MBA Read online

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  They put Connie’s CD on later, because first there was early birthday cake – a cheesecake with one candle. The crowd had thinned down to a gang of friends. It was still light, but evening light. Seth packed up glasses, coolers and rubbish (some bits he picked up several times as the champagne took its toll). Connie handed Ben a magnum of Rioja. He used the corkscrew like a pro, but the bottle had a screwtop. After pouring everyone a glass he propped the bottle in the lunar glow of the garden light, using the sun’s light a second time. Underneath the grass, the earth was moist from the wet pounding of the day before.

  Eight of them danced, and then six. Some of them lay down to paint night-pictures with the glowing end of a Rizla and some crumbly Moroccan. The tracks Connie had burned on the CD ranged from Fatboy Slim, Everything But The Girl, Bob Marley and the inimitable Tina Turner to new stuff from the Cure. Had she screwed up, she wondered? Such a range of music must make her seem old to someone 10 years younger. Anyway, Ben was still dancing.

  When English men got drunk and danced, it reminded Connie of a street party. Arms and legs, hands and hips were all over the place, forming conga lines and opening their front doors to anyone. But the unpractised wildness of the gesturings also said that come sun up, those bodies would be frozen again, each a suburb of silence where a sprained neck might commute to work for years next to somebody else’s shoulder without ever asking to borrow an aspirin. If it was a clue to his life, Ben’s body in motion struck her as positive: underneath it all it was the body of a man in whom life had not destroyed the capacity to be happy.

  Connie knew when the last track had started. She moved next to him as it did, pretending to look in the other direction at the headlights of a car reflected in the lake from the other side. The track was a cool-down number with the spiced lyrics and harmonies of the Indigo Girls, but for a moment Connie could not remember which song she had chosen. It turned out to be ‘The Power of Two’, in which someone claims to be stronger than the monsters beneath your bed, and smarter than the tricks played on your heart.

  She turned to him. ‘I did think about finishing with one of my own, but one of my friends called it “jump-and-shout music”. I think she may have been right.’

  ‘One of your own what?’ Ben was happy, his shirt undone.

  ‘Tracks. For a while I was a singer-manager in a student band in Manchester. Being the manager meant being sober enough at the end of the night to stop us getting ripped off by the venue.’

  ‘Wow.’ (Wow as in, gosh, you were young once? Or just, wow?)

  ‘Come for a walk. We’ve been studying here on and off for two years, and this week is our last. There’s supposed to be a viewing spot up on the hill, but I’ve never been.’

  They walked for 10 minutes up the hill, cooled by the beginning of a night breeze. She liked the way Ben did not walk too fast without making a show of it. He seemed – what? Honest, for a start. Likeable. Sexy. (Did the young always seem sexy to the middle-aged? No, she thought, remembering at work how irritating she found most of the junior male doctors.)

  Ben stirred. ‘You remember saying all men were bastards or wimps?’

  ‘I was right.’

  ‘So what am I?’

  Connie reflected. ‘All right, all men are bastards, wimps or wanna-bes. You’re a wanna-be, like the other MBAs.’

  ‘And according to you, is that good or bad?’

  Suddenly they both laughed, realising at the same moment what she was going to say. ‘It depends what you wanna be!’

  ‘Not Bakhtin, at any rate.’

  ‘You probably wanted to be him when you came to study here.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘We’re here,’ Connie announced. They had turned a corner and the hill had flattened out, creating a space where a couple of cars could retreat from the road. Beneath them the lake looked as if it had been scraped out of the valley with an ice-cream scoop.

  Watching the lights excused both of them from speaking for a while. The teaching and administration building was dark. Fluorescent lights gave a partial animation to the swimming pool, the car parks and parts of the residential building, but the scene was dominated by the flying saucer, glowing like a giant version of the garden light they had used earlier. Long black shadows from trees and other buildings radiated away from the tower like lines holding up a circus tent. At its top and around its rim blinked red hazard lights.

  ‘It is a great view,’ Ben ventured.

