Caroline Graham - A Ghost in the Machine

Andrew strode over to his window to see where Polly went. Crossing the market square, she stopped suddenly by the statue of Reuben Cozens, a third-rate sculptor and Causton’s only claim to fame. She sat down on some steps by his great bronzed boots, drummed her knuckles fiercely on her knees then suddenly swung her head round, staring hard up at the office of Brinkley and Latham.

Andrew stayed where he was. It would have been foolish to do otherwise. It was too late to pretend he wasn’t there and jumping back would have made him look furtive and guilty. As if he was indeed spying on her. The girl’s anger was clear even from this distance. The set of her neck, the rigid shoulders. He felt that at any moment she might shake both fists at him.

Andrew shifted his gaze, as if taking in the rest of the busy High Street, then turned slowly from the window. He would give a lot to know what had happened in Dennis’s office to put her in such a paddy. Pointless asking – the po-faced old bastard was tight as a drum when it came to discussing clients. Still, no harm in having a word. Just the normal day-to-day exchange.

“Ah – Dennis.”

Everything about Andrew Latham irritated Dennis. The habit of always sounding surprised when he opened the door marked “Dennis Brinkley” to find a man called Dennis Brinkley sitting behind it was only the beginning.

Latham had been wished upon him seven years earlier when George Fallon, the original owner of the business, had become convinced that the firm was top heavy and foundering. This was not true, as Dennis repeatedly tried to explain. Yes, it had grown over the years and they had taken on more staff but the work was there for them. The old man, unconvinced, thought they should start sacking people. They had reached an impasse when one evening, at a dinner at his wife’s golf club, Fallon had found himself sitting next to Charlie Berryman.

Barely a fortnight later Berryman’s daughter and her husband visited Fallon and Brinkley’s offices. And just a few weeks after that, following an enormous injection of his father-in-law’s cash, Latham took over George’s half of the business and Fallon retired.

Dennis, who always thought taking against anyone on sight was extremely unfair, struggled to like the man. When it became plain that that was out of the question he struggled to be civil. Nearly always he succeeded, though Latham’s coarsely robust sense of humour and crass insensitivity to the feelings of others made it extremely hard.

Three-quarters of George Fallon’s clients had transferred their allegiance to Dennis or Leo Fortune, his most senior subordinate. The rest simply left. Sometimes Dennis wondered what Latham did all day. He turned up on a fairly regular basis and sat around fiddling with papers but his visitors were few. What there were seemed to be pretty much of his own stamp: all loud voices and back-slapping braggadocio. The sort of person that used to be described as “hail fellow well met,” though it seemed to Dennis that anyone with half an ounce of common sense who saw them coming would run a mile.

“Did you want something specific, Andrew?”

“Nope.” He picked up the remaining few biscuits and started cramming them into his mouth. Then he pushed the plate back on to the desk, sneering to himself as Dennis lined it up precisely with the cup and saucer. “Just popped in for a chat.”

Dennis loathed that phrase. They were always using it on the television, which was why he hardly ever switched it on. Chefs would be “popping” things into the oven, characters in plays would be “popping out to post a letter” or “popping round for a drink.” Once, in a crime story, a pathologist had suggested “popping” a cadaver on a slab to “open him up and have a looksee.” This brief recollection combined with concern over Polly’s visit made Dennis as near to bad-tempered as he ever came.

“I’m rather snowed under at the moment, I’m afraid.”

“You should take a breather, Den. Come back refreshed.” Andrew smiled as he watched the skin above his companion’s collar redden. Dennis hated being called Den. “Did you have a holiday this year?”

“Why ask a question to which you know the answer perfectly well?”

“Just making conversation.”

“Well, you may have the time. I haven’t.”

Dennis turned to his screen, tapped a few keys, frowned. Andrew stopped perching on the edge of the desk and flung himself into the chair that Polly had so recently abandoned.

“Mmm,” he said, insinuating his bottom deeper and deeper into the cushions, “this is still warm.”

Dennis went even redder, clenched his teeth and tapped on.

“Beautiful girl. Why don’t I ever get clients that look like that?” Pause. “Didn’t I see her at old Carey Lawson’s funeral?” Pause. “Don’t tell me she’s come in for some of the swag?”

Dennis clamped his lips together, pressed his buzzer with savage precision and told the girl who responded that he had some correspondence and would she come in straight away.

“Listen…” Drew Latham took his time getting out of the chair. “You must come and eat with us. Gil was saying only the other day, ‘We haven’t seen that Denny for ages.’ You know how fond she is of you.”

Dennis did not reply. He could count the times he had met Gilda Latham on one hand. Once when she had come into the office with her father at the time of the merger, at Carey Lawson’s funeral, and also when he had given a talk on his machines to the Causton Library Users Association. She had gushed all over him afterwards and insisted on helping to put his slides away. It had taken him hours to get them straight.

Now he wondered at which moment during these brief encounters Gilda could possibly have become “very fond” of him. He presumed it was a figure of speech used as carelessly as the word “love” seemed to be these days. This had turned up last year on nearly all his Christmas cards, even from people he hardly knew, only the milkman showing decent restraint.

When home time came and people were packing up to go, Dennis decided to have another look at the Lawsons’ account. As financial advisor to the new publishing business he should have up-to-date figures to put on the table at their inaugural meeting. He typed in the password, which was “Parmain.”

Dennis was rather chuffed with his compilation of passwords, which were all medieval French. They had been chosen very carefully to complement the business or personality of the relevant client. So a drunken landowner gambling away his estate had “Soteral.” A dress manufacturer “Asure.” The owner of a prep school “Enfancegnon.” A judge who rode with the local hunt, “Esmochior.” A greedy banker, “Termoint.” Aubain, fauconcel, dringuet, lorain – who would guess to what these words referred?

Only Leo Fortune had been told. And Dennis had been so delighted with this clever conceit that Leo hesitated to mention that labelling the disk on which the words were kept “ENTR’OVRIR” might be a bit of a giveaway. But he agreed that the words themselves were pretty impenetrable. Having little knowledge of apples and their infinite variety, neither man noticed how near “Parmain” was to Pearmain – as in Worcester.

On the bus going back to Forbes Abbot Polly sat and seethed. Seethed primarily because she didn’t see herself as the sort of person who travelled on buses, ever. But also because she had been humiliated by some stuffy, dried-up old boot of a man purely for the pleasure of seeing her squirm. And he would tell Mallory. Of course he would. He was the sort. She could just hear him, pompously describing the scene in his office with mock regret. I felt as her father you should know…Yeah, right.