Dazzled by Dollars: The Big End of Town Breaks Bad

By Rob Verlander

Rex Mainprize, CEO of the Do-Rite Organisation, is a dinosaur. All he knows about is making money. A shortcoming his chairman, a former army major-general is all too well aware of. He's grooming tech-whizz, Primrose Lightfoot, for the top job. Youthful. Vibrant. Someone who can negotiate the minefield of social activism and fight the culture war Do-Rite is always on the wrong side of.

But Rex's final reckoning arrives when a Do-Rite executive in a far-flung state is arrested for seven brutal murders. Having a murderer in the executive ranks of a banking behemoth is bad for business—more toxic than unwittingly financing paedophiles in the Philippines or selling to the dead.

'Dazzled by Dollars' is a tale of impending downfall and a window to a high corporate chaparral where appearances are not always what they seem. In a comic nod to The Big Short and Barbarians at the Gate, capital markets luminary, Robert Verlander, shines a singular light on how big organisations roll.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781922788757

Book preview

REX MAINPRIZE

(Victoria Peak, Hong Kong)

The Do-Rite Organisation didn’t crash. It disintegrated. Rex Mainprize, Chief Executive Officer of The Do-Rite Organisation, could fix the precise date its fate was sealed: 1st April 2016. That the final shoe to drop in Do-Rite’s undoing was almost three years later, when Do-Rite’s Far North Queensland banker, Don Randall, was arraigned and charged for the multiple homicides of seven members of a drugs cartel, seemed only fitting for an organisation where the bizarre had become humdrum.

Rex hadn’t stood a chance. Not that he knew it at the time. Rich, industry-decorated, a lifetime of community engagement, none of that could surmount the fraught ever-shifting terrain of social justice. Just being male and middle-aged put him on the precipice. But that wasn’t exactly why Rex found himself alone, beyond the safety railing of a Victoria Peak mansion’s balcony, weighing up the pros and cons of a leap into oblivion.

1

THE DO-RITE ORGANISATION

April 2016

For Rex, the meeting he’d had with the Chairman on 1st April 2016, that ultimately led to the Union Banking Company of Australia becoming The Do-Rite Organisation, symbolised the beginning of the end. That it was April Fools’ Day, would only occur to Rex in the aftermath.

‘We stand out, Rex. We sound too much like a bank.’

‘But we are a bank.’ Rex didn’t say this with any conviction.

‘Bank is an emotional cripple of a word. A four-letter word at that. It’s got to be softened and differentiated by a human and moral dimension.’

‘But Bank tells people what we do.’

‘Especially for that reason,’ said the Chairman. ‘But The Do-Rite Organisation gives them the how. Doing the right thing,’ insisted the Chairman, ‘that’s what we’re about.’

‘Do-Rite?’ queried Rex, who even hated the spelling.

‘Look what we’re up against.’

All the big banks had, at least nominally, disappeared from the financial landscape. The Do-Rite Organisation would join The Can Bank and The More Give Less Take Bank and the Best Is Less Bank and The People’s Bank as the bastions of the banking industry. And with a new board, Rex now its sole banker, that included the Director of the St John’s Ethics Institute, a Professor of Social Justice, an international expert on Wellness and a retired US Navy Marine, the Do-Rite Organisation was well placed to do rite…right.

Simon Fortune, the Chairman of Do-Rite, a retired major general in the Australian army, was in full uniform for a reunion with old comrades, when he stood up and strode to the window of Rex’s office, overlooking Martin Place and the Cenotaph. ‘It means exactly what it says, Rex: Do-Rite. Just like the fine men and women did who died for this great country.’ He motioned for Rex to join him at the window, to watch a young family laying flowers and lighting candles at the foot of the Cenotaph. ‘Widows, old men, kiddies, they’re all part of our future.’ The Chairman wrapped a burly arm around Rex’s shoulders.

