The Thrill of the Case – Part Four

Read part one, part two or part three of The Thrill of the Case.

Listen to this part of the story read by AI voice Mimic 3.

Everarck distributed the remainder of the e-mails without further incident. More than once he opened his mouth to ask about the Court of one of the array of thoughtful lonely officials abandoned in overlarge dusty offices around the building but, as HR Manager Octomus Dicks had somehow gotten loose from his office and was now snorting and evil-eyeing his way around the building, he decided to complete the task as efficiently as possible and then found a quiet place near the reception area to catch up on tasks he’d been avoiding for several days. As these did not elevate his impression of his own intellect, he contented himself by entering the records in rigorously pedantic detail in the most beautiful script he was capable of producing.

When Everarck got home, the hall telephone awaited him. A black triangular prism with round shiny buttons, its design was wholly predictable and yet Everarck could not help thinking it resembled the key to some deep space alien portal. He took off his jacket and baseball cap and put them on wall hooks that had always been there. He went to see if there was any mail propped next to the toaster. There was: a slender brown envelope, most likely a bill, and a stuffed-looking white packet that was undoubtedly junk mail. He didn’t touch either of them. The main news was that Zagonella had been here at some point. He hoped she’d slept.

Finally, there was nothing left to do except switch on the TV, access the world wide web with their dial-up service, read a newspaper, go for a walk, or check the answering machine. In short, give up, give up, give up, give up or let the consequences of his rash actions wash over him. He checked the answering machine. There were three messages, two of which were a couple of seconds of silence followed by a beep and then suddenly a voice was speaking in a slightly nasal voice that lingered over vowels, making it obvious the speaker was choosing her words with care.

‘Hello, this is Gerellia Noghan calling from the Court of Public Opinion. We received your message, Mr… Fanger. Thank you very much for getting in touch. I understand you’d like to apply for a law regarding… intellectual vanity of some kind, so that you can enter into a case with one of our professional advisors and work towards being acquitted of the charge. If I’ve understood correctly, call me back. My name’s Gerellia Noghan. You can call me on 01867 665 328. I’ll be here until about… 6 pm, maybe a little bit after that.’

‘Oh, God,’ he thought, ‘It’s only 5.37. I’ll have to do it.’

He sat down on the hall chair, an uncomfortable thing with a hard back. His knees jutted into the arc of the living room door, which he didn’t like, even though it was closed. He’d have to listen to the message again as he’d forgotten the number. The corner shop would close soon, and he needed cheese and bread, but that was no excuse either because the nearby Sunny’s didn’t close until 7. Sort out the road tax for Zagonella’s car? Fish the wedding invitation out from behind the fridge? No, it was no good. He’d have to call. He’d have to call. He looked at the phone and imagined picking up the receiver. Yep. There was no doubt about it. He’d have to call.

Read part 5 of The Thrill of the Case.

The Thrill of the Case – Part Three

Read part one and part two of The Thrill of the Case.

'Any success with the upgrade?' he further enquired.

'Mmm. Tricky one that, but old Nik knocked it out the park with a juicy new data set. While she was devouring all that lovely new info, she didn't seem to mind having her brain slightly reorganised,’ said the silver mop, bouncing with enthusiasm.

'Ah, foxy old Nik!' approved Everarck.

'Foxy old Nik with the hilarious face, you mean?'

'Oh, forget that! I was just upset about dropping these stupid e-mails on the floor.'

'I'll take that as an apology. Anything else I can help you with, young man?'

'Not really.'

'Hmmm? Yes or no?'

'No, I mean yes. I mean – have you seen that ad in the paper, “Are you so sexy, it should be illegal?”’

‘Goodness me, no. What kind of newspaper is this? It sounds a bit … top shelfian.’

‘No, the free thing on the bus.’

‘Ah, the illustrious Free Gazette!’

‘That’s the one! There was an ad in it yesterday. I thought it was interesting.’

‘Mmhmm.’

‘The Court of Public Opinion. You can… you just have to ring them up and apply for a law and then they, I think they arrest you and you have to, you have to prove you’re innocent.’

Nik’s face had slowly appeared from behind the sickly coloured screens. Two green eyes scorched Everarck from within a mass of wrinkled liver pink.

‘What are you blithering about?’

Everarck’s free hand patted his shirt pocket pointlessly.

‘I haven’t got it with me,’ he complained.

‘You are referring to your sanity, I take it,’ said Nik, looking over his shoulder before swiftly disappearing behind his machinery.

‘Oh, I checked my sanity in with HR when I started this job.’

Nik coughed. Everarck turned to find the short but undeniable image of Surd Fleeting examining something on the far wall.

‘As a general point of interest, the lawyer is in the reception area and seems to be waiting to be served,’ said the director in soft but resonant tones.

‘Oh, right, okay!’ exclaimed Everarck, simultaneously trying to bustle through the door while also attempting to permit Surd passage through the narrow space at the doorway, one carefully contrived to keep visitors to a minimum.

‘A lawyer!’ thought Everarck toing and froing dancingly around Surd as the short, stout man strode through his choreography, ‘I’ll ask him about the Court of Public Opinion! He’s probably very busy, but he might be able to tell me something about it!’ and the unsummoned image of a slim, severe and infinitely patient man blossomed in his mind.

