Chapter 7 The Lift
The Lift
The lift dropped again and Tam’s hand gripped the long pile of the carpet on the floor in panic. It was ridiculously plush, something that Jack drew attention to.
‘Superlative-quality carpet in here, isn’t it?’
Tam nearly laughed. ‘One of Middlewood’s last innovations. Top-notch to impress visitors.’
Jack noted her scoffing tone. He tilted his head at her.
‘You don’t sound as if you approved.’
‘I think any attempt to impress folk with a fancy carpet is going to be negated by them being stuck in it like we are. The whole lift system is well overdue for replacement, but he preferred to plaster over cracks,’ she responded, surprised that her breathing was evening out as she talked with Jack.
‘Yes, I’ve noticed, from the expense reports,’ said Jack. ‘He made some very . . . dubious purchases.’
Jack had pored over every letter and figure she’d supplied to him. She could imagine that he’d taken in whatever detail his eye touched, like a cross between a high-functioning computer and a sponge: budgets, time sheets, personnel files, petty cash, big cash. Everything. No corner unpoked at.
‘There’s a lot of money that’s been wasted in this company over the past five years since he took charge,’ explained Tam. ‘And not enough spent where it should have been.’
If she was going to go out, then she’d go out with a bang and tell him what she hadn’t so far, though if he was as clever as everyone said he was, then he’d have already suspected it.
‘Such as?’
‘Such as he would have been better spending the company’s money on decent pay rises for people who deserved them and not throwing it away on the . . . dead wood.’ The yes men whose salaries he pumped up.
‘Interesting.’ Jack’s dark eyebrows were rising. ‘And who would you say is the . . . dead wood?’
Should I? Tam mused. Given the chance to air her feelings, to be indiscreet and unprofessional . . . should she reel off the list of those she would have winkled out, given the time? The leeches, the fat cats who drew multiples of the salaries the real workers did.
Oh, go on, said an imp on her shoulder. What have you got to lose? There were worse ways to use up the remaining oxygen at their disposal than to help some of the people who didn’t have a voice in the company.
Tam cleared her throat.
‘Richard Idle, head of Accounts, couldn’t count to two with his own hands to assist him unless he had a calculator in one of them, and even then I’m not sure he has the gumption to turn it on.
Frances Belk in PR should be on a Roman rowing boat, flogging slaves.
If you look at the staff turnover in that department, it should tell you everything.
The morale in PR is lower than a snake’s belly and it’s not fair.
’ The words flowed like water from a broken tap.
If she was going to be leaving, the least she could do is tell Jack the Pizza a few home truths, even if it would blemish her reputation in the process because ‘no one likes a telltale’, as her mother used to say to Hellen, who was a proper little grass.
But, Tam reasoned, it might just help the people who would never have his ear, as she presently did, courtesy of a broken-down lift she was desperately trying to pretend wasn’t about to plummet to the ground, and talking helped to keep those fears at bay.
Jack nodded, taking in her words. She could almost see the cogs in his brain whirring round, digesting, analysing. ‘You said that there are people who deserved pay rises.’
‘I did.’
‘Like who?’
‘Olek Serafinski, in Accounts. He’s an Oxford graduate, you know.
Brilliantly efficient and totally overlooked.
He runs that department while Richard Idle spends most of his time skiving off batting balls in holes with Sir Roland, or whatever the golf terminology is, so if I’d had more time I would have put him in the driving seat and paid him what he’s worth.
Jason Clement in Grocery, very insightful and does way more than the job description.
Young, but deserves his break or we’ll lose him to Freshfield – a few of our good people have gone there in the last couple of years and who can blame them, but you really don’t want to lose any more.
Sheila Milner in HR, loyalty written through the middle of her like a stick of rock. If it weren’t for her . . .’
Jack listened intently to Tam giving him a rundown of people more invisible to the board than Meredith was at her parents’ dinner table, and at the end he said, ‘Thank you. Some of those are already on my radar, but not all.’
‘Good,’ Tam said, with some emphasis. ‘There are some really hard-working, unseen people in this firm. And I’m one of them.
’ She hadn’t meant to say that, but it couldn’t be put back.
