Second Intention (8 page)

‘
So can I still have the Friday and Monday?’ I asked, hoping my irritation wasn’t showing through too much.

‘
Yes, of course,’ he nodded encouragingly. ‘Look, I really wanted to be able to say yes, but you know how it is. If we need you here we need you here.’

‘
Yeah, sure.’ I said. I didn’t really know what else to say.

*                 *                  *                  *

One hundred and twelve pounds.

That
’s how much extra it cost for our flights to Copenhagen, over what it would have cost if I had just gone ahead and booked them on the Monday evening. Yes, really - in forty-eight hours the cost of the flights out there had gone up by fifty-six pounds a head.

I was now a hundred and twelve pounds worse off, and all because Douglas had pratted about and not given me a straight answer on Monday. I had even suggested to him that we forget about my having the Thursday off, just so I could book the flights, but he persuaded me to wait.

Maybe it was different for him. Maybe with his enormous salary he didn’t ever have to use budget airlines, and therefore didn’t understand how they work. Didn’t understand the need for urgency when it came to booking.

It didn
’t really matter.
I
was the mug who was now out of pocket, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it, except never trust him over something like this again.

I had no choice about it. I had to book the flights anyway, before they got any more expensive. I reached for my wallet, took out my credit card, and began putting in the details so I could confirm the booking. I was so shocked by it all I found myself typing as quickly as possible, just in case the fares went up again in the time it took me to enter the information.

I sat back and took a sip of my scotch, waiting patiently while the booking confirmation chugged through the computer. I had the house to myself, Sue having gone off to bed pretty much as soon as she got in, and I thought I might as well have a nice relaxing evening of my own company. At least, as relaxing as it can be when you find yourself a hundred and twelve pounds worse off.

I could tell she was really struggling with it just then. She had been pretty quiet all day, only exchanging a few words when I had seen her in the morning, and disappearing as soon as I had got in that afternoon. She gets like that sometimes, when it
’s really bad, and I’m used to it by now. I only hoped it wouldn’t spoil all her preparations for the exhibition at the gallery, and that it would have passed by the weekend, when we had promised ourselves a day of Christmas shopping in Norwich.

While I was still logged on I thought I might do a bit of research about Copenhagen, and check out some of the sights we could go and tour when I wasn
’t competing. Sue had told me at breakfast that she had been on the web the night before, checking out galleries and museums in the Danish capital which she would doubtless have liked to visit.

I swear I wasn
’t checking up on her. I was just curious, really. I wondered if she’d found anything interesting so I clicked on “history” and brought up the listing for Tuesday.

It was bizarre. According to the list, nobody had been logged onto the net through
our computer the previous day.

Eight

On Friday morning I got the biggest shock of my working life, and my weekend started seven hours earlier than I had expected.

I didn’t even make it as far as my office. I got through the door into the reception area of our building to find Geoff Prentice, our personnel manager, waiting for me, an embarrassed look on his face.

‘Morning
, Geoff,’ I said brightly, wondering what he was doing there. ‘You okay?’

‘Er  …
actually Richard, I’m here to see you.’ He was looking distinctly cagey, and clearly didn’t feel comfortable with this.

‘Oh?’ I was bemused by the whole thing, and certainly wasn’t at all worried at that stage, even though it wasn’t a normal start to a day. Not by any stretch of the imagination. ‘Not in trouble am I? What have I done? Are my buyers revolting?’

My making light of it didn’t seem to be helping him at all. In fact, he looked as though he wished I would stop talking altogether. Whatever it was, he didn’t want any idle chit-chat.

‘Actually, we need to go and see Douglas. Right away.’ He gestured towards the door which led to the lifts.

‘Oh, okay then.’ I was puzzled. If Douglas had wanted to see me, surely it was easy enough for him to just call me once I got to my desk. I certainly didn’t need an escort. ‘Just let me drop my case off will you?’

I began turning toward the short corridor which led toward the managers’ offices, but he took hold of my arm, stopping me abruptly.

‘I’m really sorry, Richard,’ he said, flatly, and I could tell this was serious.
Really
serious. ‘We’re to go straight there. I’m afraid you won’t be able to go down to your office just yet, and you’ll need to bring your briefcase with you down to Douglas.’

‘Ah. I see.’ I said quietly. So it was like that, was it?

