The Spanner - 7

Ramble awoke on the sofa with no feeling in his left arm and a strange and intense couple staring at him, perched on dining chairs like eager church-goers. A male and a female, both with dark lank hair, both wearing black and white clothes which looked to have been picked up on sale in Matalan. They leaned forward when he stirred. The female sucked in a breath to speak.

‘Do you know Jesus?’ she said.

Oh bloody hell. Mormons.

‘Elaine!’ Ramble shouted, and the Mormon couple recoiled. ‘Elaine!’

‘Hold your horses,’ she called from further back in the house.

The male leaned forward and whispered, ‘I’m sure things will get better. Soon.’

He spoke with such sincerity, but Ramble found himself too distracted by the huge mole in the centre of the man’s forehead to really appreciate his words.

‘Everything’s fine just now,’ Ramble said. He pushed himself up to a sitting position and his neck replied by trying to break away from his shoulders. ‘I only fell asleep watching telly.’

‘Oh,’ the man said. ‘Oh, of course.’

Ramble tried to think past the lie to remember what had really happened. He’d been sitting in the armchair in the shed, attempting to reminisce and trick his brain into revealing the specifics of DDNPLFRR. He dozed off like that, and when he woke up and shuffled back into the house he found that Elaine had locked the bedroom door. He considered knocking to wake her up, but the last time he’d done that she answered the door with a forgiving smile before kneeing him in the crotch. He thought about it, and concluded the sofa was a much safer proposition.

Elaine strolled into the room, smiling like she’d just cleared a stubborn bowel obstruction. ‘Stan,’ she said. ‘Have you offered our visitors some tea? Does you still being here at this hour mean you’re not going to work today?’

This is how she was punishing him. She knew he hated Mormons, and Witnesses, and Baptists … anyone who came to the door uninvited really, postmen excepted.

He tried to check his watch, but his arm still wasn’t responding. It hung heavy and disturbingly alien at his side, and when he reached down to grab his left hand it didn’t feel like it was his own. He felt as though he was breaching some social barrier with the act, and he blushed at the thought of his right hand in such an intimate caress with his left. He got an overhand grip on his senseless fingers and lifted the arm to expose his wristwatch.

‘Bloody bugger,’ he said. It was five to ten. He had a call with the development team in five minutes. ‘Where’s my phone?’

‘Probably in your trouser pocket, where you usually keep it,’ Elaine said.

‘Here, you can use my phone,’ the male Mormon said, and placed an outdated Nokia brick in Ramble’s open hand — his numb, useless open hand. It fell to the floor with a plastic clatter. The Mormon glared at him.

Ramble felt the slim profile of his BlackBerry in his pocket — in his right pocket, thank the Mormon God — and fished it out as he stood. ‘My wife will see you out,’ Ramble said. ‘I need to make a call.’ With his left arm still dragging at his shoulder like the world’s most useless prosthetic, he let himself out the back door and made his way to the shed.

‘We’ll wait here for you,’ Elaine called out.

The cow. She was using the Mormons to make sure he left the house. He tried to remember why he’d married her, but like his knowledge of DDNPLFRR’s secrets, that information was lost to time.

Once inside, he scrounged around the drawers in the workbench for some paper and a pen, then scrolled through the infernal menu system on the phone until he found the conference call numbers and password he’d saved there. He wrote these down and started punching them in. As the call connected, he fell into the armchair and his left arm suddenly exploded in a firework burst of pins and needles.

‘Ahh, ahh, shit bloody crap!’

‘Hello Stan?’ came an Indian voice through the phone’s ear-piece.

‘Oh, ah, good morning, er … Benoit.’

‘It is night here Stan, but good morning to you. I’ve also got Olivier and Julien in the room with me.’

‘Good, ah, good evening Olivier, Julien.’

Fire spread up Ramble’s arm, but it was still trapped in a physical limbo, neither dead nor alive. Benoit, Olivier and Julien comprised Ramble’s development team in Bangalore. He could no longer remember their real names. The consultancy who employed them had mixed up the message that they were to be responsible for a system inherited from a Belgian bank; they thought they would be working for a Belgian bank, so they decided their developers should legally change their names to something Belgian-friendly. It suited Ramble, as he was never able to pronounce their real names in a hurry, and his preferred method of communicating with them was exactly that: in a hurry.

‘Stan, so, we are ready to start development on CR2107.’

‘No you’re not.’

‘Yes we are, we —’

‘You are not ready to start work on CR2107. Yeah? The business still have outstanding questions to answer on the requirements.’

‘But these are small questions, and we understand —’

‘There are no small questions, only stupid answers. We need to follow governance very tightly or it will be our arses. No development until the requirements are closed out.’

‘Did he say we need tight arses?’ one of the developers whispered.

‘Okay Stan,’ Benoit said. ‘No development yet on CR2107.’

‘Exactly, no development.’

‘So what should we do in the meantime? There aren’t many production issues, and we haven’t seen an new items come out of the pipe.’

No, that was because Ramble kept a tight grip on the pipe. If they saw everything in the book of work at once, the bloody fools would go and do it all!

‘You should start work on CR2107,’ Ramble said.

Silence. Eventually, Benoit began to mutter. ‘But … but …’

‘Look, it’s really quite simple. I don’t want you to start developing CR2107, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start working on it. Yeah?’

‘But … but …’

Ramble tried rolling his shoulder, and the resulting pain was exquisite. He bit the side of his tongue.

‘Do I need to spell it our for you Benoit? Surely you understand what’s required of you.’

‘Yes Stan, of course,’ Benoit said. ‘We will do the needful.’

‘Yes,’ Ramble said. ‘You will do the needful. Was there anything else we needed to discuss?’

Another pause, then Benoit said, ‘There is one other thing, Stan.’

‘Yes?’

‘We have been told to expect visitors tomorrow. Two of your colleagues from London are coming to visit. We wondered if you could tell us what they might be wanting to do.’

‘Visitors? What visitors?’

‘Two people, Ryan Sanderson and Kong Li.’

The pain in Ramble’s arm became the ghost of a forgotten notion. Blood fled his head and pooled in his guts. ‘Those two? In Bangalore? Why?’

‘We were hoping you could tell us that Stan.’

Ramble tried to think fast. There could only be one possible reason for those two being sent to speak to his development team: mutiny.

