Excellence at Work
By
Hina Tabassum
Copyright 2014 Hina Tabassum
ISBN: 9781310067631
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About the Author
Hina Tabassum is a banker by profession but she has always loved to write. Creating new characters in her mind and weaving stories around them has been one of her favourite hobbies since she was not even 5. At school she participated in all the extracurricular activities that she could accommodate in her daily schedule. Now that she is working, her time for writing has been reduced greatly, but she takes out time (at least once in a week) to put her pen to paper. Which actually means that she is typing away at her computer. Furthermore, she loves it when people read what she has written and enjoys hearing feedback. You can always connect with her at
[email protected]!
Dedication
This story is dedicated to my family and my friends as they are the ones who have sat by me and listened to me go on and on about people that existed only in my mind. Not once did they snap back and tell me to stop wasting their time or that they had better things to do. Rather they all encouraged me to get my stories out there so that more people could read them.
Dear Readers,
This is the very first book that I am publishing. Even, if it is an e-book and available for free. And it gives me immense pleasure to address you all before you read the story itself. This book, Excellence at Work, is a story I wrote when I was at school. It was sort of an assignment. Time passed but this story remained with me. I did a few edits and improvised a bit more. The result is in your hands right now (or rather on your computers or e-book readers). I hope that you all like the story and come back for more.
If anyone of you wishes to read the un-edited and un-improvised version of this story, it could be found on my blog, Lair of a Wordsmith (www.khatrihina.wordpress.com).
Unlike many other books that you must have read, this book’s story does not come divided in different chapters because it is not long enough to justify the need for such division. This goes on as one long story.
Many of you (all of you who have read the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling) will notice my love for the said series reflected in this story as well.
But of course, the book that I am currently writing (which will be my 2nd published book) is going to be a novel and thus presented in a way a novel should.
Wish you all an enjoyable read.
Hina Tabassum
Excellence at Work
Working at P. Smith’s, P.I, Amanda Watson was the best detective the agency had ever had in years - and that was saying something about the woman in questions as P. Smith’s was not a small agency. That is detective wise. It had over a hundred detectives on its payroll across the state of Massachusetts.
One sunny morning found Amanda Watson sitting in her small office on the top floor of a modern high-rise in the Financial District of the State’s Capital, Boston. She sat behind a wooden desk which would have not been out of place in a man’s study in the early nineteenth century. The desk was of course in the ownership of Amanda Watson who when provided with the office in question had decided to bring along her own desk as she had a certain dislike for chrome and glass desks which were provided by the company to all its employees. To go along with her antique table she had also brought in a high back chair with the softest of cushions one could sink in (seeing that she spent not a whole lot of time sitting in her beloved chair).
Apart from her precious desk and chair in the said small office, which is not exactly very small, this brilliant detective’s office decor included flower arrangements that were all plastics because who wants to look at dying flowers? That is so very depressing. The office had framed paintings (which she swears are either done by her or either of her two young siblings) and a book shelf. No, scratch that. She had a book cupboard with glass doors that could show what she owned but at the same time kept her belongings safe under lock and key. The book cupboard was half filled with thriller and mystery novels - which no one knew when she got the time to actually read - and the rest of the space held her case files. One may wonder what happened to all the file cabinets but Amanda being Amanda did not like them either. She found them ugly and did not want them in her line of sight or rather in her office.
She was busy examining some papers – all of them clipped together. Order was of course something she cherished. Her brows had furrowed and she was thinking hard as a consequence of the documents she was busy examining. As she turned a page, there was a knock on her door. Amanda did not want to speak to anyone at the moment as she was in her thinking mode. She paid no attention to the little sound and went back to doing what she was before she had heard the knock believing that whoever it was would simply think that she was not in her office at present and leave.
After a few seconds that could not be more than 10 by any rate seeing that she had finished reading almost three lines of her document, whoever was at the door, knocked again. She sighed and straightened in her chair.
“Come in,” she said.
The door opened without a creak on its well-oiled hinges. A man wearing a dark brown suit entered the room and shut the door behind him. His hair was the same dark brown shade he was wearing. His hazel eyes, though covered by half-moon glasses were very sharp and at present the gaze was directed at Amanda.
“Are you done with the report Ms Watson?” he asked.
Amanda had known that that would definitely be the question her boss, Mr Percival Smith, would ask. The man believed in getting to the point even before the point could be seen. Percival Smith was not the founder of P. Smith’s P.I. but the founder’s grandson. The family had a tradition. If you’re born a Smith, your name starts with a “P”.
“Yes Mr Smith,” Amanda replied. Percival Smith has never believed in being on a first name basis with any of his employees. He insisted on being called Mr Smith and never “sir” because he had never been knighted.
After a beat she asked, “Would you like me to go through it for you?”
She could see that he did not appreciate being questioned like that. Amanda knew he believed that it was his right to know what was in that report and likewise it was Amanda’s duty to fill him in.
“Go on Ms Watson. I am all ears.” His sarcasm was hard to miss.
“Have a seat,” she told her boss and motioned towards the only chair, apart from hers, in the room. Percival Smith looked pained to be taking an ordinary chair when he was the boss in the place but he sat down nonetheless.
Amanda took her place behind the desk and sat on her chair as if she were a queen. She quite liked these moments when she could get the upper hand on this man. Percival Smith and Amanda Watson were childhood friends who went to school together and then to university together. But as soon as she had joined the agency, the man had started behaving as if he had not known her before.
Her defiance to one side, she was very passionate about her work. She gave it her hundred percent. Maybe more at times. It took her almost fifteen minutes to bring Percy (as she was used to calling him) up to date regarding the investigation she had been conducting for the past fortnight.
After she finished with her ‘brief’ recounting of the findings, she poured herself half a glass of water and drank it in three little sips.
Percy stood up, congratulated her on a job well done and left.
Shaking her head, she stood up, opened her handbag
and took out a key. She went to the book cupboard, right beside the glass window. While inserting the key into the lock she looked out the window and sighed. Getting her attention back to work, she opened the cupboard and took a file from the top shelf and locked it back. She went back to her desk and put the file on it. It was a light blue coloured file made of leather that was most probably not real leather. The file had the name of the agency embossed in black on the top and the address at the bottom. In the centre of the face of the file was the word ‘Secrets’ embossed in dark golden. These files were Percy’s idea. Prior to them, the agency had used non-personalised everyday files.
Amanda sat back down and started gathering her papers. All of them pertained to the investigation that she had resolved just a day before. Putting them in order she filed them in the fancy file. The only thing (maybe apart from the colour) that she liked about these files was that there was no more a need to use a punch machine on the papers. Doing so was considered downright criminal by her.
She put the file in her black leather handbag which looked too big for anything that someone might decide to put in a handbag and carry around all day. Now that she was done, she realised how tired she was and seeing that she had almost an hour before she had to leave for the airport she put her head on her desk and decided she