Free Utterly Monkey by Nick Laird Page A

anti-depressants, he hadn’t yet suggested that maybe Albert should change his job.
    Danny stood in the doorway but didn’t go in. Something was different.
    ‘Mate, why is your room reminding me of the Blue Grotto?’
    ‘I know, the fluorescent light was making a buzzing noise so I rang down to Business Services and got them to send a man up to change it, but they’ve installed a blue one. It’s like sitting in a brothel.’
    ‘Is it?’
    ‘Yes. It is. Aside from the lack of hookers.’ Albert did a newsreader shuffle of the papers he was looking at and set them aside. He did look wrecked, and unusually for Rollson, his clothes were a little rumpled. His Windsor knotted red silk tie was still on but the top button of his white shirt was open. A stray hair curled out from the gap and his dark brown eyes were underlined for emphasis by thick black lines of sleeplessness.
    ‘You have to ask her to your party tomorrow night.’
    ‘Ellen?’
    ‘Yes, Ellen. You just rambled on about how amazing she is. You have to ask her.’
    ‘She’s working for me. It’d be weird.’
    ‘No, it wouldn’t. And she’s working with you, not for you. It would be weirder not to mention it. Just casually throw it into the conversation. Who else’ve you invited?’
    ‘You saw the e-mail. That lot plus Geordie.’
    ‘Who is this guy?’
    ‘I’ll tell you about it at lunch. He’s an old mate from school.’
    ‘You haven’t mentioned him before. Where’d he spring from?’
     
    After Danny and Ellen had spoken on the conference call to John Freeman, the Corporate partner overseeing the Ulster Water bid, it became apparent that there would be no lunch. Freeman was a short and angry man. The anger was obvious. The shortness Danny inferred from his photo on the firm’s intranet. He was shiny-pated, overweight, and had tiny black perforations for eyes which were looking upwards to the camera. He looked like a malevolent medieval abbot. After Freeman’s secretary had patched the two of them into the call, Freeman launched into the conference without giving Danny time to introduce Ellen. There appeared to be several accountants and clients on the line, aside from the whole Corporate team, presumably down on the second floor, hunched in anticipation round Freeman’s speaker phone. As always, Danny found it difficult to focus at times like these. His ability to concentrate decreased in proportion to how important it was that he did. He could, for example, intimately describe someone he had sat opposite on the tubeseveral days before but couldn’t tell, when asked directly, whether or not he’d sent a holding letter to the lawyers on the other side or indexed a file of documents. As the voices coming from the speaker phone on his desk discussed logistics Danny, sitting opposite Ellen, felt himself unwind, as if the speaker phone was a radio and he was lolling in the bath. She was really quite something, this girl. Absolutely remarkable. Danny found himself staring at her breasts and quickly shifted his eyes onto the pad she was scrawling on.
    ‘Will that be possible, Danny?’ Freeman’s tensed vocal cords were flinging something at him.
    ‘I’m sorry, we seemed to get cut off there. Could you repeat it?’
    A derisory snort issued from the phone. Ellen, her face inspired with concern, was holding up her pad opposite him. CAN YOU GO TO BELFAST ON SAT MORN . She grinned. He grinned back.
    ‘I mean, it sounded like you were about to ask me whether or not I could take a team to Northern Ireland this weekend, but then there was silence.’ Danny winked outrageously at Ellen. ‘If you hadn’t progressed further than that then the answer’s yes. I’ve a trainee briefed and we’re aware of what the exercise will involve. Obviously, I’ve a few specific questions to ask about the set-up, but we don’t all need to be on the call for that.’
    The Corporates were mumbling assent. Freeman took hold of the conversation again, a little