Alberta Clipper (8 page)

“He’s entitled to have friends, Ag.”

“I know that.”  Aggie looked hurt.  “It’s just -”

Oh God, please don’t cry.  I’ve just done my make-up for work.  Please don’t start me off.

“It’s just sort of weird, you know?” 

“I know, Ag.  But you know what?  He’s in great form.  For whatever reason.  So that’s all we should care about, really.”

“Yeah.”  Aggie sniffed into her mug of tea. 

Christine looked at the clock again.  “Look, I’m sorry Aggie, I’m gonna have to go.  I have to leave for work.”

“Sure, of course.  Well, have a good day.  And if you see Dad,” she looked straight into the camera, “ask him to give me a call when he has a night off from partying with Grace.”

“Will do.”  Christine smiled at her sister.  “Say hi to Jamie for me.  I’ll call you at the weekend.”

“Bye Chris.”

Christine clicked her PC closed with a sigh.  She looked at her watch.  She’
d
never get into work before Craig now.

~

Why was it that some days were just so bloody crap?  Was he imagining it, or was there some sort of order to it?  Some days, things just seemed to work out.  Profits were up. The sun was shining.  Your favourite flavour soup was on as the daily special at the sandwich bar down the street.  And then there were the days when everything went bloody wrong.  The kind of day when the first-aid box falls out of the press and gashes you on the head. 

This was one of those days.  It seemed to Mark that he’d had a run of them recently.  After they had returned home from the garden centre on Saturday, Jennifer had informed him that she was going to stay with her sister for the night.  He hadn’t tried to stop her.  He’d wanted some space himself, to think through all they had said.  Although, he hadn’t done much thinking.  After he had penitently planted the clematis against the garden wall, he had spent three hours cutting the grass and tidying the borders and hedges.  He’d even mended the door of the shed which had been hanging crookedly since they had bought the place ten years previously.  He’d had a shower and walked to the off-licence on the corner.  Then he’d gone home, and opened the first of six cans of beer. 
He’d watched a rugby match on television
, taking some guilty pleasure in the fact that he didn’t have to hand over the remote when the news started. 

When he had finished four beers, he had ordered a pizza.  With the phone still in his hand, he’d considered phoning someone to hang out with.  But who?  All his friends would be home with their wives and kids, enjoying their Saturday night in.  No one would want to leave their own sofa to come over and get messy drunk with him.  For a second, he considered phoning
Shay
. 
Nina
wouldn’t mind.  She’d probably shove him out the door in the hope that he might bring her home some gossip from the office. 
Nina
was such a great girl.  He remembered when she and
Shay
had first got together, back when she had also been employed by CarltonWachs.  It had been the talk of the building for weeks.  But that was a lifetime ago.  He and Jennifer had just met at a wedding.  The four of them had socialised together a lot in the early days.  Mark sat staring blankly at the TV, marvelling at how differently the two couples’ relationships had turned out. 

Nah.  He couldn’t phone
Shay
.  Talking to
Shay
would just make him feel worse about himself. 
And there was the fact that he knew Christine. And after four drinks, Mark couldn’t trust himself not to start talking about Christine. He couldn’t let
Shay
know how he felt. Not yet anyway.  He was still living with Jennifer, even if she couldn’t bear to be under the same roof as him.
In the end, Mark had thrown the phone over onto an armchair and had gone to open a bottle of wine in the kitchen.  The next thing he could remember was waking on the couch at four
AM
with an empty pizza box next to him. 

Yesterday had been horrible.  He’d had the hangover from hell.  Jennifer had returned at about five o’clock, and had been just civil.  She had made it clear that she hadn’t been in any humour to speak to him, let alone have a meaningful discussion about their future, and they had spent the evening tip-toeing around each other.  She had gone to bed early, and he had stayed downstairs watching mindless television until after one, afraid of joining her, but not wanting to make a statement by sleeping in one of the spare rooms.  In the end, he had crept upstairs, and lain down on his side of the bed as usual, taking care to keep his distance, his back to her.

This morning, she had left for work before he had woken.  He was worried now that she would
think him
uncaring, or indifferent to their situation, but he was just so bloody tired. 

And now this.

Bloody Craig Clarkson.  He was a wanker on a good day anyway, but Mark had wanted to kill him this morning
as they sat waiting for Shay so they could get the briefing started
.  Craig
might be
one of their most successful dealers
, but
Mark just wished he wasn’t such a loud mouth.  And that he was a little less forward with Christine.  He
practically
slobber
ed
over her.  As if she would look twice at him.  Anyway, it appeared she was already involved with somebody.  And bloody Craig had bloody met him.  Bloody
Gavan
, or something.  He could tell Christine had been mortified as Craig had smugly announced to the whole room how he had bumped into them on Saturday night.  And they had been heading back to her place, he’d said.  Well it was none of Craig’s goddamn business what Christine was doing on Saturday night.  Sitting
there in the meeting room
, Mark
was
torn between wanting to punch Craig to stop him talking, and hanging on his every word.  He wanted to know what type of guy Christine would go for.  Maybe it wasn’t serious.  Maybe he had just been a friend.  But from the picture Craig was painting of it all, Mark doubted it. 