Rex had never been in the military. He’d never been in the Boy Scouts for that matter. The whole notion of mateship was something he was a little uncomfortable with. And, as a rule, he didn’t wander about putting his arm around other executives. Troublesome waters they were. Unwinding his arm, the Chairman stared Rex straight in the face. ‘Banking is not about money anymore, Rex. It’s about ethics and social justice and a universal corporate morality. Something that transcends profit and return on capital.’

‘But what about the shareholders and our dividend and…?’ Images of a Juukan Gorge in ruins and climate change protestors marching against the bank and its coal customers swirled, as Rex wondered how he would inform small investors and pensioners, who depended on Do-Rite for their modest retirement incomes, that they might have to bear the cost of remedying these wrongs.

‘It’s about the community, Rex. Society writ large.’

‘Sure. Sure. But who are all these people? Where does it stop? Who decides that? When did things change?’

‘It’s buried beneath the mis-selling fiascos and the unmistakable odour of international money laundering and rate-rigging and financing an Asian military coup and paedophiles in the Philippines, and charging pensioners and the disabled, and even the dead, willy-nilly fees on this and that, when everyone knows the cost is already covered in the rate at which we borrow and lend money at…should I go on?’

‘There have been missteps, no question…’

‘Those weren’t missteps, Rex. Those were betrayals of trust. Bushfires. Oil spills. The Catholic Church. Indigenous outrages. Big tech companies overstepping the mark. They’re all part of the same thing.’

Rex’s head was spinning.

The Chairman continued with gusto. ‘We need a corporate image and a name that will cut through all the lies and deception and dishonesty and self-interest that people automatically think of, when they hear the word bank.’

In his head Rex conceded this was some challenge. ‘So definitely no bank in the name?’

‘Absolutely not. Too negative. Besides,’ said the Chairman quite emphatically, ‘the consultants like Do-Rite. And Organisation. It has a collective ring to it. Togetherness.’

‘But a bank is the hard face of reality,’ Rex persisted. ‘It’s where people work who know something about finance. Not a charity, not some religious order. Certainly not a place that can divine the shifting sands of whatever social justice might require at any point in time.’

‘You’re getting on touchy ground there, Rex.’

‘Anyway, we know the consultants just say whatever’s popular, whatever’s on ethical trend.’

‘It’s investors too, Rex.’

‘They’re mainly the ones with their own economic and political axes to grind.’

The Chairman’s face softened. ‘Of course, if it all goes well, we are accountable. And we’ll pay you another ten million dollars plus, I guess, for the privilege. For a couple of tigers who’ve been on safari a while, we’ll still do well.’

The Chairman gave Rex a gentle dig in the ribs. Rex didn’t need reminding. It was hardly a secret. Middle-aged executives in banks were a dying breed. Where the C-Suite was increasingly dominated by thirty-somethings and experience and nous, and client relationships were signs of obsolescence and rust. Evidence of a culture best kicked under the carpet. The problem was that middle-aged men were seen as the root of the problem. And it was hard to avoid the observation that when things turned to custard in 2008, they were running the show.

‘We have sinned, Rex, and we will be punished.’

‘So now we’re being run by politicians and regulators and media commentators, all purporting to act for society at large, a constituency that grows by the week.’

With a shrug of his shoulders the Chairman acknowledged the central truth of the proposition. ‘The Iceman Cometh.’

2

A MASSACRE UP NORTH

February 2019

From Rex’s penthouse apartment at Circular Quay to Do-Rite headquarters in Martin Place was a ten-minute stroll. If he could get past the new concierge, Bill, Rex would emerge upon the panorama of historic Sydney Cove, immersed in his own thoughts about nothing in particular.

Bill spotted him before he’d taken two full steps across the vast grey expanse of marble foyer. ‘Good morning to you, Mr Rex. Can I help you with anything?’

Rex had to admit that he just loved it when Bill talked to him like he was the owner of a vast cotton plantation somewhere on the Mississippi Delta about the time of the American Civil War. Having someone who acted like your valet provoked in Rex quite profound feelings of attachment. While they weren’t really feelings he wanted for Bill, he recognised their rarity and profundity.

