molly.
“Yes, I do, but it’s not the same. A lot of it is working from home and you’re not always on the same inspection team. You don’t get the same interaction.”
“What about when you go into schools? You’re mixing with other people then, aren’t you?”
“Not really. The thing is, from the time you step across the threshold, you’re being observed. Everybody’s watching you. Everything that you say or do is noticed. And I understand that. It was the same at Sir Frank’s. Whenever we had an inspection everybody was on high alert. Because it’s all very well for people to say it doesn’t matter, it’s only an inspection, or whatever, because it does matter. A good inspection report can be the making of a school. And vice versa.”
“But surely you talk to the staff and so on when you’re there?”
“Yes, but they’re not like colleagues that you see every day. Every conversation is very controlled. Quite often they’ve got prepared answers ready. We used to do it at Sir Frank’s, too.” He sighed and Molly looked at him, concerned. It was a good job that he’d have a break over Christmas, he sounded as if he needed it.
“I think,” Jeremy continued, “that in some schools the staff think that we’ve just landed from Mars. They seem to forget that nearly all of us were serving teachers. Like I said, you’re on show the whole time. I suppose that I’ve more or less got used to it now but well… I guess that being in that board room today made me feel more like a part of something. A member of a team. I couldn’t actually join in yet of course, not officially. But it was good to see how it worked.”
“So who was there?”
“Well, the Chief Executive and the senior managers, as well as the trustees. The Chief Executive, Dick, seems a bit useless. He was practically nodding off at one point. Adam told me that he’s another one due to retire in the not too distant future. From the look of him, he’s just counting down the days.” He laughed suddenly. “Just after we got started, somebody had left the door ajar and a little cat drifted in and made itself at home on top of a side table. I swear it was listening to everything we said.”
Aubrey and Vincent looked at each other. They had met Eric on their nightly rounds, which had lately included the bottom end of the high street and Fireside House. He had promised to show them the secret way in and give them a tour. They had a lot of respect for Eric. He didn’t say much but he did a lot of thinking.
“Anyway,” Jeremy continued. “Adam stirred things up a bit.”
Molly leaned forward.
“Why? What did he do?”
“He started asking questions. Something to do with some project in the midlands. The Foundation is converting some big houses into flats. He asked how it was going, what the state of play is and so on. Everyone looked a bit surprised. I understand that the usual thing is for each senior manager to give an update and then they discuss it a bit and then it’s more or less signed it off. Adam said that it might be useful to look at some of the stats and figures at some point. None of the managers looked very pleased.”
“Did anybody actually object?”
“No, not exactly, but there was a sort of atmosphere if you know what I mean.”
Carlos drained his mug and got to his feet.
“I think I’ll go for a walk.”
Jeremy watched him leave the room, his expression thoughtful.
“Is he all right? Apart from trying to murder me by snowball, he seems very quiet.”
Molly gave a half-smile.
“He had an email from Teddy today.”
Down on the beach Carlos wrapped his parka more tightly around him, feeling the cold wind bite into his face. He was regretting tying his scarf around the snowman now. He’d swap it for something else when he got back. He shouldn’t leave it out anyway, it was one of the last reminders of his life in Brazil and he would be devastated if anything happened to it. He supposed that he could always get another scarf but it wouldn’t be the same. His grandfather had given him that scarf when he was four and he had taken it everywhere with him ever since. He sat down on one of the big boulders that were strewn along the beach and stared out to sea.
Teddy was going away when she finished her A levels. She was going on this gap year thing, working in some orphanage or something. It had taken all his self-control not to plead with her not to go, to point out that he was an orphan too. His mother had been murdered and his father was almost certainly dead from the effects of alcoholism. He loved Molly and Jeremy dearly but they were his foster parents, not his real parents even though he pretended that they were sometimes. If Teddy went off to this orphanage place she would forget all about him. There were bound to be boys there. Posh boys with thick floppy hair and big perfect teeth and then she would probably go off and marry one of them and live in one of those big houses, the sort in which his mother had been employed as a cleaner. And then it would be all over. All his plans for finishing his catering course at college and starting a restaurant would mean nothing without her. He’d be finished before he got started. He dipped his head as he felt the hot pricking of tears against his eyelids.
6
Max stared out of the window at the snow which was now falling fast, great fat flakes swirling in delicate fluffy formations before they finally settled. It showed no sign of slowing down and traffic was bound to be disrupted again. Really they all ought to go home early but it would never occur to Dick. He was far too selfish. Living within walking distance of Fireside House, the Chief Executive never considered that some people might occasionally have difficulties with travelling. Next to him Harry doodled on the agenda placed in front of him. They all hated these Monday management meetings. They were only for show anyway. Nothing was ever decided and even if it was, it was generally ignored. The truth was that they all went off and did their own thing. He picked up his pen and assumed an air of concentration as Dick started speaking. God, he was boring.
