-Track Nineteen-
Billy made a cup of instant coffee, took a sip, and grimaced. He looked around his small office and his boxes waiting for him to unpack. He thought about his and Susan’s rapid fall from grace, the ridicule they had received from the press, and the embarrassment they’d brought upon their powerful employers.
Billy sighed and wished that he had read his employment contract more thoroughly, especially the vague employment description and his negotiable salary.
After Fredrick’s visit, the board of top executives at both the BBC and Virgin convened an emergency meeting to decide what to do.
The lawyers advised them that Billy and Susan had overstepped all legal boundaries and they would lose any case brought against them by Kipper. They knew they would not only lose an expensive trial, but the repercussions would also cost them a fortune with their competitors capitalising on their bad press.
Both companies felt relieved and delighted when Kipper accepted their £2 million settlement and agreed to their payment terms.
Not only was Billy and Susan embarrassed by the media; these unscrupulous pair were now a liability to the two massive corporations and Numan and McHale entered employment purgatory.
Still under a ten-year contract with their employers, BBC and Virgin wanted to ensure they had control of the pair and keep them closely monitored. The powerful companies warned them that they would prosecute the pair if they disclosed anything about Fossils.
Billy and Susan both knew that with the companies’ powerful legal machine against them, they faced lengthy prison sentences should they try anything.
With Billy demoted to a minor position within Broadcasting House and Susan given menial work around the Virgin offices, they were now just filing Clerks and gophers.
Billy took another drink of coffee and his intercom buzzed. “Numan, come to my office, immediately.”
“On my way, Eileen,” said Billy and sighed.
Billy finished work and drove to his Mayfair penthouse apartment. He looked at boxes of his belongings stacked on the floor, becoming angry when he thought about Kipper moving into there in a few days. With all the swish furniture in the apartment covered by the cleaning teams, the large penthouse apartment looked pristine, unlike his dingy flat.
He looked around his old lavish apartment and looking out of the window, shook his head and sighed.
Billy’s new position did not come with benefits and he knew his revised salary wouldn’t even cover the service charges here, let alone the rent.
Looking out over the London skyline and still trying to come to terms with what had happened, Billy now wished he hadn’t squandered the money he’d earned living the high life, holding lavish cocaine and champagne parties and leasing fast cars, boats, and a private jet.
Billy was similar to Kipper and spent money like water, never thinking or planning for the future, which he assumed would be bright when he signed a lucrative contract with the BBC. Billy was a ruthlessly ambitious man, who let no one stand in his way on the rise to the top. Perceived as a playboy, he spent lavishly on the beautiful women seen with him around London, either driving the latest sports car or flying too expensive restaurants in Europe. However, after using the last of his money several days earlier to pay a deposit on a dingy west end flat for him and Susan and rent a Ford transit van to move his stuff, he had nothing but dept.
Billy groaned as he picked up a box of ornaments and walked outside. ‘Most of these are antique and cost me a fortune, but I need to sell them cheaply to raise money,’ he thought as he went down the lift outside the penthouse to the car park.
Billy had met Susan several months earlier at a Virgin conference and they hit it off straight away. They both considered the relationship casual, as Billy loved his playboy lifestyle. However, they knew they had to keep any relationship secret when their companies teamed them up to promote Fossils, so met discretely on Billy’s leased 50-foot cabin cruiser moored at Poplar Marina on Canary Wharf. The sex between the pair was great but they had very little else in common, apart from having a similar attitude, ‘get to the top, and fuck everyone else.’
Susan also frittered away her money; she loved clothes and bought the latest luxury designer brands, which she only wore a few times and then threw away. She spent more on one visit to a top designer fashion show than most people earned in a year.
Billy and Susan were ambitious individuals who had always concentrated on their careers. Now social outcasts and skint, a bond formed between them. However, neither considered it a romantic relationship, more like colleagues with benefits and with one aim. They wanted revenge for their humiliation and degradation, Kipper exposed as a fraud, and their companies to compensate them for their injustice.
The couple knew the only way to do that was if the truth came out about the real Fossils with no one aware they were involved.