Faceless, p.16
Faceless, page 16
‘Jesus, Bradley, where have you been the last few days? The boss is ropeable.’ Jenkins had never looked more like a nervous rabbit than he did at that moment. He was the office doomsayer, everyone acknowledged it; but somehow today, in Bradley’s eyes, he was a caricature, some pathetic wide-eyed creature dreamed up by a cartoonist – the ultimate loser. He had the urge to swat him away like a pesky fly.
‘I’ve been sick, Jenkins, he knows that.’ Crampton knew because Ange had taken it on herself to be the overprotective mother and to ring him. That was yet another subtle way she emasculated him. ‘You are allowed to be sick, you know, even in this company. It’s not illegal.’
Jenkins caught the sarcasm in his voice and looked puzzled, even hurt by it. In that moment it dawned on Bradley that Jenkins saw him as an ally, a fellow wimp among wimps. He’d have to rectify that. There was no way he was going to continue wearing that mantle. He’d had enough of being downtrodden, and associating with that whinger and whiner just pulled him down further. The other staff were all pretty glum at the moment, courtesy of all the shit that had gone down with the restructure, but Jenkins was the worst; how the hell he’d kept his job, he didn’t know. Maybe he was a relative of someone important, or maybe he knew where they buried the bodies.
Bradley walked on to his desk, ignoring whatever it was Jenkins was prattling on about. When he got there the first thing he saw was the fluorescent-yellow note strategically placed in the middle of the mess: My office as soon as you get here. Bastard hadn’t even signed his name. Bradley screwed it up and tossed it in the bin. He looked at the piles of shit all over his desk and wondered how on earth he managed to get anything done with all that crap everywhere. He sat down and set about restoring some kind of order to it all, and after fifteen minutes of concerted effort had cleared everything away into its rightful place. It looked far more relaxing. Maybe there was something to that feng shui garbage after all.
Next he turned on his computer and waited while his email inbox filled up. Two hundred and fifty-six unread email messages. Shit. He scanned down and deleted twenty-eight without even looking at them – they were only forwarded funnies from co-workers. He was about to open the first real email when he heard a strident ‘Fordyce’ from across the room. The tone was unmistakably irate. ‘My office, now.’
He knew this was coming, and he also knew the lines he’d been practising in the car on the way over.
Robert Crampton was a bully, pure and simple. But Bradley also recognised in him a man under immense pressures of his own. He too had to answer to those above him, and he too had just survived the restructuring. Unfortunately for the rest of the staff, he was the kind of man who took that stress out on others; the kind who found the weakest and most vulnerable and then took it on himself to slowly pick them apart. Bradley had been the target of that campaign these last few weeks, and it galled to think Crampton saw him as an easy target.
But that was no longer the case. He wasn’t going to buy into the victim mentality any longer. He felt more than capable of taking on his aggressor and standing up for his rights.
‘Look, I didn’t appreciate that we didn’t know where you were yesterday. There’s a lot going on here at the moment and the last thing we need is people taking time off at a whim.’ His face, when screwed up like that, looked remarkably puggish.
‘I was still sick. Ange had called in the day before, so I didn’t think it necessary to call again. I would have thought it was obvious I was still home.’ He’d never dared be that direct with Crampton before, and although he could feel the flutter of anxiety in his stomach, it felt good.
‘Simple courtesies count. As far as I’m concerned it was an unaccounted day off, so it will come out of your annual leave.’ His eyes had narrowed even further.
‘I’ll get a doctor’s certificate if you like. I was ill, so you can’t arbitrarily remove it from my leave.’ Crampton looked surprised at this assertiveness, then wary; he was unaccustomed to having anyone contradict him. Bradley could see the simmering anger beneath his demeanour.
‘You do that, then, but I expect to see it tomorrow. All the same, you’re going to have to make up the time, though. We have the report for Red Co due Monday morning, so you’ll have to stay as late as it takes tonight to get that finished. And the annual plan for the engineering division needs to be completed by Wednesday. You’ll have to come in over the weekend to get up to speed on that.’ He sat there and rattled off more demands and expectations of overtime. Bradley stood there, calm, taking it in and smiling on the inside, waiting for his moment to play his trump card. The boss paused; Bradley played.
‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t do that.’
Crampton shook his head as if he hadn’t heard properly. ‘What do you mean, no?’
‘I won’t be coming in on the weekend, and I won’t be working overtime tonight. I will work my utmost for you in the hours I have here, but I will no longer allow work to spill into my family time.’
A shade of deep red began to creep up Crampton’s neck and blotch into his face.
‘That’s impossible,’ he said, his voice in combat mode. ‘Everyone else here is doing extra hours, it’s part of the job, and I don’t need to remind you there are plenty of other people who would be happy to step in and take over your job if you aren’t up to it.’ The volume of his voice had risen, and Bradley let his rise to meet it. He was very aware of the fact the door was open behind him and an appreciative audience beyond.
