The Reckless Engineer

THE RECKLESS ENGINEER

JAC WRIGHT

SOUL MATE PUBLISHING

New York

THE RECKLESS ENGINEER

Copyright©2013

JAC WRIGHT

Cover Design by Rae Monet, Inc.

This book is a work of fiction.  The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Published in the United States of America by

Soul Mate Publishing

P.O. Box 24

Macedon, New York, 14502

ISBN-13: 978-1-61935-
304-6

www.SoulMatePublishing.com

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

This work is dedicated to my mother,

for always being there when I need someone

and for everything she has taught me.

Secondly, this work is a tribute to Charles Dickens,

whose books taught me how to tell a tale

early in life, and to Portsmouth,

the beautiful English seaside town he was born in.

CHAPTER 1

Friday, October 15 — The Day of Arrest

Harry and Jeremy were just about to call it a day and head over to the pub for a drink when the call came through. Harry had gathered the files and papers spread over the round table that stood diagonally opposite the large polished oak desk that dominated his office. There they liked to sit in the afternoon, take stock, and mull over matters at hand once every few days. The London sky, turning a misty orange-red through the window behind Harry, was being served to them lukewarm and sliced finely into stripes by the blind. Jeremy didn’t envy Harry his large west-facing office. He liked his sun served whole, with a black Americano and two sugars, early in the morning.

Harry had pricked up his ears on the phone. ‘Jeremy, it’s for you,’ he said, locking grave eyes onto his friend’s, ‘from the Guildford police station. Do you want to take it in here?’

A call to Jeremy from a police station was an odd occurrence.
It must be something serious,
he thought
.
He had learned by then that such a look from Harry portended serious events to follow without fail.

‘Thanks, Harry.’ He took the phone. ‘Hello?’

He was wholly unprepared for the voice that came through to him.

‘Jeremy, it’s Jack, from Marine Electronics. You remember Michelle? She’s dead, man. I’ve been arrested. I need a solicitor.’

Michelle dead and Jack Arrested! Jeremy paused for a moment to recover from the shock. Marine Electronics was where he had done his last engineering contract. The recession had been biting the company hard and in order to adapt to the harsh economic climate his contract, along with those of most other engineers on fixed term contracts, had not been renewed. Jack Connor was his best mate, the colleague he had been closest to for the three and a half years he had worked there. Jack had been getting involved with Michelle, a golden tigress who worked in Quality Assurance, about the time Jeremy’s contract ended. He had warned Jack that that entanglement was going to end in big trouble, but he hadn’t imagined anything this big!

‘I need a solicitor, Jeremy.’ The pleading in his ear that broke through his reflections had a ring of wretched fear. ‘Your firm is the only one I could think of with someone I know and trust.’

Barrett, Stavers & Associates wasn’t really Jeremy’s firm, though he had become closely associated with it since his redundancy from Marine Electronics. Under the difficult economic climate he had decided that his best option was to start his own company consulting on and subcontracting electronic engineering projects and manufacturing consumer electronics devices. He had named his company Radio Silicon Limited.

Harry Stavers was Jeremy’s best friend from school days. He had never lost touch with Harry from the days they had left for the US together and been roommates at Stanford where Harry was a pre-law psychology major and Jeremy, an electrical engineering undergraduate. They had parted when Harry came back to England to read law at Cambridge and Jeremy went to UC Berkley to read for his PhD in Electrical Engineering.

Harry and his partner, Stephen Barrett, had also been downsizing their firm in London to adapt to the harsh economic times, their third partner having just left the firm, and had offered to sublet a section of their offices—a whole wing with four office rooms and a large open-plan room just right for an engineering laboratory—to set up Jeremy’s business. Harry specialized in criminal law, and Stephen, in corporate law.

