Pay Off by Stephen Leather Read Free Book Online Page B

waiters waited patiently to close up for the night, and then we reached the point where our eyes met and the air was thick and time stopped and we either had to take it further or kill it.
    I can still remember the moment as we both silently came to the same conclusion, and we smiled and Shona shook her head slowly. What we had was too important, too special, too precious, to risk spoiling. It would follow a pattern that could end with us losing everything. I read it in a book once, one of Stephen King's I think, but I can't remember which one. 'First it was love,' he wrote, 'then it was like love, and then it was over.' Becoming lovers would have given it a beginning, a middle and an end, and I didn't want ever not to know Shona.
    I guess what we had now was love without being lovers. And we had the business. We knew we were heading for the top, together but apart.
    We were in the office bright and early going through the newspapers.
    It's surprising just how much business you can pick up that way, from profiles of businessmen on the way up, recruitment advertisements pointing to a firm expand- ing and maybe in need of new capital, rumours of multinationals moving into Scotland to take advantage of Scottish Development Agency incentives and the twenty per cent unemployment rate, all were opportunities waiting to be grasped.
    I ploughed through the Glasgow Herald while Shona read the Scotsman. Glasgow and Edinburgh are separated by a forty-minute train ride but they're poles apart, and nowhere is that more reflected than in their newspapers. Neither is a true national newspaper, they are far too parochial for that. There's hardly any overlap in circulation, which has led to both becoming complacent in their newsgathering, each maintaining only a token presence in the other's camp. There's no competition because a Glaswegian would no more think of buying the Scotsman than he would of giving up his seat to a lady on the bus. Equally, if you see a copy of the Herald in the capital then it was probably brought over by a passenger on the early morning train, and he was almost certainly riding in the first-class compartment. But any Scottish businessman worth his salt reads both.
    My sortie down south had cut me off from much of the Scottish news, which always gets a poor showing in the English papers and London-based television. It's a different country, no doubt about it.
    The people from Crest arrived at ten, there were three of them carrying identical black briefcases, middle-aged men starting to thicken around the waist after too many expense account lunches and too many hours at their desks.
    Normally Shona and I tried to meet our clients on their home ground, it puts them at ease, but they'd wanted to get away from their factory for a few hours.
    It was a coddle. Shona had been right; the three of them, the managing director, his deputy, and the financial director, all knew what they wanted, their minds were already made up. All they wanted was to be told what clever chaps they were and to have their egos massaged. By both of us.
    I'm in two minds about employee share schemes. Its supporters will tell you that it gives the workforce an interest in their company as well as an incentive to keep the firm on a healthy profits curve. It's supposed to cut down absenteeism, reduce strikes, slash wastage and probably cure the common cold.
    I suppose I'd better explain how it works. A company agrees to set aside a proportion of its profits, usually above a certain limit which it sets itself, and it converts the cash into shares which it then divides among the workforce according to salary, length of service and so on. Some of the country's biggest firms do it - ICI has one of the longest running and they reckon it's a great success. Me, I'm a cynic. I reckon most employees prefer a cash bonus to the shares and anyway it usually ends up getting pissed against a wall. And there's a lot to be said for working for one company and holding