A Shock to the System (28 page)

‘Who's done it?'

‘Well, obviously, the computer boys have helped out on the figures, but . . . the thinking's mine.'

The Managing Director smiled. ‘I will read it with interest, Graham.'

The next day Graham didn't wear a tie to the office. At lunchtime he went out and bought a dark brown leather jacket, cut on casual lines. After work he had fixed to join George Brewer for a drink, but he stood his boss up. Instead, he had an estate-agent-guided tour round a new block of service flats just off Sloane Street. A one-bedroom studio cost almost exactly what he had been offered on the Boileau Avenue house. The flats appealed to him. Without furniture, with bare polished floors and newly white walls, they appealed to him a lot. Hotel-like, uncluttered, anonymous.

When he got back that evening there was a message on the Ansaphone from Charmian. She sounded extremely angry. It was ten days since he had last seen Henry and Emma and since then he hadn't even phoned to check that they were still alive. What kind of father was he? Had he no interest at all in his children?

The final question was easily answered, but there seemed little point in ringing Charmian to tell her. Instead, he wrote to his bank manager, arranging the agreed monthly standing order into his sister-in-law's account. After that, he felt he had fulfilled his paternal duty.

It was on the Thursday that the summons to David Birdham's office came through. Terry Sworder's report lay on the Managing Director's desk.

‘It's good, Graham, bloody good. Pulls no punches. Lot of redundancies, though. Many people won't like that.'

Graham shrugged. ‘You can't make an omelette without cracking a few eggs.'

‘Oh, sure, sure. And I could nominate a few eggs in Personnel Department who are ripe for cracking. What I'm saying is, it's one thing to produce a report like this, it's another to put it into practice. Whoever does it is going to have to work very hard and be prepared to make himself unpopular.'

‘I'm sure it could be done.'

‘By the right person, yes.' David Birdham toyed with a paperknife. ‘Management has known for some time that this sort of shake-up was needed. We're not daft, you know, we do notice things. But, though he's been a brake on progress for years, we wanted to hang on till George went. Not just sentimental, we could easily have put him out to grass even earlier, but we didn't want any half-measures. Which was why Benham was appointed. He seemed to have the right thick-skinned qualities for the job. It needed a blunt instrument and he fitted the bill. We all felt that you . . . were too much of a traditionalist, too tarred with George's brush . . .'

Graham was silent, waiting.

‘And then you send me a report like this.' David Birdham tapped the papers on his desk. ‘It is exactly what is needed, and I won't say I'm not surprised that it came from you. You always seemed to follow George's line.'

‘I suppose that was out of . . . what? Loyalty?' Graham poised the word diffidently.

‘Loyalty can be dangerous in business. Lost you the job the last time around.'

‘Yes.'

David Birdham rose from his chair and walked across to the window. He spoke with his back to his junior. ‘Listen, Graham, I want you to take over from George next week. I've spoken to most of the board and most of them'll accept any recommendation of mine. May have a bit of a problem with the Staff Association over the job not being properly advertised, but we can ride that. Thing is, these are exceptional circumstances, with the Heir Apparent dying before the old King goes, and in my view a quick decision is needed. Nothing like an interregnum to get a department out of hand. And since there's no doubt you were runner-up last time round, I think you should definitely have the job. What do you say, Graham?'

He had done it. The failures of the last two and a half months had been wiped away and he stood where he had hoped to stand. But his position was so much stronger; three murders had elevated him way beyond his prosaic former hopes.

‘It's a big challenge, David,' he said grittily, ‘but it's one that I'd welcome, and one that I feel confident I can cope with.'

‘Good man.' The Managing Director turned, came towards him and shook his hand. ‘I'm relying on your discretion. All got to be hush-hush at the moment. Certain amount of bumf has to be passed around before we can make any official announcements. So keep it under your hat, eh? Don't tell anyone, even at home . . .'