‘It’d be a good day for a walk, Mr Rex,’ Bill beamed.

It was apparent to Rex that Bill considered part of his job as having conversations with the owners and the tenants. All Rex wanted was to exit the foyer in the way he’d entered: as empty-headed as a Halloween pumpkin.

When Rex’s wife, Tiffany, first heard Bill address him as, ‘Mr Rex’, she had been a little taken back. ‘That’s a bit Gone with the Wind, isn’t it?’ she’d said. In his defence, Rex had been forced to say, ‘Well I’m not endorsing slavery if that’s what you mean. There’s just a certain charm in it. That’s all.’

Ushered through the revolving door as if Bill’s life depended on it, Rex, after quickly looking left and right—the prospect of being mown down by joggers couldn’t be totally discounted—strode up the rise in the direction of Do-Rite HQ.

The sun was out, the still air crisp and cool. Up Macquarie Street he went with the Domain on his left and Parliament House on the crest of the hill before him. On the pedometer Tiffany had given him—a present she said he didn’t need—he’d just passed 250 steps. In no time he was coming down the terraces of Martin Place, amidst the canyon and sharp shadows of tall office buildings: sun-drenched, heat in his shoulder blades, deep almost drowsy in the solitude of recycling mindless thoughts. That was until the lights where Castlereagh Street intersected Martin Place turned red. Here, he dutifully stopped and waited. Until a young, athletic woman in skintight lycra unhesitatingly swept past him and across the road and he silently wished the police had been around to enforce the laws of the state, he’d gone an estimated ten minutes without a single negative thought.

Ahead, a small crowd of commuters had gathered in front of a massive TV screen. Rex stopped to watch. Onscreen a newsreader was crossing live to a reporter.

Reporter: ‘Rate-rigging. Insurance scams. Selling to the dead. Now murder!’

Newsreader: ‘But really, John. Murder?’

Reporter: ‘It’s a race to the bottom, that’s for sure.’

Newsreader: ‘So much for all their visions and values.’

Hearing the words ‘vision and values’ set Rex’s corporate antenna twitching. Grainy footage played of a man dragging a body down a dark, tropical tree-lined street. At the bottom of the screen a caption read: BREAKING NEWS – FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND – 7 SLAUGHTERED IN KILLING SPREE – MANHUNT FOR DO-RITE ORGANISATION EXECUTIVE.

While Rex’s face bore no emotion, he mouthed the word, ‘Shit.’ He watched the story unfold.

Newsreader: ‘But the Do-Rite Organisation? Again!’

Reporter: ‘Just goes to show a name change only goes so far.’

Instinctively, Rex began to run. A jog at first and then a full sprint through the stream of commuters going up and down the great steppes of Martin Place. A media scrum lay in wait. The big screen playing behind him captured his arrival and waylaying brilliantly and in close-up. Photographers got to their knees to zoom in on the unlikely sight of a bank CEO running flat out in his brogues and perfectly tailored suit. Cameras shuttered, lights flashed, journalists barked questions. Ignoring every call for comment and cries of, ‘What have you got to say about your vision and values now?’ Rex crashed through the pack into the spinning glass door.

3

SMOKING GUN

The lift of the executive floor dinged open. Rex, red-faced and out of breath, stormed across the plush, carpeted reception area. He barely acknowledged the beautifully coiffed receptionist and her muted, ‘Good morning.’ His office was down the end, on the corner, the last of the C-Suite.

All the offices were empanelled in clear glass, except for his, that was frosted like a forest cabin in a bitter snowstorm. With an outer and an inner office, he had two doors he could shut on the outside world.

When he burst in struggling for air, he saw his executive assistant, Giselle Fiorina, arched over his desk, punching the keyboard of his workstation. Giselle had the looks of a runway model and was not short of a word.

