The New Collected Short Stories (30 page)

It would all have been so different if he had taken over as Chief Executive. He’d been on the shortlist, and at least three members of the board had made it clear that they supported his
application. But the board in its wisdom had offered the position to an outsider. He had reached the last three, and for the first time he understood what it must feel like to win an Olympic silver
medal when you’re the clear favourite. Damn it, he was just as well qualified for the job as Phillip Alexander, and he had the added advantage of having worked for the bank for the past
twelve years. There had been hints of a place on the board as compensation, but that would bite the dust the moment they found out about Pamela.

And what was the first recommendation Alexander had put before the board? That the bank should invest heavily in Russia, with the cataclysmic result that seventy people would now be losing their
jobs and everyone’s bonus was having to be readjusted. What made it worse was that Alexander was now trying to shift the blame for his decision onto the Chairman.

Once again, Godfrey’s thoughts returned to Pamela. Perhaps he should take her out to lunch and try to convince her that an abortion would be the wisest course of action. He was about to
pick up the phone and suggest the idea to her when it rang.

It was Pamela. ‘Miss Franklyn just called. Could you pop up and see Mr Alexander in his office?’ This was a ploy Alexander used regularly, to ensure you never forgot his position.
Half the time, whatever needed to be discussed could easily have been dealt with over the phone. The man had a bloody power-complex.

On the way up to Alexander’s office, Godfrey remembered that his wife had wanted to invite him to dinner, so she could meet the man who had robbed her of a new car.

‘He won’t want to come,’ Godfrey had tried to explain. ‘You see, he’s a very private person.’

‘No harm in asking,’ she had insisted. But Godfrey had turned out to be right: ‘
Phillip Alexander thanks Mrs Tudor-Jones for her kind invitation to dinner, but regrets that
due to
. . .’

Godfrey tried to concentrate on why Alexander wanted to see him. He couldn’t possibly know about Pamela – not that it was any of his business in the first place. Especially if the
rumours about his own sexual preferences were to be believed. Had he been made aware that Godfrey was well in excess of the bank’s overdraft limit? Or was he going to try to drag him onside
over the Russian fiasco? Godfrey could feel the palms of his hands sweating as he knocked on the door.

‘Come in,’ said a deep voice.

Godfrey entered to be greeted by the Chief Executive’s secretary, Miss Franklyn, who had joined him from Morgans. She didn’t speak, just nodded in the direction of her boss’s
office.

He knocked for a second time, and when he heard ‘Come,’ he entered the Chief Executive’s office. Alexander looked up from his desk.

‘Have you read the McKinsey report?’ he asked. No ‘Good morning, Godfrey.’ No ‘Did you have a pleasant weekend?’ Just ‘Have you read the McKinsey
report?’

‘Yes, I have,’ replied Godfrey, who hadn’t done much more than speed-read through it, checking the paragraph headings and then studying in more detail the sections that would
directly affect him. On top of everything else, he didn’t need to be one of those who were about to be made redundant.

‘The bottom line is that we can make savings of three million a year. It will mean having to sack up to seventy of the staff, and halving most of the bonuses. I need you to give me a
written assessment on how we go about it, which departments can afford to shed staff, and which personnel we would risk losing if we halved their bonuses. Can you have that ready for me in time for
tomorrow’s board meeting?’

The bastard’s about to pass the buck again, thought Godfrey. And he doesn’t seem to care if he passes it up or down, as long as he survives. Wants to present the board with a
fait
accompli
, on the back of my recommendations. No way.

‘Have you got anything on at the moment that might be described as priority?’

‘No, nothing that can’t wait,’ Godfrey replied. He didn’t think he’d mention his problem with Pamela, or the fact that his wife would be livid if he failed to turn
up for the school play that evening, in which their younger son was playing an angel. Frankly, it wouldn’t have mattered if he were playing Jesus. Godfrey would still have to be up all night
preparing his report for the board.