  Connie wondered if he would make a move. Apparently not. The last few weeks of being 39 did not seem the age for hanging about. Because she had stayed off the red wine she could taste liquorice on his tongue. A public roll in the hay did not appeal, so she put her arm through his and led him back down the road towards the college.

  MONDAY 18 JUNE

  Talcum powder. The scent of tropical rain. Connie’s body at 37°C. But before that – now he remembered – dancing. So coffee was in order, quickly.

  It had been after two when Connie had set the bedside alarm. They had settled on eight o’clock as a compromise between Hampton and a lie-in, so Ben had kept his mobile switched off. It was seven now and he was awake. He might as well get going. Outside, the sun had already done a substantial chunk of its morning shift and was expecting tea and biscuits.

  At Bakhtin Ben had not thought of himself as unhappy, but this morning he was happy in a way that was tantalising and different. He was a happy man in a welcoming bed in a righteous world. Bakhtin had wronged him but on Thursday Ben would get justice face-to-face.

  Uncomfortable as it had felt to give Greg confirmation of Frank’s duplicity about the boathouse, Ben had gained in exchange rock-solid proof of his own suspicions. Greg had delivered Dianne Peach-Gyro to the Kings Arms for 90 minutes last Monday evening. Who had turned up to collect his boss? Bakhtin’s driver. Game, set and match, my lord?

  One detail to improve things still further would be to confirm Connie’s name. He was 97 percent certain that ‘Connie’ was what he had called her two dozen times during the night. But then damn it, why had ‘Candy’ popped uncontrollably into his head? Sometimes it was so embarrassing to be a man, like when you get a leak in your pants.

  Oh, for goodness’ sake, think straight! He didn’t know any ‘Candy’. But then, how well really did he know ‘Connie’? It mattered because he very much hoped he would see her again – soon. As a governor she would be at the tower opening and gala dinner, so he had high hopes of Thursday night.

  The rise and fall of breathing next to him suggested that he had a few minutes in hand. After easing himself out of bed Ben did a hamstring stretch and invented some other exercises which involved moving his sleeping partner’s belongings around. Success! ‘Connie Yung’ was embossed on the badge students were supposed to wear in class. Exactly. ‘Connie’ was what he had meant. Still, a reminder scribbled on the inside of his left arm would do no harm. Then he threw on yesterday’s clothes, gave Connie a kiss and let himself out.

  Ben’s shaving gear was in his own room. His good mood lasted the minute and a half it took him to walk there. Round a corner, down some stairs, round another corner was the dean’s secretary, Vanessa, camped outside his door. He doubted that she had ever before been in the state of agitation he witnessed now.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she hissed. ‘The dean’s been trying to reach you since six. It’s disgusting. He got me to drive in and find you. Where’s your mobile?’

  Ben patted his pocket. It was there. He checked his zip. What was disgusting?

  ‘Then turn the bloody thing on and call him,’ Vanessa continued. ‘And run! Over to the tower.’

  Liquid nitrogen was dripping onto Ben’s guts. ‘It can’t have fallen down! The noise would have been deafening.’ How could Gyro have heard something in Hong Kong when Ben had slept like a lamb?

  ‘I need to get Harry to school – thank
God I didn’t bring him in the car. What on earth would I have said to him?’

  Ben ran, fumbling with his mobile’s power button as he went. Normally it yielded instantly, but this time he gave up on it, deciding that he might as well get a first-hand view of the tower disaster before dealing with a garbled account of it. He turned the corner of the building.

  The flying saucer was intact but a group of students in various states of dress had gathered around the tower’s base, obscuring his view. Obscuring his view of what? The lift, he realised immediately. The fucking lift. Deep down he had known it – last week’s good news had been too good to be true.

  But no, the lift was working. It rose above the spectating heads most of the way up to the auditorium and descended again. Then it rose again. He could see something wrapped around the lift. Oh, for goodness’ sake – just some protest or other! Surely security, or even a student in the crowd, had had the wit to call the police.

