Fault Line - Retail
Read Fault Line - Retail Online
Authors: Robert Goddard
| Fault Line - Retail |
| Robert Goddard [20] |
| Robert Goddard |
| Random House UK (2011) |
Not
all scars are visible. Jonathan Kellaway needs no reminding of that on
the verge of his retirement from china clay conglomerate
Intercontinental Kaolins. The company has left its mark in pits and
spoil heaps around the world. But it has also left a no less enduring
mark on some of those who have worked for it, Kellaway included. Its
past, as well as its future, is a treacherous place.
So Kellaway
is surprised when IK's founder and former chairman, Greville Lashley,
sets him a final task before he quits. The academic hired by the board
to write the company's history has discovered a gap covering several
years in the records of the small Cornish china clay outfit Lashley
started with and where Kellaway also began his career. He is despatched
to Cornwall to learn what has become of the missing documents.
But
the search is a voyage into dangerous waters. A dead friend, a lost
lover and a clutch of mysteries from Kellaway's youth in Cornwall and
Italy in the late 1960s come back to haunt him -- and to tempt him with
the hope that he may at last learn the truth about the tragedies and
misfortunes that blighted those years. It is a truth that has claimed
several victims before. If he pursues it hard and long enough, he may
only add himself to the list.
But pursue it he must. Because the
truth, he belatedly realizes, is the secret that has consumed his life.
This time -- this last time -- he will not stop. Until he has found it.
About the Book
A search for missing documents in an international mining company becomes a voyage into dangerous waters.
A dead friend, a lost lover and a clutch of mysteries from Jonathan Kellaway’s youth in Cornwall and Italy in the late 1960s come back to haunt him when he is tasked with discovering why there is a gaping hole in his employer’s records – and to tempt him with the hope that he may at last learn the truth about the tragedies of those years. It is a truth that has claimed several victims before. If he pursues it hard and long enough, he may only add himself to the list.
But pursue it he will. Because the truth, he comes to realize, is the secret that has consumed his life. This time he will not stop… until he has found it.
Contents
Robert Goddard
2010
ONE
I WASN’T A
frequent visitor to Presley Beaumont’s office. I wasn’t a frequent visitor to Intercontinental Kaolins’ Augusta HQ at all. For years I’d been a field man, happy to steer clear of head office number-crunching. I remembered IK’s base in Sandersville and preferred it (by a long way) to the anonymous tower of angular steel and tinted glass that was our new centre of operations.
Our
new centre?
Theirs
, I’d soon be able to say. I’d handed in my notice. I was on my way out. Resigning or retiring? You could take your pick. Either way, I was leaving.
But not, apparently, as quickly and quietly as my line manager had led me to expect. He’d supposed – I’d supposed – that my three months’ notice would be waived; that I’d be seen off swiftly with a back-slap and a cheque in lieu: the travelator of working life moving on, with someone else stepping on at the start just as I stepped off at the end.
Then the call had come from the HR director: Beaumont wanted to see me before anything was finalized. There were ‘issues he wanted to address’. What might they be? No point asking. I knew that even as I asked.
I’d worked for Beaumont’s father. A good man. I’d said a few words at his funeral that came from the heart. The son was smoother, smarter,
sleeker
. I didn’t like him. I certainly didn’t trust him. He probably knew that – though, naturally, neither of us was ever likely to admit as much.
He’d put on some weight since I’d last seen him. But his tailor had kept pace effortlessly. The suit was a work of art, celebrated in shimmering fibre-notes that threw crimson in among the bronze. His smile was broad, his handshake firm. The extra poundage made him look younger than ever, puffing out his babyish complexion. He clearly thought he was looking good.
‘Can we get you some coffee, Jonathan?’ he enquired in an amiable tone.
‘Will I have time to drink it, Presley?’ I countered. ‘I mean, it’s good of you to call me in for a parting word, but I know how busy you are.’
‘There’s time.’ The smile stiffened fractionally. ‘Sit down.’
We took our seats either side of his vast and virtually empty desk. He leant back in his ergonomically over-designed chair and extended an arm to flick an intercom switch. ‘Fix us some coffee, would you, Beth? I believe Jonathan takes his black.’
‘I’m impressed you remember that.’
He smiled. ‘It is impressive, I agree.’
Someone once said to me he thought Presley smiled a lot just to remind you he had teeth. Expensive teeth, by the look of them.
‘I was surprised to hear you were planning to leave us, Jonathan, I surely was.’