‘This desk is all the wrong height, Rex,’ she said. ‘It’ll do your back in. What you need is an ergonomic assessment.’ With her hands on her hips, she waited for some kind of answer. But Rex’s mind was elsewhere.

‘Have you seen what’s happening outside?’ he said.

‘No price on your back, Rex. Only got one of them.’

Arranging the deck of papers on his desk with precision Giselle turned to face the door, her summery skirt twirling, the hemline floating fetchingly above her knees. But not even this put Rex off track.

‘This is out of control.’ His hands roamed about in a display of rare animation.

‘All under control in here, Rex.’

‘The thing in Port Douglas.’

Giselle was unimpressed. ‘Queensland? Another world up there.’

‘It’s still Australia.’

‘Just.’

Her last three answers had been spoken while restoring order to the assortment of material on Rex’s desk. Now in the adjoining office and picking up her iPad, she called out, ‘All set? We’re meeting on 8. That thing in Port Douglas.’

The last time Rex was on the eighth floor was in 2010. Back then some of the floor were still reading newspapers. Now they were all watching screens; which they huddled up closer to when they spotted him coming. Probably, he thought, because what they were doing wasn’t work. At least with Giselle a couple of steps in the lead he wouldn’t get lost—a circular building footprint tended to baffle him.

The floor was open-plan. Cubicles huddled together in hubs. Visual whiteboards proliferated like weeds. Only last week there couldn’t have been more than a handful. Now there were dozens, part of a new productivity initiative being rolled out by the Do-Rite Logistics squad. Rex could suffer the VWBs. It was the vertically adjusting desks he had a problem with. Right on cue one then another rose in the middle distance. At almost two thousand dollars a pop, it was the equivalent cost of a Fender Stratocaster for every employee who wanted to type standing up. He could almost hear the varicose vein specialists in Macquarie Street cheering.

‘It must be over here,’ Giselle called out, just loud enough for Rex to hear above the thud of the concrete slab being stabbed through the carpet by her three-inch heels. She waved at a figure standing outside a meeting room.

Russell Howblitzer, Group Executive for Wholesale Banking, looking all of his near half-century on Earth, stood at the door.

Rex was relieved to leave the open terrain for the sanctuary of the meeting room. Awaiting his arrival were Shelley Hammer, Group Executive for People Operations, who looked like the prison warder and security guard she’d been in a former life; Meredith Flint, the Chief Financial Officer, former Olympic swimmer, tall, fair and athletic; and a young man of Asian appearance, who was on the graduate programme, and if Rex remembered correctly, had been in the revolving door when he slammed into it this morning. He sported quite a nasty bruise on one side of his face. The only member of the Group Executive not present was Primrose Lightfoot, Group Executive for Retail Services, who had an appointment with the Chairman.

‘We could have had this in my office,’ Rex said.

Meredith replied, ‘I thought you wanted to get out and about a bit more.’

This ambition was the sort of thing Rex would come out with from time to time. Generally speaking, however, it was advice he aimed in the direction of others.

Rex tapped on a glass wall. ‘This stuff doesn’t work.’ Through the partially frosted glass, shadowy outlines of figures moved within the general office. With the pad of his right index finger, Rex traced the swirling pattern. ‘What’s the point of it?’

Shelley spoke in its defence. ‘Obscures it.’

‘Who’s looking, Rex?’ Russell inquired.

Rex was surprised by this query. ‘They’re all looking, Russ.’

Meredith suggested that the logistics team, ‘Redo it.’

‘Do you know how much all this stuff costs?’ Rex replied. ‘Anyway, these things never work…’ With technology issues Rex often only used half-finished sentences. He and technology were not on friendly terms. His iPad had frozen. Perhaps it was in the early throes of firing up. Meredith moved hers closer to Rex which he appreciated. Now he could see what everyone was looking at.