Jeremy’s section of the offices was separated from Harry’s firm’s by the large reception area in the middle that they shared, which was occupied and manned with alluring efficiency by Amanda, the company secretary. The associates Peter Stuart and Jake Freeman shared the large open-plan room opposite Harry and Steven’s offices. Next to it was a room packed full of filing cabinets which, on every Thursday, saw the jovial part-time accountant Aaron Jackson seated at its desk. Jeremy had also hired young Sean Holden straight from his PhD in electronics. The two friends’ businesses and friendships had become so intertwined over a short period of time that they, by then, shared the reception, the law firm’s two meeting rooms, the kitchen, the computer network that Jeremy had installed and was looking after, Aaron, and the stunning Amanda.

Less than two years ago, when Jeremy had been in a rut, Jack had literally saved his life and pulled him out of a dark hole. Now Jack needed him.

‘One minute, Jack. I shall pass you onto Harry, our criminal solicitor. Could you confirm you’re being held at the Guildford police station? If we get disconnected I shall call you right back.’

‘Yeah, I’m at the Guildford police station.’

‘Okay. If we get disconnected, don’t speak a word to anybody until we get there.’

He put Jack on hold for a minute and briefed Harry on the situation, who listened intently, nodded, and then picked up the phone.

CHAPTER 2

The Summer Of The Year Before

The Monday that Michelle Williams started work at Marine Electronics was a scorching hot midsummer day. From the fourth floor wall of glass on the west wing of the seven-storey building owned by Marine, Jeremy and his fellow engineers were treated to a panoramic view of the landscape stretching all the way to Portsmouth Bay where the waters lay out in the sun and made light ripples, too lazy and too content to get up and make even the occasional wave. The bay was thus greeting the day cheerfully shimmering in the mid-morning sun when Steve, the QA team leader, brought Michelle over for a quick introduction to Jeremy’s team. Quality Assurance essentially meant “testing”; a QA team sat next to each engineering team and ran many series of rigorous tests after Engineering was done with the research, design, and development of various stages of a product.

Engineering was a male dominated field. There was only one female, Sally Trotter, in Jeremy’s team of one physicist, one mechanical engineer, and ten electronic engineers. He could see that Michelle’s long bleached hair, sleeveless low-cut blouse, endless legs tanned from a bottle, three inch stilettos, and hot-pink claws—so long they were surely retracted in for typing—did not go unnoticed by the boys.

She wasn’t Jeremy’s type. He preferred a more elegant, darker, and a more understated beauty—a little curvier, less ‘processed’, and much more intelligent—by which he meant his then-estranged partner, Maggie, with whom, though they had been separated for nine dark months and four long days, he was still deeply emotionally involved.

Jeremy didn’t think Jack took any interest either. Jack was his best mate at the time, the darling of the team. Everybody loved his humour, charisma, and extrovert, sunny nature. Jack lived in Guildford with his second wife, Caitlin, and her pre-teen daughter, Gillian, from a previous relationship. He had two sons from his first marriage, thirteen and seventeen years old respectively, and spent many of his evenings helping the elder of the two, Peter, with his A-levels trying to get him into university to read engineering.

Jeremy had been close friends with Jack and Sally for over two years from the time both Sally and Jeremy had started work for Marine Electronics, on the same day, as senior electronics engineers. Sally was a permanent member of staff and he was on a semi-annually renewed contract. He was aware that there was a romance that had sparked and was burning between Jack and Sally. Hence, he did not think that Jack was interested in their new addition to the QA team either; at least, not at the time.

At the time Jeremy was living in a three-bedroom waterfront end-of-terrace in Port Solent a mere ten-minute drive from Portsmouth. Maggie was an Attending Registrar at Southampton University Hospital to which she had a fairly convenient half-an-hour’s drive from their house. Out of the properties they had viewed when Jeremy first took on the Marine contract, the French patio doors of the first-floor rear room of the house that opened out onto a wooden balcony over the waters of the port, and a view of the marina and the bay beyond it bathed in a sunset red on heat, had seduced them at first sight. They had decorated this room as their study cum main living room with a sofa and a TV, demoting the actual living room directly underneath to secondary status. To the right of the French patio doors they had placed the dark mahogany pedestal desk and leather chair they liked to sink into for work, looking out the patio doors at the breathtaking view. Though the old-fashioned desk and chair were slightly out of place among the otherwise modern décor they would not—well,
he
would not—sacrifice substance for superficial style. The house was a mere four-minute walk from the bars, pubs, restaurants, and shops of the Marina, and from the beach they liked to run on. Life had been perfect back then.

