Free Burial by Neil Cross Page B

Cardiff, the modern sales executive spent a great deal of time on the telephone and the computer.
    The modern sales executive also spent most of his time engaged in pursuits which didn't involve selling anything to anybody: Nathan found himself attending weekly marketing meetings, and weekly pre-marketing meetings, and weekly post-marketing meetings which, with grim and affected professionalism, were called 'postmortems'.
    In
    addition, there were quarterly, half-yearly and annual sales performance review meetings. There were monthly sales projections meetings. There were bi-monthly regional and national sales meetings.
    There were two sales conferences. There were buyers to entertain. There were lunches and dinners and drinks without number. There was karaoke in Sheffield and go-karting in Swindon.
    The sales department was structured in a way that Nathan didn't completely understand. There seemed to be four UK sales directors, three of whom were beaten and bitter men who reported to one, younger boss, whose job title was simply Director (UK
    Sales).
    In addition, sales shared an arcane crossover of responsibility with marketing, which meant each department was in a position to blame the other when budgets were overspent or financial targets hadn't been met, which was always. Thus, the relationship between sales and marketing was alternately cordial and hypothermic.
    At first, Nathan enjoyed the inanity of it. He was paid an initially modest but increasingly handsome salary, plus theoretical bonuses, to sit round a table for hours, pretending to care about the late delivery of 5,000 New Line Easter cards to a godforsaken warehouse in East Anglia.
    As the weeks bled into months, then years, Nathan would sometimes be struck by wonderment as he was cleaning his teeth in the morning - but by the time he was knotting his tie, the sense of affable farce would have deserted him and he'd be worrying that Norfolk (as the warehouse was simply and ominously known) would be unable to clear the late delivery of 55,000 New Line Eclipse cards that had arrived late from the printers.
    Getting into his car, an Omega, he would be anxious that the proposed New Lines for Christmas-after-next would not correlate with what marketing had identified as the post-Millennial Mood; or that a leading chain of high-street stationers would not after all decide to retail the new, cartoon-Jesus Easter cards which had been enthusiastically endorsed, first by the board, then by every other department - and which would just as systematically be disowned if they failed.
    He knew thinking about all this was a waste of time; but it was much, much better than thinking about anything else.
    And then, during the Winter Sales Conference, 2001, he saw Elise's family on television. They were making an appeal for information that might lead to her return.

12
    He'd spent a long, buttock-numbing day in an overheated hotel conference room, listening to inept presentations by senior management and non-executive members of the board.
    Nathan was always frustrated by the Sales Conference; partly because he wasn't allowed to participate in the presentations, and partly because he was forced to share the complicit eye-rolls and watch glances of the stultified sales reps, who weren't listening to a word of it.
    The day's session ended at 4.45 p.m. In the foyer, there were coffee and biscuits for the delegates, who would then enjoy an hour or two of free time before reconvening in the Boleyn Bar for the formal dinner.
    Overheated and itchy with boredom -- except the senior management, each of whom glowed with the invigorating success of their talk on Seasonality: A Picture of Shift? Or Opportunity for Growth? -- the delegates filed into the lobby where little clumps began to form, like matter after the big bang.
    The muttered conversation centred on how bored everyone was, how hot it was in there - and who was sitting with whom at that evening's Formal Conference Dinner.
    Among