Actually, I didn’t see at all. I had absolutely no idea what this was about, but knew enough about how these things work to realise what was going on. It had never happened to me before, but I had seen this happening to other guys and it was never pretty.

No access to my office, and they wanted to know what I had in my briefcase. Just what was it they suspected me of? Misappropriation of funds? Selling Medicom’s secrets to a rival firm? Inappropriate use of the photocopier?

Whatever it was, I knew one thing. This only ever happened to a senior manager when they were seriously deep in the mire.

There was somebody with Douglas when Geoff and I stepped into his office a few minutes later, somebody I didn’t recognise. He was a short bloke with a beard, glasses, and a paisley tie, which looked as though it might have been fashionable about ten years earlier. He was standing beside Douglas, and was tapping away at the keyboard of my boss’s computer. He glanced up at me and allowed the briefest of frowns to cross his face as I walked towards the desk.

‘Good morning, Richard,’ began Douglas. His tone wasn’t exactly frosty, but then it wasn’t particularly matey either. He gestured towards one of the seats, and I sat down, while Geoff took up a position slightly behind and to one side of me.

‘Morning,’ I replied, deadpan. You didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that this was a situation where, to start with at least, it was best to speak when you were spoken to.

‘I’m very sorry to have to do it like this,’ he went on, his tone measured and businesslike, ‘but I’m afraid a problem has come to light, and we need to have a chat.’

He leaned back in his chair and did the spectacle wiping routine again. He was a
man of great self assurance, in that domain at least, but I could see that even he was finding it difficult to select the best approach for this. I said nothing, and after a moment he continued.

‘As I say, we have a problem. Several members of staff, some of them female,  got in early this morning to find e-mails waiting for them on their computers. Naturally, they thought nothing of opening them up, since they had been sent by somebody internally. Somebody
within
Medicom.’

He let it hang for a moment. Just long enough for me to get a sickening, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. He looked up at the guy with the paisley tie standing next to him and gave a brief nod. With a theatrical flourish, Paisley Tie swung the screen of Douglas’ computer round so I could see it.

What I saw on the screen took my breath away. Not because I’m naïve and unworldly - hell, I know enough about these things to not be easily shocked - but because I realised they thought
I
had something to do with it. After all, if they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been sitting there right then.

There, filling the screen of his computer in living colour, a pneumatically chested blonde was fellating an enormously endowed black muscle man. It was a typical hardcore porn image of the sort anybody could pick up off the
internet in a matter of seconds. Common enough, if you want to go looking for that sort of thing, but certainly not what anybody would want to find on their desktop at work.‘There are six separate images, all of this ilk,’ said Paisley Tie, glancing down at a notebook on the desk, ‘and they seem to have been scattered at random throughout the internal mail network.’

‘This, by the way,’ cut in Douglas, waving a hand up at Paisley Tie, ‘is Derek Green. From DCS.’

Ah. That figured. DCS were the I.T. consultants we had on call twenty-four hours a day. I didn’t like the look of Derek Green, but just hoped he was smart enough to figure out that
I
didn’t have anything to do with sending the smutty pictures around the company. Like him or not, he could prove to be my saviour.

‘The problem is, Richard,’ Douglas went on, ‘the photographs, and their covering message, all came from
your
computer.’

‘What?’ I spluttered. ‘You
don’t seriously think that I …’

‘Richard …
’ Douglas raised his hand, deprecatingly.

‘Oh, it’s quite clear,’ cut in Green. ‘They all most definitely came from your desktop.’

‘Not possible!’ I was close to shouting. ‘When were they sent?’

‘Ah …’ he tapped away at the keyb
oard for a moment. ‘Seven fifty-nine this morning.’

‘Well, there you go.’ I turned to Douglas. ‘I wasn’t even here then. I was at home with Sue. Ask her if you don’t believe me. Take my swipe card. Check my log-in time if you like.’

Douglas just looked at me for a moment. Something about his manner told me that
he
, at least, could see that something about this just wasn’t right. He passed a piece of paper across the desk to me.

‘What am I supposed to make of this?’ he said, letting me read it.

It was a print out of an e-mail, obviously the one which had accompanied the photographs. Its message was brief, and clear:

HOW W
OULD YOU LIKE A PIECE OF THIS? R.T.

