Night's Favour Read Free

looked at Val’s gut, then picked up the Cross, tapping it on a paragraph in the file.   “Fact is, we still need you.”   The clock on the wall ticked by a few more seconds, the sounds of the city outside the open windows gentle.   “But we need the old you.   You’re a wreck —”
    “Hey Pete, c’mon.   I crank out the code like you need.   I’m the first guy to punch in every morning...”
    “And the first guy to hit the Blues at lunch.   After lunch, you’re back at your desk, but you’re thinking about your next drink.   When was the last night you didn’t knock back even just a few?”
    “Everyone has a pint after work, Pete.   Be serious.   We work in computers.   And our clients are assholes.”   Val tried for some easy camaraderie.   “Who wouldn’t drink on a government contract?”
    “It’s not like we work in the ER, Val.   And if it was the work that was the problem, we could fix that.   You work in a team of what, ten guys?”
    “Yeah, and they come down for a beer at lunch too!”
    “They don’t all go down.   With you.”   Davies examined a perfectly manicured nail.   “At the same time.   Fact is, they’re going down to make sure you’re ok.   A few of the guys — and I’m not naming names, it’s confidential — are worried about you.   They said they want to keep an eye on you.   They’ve come to see me, to ask me to ... intercede.”
    He grabbed a sheet from the file — this one suspiciously laid out in corporate style — and spun it on the old wooden surface towards Val.   “It’s a leave form, Val.   It’s on the house. But it’s got conditions.”
    Val didn’t lean forward to look at the form.   “You’re getting rid of me.   Gardening leave.   I don’t know if I should be flattered or pissed off.”
    Davies tapped the paper again.   “Maybe you should just be...   Well.   I think we both know ‘happy’ is a bit of a stretch, considering.   Get your house in order.   Drive up the coast.   See some friends.”   He paused, as if the idea had just occurred to him.   “Get some help, Val.   See someone.”
    Val reached forward to get the sheet, seeing his hand shaking with either anger or the memory of the hangover.   Maybe a heavy salting of both .   The form was straightforward — a month of leave, but with a small catch.
    “The company wants some return, of course.”   Davies looked down in carefully constructed abashment.   “We want the old Valentine Everard back.   We want you a productive member of the family again.   We’re going to ... invest, shall we say ... a few weeks.   What’s a few weeks?   That’s on us.”   Nodding, Davies replaced his expression, looking Valentine right in the eye with an affable smile.   It was like watching a super marionette, as if all those management courses had taught him which emotions to try and fake, and when.   “But you’ve got to do your share.   A part of the bargain.”
    It was there in black and white.   They’d even helpfully supplied a phone number and a website — probably one of the narcissists in HR.   Those fuckers thought of everything with their saccharine sincerity.   They wanted him in an alcoholics group of some kind.
    “If I don’t sign?”
    Davies swapped the grandfatherly smile for a look of grandfatherly reproach.   “Well Val, then things might have to get formalised.   You know how it is.”   As if it was out of his hands.   Just one of the boys, Val and him in this thing together.   “But we — well.   I don’t want it to get formalised.”   He handed the Cross to Val.
    After he’d signed — like there’d been a choice — he walked out to collect his jacket.   He felt as if the entire office watched his walk from Davies’ office to his cube, the air heavy with the silence of funerals.   The hessian partitions were covered with the same old crap, charts jostling for supremacy next to Dilbert cartoons.   The odd