Acts & Monuments Page 4

  Iulia’s eyes flared with alarm. “You must never tell them where I am! They are looking for me. They are looking to take me back to those men – the men who will kill me! Promise me you won’t!”

  “Well, obviously, we won’t pass on your details without your consent; I promise you that,” Barry reassured her. “But we need to see some money – soon. We need to see that debt going down. Is there anything you can do?”

  “I have some money.” Iulia took a battered brown envelope out of her jacket pocket and withdrew £400 in used bank notes. “It is not everything I owe, but it is all I have.”

  She was weeping now.

  “Have you got work now, Miss Nicolescu?” Lucy asked, hopefully. “If you have proof of a clear source of income to pay your rent, we can reach an agreement to pay the debt.”

  Iulia looked Barry squarely in the eye and said deliberately, “I will do anything – anything – to stay in this country. I cannot go back.” At which point she broke down in tears.

  And so it was agreed. Lucy took the money and gave it to the cashier on reception. Barry agreed that he would hold off requesting that the court issue an eviction date for as long as Iulia continued to pay her rent every week, plus a contribution toward the arrears.

  “Are you sure we’ve done the right thing?” Lucy asked as they headed back to their desks. “I mean, we’ve got no entitlement to benefit and no proof of income.”

  The simple answer was no, Barry wasn’t sure. They had certainly not acted in accordance with Monument’s policy and procedure, which, as Lucy had correctly pointed out, required them to have some proof on file of a realistic ability and intention to pay the debt before an eviction was stayed. Things could get messy if Iulia reneged on the agreement now.

  “I won’t tell Langley if you don’t,” was all he could muster in reply.

  The fact was he had a horrible feeling about where that £400 had come from, and he had an even more horrible feeling about how Langley would react if he found out what Barry had just sanctioned. Yet, for all of that, it still felt like the right thing to do. Whatever the implications, Barry knew that he couldn’t send her back to Romania. He was, after all, “In housing for good.”

  Five

  When Barry returned to his desk, his attention was caught by two emails from Angela. The first was just confirming in writing what she’d told him in person the day before – he hadn’t got the director’s job. The second, however, was something altogether more interesting. It was headed “Organisational Restructure: The Next Phase”. Barry’s heart sank as he read the opening paragraphs of the email, which contained all the old favourites of management-speak – “tough operating conditions”, “continuing challenges”, “regulatory pressures” and, of course, “the need to focus resources on the front line”.

  But then Barry noticed something in the email that potentially offered him a way out. Yes, the exec team was looking to reduce the overall headcount of the association – but they were looking, in the first instance, to see if they could reduce it through voluntary redundancies. And so, Angela was emailing to advise staff of Monument’s intention to conduct a VR trawl. Suddenly Barry’s spirits soared.

  Barry was forty-eight. His salary was just over £45,000 per year. He’d been at Monument twenty-two years. Within Monument’s VR policy, which didn’t cap your eligible earnings or your eligible service when calculating your entitlement, all of these were good things.

  Barry quickly got out his calculator and did some rough maths. It produced a figure of £22,000. By happy coincidence, this was slightly more than the outstanding balance on the Todds’ mortgage.

  He paused for a moment and took it in. There was no doubt that the thought of walking out of Monument without another job to go to was daunting. But the facts were that, firstly, he would be mortgage free, and, secondly, there were plenty of other housing associations in the West Midlands, all of which would be able to offer him the one thing that Monument couldn’t – a workplace free of Langley Burrell.

  And, in the meantime, perhaps he could pick up his art again. He decided there and then that, once his cheque came through, he would use the modest surplus to buy himself an easel and some oils, and paint a few canvasses.

  He quickly scanned the email looking for instructions as to what to do next. At the end it said “Decisions on whether to accept individual VR applications will be taken according to the needs of the business. But if you are interested in being considered, please complete the attached Expression of Interest form and return it to me by close of business next Friday.”

  The other thirty-eight emails can wait, thought Barry; this was the one he intended to prioritise.

  He immediately went upstairs to try to catch Angela. He wanted a bit of clarity on how decisions about the VR applications might be made and also about what his rights might be in respect of the withdrawal of his company car. But, before he could reach the people investment team, he was stopped by Saleema Bhatti. Saleema had reached that indeterminate age at which she appeared to regard it as compulsory to wear a crew-neck cardigan irrespective of the weather (although Barry also recognised that Saleema’s choice may have been driven by the fact that her seat was underneath one of the vents for the comfort cooling system). With her knee-length, plaid skirt and a gold cross prominently displayed around her neck, she appeared to be affecting the look of a middle-aged widow walking home from Evensong through the pages of a Miss Marple novel.

  “Barry, good morning to you. I was wondering if you could just check through the invoice for The SHYPP for me, before I send it out. I think I’ve got it right this time, but I could do with you having a look before it goes.”

  “I’m sorry, Saleema, but I just need to catch Angela first. I’ll speak to you on my way back.”

