Christopher Brookmyre - Parlabane 04 (8 page)

show and homicidal psychotic stalker. Ger was a few years older, or at least looked a few years older in a hard-paper-round kind of way. The first thing anyone was likely to notice about him was the scar running up the right side of his face, from his jawline to just below his eye, but having worked closer beside him, she'd say that his real ruggedness ran deeper. Like Mathieson, the skin on his hands was rough, callused and riven with nicks, scratches and scars. Unlike Mathieson, however, in Ger's case they continued along his forearm as far as his rolled-up sleeves revealed. Alison had been fairly terrified of him the first time she set foot in the kitchen, seeing him picked out in profile as he perused the open fridge, a fearsome blade gripped in his right fist, long straggly hair secured for hygiene purposes in a thick ponytail. In practice, she barely exchanged words with him for the first couple of months, other than the minimum required to receive and respond to orders, but had quickly learned that in the McKinley Hall kitchen, his was not the presence to dread. Mathieson doled out almost as much abuse to Ger as to everyone else under his command, which she found a little surprising, as it seemed the chef was placing a lot of trust in the invisible barriers of hierarchy to protect him. That most of Mathieson's barbs referred to criminality and prison struck her, if true, to further underline the precariousness of the chef's behaviour.

Ger, for his part, didn't say a lot to anybody, not even to rebuff Mathieson's insults, none of which seemed to penetrate anyway. He worked tirelessly, uncomplainingly and with very little outward sign of stress. It wasn't that he appeared to be tuning everything out, more that he was at one with the place, no matter how frenetic it got. Alison would sometimes catch a glimpse of him when things were getting fraught, and he'd have this small, private little smile about the corners of his mouth that suggested not mere content, but that he might actually be getting off on it. In that respect, he was a reassuring presence to be around, because he made it all - the heat, the din, the chaos, Mathieson's bluster - seem, well, not normal, but not something to shrink 44

from.

She only really got to know him when Lady Jane ordered that the kitchen make more use of her. He talked more at times when Mathieson wasn't around, though perhaps this was partly down to Alison feeling more inclined to conversation herself when the chef's presence wasn't putting her on edge. Mathieson had always tended towards the crude, overfamiliar and downright leery towards the female staff, but now that she had been foisted upon him, he made a point of staring at her tits or making remarks he clearly hoped would make her uncomfortable. Ger tended to ignore this, but it couldn't be said he didn't notice or failed to respond: Alison was sure it was no coincidence that he spent more time teaching her techniques, as opposed to assigning her basic chores, when Mathieson was being obnoxious. Given that this was his default condition, it had meant that she'd very soon learned a lot, and the more useful she became, the clearer it became to all that Mathieson wouldn't be able to get rid of her.

As Mathieson's remarks suggested, Ger had been inside, though he was not expansive about either this part of his life or the preceding part that had put him there. 'I was a bit mental when I was younger. And pretty stupit,' was all he was initially prepared to reveal. Of his workplace demeanour, he explained that he was a guy who knew he was lucky to have a second chance. It hadn't been so long ago that he could never have imagined himself having a career, never mind imagined having a career doing this, so he knew to count his blessings and get on with ensuring he'd be doing it for a long time. When she asked him how he put up with so much abuse, he laughed, a very dirtysounding cackle.

'I've put up with a lot worse than having to listen tae that wee bawbag,' he said, smiling. 'He's a good chef, and he sure knows it, which is why he's such a wanker. But just because he's a wanker doesnae change the fact that he's a good chef, and I can learn a lot from him. Course, when I've learned everythin'

I can from him, I'm choppin' him up an' stickin' him in the freezer. . . '

However, despite this professed philosophy and customary calm, she noticed that he was becoming occasionally less sanguine in the face of Mathieson's excesses. He wasn't confrontational about it, but instead of ignoring the outburst, he would quietly warn Mathieson to calm down, or 'cool the jets', as he preferred to put it. It made Alison feel both a little guilty and a little excited that all of these interventions had been when the vitriol was directed at her. Mathieson, unfortunately, seemed to be taking note of this growing allegiance, and it wasn't making him any easier to be around. The run-up to the UML weekend witnessed a rising tension throughout the entire place, and it was Alison's experience that whatever conditions prevailed elsewhere in the hotel would be multiplied in their intensity in the kitchen. 45

This was exacerbated by an increase in the frequency of Lady Jane's visits, as her fussing and concern over the junket predictably prompted her to proffer some 'suggestions' for the weekend's special menus. No-one was immune from a sense of heightened anxiety, the words 'make or break' having been used by the lady of the house, with all the implicit ramifications for on-going employment.

