The Boss (3 page)

‘Er . . . yes.'

‘The highest per capita rate of taking and driving in the country, for instance, which was a major deciding factor in locating ourselves here. We are an aggressive, forward-looking company, Miss Cotton, and by stamping down hard on street crime here, we aim to build a national reputation for our products. This is why we're looking for dynamic, proactive team members, perhaps like yourself. Furthermore, if you do work with us, you'll be taking on a fulfilling, real-time role in reducing street crime.'

That was true. I could reduce it by about half.

‘So you're hoping the council will buy your system and you'll be able to catch the local scallies . . . sorry, I mean low-level criminals?'

‘Exactly.'

‘But won't they just move on? You can't put cameras everywhere.'

‘Ah, but we can, just about. That's the beauty of the system. The ZX-4 is a high-cost, high-efficiency module, primarily designed to make the initial recordings for the facial recognition program. We have other low-cost modules, effectively disposable, which function as part of the integrated system to ensure close on one-hundred-per-cent coverage of the area for considerably less than the price of our competitors' systems.'

I had to say something.

‘Isn't that a bit over the top?'

‘At Black Knight Security we take a zero-tolerance approach. If they don't want to get caught, they
shouldn't break the law. If you're not breaking the law, you have nothing to worry about. Simple.'

‘But what about deterrence? Wouldn't it be better to put up a big, obvious camera, then maybe nobody would do anything in the first place?'

There was something almost conspiratorial in his voice as he answered me.

‘You're not looking at the big picture. At this stage of the game we need the oxygen of publicity, and that means getting results. If we use big, obvious cameras, then the . . . what was that word you used, scalies?'

‘Scallies.'

‘They'll be careful. We aim to get the full system installed without their knowledge, and to spend at least a week gathering facial recognition data before making our move. That should get us the attention we need.'

I was staring at him in horror, but he didn't notice, instead giving a dry cough as he realised he'd been getting carried away with his grand project. Once more he looked at the papers he'd been asking questions from before speaking.

‘Right, er . . . Miss Cotton, just one or two more general questions. Please could you give an example of a situation where you've used your own initiative to solve a problem?'

I could – bailing out of the old Beamer Dave Shaw had pinched before he decided to race the police down the M11 – but it didn't seem likely to go down very well. For a moment nothing else would come, before I thought of the way I'd managed to get backstage at the Bladders concert, but that wouldn't do either. I pretended to be considering several options, and finally decided to turn the whole thing around on him.

‘I don't really see how you can solve a problem without showing initiative. After all, even if you go and ask somebody else to help, that's initiative, isn't it? But if you just stand there and do nothing, then you haven't solved the problem.'

He looked mildly perplexed for a moment, then went on.

‘Do you feel you work best alone, or as part of a team?'

I knew the answer to that one, even it is was a total lie.

‘Oh, as part of a team. I've always been a team player, although I can work alone if I have to.'

He gave a solemn nod, then continued.

‘What do you do to relax?'

That at least I could answer.

‘Play the drums.'

He looked a little surprised, but nodded once again. Mr Square Jaw was on his way up and gave me an affable smile as he leant against the banister. I smiled back, maybe a bit nervous, not because he was so good-looking, rather because the pair of them were freaking me out. I felt like a mouse between two cats, one scrawny ginger and one big, sleek black one.

I seemed to have survived the interview anyway, because Foxy stacked his papers and put them back on the desk as he spoke.

‘Thank you very much, Miss Cotton. I'm Paul Minter, by the way, and my colleague is Stephen English.'

Square Jaw stuck out an enormous paw, which enfolded my own hand completely as I gave it a tentative shake. Foxy also offered a hand then I beat a retreat, complying with their final demand by sending
up the next applicant, a woman older than me, smarter than me, and undoubtedly more suitable for the job in every possible way. She even looked as if she might have shown some proactive initiative in a team-based problem-solving scenario.