“And I know how very much we are all looking forward to the Christmas lunch this year…”
Max stared at him, his face impassive. He couldn’t seriously believe that, could he? The annual farce where everybody pretended that they were all in it together? The trustees only turned out because it was a free lunch and a night in a decent hotel. It was pretty much the only time they ever saw any of the office staff. Most of them wouldn’t have recognised one if she bit him on the bum. And in the case of some of the trustees there was a lot of bum to bite. Perhaps, though, Dick really did believe that the annual enforced jolliness was the social highlight of the year. He was stupid enough. He barely had one brain cell to crash against another. Only Dick could have introduced himself as Richard and then confidently invited his senior managers to ‘call me Dick’. Which they did. How he had ever got this job in the first place was a complete mystery. Including, Max suspected, to Dick himself.
Dick continued.
“And the new brochures that Harry has produced are really quite magnificent. I think that we can all agree that the trustees were very pleased with them.”
Harry glanced at the pile of brochures stacked on the end of the table. All in all, he had to agree with Dick, they were pretty nicely done. A class act. They’d look good in the reception area. The images were well-chosen, pathetic looking beneficiaries, but not too pathetic looking, nobody wanted to look at raddled druggies, and the quotes read well. All right, they hadn’t exactly said what was printed in the brochure but that was what they meant. He had simply helped them to express themselves. He smiled to himself. He hadn’t lied at the meeting of trustees when Adam had asked him if he had actually interviewed these people. He had interviewed them. Well, two of them, when he’d taken a trip out to the proposed new development outside Birmingham. It hadn’t taken very long. The rest of the time he had spent getting to know his new girlfriend in the five star expenses paid hotel he’d booked. He looked around at his colleagues and waited in modest expectation for their praise.
“Very nice, Harry,” said Nigel, economic as ever with words.
“Yes, I am rather pleased with them,” Harry said, with his wide trademark smile that showed his perfectly straight and very expensive teeth, “And you’ll be pleased to know that I managed to keep the costs down pretty well.”
Max looked across at him and smiled back in spite of himself. Harry had all the charm that you’d expect of a man in his position. Responsible for fund-raising and public relations, Harry had thick dark hair with just a touch of silver at the temples, beautifully cut suits that screamed quality and a way of looking at somebody with an honest intensity as if they were the most important person in the world. The trustees loved him, the gullible idiots. But Harry’s greatest quality was that he was a man who could keep his nerve under pressure. And right now, with the new Chairman taking an undue interest in the affairs of the Foundation, they needed that more than ever. He glanced across at Nigel. He was less sure of Nigel. As the IT and Finance manager, Nigel held a lot of power. He could make things appear and disappear at will. And he knew it. It wasn’t helped by the fact that Nigel had even less to occupy himself during office hours than the rest of them. The post had only been created because at some point one of the trustees had said that all modern businesses had them. A small mole-like man with a habit of peering rather than looking at you, he sometimes had the sinking feeling that Nigel would shop the lot of them if it suited him.
“And Max,” said Dick. “How is the new girl settling in? Finding her way around all right?”
“Fine, Dick. Absolutely fine.”
Which was true. What wasn’t absolutely fine was the persistence of the male applicant who had been better qualified and had more experience and was frankly a better candidate than Lettie, the teenaged girl that had been appointed. Lettie was a nice enough girl but she’d only just left school. Not surprisingly, the male candidate had wanted an explanation as to why he hadn’t been offered the job. Max sighed inwardly. As Administrative manager with responsibility for human resources, he would have to deal with it somehow. He knew only too well that the appointment of a male would have gone down like the proverbial lead one with the trustees. Offices were for girls. They worked there until they got married and then they came back when their children started school. That was the way of the Fireside Foundation world and so far nobody had seen any reason to change it.
Dick swept his papers up.
“Must get on,” he said, puffing his chest slightly. “Busy day. Some new legacies to look at.”
The Chief Executive was the only staff member with any legal training although what the exact nature of that training had been was always rather vague and almost certainly so out of date to be of any real value. Nonetheless, it didn’t stop him on occasion from giving the impression that the Lord Chancellor was regularly on the blower asking for advice. He paused as he reached the door, and turned back.
“Oh, by the way. Adam asked me for some background on the Foundation, he’s keen to get to grips with the work that we do.. So I asked my secretary to give him some papers, minutes of meetings, newsletters, and so on to take away. I’m sure that I can rely on you chaps to give him any assistance that he requires.”
