The Borough

CHAPTER TWO

  Dave Winner lay back in the chair, wishing he was somewhere else. It had been a rotten way to end the dinner party the night before, smashing a tooth on a pip left in the fruit salad. Embarrassing for the hostess as well, having one of her guests decamp for the bathroom in agony. It was only the persistent ache and the jagged edge tearing at his tongue that had driven him to one of his least favourite places for starting the day.

  "Shall I numb it up for you?" the dentist asked, his voice curiously distorted by his face mask.

  "Yes please, I'm not keen on pain."

  "You'd better put these goggles on. I don't want to spray anaesthetic or anything else into your eyes."

  Winner slipped the goggles on. Going to the dentist was getting to be an increasingly surreal experience. In years gone by the dentist had been visible, but now all but his forehead was hidden behind a face mask and visor, his hands concealed by rubber surgeons' gloves. A year or two ago there had been the experiments with music to distract from pain, but at least these days it wasn't as painful as it used to be. Kids like his son Toby didn't seem to be frightened of the dentist at all. Winner tried to avoid going if possible, easier now that his wife was gone and there was no one nagging him to make an appointment.

  "I'll just put this gel on where I have to inject."

  These days you even got a running commentary. The dentist fished out the cotton wool pad, leaving a disgusting taste of rubber and anaesthetic in Winner's mouth. Winner closed his eyes to avoid seeing the hypodermic syringe. The latest scare was that dentists didn't effectively sterilise their equipment between patients, suggesting a risk of nasty diseases like hepatitis or worse still aids. The thought made Winner glad that he had been slotted in before the first regular appointment of the day. Surely the equipment would be thoroughly sterilised overnight?

  The dental nurse started vacuuming up saliva as the dentist flushed Winner's mouth clean. There was a numbness spreading through his jaw now, taking away the nagging pain. The dentist busied himself sorting out his equipment while the anaesthetic took effect, then picked up his drill.

  "Nasty business on the coast road last night. One of your people, I think they said."

  Typical dentist. Wait until they have your tongue numb and your mouth full of equipment, then start a conversation.

  "Urgh," replied Winner, raising his eyebrows behind the goggles in a gesture of incomprehension.

  "Hadn't you heard?"

  Winner wiggled his head slightly from side to side.

  "Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it," the dentist said, his brow furrowed in concentration as he carved away at the decayed tooth, "but it was on the news. Didn't give a name though. Just said it was someone who worked for the Council."

  Winner made a strangled questioning noise. What was the man talking about?

  "Oh, yes. A car went straight off the road through the safety barrier and crashed down the cliff. They say he must have been driving like a lunatic to have been going fast enough to break through the barrier. Dead, of course."

  Winner raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement. It was impossible to ask any questions. Soon he had a mouth full of hands fitting some sort of metal frame round the remains of his tooth. He tried to think who it might have been, but a lot of people worked for the Council and any one of them might have a reason for travelling on the coast road.

  "Apparently," the dentist continued, "they've had to close the road this morning to recover the wreckage. Make it a good size batch, Yvonne, Mr Winner's got quite a substantial cavity here. You're quite fortunate. There's enough tooth left to make a reasonable repair. It's quite a filling, though. You'll have to avoid biting on it today."

  Winner closed his eyes again as the amalgam was forced into the cavity. His head was starting to throb from being tipped back at an awkward angle. He just hoped the dead driver wasn't in his department. The draft budget was due to be finalised by the end of the week and it was his job as Chief Accountant to make sure it was all ready on time. It was going to be hard enough meeting the deadline without an additional crisis. The figures were already looking awful, which would almost certainly mean late nights in the office up to Christmas as they trawled through the budget to find ways of cutting back.

  The dentist was busy using a small vibrating ram to pack in the amalgam. Winner's mind drifted off to his own problems. The split with his wife hadn't been too acrimonious, just the inevitable result of a long drift apart - and he still got to see ten year old Toby every week. It was the money that was irritating. The flat had been cheap, but with a mortgage and maintenance there wasn't much left over. Local government salaries were a joke. An important job like Chief Accountant, and all he got was twenty six thousand a year. Roll on privatisation, just as long as he could still get a job. He'd have to be careful, though. At forty four he couldn't afford a career break. He didn't feel old, or look it, but there was a lot of age discrimination in the employment market.