  “Did I hear my name being mentioned in vain?” Barry was relieved to hear a familiar voice behind him and turned to address Angela directly. He was immediately deflated, however, to see that she had her coat on and was striding purposefully toward the exit.

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve got a meeting at our solicitor’s this morning. You’ll have to try to catch me later, Barry.”

  “Perfect!” Saleema said. “It’ll only take five minutes. I think I’ve done it right this time, but I just want to check with you. You know what Sally’s like.”

  Barry did indeed know what Sally was like. And knowing what Sally Hedges was like meant he understood why Saleema didn’t want to get the invoice wrong again. Indeed, the fact that an invoice was necessary at all was simply because of ‘what Sally was like’.

  The whole idea for what was to become The Solihull Homeless Young People’s Project had first come to Sally almost twenty years previously. She’d wanted to develop a scheme for homeless young people in the north of Solihull and had taken her vision to Neville Thompson at Monument, whom she knew through various mutual church contacts.

  They’d quickly found a derelict youth centre that had been closed a few years previously, which fitted the bill perfectly. The council had agreed to gift the site to them, but only on the understanding that the finished scheme would be run by an organisation based within the borough – which Monument wasn’t.

  The argument went round for a couple of years until Sally had the inspired idea of setting up a separate charity based in Solihull that could enter into a management agreement with Monument to manage the scheme on their behalf. And so The SHYPP Trust was born with Sally as its chief executive and its registered office in Solihull.

  Everyone was happy. Except, as it happened, Monument, which, following Neville’s departure, found themselves having a management agreement with a tiny charity run by a very annoying woman, in order to operate a housing scheme that they were perfectly capable of running themselves on a much cheaper basis. But, despite their best attempts to find a way around it, their legal advice was that they were stuck with the management agr
eement unless they moved their head office (and they couldn’t do that because they’d already promised to maintain their head office in Kingsbury as part of a separate agreement with a different local authority).

  So, although The SHYPP was owned by Monument, it was The SHYPP Trust who actually managed it on a day-to-day basis. It was they who collected the rent, took off a generous management fee and then paid the balance to Monument. But they only did that last part on production of a valid quarterly invoice, and, since the first phase of the latest organisational restructure, the task of producing that invoice had fallen to Saleema – who, unfortunately, had made rather a hash of producing her first one, despite Barry’s attempts to explain in advance how the invoice sum was to be calculated. Three months on (and following an email tongue-lashing from Sally), Saleema wanted to be absolutely sure that the next quarterly invoice was right first time.

  Within five minutes Barry had talked Saleema through the process and had produced a ‘rent due’ figure of £43,836 onto which had to be added repair costs of £4,747, giving a total quarterly invoice of £48,583. This had just been generated on the system when Barry heard an instantly recognisable nasal whine walking toward him, and detected the merest hint of sulphur in the air.

  “Ah, Saleema, just who I was looking for. Marvellous.”

  “Oh, hello, Langley,” Saleema said cheerily. “Lovely to see you – and congratulations on the new job!”

  “Thank you. It’s handy I’ve caught the both of you, actually,” he said with just the slightest hint of menace. His rigorous personal training regime meant he carried himself with the taut expectancy of a wound spring. Even his clipped hair was coiled, as if waiting to pounce into action. “We appear to be missing the quarter two payment from The SHYPP.”

  “We’re just raising the invoice now, Langley.”

  “But we’re in the third week of October. You mean to tell me that we haven’t even issued an invoice for July, August and September yet?”

  “The thing is, Langley,” Barry said, “the management agreement stipulates that we can only invoice quarterly in arrears, so the account will always be behind.”

  “Payment is due quarterly in arrears, yes,” said Langley, pointedly making the distinction, “but, as it happens, I’ve just checked the management agreement and it says nothing about when we can invoice. Unless you can point me in the direction of a clause that I’ve missed?” he asked, waving a sheaf of papers in Barry’s direction.

  This had been said with a large dollop of sarcasm, which almost certainly meant that, much to Barry’s horror, Langley had actually read the agreement. This was probably because Langley had made no secret of his belief that The SHYPP should be brought under Monument’s own management in order to save money, and now that he was housing director he was clearly determined to do just that.

  It occurred to Barry that there might be one way in which Monument could legally cancel the management agreement, and that was if The SHYPP Trust was deemed to have breached it. Barry suspected, therefore, that Langley was hoping he could find a way to argue that The SHYPP had failed to meet the payment terms set out in the agreement, so that he could justify giving them notice. But, of course, this would require Monument to have issued an invoice in the first place.

  “We’re now three weeks into quarter three and the invoice for quarter two hasn’t even been issued – is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Sorry. Yes. That’s the situation,” said Barry, “but if I could just—”

  Barry sensed that Langley was about to cut across him with a statement about the acceptability, or otherwise, of this state of affairs to a company such as Debenhams, when Saleema cut in first.

  “As far as I’m aware, we’ve always invoiced it this way and no one’s complained. Obviously, if you want it done differently, then just let me know and I’m sure we’ll be happy to oblige.”

