“So you found a stranger.”
“I found a man with a consultancy and a good suit.” She turned her cup a quarter turn. “I did not ask him to invent a theft.”
Then she made the offer, and she made it well. Marek’s suspension could stop being true on Monday: clean record, pension untouched, a clock and a leaving do at Ashfield. And I could have Ashfield. Manager’s job, my own store, no more Thursdays on the 7:40.
“All I have to do is sign.”
“All you have to do is sign.” She slid a folder across the desk, a contract in it with a yellow tab at page nine. “Read 9.3 first. I’m not hiding it from you.”
I read it twice.
9.3 The Responsible Officer shall be solely accountable for the accuracy of all figures contained in the Rationalisation Review and for any representation made to the Trustees in respect of them.
“This is a director’s contract,” I said.
“It’s the contract Gideon was going to hand you in June. It’s here now because I need this finished.” She took her glasses off. “Sign page nine and the review goes through. You’re covered.”
“I’m employed.”
“Both,” she said. “That’s the job.”
“Why give a directorship to the person closing the stores?”
“Because when the letters go out, somebody has to have certified the figures behind them.” She put her glasses back on. “I’d rather it was somebody who has walked every one of those shops and can say so honestly. Wouldn’t you?”
Nine minutes. That’s how long I sat there with the pen in my hand and my thumb on the cap, because the offer was made of everything I wanted and one thing I couldn’t see the edge of.
That was the third thing I got wrong. Not the sitting. The wanting.
At the door I asked who wrote the margin.
“The man I hired to write it,” she said. “He wrote the schedule. I gave him the branches. He gave me the page.”
So the page was in his hand, and P to sign had been written in March, before the trust had told any of us he existed, and before I ever saw his face.
Marek was in his kitchen with the radio on and the kettle held down at the switch, the way he always holds it. He asked whether I’d eaten before he asked anything else, which was worse than shouting.
I showed him the photograph of the transfer note. He looked at the authorising box for a long time. Then I opened the staff directory on his laptop and turned the screen round.
“That’s him,” he said. “That’s the consultant.”
“Say it slowly.”
“March. A Tuesday, raining sideways. He came in with a clipboard and asked for two years of stock files and the loading bay keys. Said he was doing a survey for the trust.” Marek rubbed his thumb along the edge of the table. “He hung his coat on the racking. I told him not to and he did it anyway.”
“Did he sign in?”
Marek looked up. “Everybody signs in. There’s a book behind the trade counter. Hardback, going back to 2011.” He pushed his chair back. “I’ve been wanting to say that to somebody for a fortnight and there’s been nobody to say it to.”
We went in through the yard at half nine. I gave him his keys back in the car and he turned the fob over twice before he used it. The book was under the till drawer, and the page for the fifteenth of March had three lines on it. The third was in blue-black, small and level, the same hand as the margin and the same hand as the box on the transfer note.
G. Marsh, consultant, Bramwell & Sons. In 9.20. Out 11.40.
I photographed the page with my thumb holding it flat so the spine wouldn’t take it back.
On the Friday the board met on the fourth floor with the blinds up. Rosalind chaired. Lena sat two places down with her ledger closed. Two trustees, and the trust’s solicitor taking the minutes in shorthand.
I presented the region for six minutes, because I had promised to present the region, and then I said I could not certify the figures, and asked for the three items to be entered into the minutes as exhibits.
The page first, dated 12 March, margin note and all. Ashfield: M out by Q3, P to sign. My initial, in his hand, and no contract in existence that would have made me answerable for a single one of those figures.
