Tell Me (23 page)

People were interested, some would be amused. Others might be jealous. But it would all blow over. Things always did.

Brazen it out. Chin up, and let Tony do most of the talking. That’s what they’d agreed. And now came the moment of truth.

Tony had been seated at a table a few feet from her. The room fell silent when he got to his feet. Thea moved over to stand beside him. Tony smiled at her, then gazed across the hundred or so curious faces, all turned toward him.

He pulled a copy of the now infamous picture from his jacket pocket and held it up. “Has anyone not seen this?”

Silence.

“Does anyone here have any doubt that the two individuals in this picture are myself, and Mrs Richmond?”

More silence.

“Excellent. So we have that straight then. Just in case anyone is wondering, this picture was taken just under a week ago, at a club in the city. I hardly need to say, it was taken without our knowledge or permission. The club is a private venue, and we had every reason to suppose that anything taking place there was confidential. That confidence has been broken, and this is not a situation we can reverse.”

He paused, but it was clear he had not finished. No one spoke.

Tony swept his gaze across his attentive audience. “Before saying anything more I should explain something to you all, and this concerns consent. Those of us who choose to participate in the activities depicted in this image have consented to do so. It is our choice, and one we are free to make. Those who watch, those who observe, have also consented. You have not consented, you didn't choose to look at this picture. It was dumped on you whether you wanted it or not. To anyone here who finds themselves offended by what they have seen I can only apologise. You should not have been involved. But the fact is, each of you is involved, and you are now in possession of very private information, very personal information, about myself and Mrs Richmond. I hope you will treat this appropriately. I’m not about to insist you respect our confidentiality, you are under no such obligation. But I am entitled to require everyone who is employed at Dart Logistics to behave towards everyone else connected with this company with respect and courtesy. These rules apply equally, and encompass everyone. So, is there any person here who envisages any difficulty in complying with this?”

Still the room remained silent.

“Excellent. I appreciate though that for many it is difficult to speak out in a large group, especially about a sensitive issue such as this one. If anyone wishes to raise any concerns with me in private I am happy to hear them. Or you may prefer to talk to your head of department. So, that’s all I need to say to you, but before we all get back to work, are there any further questions that I can deal with now?”

The silence was palpable. And uncomfortable. Thea cringed inwardly. Talk about an elephant in the room.

Tony shook his head. “You people are a disappointment to me. You’ve been shown a picture of your boss at a BDSM club, and no one has anything to say? Hell, if I was sitting where you are I’d have barrage of questions to ask.”

There were a few nervous titters, a shuffling of feet, then a voice piped up from somewhere in the middle of the room. “Mr diMarco, what would you ask then? If you were us?”

Thea scanned the sea of faces in front of her but couldn't pick out who had spoken. Tony seemed to have no such difficulty.

“Well, Archie, I’d start by wanting to know where that club was and how much it would cost me to join. But that’s just me and we all know now that I’m a kinky bastard.”

There was collective gasp before the room erupted in laughter. And Thea knew it was going to be okay.

*****

“That went well.” Thea perched her glasses on her nose as she opened up a spreadsheet on her PC. Her heart wasn’t really in grappling with the complexities of their end of quarter projections, but her instincts were screaming at her to get back to normal. She shot a glance across the office to Tony, seated at the other desk.

The door to Isabel’s outer office stood open, but they knew she wasn’t there. Isabel was taking her lunch down in the canteen. Thea was pondering how to broach the matter of the PA’s continued service with Dart if her petulant mood continued. Tony had made it clear he was not about to put up with a negative attitude from anyone on his team, but even so Isabel had worked for him for several years. She was good at her job, or she had been. It was difficult to see how that would continue if the secretary refused to speak to either of them.

“Yeah. A little gallows humour goes a long way, I always think.”

“It could have backfired. Referring to yourself as a kinky bastard…”

“I was banking on knowing my staff. They like a giggle, and you have to admit, this whole bloody mess has its comic side. BDSM always does.” He cast a sardonic grin Thea’s way. “Will you believe me if I tell you we’ll look back on this in years to come, and laugh?”