  They were cleaning up now, picking out bits of stray amalgam and flushing away the detritus from his mouth. The dentist swivelled the chair back upright and Winner handed back the goggles.

  "The tooth shouldn't give any trouble. It was an old filling that had been loosened by some further decay. No toffees or crusty bread today."

  "Thanks for fitting me in at such short notice," Winner said, his numb jaw making him sound a bit drunk.

  "The tongue should come back to life in an hour or so," the dentist told him, as he showed him out of the surgery door.

  Winner paid the receptionist by cheque, wondering, as he scrawled an unusually shaky signature on the bottom, how many cheques were returned to dentists because of suspicious signatures. Maybe none. He doubted if banks looked at them at all now.

  One of the perks of being Chief Accountant was a designated parking place in the small car park tucked in behind the rambling Victorian heap that was known as the Town Hall. Other staff had to leave their cars scattered around the back streets of Sharmouth, or pay a stiff annual fee for one of the two multi-storey car parks nearby. Winner eased his Ford Escort into his space, a task made difficult by the refuse containers which had been left sticking out of their bay again. The private contractors were always in such a hurry. It didn't seem to matter to the councillors that they only did three-quarters of the job, just so long as there was a cash saving to show the voters. Winner locked up his car, then used his pass key to get in through the back door of the Town Hall. It was only a short way through to his office, which was accessed from the main corridor, but had a second full length glass door into the main accounting office, through which he could keep an eye on the staff.

  As Winner entered, the glazed door was open and he caught a rear view of Chief Auditor Barry Freeman talking to the accountancy staff. He could see Christine Tucker, the costing clerk, with tears running down her face. Freeman heard the door to Winner's office close and glanced around.

  "......anyway, we'll let you know what's going to happen and any arrangements," Freeman told them. "I don't know what to say, really. I must talk to Dave now that he's arrived."

  Freeman turned and stepped in through the glazed door, pulling it closed behind him.

  "Where the hell have you been?" he asked Winner.

  "Dental emergency. What's happened?" Winner hung up his coat, not wanting to hear the answer.

  "Nigel Stewart went and killed himself on the coast road last night."

  Winner flopped down into his chair. With so many staff working for the Council he hadn't thought for a moment about it being one of his own team. Nigel Stewart. Not someone he particularly liked, or even knew very well on a personal level, but still an awful shock.

  "You've told my staff?"

  "I had to. Nobody knew where you were or how long you'd be. There were all sorts of rumours flying around as soon as everyone got in this morning. Linda Price called all the section heads in and told us to let the staff know."

  "Thanks, B
arry. The dentist told me about the accident, but he didn't know who it was. Is there any other information?"

  "Not much to tell. Are you all right? You look very pale. I'll get someone to get you a coffee."

  Freeman put his head round the door and called out to one of the clerks.

  "The anaesthetic isn't helping," Winner said, rubbing at the side of his face. "Bit of a shocker, isn't it. What time did it happen?"

  "Some time in the evening. He phoned his wife about half past seven and said he'd be leaving soon, but he never turned up. The wreckage wasn't found until about three in the morning."

  Winner turned and looked blankly out of the window. An unexciting view of the back of some shops, relieved only by a single mature ash tree, its branches silhouetted bare against the pale grey sky.

  "I think he's got two kids as well," he said, struggling to remember how old they were. Distressing as the accident was, he couldn't stop his mind from turning to the effect of Stewart's death on the work that had to be done. This could screw up the whole budget timetable. Stewart was the systems expert who looked after the administrative accounts and kept accounts reconciled and balanced. He was one of the few people who really understood how the various computer programs meshed together. It could create serious problems, especially at this time of year with budgets taking up so much time.

  Freeman looked at his watch. "I've got a meeting in five minutes."

  "Should I go and see her?"

  "Who? Mrs Stewart? I shouldn't think so. Pat Johnson's driving over to explain about pension and benefits, that sort of thing."

  "It would be awkward. I've never met her before. There are some things that will have to be sorted out in this office."

  Freeman gave a sort of half smile as he stepped out into the corridor.

  "We'll just have to hold a meeting about it, won't we?"

  The door closed and Winner looked out through the glazed door. The staff all looked miserable, hardly surprising. The clock on the wall said nine forty.

  What a bloody marvellous start to the day.