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The whole conversation was a bit difficult, I guess you could say. Elly wanted to sort out what we were going to do about Sarah, Cindy and the Emir’s PA position and she recognised that Freddie wasn’t doing the job that needed to be done looking after sales. I wanted to solve the Rachel and Sukie problems. Harry just sounded as though he was resenting the fact that all this was taking up time he needed to work on Ops matters.
Freddie was sitting at one end of the table peering inscrutably over his hands as Elly expressed her concerns on letting Sarah out of the business. “I don’t have a problem with using these girls on internal work but we’ve got to recognise that when we do they collect a lot of knowledge that might embarrass us later. And it’s not just where they go to next it’s what happens to them after that, we’ve got no control of who they might be sold on to.”
Freddie looked pensive. “So what do you think we should do?”
Elly was blunt. “Leaving aside the current problem, there’s three alternatives. Either we don’t use them internally. Or we do and if they turn out unsuitable we carry the costs of keeping them in house but not using them. Or we do and if they turn out unsuitable we, to put it bluntly, dispose of them in a way that doesn’t put us at risk.”
“You know I don’t like wasting assets, Elly,” Clegg said. I wasn’t quite sure which meaning of the word ‘wasting’ he was using. “And I’m not keen on letting the costs of keeping them go up. All right, it’s cheaper than paying staff but that’s not the point. Harry, what’s your view?”
“Well,” he said, “I know it’s my girl that triggered this but actually I think Elly’s right. We ought to have a consistent policy.”
“OK and how are our two current problems?”
“They are both in secure accommodation on a no contact regime.” I knew what that meant. It would get pretty boring in those hoods. “I didn’t want things to get any more complicated.”
“Fine,” said Freddie. “Larry what’s your take?”
“I’m not so sure,” I said warily. “Look, I can’t really have a point of view on what’s secure or what’s not. I just don’t know enough about it. It’s pretty obvious Sarah can’t go back to working for Harry, she’s lost his confidence. Equally she’s been too involved in the business just to be sold on. We need to supply something to the Emir, we’re committed on that and it needs to be Sarah or Cindy. My suggestion would be Cindy.”
“And what do we do with the other one?”
“I think we can find a use for her. We could put her through the same programme that Brian’s family and Rachel have been through. At the end of it she won’t care what it is that she did in the past, she’d be completely absorbed in the pursuit of pleasure. We could use her for what we like then.”
“Which might be?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about this for a while – since we brought in Brian’s family, really - but I hadn’t really finished getting all my ducks in a row yet, so I hadn’t mentioned it. What I’d been thinking was – as we’re starting to see more slave owners appear, some with very little idea of how to look after slaves – I mean imagine I was trying to handle Rachel and Sukie on my own – these new owners, some of them don’t have the first idea of how to do it. They’ve got some romantic idea about having a couple of women on tap but its much more complicated than that. We could help them. Run a sort of training school. ‘Slave Keeping 101’ that sort of thing.”
Freddie was thinking. He didn’t say anything. Elly cut in, “And we’d use Sarah and Brian’s family as the teaching aids?”
“That was my thought,” I said. “Look this isn’t a fully formed idea by any means. It needs a proper plan and….”
“No,” said Clegg. I felt defeated. “No, it doesn’t need a plan. I think we should try it. We’ve got the resources. Let’s see if it works. It’s the sort of thing we should be doing to help develop the customers – the more we can do for them the more their likely to buy from us. Don’t spend time planning, spend time doing. That is unless anyone’s got a better idea?”
Harry, Rick and Elly all shook their heads. “Sounds fine to me,” said Elly.
“Good,” said Clegg. “That’s decided. Get on with it, Larry. The lads will help out.” Harry and Rick both looked relieved.
Elly wasn’t going to let the issue of who was running sales to slide. “And sales management?” she said.
Clegg sucked in his cheeks. They’d obviously discussed it before and it looked like he’d been hoping the problem would go away. “All right. I can see you think it’s not working like this, Elly.” She gave him one of her most inscrutable looks. “I’ll look at moving one of the account managers up into a coordinating role. We don’t need a sales director, I don’t think.”
“But we do need someone to take day to day responsibility for sales management,” said Elly.
“Agreed,” said Clegg. “Leave it with me. I’ll fix it.”
The meeting broke up. I had a separate word with Freddie about Rachel and Sukie. I wanted to hang on to them but I’d need some help as things got busier. Freddie agreed to my proposals for Rachel and for Sukie too. He complained a bit about increasing the overheads but, as I said, it was basically only food and drink anyway. Their costs were pretty marginal and the value that we were getting from Rachel’s insights into the sexualisation programme were worth that alone.
The two of them were installed in an office next to mine. Sukie as a sort of admin / marketing gofer and Rachel doing any of the research or writing that I needed.
The first real jobs that I had for the two of them were mapping out the owners training programme and organising the buyer’s hospitality event. The buyers took priority – we already had a date for that.