‘I might be going to Freshfield myself, actually. I’m sure they’ll value my skill set.
They tried to poach me last summer, but I didn’t go. What an idiot.’
At the time, she didn’t think she could leave; she’d been working on a few secret projects behind Martin Middlewood’s back to try to undo the damage he was creating.
She’d operated like a supermarket version of a ninja, well aware that if she were ever found out, she’d be for the chop.
But it was worth it if her efforts could keep the ship steady, or as steady as it was ever going to be with Middlewood’s inept bottom in the big seat.
To her absolute shock, Jack replied, ‘I know what you did last year.’ It sounded like the title of a horror film. ‘There were a lot of . . . ends that didn’t quite tie up in your department. That bugged me. So I tied them up.’
She gulped. He knew. Despite all her expert fudging. She shouldn’t have been surprised – this was Jack Cesaroni and what might have escaped others, he’d never miss.
‘You were very clever,’ he went on, casually resting his back against the corner of the tiny box they were trapped in, and she couldn’t read if he meant that in an appraising way or a critical one.
She felt a blush starting to heat up her cheeks, although it was getting very warm, very quickly in here with their body heat bouncing off the metal surfaces and lush carpeting.
Jack tilted his head at her like a confused spaniel. ‘Why would you do it?’
‘Because if I hadn’t, there might not have been a business left for you to come to. I love this company, and I didn’t want it to be broken up and sold as spare parts – and trust me, it would have come to that—’
He interrupted her. ‘I don’t mean that. I mean, why would you go to Freshfield?’
Her eyebrows crunched down in confusion. Is he dense?
‘You already said, you’re bringing in your own people.’
‘Yes, I am.’
She felt like slipping off her stiletto and battering him around the head with it. Then again, that might scupper any decent redundancy package that she knew Sheila would negotiate on her behalf.
The lift creaked, sounding very much as if something was splitting in two. Tam lifted up her right hand and crossed her chest just in case God might be looking down on her, which was likely if he was omniscient.
‘You know, maybe this . . . was meant to happen,’ said Jack, gesturing generally around the suffocating lift. ‘We haven’t really talked together, have we? I’ve had my work cut out since day one trying to get on top of things and I apologise for being . . . distant.’
Tam shrugged. ‘You don’t need to apologise to me.
I never expected to be best pals with’ – the great Jack Cesaroni – ‘you. It’s work.
I get that.’ And it was also a bit late to be having an entente cordiale now, just before the big goodbye.
She now felt quietly resigned to the end, and it might have something to do with the fact that finding another job paled into insignificance against death by lift-dropping or asphyxiation next to your soon-to-be-ex boss.
If she had to go and beg Freshfield for the job she turned down last year she would, although she really didn’t want to go and work for them.
She had a funny feeling that Martin Middlewood might end up there.
Death would definitely be better than working with him again.
‘With the groundwork done, I’m ready to make the big changes. The important changes. The people changes,’ said Jack.
You don’t have to rub it in, thought Tam, patting at the perspiration pushing out of the pores on her forehead. Her skin felt as if she had a furnace behind it and two big lads were stoking it up with best Yorkshire coal.
‘You were suited to Operations. I do wonder if the board made you into a glorified assistant to me so that your position might become untenable after a short period,’ Jack continued.
‘Of course they did,’ she replied. ‘I was happy in Operations. It makes no sense to merge it with anything else either, let me tell you. I really had a good handle on it.’ There had been no better department to be in in order to meddle, manipulate and manoeuvre pieces around as if she were playing an expert game of chess.
But only ever for the good of the company, not for personal gain the way Martin Middlewood did.
‘You certainly had a handle on covert Operations, Miss Remington.’ Jack smiled a smile that sat lopsided on his lips.
It was a very attractive smile even in this semi-dark, she would admit that, though she had always remained resolutely impervious to his charm.
To his tall, really-dark-hair, really-big-brown-eyes, really-handsome-face charm.
His PA, Shirley, whom he’d personally picked from the temp agency, was a fifty-something ex-sergeant major, yet whenever she brought him a cup of coffee over, it shook in the saucer.
Her eyes only just fell short of pumping out cartoon hearts when she was in his presence.