Days Ten and Eleven: 2,959 words

Paul looked at his stacked-up in-tray, and than back at the screen on his computer. He was in two minds. He had work to do, which mainly involved checking forms that people had submitted, signing or countersigning them, logging them on “the system” and forwarding them to another department, and part of him knew that really he ought to be doing that. On the other hand, he found himself intrigued by the idea that Opocapopopoulos had employed people that nobody, now, knew about. Strictly speaking he shouldn’t have had access to the parts of “the system” that held all that information, and in fact he didn’t, but whoever had designed that way of doing things and satisfied themselves that merely locking people out of some computer software would stop them finding out things they shouldn’t be able to had forgotten that the paper copies were kept in filing cabinets that anyone could access if they asked nicely enough for the key. Sharon, who worked in some department to do with local employment legislation, was his entry point here. She had a copy of most of the keys he needed. If Opocapopopoulos had employed people properly, and filled in all the forms and so on – and there was no reason to think that he had, but it was at least worth a shot – then records of his employees would be held somewhere in these filing cabinets. He looked at the cup on his desk, and it was empty, so that swung it for him: he’d go and make a cup of tea in the kitchenette that was a bit further away, and on the way would see if he could bump into Sharon and get the key off her.

On his way, he happened to glance at the local paper, which someone had folded so only the front page was visible:

Another New Twist To Unpopular Millionare’s Untimely End

He stopped, and looked around to see if it seemed to belong to anyone, but everybody seemed to be out at a meeting or something. Well, surely they wouldn’t miss it if he brought it back: he quickly picked it off the table, thrust it under his arm, and carried on towards the kitchenette with a new sense of purpose.

Once there, he put the kettle on, opened the paper out, and read the rest of the article.

Shocking new evidence has come to light in the case of murdered local tycoon banker Bartholomew Opocapopopoulos, which throws a fresh light on everything. The previously confusing case, which looked like suicide but which has most likely been murder all along, has been given a new twist by the confession of a local man, Orson Cabin, who claims he was employed by Opocapopopoulos as a chauffeur, which would fit as it appears that Opocapopopoulos had an extensive collection of cars but couldn’t drive. Cabin claims that on the day of the murder, he had been ordered by Opocapopopoulos to drive to Guildford to pick up a package waiting for him at a post restante address in the town. When he returned with the package, Opocapopopoulos was nowhere to be seen, but there was an envelope pinned to the door of Cabin’s room. He has refused to divulge the contents of the envelope or what was in the package under data protection laws, which in a way doesn’t make this much of a confession, but frankly we’re not expecting you to have read this far anyway.

That sounded odd, Paul thought, pouring hot water into the cup. As he carried his fresh tea towards where Sharon worked, he couldn’t help feeling a small niggling feeling of there being more to this than he, or anyone, knew. What was all this weird stuff with packages? Why had Susan inherited something, anything, from Opocapopopoulos, when apparently only two other people had been present at the –

He stopped dead. That was what wasn’t quite right. He needed to find a phone... it was Wednesday, which meant that Susan would be probably at the library –

He found a free desk (where was everyone, and why did they spend their entire time in meetings?) and dialled her number. Amazingly, and somewhat gallingly, he got straight through without having to ask permission to dial a mobile number. It rang a few times, and then Susan answered.

“Hello?”

“Hey, listen, it’s Paul. Look, I’m at work and I don’t have a lot of time. But can you remember what the other two people at the, er, will reading were called?”

A pause. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

“You’ve got to try. I don’t think it was real. I mean, I think it was a sham.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Think about it, Susan. That’s not the way wills are read out, is it? Not even if there’s nothing much to hand out, and especially not if you’re talking about someone who was in the Sunday Times Rich List as one of the most unlikeable multimillionaires over fifty. Can you imagine the kind of legal crap you’d have to go through, the number of people who’d come out of the woodwork claiming to be related to him, the lawyers and the slanging and everything? Anyone who was even slightly related to him would want a piece. It’s a process that would take weeks, and as far as I know not much of the house has been touched... I mean, those sideboard things surely weren’t the only valuable thing he owned, so why isn’t the rest of it being left to somebody? Why is it just sitting there?”

Susan paused again before answering; Paul got the impression she wasn’t really listening. “I don’t know, Paul. What are you trying to say – that I should give those cabinets back?”

“No, but I do think you shouldn’t just be accepting that that’s the last you’ll hear about them. I guarantee it won’t be. Are you sure you can’t remember who the other two people were?”

“One had the same name as a photographer, I think. Wasn’t Snowdon or Mapplethorpe or Bailey, but somebody like that... began with an R perhaps.”

“Rankin?”

“Yes, that was it. The other one began with an A, as far as I can remember, but I’ve got no idea what his name actually was.”

