The Programme

CHAPTER ONE-4

The Management Committee was composed of Colin, Carey, and four others - with Charles in attendance, when he wanted to be, ex officio.

“It’s a straightforward decision,” Colin insisted. “Either we tender or not.” Historically, Arnotts acted for employees, not the bosses. Now they had, for the first time, been invited to bid for the employee relations work of an employer, and not just any employer, but a major, formerly nationalised and still national industry. If they won, it would be followed by others.

“Nothing’s that straightforward,” Alison Hansen fought on. “If we tender and don’t get it, we get the worst of both possible worlds: we lose unions because we wanted employer work; and we don’t get the contract to compensate.”

Alison Hansen knew more about employment law than any of them had forgotten. A lean, spare, hard-looking woman in her mid-forties, recently and suddenly deserted by her husband of twenty years, there were General Secretaries - tough and working-class to a man - who would not call a strike without consulting her, nor would settle a dispute if she raised an eyebrow in disagreement.

“Where is this leading, Colin? Where do you want it to go?”

“I’m asking you. At the moment, income is thirty per cent crime, against expenditure of nearly half; family, domestic, small claims, petty problems, say ten per cent income, fifteen percent cost; your union work fifteen per cent income, about the same expenditure. About eighty per cent of our expenditure generates fifty-five per cent of the income. The remaining twenty per cent of our expenditure generates forty-five per cent of our income. The margin is profit. I, uh, rest my case.”

“Which is what?” Alison pressed, ever the negotiator.

“That if the balance doesn’t change, dramatically and soon, we’ll have to choose between continued investment in the firm and what we can personally take out of it. That’s a conflict that could cost us lawyers, perhaps more of them than the firm can bear; ultimately, it could tear us apart.”

“Then we might as well do it,” Graham Engel - a Colin loyalist - said. “If the firm’ll disintegrate anyway, we’ve nothing to lose.”

Alison raised her eyebrows in despair. Before she could speak, though, Alistair chipped in, ever graphic, vulgar only by design, when a few blunt words would save him the trouble of a speech.

“Sometimes, it’s better to die for principle than to spread your legs for the enemy, son.”

If Charles had a consigliore within the firm, it was Alistair Mathison, former and first articled clerk of Charles Arnott, much married and as many times divorced, a compact man of nearly sixty and carrying it well, the leading criminal light of his generation.

Alistair’s position within the firm put him above factions. He was personally and professionally loyal to both Charles the father and Colin the son. His reputation and practice had been based at and on Arnotts but now stood out in its own right.

The sixth member of the Committee was Patrick Preston. He, like Colin and Graham, was a civil lawyer; he, like Alistair, had been articled to Charles, but in his case only nominally: he had worked instead with Alistair for half a year, with Colin for another, and had finished up with Wendy Brett, their then family practitioner, whom Charles had ushered out of the firm to make space for Carey. Now, he was Head of Litigation.

Patrick was in his early thirties, of a generation with Colin. He ran each year in the London Marathon. He could name every film that had been made in black and white. He sang in a choir. The MP3 player he wore as he walked to work played Law Society professional updates. He drank New Zealand Chardonnay. His father was a preacher; his mother bought antiques. He came from a family that could trace its origins back for more than two centuries, and had lost its fortune long before the first depression. He lived alone in a flat in the Barbican. He was an archetypal English eccentric. He was in love with Carey.

“Can we get back to the budget,” he asked, preferring statistics to personalities.

Alistair boomed:

“Budgets be buggered. I’ve a pair of long-term fraudsters to see in the Scrubs at four o’clock.”

Carey asked:

“What do you think, Alistair?”

She wanted to know whose side he would come out on before she declared her own position.

“I do my crime; I’ll take any case that comes along. Give me a man who’s cut up his innocent wife of twenty years, and I’ll turn it into six figures of legal aid money without breaking a sweat. I’m no one to tell others what they ought to do.” He loved Carey but at times like this her reluctance to commit herself irritated him. “What do you want? Clients who never do anyone any harm?”

“This doesn’t need to be personal,” protested Patrick.

“Sonny,” Alistair affected a Scots accent that wasn’t his by more than a generation, “it’s all personal. You may have lineage; me, I want a cheque in the bank big enough to hear the interest adding up.”

“Then you agree with me,” Colin insisted.

Alison shook her head.

“It’s not that simple.”

“Here we go again,” Carey sang. “Around and around.”

She was right, thought Colin: it was deadlock. He and Graham formed one faction. Patrick supported them intellectually but usually sought to straddle the fence rather than risk antagonising Carey, who all too often would not say. Charles and Alison were the other faction. Alistair, like Patrick and Carey but for different reasons, wouldn’t take sides.

Colin sighed.

“We’ll have to call a partnership meeting, then.”

“Soon,” said Carey, thinking that their father was going abroad shortly.

As the others bustled from the room, Carey hung back.

“Nice lunch?” Coli leaned back, eyes teasing.

“Who was the Man in White?” she answered, sliding up to sit on his desk, facing him with her legs crossed.

“Funny you should ask,” he pulled out the file - fattened by the booklets Matthew had left with him - from a pile of a half dozen others.

Over the course of the Management Committee discussion, Colin had reached his decision. He was not going to turn away paying work without good cause.

“I was wondering if you might let me know what you thought about this. Odd sort of business - cult type action - people wanting their property back - sort of thing.” He shoved the file along towards her, conscious of her proximity and her position. “Good thing you’re my sister.” He covered up his embarrassment. “I’d be up on some sort of employer charges.”

“Good thing you’re my brother,” she answered tartly, picking up the file, “not my employer. This is him?” Matthew.

“The Teacher,” Colin announced sarcastically.

“You want me to take him on?” She wasn’t fooled by his request for her views; if he hadn’t already decided, he wouldn’t have asked.

“As a client,” Colin laughed. “Only as a client.”

At the Midnight Mass, the Teacher raged:

“None of you, none of you is committed - not wholly committed, not truly committed, not committed until you can feel the rough edges of your soul as it rubs against the raw need of The Programme, the hunger that causes it to scrape and scratch for more until the last drop of blood dribbles from the broken skin.

“What do you think I am doing with my life? My life is your life; my needs are yours; my hunger is your failure. Purpose and counter-purpose: if you have not learned to throw yourself entirely into your purpose, how can you expect the Messengers and Initiates to do so? Every inch of your being that does not achieve perfection is an act of hostility against me, an act of theft from me, an act of war.

“I am your Teacher, your father, you owe nothing to yourselves, nothing but what you can give to me; you cannot love yourselves except as you love me; you do not live unless and until it is my life that you are living. We may take many forms and even more directions - there is but one direction: mine, The Programme - you are many; I alone am whole.”