Rachel was to script the entertainments. Sukie would handle the admin. I spent an hour running through my thoughts with the two of them. In many ways it was just like a hundred events I’d organised before. Just this time the audience and the products were a bit different.
Basically the pitch was to give the buyers a training day that would help them do a better job for their employers. We wanted to let them have some fun but there had to be some work content as well. Between the three of us we worked up the programme. Sukie had some useful thoughts, she’d seen a lot of the American owners and knew the sort of things they wanted in their purchases. We thought it might be interesting to get Elly to do a short talk on contractual issues and we wanted to pull together a short documentary like video on the collection and preparation process but apart from that the idea was just to give them the opportunity to get some food and drink inside themselves and to enjoy some of the product.
I knew Rachel could write the video script. She’d already developed a rough story-board covering intelligence gathering, a surveillance project, collection, basic orientation and preparation. The brief was to focus in on intelligence and surveillance because it was those phases that most affected out ability to give warranties or provide other reassurances in supply agreements. In the end I think she did a pretty good job, pulling together some existing material that the research teams had collected, some video footage shot on a snatch as a training aid for Harry, some of the CCTV footage from inside the prep centre and some new material shot specially for the video. She even volunteered to do the voice over herself.
The three of us had fallen into a work and life routine that seemed to suit all three of us. Sukie was happy to look after running the apartment, she did most of the cooking and cleaning. Rachel was still spending part of her time reinforcing her sexualisation programme but she and Sukie had developed a very close relationship that was as much emotional as it was physical. Although both the girls were slaves as far as the organisation was concerned, when the three of us were alone together we worked or played as the mood took us or the business required, a delightful combination of labour and lust.
The girls wore their collars, of course, and shackles whenever they were outside the apartment but, apart from that, we lived what looked like a normal existence for three people sharing a flat and their workplace.
Even Tricia started to look as though she was accepting the situation. We’d been chatting one evening and she’d even got as far as apologising.
“You know, I think I might have seemed a bit single minded over some of this stuff,” she said. We’d met up for a drink in the riverside bar. We were at one of the tables, Harry was at the bar trying to renew his acquaintance (again) with the bar maid. “And I’m sorry if it looked like I was jealous about your writer or Sukie. I guess you just had to do all that for the job and if I’m so all fired up by mine I shouldn’t complain if you get caught up in yours.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Well maybe, but I
don’t blame you for getting hacked off. I wasn’t very straight with you about
things.”
“No it’s OK. I mean what man wouldn’t like
having two women on tap. Especially when one of them is set up to get friendly
at the click of a finger.”
As apologies went it wasn’t actually a
really good one but I didn’t want to push things further. “I guess so. It’s not
quite like that with Rachel, though.”
“No? I thought that was how the programme
worked. Just like Pavlov and his dogs, except when you ring the bell with her
it’s not her mouth that starts dribbling.” She gave a laugh that I guessed was
meant to convince me that she was joking. Somehow I didn’t really believe it.
“It’s a bit more complicated than that, Tricia,” I said, “but I can see it might look like that.”
“Don’t you find it a bit creepy, though? Knowing she’s been conditioned to behave like she does? I always had you down as someone that liked his women a bit more independent minded.”
It was obvious that Tricia was including herself in that. “Sure,” I said “but don’t confuse submission with a lack of independent thought. If you get to know Sukie or Rachel you’ll see there’s no lack of that. They just go at their lives in a different way.” The conversation was spiralling down. I could see us ending up throwing things at one another if I didn’t change the subject. “How are you getting on with persuading Harry to let you take a lead on a job?”
Tricia was pleased for the chance to talk
about her favourite subject. “All right, I think,” she said looking furtively
across the bar. Harry was still chatting happily to the bar maid. “I mean at
least we’ve agreed a series of things I’ve got to do to get to a position where
he’ll be happy for me to take the lead. Plus he’s get me involved with some of
the research side. I think he’s happy enough with my field work, it’s just the
planning that he’s not so convinced about, that, and the coordination of the
various members of the team. I guess it’s fair enough but it’s pretty
frustrating. I know I can do just as good a job as Eva or any of the men but I
suppose I’ve just got to go on working at it.” While Tricia carried on chatting
about her problems, my thoughts were drifting back to Sukie and Rachel. I could
see the clock behind the bar over Tricia’s shoulder.
I was suddenly aware that Tricia’s tone had changed. “What?”
“You might at least pretend to listen a bit better than that.”
“Sorry, sure, look I can understand it’s frustrating but you’ll persuade him.” Tricia didn’t look convinced by what I was saying. She believed that she could do it anyway. I just thought she needed to grit her teeth and get on with the hard work. Whether that was the answer or not, bitching to me about it wouldn’t help and I was pretty sure she wasn’t looking for advice.
That’s when my mobile went off. It was from one of the guards at the Centre. Rachel had had a relapse. It looked like another anaphylactic episode. The doctor was with her.
© 2006 Freddie Clegg
Download PDF copies of my other stories at my Yahoo Group :
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freddies_tales/
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