‘Don’t tell them anything,’ Ramble said. ‘Not one single word.’

Another pause. ‘Okay Stan.’

‘No, not just Okay Stan. I want you to say it, Say, we won’t say a word to them.’

‘We won’t say a word to them.’

‘Good. Now, I need to get going. Call me when they arrive. And don’t tell thm anything! Don’t even speak to them.’

‘Okay Stan. Have a good —’

Ramble hung up. Jesus Christ, this was an unhappy development. Radical measures were going to be required. He went back to the workbench drawer and opened the cigar box. The mushrooms still had a bit of moisture in them, but he needed to access some of that locked-away information in his head, and fast.

He needed to go back in time.

He popped one of the little angel caps into his mouth, chewed briefly and swallowed.

The Spanner - 6

‘Bloody crap-sticks,’ Ramble muttered when he saw the blue VW Polo parked in the driveway.

He trawled his memory for some mention of Reggie coming to visit. Elaine had probably told him, but like everything else she said that information would have been filtered out or otherwise tangled in his grey matter before it reached the hippocampus. Damned hippocampus, he thought, you and I used to get along. Where did we go wrong? Was it the drinking? The LSD in my younger days? Or have we simply become estranged? Now you’ve locked me out when I really, really need to get something out of there. Just let me collect a few things and I’ll leave you alone. What do you say?

‘Stan?’ Elaine crowed at him from the open front door. ‘Are you going to stand in the driveway all night? I’ll get you a tent, if you’d like.’

He jumped. How long at she been standing there? How long had he been standing there? ‘Just gathering my … thoughts,’ he said.

‘Oh, that could take a while. Perhaps I should get the tent.’

‘Ha bloody ha,’ he said, and stepped past her into the house.

‘You did remember Reggie was coming to dinner didn’t you?’

‘Of course I did.’

‘With his new girlfriend?’

The dark fog in Ramble’s head was suddenly obliterated by a warm burst of sunshine. ‘Girlfriend?’

‘Yes,’ Elaine said. ‘His girlfriend. The one I told you about nearly a month ago. You have no idea, do you?’

He rifled around through a few scraps of memory, flipping them over and searching for clues. A few mentions of Reggie, but nothing about a girlfriend.

A girlfriend.

‘Are you okay?’ Elaine said. ‘You’re not having a stroke are you?’ She said it almost hopefully.

‘No, I’m fine, I just … a girlfriend.’

‘Yes, a bloody girlfriend, I told you about … Oh, wait. Oh, I see. You were still labouring under the false impression that our son is gay, weren’t you?’

‘No, no no no. No.’

‘You don’t have to keep shaking your head like that Stan, I understood you when you said no. Or are you having a stroke after all?’

‘I didn’t think he was gay.’

‘Yes you did. You used to refer to him as our sausage-loving she-boy.’

‘That was a long time ago.’

‘That was two weeks ago, at the Wintons’ barbecue.’

‘Ah. Well, yes, I did say that, but I was being facetious.’

‘Don’t you say ah to me, save that shit for work. Just repeat this phrase, and for Christ’s sake try to remember it, and keep your bloody voice down: our son is not gay.’

‘Our son is not gay. But he does live in Brighton.’

Elaine looked like she was trying to suppress a scream. ‘You … stupid … fucking …’ She reached out and twisted Ramble’s left nipple through his shirt. ‘Don’t squeal,’ she hissed.

Ramble bit down on his tongue and tasted warm copper. She let him go.

‘That was unpleasant for both of us,’ she said. ‘Believe me. Now come on.’

Ramble took some deep breaths and wiped the tears dribbling from the corners of his eyes. Then he followed Elaine down the hall, into the sitting room at the back of the house.

Reggie was on the sofa with some tattooed and heavily-pierced freak. It appeared to be female, but Ramble had made that mistake once before in a Soho bar. It had long black hair with streaks of iridescent blue, and the bulges in the chest area of the back dress suggested tits, but he couldn’t be too careful in that department. No, one could never be too careful.

Reggie stood up as he approached, hand outstretched and a nervous smile trying to come out of its closet.

Ramble stopped. ‘You’re leaving?’

‘No I … we just got here.’

‘Why are you standing then?’

‘I’m … I’m saying hello, Dad.’

‘Oh. Ah, yes, of course. Hello Reggie.’ He took his son’s hand, and it felt like a damp squid which had been left to marinate in warm brine. When they released grips he wiped his palm on his trousers.

‘Dad, this is Regina.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Stan!’ Elaine said, and jabbed one of her bony knuckles into his ribs.

‘Ow! Sorry, that came out wrong. You are kidding though, aren’t you?’

‘No Stan, he’s not kidding.’

‘Pleasure to meet you Mr Ramble,’ Regina said, standing and holding out her hand.

‘Yes, er, pleasure to meet you Regina, of course.’ He took her hand, turned it over one way, then back again. It certainly looked like a female hand. ‘So, you’re a student too, are you?’

‘What gave it away?’ she said. ‘Was it the blue hair or the nose ring? Or do I carry about me a general air of poverty?’

Elaine barked out a laugh. ‘I like this one.’

Ramble wasn’t so sure. Her tone, for one, was filled with dry insolence. All she needed was to throw a whatever in there somewhere to complete the stereotype of apathetic youth. Combined with the similarities of their names, she was too much like a girl version of Reggie. Ramble’s ancestors had a promiscuous history; there could be common genetic material between those two.

Decent looking arse though.

Reggie was doing his best to scowl at Ramble, but it was water off a duck’s back. Ramble bulged his eyes and raised his eyebrows as if to say, what? It was a look he had cultivated over the years, modelling it in part on the expressions produced by Tom Baker in the old episodes of Doctor Who — the best Doctor Who, without question — and in part taking advantage of the naturally startled look he’d been born with. Elaine hated it. She said he looked somewhat daft at the best of times, but when he goggled his eyes like that he looked utterly daft and terminally confused.

Reggie waited until Regina turned to sit back on the sofa, and gave Ramble the finger before sitting back on the sofa with Regina. Reggie had none of his ocular gifts; his eyes were more like Elaine’s, slightly feline with pale blue irises. He’d also inherited Elaine’s blonde hair and slender frame, and he had at least half a foot of height on Ramble.

He thought, not for the first time, that he should secure some of Reggie’s hair for a DNA test.

