The room was empty. There was nobody there. "Um, hello?" said Fat Charlie, not very loudly. There was no reply. There was a certain amount of disarrangement in the room, however: the bookcase was sticking out of the wall at a peculiar angle, and from the space behind it he could hear a thumping sound that might have been hammering.
He closed the door as quietly as he could and went back to his desk.
His telephone rang. He picked it up.
"Grahame Coats here. Come and see me."
This time Grahame Coats was sitting behind his desk, and the bookcase was flat against the wall. He did not invite Fat Charlie to sit down. He was a middle-aged white man with receding, very fair hair. If you happened to see Grahame Coats and immediately found yourself thinking of an albino ferret in an expensive suit, you would not be the first.
"You're back with us, I see," said Grahame Coats. "As it were."
"Yes," said Fat Charlie. Then, because Grahame Coats did not seem particularly pleased with Fat Charlie's early return, he added, "Sorry."
Grahame Coats pinched his lips together, looked down at a paper on his desk, looked up again. "I was given to understand that you were not, in fact, returning until tomorrow. Bit early, aren't we?"
"We - I mean, I - got in this morning. From Florida. I thought I'd come in. Lots to do. Show willing. If that's all right."
"Absa-tively," said Grahame Coats. The word - a car crash between absolutely and positively - always set Fat Charlie's teeth on edge. "It's your funeral."
"My father's, actually."
A ferretlike neck twist. "You're still using one of your sick days."
"Right."
"Maeve Livingstone. Worried widow of Morris. Needs reassurance. Fair words and fine promises. Rome was not built in a day. The actual business of sorting out Morris Livingstone's estate and getting money to her continues unabated. Phones me practically daily for handholding. Meanwhilst, I turn the task over to you."
"Right," said Fat Charlie. "So, um. No rest for the wicked."
"Another day, another dollar," said Grahame Coats, with a wag of his finger.
"Nose to the grindstone?" suggested Fat Charlie.
"Shoulder to the wheel," said Grahame Coats. "Well, delightful chatting with you. But we both have much work to do."
There was something about being in the vicinity of Grahame Coats that always made Fat Charlie (a) speak in clichés and (b) begin to daydream about huge black helicopters first opening fire upon, then dropping buckets of flaming napalm onto the offices of the Grahame Coats Agency. Fat Charlie would not be in the office in those daydreams. He would be sitting in a chair outside a little café on the other side of the Aldwych, sipping a frothy coffee and occasionally cheering at an exceptionally well-flung bucket of napalm.
From this you would presume that there is little you need to know about Fat Charlie's employment, save that he was unhappy in it, and, in the main, you would be right. Fat Charlie had a facility for figures which kept him in work, and an awkwardness and a diffidence which kept him from pointing out to people what it was that he actually did, and how much he actually did. All about him, Fat Charlie would see people ascending implacably to their levels of incompetence, while he remained in entry-level positions, performing essential functions until the day he rejoined the ranks of the unemployed and started watching daytime television again. He was never out of a job for long, but it had happened far too often in the last decade for Fat Charlie to feel particularly comfortable in any position. He did not, however, take it personally.
He telephoned Maeve Livingstone, widow of Morris Livingstone, once the most famous short Yorkshire comedian in Britain and a longtime client of the Grahame Coats Agency. "Hullo," he said. "This is Charles Nancy, from the accounts department of the Grahame Coats Agency."
"Oh," said a woman's voice at the other end of the line. "I thought Grahame would be phoning me himself."
"He's a bit tied up. So he's um, delegated it," said Fat Charlie. "To me. So. Can I help?"
"I'm not sure. I was rather wondering - well, the bank manager was wondering - when the rest of the money from Morris's estate would be coming through. Grahame Coats explained to me, the last time - well, I think it was the last time - when we spoke - that it was invested - I mean, I understand that these things take time - he said otherwise I could lose a lot of money -"
"Well," said Fat Charlie, "I know he's on it. But these things do take time."
"Yes," she said. "I suppose they must do. I called the BBC and they said they'd made several payments since Morris's death. You know, they've released the whole of Morris Livingstone, I Presume on DVD now? And they're bringing out both series of Short Back and Sides for Christmas."
"I didn't know," admitted Fat Charlie. "But I'm sure Grahame Coats does. He's always on top of that kind of thing."
"I had to buy my own DVD," she said, wistfully. "Still, it brought it all back. The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the BBC club. Made me miss the spotlight, I can tell you that for nothing. That was how I met Morris, you know. I was a dancer. I had my own career."
Fat Charlie told her that he'd let Grahame Coats know that her bank manager was a bit concerned, and he put down the phone.
He wondered how anyone could ever miss the spotlight.