Onscreen was a headline in bold: BANK MANAGER RUNS AMOK: 7 DEAD. Which Rex thought could have been worse. It could have said DO-RITE ORGANISATION MANAGER RUNS AMOK: 7 DEAD. ‘When was the last time we had a normal day? Just an everyday day.’

Meredith answered, ‘This is a bank.’ Inside Do-Rite HQ a nervy in-house humour set the tone.

‘We’re not Al Qaeda. We’re not them.’ Rex knew Do-Rite and Al Qaeda were both eminently newsworthy.

Meredith agreed, ‘No we’re not Al Qaeda.’ She seemed reasonably sure.

‘Not in the eyes of some,’ quipped Russell.

‘In the eyes of the Sydney Tribune we’re worse. Count how many stories they’ve run on us compared to Al Qaeda. Done that?’ Rex wasn’t guessing. Giselle had done the research.

Shelley sputtered, ‘Really?’

‘Yep,’ said Rex emphatically.

Hardly a week went by without another scandal rocking the banking cosmos. On a league table of major transgressions, Do-Rite was vying for industry leadership. From time to time, Rex wondered if the better solution was to be like the UK and US and just go broke. Get it all over with in one fell swoop. See how the media pundits liked it then, with queues of pensioners in their slippers and cardigans, going out the doors of a Do-Rite branch with no hope of getting any of their hard-earned life savings back, unless the Government slipped its grubby fingers into taxpayers’ pockets.

‘Geez,’ said Rex, ‘is it too much to ask—no killing? Do we have to put that in their contracts, too?’ Do-Rite, in what had become industry standard, felt no shame in stating the obvious. To assist the process Rex and the executive team would keep an image of the least capable person in the Organisation firmly in mind when reimagining any new corporate Vision and Values. This lowest common denominator style of thinking shed light on the latest staff training packs, that went to some lengths to explain why fraud and bribery and corruption and workplace assault were definitely not part of Do-Rite’s Vision & Values. Separately, it also offered some insight into the Logistic’s squad perceived need to repeatedly supply instructions on how to use the toilets—for the illiterate, diagrams were posted on the inside of every cubicle door. There was no small number of lunatics who thought they could successfully defecate while crouching ninja-like above a toilet bowl.

Shelley, who had been musing about Port Douglas as not exactly being the type of place you’d associate with mass killing, added, ‘Especially where everybody’s so laid back.’

‘Not everyone,’ Russell observed accurately.

While most newspapers and media outlets seemed to gather the photos of bank executives from the equivalent of a Crime Stoppers archive, the glossy ones for Don Randall might have been lifted straight from GQ or Vogue. And, to Rex’s consternation, there seemed to be a gathering consensus that Don Randall had all the good looks of a suave, sophisticated international diplomat.

‘Who is he, exactly?’ Rex was still sharing Meredith’s screen.

‘He’s our head of Far North Queensland. FNQ,’ Shelley informed them.

Meredith slowly scrolled the page up. ‘I’ve met him.’

‘Really?’ said Rex.

‘Holidays last year with the kids. Dropped in to the branch. Went for lunch.’

‘Wouldn’t find me in the office on my holidays,’ said Russell looking up from his phone.

Rex shot Russell a knowing sideways look. ‘Hard enough finding you at the best of times.’

Using the tip of her finger, Meredith expanded the photo of Don Randall so that it filled the page.

‘Lunch?’ queried Rex.

‘Chinese. The place with Bill Clinton’s faded photo taken on 9/11 in the window, next to the menus with pictures. Charming he was.’

Rex felt compelled to watch as Meredith scrolled through pages of photographs of Don Randall that she’d obtained from an online circus boxing website. The still shots of Don Randall fighting bare-knuckled in a boxing tent at the Royal Easter Show were impressive. Bare-chested, sporting long tight trunks, Don was well-muscled and striking.