‘Perhaps the fact everyone else is having to do overtime is because the amount of work you are foisting on us is impossible. Since the restructure everyone left has been doing the work of two people, but with the same time restraints, resources and the same pay. It’s inhumane and it’s unworkable. Look at them all – everyone is stressed out and up to their eyeballs in it. If you want all this work to get done you need more staff, it’s as simple as that.’ There he was, champion of the cause, and it felt great, he felt he was on a roll.
Crampton rose to his feet. ‘If you think there is going to ever be more staff, you are mistaken. Get real, Fordyce, you know the current economic environment. And don’t you dare go stirring up this kind of sentiment among the others. They choose to stay and work overtime, they aren’t lazy shirkers like you.’ The conversation had changed tone: Crampton’s voice was rising in pitch, but Bradley’s remained rock stead, even.
‘They don’t choose to: every single one of them would rather be at home with their families, or out having a life. You and this profit-driven, shareholder-pandering company give them no choice. They know damn well if they don’t do it, you’ll turf them out on their ears and they’ll be stuck in the dole queue, struggling to pay their mortgages and scrape up enough money to feed their families. They are blackmailed into staying late, pure and simple. The work doesn’t get done because there is far too much of it for the number of staff we have, so they are here doing overtime because you force them to.’
‘Well, that’s your opinion, and I can see clearly you aren’t coping with your job.’ Crampton started straightening papers out on his desk, indicating this conversation was about to come to an end. ‘I’m sure I won’t have any difficulty finding a replacement for you; and after this conversation, where you have taken time off without notice and are causing unease among the staff, inciting them, you’ll be receiving a written warning.’ And there he played right into Bradley’s hands.
‘And if you so much as think about going down that track I’ll be filing suit against you for constructive dismissal. I know the union would be very interested in all of this, in the way the workers are being treated in this company. So don’t you dare threaten me with losing my job, and don’t you dare threaten the others either, because by God, I’ll get the unions and the lawyers involved and you and this company will not know what has hit you.’
Before Crampton had a chance to retort, Bradley turned his back and stormed out of the room. He emerged from the door in time to see a scurry of bodies heading back to their desks, and as he walked, slowly and with back straight, to his cubicle, his chest rose at the smiles and thumbs-ups he got along the way.
Max
Sleep had not come easily last night. His dreams had again been infiltrated by dread, the same distorted images of Billy’s face and that other one, but this time joined by the Red Cross girl, Jess’s, and Harry’s, all billowing in an ethereal mist, wraith-like and being hounded by something hooded and reaperish, something that felt incredibly old and cold, something dredged from the collective fears of humanity. This time he’d awoken disorientated and afraid, and it had taken him several panicked moments to figure out he was back in the dark of the boxing gym. Matt had reluctantly let him in last night. No doubt Max had the young woman’s potential wrath to thank for the roof over his head and the comfort of the pile of gym mats he’d dossed down on. In thanks he’d found a broom and swept the floor before the first people arrived in the morning. But despite a warm and dry night and even the luxury of a hot shower first thing, nothing could remove the taint of the nightmares, and he felt a blanket of gloom smother his mood.
He trudged back up the familiar route to the Central Police Station and put in his usual request to the officer at the front counter. There was someone new on today, but either word had got around about his business there, or he looked semi-respectable in the young woman’s eyes; she paged Meredith without question. Although he no longer experienced that near-crippling panic when he entered the building, it still wasn’t what he’d call a comfortable experience, and his radar was on full alert, waiting for something bad to happen. It took an age for Meredith to come down, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she did it on purpose. When she finally appeared at the side door and indicated for him to come through, they followed the uncomfortable dance of silence and polite distance – at least up until the second landing in the stairwell, where she opened her mouth.
‘You look like shit. Do you want a coffee?’ She always was concise. But he wasn’t going to turn down an invitation for coffee, even if soured by insult. Besides, she was probably right. She led the way up to the staffroom. He was relieved to see they were the only occupants; it was too early in the day for the first round of morning tea breaks. His eyes drifted to the cabinet of cakes and sandwiches, and his stomach audibly informed him of how hungry he was. Billy’s disappearance had provided a large distraction in his life but he knew if he was going to have the fortitude to see this through, he was going to have to remember to eat.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, choose yourself one, I’ll get it.’ He didn’t turn down her grumpy charity. She might have been a bitch, but she was a generous one. They took their supplies to a table over by the window. She had her standard black coffee, no food. You didn’t get a figure like that by snacking. His own methods of weight loss had been a little extreme.
‘I take it you want to know where we’re at?’ she said, getting straight to the point.
He just about said, ‘Well, I’m not here for the charming company,’ but thought better of it, so instead nodded and bit into the sandwich. God, he’d forgotten how good bacon and egg could be.
She reached into her satchel and pulled out a photograph, slipped it onto the table in front of him. He almost spat out the mouthful.
‘Is that your girl?’
The image blurred as his eyes welled up, an instant reaction to seeing that face. God, for a man who never used to cry he’d been doing a hell of a lot of it lately. He guessed that was what happened when you were a wreck, in every sense of the word; but he couldn’t accept it. To him this tendency to tears taunted him, reminded him of the pathetic creature he’d become. He needed to be stronger than that. He reached out and picked up the picture, careful to hold it by its edges. The photo must have been at least two years old, but despite the rounded cheeks and schoolgirl plaits, it could only have been Billy. Billy without the street-weary look, Billy with an innocent smile. He looked at Meredith and nodded. She frowned at his emotion and looked away.
