Brenda Brennan, ‘BB’ to the senior people in the company, ‘Miss Brennan’ to all the rest, was at her desk at seven a.m. as usual.
She had been coming to work at that early hour for the past thirty years, first as the young secretary to Brian Malone, when he was an up-and-coming property developer and estate agent, now as the personal assistant to his son, Christopher, the chief executive of Malone Group.
There was something about being in the building when no one else was there. It felt like a private domain of which she was in control. In the quietness she could order her thoughts and her papers, prepare for the day. Or, as was becoming more frequently the case, steel herself for it.
She did not mind being alone; much of her life was solitary. She had been married once, a long time ago and briefly, but that had been a mistake. Her job was what mattered most to her and it was a job which would not tolerate conflicting demands on her life and her loyalty. So she had made her decision. Here was where her affections lay.
But of late she had begun to have doubts.
She made coffee for herself. It was the only time during the day when she did so. The girls in the outer office would take over that task but they would not be here until eight fifteen.
She stood cradling the warm mug, breathing its aroma, as she looked out of the window. The Malone Group headquarters was in Belfast city centre in what had once been a sooty old corner building erected by an austere Victorian insurance company. But in an extensive restoration operation some years ago the grime of a century had been power-washed away to reveal the warmth of the russet sandstone underneath. Now it stood proud and revitalised, an ancient hero among the upstarts of glass and steel.
The chief executive’s suite of offices took the whole top floor. From the windows on one side, Brenda could look out on to the dome of the City Hall, green and streaked by time and weather, and from another she could look down the thoroughfares that led to the waterfront. She saw the traffic building from a trickle to a metallic stream, watched red double-decker buses decanting Lowry figures onto the pavements.
The softness of the early morning light was beginning to sharpen but Brenda did not feel herself brightening with it.
Maybe she should finally admit to herself that at fifty three she was getting too old for this game. She did not need the salary. She was comfortably off, she had a good portfolio of investments, a house which would make a substantial profit if she chose to sell it and move somewhere smaller, and there was her Malone Group pension to come. She could take early retirement any time she liked and she did not believe that Christopher would stand in her way. In fact, he might be glad to see her go; it was getting hard to tell with him.
But then, she reflected, maybe she was not the problem at all.
When he had taken over as chief executive several years ago, she had felt certain that he would be a youthful version of what had gone before, not that Brian had for one second ever lost the spring in his step. Hardly. He was a player on a world stage now. He was Sir Brian Malone, the tycoon.
He had stayed as chairman, keeping close to his roots, even though Malone Group was a tiny grain of sand in a business empire that now included banking, newspapers and television stations in the United States and Canada where he spent most of his life.
Christopher had persuaded her to stay in the job she had done so long and so well, even though she had volunteered to step aside so that he could appoint his own PA if he wished. He would not hear of it. He had insisted on maintaining her as that vital link between his father’s stewardship and his own. But no matter how affectionately he put it, it was not a decision based on sentiment or loyalty; she was under no illusions about that. He needed her because she was bloody good at her job. No one could do it better.
At first it had been fine. He had a bright business brain, an instinct for profitable development and he had attracted a handful of new and youthful executives made from the same mould as himself. But very soon he had begun to change. Most of that fresh team had gone now, exhausted, either sacked or else driven out by the ferocious style of a boss who could not tolerate seeing any of his managers with both feet on the ground at the same time.
Brenda had watched the confident veneer crack and peel and even she herself had felt the sharp end of his rage once or twice. But she had not allowed it to wound her. She had been employed by a tougher man than this.
Christopher’s father could get angry, too. Yet in all the years of working with him she had always known that it would be only temporary, soon forgotten. It was never personal, there was never any spite in it, nor was she ever in any doubt about Brian Malone’s ability to overcome whatever crisis had sparked it and to move on to new and greater achievements.
The son was different. Stress drove him and it clung like a wet shirt to everyone around him.
All of which had created an unstable environment, made worse by a couple of dubious acquisitions which had not entirely worked but which had been off-loaded quickly before becoming a profit drain.
Then he had recovered his poise with an audacious proposal to take over an ailing leisure group. It had required all his powers of persuasion to swing the board behind him but he had done it with the aid of a very thorough business plan.
