The Whiskerly Sisters (29 page)

For Fresna, who adored anything to do with family, it felt like coming home.

F
or the third time that afternoon, Celia found herself lugging yet another flask of coffee up the stairs to the second floor meeting room where the Top Team were gathered, and where an atmosphere of deadly seriousness, absolute concentration and complete bafflement had even silenced the normally belligerent Patrick.

Below them, the rest of the Dumbleton’s workforce was in uproar. It was unbelievable, it was dreadful, and it was hysterical. It really rather depended on the stance the different employees chose to take. At any rate, no one was doing any work as people gathered, in small groups, around the now silent banks of computers. From Celia’s panoramic view, there was a load of head shaking, head nodding and frowning, interspersed with occasional bursts of laughter. All in all, it was a very fitting end to her last day. Over the past fortnight, there had been a burst of intensity in her workload – so much to do, to finish, to hand over before she left. It was unsurprising that she had not progressed far with the agreed hand over manual. She had met with Patrick that morning to discuss next steps. He was very anxious about how the office would cope without her, given the move to the warehouse creeping steadily nearer and Germany breathing down their necks over every minor incident. No replacement had yet been found so Patrick had reluctantly agreed to hire a temp for Celia to instruct on office procedure. The poor girl had left after two days, citing too much donkey work for her taste. Whilst her replacement was definitely more robust, she was proving totally incompetent. Once again Patrick had begged Celia to stay on a few more weeks and had even offered her a generous wage, but the lady refused to budge.

In the end, she and Patrick had agreed a compromise in which she would work on the handover notes during her forthcoming holiday. Dumbleton’s would pay heavily for the work and Patrick had had to agree to Celia’s terms of half immediately and half on completion. The cheque was in her bag waiting to be cashed.

Just after lunch, the proverbial had well and truly hit the fan. No one quite knew how it had happened, but there was a phone call from Germany in which Patrick was informed that he had somehow attached a short, pornographic video to an email. At the same time, long-time customers began to ring in to complain about the same attachment. By the time the server had been shut down, several members of staff and some of Dumbleton’s best customers had been hit. No one could figure out how to stop the video from being attached. The incident was proving far beyond the capabilities of their normally capable technician. Patrick’s laptop had been quarantined and the Executive Team had retired upstairs to discuss the incident and plan their damage limitation strategy.

With the office more or less shut down, the staff had gathered to speculate on the incident. The question on everyone’s lips was which staff member had had the audacity to post a clip of the film on the noticeboard overstuck with an image of Patrick’s head. Patrick was seething; he had no clue who had done it, but he knew that whoever it was would be for the chop.

Someone declared it had to be a worm, another said it was sure to be a virus, but no one could work out how it had got into Dumbleton’s in the first place given the strength of their firewalls. The message had leaked downstairs that Karl was flying over immediately with his own technical crew and he was not at all pleased.

It seemed that Karl was spending quite a bit of his time being not at all pleased.

Celia carefully set the coffee flask down on the table in front of her and quietly began refilling the empty cups littering the table. Locked in a heated discussion, the Directors barely noticed her presence. Given the furore around her, she guessed that the planned presentation and farewell present were probably no longer on the agenda, but she couldn’t have cared less. In fact, she was delighted since it meant she could sneak out unseen using the backstairs and that played directly into her plans for the afternoon. Placing a cup of coffee in front of her boss, she stood back and watched him take a gulp.

They had used her and abused her. They had offered her empty promised and had treated her like dirt, but hers was the last laugh. Leaning in her own little bubble against the back wall of the office, she watched as several people in the room, paused mid thought shower and took an automatic sip of their coffee. Smiling maliciously to herself, she thought,
Serves you right, you bastards!
Gathering herself together, she left the room, struggling with her mirth. As she reached the first floor, she glanced back up at the office, gave a two-fingered salute and walked down the corridor in the direction of her office.

Back in the safety of her room, she marvelled at her audacity. Taking a leaf out of her friend, Bex’s book, she had added a jugful of her own warm urine to the last batch of refreshments. “
That’ll teach you lot to piss on m
e,” she thought savagely as she delved into the holdall on the spare seat to close down the small device hidden at the bottom beneath the weight of her personal belongings. She took a few minutes more to finish clearing her desk, placing more memorabilia into the bag and then called in her wide-eyed replacement for a few final instructions. Leaving her with more than enough to do, Celia gathered her things together. Amidst all the fuss, no one noticed her enter Patrick’s office one final time to drop a mysterious communication on his desk. Carefully, she placed the top quality cream business card in a corner of his untidy blotter. In the flurry of events unfolding, he would probably not waste much time wondering who the hell had left it there, but he might just stop to puzzle out its cryptic message, “Job Well Done!” Knowing Patrick, the message would most likely go right over his head and he would toss it in the bin.