It occurred to him that he didn’t have to stay.  He was the boss, for God’s sake.  He didn’t need to attend these briefings anyway, he just liked his staff to know
he was involved and interested. 
But
he was damned
if he was going to sit here and listen to Craig go on.  Not
today.  He
stood
up
abruptly, silencing the room.

“Tell
Shay
I couldn’t hang around.  I’ll be in my office if he wants me.”  He looked at
Harry
.  “Just copy me on the email going out to the trading desk.”

He glanced back through the meeting room
’s
glass wall as he walked across the floor to his own office, just in time to see Christine swatting Craig with rolled up pages like she meant it.  Good enough for him.

He closed his door behind him.  The blinds on his office walls were partially shut, and he left them like that.  He looked at his desk, but couldn’t bring himself to sit down at it.  He felt sick.  He hated this office too.  He had never felt comfortable in it.  Partly, perhaps, b
ecause he spent so little time
here. 
Rarely a week went by that he wasn’t in one of the other CarltonWachs offices around the world. 
Partly because he had never made an effort with the space.  The one time Jennifer had been in it, shortly after he had been promoted, she had suggested hanging a painting and getting a few plants, neither of which he had done.  They had made plans to go out and celebrate his promotion by buying a painting for the purpose, but it had just never happened. 

Mark walked over to the window and looked out over Clarendon Square.  Miserable Irish weather suited Dublin in lots of ways, but sunny days like this really seemed to give the city a new personality.  A bit of good weather was all it took to put Irish people in good humour, and he could see only smiling faces as he looked down the street and over to the gates of the square
opposite
.  Youngsters congregated in shorts and shades, enjoying the freedom of the school holidays. 
Mothers pushed
babies and
dragged
toddlers in through the gates,
like
ly
bound
for the playground and the duck ponds within.  Along the street,
office workers
carried laptop bags and talked on phones.  Most of the men carried their suit jackets over their arms or were without them entirely.  Mark stood on a chair and reached to unlock the window
latch to let in some air.  It
was stiff from lack of use.  As he jammed the palm of his hand against it, the sound of a knock on his door startled him.

“You’re not going to jump, are you?”

“Very funny.  Sorry I couldn’t wait around for the briefing.  I had something I needed to do here.”  Mark resumed forcing the lock so
Shay
couldn’t see his face. 

“No problem, I can see you’re busy.  I’m only heading in now.  I told them to go ahead without me.” 
Shay
stepped further into the room and closed the door gently behind him.  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

The clasp snapped back and the window dropped down. 
The sounds of the street amplified
.  Mark closed his eyes and breathed in the air, full of scent and heat.  He stood down from the chair, putting it back in the far corner of the room as if to reassure
Shay
of his sanity. 

“I’m fine.  What did Marcus want?  That was who you were on to, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” 
Shay
sat down opposite Mark at his desk.  “Actually, it might be a problem.  It seems there have been some irregularities flagged in the UK.  Proprietary dealing irregularities.  Corporate compliance are investigating, and they want to include the Irish operations in the sweep.  He didn’t say it outright, but I got the impression that there is more to it than he is letting on.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m
not sure – it was just Marcus’s
tone.  I’m wondering if maybe the problem is exclusively here.  If maybe the investigation into the UK desk isn’t just a diversion.”

“Jesus.”  Mark leaned back in his chair.  “But we have had no indication of there being any problem here?”

“None.”

“And who might be involved if there was a problem?”

“I can’t say for sure.  I mean, I
can’t really imagine any of my team at it.  T
hey wouldn’t be stupid enough.”

Mark looked doubtfully at
Shay
.  For someone as intelligent as he was,
Shay
could be
blindly loyal and a little
naïve sometimes.

“Well,”
Shay
relented, “I suppose if there were something going on, it would most likely be Richie, or Mick.  Or maybe Craig.”

Craig.  For a second Mark hoped Craig
had
done something off-side
, so he could fire his ass.  But, Christ, if
Shay
was right and there was something going on, they had to get on top of it immediately.  Whatever about the person carrying out
dubious
deals, it would be Mark’s own ass if it was being done on his watch.  Could this bloody day get any better?

“Marcus is going to give you a call later today.” 
Shay
stood up.  “He’s likely to fly over later in the week.”

“Okay.  I’ll call him now myself.  And
Shay
,” Mark looked directly at him, “you need to get on top of this.  Now.  Today.  Before the UK are over here breathing down our necks.  If there is something going on, we need to know.”

“Of course.  Maybe we should keep this between ourselves for the moment.”

“Yeah.”  Mark leaned on his desk, rubbing his temples.  “Actually, no.  Go to the meeting.  Tell them what Marcus said, but don’t tell them that they suspect a problem h
ere.  Let them think that it’s
only the London office
under scrutiny
.”  Mark looked back out throu
gh the window.  “
The
analysts
are like old women
when it comes to gossip
.  The story will be all over the building by this afternoon.  Then if someone is doin
g something, they might try to
cover
it
up.  We might notice something.”

Thirty seconds after
Shay
had left his office, Petra was standing at
Mark’s
door with a folder
in one arm and a mug of coffee in the other.

“You wanted to go through your diary to year end this morning Mark?”  She smiled sweetly.  “Is now a good time?”