“I’d have taken some convincing yesterday.”

“And today?”

“Maybe. I confess the funny side of all this is a lot less obvious to me than it apparently is to you. Or to Archie Fellows.”

Tony chuckled. “Ah yes, old Archie. He certainly opened the floodgates. I think you were right though, not to agree to incorporate flogging and nipple clamps in the revised disciplinary procedure.”

Thea snorted. “I can’t believe he actually said that. I didn’t know where to look.”

“You did fine. Really.” He leaned forward, propping his elbows on the desk, his expression serious suddenly. “It was always going to be an ordeal, more so for you than me. We both knew that. Still, it’s over now and you were brilliant. However uncomfortable, I’d rather they exhausted their curiosity all at once, and with us present. Far better that than to have everyone whispering in corners. It’s out in the open now and I think our reputations will survive. Our staff may view both of us in a new light, but I feel we still have their respect. Don’t you?”

“Mmm, time will tell. But yes, no one was overtly hostile. I’d have preferred to avoid all of this, but in the circumstances this is the best outcome we could have hoped for. And you’re right. We had no choice. One thing still worries me though. What if whoever did this isn’t done yet? What else might they be planning? And what was it all about anyway?”

“Who knows?” As he responded Tony picked up his phone and hit redial. He’d tried the mystery number several more times, always with no answer. Thea turned back to her screen.

They both heard it at the same time, a faint but distinct ringing. From somewhere close by. Thea’s gaze snapped back to Tony. Their eyes met.

He ended the call and the ringing stopped. Coincidence?

“Try again,” Thea whispered.

The ringing started up seconds after Tony finished dialling, and again it ceased when he hung up. The sound was coming from the outer office.

“Fucking hell.” Tony got to his feet and strode out there. Thea was hard on his heels.

He dialled again, and they both stood transfixed as the trilling of a phone echoed around the otherwise silent space.

“The desk.” Thea moved forward, examining Isabel’s workspace for the telltale phone. “Nothing. But it’s here somewhere.”

“Keep looking. Underneath? In a drawer?”

Tony joined her and together they opened each drawer in turn. Thea crouched to peer under the desk, and spotted Isabel’s bag tucked away there, out of sight. She dragged it out, and unzipped the top. The old fashioned Nokia lay on the top, its screen illuminated and ‘unknown number’ emblazoned across the display. Tony ended the call, the screen went dark and the trilling stopped.

Thea stared at Tony, his expression of disbelief mirroring her own.

“Isabel? Isabel did this? But why?” Thea was incredulous.

“I intend to find out. First though, pass me that phone if you would.”

Thea obeyed, then straightened to stand beside Tony as he turned the phone on. He quickly located the pictures stored on it. There weren't many. A couple of shots of a house somewhere, several snaps taken at a wedding, and just one of her and Tony. That picture.

“I’ll check her machine.” Thea sat at Isabel’s desk and fired up the PC there.

“What? Why?”

“She printed that off. She must have copied the file onto a computer, then sent it to the printer. My guess is she didn't do that at home.”

“Right. She might have deleted it though.”

“Maybe. If so, I’ll get it back. I’m a forensic auditor, remember. If that picture is on this machine, or has ever been here, I’ll find it.”

Tony watched in silence as Thea spent the next several minutes checking through Isabel’s recently altered files. She turned to him. “It’s here. Look.”

She clicked the mouse to bring the image up on the screen. “The file has a number, but no name. It was created yesterday, and last accessed at eight minutes past four yesterday afternoon. I assume that’s when she printed those flyers. Just before she left.”

“Yes. Scattering them around the cars in our car park as she went.”

“What’s going on? What are you doing in here? That’s my bag.”

They turned. Isabel was framed in the open doorway, her half-finished cup of take-out Costa coffee in her hand. She looked furious.

“You have some explaining to do, Isabel.” Tony didn’t raise his voice. Neither did he respond to the implied criticism from his PA. Thea admired his restraint. She could not have summoned such control if her life depended on it. A Dom thing, no doubt.

