Corporate Bodies

by Simon Brett

  ‘They won’t recur if the incriminating evidence has been handed over in exchange for the money.’

  Charles grimaced. ‘Depends. What we’re talking about here is a video tape. Very easy thing to copy these days, Mrs Tressider.’

  ‘Yes. I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘Anyway, as I was about to say, there is another, more permanent, way of putting an end to the demands of a blackmailer.’

  The idea was so alien to her that, for a moment, she did not understand him. But, as light dawned, he was rewarded by Brenda Tressider’s first uncontrolled reaction – one of shock. ‘Are you suggesting that the girl was murdered?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She quickly had command of herself again. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Look, the girl had somehow arranged to video herself in bed with him, she lets him know she’s got the tape, she names her price. But he doesn’t feel certain that he’ll be buying her permanent silence by paying the demand . . . so he decides on a more reliable method of keeping her quiet.’

  ‘But I just can’t believe it of him. He’s the gentlest of men. I mean, I know he has a rough diamond exterior, but, deep down, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. You only have to see him with –’

  ‘I’m afraid, Mrs Tressider, that maybe you don’t know your husband as well as you think you do.’

  He had been hoping for more reaction, and he was certainly rewarded this time. Her face became a mask of amazement. ‘My husband?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Tressider. Your husband, Brian.’

  ‘You mean you thought the video was of Dayna Richman and Brian?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Well, I can assure you it wasn’t, Mr Paris.’

  ‘You can’t be so sure. I know it’s sometimes hard for a wife to imagine that her husband –’

  ‘Mr Paris, Brian and I have no sex-life at all. We haven’t had for nearly thirty years. That’s why we haven’t got any children.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have to say this, but it is possible that, flattered by the attentions of a younger woman –’

  ‘No, Mr Paris!’ She was almost shouting now. ‘It is not possible. Will you please give me the credit for knowing my own husband’s medical condition? Brian was involved in a car crash when he was twenty-five, just after we were married. He escaped, fortunately, with what they described as “minor injuries”. Unfortunately, one of those “minor injuries” put paid to our sex-life. And not just our sex-life – Brian’s sex-life with anyone else. So, Mr Paris, you can forget your fantasies of my husband frolicking between the sheets with Dayna Richman. I am sorry to say that, though he’s very powerful in every other department of his life, down there nothing works at all!’

  This time he got all the reaction he had hoped for. Tears poured down Brenda Tressider’s face, furrowing through the expertly-applied make-up.

  Charles Paris felt a complete heel.

  Of course she wouldn’t give him any more information. She left his room as soon as she’d recovered from this unseemly breakdown of control. And she recovered very quickly. She’d had a lot of practice at that sort of thing through the long charade of her marriage.

  But she’d told Charles enough. If it wasn’t Brian Tressider whom Dayna had been blackmailing, there was only one other person it could be.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  IN SPITE of the volume of whisky he’d consumed, Charles only slept fleetingly. He didn’t feel drunk, but his mind was very full. If he did doze off for a few minutes, he would quickly reawake with a new link of logic connecting in his brain.

  It all fell into place now. Most of the sequence of solution had been complete when he had cast Brian Tressider as murderer. With a new actor in that role, it all worked even better. The logic was tighter, the conclusion more secure.

  He woke for the last time around quarter to six. His head didn’t quite ache, but felt scraped and empty with tiredness. He went down to breakfast early, thinking his quarry might do the same, but was out of luck.

  Never mind. Time enough. The murderer didn’t know that suspicions were homing in on him. It was unlikely that Brenda Tressider would have tipped him off, so Charles need not feel in any danger. He could bide his time, and make the confrontation whenever a convenient moment arose.

  Charles Paris ate a large breakfast and did his Confectionery presentation very professionally. Modem conference technology actually made it difficult to do otherwise. The script was on a roller, its speed controlled by an operator in the glass box at the back of the hall. This was relayed to a television monitor concealed on the floor behind the lectern, whence it was projected up on to an angled screen of special glass, where the words were visible to the reader but transparent to the audience. And for the Confectionery presentation, unlike Ken Colebourne’s, the slides were also controlled from the box.

