The Promotion: A psychological thriller with a killer twist

by Daniel Hurst

  ‘I put the slides together. I worked on it. I did everything for it!’

  ‘Everything but present it. And it was a very good presentation. It’s just a shame that everybody will remember it being my presentation, not yours.’

  I wait for Imogen’s next complaint, but she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she moves over to the small sofa that I put in here to make this setting feel less like an office and more like my personal chill-out zone. As she takes a seat, she sits forward with her arms on her lap and her head bowed, and I note that it is very submissive body language. Extremely weak. As if she is defeated.

  It’s a sight to behold.

  ‘You can’t keep doing this,’ she eventually says after thirty seconds of silence.

  ‘I think we both know that I can.’

  ‘I might as well give up, then. I’ve got nothing to lose at this point.’

  ‘We both know that’s not true, don’t we?’

  Imogen looks up at me, and I make sure to give her one of my dazzling smiles as she does. ‘Your career. Your marriage. Your freedom. And, of course, the love and respect from your dear old daddy. You stand to lose all those things if you give up and walk away now.’

  ‘So what? You’re just going to keep doing this until you retire?’

  ‘Who said anything about retiring? I’ve got plenty more years in me yet.’

  I’m saying anything I can to infuriate her even more, but I do mean it quite literally as well. I’m only fifty, so retirement is some way down the road for me, not that I would want to take it even when I do reach the appropriate age. I love my job, and I love the lifestyle it affords me. I particularly love the fact that I am a relatively big name in the financial industry, at least in the UK, and that opens doors for me in all sorts of places. Places that I like to frequent and places that aren’t always strictly above board. If I leave this job, then those doors might start closing, and I can’t have that. I have far too many vices that can’t be satisfied elsewhere to allow that to happen.

  ‘One day, you’re going to push me too far,’ Imogen says rather ominously, but I only chuckle.

  ‘Is that a warning?’ I ask her with a smile on my face. ‘I rather hope it is, you know. I get excited when you threaten me.’

  ‘Get a life,’ Imogen says as she gets up from the sofa and heads for the door, seemingly having vented her frustration enough for one afternoon and now on her way back to get on with her duties until the next time she feels the need to come in here and let off some steam.

  ‘Thanks for dropping by,’ I tell her just before she leaves, and she shoots me a look of pure venom just before she walks out the door and pulls it closed.

  I notice Marjorie, the dear old administration manager, looking at me from her desk, and I make sure to give her a smile and a wave, which she quickly returns because she loves me as her boss. Everybody here does. Everybody except Imogen, that is. That’s because I treat them all very well and give them no reason to hate me. Pay rises. Promotions. Benefits. I’m happy to fast-track all sorts of things for my bunch of loyal and trusting employees. Unless that employee is Imogen. She will get nothing from me.

  Nothing but bad luck, anyway.

  As Imogen takes her seat at her desk and goes back to work, I watch her typing away on her keyboard for a moment. Despite the way I treat her, she is still a very good worker. Conscientious. Driven. And talented, if such a thing can be measured in the banking industry, and I think it can. She definitely has some of her father’s traits, there’s no doubt about that. It’s just too bad that none of those traits are going to get her any further here. She has climbed as high as she is going to go. She will never scale the heights that her daddy scaled in this office, and that’s too bad.

  It’s all down to me.

  I am keeping her right where I want her.

  And she knows that there is no escape.

  3

  I arrive home late and in a terrible mood, which isn’t fair on my husband because this will be the first time I have spoken to him today. I always leave the house before Evan, and I always arrive home after him, simply because I have the more demanding job of the two of us. He is a primary school teacher, spending his days with five-year-olds and finishing at three o’clock in the afternoon, but I don’t envy him because we all make our own choices in life.

  He has made his.

  And I have certainly made mine.

  I’m very proud of my husband and his job because it is his passion, and he loves what he does. Unlike me, he chose his career rather than having it chosen for him, and while it isn’t a high-paying profession, he doesn’t work crazy hours, and he gets a sense of fulfilment from his role. I, on the other hand, work from dawn to dusk at a job I ended up in only because my father got me a placement at the bank when I was twenty-five and going nowhere in my life. I earn a lot more than my husband does, but it comes at a cost.

  I’m miserable.

  And it’s all to do with Michael.

  As I step through my front door at the exhausting time of eight o’clock in the evening, I could be forgiven for assuming that my workday is complete and that the last few hours before bed can be spent enjoying a good meal, watching some television, and unwinding with a glass of wine. But I know that is just folly. The reality is that arriving home does not signal the end of my working day. Michael sees to that by ensuring that he always gives me plenty of work with unrealistic deadlines that are guaranteed to eat into all my free time and ensure that being out of his sight does not mean being out of his mind. He controls me at the office, and he controls me at home. But none of that is Evan’s fault, which is why I force a smile onto my face as I walk into the kitchen and prepare to greet him.