I went home, feeling distinctly depressed. Nobody was in, so I flopped down on my bed, thinking black thoughts. I obviously didn't have the job, not that I wanted it anyway, but much more importantly it looked like the entire town and maybe even the surrounding countryside was going to be swamped with Foxy and Square Jaw's horrid little cameras. Soon it would be impossible to have a snog without some closet perve peeping in to have a good leer and check that nothing happened to offend propriety, that or offer some thoroughly condescending advice on birth control.

Not even The Clash or Dag Nasty or
Fat Lip
could pick me up, but only succeeded in turning my thoughts to dark but ludicrously impractical ideas for putting a stop to the surveillance camera scheme. Yet at the very least I could warn everyone, so Foxy and Square Jaw might not get the bonanza scoop of scallies they expected. I knew what to look for too, which had to help, but with the sort of technology they were employing it was going to be very hard to hide.

I could of course give up my life of crime and become a model citizen, but I didn't want to, not with the punk blaring into my ears. Unfortunately it's one thing to sing ‘Never Surrender', another to do it, and by the time I'd got to ‘I Fought the Law' I found I couldn't get the lyrics out of my head. I thought back to my joyride with Pete just a few days before and wondered
if it might be my last. It already felt distant in time, a lost moment of pleasure and excitement I would never know again.

That was nonsense. I'd just have to be clever, but there was always a way to beat the system. Foxy and Square Jaw would never control me. I'd be out again, maybe with one of those joke masks you can get of King Kong or the Queen. Let them put that in their facial recognition program. That made me laugh, and I began to daydream about the two men and how I could thwart their evil scheme, or their good scheme really, because I had no illusions about who the bad guys were, at least by most standards.

It was amazing how different they were to the men I knew, in some ways anyway. In other ways they were the same. After all, they were really in it to make money, just like Steve bringing the booze back from Calais, only legal. That was where the resemblance ended. Steve was full of life and emotion, always laughing, or angry, or dirty, filling my mouth with cold lager and then pulling my head down on his crotch because he liked the feeling on his cock. It was impossible to imagine Foxy doing that, or Square Jaw, who was definitely a Stephen and not a Steve.

There had been that one brief moment though, when Foxy had said that thing about my ‘personal toolbox' and for one moment I'd really thought he was testing me to see if I'd be the sort of assistant who did personal favours. Not that I'd have done it for him, not in a million years. Square Jaw was a different matter, because he was undeniably good-looking, and I can sometimes be a bit of a sucker for a stern man, literally.

It actually made quite a nice fantasy, imagining Square Jaw interviewing me, with the same string of
fatuous, newspeak questions, then all of a sudden a complete bombshell, something like ‘And what would you do if I were to demand fellatio out of hours, Miss Cotton?' I'd tell him that I was no clock-watcher but dedicated to the success of the company and quite happy to work late, or that I fully understood the importance of teamwork and that if sexual tension was reducing his performance I would be more than happy to provide him relief in my mouth.

That was a deliciously dirty thought, and I made myself more comfortable on the bed, rucking my skirt up a little and letting my thighs come apart. For a moment the scene in my head changed, and I was imagining doing to Stephen English what I had done to Pete, straddling his face to make him lick me to heaven. Somehow it didn't work, but seemed inappropriate, even insolent. Stephen was too strong, too harsh to be handled so easily. If he licked me he'd have me on all fours, in a thoroughly exposed position, but it was much more likely to be me down on him.

I didn't want to admit to myself that he made me feel subservient, and I fought against what my body was telling me to do, but only for a moment. The idea was too sexy to hold back on. My hand went between my thighs, touching myself through the moist cotton of my knickers as I imagined the scene. It would be after hours, with both of us working late, and he would suddenly, casually make his demand, in a voice that allowed no possibility of disobedience – ‘You will now give me fellatio, Miss Cotton.'