After Maggie moved out, Jeremy had started working very late and taking Sally and Jack out to his favourite pub on the Marina, The Mermaid, to numb himself enough to face the restless dark hours after work. For many months, the grieving ghosts of his empty house had driven him to catch a ride with Jack to dinner with Caitlin, Peter, and Gillian. Jack had a good hour’s drive home and, since Caitlin liked having Jeremy over as a third wheel, he had spent many nights and weekends in one of Jack’s guest rooms.

More recently their evenings in the pub had gone on till very late and Jack had started staying over at Jeremy’s place rather than drive home with his blood alcohol level well above the limit. Jeremy knew Jack was using that as an excuse. Jack had taken him under his wing since the day of that accident. Jeremy had overheard Jack telling Caitlin that Jack needed to keep an eye on him to keep him sober enough not to lose his job and to make sure he “did not do something stupid.”

He knew which stupid night Jack meant. That restless night he had stumbled out of the house in the dark hours after midnight and driven around, trying to get Maggie out of his head. At some point he had been on the wrong side of the road—he did not know whether it was from that evening’s alcohol in his blood or from Maggie in his head—and a honking truck with blaring headlights coming straight at him had driven him off the road and onto the beach, where he had simply curled up and gone to sleep in his car.

It was Jack who had come to take him home from the custody of the policeman who had found him and locked him up. Jack had policed Jeremy’s drinking and had refused to let him spend a night alone in the months following the incident. It had given him bloody nightmares. For months he had woken up with the headlights in his eyes, the honk of the lorry in his ears, and the smell of burning tyres in his nose.

Caitlin didn’t mind Jack’s staying the odd night with him. Jeremy found it easier to watch TV until he fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion on the sofa-bed in their study rather than lie in his empty bed without Maggie, where sleep evaded him through the night more often than not. He let Jack have the king-size bed.

Lately, when Jack stayed over, Sally had also started spending the night with him. Sally was a buxom brunette with wavy layered hair that framed her face and tapered down to her shoulders. She had immigrated to England from Australia about three years ago and still carried the pretty Aussie accent that he liked. An athlete who was into long distance running, horse riding, and mountain climbing in her spare time, she had a trim, athletic physique on which her ample bust looked quite out of place. She stood three or four inches shorter than Jack, who was 5’ 10” tall. Jack was lean and had honey brown hair prematurely thinning at 38. Both Jack and Sally had similar faces with sharp, fine features. Both were extremely bright engineers, Sally boasting a PhD in Electrical Engineering from University of Sydney. Jeremy thought they went well together.

After becoming acutely aware of the intensity of Jack’s relationship with Sally, Jeremy had more recently ceased his visits to Jack’s house. Sally was Jeremy’s buddy and he did not want to face Caitlin or get involved in the little deceptions that kept her blissfully unaware of the triangle. He had also picked himself up from Maggie’s moving out on him and she was back to spending time with him on and off.

Sally and Jack were left thrown together on their own as Jeremy went back to being deeply obsessed with Maggie again. He was aware, from having to cover for Jack during Caitlin’s increasingly frequent calls to his house and mobile enquiring after Jack, that lately on the days Jack had informed Caitlin he was staying over with Jeremy, he was actually driving over to Sally’s house in the Portsmouth suburbs. Everybody at work thought Sally and Jack were inseparable.

It raised some eyebrows, therefore, when one Friday afternoon Michelle walked straight up to Jack who was in a deep technical discussion with him close to where Sally was seated and started a vivacious conversation about a reality TV program.

‘So what do you guys do in your spare time? Do you watch
Big Brother
?’ She touched Jack’s upper arm and fiddled with her hair.