  So, so long as the speaker had had a run-through and knew the contents of his text, it was pretty hard to go wrong. Particularly if, like Charles Paris, that speaker had spent much of his life reading scripts.

  This conference was the first time he had used such apparatus and, seeing how easy the system was, Charles vowed in future to be even more sceptical of the oratory of politicians. It was now possible for any fool to look sincere or appear to struggle for the apposite bon mot with a script rolling comfortingly in front of him, unseen by his audience.

  After Confectionery, there was a coffee-break and then Paul Taggart did Beverages. His approach was totally businesslike and functional; he supported his argument with slides and did not allow the presentation to be sullied by humour. The eyes of the massed rows of salesmen in floppy suits and Post-Surrealist ties glazed over in the final extended agony of last night’s hangover before the blessed resuscitation of a lunchtime drink.

  There was no sign of Daryl Fletcher, and a few of the other seats were empty. Charles wondered idly how many Shelley had recruited to join in her day’s entertainment.

  He also wondered how the glazed salesmen would react to the more upbeat presentation of the Delmoleen ‘Green’, which was to begin the afternoon’s proceedings.

  Will Parton was optimistic as they joined the rush for the bars the minute Paul Taggart had delivered his final statistic. ‘Going to be great, Charles,’ he enthused. ‘After that lot, the Tom Jones routine’ll really knock ’em dead.’

  Charles was less certain, but, God, he felt better for a drink. Couple of beers first, just to irrigate the hangover. Then maybe a Bell’s. And a bit of wine with lunch. That should sort him out.

  Across the melée of salesmen, who were all drinking as if alcohol was an endangered species, he could see his quarry. But the murderer was surrounded and preoccupied. The confrontation would have to wait.

  It finally occurred in the afternoon tea-break, after the Biscuits and Cereals presentation.

  Difficult to say exactly how well this extravaganza had gone. Robin Pritchard’s initial remark had been predictable, and lulled those of the audience who’d managed to get back after lunch into the somnolent assurance that the rest of the programme would be equally bland. Legs were stretched out under the chairs in front, and eyelids drooped as the salesmen saw an opportunity to catch up on the sleep they had lost the night before and the sleep they would undoubtedly lose after the forthcoming banquet.

  The outlining of the proposed ad campaign for the new Delmoleen muesli bar raised a flicker of interest, but none of the salesmen was prepared for the sudden change of gear from commerce to showbiz that followed.

  Robin Pritchard made the most of the occasion. Suddenly raising his voice and adding to it a phoney ringmaster’s razzmatazz, he shouted, ‘But don’t take my word for it! No, for the latest, mind-stretching news about the Delmoleen “Green”, let me hand you over to – THE GREEN MACHINE!’

  The appearance of a thickening green-bow-tied night-club singer in a green tuxedo, escorted by two male dancers in green waistcoats and two female dancers in g
reen catsuits, certainly had the effect of waking the audience up, if only because it was such an unfamiliar sight at a Delmoleen sales conference.

  But whether what ensued had the effect of exciting the salesmen about the new product they would shortly have to sell was less certain.

  It undoubtedly excited them to laughter.

  The performers had put in more rehearsal during the day and were now quite slick. The singer had added a few more sexy hip-gyrations in what he imagined to be the style of Tom Jones, but these elicited only coarse comments from the predominantly male audience.

  This ribaldry was exacerbated by the actions of the female dancers. The prop they had been missing on the previous evening – the six-foot green-wrapped giant muesli bar – was held upright by the ‘boys’ at one point in the routine and caressed lovingly by the two ‘girls’. Though the intention of these movements had not been erotic, the effect undoubtedly was. The Delmoleen sales force was an audience highly attuned to the detection of innuendo, and the phallic implications were not lost on them.