‘Good. I suggest we meet up again at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, so you can brief me on how we should go about implementing the report.’ Alexander lowered his head and
returned his attention to the papers on his desk – a sign that the meeting was over.

Phillip Alexander looked up once he heard the door close. Lucky man, he thought, not to have any real problems. He was up to his eyes in them. The most important thing now was to make sure he
continued to distance himself from the Chairman’s disastrous decision to invest so heavily in Russia. He had backed the move at a board meeting the previous year, and the Chairman had made
sure that his support had been minuted. But the moment he found out what was happening over at the Bank of America and Barclays, he had put an immediate stop on the bank’s second instalment
– as he continually reminded the board.

Since that day Phillip had flooded the building with memos, warning every department to be sure it covered its own positions, and urging them all to retrieve whatever money they could. He kept
the memos flowing on a daily basis, with the result that by now almost everyone, including several members of the board, was convinced that he had been sceptical about the decision from the
outset.

The spin he’d put on events to one or two board members who were not that close to Sir William was that he hadn’t felt he could go against the Chairman’s wishes when he’d
only been in the Chief Executive’s job for a few weeks, and that had been his reason for not opposing Sir William’s recommendation for a £500 million loan to the Nordsky Bank in
St Petersburg. The situation could still be turned to his advantage, because if the Chairman was forced to resign, the board might feel an internal appointment would be the best course of action,
given the circumstances. After all, when they had appointed Phillip as Chief Executive, the Deputy Chairman, Maurice Kington, had made it clear that he doubted if Sir William would serve his full
term – and that was before the Russian débâcle. About a month later, Kington had resigned; it was well known in the City that he only resigned when he could see trouble on the
horizon, as he had no intention of giving up any of his thirty or so other directorships.

When the
Financial Times
published an unfavourable article about Sir William, it covered itself by opening with the words: ‘
No one will deny that Sir William Selwyn’s
record as Chairman of Critchley
’s
Bank has been steady, even at times impressive. But recently there have been some unfortunate errors, which appear to have emanated from the
Chairman’s office.
’ Alexander had briefed the journalist with chapter and verse of those ‘unfortunate errors’.

Some members of the board were now whispering ‘Sooner rather than later.’ But Alexander still had one or two problems of his own to sort out.

Another call last week, and demands for a further payment. The damn man seemed to know just how much he could ask for each time. Heaven knows, public opinion was no longer so hostile towards
homosexuals. But with a rent boy it was still different – somehow the press could make it sound far worse than a heterosexual man paying a prostitute. And how the hell was he to know the boy
was under age at the time? In any case, the law had changed since then – not that the tabloids would allow that to influence them.

And then there was the problem of who should become Deputy Chairman now that Maurice Kington had resigned. Securing the right replacement would be crucial for him, because that person would be
presiding when the board came to appoint the next Chairman. Phillip had already made a pact with Michael Butterfield, who he knew would support his cause, and had begun dropping hints in the ears
of other board members about Butterfield’s qualifications for the job: ‘We need someone who voted against the Russian loan . . . Someone who wasn’t appointed by Sir William . . .
Someone with an independent mind . . . Someone who . . .’

He knew the message was getting through, because one or two directors had already dropped into his office and suggested that Butterfield was the obvious candidate for the job. Phillip was happy
to fall in with their sage opinion.

And now it had all come to a head, because a decision would have to be made at tomorrow’s board meeting. If Butterfield was appointed Deputy Chairman, everything else would fall neatly
into place.

The phone on his desk rang. He picked it up and shouted, ‘I said no calls, Alison.’

‘It’s Julian Burr again, Mr Alexander.’

‘Put him through,’ said Alexander quietly.

‘Good morning, Phil. Just thought I’d call in and wish you all the best for tomorrow’s board meeting.’

‘How the hell did you know about that?’

‘Oh, Phil, surely you must realise that not everyone at the bank is heterosexual.’ The voice paused. ‘And one of them in particular doesn’t love you any more.’

‘What do you want, Julian?’

‘For you to be Chairman, of course.’

‘What do you want?’ repeated Alexander, his voice rising with every word.