Dinner was a stingy and uncomfortable endurance. Elaine had made some kind of chicken breast salad with lots of green leafy stuff and mango and peppers.

And it was all cold.

‘What’s wrong with a roast?’ Ramble complained. ‘Or steaks? And spuds or mash would have been nice.’

‘It’s too hot for all that,’ Elaine said. ‘I’m not going to start cooking winter meals until it’s bloody well cold. There’s a big bowl of steamed broccoli there. Help yourself.’

‘Pah!’

‘You eat too much starchy food as it is,’ Elaine said. ‘Too many simple carbohydrates. You’ll be developing diabetes any day now.’

‘What do you care?’ Ramble muttered.

‘Because if you consciously eat yourself to death, the insurance company might consider it suicide.’

Reggie and Regina both tried to stifle laughs, and both failed.

Ramble felt his face heating up. ‘Right, I’m going out to the shed.’

‘Oh, don’t be like that,’ Elaine said half-heartedly. ‘I was only joking.’

‘I have work to do,’ he said, and scooped up his laptop bag as he headed for the back door.

‘Pleasure to meet you, Mr Ramble,’ Regina said from behind him, but he pretended not to hear.

The sanctuary of his shed was in sight, and once out the back door he just about bolted for it. He rested the laptop bag against the armchair, and was about to settle into it and mull over his current catalogue of problems when he had a thought.

It was quite hot, Elaine was right about that. And humid, especially after the rainfall the night before. Sticky. He started to walk around to the back of the shed, holding his breath and hoping for some special visitors. There was a small patch of ground he’d discovered several years ago where, under the right conditions, and at the right time of year, there grew …

Ah, yes, there they were. Ramble allowed himself a victorious fist-pump. Nestled between the uncut blades of grass at the back of the shed, a small area which picked up a few glimpses of sun in the morning but remained in shade for the rest of the day, stood a small crop of slender white angel caps. He crouched down, his knees popping and creaking under the strain, and plucked them out of the soil one at a time. When he had all of them, checking the surrounding area for any he might have missed, he gently curled his fingers over them and returned to the shed. He laid them out on the work bench and counted out thirteen.

Thirteen. Unlucky? Ramble wasn’t a superstitious man, but he went outside to check the area again, just in case there were any stragglers. It would be better if he had an even number, he told himself. When he couldn’t find any more, he repeated his claim: I am not a superstitious man.

He placed the mushrooms in a cigar box to dry and slid the box into one of the drawers under the bench, amongst a miscellany of screws and bolts and washers. These new tools, he thought, these could help him unlock that stubborn hippocampus.

The Spanner - 5

‘Gentlemen, welcome, welcome. Take a seat. Would you like anything to drink? I have coffee and sparkling water. No still water I’m afraid. If you need still, I could have Richard get you some.’

‘No thank you,’ Ryan said as he and Kong took their seats. The vintage leather didn’t so much creak as pleasantly sigh under their weight. Ryan had identified them as Eames originals the first time he’d stepped into the office. The large desk looked to be of the same era, a g-plan with shelves suspended beneath the table by metal posts. He furnished the office with his own funds — very few bank executives had such confidence in the security of their posts. ‘We had a coffee on the way.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Clitheroe said as he settled behind his desk. ‘So, what’s all this about then?’

Giles Clitheroe, AKA the Clit, was overall program manager for Harmony and half a dozen other strategic projects currently running in the bank. While Kip Gillette might be a director trying to throw punches in the managing director weight class, Clitheroe was the real thing. He held power-by-title, and he wielded it almost effortlessly. He leaned forward in his seat, perfectly balanced as he pivoted forward and gently rested his elbows on the table in a fluid dip. Ryan wondered if he could pass a sheet of paper between his elbows and the tabletop. He thought he probably could.

Ryan cleared his throat, his tie suddenly feeling too tight. He’d never seen the Clit lose his temper — quite the opposite, he seemed to carry an almost unshakable air of serenity even in the most adverse circumstances — but he couldn’t help thinking that if he ever did snap it would be epic. ‘It’s about the impact analysis for DDNPLFRR. We’ve hit a bit of a road block.’

‘That was to be expected, I suppose. What kind of a roadblock?’

‘It’s the IT manager. He can’t .. He won’t provide the information we need.’

‘Can’t or won’t?’

‘Both, to be honest. I suspect if he did know the answers he still wouldn’t provide them, but we’ve no real way of knowing.’

Ryan explained the difficulties they’d been facing with Ramble, the lack of cooperation and the bizarre diversionary tactics. Throughout, the Clit remained expression-neutral and so focused on what Ryan was saying he didn’t appear to blink, not even a flutter. Each time Ryan would use a word like difficult or obtuse or unusual, he could could see Kong twitching ever so slightly in his periphery. Kong wanted to use words like moron, imbecile, and fuckwit, but Ryan thought it was unlikely the Clit would appreciate such frank expression, no matter how honest.

‘I see,’ the Clit said, Buddha-calm. ‘And you think there’s no way this Ramble fuckwit is likely to come around?’

Ryan felt a sudden warmth emanating from Kong, a clearly detectable wave of satisfaction. ‘No, I don’t think so. We had another go at him earlier today, but he was just as bad.’

‘Worse,’ Kong said.

‘What do you recommend?’ the Clit asked, looking between Ryan and Kong.

‘I think we need to get a new contract with the suppliers in Bangalore,’ Ryan said. ‘If the developers will only speak to Ramble under the terms of the current arrangement, then we need an arrangement with them, our own service contract.’

The Clit went rigid. His eyes didn’t even move. Ryan had seen this before when the Clit was thinking with a rapid intensity, as though he was able to stop time for himself, travel inside his own head, and look at the situation from all possible angles. In Clit-time he might have been pondering it for an hour or more, but to Ryan and Kong it was a matter of seconds. He blinked once and said, ‘Excellent idea. You’ll both fly out to Bangalore in the morning. I’ll have Richard arrange your flights and accommodation. Three days should be enough.’

‘Um,’ Ryan said. ‘Er.’ He hadn’t been prepared for that. ‘Okay, but is that … really necessary? Going out there?’

‘Absolutely,’ the Clit said. ‘If we tried to get a new contract from here it would take days of passing documents back and forth between all their management layers. If you go there you can do it in less than a day, and then establish a relationship with the developers. Very important that you establish a relationship with them, get them to trust you.’