He breathed with relief as the unheard computer fans were cut off as the door shut. He looked up and saw a young woman in an unembellished black jacket and red lipstick. He saw her as a rose in a vase and, as one does not speak to roses, he was not immediately able to speak. She watched him with curiosity as he entered the reception area with as much of an air of diffidence as he could muster.

‘Would I be able to assist you, madam?’ he asked, noting with discomfort that the question was several levels more polite than the one he’d asked the woman with the curly mop of hair and the pink cardigan twenty minutes previously.

‘I hope that you would,’ she said with a smile, ‘Is Ms. Lemender present?’

‘Yes, I believe so.’

‘This is it,’ he thought, ‘This is my moment to ask her. No lead-in required. She’s standing right there, and she’s smiling at me! All I have to do is say, “By the way” or “Incidentally” and I’m in! Committed!’

But at that moment he looked to his right and saw the monolithic form of Chariot Lemender descending the stairs with purpose.

‘She’s on her way,’ sighed Everarck and sat down at the desk.

Pushing both of the narrow double doors open, Chariot entered the reception area and the glow of her gaze fell upon the lawyer. The sound of the double doors slamming shut seemed to take place in another world.

The chief executive was indeed a towering woman in a severe grey skirt, thick framed glasses and a pearl necklace. Her look was intelligent, humorous leaning towards ironic, hungry. To Everarck, she was a lighthouse, the grey skirt the very rocks of which her beam-like gaze warned. But in this lighthouse were not merely a spiral staircase and bare brick walls, but a whole glistening library, organised in teak shelving. And so she summoned and warned off at once, stoked curiosity and dread.

‘Sobian! Thank you for coming!’ she declared as though speaking to a roomful of people, ‘How long have you been waiting?’

‘A minute,’ she said.

‘I’m so sorry. Mr., em, Fanger must have been busy. You have a lot of plates to spin, don’t you, Mr. Fanger?’

‘One or two,’ shrugged Everarck, immediately cursing himself for the implied dissent.

‘Don’t worry about signing in. Mr. Fanger will deal with that,’ said Chariot, standing to one side so that the lawyer was denied all moves but that of progressing into the field.

And then the event of the morning was walking away from him through the double doors and up the stairs, and Everarck was left wondering whether the initiative had been snatched from his fingers or whether he had allowed it to fall.

Read part 4 of The Thrill of the Case.

The Thrill of the Case – Part Two

Read part one of The Thrill of the Case.

At work the following day, Everarck sat in the horseshoe of the reception desk, doing such a marvellous impression of someone who was not the receptionist, perhaps a technician surveying the receptionist's equipment in their absence: phone, switchboard, computer, guestbook, pen, cash drawer, corporate agenda, complaint forms; that not one of the visitors found themselves able to approach him for help for eight and a half unbroken minutes.

However, even the white golf club baseball cap, incompetently Windsor-knotted tie and oblique, uncomfortable posture could not indefinitely suppress the idea that this small-framed man with squashed facial features might be able to perform the most basic tasks of a receptionist - with effort. And perhaps a little support.

To his credit, Everarck maintained the impression of not really being the receptionist but graciously prepared to stand in for them, fumbling with systems he knew intimately and lathering his instructions with mights and maybes, until the last of the visitors had disappeared into the labyrinth of the back offices or gone home.

At this point, Everarck wrote, 'Back in 5 mins. Pls wait or leave a msg' with a marker on a sheet of scrap paper, which he placed next to the guestbook, and left with a pile of emails which he had printed out according to corporate policy.

In truth, his pretence of not being the receptionist had some basis in fact. The company did not have a receptionist, and Everarck's job description specified little more than that he competently assist the director and put to rest a minimum of 40 hours per week on the premises. However, that the flexibility of Everarck's role and the official vacuum of services in the reception area provided him a permanent mooring point in the organisation had been so powerfully implied by the director, the stone-faced and permanently sleep-deprived Surd Fleeting, that Everarck had not had the will to resist. Few would have.

He took the meticulously compiled sheaf of papers towards the IT room and attempted to open the door with his two unoccupied fingers but succeeded only in opening the stiff door and spilling the papers directly from his guts in one great floe across the IT room's becabled floor.

'Well done, young man,' rumbled the only person there, a man whose thick hair in several shades of shining grey was the only part of him visible behind a variety of box-shaped machines the colour of rancid cream, 'That is by far the funniest thing to happen today.'

'Apart from looking at yourself in the mirror, Nik,' replied Everarck to Nichomachus, stooping to pick up the papers and slather them into a single jumbled pile.

'Don't be rude. You'll upset MARIA.'

Everarck knew that MARIA was how Nik identified the seemingly alert core of the interlocking databases that defined his professional sandbox.

'How is she today?'

'Temperamental,' replied Nik with a hollow laugh, 'She still hasn't forgiven me for my little holiday to Lake Solemn without her.'

Everarck was briefly caught up in the dream of a woman who would miss him when he was gone. But he was holding Zagonella to an impossible standard. He never went anywhere.

Read part 3 of The Thrill of the Case.