  ‘Evening, love,’ I say as I find him sitting at our kitchen table with his laptop open in front of him and a glass of beer beside him. There are football highlights on the screen, and it’s obvious he is well into the process of unwinding after his busy day, but I’m not jealous, or at least I make sure not to let it show that I am.

  ‘Hey,’ he says in a weary tone, and I instantly know what has caused his mood.

  He is irritated that I am home late. Again.

  ‘Good day?’ I ask him as I go in for a kiss, and he reciprocates before giving a shrug and telling me it was fine. Then he asks the next logical question even though I know he isn’t going to like the answer I give him.

  ‘And you?’ he says as he pauses the football highlights to let me know that I have his undivided attention, which is sweet because I’m aware not all husbands would offer such a thing when there is sport to be watched instead.

  ‘Not great,’ I tell him as I open the fridge and look inside to see what I have in there that will cook the quickest. ‘My presentation was a disaster.’

  ‘You’re joking? You spent all night working on that! What happened?’

  ‘What do you think happened?’

  Evan lets out a deep sigh because he knows exactly what I am talking about. He knows how much Michael hinders my progress in the office. He just doesn’t know what his real reason for doing it is.

  ‘There’s some lasagne on the third shelf,’ Evan tells me when he sees I’m struggling to get some inspiration for dinner, and that’s when I notice the large tray covered in cling film buried beneath the bags of salad and pots of hummus.

  ‘You’re a star,’ I say as I take out the dish and prepare to hungrily tuck into it, pleased that my partner is not just a loving companion but a dab hand in the kitchen as well. I’m far too hungry to bother heating it up and instead waste no time in taking my seat at the table beside my husband.

  ‘So what’s Michael done now?’ Evan asks me as I slice into the tasty Italian dish with my knife and fork.

  ‘Just took the credit for all my work, you know, his favourite party trick.’

  ‘I really think you should speak to HR again. He can’t keep doing this.’

  ‘Yeah…’

  I decide to quickly stuff some food
into my mouth so that I don’t have to give that suggestion any more of an answer.

  ‘Anyway, moving on from a bad boss to a good one, I went around to your dad’s house after work and dropped him off some food.’

  ‘Thanks for that. How was he?’

  ‘Up and down. He mentioned your mum a few times as if she were there. And then he told me he had a meeting to get ready for in the morning. He’s definitely getting worse.’

  ‘Damn,’ I say as I put down my cutlery and run a hand over my tired face.

  Dad’s Alzheimer’s came on relatively early, in his mid-sixties, but it has mercifully progressed slowly since then, and he has been living with it for almost a decade. But recently, it’s been obvious that the condition is getting the better of him now and moving on to cause problems that can be much more serious than simply forgetting where he left his keys or what time he was supposed to be somewhere. Now he is starting to get people mixed up and referring more and more to things in his past as if they are happening in the present, and that’s not good. My mother, Cath, whom he mentioned today, has been gone for twelve years. The last thing I want is for him to forget and then remember she has passed and get distressed while he is on his own.

  I wish I could see him more, and I wish I didn’t have to rely on Evan to call around and check on him while I’m at work. I’m grateful for my husband doing that, but I should be the one to visit him. I’m his daughter. The problem is I just don’t have the time, thanks to all the demands that are being placed on me by that despicable figure in my office.

  ‘I’ll look into some more nursing homes this weekend,’ I say as I continue on with my meal. ‘I don’t think I can put it off any longer.’

  Evan gives me a sympathetic smile because he knows I hate the thought of telling my father that he needs around-the-clock care, considering how independent he used to be. But he also knows that it is inevitable, and time is running out to make that decision.

  ‘I think it’s for the best,’ he says before getting up and taking his laptop. ‘There’s a game just starting in a minute. You don’t mind if I go and watch it, do you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I say with a smile before he kisses me on the head and leaves the room.

  As I sit alone at the kitchen table, twirling my fork through the piece of meat and cheese on my plate, I can’t help but think about how life has turned out, not just for my father but for me as well. While Dad didn’t have a choice when it came to the terrible illness that was to befall him in his later years, I can’t say the same thing about where my life has ended up. I did have choices. I could have done something else if I really wanted. I could have pursued another career, one much less demanding and one that would have afforded me more time to spend in my lovely home with my lovely partner. I could have pursued my passions like Evan did or just have taken an easy job that might have paid less but didn’t leave me exhausted at the end of the day.

  I’m an adult, and I have to face the facts. I messed up. I have gone down the wrong path, and I’m now too far down it to turn back. My father got me a job at the bank even though I didn’t want it, but he was only trying to help me. He wanted me to have all the things he did too, but he wanted me to earn them just like he had. Despite my misgivings, I did what he asked and gave it my best shot. I have worked hard, and I’ve done okay for myself. But at what cost? I’m miserable, and I can’t see any way that can change, certainly not while Michael is around, anyway.

  As I stab at my food with increasing aggressiveness, I know that the worst part of all of this are the choices I made. I chose to take the job when I was twenty-five.

  And I chose to break the law two years ago.