David Birdham realised what he had said and coloured. For the first time in Graham's memory, the man looked embarrassed. ‘I'm sorry. Insensitive. I mean . . . Well, all I hope is that your taking over the job will be some – of course inadequate – compensation to you after your wife's death.'

Graham made his smile of response properly reflective, the smile of a man who has just been reminded of his greatest sadness rather than one of his greatest triumphs.

George Brewer's previous farewell celebrations had been local, carving up little sectors of different departments, but the one which started at six o'clock in the eighth-floor conference room on his final Friday of employment included everyone.

Its guest of honour seemed subdued, if not downright depressed. Whereas the previous crowds had lifted him to a feverish jollity, on this occasion the reality of his departure seemed to crush his spirit. He no longer had merry quips of golf and gardening to answer the enquiries about how he would spend his retirement; he replied, ‘I don't know. I just don't know how I'm going to fill the time.' He no longer even pretended to crow at the prospect of increased leisure and his index-linked pension, but listened wistfully as his colleagues inadvertently excluded him by their talk of future plans. He looked like a man on the edge of a dark precipice, afraid and ignorant of how far he had to fall.

His assistant, by contrast, was in ebulliently cheerful mood. He chatted lightly with his older colleagues and his new friends from Operational Research. He had whispered, complicit conversations with members of senior management. He flirted harmlessly with secretaries under the benign eye of Miss Pridmore. And every now and then, when someone mentioned his late wife, he looked appropriately grave.

He saw Stella from time to time. She tried to pierce his bonhomie with meaningful looks, but achieved no deeper conversational engagement than the other girls. At one point she actually took his arm and hissed, ‘When are we going to see each other again, Graham?'

‘Soon, soon,' he replied airily, and whisked away to share a joke with Terry Sworder.

Eventually, after a great deal of drinking, a glass was tapped for silence and David Birdham gave a brief, professional encomium on George Brewer. He started with an ancient, mildly risqué anecdote of George and a long-vanished secretary at a conference in Manchester, which achieved the required raucous laugh, then moved on to list the Head of Department's qualities of good humour, patience and common sense, and to say how much they would be missed. He made a brief reference to ‘the cloud cast by recent events' and assured ‘George's successor, whoever he might be' that he'd have a tough job in maintaining the high standards of his predecessor. David Birdham did not mention his personal view that George was ‘losing his marbles' and had been ‘a brake on progress for years'. In conclusion, he asked everyone to raise their glasses to George Brewer, as Miss Pridmore wheeled in the gift to which they had all so generously contributed – a new golf trolley.

After the applause had died down, George made a broken-backed little speech of thanks. Perhaps he was drunk, perhaps it was emotion, but he kept losing his thread. He mistimed his jokes, stuttered his gratitude, and kept reaching the same impasse when he mentioned what he would do in the future. Eventually he was left just looking at the golf trolley, which, like the previous gift of Newton's Balls for his desk, now seemed only to advertise the emptiness of his life.

As the speech spiralled down to silence, David Birdham took the executive decision of shouting ‘Jolly good show, George', and leading a round of applause.

After that the assembly dispersed rather quickly. Groups of the younger ones adjourned to pubs, the board members went down to their drivers, and members of the Personnel Department queued for final handshakes and farewell quips. One little group of hard-core drinkers, which Graham noticed included Stella, stayed resolutely and rowdily together, while the uniformed waitresses circled, collecting plates and glasses and putting away the remaining wine bottles.

‘I think I'd better go,' said George abruptly in the middle of a long-winded effusion from the internal postman, and moved unsteadily but quickly over to the anteroom where the coats had been dumped.

Goodbye, George, thought Graham. Last I'll ever see of you, you boring old fool.

Then he saw the gleaming golf trolley, abandoned and forlorn. Oh, God, last thing he wanted when he took over the reins on Monday was George stumbling in to collect his present.

With a cheery cry of ‘Forgetful to the last' tossed towards the group of drinkers, Graham pushed the trolley after its owner.

