Tell Me - Ashe Barker Page 0,46
on the other hand suggested he was inclined to agree with his faithful secretary’s analysis, but he still regarded Thea with some interest. “What’s this about, Mrs Richmond?”
She met his gaze levelly. “I never met Mr Malone. Did you?”
Tony shook his head. “No. He’d been dismissed before I bought Dart. I just got caught in the fallout afterwards.”
“What about the rest of you? Did any of you know him? Talk to him?” Thea addressed this question to the others around the table, but her gaze rested on Denise and Christopher. Nevertheless, it was Eric who responded first.
The man nodded. “Yes, I dealt with his appeal following his disciplinary hearing. I interviewed him, and could hardly get a word out of him, to be fair. I didn’t get the impression he particularly wanted to save his job.”
Isabel chipped in again. “Exactly. He saw a chance to screw some cash out of the company instead, without the bother of working for it.”
Thea ignored Isabel’s comment this time and directed her attention to the two remaining managers who had not yet spoken. “Chris, Denise, did either of you know Mr Malone personally?”
Both nodded. Christopher opted to speak first. “He was a quiet enough bloke, kept himself to himself, but he was fairly popular as far as I knew. I was surprised, actually, that he’d got himself into so much bother. It didn't seem his style, somehow.”
Denise nodded. “That was my impression too. There was a bit of gossip at the time, you know the sort of thing. Water cooler chat.”
This attracted Tony’s attention. “What chat? What were people saying?”
Denise warmed to her theme. “Well, that he’d had a raw deal, really. He was a loner, but he worked hard and people liked him.” She turned to face Isabel, and her tone hardened. “And he wasn’t a waster. Definitely not. His team ran like clockwork, and he was always working late. That’s what seemed most odd, that he was in trouble for poor time-keeping, when he actually worked all the hours God sent.”
Tony was frowning, looking from Chris to Denise, then to Eric. “Was this discussed at the hearing, or in his appeal?”
Eric shook his head. “First I’ve heard of any of it. I wasn’t at the first hearing in any case. But I read the file notes and none of this was in there. He never tried to present any mitigating factors at the appeal. He hardly said a word at all.”
Tony turned to Thea, his expression intent. “Mrs Richmond, am I to gather you’ve been listening to water cooler chat?”
“I have, yes. It’s what you pay me for, to get under the skin of how this place runs and fix it. I got wind of the disquiet that still exists out there about Jeremy Malone’s sacking, so I did a bit of digging around, background information, that sort of thing.”
Tony leaned back, his posture relaxed, his expression anything but. “And you came up with…?”
Thea opened her notebook and poised her pen. “First, can I check out a couple more details? Eric, who represented Mr Malone during the disciplinary process?”
Eric shrugged. “No one. He was entitled to have a union rep or a colleague present but he didn't take that up.”
Thea perched her glasses on her nose and scribbled few lines, then turned to Eric again. “Did he know he was allowed to have someone with him?”
“I expect so. Everyone knows that sort of stuff.”
“No they don’t.” Chris leaned forward, his gaze intent. “You’d be astonished how little people tend to know about their rights. Especially when they're under pressure.”
Thea smiled at her latest recruit. The lad would go far.
Eric frowned, but his demeanour seemed somewhat defensive to Thea. She regretted that, her purpose was not to re-open the previous shortcomings of their HR department, but she sensed an ongoing problem and was determined to address it. Eric leaned forward, his words directed at Tony. “We wrote to him. Everything was done by the book.”
Tony shook his head slowly. “Eric, it wasn’t. You know that, we all know it. That’s why the tribunal stung me for twenty five grand.”
Isabel tossed her pencil onto the meeting table. It fell with a clatter.
“It’s done with. Over. It was a costly mistake, but one we won't repeat. We should leave it and move on.” The exasperation was apparent in Isabel’s tone, in her frustrated tapping of the table top with her manicured fingernails.
“It isn’t though. Over.” Thea’s quiet tone held everyone’s attention, especially Tony’s. “It won't