The three managers smiled and nodded. They watched as he left the room, the tension among them suddenly rising. For a moment there was silence. Unseen by any of them, a striped cat sidled round the door and crept under a chair.
“Well?” said Max.
“Well what?” said Harry.
Nigel got up and quietly closed the door. He stood with his back to it and looked around him at his colleagues. Three more different men you probably couldn’t hope to find, in both attitude and appearance. And yet the tie that held them was tighter than a hangman’s noose.
7
Max stared at Harry, his eyes narrowed.
“That’s all we bloody need. God knows what Dick has given him. What are we going to do about it?”
“There’s not much we can do, Max,” said Harry. “Adam has been appointed as the Chairman of Trustees and that’s that. Short of arranging for him to fall under a bus we’re stuck with him. The best thing that we can do is keep our heads down and our mouths shut.”
Nigel sat down again, put on his glasses, and drew in his breath.
“We all knew that it couldn’t go on forever. We knew that it would have to end. It looks like it’s going to have to be sooner rather than later, that’s all.”
Max turned to look at him, spitting out the words.
“Yes, well, that’s not particularly helpful, is it Nigel? You were at the trustees meeting, you heard the questions he was asking. Christ,” he pushed his hand through his hair. “I thought he was never going to shut up. And now he’s got hold of God knows what paperwork.”
Nigel opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again as Harry cut across him.
“All right, calm down.” Harry’s voice smoothed over the fractures that were threatening to erupt. “The next meeting of the trustees isn’t until February. We’ve got plenty of time to think about things.”
“There is the Christmas lunch though.” Nigel spoke softly although there was nobody to hear him other than his colleagues and the cat that was watching him. Nigel’s small brown eyes beetled over the top of his glasses as he waited for a response.
Harry sighed.
“Well, he’s not going to start bringing up Foundation business over the lunch table is he? And if he does, we’ll just have to change the subject somehow. It’s supposed to be a social occasion, after all.” He turned to Max. “What’s the latest acquisition?”
“Hightrees Place.”
“What did we pay for it?”
“£150K. The houses are practically derelict, they’ve been standing empty for years. They were up for demolition at some point but nobody ever got round to it.”
Harry nodded.
“And what did the Foundation pay for it?”
“£450K.”
“Ok. Well, we’d better make that the last one.”
Max stood up and began walking around the room in long restless strides.
“We knew that we were safe under Charles, but this Adam is some sort of finance bloke. He works for a bank or something.” He sat down again and began tapping on the table with the tips of his fingers as he spoke. “What if he starts looking into the company that the Foundation bought properties from? What if he does a search and finds out what the company paid for them?”
“Well, nobody has done so far. Anyway, why would he? The job of the trustees is to decide policy, not go poking around in admin.”
“What if he goes to Companies House,” Max persisted. “What if he puts two and two together?”
“Then he’ll come up with nil, won’t he Max? None of the registered directors can be traced to us.” Harry looked suddenly doubtful. “Can they Nigel?”
Nigel shook his head. It had been his idea to use the identities of real people. More specifically, three specially chosen beneficiaries of the trust who were not only unknown to each other but were habitually so off their faces for most of the time that they barely knew what day of the week it was. He had access to all the files. He probably knew more about them than their own mothers. But whether or not they were addicts didn’t matter. What mattered was that they existed. They had birth records, national insurance numbers, the lot. The registered office had been simple too. He had just used one of the registered office company address services.
“Very doubtful,” he said. “Of course, in the unlikely event that the false entries are discovered, we’ll all face prosecution for deliberately filling in false information on the register.”
Harry laughed.
“Being prosecuted for offences under the Companies Act is going to be the least of our problems if this lot ever comes to light.”
Nigel removed his glasses and began slowly polishing them. Typical Harry. Laugh it off. Breeze it all away. Well, he for one had no intention of being prosecuted for anything. He let his mind drift to the small laptop which sat in his study at home. He would challenge anyone, even the most forensically aware, to locate those files. He lifted his top lip in a slight smile. Sometimes he impressed even himself.
Harry looked at him suspiciously. What did Nigel have to smile about? He’d never really liked the man and he strongly suspected that the feeling was entirely mutual.
I think,” Harry continued, speaking slowly, “the best thing to do is to make a strategic retreat. We knew it was going to have to come to an end when Dick retires anyway. We’ve had a good run. We can simply wind up the company. Let’s get out while the going’s good. But in the meantime we must stick together. Agreed?”
He looked round at each of his colleagues as he spoke. Slowly, they nodded.