  As Ben pushed his way through the group, some of whom were starting to laugh, his angle of view changed. The lift had been programmed to keep moving up and down: there was no-one inside it. To the lift someone – well, certainly a group, this was too complex for one person – had wired up some wooden boards. Painted on them were on one side the knuckles and fingertips, and on the other side the thumb and wrist, of a curled male fist. The fist rose and fell with the lift, stroking the shaft.

  Obviously the tower had temporarily fallen victim to some pranksters: though to what end, or how it should all have come to provoke Gyro’s instantaneous ire on the other side of the world, Ben did not see.

  Once he had called the dean, he did. Gyro flung his words like mortar bombs, and they clung to their victim like napalm. Someone must have rigged up the artwork at dawn, not long afterwards posting a two-minute video on the web. Within half-an-hour corporate web-watchers, scanning constantly for any conjunction of the word ‘Pinnacle’ with trigger words or phrases (protests, law suits, threats, injuries, kidnaps, deaths, loss of profits or other obscenities) had flashed an alert to Cardew McCarthy. The on-screen legend said:

  HAMPTON – PINNACLE – WANKERS!

  CAPITALISTS FUCK OFF!

  Gyro’s final words had been clear enough. ‘Fucking get the lawyers! I’m texting you the name. Get the police! Get that video taken down now! Whatever it takes. Get it down before Junior wakes up.’

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  When he reached the office the cleaner grinned at him. He nearly hit her between the eyes but didn’t have the time. First steps first: the maintenance team disabled the lift at ground level, stopping the offensive motion. Ben had no hopes of early results from forensic evidence – fingerprints, DNA, or paint sourcing; in any case the thing was clearly a prank. Still, the police had been called. Tom was on his way to look at how the lift controls had been breached. Greg had taken to dispersing the crowd and keeping the crime scene intact as if he had trained for it.

  Ben grimaced when he read the details of the lawyer whom Gyro wanted on the case. Still, it was an international firm, so they would be able to move swiftly in different national jurisdictions to get at the video’s host server.

  ‘Mr Andrews, please – it’s urgent, I need you to page him if necessary. This is Ben Stillman in Dean William Gyro’s office at Hampton Management College. Thank you.’

  Two minutes of silence nearly made him redial, but then he heard a throat clear. ‘Bill Andrews.’

  ‘Mr Andrews? This is Ben Stillman in Dean Gyro’s office.’

  ‘I recall that, Mr Stillman. And my firm is still Andrews, Caravajal, Sagan and Warner. I’m afraid none of my partners have taken up your generous suggestion of retiring so that we shorten our name. But it’s not all loss; I was given some suggestions for changing your own name, to as little as four letters.’

  Top lawyers: you get to pay them a fortune and you have to craTouché, sir. Very good of you to take this urgent call. Are you somewhere where you can look at this web address?’

  By the time he had finished with the lawyers, his mobile was going crazy but Greg had brought Chief Inspector Haddrill in. Ben realised that not only had he had no breakfast, shower or a shave, but his shirt bore a trail of lipstick. The trail started at his collar but rapidly headed south. There was nothing for it but to get out his notepad. The three of them reviewed the video.

  In the circumstances Ben was grateful for the chief inspector’s years of practice at keeping his thoughts to himself. After a moment Haddrill said, ‘We need to consider the possibility of inside information.’

  Greg nodded.

  Ben said, ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because the lift was not working until Saturday. Apart from the contractors, only the relatively small number of people who were around the college on Saturday or Sunday would have had this information. Presumably it would be straightforward to make a list?’

  Ben nodded.

  ‘While the offending contraption may well have been built weeks ago, someone then moved quite fast.’ Haddrill pointed to the screen. ‘These pictures were on the web within thirty-six hours of the lift becoming operational. The ISP, all of that, we’ll look at too – if they have been careless we might get a fast result that way. But let’s assume not. At the moment we should assume a possible combination of internal and external resources.’ Haddrill turned to Greg. ‘I am assuming that we are not dealing with any kind of visit by the Prime Minister on Thursday.’

  Ben was adamant. ‘It’s not in the plan for Thursday, and never has been.’

