26
It wasn’t just Kate who was crying. Janie had tears too, but hers were more in anger than in sorrow.
DCI Eastwood had kindly given me a lift down through the town to Park Paddocks and I was now sitting in one of Tattersalls’ meeting rooms with Kate and Janie.
‘I’ve been working at Castleton House Stables since I was sixteen,’ Janie said angrily. ‘Half my bloody life. And I always worked far more hours than I was paid for, especially since Ryan cut my wages last month. In fact, if you count all the hours I actually work, I’ve probably been getting less than the minimum wage.’
‘Then report him to an employment tribunal,’ Kate said. ‘And also take him to the cleaners for unfair dismissal.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ I said. ‘Let’s not be too hasty. What reasons did Ryan give for letting you go?’
‘The bastard didn’t let her go,’ Kate said angrily. ‘He sacked her. He shouted at her and told her to collect her things and go immediately, and not to come back.’
‘He said he couldn’t afford me any longer,’ Janie said. ‘And also that he didn’t like me passing on personal information about his business to other people.’
‘Did he say which other people?’ I asked.
‘His exact words were “to your sister and her effing boyfriend”.’
Charming, I thought.
‘He’s a fool,’ Kate said.
‘He’s more than that,’ Janie said. ‘I don’t think he has the slightest idea how much I do to make that place run smoothly. I complete all the declarations and engage all the jockeys, to say nothing of the collection of the training fees, vets’ bills, transport costs and so on and so on. I do all the statutory HR stuff and the payroll for the stable lads. It’s even me that orders the horse feed and the bedding. Most yards have a whole team of people doing what I do. All Mr Ryan does is the entries. I reckon the whole place will grind to a halt now that I’ve gone.’
‘Does Oliver know?’ I asked. ‘He told me only last week that the place couldn’t operate without you.’
As if on cue, my phone rang and it was Oliver. I put him on speaker so the girls could hear.
‘Ah, hello, Harry,’ he said hesitantly. ‘We have a bit of a problem here and I was wondering if you could help?’
‘I’ll try,’ I said.
‘I’m trying to contact Janie Logan,’ he said. ‘I thought you might know where she is.’
‘Why do you want her?’ I asked.
‘Well, it seems that Ryan may have acted rather hastily.’
‘What, in sacking her?’
There was a slight pause from the other end.
‘Ah, I see that you already know.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘In fact, I’m with Janie Logan right now. She is very upset. We are discussing making a claim for wrongful dismissal.’
‘Wrongful dismissal?’ he said sharply, repeating the words.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I believe Janie has worked at Castleton House Stables for sixteen years. That means she was entitled to a minimum of twelve weeks’ paid notice. In addition she will also be filing a case with an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal, which I am quite sure she will win.’
‘But it’s all a mistake,’ Oliver said. ‘We want Janie to come back. Ryan should never have said what he did. She is not sacked.’
‘Oliver,’ I said. ‘I think if your employer shouts at you and tells you to get out immediately and not to come back, then you are sacked.’
‘But, as I said, it was all a big mistake. Heat of the moment stuff. We desperately want Janie back.’
‘Is that also what Ryan thinks?’ I asked.
‘Yes, of course.’
I could imagine Oliver and Ryan having had another one of their difficult discussions when Ryan had told his father that he’d fired the only person who really knew what was going on in their business.
Oliver was once again on a damage-limitation exercise for his eldest son.
‘I will consult with Janie and let you know,’ I said. ‘But, whatever happens, I assure you that she shall not be returning on the same terms as before. For a start, she would want last month’s cut in her pay reversed and she would also require a sizeable raise on top of that, as well as substantial compensation for her distress over this matter.’
‘Cut in her pay?’ Oliver said. ‘What cut in her pay?’
‘Ask Ryan,’ I said, and hung up.
I could foresee yet another difficult conversation between father and son.
‘Harry,’ Kate said, clapping her hands together. ‘You were brilliant.’
Indeed, the exchange seemed to have cheered them both up.
‘But the big question,’ I said to Janie, ‘is do you really want to go back to work there, even with a significant raise?’
‘More to the point,’ she said, ‘is there going to be a job to go back to anyway? Two of the owners called this morning to say that they were transferring their horses to other trainers. Sorry, they said, but Mr Ryan has been having too many recent losers.’
Owners of racehorses, it seemed, were only as loyal to their trainers as the owners of football clubs were to their team managers, i.e. not at all, not unless they were winning.
In racing or football, or in any professional sport these days, winning wasn’t just everything, it was the only thing.
‘Where are the horses going instead?’ I asked.
‘One I don’t know, the owner wouldn’t say, but the other is sending his horse to Declan. At least he’ll be keeping the horse in the Chadwick family, he said, as if that was a good thing! Mr Ryan went ballistic when I told him. That’s when he fired me.’
‘One should never shoot the messenger just because the news is bad,’ I said. ‘If you do, then no one will tell you what you don’t want to hear for fear of being killed. Hence you end up not being forewarned of approaching danger even when everyone else knows about it.’
‘That’s very profound,’ Kate said.
‘But true. Hitler got so angry when he was told things were going badly that his generals simply stopped passing on the bad news. He still believed he was winning the war right up to the point where the Russian army was fighting in the streets of Berlin. And, in England years ago, it was considered treason to attack a town crier because you didn’t like the news he was shouting.’
‘Perhaps we could get Ryan hung, drawn and quartered,’ Kate said with a laugh.
‘Too good for him,’ Janie said, which I thought just about answered the question about her going back to work at Castleton House Stables.
Leaving both Kate and Janie in far better humour than I’d found them, I walked back to the Bedford Lodge and checked in with the Simpson White office.
‘ASW is out to lunch,’ Georgina said. ‘But he left you a message.’ I could hear her rustling papers. ‘Here it is. He says you only have until the end of this week as he needs you back here because other projects are looming on the horizon. He’s fixed it all with the Sheikh, who is happy with the arrangement.’
‘Is that all?’ I asked. I’d rather hoped that the research wizards might have discovered a smoking gun by now, preferably one nestling in a Chadwick hand.
‘No, it’s not all,’ Georgina replied. ‘He also said to tell you to get an effing move on, stop pissing around, and put a thunderflash up their arses... there’s a good chap.’
I laughed at her impression. I could almost hear ASW saying it.
ASW loved his thunderflashes, metaphorically speaking that was. A real thunderflash was a pyrotechnic used for training in the army. It was like a firework ‘banger’ only bigger and louder. But an ASW thunderflash was anything that produced an explosive reaction.