  ‘Ooh, lovely! Do it some more!’ came a throaty cry from the auditorium at the height of the female dancers’ ministrations. This unfortunately got the girls themselves giggling and so, while the singer struggled gamely on, thrusting out his hips and extolling the ‘Green – “Green” – Del – mo – leen’, the chorus behind him had degenerated into something of a shambles.

  Whether or not the sales force got the message about all the virtues of the Delmoleen ‘Green’, there was certainly no danger that they would forget the name of the product.

  So maybe the exercise hadn’t been wasted, after all.

  At the tea-break, Charles was in the Ambassador Hotel’s reception area when he saw his quarry, on his own, going through into one of the lounges. At the bank of telephones in the recesses of the hall, Heather Routledge was hunched over a receiver, her tense body language leaving no doubt that she was once again talking to her mother.

  ‘Oh, Mr Paris,’ called the receptionist. ‘There was another call from that Mr Skellern.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Charles.

  But he was not to be diverted, least of all by a call from Maurice. He went through into the lounge and sat in an armchair opposite his quarry, who was bent over the Top Table seating plan for the evening’s banquet.

  ‘Afternoon, Ken.’

  The Marketing Director looked up. ‘Oh, Charles,’ he acknowledged mildly, then grinned. ‘Well, I remain to be convinced that Delmoleen sales conferences need to be converted into The Black and White Minstrel Show. Though, actually, on this afternoon’s showing, it seemed more like Oh! Calcutta!’

  Charles nodded. Ken Colebourne seemed fairly relaxed, or at least as relaxed as the responsibilities of the sales conference allowed him to be. It would be churlish to add another anxiety to his load at such a moment.

  On the other hand, a human life had been taken. And, though, from what he’d heard of her character, he didn’t have much respect for Dayna Richman, Charles Paris still had to find out the truth of what had happened to her.

  ‘I want to talk about something a bit awkward, Ken . . .’ he began gruffly.

  ‘Oh yes? Problems?’

  ‘You could say that. It’s about Dayna.’

  The name caught Ken Colebourne like a blow to the solar plexus. He gaped at his accuser, winded.

  ‘I know about you having slept with her.’

  ‘What!’ The Marketing Director half-rose to his feet. ‘For Christ’s sake keep quiet about that! If Pat found out, it’d kill her!’

  ‘I wasn’t proposing to tell Pat.’

  ‘Then what do you want? Are you after money too?’

  Ken Colebourne’s words satisfyingly confirmed Charles’s conjecture. There had been an instant recognition of the subject under discussion, and no attempt at denial.

  ‘No, I’m not after money.’

  ‘Then what do you want? If you’re offering moral judgement, I can do without it, thank you. I’ve punished myself quite enough for what happened. God, if you only knew how much I’ve regretted it, from the moment I did it – even while I was doing it. But things haven’t been easy, with Pat being ill. I’m a normal man – God damn me for it – perhaps a bit over-sexed, I don’t know – and that Dayna was a right little vamp. She knew what a man wants all right and –’

  ‘I’m not blaming you for going to bed with her, Ken. I’m blaming you for what happened afterwards.’

  ‘You should blame her for that, not me! I wasn’t the one who taped the whole sordid business. I wasn’t the one who introduced blackmail into the proceedings.’

  ‘Did you ever get the tape, Ken?’

  ‘No. I’m still not sure that it existed. She may have invented it, just to make her blackmail demands more forceful. Didn’t really matter whether there was a tape or not. The threat of her telling Pat was quite sufficient. I’d have paid anything, I’d have done anything, to stop that happening.

  ‘You don’t know what it’s been like for me with Pat these last few years . . . to watch someone you love, wasting away . . . all their life trickling through your fingers. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it, nothing you can offer. Except love. So you go on telling them you love them, and then eventually that’s all they’ve got. And the thought that some little tart could have threatened that love . . . Dayna seduced me when I was at a low ebb. It was nothing, just physical. But it would have killed Pat if she’d found out.’