‘Um,’ Kong said. ‘Won’t still take us a while to agree the contract? With all the management layers?’

‘Oh, it’s only three guys,’ the Clit said. ‘Two of them have multiple roles, but they all sit next to each other. If you’re present, they’ll be forced into an honest representation of their physical proximity. Give me a call when you get there, okay? Just be conscious of the time difference. Now if you gents will recuse me, I’m due on a conference call with Geneva.’

Ryan and Kong stepped out of the Clit’s office both looking like they’d been spun around five times really quickly.

‘Here are your itineraries,’ said Richard, handing each of them a sheet of paper. Richard was the Clit’s assistant, a young Etonian-type with sharp avian features and an even shaper side-part.

‘But how did you …’ Kong said. ‘We just …’

‘Your flight leaves Heathrow at eight, car will pick you up from your homes at four-thirty, so be sure to set your alarms. You’re staying at the Novotel near the office, I hope that’s OK.’

‘But … how …’ Kong stammered.

Ryan led him away as Richard started speaking to someone else through his headset. ‘Come Kong,’ he said. ‘We must pack. We have a quest.’

‘Bangalore,’ Kong said. ‘Fucking Bangalore.’

‘Yeah,’ Ryan said, quietly excited. ‘Fucking Bangalore.’

The Spanner - 4

Something had changed on the office floor, he could feel it. There was an almost tangible tension holding everyone in place at their desks, heads down and working hard. Even Troy was typing something instead of just surfing the web. It was these two monkeys from Group, their mere presence had been enough to get everyone on edge.

If Ramble was honest with himself, he was a little unsettled by them too. Once Group got involved, it was a lot harder to confuse and deflect; they had a tendency to remove anyone found guilty of that behaviour, and to hell with the consequences because they didn’t have to live with them. Ramble was going to have to pull together some information on DDNPLFRR to satisfy the little hyenas. Not enough for them to do anything with, but enough to get them off his case.

He hunched forward over his laptop like he was trying to hide some awful secret; which he supposed he was. He’d got into the office earlier than his usual 10.30 to search through his archives. He was trying to find a document which he hadn’t seen in over five years, a document no-one knew existed: the DDNPLFRR manual.

Yes, it existed. Or it had done, at one time. If those two wetbacks Ryan and Kong had the slightest idea there ever was a manual they’d probably wee a little in their shorts. When Ramble came into the bank to take ownership of DDNPLFRR, he saw the opportunity he was being handed. He’d been in the industry long enough to know how these things went: get the contractor in to figure out the system, get it into shape, document it, then ship the whole lot off to a cheap offshore location. It was a cycle he was very tired of, and one he had no desire to repeat.

So he broke the cycle.

Ramble memorised the manual, learnt the system, then destroyed everything. Files were deleted, booby traps placed in the code, and he and he alone managed the relationship with the developers in Bangalore. He’d even gone out there to hire them.

But now, as he tried to recall the details, any of it, all he got back from his useless head was the rubbish he made up on a daily basis to explain away the shortcomings and complexities of the system. Had he been so thorough in destroying the documentation that he’d corrupted his own memory? Did he have any real knowledge of the system left? He used to, he was sure of it.

He didn't want any of his colleagues to see what he was doing, so he’s removed his laptop from the docking station, which meant his triple monitor setup wasn’t showing his desperate key-word searches of his own directories.

‘Morning Stan.’

‘Bloody shitting hell!’ he said, jumping in his seat and slamming shut the lid of his laptop in one exaggerated motion.

Ryan and Kong were standing behind him, fake smiles on their faces.

He turned back to his laptop and raised the lid, switching the display to his email. He started typing in a two-fingered fury.

‘Stan, can we grab you for five minutes?’ Ryan said.

Ramble held up his right index finger, leaving only his left to type with. He soon needed the use of the shift key, so he had to reclaim the finger.

‘One minute?’ Ryan said. ‘Sure, we can wait a minute.’

The two Groupers sat at the unoccupied desks either side of him — he almost always found himself flanked by empty desks, any neighbour he collected over the course of a year often needing to urgently relocate after only a week or two — while he churned out a brain-dump to the developers. Issues, new requirements, musings, fancies, developments, wishes and worries, it all went into the daily email. He doubted the daft buggers could comprehend much of it, as Ramble had a tendency to wax lyrical in his communiques, but he needed to get everything in there so when they messed something up he could point at random to any one of those emails and say, look, it’s all in there, I told you about it.

One minute turned into two, then three. Kong cleared his throat, and Ramble’s right index finger flew up once more.

He bashed away at the keyboard and willed, wished, urged his cloak of invisibility to surround him to conceal him from these dopes. Ramble’s cloak of invisibility was a powerful mental tool, a state of mind which put out a signal strong enough to influence those around him. If he believed in the cloak, so would everyone else. It worked on Troy and Sevak almost every time, and it would work on these two, if he believed in it.

Surround me, cover me, turn me into air and light.

‘Have you finished then? There’s a free room just over there.’

Hide me, conceal me, shield me …

‘Stan? Hello? We’re not going away Stan.’

Bugger. His thoughts were too tangled to get the cloak to function properly. These two clowns were quite literally messing with his head.

‘Fine!’ he said, and slammed the laptop shut. ‘Fine, I suppose the world can stop turning for five minutes then. The developers can wait for instructions, perhaps they can go and drink some chai on the company pound, that’s what I’ll tell Gillette they were doing instead of resolving his urgent production issues.’

‘Really?’ Ryan said. ‘We just spoke to Gillette, he didn’t mention anything about production issues.’

‘That’s because there are constantly production issues with DDNPLFRR, and if we don’t stay on top of them the whole business comes crashing down.’ He kept his voice calm and full of condescension, but his blood was screaming. They’d spoken to Gillette? About what?

‘Well, we shouldn’t keep you more than a couple of minutes,’ Kong said.

‘What is it? A couple of minutes or five minutes? See, it’s this kind of inconsistency which causes us so many problems. Three minutes might not seem like much to you, but to the developers it can mean missing a production release deadline.’

They had no comeback to that, naturally. Ramble had years of counter-punches stored in his head.