The other phrase that had been used was 'new beginning'. McKinley Hall had had a few of those in its time, and even in its latest incarnation as a hotel there had already been a supposed new dawn when it opened its doors to the public. However, with the public not exactly flooding through those doors, the overtures of Ultimate Motivational Leisure had promised, if not a wholly fresh endeavour, at least a chance to kick-start what had stalled. McKinley Hall had been operating as though at reduced capacity since the late-summer lay-offs, meaning that it couldn't offer all of its rooms even if there were guests enough to fill them. It was a short-term survival strategy, and one that wasn't looking entirely certain of paying off before UML came along and made a virtue out of it. They wanted to take over the entire place for the duration of their 'Experience', but were not offering anything like as many places as the Hall had rooms. They didn't want merely to prevent the intrusion of non-involved guests: they wanted the run of the place, access to every room and anything else that might facilitate the scope they required to play their little games and 'spring a few surprises'. As they would be paying around two-thirds of what the place might hope to make over a weekend at (thus far never achieved) full capacity, their every request, however unusual, was acceded to by Lady Jane. The plan was, all going well, for there to be one UML weekend per month, with that likely to increase as their reputation grew and business expanded. They wanted their relationship with McKinley Hall, Lady Jane reported, to be ultimately not an arrangement but a partnership. UML couldn't think of a location more suitable for what they had in mind, and it would be a great way of spreading word of mouth about a hotel that was otherwise suffering from being so far off the beaten track. A new beginning indeed, but none of it would matter much if the promotional premiere weekend went in any way tits-up.

But if Lady Jane was uptight about the weekend being a success, her anxiety was, Alison suspected, quietly eclipsed by that of Sir Lachlan. Given what she had learned about the history of McKinley Hall and his family's relationship with it, she understood better than her less curious colleagues the extent of Sir Lachlan's desires that its new, restored incarnation should be a success; to say nothing of the depths of his fears should it fail. That was why, despite knowing how mutually uncomfortable it would be, he felt compelled to make his speech, and why he'd have made it even if his embarrassed wife had been 46

standing a few feet away, glowering and tutting the whole time. So much had been taken out of his hands recently, he needed to feel he was doing everything that was in his power, even if he was merely an enfeebled football manager who knows he's helpless once his players cross the touchline.

'A whole new beginning,' he repeated, nodding to himself. 'A brighter future, and the success that God knows you all deserve. We've all had to work very hard of late just to stay afloat, and I think we all know we're going to have to work even harder to grasp this chance before us, but I also know we're the people to do it. So let's look to the future of McKinley Hall as it lies immediately in front of us, with this, our first Intimate Motivation weekend.'

Alison closed her eyes for a moment, not wanting to catch anyone else's look or be party to a smirk. Intimate Motivation. That was what he'd called it every time, with Lady Jane seething as she corrected him, and it always seemed the harder he was trying to remember the right name, the more the stress guaranteed he'd fluff it. When Alison looked at him again, however, he had a twinkle in his eye, and not just because the ordeal was almost at an end.

'And if you tell Lady Jane I called it that again, you're all fired,' he said, to polite and largely relieved laughter. 'Thank you, everyone. Now let's get to work.'