It was clearly intended to shock, and shock it most definitely would. I could only guess at the impact it would have had on any unsuspecting innocent who saw it and its attachment. I felt terrible. We had plenty of people at Medicom who would be upset - no,
hurt
- by this. Decent people. People who deserved better than to have this pop up at them.

People who, even now, were probably thinking that
I
had done this. And word would get around quickly.

For the first time I could see the real gravity of the situation.

‘Douglas,’ I said quietly, looking him straight in the eye. ‘Do you
honestly
think
I would be stupid enough to do something like sending this … this ... filth over our internal mail system? And do it from my own computer? And put in a covering message, with my initials on it? Think this one through, please.’

He didn’t respond straight away, but held my gaze before finally commenting.

‘Actually, Richard, no I don’t.’ He wiped the glasses again. ‘But there is no disputing that they were sent from your desktop. Derek here says there’s no question of that.’

‘Do you have a pet, Mr. Teasdale?’ Green blinked at me through his glasses.

‘Sorry?’ I wasn’t sure if this was some sort of trick question.

‘Do you have a pet? A dog, or a cat maybe?’

‘Er … no …. no, I don’t.’ I glanced around at Geoff, but his expression gave nothing away. What the hell did
this
have to do with anything?

‘
Pity.’ He turned back to the keyboard and tapped away at it a bit more. ‘You see, a lot of people use the name of their
pet as their computer password. I’ve been trying for the past five minutes to log on as you, but without success. If it had been possible for somebody to gain access to your desktop by figuring out your password then that might look a little better for you right now, but I’m afraid I’m getting nowhere. You’re a little too well protected, which does seem to rule out the possibility that somebody else did this by sitting at your desk when you were not around and pretending to be Richard Teasdale.’

‘Do you mind telling us what your password is, Richard?’ Douglas asked, the tone of his voice a little softer than the last time he had spoken. ‘It would be very helpful for Derek to see just what’s been going on inside your desktop.’

I sighed. I really didn’t have any choice about this. Even though I had done nothing wrong, and had nothing to hide, I hated the thought of having to lay myself open for dissection like this. They would go through all my files, all my e-mails, and probably even go through the contents of my desk, just as they would be looking through my briefcase in a moment and taking out any Medicom files. Then I would be asked to hand over my keys and my swipe card and be shown the door.

It was a hateful process, but I couldn’t do anything about it.

‘Kolobkov one three one,’ I said, finally.

‘Pardon?’
Green’s tone said it all. It clearly wasn’t what he had been expecting.

‘K-O-L-O-B-K-O-V.’ I spelled it out for him and he duly typed it in. I turned to Douglas, who was looking at me with raised eyebrows. ‘Pavel Kolobkov. Four-time world
epee champion.’

There was the barest flicker of a smile on his face, the first I had seen from anybody since arriving at Medicom that morning, and he turned to Green.

‘You in?’ he asked.

‘Oh yes,’ the I.T. consultant replied, a note of satisfaction in his voice. ‘Yes, it’s all here.’

My heart sank. Whatever was going on, I was being well and truly shafted.

‘Look,’ I stared Douglas in the eye, aware that a pleading note had crept into my voice, ‘I didn’t
do
this.’

‘No, Richard,’ he said, sympathetically. ‘I don’t honestly believe you did. If I thought that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now, but until we get to the bottom of this it’s best if you’re not around.’

So. It really had come to that.

‘You’re suspending me?’ My voice was little more than a whisper.

‘Oh, no, no.’ He shook his head. ‘I’d just like you to take the rest of the day off. You know how it is. It would be best for everyone, given what the likely topic of conversation in the canteen is going to be, if you just have a free day’s leave today. Go on, have some time at home tinkering with your foils.’

‘Epees,’ I corrected, although why I felt the need to clarify the point right then, God only knew.

Between them, Douglas and Geoff went through my briefcase and removed anything to do with Medicom, then relieved me of my swipe card and my set of keys to the building and warehouse. It was a humiliating process, and I hated it, Green tapping away at the computer all the while with a smug look on his face.

Just as I was being shown to the door,
with Geoff clearly intending to see me off the premises and make sure I didn’t get up to anything naughty before I left, something hit me. Hit me like a thunderbolt. Something about which I had completely forgotten.

I stood there and looked back at Derek Green with my mouth hanging open, and he blinked at me again through his glasses.

‘A virus?’ I asked. ‘Could my user account have got this through a bad e-mail?’