It had worked, too. The leisure division seemed to be thriving and the market appeared to smile on it. But here, on this lofty plateau above the city, Brenda was sensing the first cool breath of a wind that was begnning to change direction.
She heard what was being said. She wondered, as she knew the market and then the directors and the shareholders would soon wonder, if too much of the powerful energies of Malone Group and its chief executive were being channelled in one direction. Confidential assessments passed across her desk, documents that he seemed to ignore, and they hinted that the rest of the group’s activities were not flowing as vigorously as they should. Stagnation was a real risk.
She turned from the window. Christopher was obsessed with this leisure business. She picked up a folder. Here was another example of it, the papers for a meeting at nine o’clock at which he would talk about his idea of buying a chain of cinemas. She would sit in on the session and take the notes, watching the new clutch of wan-faced young executives squirm under his bullying interrogation if any part of their preparation did not come up to scratch.
Sometimes she wished one of them would stand up to him, just get to their feet and tell him not to talk to them like that, but no one ever did. They got paid a lot of money to put up with this abuse and some of the men had wives and families to support.
If anyone ever did tell him where to get off, it would be a woman, Brenda reckoned. Only a woman would have the balls.
Then why didn’t she do it herself? She gave a little smile. Life was too short. This, too, will pass.
Occasionally she wondered if Christopher would have been any different if his marriage had not broken up. There had been a son. His wife had remarried and she lived in London now. He hardly ever saw the boy. But then he had not seen much of him before the divorce, either.
It had been his own fault. As well as working hard, he threw himself into his chosen recreational activities with exactly the same enthusiasm. The list had included squash, tennis, sailing, drink and women.
Only the last two had survived and now they were getting the better of him. His heavy looks were over-ripe. When he had turned forty a while ago, a lot of people had been surprised to find that he had not passed that milestone already.
She looked at her watch. Seven thirty. He would be on his way from his home in County Antrim, sitting in the back of the car buried in the newspapers which his driver had brought. Lately, he got the lot, not just the heavyweights like the Financial Times or the Daily Telegraph but the red-top tabloids, too, and he scoured them every day before getting to work.
When he had finished, her phone would ring and she would take down instructions about the day and details of calls for her to make straight away. Sometimes the car was pulling into the parking bay at the rear of the building and he had not reached the end of the list.
She turned on the radio. Terry Wogan was playing the Bee Gees on Radio 2. She poured another coffee.
She had finished it and he still had not phoned.
She checked her watch again. Seven forty-five. He would be here at any minute.
But no call. That was odd.
The phone rang.
‘Miss Brennan?’ It was not him. Instead, she recognised the voice of Damian, his driver.
‘Damian?’
‘Yes, miss.’
She was puzzled. ‘Where are you? Everything all right?’
‘I’m not sure.’ He was speaking very quietly on the car phone and she could hardly hear him against the engine noise. ‘I’m just pulling into the back of the building. Look – could you come down?’
She did not say anything. She hung up and headed for the lift. So far she had been the only one to use it today and it had stayed at her floor. When she got to the ground, she turned left and out through the rear door that led to the private car park.
Damian was bringing the big BMW in. The shutter was rattling down behind him at an unruffled electronic pace. Other people would be arriving soon but at the moment the only other car here was her own, an Alfa Romeo saloon.
As Damian pulled into the chief executive’s space, she hurried towards him. He got out. He was a man of about thirty five, athletic and fit enough to be a bodyguard, which was one of the reasons he had this job. He looked anxious.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked him.
‘I don’t know. It’s the boss. He . . .’
She pulled the rear door open, noticing for a moment that the pile of newspapers was untouched on the seat. Christopher Malone sat beside them, his briefcase open on his lap. Documents from it were strewn on the floor. His head lay back against the seat. His face was red, blotchy. Round the bridge of his nose the broken veins seemed lit up.
For a second she thought that he was dead. Then she saw that his eyes were wide open and that tears were pouring down his cheeks.
‘Christopher?’ she said. She never called him that. Usually, she did not call him anything.
He lifted his head and turned to her. She saw desolation in his face, raw fear in his glistening eyes.
‘BB,’ he sobbed. ‘Help me. I can’t handle this any more.’