Jeremy observed Michelle at close range for the first time. She had a long oval face with full lips and stood slightly taller than Jack on her killer heels. Red lace peered out from the edge of her low cut blouse and filled out with every breath. She had flirted vivaciously with most males in the office since starting work. Her high-pitched voice irked him and her brashness made him cringe.
This looks like trouble with a capital T.

‘I think
Big Brother’s
hot,’ Jack said, sending out a mild shock-wave of surprise through the room.

Don’t tell me he is falling for this.

‘Oh, he does
not
watch
Big Brother
. He’s just kidding.’ Sally turned her seat around and joined in.

‘I do, honestly. But I am such a geek that I have to analyse the social dynamics out loud every time, which annoys everyone else watching it.’ Jack laughed, ignoring Sally and enthusiastically entering into the conversation with Michelle, completely enthralled by her attention. He went on to offer to give Michelle an introduction to the Engineering lab equipment.

Sally caught Jeremy’s eye with alarm and pain in her eyes as they stood looking at each other in a stunned silence. Jack’s laughter mingled with Michelle’s and filled the wall-less open plan office as he led Michelle by her upper arm and the small of her back around the lab, explaining the use of equipment that she would neither understand nor ever use.

In the distance, rough waves of a now stormy sea had begun thrashing the stone walls of the bay with a newfound reckless vigour.

Jack declined the invitation to get together at the pub with Sally, Maggie, and Jeremy that Friday afternoon. Friday afternoon pub had become a routine for them over the previous months. Maggie drove down to them from Southampton and, if Jeremy were lucky, would spend the night and the following day, and occasionally the whole weekend, with him.

When Jack did join them the following Friday he brought Michelle. Though he laughed and flirted with Michelle with abandon, he also took time to talk to Sally about the current engineering project she was working on with him.

‘Sally, I’ve reviewed the design note for the D612 hardware bridge, and I think it is brilliant.’

Sally nodded with a sad smile.

‘I’ve got a couple of questions about the data speeds on the serial ports. Let’s get together Monday about them, ha?’

Their exchange continued only for a few more seconds before Michelle interrupted them.

‘Jack, I ordered a couple of raspberry and blue margaritas you said you have never tried before.’ She cocked her head and smiled. She brushed imaginary flecks of dust off his shirt and tugged at his sleeve. ‘There are boats out on the sea in the dark, specs of light like fireflies I have seen on holiday in the West Indies. Let’s go out on the deck.’

Michelle had taken off the cardigan she had worn over her dress when she came in and was now in the shoulder-less floral summer dress held together precariously by a pair of thin straps tied together at the back cut low down to her waist. Jack laughed, caressing her upper arm. Taking the margaritas from her, he headed for the deck without as much as a backward glance.

This girl knows how to work it. Sally’s no match for her.

Sally stood up from where she had been interrupted mid-sentence to go after him, but then thought the better of it and sat back down with a look of despair.

‘The office has about forty other guys on our floor alone and just us two girls. Why is she going after
my
guy?’

She disappeared into the ladies’ room after sullenly gulping down several drinks where a concerned Maggie followed her after she failed to reappear for a good half hour.

Shortly Maggie returned. ‘Jeremy, Sally’s quite sick. We had better take her home.’

This must be hard on her.
He knew what it was like being the one being left behind. Sally must have known what she was getting into when she started seeing a married man, but it probably didn’t make this any less painful.

Maggie and Jeremy helped a drunk and insensitive Sally out from the side entrance and drove her to her house in the Portsmouth suburbs, leaving Jack and Michelle revelling in each other’s company on the deck over the warm waters outside the pub.

The tensions continued into the following weeks with Michelle interrupting even work meetings between Sally and Jack. There were some arguments that arose apparently from Michelle’s ignoring Sally’s instructions on testing despite being Sally’s inferior in the work hierarchy. These disputes Jack, as the head of their engineering team, attempted to resolve in Michelle’s favour, further undermining Sally’s professional status.

Jeremy was spared much further observation of or involvement in the increasingly messy entanglement when he was given a month’s notice that Marine Electronics would not be renewing his contract for another term due to staff downsizing and redundancy measures required by the recession.