The Land Rover Defender stops at a gate along a deserted country road and the nine members of the Cinq Estates team – Christian, Craig, Danny, Ibrahim, Paul, Suresh, Adam, Bradley and Jamaal – are told to take off their blindfolds and get out. As soon as the door is shut, the driver speeds off. There is nothing but woodland and fields for miles.
‘Where are we?’ Danny asks.
‘Surrey,’ Christian says. ‘That’s all you need to know.’
The team are dressed in army fatigues and everyone is carrying a rucksack. Craig is leaning against the gate, yawning. It is warm but overcast, and muddy underfoot. One of the new boys, Jamaal, has wrapped his shirt around his waist to reveal a Chicago Bulls basketball vest which almost comes down to his knees.
There’s a rustling in the bushes and then suddenly a savage howling as a huge figure in combat dress and a balaclava charges towards them firing a pistol over their heads. The Cinq team throw themselves on the floor, apart from Bradley, who sprints off down the road. The gunman flings himself over the gate, pulls his balaclava off and laughs manically. He is well over six feet tall and heavily built with a bent, scarred nose and a thick brown moustache. He has black and green war paint smeared over his cheeks and forehead.
‘Sorry ladies, did I frighten you?’ he barks. ‘Get to your feet and line up in front of me.’
They follow his orders. Suresh, a timid teenager who only joined the company yesterday, is shaking. Craig and Christian stand at opposite ends. He points at Jamaal and without having to say anything Jamaal puts his shirt back on.
‘My name is Griff Hammerson and I’ll be leading you today.’ He’s Welsh and his tone is cold and intimidating. ‘I am a retired Royal Marine commando and I served this country for almost three decades in some of the most violent and bloody conflicts in our history.
‘I’ve killed men in the Falklands, Northern Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, Libya and Sierra Leone… and Germany, although that was an accident. I am a trained killing machine.’ He walks towards Craig. ‘If I wanted to, I could kill all of you with my bare hands, dismember your bodies and bury you in these woods, but luckily for you I’m in a good mood today.’ He pulls a manic, teeth-baring smile. ‘That was a joke. You are allowed to laugh.’
The team exchange nervous looks and eventually manage fake grins.
‘Good,’ Griff continues. ‘You now look a little less like frightened rabbits. Now, you may be wondering why I surprised you like I did. It was not to frighten you, or purely to give myself a good laugh, even though I did find it rather amusing, it was to assess how, as a team, you react in a high-pressure situation. The aim of today’s session is to build confidence and teach you how to think clearly under pressure.
‘Now, your reactions told me you are a team low on self-confidence and lacking leadership. The fact that one of your team scarpered at the first sign of trouble told me everything. What was his name?’
‘Bradley. He’s new,’ Christian answers, frowning.
‘Has anyone got his mobile phone number so we can get him back?’
‘He hasn’t got a mobile at the moment. Some kids mugged him on a night bus.’
‘Jesus Christ. He’s as good as useless then. Forget him. He can find his own way home,’ Griff says, shaking his head. ‘As for the rest of you, why did nobody stand up and try to disarm me? Where was the leadership? Who was going to put themselves on the line for the sake of the team? Well?’
‘We thought you might shoot us,’ Danny says.
‘If I’d have been firing real bullets rather than blanks, I would have shot all of you. It was one against nine, yet your first reaction was to protect yourselves which made you all equally vulnerable. It would have taken only two of you to wrestle me to the floor and disarm me. I accept that it takes a brave man to tackle a guy with a gun, but you have to be brave in whatever you do, be it fighting wars or selling houses. One, or at worst two of you may have been wounded but with the threat neutralized you have seven or eight other guys who you’d be able to rely on to treat your wounds and call for medical assistance… unless of course you’d taken a bullet to the head from close range, in which case you’d be dead as fuck.’
Griff takes a pen and paper from the pocket of his combat trousers. ‘Which one of you lot is Christian?’
Christian steps forwards. Griff makes a note.
‘Right, Christian, who’s your number two?’
‘I haven’t got one. It’s just me.’
Griff looks annoyed. ‘Well who’s the second most experienced one of you?’
‘Err, Craig I suppose.’
Griff makes Christian and Craig stand either side of him and divides the others into two teams. He then asks them to come up with a team name for their opponents.
It’s Christian’s Crusaders vs. Bitch Boy Squadron.
*
Craig blows his nose and then pours a cold and flu remedy into a mug of boiling water. His eyes look sore and he keeps feeling his face and forehead with the back of his hand.
The Monday morning meeting has been cancelled as Christian has emailed to say he’s at a branch managers’ conference and won’t be back until tomorrow.
Craig makes a rasping, dry coughing sound and blows his nose again. He leaves his drink to cool on the worktop and goes to the bathroom to get some more tissues.
When he gets back, Hannah is there making herself a hot chocolate. She’s wearing glasses and her hair is tied back. She looks over her shoulder and when she sees it’s him she turns and smiles.
‘Don’t come too close, Han. I think I’ve got a cold.’
She looks slightly aghast as he nears her. ‘Craig, you look really poorly. Have you got a temperature?’