  There was a brief pause during which Barry thought, for the slightest moment, that that might be the end of it, before Langley added, “And why do we include repairs on the quarterly invoice? That’s not part of the management agreement. Surely we should be invoicing for repairs as we complete them? Or at least monthly. There’s no reason for us to be waiting that long for the money.”

  “Well, because that’s what Sally agreed with Neville fifteen years ago,” Barry replied. “That she’d be invoiced for repairs quarterly in arrears, along with the rent.”

  It was, as Barry had always recognised, an arrangement designed to ease The SHYPP Trust’s cash flow. There was no advantage for Monument from this arrangement, but it went back to a time when Monument was quite happy to help a smaller organisation out – even at their own expense. It was only now someone like Langley had arrived in the picture that the whole arrangement began to sound faintly ridiculous.

  With this – and his VR package – in mind, Barry decided that the best course of action would simply be to agree to whatever Langley wanted. Barry felt no particular moral imperative to protect Sally Hedges and her synthetic organisation if it gave his new boss any reason to block his twenty-two grand payout.

  “How would you like it to be done?” he asked.

  “Well, we should issue the quarterly invoice twenty-eight days before the end of the quarter, with our usual twenty-eight-day payment terms. That’s what the management agreement specifies. Is that clear?”

  “As crystal,” Barry replied. What was also crystal clear was that Sally would not like getting (and therefore being obliged to pay) her rental invoice six weeks earlier than had been the customary practice. Indeed, given The SHYPP’s generally hand-to-mouth existence, Barry supposed that it was entirely possible that they might struggle to meet the new payment deadline. But that, of course, was precisely what Langley was banking on. Sally would almost certainly create an almighty stink in any event, but, as Barry didn’t intend to be around for much longer, this was a consequence he was quite happy to live with.

  “I’ll make sure that’s what happens in future,” Saleema said.

  “And, for goodness’ sake, get this quarter’s invoice out now. They’ll be in breach in a matter of days – but I can’t do anything about it unless we’ve actually invoiced them!”

  Six

  Barry had promised Langley that the invoice to The SHYPP Trust would go out immediately. But no sooner had he done so than Ruth, Monument’s finance director, had put a halt to the issuing of any further invoices until creditors had been advised of a change to Monument’s banking details.

  Barry well understood the reasons for this. The issue was that, as Monument had merged with other housing associations, it had begun to inherit bank accounts from them. As is often the way, tenants (and housing benefit departments) had grown used to paying their rent monies into these accounts, and so it always seemed more trouble than it was worth to shut them down. That was until the previous financial controller had worked out that having five separate bank accounts provided ample opportunity to create confusion in any event, and for this confusion to be used to cover up what was subsequently described by Andrew (in his beautifully understated email to staff explaining why the auditors were now on site, whereas the financial controller wasn’t) as “intentional fiscal leakage from the organisation”.

  This had brought matters to a head, and, once the dust had settled, Ruth had agreed with Monument’s regulator to reduce the number of accounts.

  But the fact that Barry understood the reasons didn’t mean he agreed with Ruth’s decision. He didn’t want Langley to be considering his VR application when he had signally failed to follow Langley’s first management instruction to him.

  “But Langley said he wants us to get the invoice out to The SHYPP urgently. And you agreed to do that,” Barry said when Saleema had phoned him with the news.

  “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do. Ruth says I’ve got to issue the notification letters first, but i
t shouldn’t hold things up for too long. I’ve printed them all off and signed them already; they just need to be stuffed into envelopes and sent out. That will happen today. Then we can get the invoice out next week – I promise.”

  Barry sighed. “It’s just that we did promise Langley—”

  “I’m so sorry, Barry, but Ruth has said we can’t short circuit the process for Langley or anyone else. It’s essential we get those notification letters out first. It’s for fraud prevention, she said, so I’m sure Langley will understand.”

  In due course, the irony of a fraud-prevention measure turning a previously unthinkable fraud into an eminently thinkable one would not be lost on Barry. But, as he hung up, other matters were in the forefront of his mind.

  He’d been vaguely aware of raised voices coming from Langley’s office a few minutes previously; the kind that were causing people out in the open-plan office space to cast glances at each other. He couldn’t hear exactly what was being said, but it appeared that Langley was unhappy about some recent Tweets that referred to his appointment as housing director, the contents of which would never have been tolerated at Debenhams, apparently. Monument’s new offices had been decorated with beech and chrome in order to make them look as much as possible like the headquarters of any typical modern corporation. But mostly they were made of glass. Andrew had explained that this was to emphasise the transparency of the organisation. And, indeed, the large walls of windows flooded the open-plan floor space, where Barry and his colleagues had to sit, with a fiercely invading light. Everyone and everything could now be seen. Except, ironically, the exec team. The walls of their offices, although made wholly of glass, had been covered with swirls of frosting in order, Andrew had clarified, “to maintain appropriate privacy”. So Barry could not actually see who it was that Langley was berating.