‘The people just love him,’ Meredith explained. ‘Salt of the Earth’ and ‘Give you the shirt off his back’ and ‘Man amongst men’ captured best what the local residents thought. He was beloved. And in the telling, that was the word Rex remembered the second-most. The most used word was hero. Again and again: hero. What would Rex have given to be beloved, a hero?

‘He’s just a thug,’ blurted Russell.

‘Hardly a hero,’ agreed Rex, who was grateful for any opposition to Don’s credentials as an esteemed citizen and employee of Do-Rite.

Meredith said, ‘Have a look at this YouTube clip.’

They all crowded closer to her screen.

While the clip loaded, Meredith provided the narrative. ‘Back in 1998 Don Randall, in his first week as manager of the brand-new Port Douglas branch of the old Union Banking Company of Australia had a run-in with a few druggies who thought it might be a soft touch.’ On her iPad Meredith hit play. CCTV footage caught what happened next with alarming reality. Illuminated in grainy black and white, shadows moved around the branch. Customers lay lifelessly in outlines on the floor. There were flashes of gunfire. Plaster and building material drifted down from the ceiling. Shadows began to move faster, entwining. Bodies clashed and fell.

‘That was Don Randall in there doing all that. By the time the cops arrived the druggies were a beaten-up and bloodied mess. An old lady, one of those caught inside and made to lie on the floor, gave an eyewitness account. Watch this.’ Meredith hit play again.

Reporter: ‘It’s a real hero’s story here. And I’ve got an eyewitness to it all right with me.’

Old lady: ‘It was like the Wild West movies you used to see on TV.’

Reporter: ‘How’s that?’

Old lady: ‘Well, there was guns and shooting and screaming and commotion.’

Reporter: ‘The robbers attacked you?’

Old lady: ‘Oh no, glory be, no. This be Don Randall. You know the branch manager fellow. Local boy. Apparently been offered lots of money to go to the big smoke like big banks do nowadays. Forget who their customers really are. Particularly out in the boondocks. Didn’t want to go to the big smoke did our Don. Too loyal for that…’

Reporter: ‘But inside the bank, the attack?’

Old lady: ‘Yes, well, you don’t cross our Don. None of that carry-on in his bank. He give ’em a whippin’ he did. A right thrashing. In the end they were begging for mercy. Begging him to stop. But he had the blood in his nostrils by then did Don. He’s got his belt off…’

Heroism in large doses made Rex queasy. It was often too good to be true. He fought to swallow the saliva that was caught in his throat.

Old lady: ‘…and he’s striping their backsides black and blue. Bits of flesh are going every which way. Look here.’

The old lady held up the hem of her ancient floral frock that appeared to have blood stains on it and a small gob of matter, and declared, ‘That’s buttock, that is.’

When the old lady pointed to the gob of matter, Rex had seen enough. ‘Shut it down,’ he said. ‘He’s a vigilante.’ He turned off his iPad, which had never truly sprung to life. ‘Anyway, one bad egg off the payroll.’

Shelley hesitated. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘not quite.’

‘Sorry?’ said Rex.

‘Not yet.’

‘Not yet? Seven not enough?’

‘There’s a whole bunch of protocols and procedures to go through.’ Shelley had a large folder opened in front of her.

‘Maybe there’s an exception for mass murder,’ offered Russell.

‘Forget the infernal protocols! We’re on the front page.’ For emphasis Meredith held up the smiling face of Don Randall beaming from her iPad.

Tristram ventured, ‘Can I ask a question?’

The whole point of having a graduate in the room was for him to learn. Nevertheless, invariably, it seemed to Rex, that whenever he opened his mouth, it was an interruption.

‘Of course,’ said Shelley with a jittery smile, ‘that’s why you’re here.’

Russell said something inaudible into the phone he had picked up as he read his incoming emails.

Without a trace of nervousness—something Rex admired and resented in the young—Tristram broached his concern. ‘When we talk about cultural things like openness and transparency…’

Russell interrupted Tristram midstream. ‘There’s a big difference between transparent and buck naked.’