“Me? What about you two? Searching through my private things. You had no right…”

“I do hope you’re not about to start giving us a lecture on invasion of privacy, Isabel.”

“I don't have to talk to you at all. Either of you.”

“You do, if you want to carry on working here. I need a damn good explanation for this. And I need it now.”

“Are you threatening to fire me?”

“Tony, we should—” Thea tried to interject, even in this situation her sense of procedure coming to the fore. Tony was having none of it.

“Yes. You’ve five minutes to convince me otherwise.” His glare was implacable.

“So you’re taking her side then?” Isabel spat the words at him. Her glance at Thea was laced with contempt.

“I am. Every time.”

“You’ve only known her five minutes.”

“What does that have to do with you? With any of this?”

“She swans in here as though she owns the place, telling us all the things we’ve been doing wrong. Who does she think she is? Jumped up cow.”

“Isabel…” Thea couldn’t miss the warning note in his growl, but evidently this was not a tone he used much with his PA as she seemed oblivious to it.

“You used to listen to me. You valued my advice. Not any more. Not since her ladyship arrived. It was bad enough that she got you to reinstate that lazy slob Malone, but when I walk in and find the pair of you all over each other in the office. Well, that's too much. She needed teaching a lesson.”

“And you took it upon yourself to teach her? Is that how it was?”

“Someone had to.”

“So let me make sure I’m getting this. In order to ‘teach her a lesson’ you paid someone to follow Thea and me to a club, and take a compromising picture of us. Then you printed that picture and handed it out to everyone who works here. You even went over to the home of Thea’s other employer and treated him to a copy too.”

“I thought he should know what sort of a person he had working for him.”

“He knows what sort of person Thea is. So do I. So does everyone else here. She’s a consummate professional, brilliant at her job. Dart was lucky to get her. Kershaw’s too.”

“She’s a slag.”

There was a brief pause, then. “And you’re out of work. Leave now, Isabel.”

“I’m going nowhere.”

“Out. Now. Under your own steam, or with the help of security.” He picked up her bag and handed it to her.

“My phone?”

“Ah, right.” Tony still had it in his hand and turned it on. He navigated back to the picture and deleted it.

“You had no right to do that. That’s interfering with my property.”

“Just get out, Isabel. If you’re still in this room by the time I count to five, I’ll have security remove you from the premises.”

“You can’t just fire me. I have rights.”

“Two.”

“I’ll have you in front of a tribunal. I’ll—”

“Three.”

He nodded at Thea, which she took to be a signal to contact security. She picked up the phone on Isabel’s desk and dialled zero. Isabel remained rooted to the spot, her expression belligerent.

“Four.”

“Hello, Security? Could you send someone up to Mr diMarco’s office please? Immediately. Thank you.” Thea replaced the handset and turned to face her adversary again. Or she would have. Isabel was already scuttling out of the door, her bag clutched to her chest.

Tony strolled to the window. “If she’s not crossing the car park in twenty seconds I’ll have her found and ejected from the building.”

Thea went to stand next to him. They waited in silence, Thea counting in her head. She reached eighteen before the outer door opened, and together they watched Isabel Barnard hurtle from the front entrance and dash down the half dozen or so steps. She headed to her car and within a few seconds was roaring out of the gate.

“Will we see her again?”

“I sincerely hope not.”

“I can’t believe she was so jealous. Resentful. Of me. Is that what all this was about? Just that?”

“It seems like it.”

“I thought she liked me. We got on fine. Well, we did at first…” Thea was bemused suddenly, now that the crisis seemed to be over. Baffled at the bizarre attitude taken by the other woman. Talk about disproportionate.

“I had that impression too. She certainly seemed to like me. I’d thought we were close. Still… we now know who, and we know why up to a point though I agree with you, it all seems a bit off the wall. But we don’t know how.”

“What do you mean?”

“How did she know we’d be at the club that night? Shit, I didn't even know myself until that same afternoon.”

“Me neither. You told me after the managers’ meeting that afternoon. When we both stayed back in the conference room. No one else knew but us two.”