Chapter 6
They started work at nine the next day. Vidya had been down to breakfast early and gone back up to her room, so she hadn’t seen the men until she met them in the meeting room that they were using as an office.
The room was locked, but Stella had given them all key fobs last night.
It was empty when Vidya arrived, so she plugged her laptop in and took a look around.
This was clearly a room that the hotel rented out to business clients.
The conference table in the middle was made up of several tables put together.
She got the impression that the room was used for events as well as meetings.
It had windows along one wall that looked out onto the car park a floor below. But if you looked further out, you could see the other side of the bay.
Today the sea was a shifting mass of blue-green with white frills. She really should go and have a look at the beach. It would be a shame not to.
Since it was still only a quarter to nine, she checked the WhatsApp group that she had with Udeni and Angie. They usually discussed household-related things on there, but lately, there had been pregnancy-related chat too.
This morning’s conversation was mostly suggestions about how Vidya might get a glimpse of Caleb’s chest to verify the tattoo. Angie seemed to have interpreted the brief as ‘how to get a man to take his shirt off’ and was coming up with increasingly ludicrous ideas. Udeni wasn’t helping either.
Vidya: Cut it out you two. I’m at work. Not in a low-budget porno.
Angie: It would have been easier if you’d been in a porno.
Vidya: I have to work with these men!
Udeni: Make sure you find out if he has any allergies. I think those are hereditary.
Angie: Maybe check mannerisms too. My brother and my dad have a lot of the same mannerisms.
Vidya: That might be nurture not nature.
Udeni: Maybe you should get some videos, just in case.
Vidya: Yeah, like THAT wouldn’t get me into trouble with HR at all!
Udeni: I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it work.
Vidya: I might be too busy working. You know, doing my job.
Angie: Speaking of which, we have a sweepstake going in the office on how long you last before you get sick of Leo and want to quit.
Udeni: What time slot did you choose? Angie’s been telling me the gossip about him. He sounds like a real charmer to work with.
The door to the meeting room opened. Vidya hurriedly exited the app. Leo and Caleb walked in, both dressed in suits. Once again, Leo’s suit looked crisp. Caleb, although still smart, looked less polished.
Leo gave her a nod and said, ‘Good morning.’
This was in contrast to Caleb’s big smile and cheery, ‘Morning, Vidya.’ He put his laptop on the table and came to stand next to her and look out of the window. ‘This is some view. It’s almost a shame we’ll be too busy to enjoy it.’
Vidya smiled. ‘It’s nice to be able to rest your eyes from time to time. You’re supposed to look into the distance.’
‘The horizon is pretty distant here,’ Caleb said, agreeably. ‘Although … isn’t it always the same distance away?’ He turned. ‘Leo?’
‘Depends how high you are off the ground.’ Leo didn’t even look up. ‘We’re on top of a hill and on the second floor.’
‘Hah, so I was right. Pretty distant.’ Caleb looked pleased.
Vidya added ‘smug when right’ to her mental list of observations about him. But then, he did check his facts with his friend. That made him less smug.
‘Are you ready for this?’ Caleb asked Vidya, indicating the laptops.
‘We can only do our best,’ she said.
Leo looked at the clock on the wall. It was a few minutes past nine. ‘I thought Stella was meeting us here at nine?’
‘It’s only five minutes, mate. Give her a moment,’ Caleb said.
Leo’s glare suggested that he didn’t think much of people who were late. Woah. Grumpy.
She watched him as he opened his laptop, presumably checking his emails.
The weak sunlight caught him and highlighted the deep browns in his hair and the sharpness of his features.
In the cold light of day, he was very good looking.
His expression was fixed on stern, though.
No, she decided, it wasn’t so much stern as solemn.
He was a very serious guy. He didn’t like it when people were late and he didn’t like incompetence.
He also didn’t smile much. What a waste of that face!
***
‘We have paper copies of the agreements in here.’ Stella unlocked the door using her key fob and opened it.
The file room had no windows. It was a wall of rolling shelves that were currently all pushed to one side.
The aisle in front of the file stacks was barely wide enough for two people to pass, a couple of feet wide.
Vidya smiled. She liked these sorts of rolling cabinets.
Stella explained the filing system and showed her the legends on the ends of the shelves, that showed which files were in which rolling stack.
Stella glanced at Vidya and said, ‘We have a kick stool.’ She pointed to it, tucked away underneath the small desk, which was the only other piece of furniture in the room.