She left unnoticed. There were far more serious things to discuss than Celia’s departure. Staff were beginning to think about their jobs and wonder if they would have them for much longer. Given her good understanding of office politics, Celia could have reassured them. She knew there would be an investigation and someone would have to take the blame. She felt certain who that one person would be and would enjoy hearing from her former colleagues how his head had rolled.

Making her way across the car park, her head held high and her step light, she glanced up towards the second floor where the Top Team were again trying to stop Patrick from swearing. She guessed they would be there well into the evening, possibly even until Karl and his team arrived to fix things. They would never get to the bottom of the incident. Charley’s contact had programmed the virus remotely using the device in her bag to bypass the server. He had arranged for it to wipe itself out within an hour of her shutting it down. All Celia had had to do was follow his very precise instructions. It had been easy peasy and well worth the outrageous expense.

As Celia left Dumbleton’s forever and turned left towards the airport and a well-deserved break in the sun, Celia couldn’t help wondering how Patrick would react when he found they had been robbed. Her daring raid of a week ago had proved outstandingly successful, not to mention lucrative. What would Karl say to her former boss when he flicked through the product catalogue of a close business rival and noticed it was full of their designs? How long would they take to work out that the blue prints of their future products, thought to be safely stored in the safe in the office of the UK MD, had been copied and sold? Who could have done such a thing? It was a no brainer. Patrick was the only one who knew where the combination to the safe was hidden.

Wasn’t he?

C
ommander Munro frowned as he read through the letter. Hitting a button on his phone, he asked his secretary to bring in the personnel file of Bryn Jones. This was the fifth complaint in as many months and he now felt he had to act fast. At first, he had thought it best to play things down. It was a matter of one person’s word against another and so he had sent a solicitous reply to each complainant, informing them that he was dealing with the matter and would be in touch in due course. This time, however, there was an independent witness plus the girl’s mother had seen it all. This time something had to be done.

With a curt nod, he took the proffered file out of his assistant’s hand and thumbed through it. He had a distant memory that there had been something similar not too long ago. He located the page and read it through swiftly. An incident almost two years previously when things had got out of hand at a training course that Jones had headed up at which a very aggrieved woman had poured a glass of wine over his head, claiming he had acted in an offensive and unprofessional manner. Jones had fought back by raising a grievance against his colleague, proclaiming he was innocent and that she was ‘off her rocker’. There had been an enquiry where it had been decided that the woman concerned had been drunk and had been heard to use offensive language against the man. Since no one present claimed to have witnessed anything provocative in Jones’ behaviour, the woman concerned had resigned and the matter was closed, but that had not been the end of it. Rumours began to circulate that Jones had had a crush on the woman and had been seen to flirt openly with her, that he had been turned down flat on more than one occasion and, in fact, had directed some unfortunate remarks to her at the event dinner. Since no one had bothered to come forward at the time, the remarks had been considered either spurious or malicious, but a note had been placed in Jones’ file.

Sighing heavily, Munro concluded that something similar was beginning to raise its ugly head. He reached for the phone and made two calls.

If Bryn was surprised to be called at home on his rest day by the Commanding Officer and asked to report to Headquarters first thing, he gave no sign. Switching off his mobile, he took another swig of his favourite, Speckled Hen, and carried on arranging his bedding plants. He took great pride in his garden, boasting the largest number of hanging baskets in the avenue. In fact, his garden came a very close second to his other great love – golf.

Bryn found himself wrong-footed when he stepped into Commander Munro’s office to find a member of the HR Team already there. Nonplussed, he sat down opposite the two senior officers. He was told not to worry and assured that the meeting was merely a necessary formality. He was informed that he could have his own representation and that, if he chose to do so, they could defer the meeting to a future, mutually convenient date. With icy fingers of anxiety plucking at his stomach, Bryn forced himself to sit up squarely in his chair and placed his hands on his knees. In a steady voice, he informed the pair that he would exercise his options when he had heard what they had to say to him.

Back in the HQ car park, Bryn leaned back in his car and closed his eyes. His face was ashen, his breathing was shallow and his palms were damp. He felt physically ill. He wondered how it had come to this. He had believed he was doing a decent bit of work, establishing rapport with his mainly female audience, possibly doing a little bit of subtle flirting and telling a few humorous anecdotes to relax everyone. He had been happy to stay behind at the end to answer the questions of those who were too shy to put their hands up at the end of his lecture and all the time the she devil bitches were only too happy to put the flaming boot in.

Five of them! Five of the stupid bloody cows and all of them during this round of courses apparently! He could not work out what he was doing differently. He had a vague recollection of talking to the last one, the young one who had turned up with her mother. How could he forget her with her big anxious eyes and fluttering little hands, but she had been mistaken. He had even felt sorry for the poor wee thing. However, he could have dropped dead when he learned that four others were also claiming he had behaved inappropriately towards them too. He had sworn on all things holy and unholy that he had never laid a finger on any of them. He cursed loudly as he recalled the moment when the HR bastard had informed him in a small, cold tone that each of the ladies concerned had written in personally to complain about him. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and tried to breathe slowly. He couldn’t understand it.