“Well, Rankin’s a start. Do you remember what they inherited?”

“No.”

“Did you leave after you heard your bit?”

“No, but I was a bit shocked. I don’t remember there was too much blurb after the bit about the cabinets, but this guy Trent asked us whether we had any questions after he’d finished reading the will.”

“And were there any?”

“What is this, Mastermind? Why are you so interested?”

“I think the whole thing was a charade, and that the other guys were stooges. I think Opocapopopoulos is somehow using you to ‘inherit’, in inverted commas, something he didn’t want anyone to find out about – maybe you were the only family member he could remember, apart from Mum, and we know there was no love lost there. And he’s also, it seems, trying to get you to destroy it. I have absolutely no idea why, though.”

“Look –“ Susan’s voice was somewhat strained. “I’m a bit busy at the moment... I’m sort of stuck in the midle of an essay. Can’t this wait?”

Paul huffed a bit. “You haven’t moved the cabinets, have you?” he asked, not answering her question.

“No,” Susan sighed, “they’re still stopping me from watching crappy telly in the evening.”

“Well, at least they’re fulfilling some kind of purpose, then. Do you mind if I make some enquiries about them? I’ve been in contact with one of the forensic scientists who’s investigating things up at the house, and she kind of owes me a favour. She might be able to unearth some clues, if we can get the cabinets up to her so she can have a look at them.”

“Do whatever,” Susan said. “A week ago, I didn’t have them anyway, and apparently I’m supposed to be destroying them, so I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do to damage them. It might be easier if we broke them up in Bartholomew’s house, anyway... sort of fitting.”

“I’m not talking about destroying them,” Paul retorted, “just trying to find out what the hell is going on. I’ll give Meredith a call.”

“Great,” Susan said, nonplussed, and rang off.

Paul considered his options. If he could find out some more information about Opocapopopoulos’s possible employees – apart from this chauffeur who had suddenly popped out of nowhere, about whom Meredith presumably already knew – that might be a good thing to offer her in exchange for some forensic expertise, he felt. He wasn’t usually the Machiavellian sort, creeping around and politicking people in exchange for favours, but perhaps because he was both disinterested – as he hadn’t inherited anything, and couldn’t think that he particularly stood to gain anything from getting to the bottom of this mystery – and interested at the same time, he felt a certain sense of detachment from everyone involved in the case which lent him an extra boldness he didn’t often feel. It was also nice to have a purpose, and to feel like he was able to get something out of the council for once rather than the other way around.

So he located Sharon, and persuaded her to lend him the keys to a set of filing cabinets which, he hoped, might contain some more information about Opocapopopoulos’s hiring and firing activities. Half an hour of fruitless file-riffling, however, yielded nothing, and he was about to give it up as a bad job when he chanced on a single sheet of yellowing A4 paper, which appeared to be part of a form the rest of which had been lost. He decided to photocopy it anyway, handed the keys back to Sharon, made his way back to his desk – dropping the paper back where he’d found it on the way – and picked up his phone to call Meredith. This made him realise he didn’t know her number, so he unlocked his computer to see if it was on the bottom of the email she had sent him, and was just about to delve into one of his many folders to dig out her email when he noticed a message he hadn’t read marked IMPORTANT. He would normally have ignored this, since emails came through all the time marked IMPORTANT which weren’t, but the subject line of this particular email made him hesitate – “Disciplinary Hearing, Thursday 11.00am, Meeting Room 305”. He opened it, and read:

“Dear Paul, This is official confirmation of your disciplinary hearing scheduled for tomorrow morning. An independent arbitrator will be present, as will myself and Nigel Slipknot, Human Resources Manager. Please bring any supporting material you feel would support your case against dismissal. Kind regards, Ursula Spineshank.”

Paul’s blood ran cold. What disciplinary hearing, and why? Didn’t they have to give him two written warnings before they could threaten to fire him? He felt suddenly angry and self-righteous. Could he try to bring a union representative? It wasn’t that he liked his job or wanted to keep it, but at the same time it did pay the bills, and he’d always wanted the satisfaction of being able to leave rather than being forced to go. For a moment or two he thought about writing a snotty email back to Ursula saying “you can’t do this”, but was suddenly struck by the thought that they might have tried to contact him and failed. He did have – he glanced at the count, in bold text – 4,388 unread messages in his inbox, and it was true that the many times recently that he’d taken days off sick, whether they’d been legitimate or not, when he had come back to work he had usually ignored all the emails he’d got while he’d been away, reasoning that it would take him far too long to read through them all, and if any were important people would email him again about them. He did a quick search for any other emails that Ursula had sent him, and his blood ran cold all over again when the search came back with a whole page of them. Merely scanning over the subject lines was enough; it was suddenly, and terrifyingly, obvious to him that Ursula had indeed been asking him where the hell he was for about three months now. Two of them were headed “WRITTEN WARNING”.