He would say it that way, very formal and stuffy, but the end result would be just the same, his cock fed into my mouth for me to suck him off. I'd be kneeling, under his desk, maybe with my smart little skirt suit –
the same one I was really in – disarranged to show my breasts and bottom. Men love that, to have a girl go bare while she sucks, and he would be no exception. I'd be playing with myself as his cock grew in my mouth, just as I was for real, with my fingers doing wonderful things between my legs and to one nipple.

Already I was on the edge of orgasm, but I took a last moment to strip myself, pushing down my knickers under my skirt and hauling my blouse and bra high to bare my breasts. That felt good, and as I began to touch again my mind focused on how he'd look in a similar dishevelled state, with his smart business suit still on, but with his cock and balls sticking out from his fly, huge and virile, ready for my mouth as I was ordered onto my knees to suck him.

I held the image as I came, my eyes tight shut, my body locked in ecstasy, clinging onto the moment for as long as I possibly could before slumping back on the bed with my mouth set in a wry smile for my own dirty behaviour.

STEVE BEGAN TO
pick up speed as he pulled the van onto the M11, finding a gap in the traffic and drawing out into the middle lane before he spoke again.

‘Remember, we're getting married and we need the booze for our wedding.'

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.'

‘Fizz, get serious, will you? I've got a lot of money in this.'

‘Yes, but, Steve, what if we get the same officer as last time, or the time before? Isn't he going to think it's a bit weird us getting married so often?'

‘Nah, they get thousands of people coming over every day. They won't remember us. Anyway, you look well different. What did you go and do that to your hair for?'

‘Mum made me change it, so I'd look respectable for a job interview.'

‘A job interview? What d'you want a job for? I pay you something, don't I, and what with your social and Rubber Dollies.'

‘That's not a lot, Steve, especially as the Dog and Duck are refusing to pay us because the council are on their backs. They've banned us too. I don't want the job anyway. I only went along to keep Mum happy.'

‘Do you reckon you'll get it?'

‘No. We're going to have to watch it though. They were these new people on the Hereward Trading Estate
and they're trying to sell this security system to the council, hi-tech cameras, the works, and this program that records people's faces.'

‘Nosy bastards! Still, I've got nothing to worry about.'

‘No? What about when you make deliveries?'

‘How do they know the stuff doesn't all come from the cash and carry?'

‘Maybe, but keep an eye out anyway.'

‘I will, thanks for the heads up.'

He'd pulled out to overtake a pair of lorries and I didn't answer, but settled down in my seat to watch the traffic and the fields beyond, with the perspective on a line of pylons slowly shifting as we moved beside and then beneath them. I always like to get out of town. It makes me feel free, or at least less trapped. I thought of how it would be working in an office, the same routine each day, the same places and the same faces, deadly dull, and obviously Stephen English wouldn't prove to be the dirty bastard of my fantasy but just another boring suit. I was best off out of it.

I began to flick through Steve's CDs, choosing Radio-head as the best of his somewhat motley and mainly 90s collection. He immediately began to sing along, his cement-mixer voice destroying all chance of my losing myself in the song. I didn't say anything, knowing that to let him realise he was being annoying would only make him worse. Finally he broke off to voice his opinion of an old blue Ford doing sixty in the middle lane and didn't start up again, leaving me to enjoy the journey.

Booze cruises are fun, especially if it's not your money that's at stake. I love the thrill of getting one over on the bastards, and that's what they are. Imagine taking a job where the main thing you do is make life
unpleasant for other people? It's the same with traffic wardens and wheel-clamping firms and all the other little Hitlers. I don't know how they live with themselves.

The law is stupid anyway. Our taxes are way too high, anyone can see that, but do they reduce them? Do they fuck. They stick to every penny like glue and so you get the ridiculous situation where you can buy booze so cheap in France and Belgium that it's worthwhile for somebody like Steve to make a three-hundred-mile round trip to Calais, with the ferry and all, just to stock up. Not just worthwhile; he makes a living out of it. So he's a smuggler, big deal. Smuggling's not wrong, it's just a symptom of unjust taxation.