‘What about the factory? How did you get on there?’ Ryan asked her, deftly changing the subject.
‘I explained the situation to the workforce and advised them that they’d all be issued with redundancy notices. I also explained to them their position as preferred creditors.’
‘Mmm… Did you tell them that we’re only expecting a low dividend and that they’ll be lucky to get as much as fifty pence in the pound of what they’re owed?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ Deborah told him evenly. ‘After all, we don’t know yet that that will be the case.’
‘Mmm—I forgot to warn you this morning: it might be an idea to get a security firm in to guard the place. We don’t want anyone taking it into their head to stage a sit-in. We want to get everything sold off and the liquidation completed as quickly as possible.’
He frowned as his intercom buzzed and his secretary announced that a client was waiting to see him. ‘Look, I haven’t got any more time now, but there are still a few points I need to go over with you. This client is going to take up the rest of the afternoon, but we can take care of what’s left after he’s gone. We’ll go to the wine bar at six.’
He was already standing up, dismissing her, not allowing her to refuse the suggestion.
Irritably Deborah went back to her own office. She should have thought about that point he’d raised about security for the factory herself and it galled her that she hadn’t done. She could do it now, though.
‘Sorry,’ the office manager told her when she got through to the firm they always used. ‘But we can’t get anyone there until Wednesday now. Would you believe we’re short-staffed?’
When she had put the receiver down she picked it up again, punching in Mark’s extension number, but it was one of his colleagues who answered the phone, telling her that Mark was having a case meeting with their head of department.
She would have to get hold of him later to warn him that she was going to be working late. Briefly she wondered what his meeting was about, and hoped that it might be some new business.
He had become very reticent recently about discussing his work with her. She frowned, reflecting on this. It wasn’t like him to be so edgy and irritable, and she had felt hurt by the way he seemed to be shutting her out of his professional life, as well as by the attitude he had taken to her promotion.
His obvious disapproval had taken the edge off her pleasure and sense of achievement, and today’s events had underlined the fact that her promotion had come about through another person’s downfall. She didn’t feel particularly sorry for Andrew—in her opinion he had been a weak and very egotistical man—but his wife, his family, and those who had been unfortunate enough to be employed by him… She tensed a little, wondering how she would feel if Mark had been one of those men who would be going home today to break the news to their partners that they were out of work.
Of course she and Mark were in a very different situation; they were both professionals with separate careers, neither of them financially dependent on the other.
How many other lives besides his own had Andrew ruined with his reckless refusal to listen to anyone else’s advice, his egotistical belief that he was immune to the dangers and risks inherent in his narrow-viewed way of running a business?
She wished now that she hadn’t agreed to meet Ryan after work. In her present mood it was Mark she wanted to talk to, to confide in and share her emotions with.
* * *
Mark waited tensely as Peter Biddulph, his boss, finished studying the list he had in front of him.
Peter was about ten years older than Ryan, but a very, very different type of man. He was quiet, solid and not the type to put himself at risk in any way, but the clients trusted him and felt that their business affairs were safe with him. He was a calm, pragmatic man who seldom became irritated no matter what the provocation; a man whom others, including Mark, liked and admired.
Mark knew from the office grapevine that over the years there had been several attempts to entice him away from the practice, but he was not ambitious in the sense of wanting the prestige of a high-profile lifestyle or the material benefits that went with it.
The good name of the practice, though, meant a good deal to him, as did the success of his side of the business, and it was no secret within the firm that beneath his outward calm he was becoming increasingly concerned about the way in which the liquidation and receivership side of the practice’s business was beginning to overtake their own.
‘Ah, Mark,’ he said now as he put down the list he was studying, steepling his fingers together and frowning as he studied them. ‘I’ve got a list here of the accounts you took over when you joined us.’ His frown deepened. ‘Originally there were fifty names on that list. Now there are under forty.’
Mark could feel his tension increasing, his skin growing tight and hot across his facial bones as he fought down his instinctive need to defend himself and let Peter finish speaking.
‘We all know, of course, that these are difficult times for industry. The recession and its af
termath are going to be felt for some years to come. Any business portfolio containing, as yours does, so many small industrial concerns is bound to mirror those effects. It isn’t, after all, mere coincidence that the liquidation and receivership side of the practice is increasing in almost exactly the same numbers as ours is decreasing, no matter how much Ryan might choose to pretend that such an increase is hard-won and the result of energetic personal endeavour. The senior partners are not, of course, oblivious to the effect of market forces, but Ryan does tend…’ He paused, frowning, and Mark knew that it was a sign of how disturbed he was by their falling business that he was actually discussing Ryan in such terms with him.
It was obvious there was no love lost between the two men; they were complete opposites in every way after all, and there was even some gossip—never substantiated—that before Ryan had come on the scene Peter had been dating Alice. If it was true Mark wondered if she ever regretted having married Ryan instead. Peter was a devoted and faithful husband and a doting father to his three daughters, while Ryan…
‘When you originally came to us, Mark, the expectation was that with projected business growth you would ultimately become head of your own department, overseeing our industrial accounts, with your own qualified staff beneath you. However, obviously now…’
He looked up at Mark and told him quietly, ‘At our last board meeting Ryan suggested that, in view of the loss of business in the industrial sector, instead of being expanded it be combined with our shop-business accounts, which have also been heavily depleted because of the recession.
‘Needless to say I pointed out to the senior partners that all the signs are that the worst of the recession is over, and that history indicates that in its aftermath new businesses will flourish and that again, historically, such new businesses will in their early stages have to make heavy calls on our expertise and time, something we shall not be able to give them if our own staff resources have been depleted.’
He was frowning again, and Mark wondered bitterly what else Ryan had had to say; the man was a chancer, an aggressor, a privateer who fed off the weakness of others. He wouldn’t just enjoy the opportunity to boost his side of the business and rate its importance over theirs, he would also have great personal satisfaction in putting Peter himself down… Peter or any other man. Ryan wasn’t the sort who could ever accept anyone else as his equal, and he could certainly never be subservient to anyone.