‘I thought a little break in the sun while you’re moving up a floor. Nice, Monte Carlo, perhaps a week or two in St Tropez.’

‘And how much do you imagine that would cost?’ Alexander asked.

‘Oh, I would have thought ten thousand would comfortably cover my expenses.’

‘Far too comfortably,’ said Alexander.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Julian. ‘Try not to forget that I know exactly how much you’re worth, and that’s without the rise in salary you can expect once you
become Chairman. Let’s face it, Phil, it’s far less than the
News of the World
would be willing to offer me for an exclusive. I can see the headline now: “Rent Boy’s
Night with Chairman of Family Bank”.’

‘That’s criminal,’ said Alexander.

‘No. As I was under age at the time, I think you’ll find it’s you who’s the criminal.’

‘You can go too far, you know,’ said Alexander.

‘Not while you have ambitions to go even further,’ said Julian, with a laugh.

‘I’ll need a few days.’

‘I can’t wait that long – I want to catch the early flight to Nice tomorrow. Be sure that the money has been transferred to my account before you go into the board meeting at
eleven, there’s a good chap. Don’t forget it was you who taught me about electronic transfers.’

The phone went dead, then rang again immediately.

‘Who is it this time?’ snapped Alexander.

‘The Chairman’s on line two.’

‘Put him through.’

‘Phillip, I need the latest figures on the Russian loans, along with your assessment of the McKinsey report.’

‘I’ll have an update on the Russian position on your desk within the hour. As for the McKinsey report, I’m broadly in agreement with its recommendations, but I’ve asked
Godfrey Tudor-Jones to let me have a written opinion on how we should go about implementing it. I intend to present his report at tomorrow’s board meeting. I hope that’s satisfactory,
Chairman?’

‘I doubt it. I have a feeling that by tomorrow it will be too late,’ the Chairman said without explanation, before replacing the phone.

Sir William knew it didn’t help that the latest Russian losses had exceeded £500 million. And now the McKinsey report had arrived on every director’s desk, recommending that
seventy jobs, perhaps even more, should be shed in order to make a saving of around £3 million a year. When would management consultants begin to understand that human beings were involved,
not just numbers on a balance sheet – among them seventy loyal members of staff, some of whom had served the bank for more than twenty years?

There wasn’t a mention of the Russian loan in the McKinsey report, because it wasn’t part of their brief; but the timing couldn’t have been worse. And in banking, timing is
everything.

Phillip Alexander’s words to the board were indelibly fixed in Sir William’s memory: ‘We mustn’t allow our rivals to take advantage of such a one-off windfall. If
Critchley’s is to remain a player on the international stage, we have to move quickly while there’s still a profit to be made.’ The short-term gains could be enormous, Alexander
had assured the board – whereas in truth the opposite had turned out to be the case. And within moments of things falling apart, the little shit had begun digging himself out of the Russian
hole, while dropping his Chairman right into it. He’d been on holiday at the time, and Alexander had phoned him at his hotel in Marrakech to tell him that he had everything under control, and
there was no need for him to rush home. When he did eventually return, he found that Alexander had already filled in the hole, leaving him at the bottom of it.

After reading the article in the
Financial Times
, Sir William knew his days as Chairman were numbered. The resignation of Maurice Kington had been the final blow, from which he knew he
couldn’t hope to recover. He had tried to talk him out of it, but there was only one person’s future Kington was ever interested in.

The Chairman stared down at his handwritten letter of resignation, a copy of which would be sent to every member of the board that evening.

His loyal secretary Claire had reminded him that he was fifty-seven, and had often talked of retiring at sixty to make way for a younger man. It was ironic when he considered who that younger
man might be.

True, he was fifty-seven. But the last Chairman hadn’t retired until he was seventy, and that was what the board and the shareholders would remember. It would be forgotten that he had
taken over an ailing bank from an ailing Chairman, and increased its profits year on year for the past decade. Even if you included the Russian disaster, they were still well ahead of the game.