He followed them into one of the smaller meeting rooms, a windowless box furnished with a cheap round melamine-topped table and three chairs, one of which was an orange plastic tub of the kind found in school cafeterias. Ryan and Kong took the good chairs.

‘What’s this about then?’ Ramble said, folding his arms and leaning back in the chair. It creaked loudly and he felt the backrest buckle in.

‘We need access to the developers,’ Ryan said. ‘We’ve only got three weeks to complete the impact assessment, and we haven’t been able to make any progress with the London resources.’

Rude little oik. Ramble was the London resources.

‘You can’t,’ Ramble said. ‘They’ll only speak with me, it’s in their contract.’

‘Convenient,’ Kong muttered, and Ryan shot him a look.

‘Then we’d like you to facilitate the discussions.’

‘Look, I really don’t have time for this,’ Ramble said, throwing his hands into aerial tumbles over the small table. ‘I’ve got more than enough on my plate with my own job without having to do yours too! I don’t see why you need to go into such a ridiculous level of detail, I’ve told you everything you need to know about DDNPLFRR.’

‘You’ve told us nothing!’ Kong said.

Ramble just stared at him, silently saying: My. Point. Exactly.

Ryan sighed. It was a stage sigh, Ramble knew them when he heard them. ‘We’re going to have to escalate this then, no other option.’

‘You go right ahead. Escalate away. While you’re off escalating to mummy and daddy, I’ll be here getting on with business.’

Kong looked like he was fit to burst, but Ryan just smiled and shook his head. ‘Thanks for your time Stan. See you later.’

They both left the room, Ryan leading the away. Neither of them looked back.

Ramble felt something straining in his chest, and he realised it was his heart. Calm down Stan, he told himself. This isn’t the first time someone’s tried to escalate something to Troy. Nothing to worry about, you can handle Troy. Something about Ryan’s demeanour unsettled Ramble, his quiet smirk and sure tone. They’d already spoken to Gillette. Is that where they’d be escalating? Best not think about it. What will be will be.

He went back to his laptop and finished typing out his morning missive, then fired it off to the developers.

There, he thought. That’ll keep them busy for the rest of the day. He checked the clock, and decided it was close enough to ten for his morning smoke. He tucked a Hamlet behind his ear and shuffled to the lifts.

The Spanner - 3

Ryan and Kong sat in the meeting room at 9am, waiting for Kip Gillette to arrive. Ryan sent the invitation as soon as the farcical session with Ramble had finished the day before. Kong had been reluctant, wanting to put his faith in further analysis to deliver some progress, but Ryan could see where this was going … and he’d heard the stories about Ramble.

Stan Ramble had worked with twelve different business analysts during his tenure on DDNPLFRR, and all twelve had resigned, citing Ramble as the cause.

And yet he remained.

The business no longer bothered with business analysts, leaving the requirement gathering and legwork to the project manager. Sevak was the fourth of these project managers. One of his predecessors had suffered a full-scale nervous breakdown, and was last seen dancing around the cafeteria dressed as a Smurf, complete with blue body-paint, singing la la la-la-la laa, la la-la la laa. As he was led away, he shouted to anyone who would listen, Stan Ramble is Gargamel! He’s evil! Apparently there was much nodding at these claims.

And yet he remained.

No, analysis wouldn’t get them far, Ryan was sure of that. Their remit was clear: understand DDNPLFRR, document it, and escalate any roadblocks. Ramble was like a dictionary definition of roadblock. Ryan didn’t see they had any choice.

Gillette appeared in the room at five minutes past the hour. Ryan and Kong both had their heads down reviewing the latest Harmony road map when Gillette said good morning and made them both jump in their seats.

The door to the room hadn’t opened, and there was no sound of his chair being rolled out from the table. He was lithe of frame, but not so slim that he shouldn’t have made some noise when he took a seat. One second they were waiting for him and the next he was just … there.

‘What’s this all about then?’ he said, ten percent of a smile holding his cheeks up.

‘Stan Ramble,’ Ryan said. ‘It’s about Stan Ramble.’

‘What about him?’

‘Well, he’s a … he poses a … that is to say, our remit with Harmony is …’

‘It’s okay,’ Gillette said. ‘You can say it. The man’s a walking train-wreck.’

‘He’s an incompetent fuckwit!’ Kong suddenly blurted out, and immediately reddened. ‘Sorry,’ he said in a much quieter voice. ‘Ryan usually does the talking.’

‘Yes,’ Gillette said, his expression unchanged. ‘Perhaps we should stick to that approach. ‘Look, I understand your concerns, I really do, but you have to appreciate the unique nature of DDNPLFRR. We didn’t create the system, we didn’t buy it in, we just inherited it. Along with the hardware and the tables and the code and the screens, we also inherited its problems.’

‘I understand,’ Ryan said. ‘But Ramble doesn’t have to be one of those problems.’

‘See, that’s where I disagree with you,’ Gillette said, leaning forward in his seat. ‘Stan Ramble, unpleasant though he might be, in the only person in the bank with even a loose grasp of how the system works. And he’s the only one who can talk to the development team.’

‘Why?’ Ryan said.

‘Because that’s the way it is. The developers are all sourced through a third party supplier in India, and the vendor contract states they can only interface with Stan Ramble.’

‘Who the hell negotiated that contract?’

‘Well, Ramble did. Obviously.’

Ryan felt a stabbing pressure inside his skull, right above his eyes, as if his brain had decided to try and get out while it could.

‘So let me see if I understand the situation correctly. DDNPLFRR is a rubbish system inherited during the Belgian acquisition, and there doesn’t appear to be any documentation on it. While Stan Ramble appears to be the only one in the bank with even a small amount of technical comprehension of the system, he doesn’t really know what makes it tick; and the only people who do seem to know how it works are a handful of outsourced developers in Bangalore who are contractually obligated to speak only to Ramble. Does that sum it up?’

‘Precisely,’ Gillette said, his smile still at ten percent.

Ryan felt like he was trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle, but every piece was the same. He let out a long breath.

‘This looks like it is a significant issue for Harmony.’

‘I agree,’ Gillette said. ‘You need to find a way to work around it.’

‘The most efficient way I can see around it is to remove Ramble from the picture.’

‘Can’t, there’s too much in-flight change happening. And he holds the relationship with the developers.’

‘Only because there’s no-one else,’ Ryan said, more to himself than to Gillette. An idea began to take shape, and he worked at it.

