Extracted from the Diary of Atticus Lane:
(filth, murder and mayhem ...then more filth)
“Thursday 21 January
Back from lunch. E-mail sitting there from Stefan Hitman, new FD at Postillion Group PLC. He wants a meeting tomorrow.
For the past twenty years Postillion (originally a Norchester based company) have been one of the most acquisitive conglomerates in the UK making them, after the collapse of Titanic, my biggest client – the biggest client D&M has outside the Chapter work and other private client stuff controlled by the Graces. Last year the old FD of Postillion (a good mate of mine) retired and they recruited this dick-head called Stefan Hitman: an oily, smart-arsed, permatanned, eternally-grinning, Canadian prick in his late thirties who’d been assistant FD at one of the UK’s biggest construction companies where he developed serious delusions of adequacy. There’d been a change of CEO at Postillion only two years previously which had already dragged their head office loyalties towards the City, the new guy living in Primrose Hill and a lot of their operations being focussed down south.
Hitman is City-based too and he’s made it startlingly fucking obvious over the last six months that he’s going to relocate their head office there completely and, in the meantime, can’t see the point in continuing to use some tin pot bunch of pricks from the sticks for Postillion’s legal work when his mates from the Magic Circle firms will take him to Ascot, Wimbledon, any Test Match he likes, bend over and take it up the arse or probably even let him shag their tired old wives in return for an opportunity to charge him twice what we charge for carrying out the work.
What does the grinning bastard want so urgently?
“I’ll see you at 12.45 tomorrow.”
I don’t like the sound of that. That’s a summons. No “can you make it at ...?” the cheeky little bum wad.
We haven’t got any deals on for Postillion at the minute but we’ve got a whole load of pensions and property reconstruction work, employment and litigation stuff. Look on the bright side: maybe it’s a new transaction he wants to talk about. Hope so. Jesus Christ knows I can’t afford any more client losses.
Pop a couple of Quiet Lives and reach for the lemon balm. Got to find an alternative source of income so that my days of kissing the arses of chinless shits like Hitman will be a thing of the past.”
******************************
Has anyone ever actually taken a baseball bat to a client I wonder. It would be nice, wouldn’t it, just to carry it in under your arm and put it down on the desk? You wouldn’t necessarily have to use it ... not every time. Sometimes the threat would be enough: NO YOU’RE NOT GETTING A DISCOUNT YOU TWAT ... The message would be clear. Of course some wouldn’t get it, your average FD/accountant having the social skills of a badly bricked frog, so you might have to flourish the timber to get your point over:
"NO ..."
(Cafetiere shatters and cups go flying)
"YOU’RE NOT ..."
(air conditioning control panel swiped from the wall)
GETTING A DISCOUNT ..."
(telephone smashed and plants battered)
"YOU TWAT."
(establish eye contact with bat and eyebrows raised to emphasise discussion is at an end)
Come on ... aren't there one or two you’d take the bat to anyway? Just to feel their skull break like an egg:
“Sorry mate ...”
(crunch)
“... full whack.”
On the other hand you could always give a discount ... like lawyers always do.
It’s only money.