47

Purple Hail

Emily stood as near to the back of the semi-circle as she thought she could risk without it being apparent that she was trying to stand as near as possible to the back of the semi-circle. She was wearing a heavy yellow shapeless fleece with a thick-toothed zip, the kind of garment normally only worn by women whose idea of fashion shopping was a biennial trip to Mackay's. By rights the outfit should have been completed by a pair of sta-prest burgundy slacks with an elasticated waist, and beneath those a pair of pants that came up to just below the sternum. She couldn't decide if it was a consolation that everyone else was similarly garbed, as although it was preferable not to be the only one resembling an overweight shaved lemur, it was less than easy on the eye to see this hideousness everywhere she looked.

In her hands she held a paintgun, or as Francis Campbell, UML's ''ubermotivator, described the same object, a 'Kestrel G4 semi-auto marker with compression-assisted power feed, pro-performance nitrogen back bottle, precision diamond-cut muzzle break and a chronometrically calibrated restricted projectile velocity of 250 feet per second'. She had also been issued with a spare cartridge, a pair of protective goggles and a clip-on earpiece complete with a thin, levered boom-mike. Oh, and of course, the yellow fleece, which had been waiting for her on her bed when she entered the room, compliments of UML.

Surveying the tooled-up lemon assembly and listening to Campbell's interminable address, she had to concede reluctantly to herself that Jack Parlabane had a point when he'd questioned how all of this was going to make anyone a more valuable employee. He struck her as the type of guy who would be utterly insufferable when proven right, and worryingly struck her also as the type of guy who was, insufferably, proven right quite a lot. Parlabane zeroed in on her almost as soon as she and Kathy had arrived, for reasons that it had failed to occur to him were entirely predictable and thus easily anticipated. She and Kathy ran the PR firm that had been - albeit tentatively - representing UML, so Parlabane, being here to rip the piss out of the whole venture, would be tapping them for anything he could construe as a negative comment. One remark from her, even in an understandable moment 49

of high stress, suggesting she was having anything less than a richly fulfilling time, was worth any number of paragraphs of Parlabane's own vitriol. Forewarned was forearmed, but neither was likely to deter his persistence, so she had already resigned herself to seeing a lot of him over the next couple of days.

He'd piled into the seat in front of her on the minibus, cheerfully introducing himself and his photographer before pitching straight to the top of his agenda by asking: 'So, exactly how big a waste of time and money do you reckon this kind of carry-on is, on a scale from making your own crisps, to the Millennium Dome?'

'It's not costing me any money to come here, Mr Parlabane, so that's a moot point, and I think the moment to assess how well your time has been spent has to come after you've spent it.'

'I meant in general: all of this corporate team-building keech, like
It's A
Knockout
without the funny costumes. All right, fair do's if you get a kick out of playing daft games, but is anybody here stupid enough to think it's somehow gaunny make them work better when they get back to the office?'

Emily had smiled and looked straight ahead, partly to convey that she wasn't going to be baited, but equally so that she could get a longer look at Donald Baxter, who was driving. Kathy had sat up front next to him, it having been agreed by the pair of them that they should split up and mingle from the off, no matter how tempting it became to circle the Seventh Chime wagons. With so many people milling around, luggage being loaded and questions being asked, she hadn't been able to make more than brief eye contact with Baxter as he shook her hand. His face, though, had seemed unnervingly familiar, not so much a spark of recognition as a jolt of something much stranger. If it didn't sound so ridiculous she'd have said it was as though she'd known him in a previous life. She hadn't heard the name before UML approached Seventh Chime, and his voice hadn't rung any bells on the very rare occasion he'd called, it being mostly Campbell who did the moving and shaking. Her conversations with both had been as brief as they had been scarce, the pair preferring email correspondence in accordance with UML's stated belief in 'the electronic office'. (They had exchanged no snail mail, and come to think of it, Emily wasn't sure if she even knew their address.) However, the moment she clapped eyes on Baxter, she felt not only that she knew him, but that she had known him a long time. Unfortunately, she was at a loss as to where from, or just as frustratingly, why she couldn't remember.

It was a happy by-product of her confused scrutiny that she was coming off unflustered to the point of aloof towards her would-be interrogator.

'Given that you might be relying on their goodwill and cooperation over the next few days, Mr Parlabane--'