  ‘So you had to ensure that Pat never did find out?’

  ‘I had to think of ways of doing that, yes.’

  ‘And you confided in Brian Tressider?’

  Ken nodded. That, thought Charles, made sense of some of the things Brenda had said the night before.

  ‘Yes, I told Brian. We’ve always been mates, right from the start. I thought he might see some way out.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘Well, he . . . he offered to help me with the money. Otherwise, he didn’t really have any suggestions.’

  ‘So you had to work out what to do on your own?’

  The Marketing Director nodded. ‘Yes. All kind of solutions went through my head. I hadn’t really decided which one to go along with, when suddenly I had the most amazing piece of good luck . . .’

  But Charles was never to find out what that piece of good luck had been.

  ‘Ken!’ a controlled but tense voice hissed.

  They looked up to see Brenda Tressider standing in the doorway. She was pale.

  ‘Ken, Pat passed out while we were going round the winery.’

  He was instantly on his feet. ‘Oh, my God! Where is she now?’

  ‘In your suite. I brought her back. She’s conscious. She says she’s fine. The hotel’s organising a doctor.’

  ‘I’ll go straight up.’ He turned to Charles. ‘We’ll finish this conversation some other time.’

  In his face there was an expression of naked pleading. Do what you like, it seemed to say, do whatever’s necessary, but please don’t let Pat find out what happened.

  After Ken had gone, the expression Brenda Tressider turned on Charles was very different. She had sensed what they’d been talking about.

  And she despised Charles Paris for having been so insensitive as to raise the subject.

  He felt frustrated as, a few minutes later, he wandered back towards the main hall. To have been so near to a confession from Ken Coleboume and yet not to have got all the details . . .

  A weariness filled him. What was the point, after all? Assuming what now seemed almost certain – that the Marketing Director had arranged the accident that killed Dayna Richman – what possible good would be served by bringing the man to justice for his crime?

  All that that could achieve would be to deprive his dying wife of the comfort of a loving husband’s presence during her last months.

  And, weighing the moral claims of Patricia Coleboume against those of the late Dayna Richman . . . well, there wasn’t much contes
t, really.

  Charles felt low and depressed. He needed to talk to someone to reassure him. Frances? He glanced across towards the telephones. But no, it was term-time. Frances would still be at school, being responsible and headmistressly.

  He caught the eye of Heather Routledge, who was still glued to the receiver. She raised her eyebrows in a despairing mime of the impossibility of getting off the phone.

  ‘Charles. We need your help.’

  It was Brian Tressider, tall, vigorous, reassuring. No one seeing him could have suspected the tragic deficiency that had blighted his married life.

  ‘Yes? What can I do for you?’

  ‘Look, Ken Colebourne’s wife’s ill –’

  ‘I know. I heard from Brenda.’

  ‘Right. Well, he’s got to stay with her for the moment. But the thing is . . .’ The Managing Director consulted his watch. ‘Ken was about to do his marketing spiel for the sales force . . .’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’

  ‘You know how to use that autocue, don’t you, Charles?’

  The bulk of the presentation went fine. Charles hadn’t been concentrating when Ken had rehearsed the day before, but he was enough of a professional to read a script unseen with a fair degree of competence.

  And, though this time he was operating the slides himself, their cues were all clearly marked on the script that appeared magically on his invisible lectern. He held the control in his right hand and just clicked its button at the appropriate moment. He could see each new slide reflected in the glass of the control box at the back of the conference auditorium, and thereby check that he wasn’t going out of sequence.

  Of course, he didn’t get much reaction, but then he hadn’t expected much. Ken Colebourne’s script didn’t contain many jokes and, after the hilarity of the ‘Green’ song-and-dance act, the sales force were saving their laughter for Nicky Rules’ cabaret later on.

  It was very near the end of the presentation, when Charles was beginning to feel confident – perhaps even a little careless – that things started to come unstuck.