  I’ve regretted it ever since. But I can’t change the past. I can’t change what I did.

  And I can’t change the fact that Michael has the evidence to prove it.

  4

  MICHAEL

  Believe it or not, coming home is the worst part of my day because there isn’t much joy to be had here. Sure, I’ve got a nice house with all the amenities a man could ask for, but that gets boring after a day or two when you realise fixtures and fittings aren’t that interesting. I’ve also got a wife who does her best to look pretty for me when I see her and who accepts that I’m only with her because being married makes me look better in certain social circles. Our loveless relationship works both ways, and I accept that she is only with me for my money, and despite her young age, her beauty, and her willingness to please, being with somebody just for the sake of it gets boring fast too.

  Thankfully, my life outside of this house is much more exciting. I’m a regular customer at certain gentlemen’s clubs around the city, where I have many good friends and can indulge in whatever desires take my mood at the time. And I have my high-powered job, of course, as the boss of a large business that pays well and gives me a level of dominance that I take great pleasure in exacting, particularly on a certain woman who deserves my tormenting of her. But I can’t stay at work forever, nor can I spend all my free time in a private members’ club, so here I am, arriving home and preparing for a quiet night in.

  It is only Monday, after all.

  I walk into the lounge room with my briefcase in hand, where I find the television off and the sofa bare. Crystal, my wife of half my age, is not in here tonight, which is unusual because she is usually found curled up in front of the TV, watching some show about young people that I have never been able to stomach for longer than ten seconds at a time. I think about calling out to her to see where she might be, but this is a big property, and she might not hear me. Besides, I’m not that interested in finding out the answer anyway. It won’t make much difference to what I have planned for my evening.

  Passing the kitchen and down a flight of stairs that lead to the most tolerable place in this house, I enter my study, closing the door behind myself before taking off my tie and slumping down onto the leather sofa that takes up much of this room. I order a takeaway pizza on my phone, not needing to check if my wife wants anything because I know she won’t. She’s always dieting, and she looks good for it, but of course, that’s why I chose her to be my wife, so I don’t want to spoil it by forcing a nine-inch cheese and tomato pizza on her.

  With my evening meal taken care of, I have twenty minutes to kill until it arrives, so I take out my laptop from my briefcase and turn it on, figuring I’ll catch up on some emails in my spare time. Unlike Imogen, I don’t hate my job. I like it, and I’m only too happy to put in some overtime. Let’s face it; it’s hard to climb as high as I have climbed in the business world if you aren’t willing to go the extra mile and do some work after hours. But my inbox is surprisingly quiet this evening, and there is nothing of any urgency that requires my attention now, so I leave the emails behind and start browsing in my personal files.

  These are the files where I keep all sorts of things that are for my eyes and my eyes only. Historical documents that come in handy to refresh my mind on certain ways of working. Motivational reading material that reminds me of what it not only takes to get to the top but stay there as well. And then there is the juicy file simply labelled ‘IS’, which is the main reason why I’m browsing in this part of the server now.

  IS stands for Imogen Stone.

  And the file contains the incriminating evidence that I hold on her.

  Accessing the file simply because it will entertain me while I wait for my pizza to arrive, I am met with the familiar sight of the two spreadsheets and the email trail that dates back two years. It’s this combination of the emails and the figures in the accompanying spreadsheets that have the ability to ruin Imogen’s life, and it’s her knowledge that I possess these things that allows me to keep getting away with what I am doing to her.

  Opening up the first spreadsheet, I cast my eye over the numbers on screen. At first glance, this looks like nothing more than a boring document that only an accountant would be interested in. There are rows of digits contained within dozens of columns,
which all add up to produce a number that shows how profitable a particular deposit transaction was. The name of the company that invested their money with our bank is not important. What is important is the name of the person who was in charge of managing this deposit on the bank’s behalf.

  It’s Imogen. She was the relationship manager on this one.

  And she is the one who deposited this money in her own bank account instead of in her employers’.

  She stole from the bank or, to use her word, she ‘borrowed’ from it. But it wasn’t her money to take. What she did was illegal. So why would she do this?

  Because she needed money to bail out her father.

  It turned out that poor William had made some even poorer financial decisions as his condition had started to get the better of him, and Imogen had taken it upon herself to help him, just like he had helped her by giving her the start at the bank where he worked. Imogen took the money from a client’s deposit and used it to cover the mess her ailing father had made in his personal life, thinking she had covered it up and gotten away with it. But she hadn’t because I discovered her deception, and I confronted her about it.

  That was the beginning of the end for our relationship. Believe it or not, Imogen and I used to be close friends, and we had been that way ever since we both joined the bank as interns around the same time. We ended up sitting at neighbouring desks during our junior years in the finance industry, and I made her laugh every day with my sense of humour and my tales of my wild nights in the city as a single man, while she impressed me with her ability to ignore some of our other colleagues who treated her fairly distantly because they all thought she had only got the job because of who her father was.

  We were equals once. So how did we end up here with me as her boss and her hating my guts?