‘If I could run this place like MI6, I would,’ Shelley said in a quiet voice.

Tristram shot back in his chair as if he’d been whiplashed. His face registered genuine shock. Grads were used to almost royal treatment and a carte blanche to say what they liked. ‘Oh,’ was all the sound he could muster, a murmur of what might have been suppressed pain.

Meredith observed, ‘It’s all a case of who does and who does not need to know.’

‘Who…doesn’t need to know?’ Tristram almost whispered the words.

Like the thick splats of a stapling gun Meredith fired back, ‘Competitors. Media. Regulators. Pollies. Proxy Advisers. Social Activists.’ They could have been leafleted on the wall like a set of Most Wanted posters.

Before anyone else in the room could steer the discussion away from some seriously rocky ethical cliffs that put the core beliefs of Do-Rite’s Vision & Values in doubt, Tristram said, ‘Pretty much everybody not in this bank.’

‘Pretty much everybody not in this room,’ Russell shot back.

‘So, all this stuff here is pretty confidential?’ inquired Tristram in a soft and conspiratorial tone.

In Rex’s days as a trainee, silence had always been the best option. Senior bankers didn’t want to know what a sniff of a boy with a law degree and ten minutes of experience had to say on anything. He was there to fill out the lowest layer of the pyramid. The one everybody else stood on. Rex had heard enough. ‘I mean it said here somewhere,’ he said looking in exasperation at his expired iPad screen, ‘that he’s cut off their heads and put them in bowling ball bags!’

‘This is PR poison,’ announced Meredith. ‘Make no mistake about it. He’s got to go.’

‘With the Fair Work Act it’s not that easy,’ said Shelley.

For some time, shadowy figures had been coming up to the frosted glass window and moving away. But now a figure came right up to the glass and peered between the gaps, within the swirling storm of glazed frosting. Rex leant over his chair and rapped on the glass. The figure reeled back as if struck.

‘Dim or what?’ said Rex.

Meredith said, ‘Told you that they were hard to see through.’

Shelley was running her finger over the text on her iPad. ‘We can go through the relevant section of the Fair Work Act if you like.’

But Rex had no interest in hearing what the bureaucrats had come up with in legislation or anything else. ‘Are you telling me that Don Whateverhisname is still an employee of this great financial institution?’

‘We might have to stop referring to Don as… Don. It’s just a bit creepy. Maybe the person will do.’ Shelley squinted for emphasis.

‘Is he still on the payroll. Yes or no?’ This seemed a pertinent fact to Rex.

‘Yes,’ answered Shelley forlornly, as if pronouncing the family dog dead.

‘OK,’ said Rex, ‘when the rabble the press gives me a call, which is about as certain as a bomb going off in the Middle East, I can confirm as a matter of fact, Don, The Person Randall, is still getting paid by us for his efforts.’

There was silence around the table that Shelley eventually shattered. ‘You certainly couldn’t run an ad or do a search for his replacement.’

In a controlled and insistent voice Meredith pointed out, ‘He might be a homicidal maniac.’

From a HR perspective, things were never this straightforward. Shelley was the reluctant bearer of the protocol. ‘We’ve got to give him notice of what he’s actually done. Not just allegations. That’s the law.’

‘I don’t care how he goes. He’s got to go,’ insisted Meredith.

Rex knew that from a corporate communications perspective there could only be one response. Having a killer as an employee alleged, or, in fact, hardly made a difference to the nation’s press. The presumption of innocence was a killjoy to making news that they’d long ago decided to do without.

At the end of the table, Tristram was taking notes on his iPad, his fingers flying. Rex cast a disdainful look in his direction. ‘You don’t need to take all this down.’

Briefly their eyes caught. Tristram slowed down but continued to make notes.

Peering into her iPad Shelley informed the group, ‘His record is unblemished. Thirty years with the bank. This is his first mistake.’

‘Mistake!’ Russell laughed.

‘Suspend him. Inform him he can’t come