A Three Dog Problem by SJ Bennett

Author:SJ Bennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction

Chapter 27

A

t her temporary desk in the Keeper’s outer office, Rozie looked up from her screen and was amazed to see that outside the light was fading. She glanced at the clock. It was nearly 5 p.m. The discrepancies in the finance spreadsheets had been tracked down to a couple of lines in the database: cross-checking with meeting notes from the relevant committees (Sir James Ellington was a stickler for record-keeping, for which Rozie silently saluted him), it was clear that certain cost projections didn’t tally with the real figures in the accounts.

If you were to illustrate the problem, a graph that should predict a steady rise in some fairly low-level maintenance requirements suddenly took off two years down the line in an almost exponential curve. Thanks to Mary, the Keeper already knew roughly where to look in the database; Rozie had simply helped him pinpoint the mistake. Apparently, Sir James had asked various underlings to fix the issue several days ago, but they had merely assured him it was all ‘under control’. He had found this, he said, infuriating – given that it so obviously wasn’t.

Anyway, armed with pages of printouts and a borrowed laptop, Rozie made her way to the property accounts department to get the problem fixed. It would have made sense for them to be in the South Wing, near Sir James himself, but it was in the nature of Buckingham Palace for the sensible thing to be completely different from what actually existed. For reasons nobody could remember, this particular team were buried in the basement, off a long corridor in the West Wing, opposite the kitchens. Rozie hurried down three flights of stairs, past the vast boiler room that fed the central heating, like something from an ocean liner, and on until she came to their unassuming office underground.

To her surprise, it was empty, but there seemed to be a bit of a party going on in the staff kitchen next door. After the focused energy of everyone upstairs, the new atmosphere was a bit of a shock.

‘Is it someone’s birthday?’ she asked.

Four heads turned to look at her. Four glasses of Prosecco paused mid-air. She felt the festive mood shift.

‘Er, sort of,’ the nearest man said, with a half-smile she couldn’t read. He was short and out of shape, Rozie saw, with a belly he could afford to lose. His suit was crumpled and his tie loosened. ‘Care to join us?’

‘I can’t, I’m afraid. I just need someone’s help with this.’

She noticed that two of the men were Mick Clements and Eric Ferguson from the Operations Team, whom she had spoken to over the summer. Now, as then, Mick, the head, seemed sullen and hostile at the sight of her, while his younger colleague tipped his head to one side, as if examining her in a glass case.

Mick put his Prosecco glass down with slow deliberation.

‘I guess I’ll be going, then.’

As Mick brushed past her, she felt his body bristle with barely contained disgust.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.