‘I turned sixty last October. Time to come in out of the weather.’
‘We could have fixed you up with something less physically arduous here, if that was the problem.’
‘Coast down to retirement behind a desk, you mean?’
‘Exactly. Not one as big as this, of course.’ He chuckled.
‘Naturally not.’
A pause, inching towards awkwardness. Then he said: ‘I heard you’d expressed … reservations … about the Rio Tocaru project.’
Reservations? You certainly could call them that. The Amazon Basin represented the future of Intercontinental Kaolins in particular and the china clay industry in general. It was going to be a bigger source than Georgia and South Carolina. It was already bigger than Devon and Cornwall. But extraction involved
deforestation
– a lot of it. I’d overseen much of the geological research that had taken IK into Brazil in the first place. I couldn’t deny the part I’d played. But I could end my involvement before any more rain forest was strip-mined out of existence. It was just about all I could do.
‘Not going green in your old age, are you, Jonathan?’
‘Late middle age at worst is how I like to think of sixty.’
‘That’s probably—’
He broke off as Beth entered with the coffee. There was a grinning flurry of three-way small talk as the tray was set down. Then she was gone, leaving Presley to eye me, still smiling, over the rim of his cup.
His expression planted a question in my mind. We’d locked horns a few times over the years. So, were his memories of those times the same as mine? Had he forgotten more than I had – or less? And which of us did the answer hand the advantage to?
‘Any reservations I may have are irrelevant,’ I said, after a cautious sip of coffee. ‘I’m out of the game.’
‘Not yet.’
‘Surely you aren’t going to insist on me working out my notice?’
‘I’m not proposing to insist on anything.’
‘Then … why the summons?’
‘Summons? Is that how it came across?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Well, I’m sorry. Communications glitch. You know how it is.’
I did know. That was why I didn’t believe there’d been a glitch. ‘Is there something I can do for you, Presley?’ I matched him smile for smile. ‘Before I go.’
‘Not for me.’ He raised his eyebrows and spread his arms expansively, disowning responsibility. ‘I’m just the messenger.’
‘And who’s the message from?’
A beat, as he let me wait for his reply. Then: ‘The old man.’
I should have known. There was only one person in Presley’s world he’d be carrying a message for. The old man. Greville Lashley, former chairman, officially retired, yet still not quite out of touch. And he never would be while he lived. Everyone
who
knew him knew that. And I, for my sins, knew him well.
‘It’s the damnedest thing, Jonathan. I got the word from him to call you on the same day I heard you were leaving us. Seems you’d have got a break from Rio Tocaru anyway. Without having to do anything as drastic as resigning.’
‘Unfortunately, I have resigned. So—’
‘You can wrap this assignment up within a few weeks, that would be my guess. Well,
his
guess, I should say. I apprised him of your … pending retirement. And he said, “There’s time for him to do one last job for me.” You should be flattered. I got the feeling there’s no one else he’d trust to do it.’
Trust was hard to win from Greville Lashley. And I didn’t fool myself for a minute I’d ever won it. But, then, who had? Maybe that was the point. It wasn’t that there was no one else he trusted. There was just no one else at all. ‘What’s the job?’ I asked warily.
‘Has word reached you about the old man’s vanity project?’
‘His
what
?’
‘A few months ago, he asked the board to commission a history of the company. Well, both companies until the merger. CCC
and
NAK.’ Cornish China Clays and North American Kaolins were IK’s forebears. I couldn’t for a moment imagine why Greville should want their corporate paths documented. It would amount, in many ways, to his own professional biography, something I’d have expected him to do his level best to prevent ever seeing the light of day. But maybe, just maybe, extreme old age was chipping away at his reticence. ‘So, we set it up for him. Hired a suitable historian. Fay Whitworth.
Doctor
Fay Whitworth. Bristol University. Gave her all the access she needed and let her get on with it.’
‘I’ve heard nothing about this.’
‘No. Well, no particular reason you should have, I suppose. She hasn’t touched the NAK side of things yet. Or anything post-merger. To be honest, I’m not sure she ever will.
That’s
the problem.’
‘Meaning what, exactly?’
Presley’s smile faded. ‘She claims whole chunks of CCC records
from
the nineteen fifties and sixties have gone missing. They should be in the basement in St Austell – but they aren’t. Anyhow, the perfectionist doctor says she can’t make any further progress without them. She’s effectively gone on strike. The old man wants you to get her back to work.’