Remainder - By Tom McCarthy Page 0,28

of old case histories around the walls, the austere secretary in the antechamber, guarding his door. I gripped my phone’s receiver harder and frowned in concentration as I thought about the wires connecting me to him, Brixton to Angel. It seemed to work. After a while he said:

“I think you need Time Control.”

“Time control?” I repeated. “In what sense?”

“Time Control UK. They’re a company that sort things out for people. Manage things. Facilitators, as it were. A couple of my clients have used them in the past and sent back glowing reports. They’re the leaders in their field. In fact, they are their field. Give them a call.”

His voice had the same tone to it as when he’d told me to drink champagne: kind but stern. Paternalistic. He gave me Time Control’s number and wished me good luck.

Time Control UK were based up in Knightsbridge, near where Harrods is. What they did, essentially, was to look after people. Manage things for them, as Daubenay said. Their clients were for the most part busy executives: finance chiefs, CEOs, people like that. The odd film star too, apparently. Time Control ran their diaries for them, planned and logged their meetings and appointments, took and passed on messages, wrote press releases, managed PR. They also ran the more intimate side of their clients’ lives: ordering meals and groceries, getting dry-cleaners to come and take their clothes away and bring them back again, calling in plumbers, phoning them up at eight twenty-five to get them showered and croissanted and shunted into the taxi Time Control had booked to take them to the nine-fifteen they’d set up. They’d organize parties, send birthday cards to aunts and nephews, buy tickets for the second day of the Fourth Test if they’d built a window in that afternoon in the knowledge that this particular client was partial to cricket. Their databases must have been incredible: the architecture of them, their fields.

I called Time Control in the late afternoon, almost immediately after I’d got off the phone to Daubenay. A man answered. He sounded relaxed but efficient. I couldn’t quite picture their office, but I saw those blue and red Tupperware-type in- and out-trays in it somewhere, like the ones they have in nursery-school classrooms. I imagined it as open-plan, with glass or Pyrex inner walls. The background sound was fluffy rather than clipped, which suggested carpets and not floorboards. The man’s voice assured me; I didn’t feel the need to run through my explanation. I just said:

“I’ve been referred to you by my lawyer, Marc Daubenay of Olanger and Daubenay.”

“Oh yes,” the man said, very friendly. Olanger and Daubenay were a well-known firm.

“I need someone to facilitate a large project I have in mind,” I said.

“Wonderful,” the friendly man said. He seemed to understand exactly what I wanted without even asking. “I’ll put you through to Nazrul Vyas, one of our main partners, and you can tell him all about it. Okay?”

“Wonderful,” I said back. It was that word “facilitate” that did it. Worked the magic. Marc Daubenay’s word. As I waited to be put through to Vyas I felt grateful to Daubenay for the first time—not for getting me all that money, but for slotting that word, “facilitate”, onto my tongue.

Vyas sounded young. About my age: late twenties, early thirties. He had a fairly high voice. High and soft, with three layers to it: a Manchester base, an upper layer of southern semi-posh and then, on top of these, like icing on a cake, an Asian lilt. As he spoke his name then my name and then asked how he could help me, he sounded confident, efficient. I couldn’t quite picture his office, but I saw his desktop clearly: it was white and very tidy.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” said Nazrul Vyas.

A pause followed, then I went for it:

“I have a large project in mind,” I said, “and wanted to enlist your help.” “Enlist” was good. I felt pleased with myself.

“Okay,” said Naz. “What type of project?”

“I want to buy a building, a particular type of building, and decorate and furnish it in a particular way. I have precise requirements, right down to the smallest detail. I want to hire people to live in it, and perform tasks that I will designate. They need to perform these exactly as I say, and when I ask them to. I shall most probably require the building opposite as well, and most probably need it to be modified. Certain actions must take