Sweating, he forced his attention away from this new horror, and found Meredith’s phone number. As he dialled it, he tried to steady his voice. This is more important, he told himself. Why? he asked himself. Because, the answer came back, because –

“Meredith.”

“Hello, Meredith, it’s Paul Jameson from the council planning department. I think I may have something you might be interested in.”

“Oh, really?”

“My sister Susan inherited a piece of furniture from Mr Opocapopopoulos, which was delivered yesterday. We’re a little bit... suspicious about where it might have come from, and wondered if you might want to take a look at it.”

“We might,” Meredith replied, a little cagily. “Where is it at the moment?”

“It’s in her front room,” Paul explained. “It’s rather big. She can’t move.”
“Hmm,” Meredith said thoughtfully. “What is it?”

Paul explained about the cabinets, and the strange note they’d found in the drawer. When he’d finished, Meredith said decisively: “Yes, we would be interested in seeing it. Can you bring it up to the house?”

“I don’t think it would fit in the car,” Paul said apologetically, “it was delivered in a van. Could you come and pick it up?”

“We could, I suppose,” Meredith said doubtfully. “Let me have a word with someone, and call you back.”

She didn’t call back that day, and the following morning Paul was too preoccupied with thoughts of his disciplinary hearing to bother answering the phone. At a minute past eleven, he knocked on the door of Meeting Room 305, feeling a mixture of anger and helplessness, and Ursula’s voice called from within: “Please enter.”

Inside, Ursula sat behind a desk between two men Paul didn’t recognise. There was a chair positioned about six feet in front of the table, with the three of them facing him; Paul felt like he was auditioning for one of the shit TV talent shows that Susan now couldn’t watch because of the priceless, tasteless cabinets that blocked her view..

“Good morning, Paul,” Ursula said, and indicated the man on her left. “This is Nigel Slipknot, and this is our independent arbitrator, Mike Hemicalromance.” Neither man said anything. “Please, take a seat,” she motioned.

Feeling he had no option, Paul sat. He noticed a cassette recorder on the table, its tiny reels slowly turning. Who still used cassettes? he couldn’t help wondering.

“I don’t need to reiterate what this meeting is about,” Ursula began, but did anyway. “Following two written warnings to yourself, sent on the first and the fifteenth of last month, to which no reply has been received, this is a disciplinary hearing at which you will have to prove your ongoing commitment to Eastwestchestershire Council, and more specifically to your rôle –“ Paul felt annoyed that he could hear her pronounce the ô – “within your department. There is a clearly-defined procedure within our Human Resources Manual for registering absence due to sickness, a procedure to which you have consistently not adhered.”

There was a silence, which Paul felt compelled to fill. “I’ve got doctors’ notes,” he tried. “I haven’t just been – what’s the phrase? – ‘chucking sickies’.”

Ursula’s facial muscles twitched. “It has been detailed in our communications to you on this matter,” she said pointily, “the correct manner in which sick leave must be registered. However, on a further matter, it has furthermore been noted that your internet usage is unacceptably high, and has been for quite some time. What have you to say for yourself on this matter?”

Did this woman speak English? Paul wondered. “I don’t see,” he began, “how my internet usage can be considered unacceptably high, when two desks down from me, Anthea Popplewell does nothing all day but shop on eBay for designer lingerie.”

“You should be careful,” Ursula fired back, “that your comments are not taken the wrong way. An Equal Opportunities tribunal might find it sexist that you consider a lady’s essential items to be outside the realms of what is allowable internet usage, and a sexual harrassment hearing might furthermore see fit to discipline you for staring at pictures of designer lingerie on another’s computer screen without their consent.”

“So...” Paul began, “what are my options here?”

“Well,” Ursula replied, squaring up the papers on the desk in front of her, “it appears that you are making no effort in your job, you are absent whenever it seems to suit you, and that you are teetering on the edge of costing this council an unspeakably large sum of money should any of these misdemeanours ever go to court –“

“Sorry,” Paul interrupted, “what misdemeanours?”

“Sexual harrassment and discrimination,” Ursula said. “As we have just discussed. It appears to me that we have no option but to release you from your current duties without a period of leave, i.e. with immediate effect. Before we conclude this meeting do you have any comments to make?”

Paul shook his head dumbly. Which is how he found himself, that afternoon, on Susan’s doorstep, asking if he could sleep on her sofa. That night, the pair of cabinets loomed over him like starry monoliths, twisted and turned themselves into all manner of bizarre and ominous shapes, and he couldn’t sleep.