‘What you need to appreciate about DDNPLFRR,’ Gillette said, ‘Is that it has its own culture, its own dynamics. Working with the system involves putting a great deal of effort into relationships. You need to build a relationship with Ramble, make friends with him.’

‘I’d rather cut myself,’ Kong said.

‘I thought you weren’t talking,’ Gillette said. ‘Look, even I’ve managed to establish a functional working relationship with Stan, and I loathe the man.’

‘Yeah,’ Ryan said. ‘He’s frightened of you, and does whatever you tell him.’

‘Ridiculous,’ Gillette said, but his smile lifted to twelve percent.

‘OK, fine,’ Ryan said. ‘We’ll give Ramble another chance to cooperate. If he remains obstinate, then we’ll have to escalate the issue.’

‘Isn’t that what you're doing now?’

‘We’ll need to raise it to Clitheroe.’

Gillette’s smile dropped to eight or nine percent, but only for a second. He forced it back up to ten. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Pass on my regards to the Clit. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a nine-fifteen.’

And int he blink of an eye he was gone, silently, his motion not even stirring the potted palm by the door.

‘He scares me,’ Kong said. ‘I don’t think he’s human.’

‘Come on,’ Ryan said. ‘Let’s go and see Ramble, give him his final chance to be helpful.’

‘Then will we really escalate to the Clit?’

‘Yep. We have to follow governance.’

‘And what will we tell him? Ramble’s being a big stupid meanie?’

‘I have a plan,’ Ryan said, folding up the papers. ‘Come on, I’ll tell you about it on the way.’

The Spanner - 2

Ramble turned the key in the lock slowly, carefully, trying to roll the tumblers and disengage the latch without rousing the dragon. The slightest click could be enough to —

‘Stan? Stan, is that you?’

Damn.

He twisted the key all the way around and opened the door and shouted, ‘Hello!’  If you can’t get away with sneaking, be as loud as possible. Anything in between is a sign of weakness.

Elaine stepped into the hallway and pulled shut the door to Reggie’s room. She referred to it as her gym now, but Ramble would always think of it as their son’s room, as Reggie’s room.

Reggie: useless little bugger.

‘Stan, what are you doing home so early?’ Elaine said, her voice cutting through Ramble’s head like a dentist drill. ‘Shouldn’t you still be at work?’ She was pulling at her yoga pants, trying to straighten them over her cold and shapeless hips.

‘There was a fire alarm,’ Ramble said. ‘By the time we were all ready to go back in again, it was hardly worth the effort.’

‘Stan, we’ve spoken about this. You need to make the effort. You’re only a contractor there, they could get rid of you like that.’ She snapped her fingers, and sweat pattered over the wooden floor.

She was slick with the stuff, and red with the strain of her workout. With any luck, Ramble thought, the wiry hag will drop dead of a coronary.

They can’t get rid of me, Ramble thought. They’d lose their own heads up their arses trying to find the right buttons to push.

‘I need to get back to my session,’ she said. ‘I’ve only got Antony for another fifteen minutes.’

Ramble grunted. Antony was the personal trainer. Almost certainly gay, the way he wore his shirts so tight, desperate to show off his poofy sculpted body to all his other poofy friends. ‘I’m going to the shed.’

Elaine returned to her gym session, closing the door behind her. As Ramble passed the door he heard the click of the lock being engaged, followed by the thumping of some very loud, very energetic pop music.

Gay pop music.

He stopped in the kitchen to grab some provisions. What’s in the cupboard, what’s in the cupboard ... Ah! Pringles, buried under a pile of Elaine’s rice cakes. There was half a loaf of white sliced sitting on top of the bread bin, so he grabbed that too and shuffled out the back door to his sanctuary, his fortress of solitude.

The shed.

Ramble’s shed was no cheap lap-panel crate from Homebase. It was timber-framed, insulated, and fully wired and plumbed. He even had a bog out there, and wi-fi! It wasn’t just a shed, it was a summer-house. It was a home away from home, though in his opinion not nearly far enough away.

He fumbled through his pockets for his keys and let himself in. The house was equipped with a standard issue Yale tumbler, but he’d spent a couple of hundred quid on the locks for his shed, the kind where the key couldn’t be copied without a secret password and a DNA sample. There were bars on the windows. He was giving serious thought to having an alarm system installed.

When he pulled the door closed behind him the latch engaged with an industrial thunk. It was the heavenly chime of the outside world being locked away. There were only two keys to the shed: the one on Ramble’s key-ring, and the other one on Ramble’s key-ring.

The boof-boof-boof of Elaine’s workout music pounded from the house, and the odd scream of exertion occasionally climbed above it. It was absurd, the things that woman did to her body, and at her age. He wondered, not for the first time, whether he should sound-proof the shed.

He rolled his head back and stretched his arms out, feeling for the floor lamp. His hand bumped the shade, and he reached beneath it to flick the switch.

‘Let there be light,’ he said to the room; and lo, there was light. The lamp was fitted with one of those energy-saving bulbs, so the small room wasn’t so much flooded with brightness as gently illuminated.

Screwdrivers and hammers and spanners and wrenches and a wide assortment of power tools covered the workbench which ran the length of one wall. Some tools still hung from their intended hooks on the wall, but only a few. Aside from the pedestal lamp, a lethargic old tartan-print armchair and a square mahogany-stain side table were the only items of furniture in the room. All three were rescued from oblivion when some new neighbours decided to update the entirety of the house they’d just bought from a deceased estate sale. Elaine had sworn at him like an army drill sergeant when she saw him dragging the things across the street. He was yet to figure out what a fucktarded shit-gibbon might be, but Elaine needn’t have worried, he never intended to leave them in the house. He had to take the door off the shed to get the chair inside, and while it took up a full third of the floorspace, it was there now, and it had become the centre of Ramble’s sanctuary.

He opened the small bar fridge under his work bench and fished out a can of Stella, sat it on the side table alongside a packet of Hamlets. The armchair half collapsed as he dropped into it, springs stretching and screeching like they were in genuine pain. When the first mouthful of lager his his belly, he was finally able to think clearly. He slipped the lighter out from inside the pack of Hamlets and touched the flame to one, sucking deeply. Elaine never let him smoke anywhere near house, but as far as he was concerned, the shed was his house.