‘In case you’re not tall enough to reach the top files. ’
‘Thank you.’ She would definitely be using that.
‘It’s all in hardcopy?’ This was Leo, who was standing in the doorway, looking serious.
‘We made a start digitising it,’ said Stella. ‘Got all the signed agreements scanned and put into a big folder, but we didn’t get around to setting up a database or anything, so we pretty much rely on the paper files.’
Vidya’s heart sank. Reviewing all of this to work out what they needed to worry about was going to be an absolute nightmare. A glance at Leo’s expression told her that he was thinking the same thing.
‘How do you find what you need?’ she said. ‘For example, if you needed to find all the agreements that were about … say, catering supplies, for example.’
Stella looked uncomfortable. ‘We used to have a line manager, who knew where everything was. She had spreadsheets that she used, but she went off sick and then left without ever coming back and there was no handover, so we don’t know where the spreadsheets are.
Nowadays, I have to look through the file index and work it out. ’
This was going to take forever. They only had six working days – eight days, if they worked the weekend. Doing this the old-fashioned way – manually looking through all the files – simply wasn’t feasible. An idea stirred.
‘But you have all the originals scanned as PDFs?’ Vidya asked.
Stella nodded. ‘All of them. Even the new ones. They’re just not organised. We have a big folder with them all in. Saved by file number.’
‘That includes any addendums?’
‘Yes. We literally attach them together in the paper copy, so they got scanned together.’
Vidya knew Leo was watching her. His face was impassive, but his eyes were narrowed slightly, as though he was wondering what she was up to.
‘I have an idea,’ she told him. ‘I think I can make some sense of all of this. It’ll take … a day or so to set up.’
He raised his eyebrows like he didn’t believe her.
‘Do you have a list of the documents relating to property?’ he asked Stella. ‘Leases, deeds, that sort of thing?’
‘I can get that for you.’
‘We’ll start there. If you get us a list and help us pull the paper files, that would be very helpful.’ He didn’t smile, but his tone was pleasant.
Back in the meeting room, they each set up their laptops.
‘This is not looking good, is it? I’ve had a look through their folders to see if I can find this spreadsheet that has the detailed information on it, but it’s not obvious,’ said Caleb. ‘There’s a lot to review and no sense of order to it. How on earth did they function?’
This was pretty much what Vidya had been thinking. There had to be some order to the madness. She just needed to work it out. A bit of time talking to Stella, without Leo glaring at them, would help. Probably.
‘Maybe we should call Sarah,’ said Leo. ‘She might have some ideas.’
Wait, what? ‘Excuse me,’ Vidya said. ‘I have some ideas on how to deal with it.’
He glanced over at her, brows furrowed. ‘Yes?’
Rude, rude man.
‘I was going to see if I can run a query through the AI and get it to pull out a table of information for us. They must use the same template for their agreements. I can use that as a basis.’
There was a moment of chilly silence. Caleb groaned and closed his eyes.
‘You’re going to use AI?’ said Leo. ‘To review serious documents?’
‘Yes. We’ve been training the AI to read and recognise key phrases. I just haven’t tested the query in the real world yet.’ She had been working on this for weeks.
‘Wait. You want to let an AI loose on some company’s legal documents? Are you mad? The security implications—’
She stood up. ‘I’ve already run this query past IT security—’
Leo snorted.
‘And I checked with compliance,’ she said, louder. ‘And in our testing phase, we used expired agreements which were not flagged as sensitive, just in case of leaks. I do know what I’m doing, Leo.’
‘But the AI is a blunt instrument.’
‘It’s still an instrument. A tool. You give it clear instructions and it carries them out. Just like any other tool. This isn’t generative AI. I’m not asking it to make stuff up or draw conclusions. I’m asking it to extract information that’s already there. There’s a difference.’
Leo opened his mouth, but Caleb interrupted.
‘Okay, okay, guys. Let’s not turn this into a debate on the merits of AI.
’ He held up his hands, palms outward. ‘We,’ he gestured to himself and Leo, ‘are naturally a bit cautious. But … as you say, this situation is a mess, and we’ll never get it done in time without some sort of intervention.
’ He paused to glare meaningfully at Leo, who crossed his arms and gave a grudging nod.
‘And Vidya, you’re sure this is safe?’ Caleb said. He was looking at her now, but one hand was still pointing at Leo, as though holding him at bay.