‘I’m not sure. My head feels hot but I keep shivering.’
‘Craig you might have flu. You should be at home in bed.’
‘I can’t afford a day in bed. I’ll be OK. I feel a bit better than I did earlier and once I drink this I’m sure it’ll go off,’ he says, pointing at his mug.
‘Yes, but if it doesn’t go off you should go home. I don’t think anyone’s going to want to be shown round a house by someone who’s coughing all over them.’
Craig sneezes into a tissue and apologises.
Hannah takes half a step back. ‘And you might be passing your germs on to other people.’
‘Sorry, Han,’ he says again.
‘Did this start on the teambuilding weekend?’
‘I started feeling ill on the way home but I thought that might have been lack of sleep.’
‘Didn’t you stay in a hotel?’
‘Everyone else did but me and Danny had to sleep under a tarpaulin in the woods all night and it poured with rain. We got soaking wet.’
‘You slept in the woods? Why did you have to do that?’ Hannah throws her spoon in the sink.
‘It was a forfeit for being on the losing team. There were four of us at the start but one guy almost drowned when our raft fell apart and was taken to hospital and then Jamaal – do you know him?’
‘Is that the kid who talks all gangsta?’
‘Yes - even though his real name’s Malcolm and he’s from High Wycombe - well, he got us lost on the orienteering because he wouldn’t go near any dark areas on the map because he thought that meant they were muddy and he didn’t want to get his trainers dirty.’
Hannah is smiling. ‘Are you joking?’
‘I wish I was. He stormed off when me and Danny had a go at him and then Danny twisted his ankle, which is why he’s not in today.’
‘But didn’t they give you a tent or something and a sleeping bag?’
‘The bloke running it, this mad ex-army guy, gave us a tent but it didn’t have enough ropes or pegs so we had to hang it between two trees, which didn’t really work.’
‘And you were out there all night in the rain?’
‘It didn’t rain all night, just for a few hours. And there were cars going up and down the track at all hours. They told us in the morning that we’d pitched up close to a well-known dogging site.’
Hannah laughs.
‘It didn’t seem that funny at the time. Anything could have happened.’
‘You could have joined in. At least you would have kept warm.’
‘No, of course not! Imagine what kind of old freaks you might bump into.’
‘Err, yeah. Anyway, how was your weekend? How was the spa?’
Hannah raises her eyebrows. ‘My weekend was awful. And it wasn’t a spa; it was a hotel in the middle of nowhere that turned out to be a retreat for women with drug and alcohol issues. We should have realised when they insisted on going through our bags when we checked in. There were all these positive thinking posters everywhere and when one of the girls asked what there was to do, the receptionist recommended counselling sessions.’
‘That’s ridiculous, what did you do?’
‘We stayed for a few hours and had a bike ride around the forest… the place was actually really nice but there was no spa, or bar, for obvious reasons, so at around seven we all got taxis back to the station and got the train home.’
‘Who organised it?’
‘No idea. Someone in head office I suppose. The people at the hotel couldn’t understand why we were there either. That was only the start of things though.’
‘What do you mean?’
Hannah sips her hot chocolate and then has a deep intake of breath. ‘I didn’t tell Marcus, my boyfriend, that I was coming home on Saturday as I knew he was having a night out with his mates and I thought it’d be a nice surprise for him, for me to be there when he got back, but he came in about four in the morning and he’d brought a group of people with him.’
‘What, for a party?’
‘Sort of, but that wasn’t the issue. They were being a bit loud and I recognised Marcus’s mates’ voices but then there were some voices I didn’t recognise. And it turned out that,’ Hannah’s tone hardens, ‘Marcus had invited a few girls back to the flat.’
‘Oh,’ Craig says. He has to blow his nose again. ‘But you never know there could be a reason-’
‘Craig, one of them was sitting on his lap with her arms around him when I walked into the living room.’
‘Oh, right. What did you say?’
‘I didn’t say anything. I just stood there. He jumped up and threw everyone out and then we had a huge row.’
‘Shit. Have you sorted things out now?’
‘No. I don’t know. I’ve not spoken to him since Sunday morning. He kept telling me that he’d done nothing wrong but I don’t believe him. I stayed at a friend’s house last night, which is why I look so rough.’
‘Hannah, you don’t look rough, not at all. I look rough. I’m sorry about… everything, but I’m sure you’ll work things out.’
‘Anyway, sorry, you don’t want to listen to me moaning.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘At least I didn’t have to sleep in the woods.’
Craig finishes off his remedy drink. ‘I’d rather hear about your boyfriend than have Christian going on at me.’ Craig starts to sway a little. ‘Is he really at a conference - Christian?’
‘I don’t think so. I got a call from one of the other branch managers this morning wanting to talk to him, and there’s nothing in the diary. Craig are you OK? You’ve gone a bit red.’
‘Yeah, I feel a bit light-headed. I think I might need to sit down. I thought these drinks were meant to make you feel better.’
‘How many have you had?’
‘This morning or in total?’ he asks as they wander back to their desks.
‘This morning.’
‘Eight.’