‘However so humble,’ he muttered through the fog leaking out of his head.

He took another swallow of beer and wound the clock back in his head to the start of the day. What happened? There were the usual crises, failures and flaws in the system, crashes and subsequent squalls from the users, but that was all normal. He felt abnormally uneasy, because something had happened today to upset the balance — it was those two little upstarts from Group. He fished his Blackberry out of his pocket and scrolled through the emails, looking for the meeting invite, and he soon found it. Ryan Sanderson and Kong Li, assigned by Group to review DDNPLFRR as part of Project Harmony. What an appropriately weak project name: Harmony. It was bound to fail with a flimsy name like that. Projects should be called strong names, big uppercase names, like THUNDERBOLT, EAGLE, and TARDIS.

TARDIS. Now there’s a good name for a project. It’s the kind of project they’d need if they ever hoped to understand DDNPLFRR; they were never going to unpick it in its current state. Time travel was the only way they were going to learn what held it all together.

Still, all the questions they were asking, Ramble didn’t like it at all. How does this work? How does that work? Why are there so many issues? Is this normal? How long does it normally take to resolve an issue? He desperately wished they’d all just leave him alone to get on with things in his own time, in his own way — that’s how things got done in DDNPLFRR. Perhaps not things that anyone was expecting, but with the limited tools he had to work with, they should all be happy if they get anything at all.

He was going to have to keep an eye on these clowns from Group. It wouldn’t be the first time his authority had come under attack, but Ramble always came out on top, pushing ahead unperturbed, with scores of beaten business analysts and project managers bobbing uselessly in his wake. It was only a matter of time before Sevak cracked, and then he’d be just another notch on Ramble’s sword hilt.

He sucked on the Hamlet, drawing the heat down into his lungs and resisting the urge the hack it back up. Even smoking seemed to be getting harder, resisting his will, fighting him.

He sucked it again.

The Spanner - 1

‘Ah. See, that’s where you’ve got it wrong. You’re confusing completed with done.’

The four heads in the meeting room all lifted from their printed A3 project plans and, in unison, turned their mechanical gazes on him.

They were like, Ramble thought, a troop of Daleks, taking their instructions by remote control and incapable of independent thought. Daft sods, they had no idea what they were doing. It was bad enough having to suffer through the idiocy of his manager and the project manager on a weekly basis, now he had these two muppets from Group to hand-hold, the guy with the curly hair and the Chinaman.

‘Excuse me?’ the curly-haired one said.

‘Yes?’ Ramble snapped back immediately. ‘Er …’

‘Ryan.’

‘Yes Ryan?’

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you’re getting at.’

Ramble let that hang for a moment before saying, almost with a sigh, ‘No. I don’t suppose you do.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t quite get it either,’ the Chinaman said. ‘It’s Kong.’

‘Kong?’ Ramble said. ‘Like the giant gorilla?’

‘If that helps, sure.’

‘So what does it mean? Is it some Confucian state of confusion?’ He had them well on the back-foot now, he could see it in their bleary stares and deep frowns.

‘It’s my name,’ he said.

‘Really? How unfortunate. Back on the subject, I believe you’re having trouble understanding the development status.’

‘Um, yes,’ Curly said, trying to gather his thoughts.

Curly, or … Ryan, that was it. Ramble was going to need a mnemonic. Curly Ryan. Curly. Swirly. Curls. Loops. Loopy Ryan? No. Ringlets. Ringlet Ryan? Perfect.

‘You’ve marked the development status of CR2107 as “completed”, but you say it’s not ready to be tested.’

‘Yes,’ Ramble said without further explanation. No free lunches for these two, not if he had any say in it.

Ringlet Ryan looked to Troy for assistance, but all he got back was a pair of upraised eyebrows and a slight shrug. Troy Bleeker was Ramble’s manager, but he’d long since had his spirit broken by Ramble’s unassailable knowledge of the system. Ryan and Kong both looked to Sevak, the broken project manager, but he was already shaking his head, eyes downcast. He looked like he wanted to curl into a ball under the table and weep. Ramble thoroughly owned Sevak.

Ryan held his hands out. ‘Why?’

Ramble sat back in his seat and folded his arms. ‘You wouldn’t understand. It’s very technical.’

‘Oh, that’s OK. Kong and I are both from a technical background.’

‘Ah. Well, you see, it’s because the developers identified a gap in the requirements.’

Sevak’s forehead hit the table with a dull thud.

‘I’ve read the requirements,’ Kong said. ‘They seem quite thorough.’

‘Seem thorough, yes. But there are still outstanding questions on how the business wants the work-flow to change.’

Sevak sat back in his chair as though dragged back by unseen wires and shouted, ‘Liar!’

‘Steady Sevak,’ Troy said, the only contribution he’d made in the meeting.

‘The requirements were signed off by the business three weeks ago. No outstanding questions!’ Ramble could see the capillaries bursting in the little man’s eyes as he glared at him. Glare all you want, tiny. You can’t hurt me.

‘Ah,’ Ramble said, ‘that was before IT hit a hurdle in the work-flow code block. The development to implement the requirement has led to a mandatory work-flow change, otherwise the whole thing could go tits-up.’

‘So, what’s this hurdle?’ Ryan said.

‘It’s in the document.’ Ramble said.

‘Can you summarise it?’

Ramble's eye flew open in shock. ‘No! It’s a question from IT.’

‘Yes, but … you’re IT, aren’t you Stan?’

‘I’m the IT manager,’ Ramble said. ‘I don’t work with the code.'

‘But you work with the developers?’

‘I manage them, yes.’

‘But you can’t explain what they do, or ask questions on their behalf?’

Ramble screwed up his mouth like he was fighting to keep bile from rising into his throat and spraying out over their ignorant arse-faces. ‘DDNPLFRR doesn’t work like that. What you need to understand, Ringlet, about DDNPLFRR, is that it was inherited blind off the back of a Belgian acquisition five years ago, without any documentation, and our team have been working around the clock, twenty-four-seven, ever since just to keep the damn thing ticking over.’

‘It was seven years ago, and … did you just call me Ringlet?’

Buggery bullocks, he thought he might have done. Damn tricky mnemonics, now he remembered why he never used them.

‘Let’s try and stay focused, shall we? Why are we talking about piglets all of a sudden?’

‘Ringlet.’

