Chapter 5

Monday morning I arrived early at the Stafford site to give me plenty of time to look around. The site, situated south of the town, comprised of one large Victorian building surrounded by a yard. The front of the building held the offices whilst all the machinery occupying the rest. I walked around the perimeter twice and that was enough to give me an idea where to start looking. At the Stoke site, which was near five times the size of Stafford, there were three large skips designated solely for waste metal. At Stafford there were also three, two from a local company, judging by the phone number emblazoned on the side, and one national. I would need to check, but I thought all those at Stoke were from the national company. I also thought that the material already in the two local skips seemed a little large to be classed as waste but I didn't know for sure.

Once I went in to reception and made myself known, I was ushered into a small room and asked to wait. About five minutes later a man who introduced himself as Donald Trent, the Plant Manager arrived. I saw a worried look on his face until he saw me, when it turned to relief. A young technician, even if from head office, was not about to worry him too much. He moaned about not having been informed before ringing Stephen Kenny to verify my credentials. I took an instant dislike to him. My initial thoughts were that he was an arse-licker or bully according to whoever he was with at the time.

After more complaints about my being there, he took me into the main office and sought out a specific young girl who appeared to be in her late teens. Reinforcing my first impression, he was very condescending to her and made a number of sexual innuendos that I could instantly see made her uncomfortable. Karen was apparently the office computer expert or in other words she knew a lot more than just how to turn one on.

'I'm sorry about that, ' I said as soon as Mr. Trent had left.

'About what?' the young girl responded.

'About what he said and his manner, after all if I wasn't here you wouldn't have had to put up with it.'

She turned and looked at me with a truly wonderful smile. 'Don't you believe it, at least with you here he didn't try to cop a feel as he usually does.'

I explained why I was there, or at least the excuse I was using, and we set about the initial part, that of detailing the existing cabling. Over the course of the morning I discovered that my partner was Karen Priestly, she was twenty years old and had been working there for less than a year and was highly unlikely to see out a second, in fact she was already looking for another job. I kept to the truth about me, apart from my latest job, that way I didn't have to worry about being caught out in a lie.

Karen, although she had no proper training, seemed highly knowledgeable regarding computer hardware and well grounded in most of the general software on current release. I forgot to ask what her official job was but got the impression that she was a general gofer. She was more than happy to muck in as I tried to follow some of the cabling into the dirty and dark recesses of the old building, and all the similar places cables get routed. She was wearing quite a short skirt so I couldn't help but notice her body. She was quite an average looking girl, unless she was smiling, with medium length brown hair. Karen carried a few extra pounds, but carried them in all the right places. Given what she'd told me about Donald Trent and a number of the other staff, I was determined not to stare or give her any reason to feel uncomfortable even if her short skirt and frequent bending was something of a test.

It must have worked, as she was quite happy to let me take her for lunch to a local pub. It was a pleasant time and I found myself quite drawn to her bubbly personality. Feeling slightly guilty, I tried to steer the conversation to the wastage and other areas that I might need to look into. She didn't know much, other than she thought it strange that it was always the Plant Manager himself who went out every Tuesday to greet the local skip company when they came to switch skips. That rang immediate alarm bells because our other skips were only changed every three to four weeks. I had to apologise to Karen a couple of times as I let my attention wander. I think she thought that I'd lost interest in her and became slightly less enthusiastic.