Breathe Read Free Page B

guy who had your desk disappeared.’
    Ben reads his on-screen manual. Under DUTIES it has:
    ASCERTAIN WELFARE OF ALL STAFF IN YOUR RESPONSIBILITY AREA AND FILE WEEKLY REPORT TO HEAD SUPERVISOR. Thirty pages of small print follow the heading, but he skips that part.
    ‘Okay.’ Broadly speaking, it sounds easy enough. Ben one-finger types: ACCESS WELFARE REPORTS FOR:
    He highlights all the twentieth floor group members. The screen reads: ACCESS DENIED PERMISSION BY GROUP HEAD: MR CLARKE.
    It make no sense. How can he do his job? There’s one way to find out. Ben knocks on the glass wall of Fitch’s booth and enters. Fitch is busy and barely bothers to look up.
    ‘I’m unable to access the staff’s previous welfare reports, Miss Fitch.’
    ‘You don’t need to. You’re going to file new ones.’ She’s marking work, ticking and crossing out, a teacher destroying the lives of her pupils with the flick of a pen. No family pictures here, no knick-knacks, just paperwork, files, signs of a monastic existence.
    ‘How can I do that if I can’t see their past complaints?’
    ‘Their past complaints have been dealt with.’ Tick. Cross. Cross.
    ‘How do I know that?’
    Now she looks up. ‘Because I’m telling you.’
    ‘I need to see their personal histories. Can you grant me access?’
    ‘You ask a lot of questions.’
    ‘I’m not getting many answers.’
    ‘Then you’ll have to come up with some of your own. Your predecessor was very opinionated, Mr Harper.’
    ‘You make it sound like a bad thing.’
    ‘It was for him. Opinions are valid only if someone wants them.’
    Don’t rise to it, he tells himself, and leaves. Not a great start. He has to learn to control his mouth.
    Ben walks over to Miranda’s workstation. ‘Is there any reason why I wouldn’t be able to access any health reports?’
    ‘After Felix disappeared, Clarke rerouted everything.’ Miranda points to the man in the photo-frame on Ben’s desk, leans forward and whispers. ‘His name was Felix Draycott. He vanished three weeks ago. Worked late one night, failed to turn up the next morning. Didn’t even come back to empty his desk. We were told stress.’
    ‘What happened to him?’
    ‘You tell me. You’re Health and Safety.’ She curls a finger between his shirt buttons, drawing him closer. ‘Oh, but there’s something else. Something really weird.’
    ‘Miranda, it’s my first day.’ He removes her hand, although he likes the touch.
    ‘I could make it your last.’
    ‘Please don’t do this.’
    ‘Come on, Ben, it’s your job to listen and make a report.’ She opens her desk and takes out an expensive man’s watch. ‘His watch was still in his desk. He took it off while he was working because he said his computer affected it. What kind of man would leave a job without taking his Rolex with him? And that’s not all –’ But Miss Fitch is passing with sheaves of paperwork, a one-woman hardcopy industry. ‘Meet us for lunch later. That’s all I ask.’
    ‘Us?’ asks Ben. ‘Who’s us ?’
    The dining room is as far from a canteen as Ben can imagine – a brushed steel kitchen galley with modular cream resin seats, a seventies-influenced lunch area set in a tall tropical plant-filled atrium. Even the flowers smell real. The food, too, is fashionably seventies; coq au vin , chicken chasseur , trout with almonds. Miranda takes Ben to a table. As she does so, she points out another staff member, a balding thirty-year-old with a fussy attitude who’s talking earnestly to Fitch.
    ‘Who’s that?’
    ‘Mr Swan. He’s Fitch’s bitch, company spy. If you complain about anything, he’ll spout the rules and offer you anger-management courses. I’m on his shitlist; there’s a surprise. Fitch is a secret drinker. Eats breath-strips to cover it up but forgets to throw away the empties. She has no life. You can imagine. All the men around here are going bald. Weak sperm or something. Comes from sitting too close to the