  ‘That’s also my information,’ agreed Haddrill. ‘So, looking inside, what have we got? Disgruntled members of staff? Or students – anyone just failed a course, or missed out on a job at the Pinnacle company? That’s Virtual Savings and Trust, isn’t it?’

  Greg looked at Ben. I know what you’re thinking, thought Ben – Frank and his shed. Conceivably Frank might have built the fist in his shed, though what they had glimpsed of its contents had not looked like a fist at all. Ben was torn. Frank was a mentor and becoming a friend. Yes, Frank had lied about the shed’s contents on Saturday, but there could be a hundred explanations for that short of terrorist melodrama.

  Greg was still looking at Ben, and Haddrill had noticed. Not mentioning Frank at all was not an option. Greg would go out of his way to mention it later. Ben’s silence would only accomplish the undermining of his own position.

  ‘Maybe two possibilities,’ said Ben. ‘One – Dr Frank Jones, a lecturer who has been here some years. Greg can tell you more about him. It’s possible he’s been building something in the boathouse which he rents from the college at the far end of the lake. Let me make my own position quite clear. I think it’s a total red herring. Frank was one of my MBA tutors and he wouldn’t hurt a flea. Also this whole thing –’ Ben made a gesture with his hands ‘– is just too naff for him. But let’s deal with it. Greg, when we’re through here, take one of the Chief Inspector’s men over to the boathouse and open it up. It is college property. Whatever we find, I’m sure Frank will explain.’

  Action and confirmation – Greg was delighted. He could not wait.

  Ben was not finished. Distressing though it was to recount the GSG meeting last Thursday he did so, consoling himself that it would certainly earn the cleaner a police interrogation. There was the answer, as plain as daylight: a graphic attack on the phallocracy plotted by the cleaner with the evil grin. The clincher: the cleaner had been in his office unexpectedly on Saturday, when the architect’s plans had been on show.

  Haddrill’s response was disappointing. ‘I see why you think this is relevant, Mr Stillman. I’m glad you mentioned it and I will keep it in mind. But let’s not move precipitately.’

  For goodness’ sake why not, thought Ben? Extraordinary rendition to Guantanamo Bay would be a good first step.

  Haddrill read his mind. ‘In your own and the college’s interests. Let’s say we come ou
t of this office and throw the book at, what is it, the Gender Strategy Group. No doubt they have lodged a complaint about the dean’s email. Threatening someone who has lodged a sex discrimination complaint is victimisation, leading straight to a tribunal hearing in which this memo and the video would be evidence. But we will make inquiries.’

  When they left, Vanessa was there with a mug of black coffee and a croissant which he grabbed with both hands. She had got Harry to school and herself back under control.

  ‘Thank God you’re here, Vanessa. What kind of crazy people are we dealing with? Anyway, the police have it under control.’

  ‘Is the tower all right for Thursday?’

  ‘Mercifully, it seems to be. It was a prank. Tom will do a full check.’

  ‘Well, that’s the main thing. And the tower was not going to have been ready before you arrived.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m sorry you had to come out looking for me,’ he added.

  Vanessa smiled. ‘You probably want to shave and get a clean shirt.’

  Ben nodded.

  Vanessa glanced down at her pad. ‘Roger Sling said you and he had a meeting first thing.’

  ‘Oh shit! I can’t believe I forgot.’

  ‘He said you made the appointment on Sunday morning, so you might have been overworking? Anyway I’ve dealt with it. He needed to see the dean as well so I’ve put him in the one slot we had left – 2pm on Thursday. That’s with you and the dean.’

  ‘You’re magic.’

  ‘And don’t forget the dean’s back tomorrow, so you need to move desks today. Maintenance put in a computer point on Friday, but on Mondays they are only around until three. We need the waiting chairs and coffee table taken away, and a desk brought in.’

  ‘Good point.’

  ‘Unless you’d prefer to be in Vanish’s office.’

  ‘No thanks. If they need to cart me off to the loony bin, they can take me directly, not via a broom cupboard.’