He stopped in the doorway. George was fumbling on the floor. The volume of coats had pulled down a hat stand and he couldn't identify his ‘British Warm'.

‘I've got something of yours, George,' Graham pronounced jovially.

The fuddled, sad eyes looked up at him. Then George rose and put a hand in his pocket. ‘I've got something of yours, too, Graham.'

He withdrew the hand. On his palm lay Graham's gold cigarette lighter.

‘Thank you. I noticed I'd lost it somewhere. Never thought I'd see it again. Did I leave it in your office?'

‘No.'

‘Oh. Where did you find it then?'

‘That's the strange thing,' said George Brewer slowly. ‘It came in the post this morning. Addressed to me. From some car-hire firm. Apparently they'd found it in one of their cars.'

Graham went down by the stairs. He waited in the shadows of the Reception area until the lift arrived. The doors opened and George stumbled out, suddenly shorter and more bent, pulling his golf trolley incongruously behind him.

Only one door was left open at that time of night and George had difficulty negotiating the trolley through it. Going down the steps to the pavement was also awkward. Graham did not emerge from the building until his quarry was moving along smoothly.

He had to find out how much George knew, or how much he had pieced together. In his fuddled state, the old man had not elaborated, simply handed the lighter over, apparently more struck by the unusual circumstances of its return than suspicions as to how it might have got into a hire-car. But he wouldn't stay drunk for ever, and there had to come a moment when he started to ask questions. Graham knew he must speak before that moment arrived, must pre-empt suspicion by some spurious explanation. He didn't know what it was yet, but he felt confident he'd think of something.

In the meantime he would follow his former boss and choose his moment to speak.

George Brewer moved automatically. His footsteps had trodden the same route every day for over thirty years and no amount of bitter reflection would allow them to deviate. He forgot about his farcical appendage, the golf trolley, until he came to the steps down to Oxford Circus Underground Station.

The almost expired season ticket was flashed at a collector deep in his newspaper and then George had to balance his trophy, his reward for all those years of service, on the unfolding escalator. That task, and the darkness of his thoughts, made him oblivious of his colleague at the ticket machine.

Graham was annoyed. He shouldn't have dawdled playing the private detective. He should have confronted George before, explained about the lighter, settled the business. Now he had to go through the rigmarole of going down on to the platform and accosting the old man there.

George lived in Haywards Heath, so caught the Victoria Line Southbound to Victoria. It was about half-past nine. The station was relatively empty; the drink-after-the-office commuters had gone, and the cinemas and restaurants had yet to disgorge their home-going crowds.

The trailing golf trolley was slowing George down, and Graham was close behind when they came off the second escalator. He could have spoken, called out, but he didn't.

George suddenly put on a spurt, an asthmatic run, as he saw the silver screen of a train across the end of the passage. But it was too late. The windows started to slide past. He had missed it. He stopped, panting, while the few unloaded passengers drifted past him. Then he moved forward on to the platform.

Graham stayed, apparently absorbed in a cinema poster. He told himself he was trying to perfect his explanation of the lighter, but he no longer believed it. A pulse of excitement throbbed inside him.

George stood with his back to the passage. He was holding the trolley handle with his right hand, while he looked from his watch to the indicator board. Graham checked no one was behind him and moved on to the platform.

A look to either side. No one but George had missed the train.

It took one quick, firm shove.

Graham was walking back along the passage before George hit the rails, so he didn't see the flash as the metal of the golf trolley made contact. Nor the great shudder that whiplashed through his former boss's body.

He strolled along, following the ‘Way Out' signs, and dumped his ticket in front of the still-reading collector, who was never going to check why a ticket printed at Oxford Circus should be delivered there.

Up on street level, he felt the excitement breaking out, tingling like sweat all over his body. He looked at his watch. It was only seven minutes since he had left the Crasoco tower.

His mind was working very clearly. He knew exactly what he had to do. He walked briskly, but not hurriedly, back to the office.