‘How did you get this?’ he asked. That was quick work – but, he reminded himself, that was the exact reason why he’d called on her help. She was the best.
‘We found her parents. Played a hunch on the churches. You were right about her father being a youth worker; we picked the biggest Pasifika church we could find, and, bingo, there he was. I figured if you were of dodgy immigration status you’d try to lose yourself in the biggest organisation you could, among all the other people with dodgy immigration status. The minister picked her and her parents from the description straight away, and called them in for a meeting at the church last night. He must hold a bit of clout – they came in immediately.’ Never underestimate the power of the Church.
‘Were you there? What were they like?’ he asked, his eyes still transfixed by the picture. What he wanted to say was, What were they like, the bastards who could throw their young daughter out onto the street? But he was afraid, with the prickle of anger simmering under his skin, that if he went down that track he might lose what little vestige of control he had.
‘They looked very nice for a pair of self-righteous, hypocritical, arsehole pricks … Well, the mother had the grace to look embarrassed, but the father was definitely a self-righteous, hypocritical, arsehole prick.’
Max was startled by the vehemence of her words. She was never shy at speaking her mind, but this was something more. He grasped, with gratitude, that she was taking this personally too.
‘Why, what did they say?’
‘It wasn’t what they said, it was what they didn’t say. I had to sit there and listen to them justifying their actions and grit my teeth because they never once made any apology for throwing their daughter out, and to my mind they didn’t look that concerned. It was all this “it’s in the Lord’s hands” righteous crap; “she shamed our family in front of God and the Church” rubbish. And do you know why they threw her out? Did she tell you what happened?’ She had a real head of steam going.
‘She wouldn’t tell me exactly what, although I think it was to do with a boy. All she said was her father got pretty rough, and her mother just stood there and let it happen, except where her little brother tried to step in and protect her, but her mother pulled him away.’
‘The gold standard of parenting. It was a boy, alright. She got pregnant. He scarpered, naturally.’ Max had suspected something of that magnitude. No parent would abandon a child without an immense cause – he of all people knew that – but he had never outright asked. She wouldn’t be the last teenager to find herself in that position, but he’d have thought most parents would do their best to support their child, not vilify them.
‘What galls me, though, is that they sat there explaining why they had done the right thing in throwing her out, because she had disobeyed them and God, and tarnished their good name, and all this crap about being a bad example for her younger brothers and sisters. Not once was there concern for her welfare. And worse, they had no idea that I was sitting there shocked that they could have thrown a vulnerable young woman out onto the streets; they honestly thought they had done the right thing. They threw her out the day she told them, and they haven’t seen her since. When I asked if they’d gone looking for her, the father did his best to make out how badly he had been wronged, and what a strange thing for me to ask. Fucking bastard. Never once asked if she’d had the baby, and if so where it was.’
‘What is her name?’ Max asked. He touched the face on the photo. ‘What’s her proper name?’ Jesus, she’d been pregnant. But she’d never looked that way, and there was certainly no baby on the scene. She must have aborted it or lost it. He felt a visceral ache in his chest as he calculated this must have all happened around the time when he’d first met her, those first nights. No wonder she looked so sad, so scared. She’d coped with all that by herself. The thought of the physical toll it must have taken, let alone the emotional, made the spark of anger he felt leap into a flame. No one should ever have to go through that alone.
‘Her name was Vilimena Naitaku.’
‘And her father?’
‘I’m not giving you that.’
He looked up at her, and was met by those tough green eyes. ‘Why, what do you think I’m going to do, go over there and deal to him? Look at me. I’m hardly a threat.’
‘Yeah, well I’m not going to have you running around town like some avenging angel. I will keep you up to date with progress, but I’m not about to give you any details that you can rush off and follow. You’ll just get in the way.’
‘She’s not dead, you know.’
‘I never said she was.’
‘I owe it to her to find her.’
‘Don’t turn this into a crusade, Max. I realise how hugely important this is for you, how personal it has become, but I’m not going to let you fuck it all up this time.’
Her words were a slap to his face. Finally it came out – after all of the tiptoeing around and avoiding, it finally surfaced. This was how she truly felt.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he said; defensiveness crawled into his voice.
Accusation had leapt into hers. ‘Well, whose fault was it then, Max? I trusted you. I gave you his name, and what did you do? You jumped in there like some bloody hero, instead of trusting me, trusting us to do our job, and it all turned to fucking shit, the worst kind of fucking shit.’ She stood up, the chair nearly falling over with the sudden movement, and she paced back and forth, her hands on her hips, before she stopped and pointed at him to deliver another salvo. ‘And do you have any idea of the hell I had to go through, the trouble I got into for trusting you? It was alright for you, resigning and buggering off to avoid the heat, but I got dragged through it all, the investigations, the accusations, I was on trial for what you did, I copped the blame, it was my career that nearly went down the toilet. All because I stupidly trusted you. You fucked it up for everyone.’