‘Don’t do that!’ Ramble snapped. ‘That’s soirritating.’

‘What’s irritating?’ Ryan said. ‘Being corrected?’

Ramble threw his pen at the window. ‘I don’t believe this. Are you trying to wind me up?’

‘Easy, Stan,’ Troy said. ‘Easy.’

‘I just want a straight answer,’ Ryan said. ‘How can the development status be complete, when it isn’t?’

‘I suggest,’ Ramble said, ‘you read the requirements document, paying particular attention to the open questions section. When Sevak answers the questions in the document —’

‘You only added the questions yesterday!’ Sevak screamed in a pitch of voice right up their with a kettle’s whistle. ‘Development was supposed to be finished two weeks ago!’

‘— then my team,’ Ramble continued, ignoring Sevak’s outburst, ‘can complete this additional requirement.’

‘So let’s get the team on the phone now,’ Ryan said. ‘Sort this question out.’

‘Can’t,’ Ramble said, staring at Ryan like he’d just grown a pair of tits on his head. ‘They’ve gone home.’

Ryan looked at his watch. ‘It’s not even three. What happened to twenty-four-seven?’

‘They work in bloody Bangalore!’ Ramble shouted. ‘Do you want to literally work them to death? Do you want them to be taken down by a pack of wild dogs as they walk home, alone, in the middle of the night? Look, I’ll call them now, shall I? I’ll call them at home in the middle of the night and wake them up, wake their family up, and demand they make the journey back to the office so they can join this call give you your answers? Shall I do that now?’

‘Why not just talk to them on their home number? No need to drag them all the way into —’

‘They don’t have phones!’ Ramble shouted, pulling at his hair with both fists so hard his eyebrows seemed to be temporarily standing in for his hairline. ‘Jesus Christ man, they live in slums!’

‘OK, OK, look,’ Kong said, holding his hands up in a plea for calm. ‘No need to call them at home, let’s just attack it in the morning when everyone’s fresh. Yeah? So, Stan, when your team has tidied up this work-flow question, then the users can test?’

‘Yes, obviously,’ Ramble said, standing to leave. ‘Unless this new work-flow requirement necessitates another code tweak.’

‘When will we know if that’s going to happen?’ Ryan said.

‘I couldn’t possibly say, that’s a question for IT,’ Ramble said, and drifted out the door, leaving the simpletons to scratch their bums in confusion.

Check-mate, Ramble.

***

Ryan stared at Kong, and they both stared at Troy and Sevak.

‘Did that just happen?’ Ryan said. ‘Did we just have that conversation, or have I been drugged?’

‘If you’re drugged, it must be in the water,’ Kong said. ‘I feel like I’ve just been run over by the stupid truck. What the hell was that?’

‘That, my friends,’ Sevak said, ‘was Stan Ramble. That –’ he jabbed his finger at the door, ‘– that is the roadblock you have to clear if you have any hope of understanding DDNPLFRR.’

‘All we asked for was a functional design document,’ Ryan said. ‘How did we end up reviewing all the issues in the system?’

‘Because that’s what Ramble knows,’ Sevak said. ‘He knows what the issues are at any given time, and can plausibly explain the issues inherent in resolving the issues ... just don’t ask him how.’

‘How what?’

‘How anything! The more direct your questions, the greater barrage of crap you face. You need to trick him into answering you directly.’

‘How do we do that?’ Kong said.

‘Buggered if I know. I’ve been trying for two years.’

Ryan turned to Troy. ‘Isn’t there a way around him? Can we discuss this with the development team?’

Troy leaned back in his chair. All the office chairs were “intelligently ergonomic”, meaning they moved with the body but couldn’t be fixed in place. Being rather heavy on top, Troy faded into a recline which could almost be viewed as napping. He steepled his fingers under his chin. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, the development team in Bangalore are under contract with a third party supplier, and they are only contractually obliged to communicate with Stan, or with others but only if Stan is included.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Kong muttered. ‘So we have to deal with that guy? Are you sure none of this is documented?’

‘Well …’ Troy said, suddenly interested in the ceiling.

‘Well?’ Ryan said.

‘Well, it was documented at one point, at least we think it was. But all the documentation appears to have gone missing.’

‘Missing?’

‘Missing. Absent. Deleted, either accidentally, or …’

‘Dear God,’ Kong said. ‘He wouldn’t, would he?’

Troy held his hands up palm out. ‘I’m not saying any more. OK? I can’t.’

Ryan pinched the bridge of his nose in a futile attempt to stem his growing headache. ‘Right, so there’s no documentation, and we’re not going to get anything meaningful out of Ramble. We can’t communicate with the developers directly. Can we raise a change requires to have them document the system?’

‘You could raise one, sure,’ Sevak said. ‘It’ll never be approved though.’

‘Why not?’ Ryan said.

‘I’ve tried it before. Ramble made a big show of telling everyone how he’d have to pull the team off their current development work to document the system, which would mean the business wouldn’t get their expected deliverables for another two to three months. Gillette hit the roof.’

Ryan had been writing change request for documentation, but he drew a line through it. Gillette was the chief business sponsor of DDNPLFRR, and if he didn’t get his changes delivered on a regular basis, people lost their jobs.

Sevak leaned in and lowered his voice. ‘You know the only reason Ramble still has a job, don’t you? It’s because whenever Gillette says jump, Ramble practically throws a disc in his back. Gillette doesn’t want to lose that flexibility.’

‘Well, our mandate is from Group. If we hit obstacles, we need to escalate to our sponsors.’

‘By all means,’ Troy said. ‘Please, escalate. Knock yourselves out.’

Ryan looked to Kong. ‘Maybe we should see Gillette, he’s aware of the profile of Harmony. If his system poses a risk to the project, he should know about it.’

Project Harmony was a Group effort to standardise all the common data in the bank, to enable seamless reporting and audit at all levels. It was never going to happen, everyone new that, but it was being driven by industry regulatory requirements, which meant Big Brother was watching. They had to go through the motions with due diligence. Ryan and Kong had been sent to perform their little role, which was the integration of DDNPLFRR, the dog system of the bank.

Kong nodded, but he didn’t look happy about it.

‘Cheer up, mate,’ Ryan said, slapping his colleague on the shoulder. ‘It wouldn’t be fun if it was easy.’

‘Fun,’ Kong said. ‘Right.’