Stark was oblivious to the meeting going on above his head in the upstairs conference room, as indeed were most of the staff. He was exhausted. He had slept, eventually, drifting off at five in the morning, to be woken two hours later by the alarm on his phone. The dream was still rich in his mind. It hadn’t dissipated to half-forgotten wisps and fragments, as dreams do. It remained clear, and its persistence frightened him.
Jenny was at her desk. It was 9am. She looked tired. The column of files on her desk seemed taller. He wondered if it had ever reached the ceiling. Such was the life before him, he thought ruefully.
“Bad night,” she said. “Couldn’t get a wink of sleep. Things go round and round.”
“I know the feeling.”
The conversation was sparse. Stark had no desire to talk. He was too tired. It seemed Jenny was of the same disposition. The work kept coming. The emails didn’t stop. Stark cursed their invention. They epitomised the “instant” culture, when light-speed responses were expected – demanded – and human beings were expected to behave like machines. Patience, thought, deliberation, consideration; such notions were prehistoric. Joe Public expected everything now. If they didn’t get it, then it was easy to complain, because, thought Stark, complaint was now instinctive. We have become a bunch of wheedling cowards. We need a fucking war.
But then, who phones their sister at 2am because of a bad dream? He gave a grim smile, as he mooned over his laptop. He was just like everybody else. Christ, he felt resentful. Lack of sleep, he knew. But that didn’t change his mood. Again, for the hundredth time, images popped into his head, unbidden. The child assaulted in her bed. The woman touching the branch from which she would hang herself.
Someone had sent him a twenty-page attachment. An impossibly obscure employment contract to review.
“Christ,” he said aloud, “I wish I smoked.”
Jenny turned, face pale and set. She pushed her chair back. “Well I fucking do. Let’s go.”
Stark offered no complaint. Jenny grabbed her jacket. He followed her out of the room, along the corridor to the back door. The fire exit. She pushed the crossbar down, shouldered the door open. They emerged into a shaded paved section of the garden, hidden away from prying eyes. Jenny got a packet of Marlboro Red’s from an inside pocket, a plastic lighter, and lit up.
She offered him one. For the first time in his life, he was tempted. He shook his head.
She shrugged, leant on the wall, took a deep drag.
“Two things I never did until I started this fucking job. Smoking and swearing.”
“At least you’re not drinking,” he remarked.
“Ah. I forgot. Three things.”
Stark gave her a thoughtful gaze. Perhaps it was the effects of the dream, the lack of sleep, his general frame of mind, or maybe a hundred other things, but he asked the question.
“Is it worth it?”
Her lips curled into a sceptical smile – “You’re the brand-new trainee. I’d better be careful what I say. After all, we don’t want to dispirit our fresh recruits.” She inhaled another lungful of nicotine, blew up into the air, attempting a smoke ring. “I can never get the hang of that.” She focused her attention back on Stark. “I would say this. And this is an opinion only, so please don’t quote. If you want to see the shitty side of human nature, enjoy getting rich bastards richer, bow and grovel to the whims of greedy grasping people, then, my son, this is the job for you. If that’s what floats your boat, yes – well worth it.”
Stark gave a sardonic grin. “I’m glad I asked.”
“You’ll learn.” A silence fell. The sun dipped, hidden behind rolling clouds. Looked like rain was coming. Stark shivered. Summer was clinging on. Barely.
“You don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to,” Jenny said.
Stark was baffled. “I would tell you if I knew what you were asking. Maybe.”
“There’s rumours. Law firms love rumours. And gossip. Lawyers need gossip to survive. It gives us… sustenance.”
“Sustenance.” Stark had a good idea where this was going. “What would you like to know?”
She took another puff, scrutinised Stark. “You don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to. And I can understand perfectly why you wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
“Alfie Willow? The chat is that maybe you were caught up in all that? I was wondering…”
Stark leant on the wall beside her. He felt he could sleep for a year. Run as fast and as hard as you want, the past is always at your shoulder.
“Yes, is the short answer. He left me in a coma for eight weeks. After that, convalescence. It took me several years before I plucked up the courage to apply for a job in a lawyer’s office. And here I am.”
Jenny seemed to consider what he said. “It was unbelievable. Unimaginable. I wonder what would drive a man to do what he did.”
“Push the right buttons – or the wrong buttons, for that matter – then anyone can do anything, I suppose.” Memories resurfaced, ones he would never forget. “Alfie Willow had come to the end. He was not the type of man to run. Prison was unthinkable. His ego demanded that if he had to go, that those he thought important should go with him. He was not one who believed in half measures. The two most important things in his life were his family, and his work. It was therefore only logical, at least to Alfie, that if the end had come, then the end should also come for his wife and family, and his staff. If he could have burned the world down, then he would have done that too.”
She studied him, a curious expression on her face. “You’re trying to find sense in the mind of a psychopath.”
Stark gave a wintry grin. “Not me. These were the observations by the doctors trying to help me through my… recovery. For me, there’s little point in trying to rationalise a psychopath’s mind, basically, because they’re mad. They’re sick.”
She gave a small sad smile. “Or misunderstood.”
“Not from the victim’s perspective.”
She finished off her cigarette, stubbed it against the wall, pinged the stub into some bushes.
“Gotta hide the evidence.”
Stark, suddenly, acted on an impulse he could never have predicted. He essayed a somewhat lame smile. “Maybe, if your diary isn’t too full, we could have a drink, sometime? Cheap beer only, until I get paid.”
“I don’t drink.”
Stark blew through his lips, started to flounder. “Well…”
“I’m lying. I drink. All forms of alcohol, without exception. Especially cheap beer. Are you asking me on a date, Jonathan?”
“I believe so.”
“Your third day. You’re a fast worker.”
“I would have done it on my first day, but that would have seemed presumptuous.”
She laughed. He laughed with her. Then her phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen, scowled.
“It never ends. Back to the shit. Don’t you have a lunch appointment today?”
“Edward Stoddart requests my presence on the top floor.”
They made their way back into the building.
“I’ve never been to the top floor,” she said, as they entered the office. “I don’t believe Stoddart even knows I exist. You must be the special one.”
“I don’t feel particularly special. In fact, as of this moment, I feel particularly ordinary.”
They sat at their respective desks. To Stark’s dismay, his inbox had three fresh emails. More little mouths to feed.
“You’re right,” he muttered. “It never ends.”
Jenny studied her computer screen, started clicking the keyboard.
“Yes,” she said.
Stark looked at her. “Yes?”
“Cheap beer. How could I possibly resist?”