Corporate Bodies

by Simon Brett

  ‘What?’

  ‘She felt ill during the banquet and slipped away without any fuss. She managed to get up to their suite, but there . . . she must have passed out on the floor . . . maybe just died straight away. Nobody’ll ever know for sure. The Hotel Manager found her after . . . after they’d found Ken.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘She was very ill. This had been on the cards for a long time. And I’d always been afraid of how Ken would react when the moment finally came.’

  ‘Oh. So what exactly do you think happened?’

  ‘Ken must’ve noticed she was missing from her table. In the middle of the cabaret. That must be why he left in such a hurry. Then, when he got to their suite, he found her dead and . . . just couldn’t go on.’

  ‘Tell me, was Patricia present for any of Nicky Rules’ routine?’

  ‘No. According to the people at her table, she left before the coffee.’

  So Patricia Colebourne had never even been aware of the suggestions that her husband was so afraid of her hearing. She had died in full confidence of his undivided love.

  Brenda Tressider’s reading of events had not been the correct one. But it was, in its own way, tidy.

  And it probably made a more satisfactory ending to the tragedy of Ken and Patricia Coleboume than the truth would have done.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  CHARLES PARIS felt exhausted as he crossed the hotel’s main lobby on the way to breakfast the following morning. The area was full of luggage and salesmen who were making an early start back to their scattered regions, hopefully re-energised by the previous two days, ready to return to the fray, to sell, sell, sell and increase Delmoleen’s precious share of the foodstuffs market.

  They didn’t look very re-energised. ‘Bleary’ and ‘hungover’ would have been better descriptions. And the way some of them snapped at their wives suggested tempers had been shortened by the excesses of the night before.

  Predictably enough, in the background Heather Routledge was talking on the telephone – or, more accurately, listening to the telephone. She had the receiver tucked under her chin, leaving both hands free to sort through some files which she was packing into a briefcase. Long practice had taught her that, as when listening to the radio, it was possible to do other things while her mother was talking on the telephone.

  Charles found Will at breakfast, looking as ropy as he felt. ‘How did your evening pan out?’ Charles asked, as he sat down.

  ‘Tiring. Ended up with the Top Salesman and his wife.’

  ‘Oh, Daryl and Shelley? Yes, well, that could have been tiring.’

  Will groaned. ‘Certainly was.’

  ‘Just the three of you? Or others?’

  ‘Oh, bunch of other people came and went. God, one of the most exhausting nights I’ve ever spent.’

  ‘Well, you’re not getting any younger, Will. Can’t go at it in quite the way you used to.’

  The writer looked up curiously from his scrambled eggs. ‘Go at what?’

  ‘Sex.’

  ‘Sex? There wasn’t any sex involved, Charles.’

  ‘Oh. Then what was it that was so exhausting?’

  ‘What was so exhausting was listening to bloody Daryl telling me about all the exciting things he’s done to his flaming Cortina!’

  ‘Ah. Yes. Right.’

  Charles’s coffee arrived. That was welcome. The kipper, however, didn’t seem such a good idea as it had when he’d ordered it.

  ‘You heard about Ken Colebourne, Will . . .?’

  ‘Yes. Bloody tragic.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Well, it means the one authentic Delmoleen contact I’ve got for Parton Parcel’s just gone out of the window.’

  Charles winced. That could have been more happily phrased. ‘Have to see who the new Marketing Director is, and start the cultivating process all over again.’

  ‘Hm. Still, at least it does mean I’ve got a solution to my mystery.’

  ‘Mystery?’ It took a moment for Will’s fuddled mind to catch on. ‘Oh, you mean your murder mystery. You still harping on that, are you?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘God, I thought you’d forgotten all about the idea.’

  ‘By no means. No, I now know that a murder definitely took place, I know why, and I know who the murderer was.’

  ‘All right then, surprise me, clever clogs.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, tell me whodunit.’

  ‘But it’s obvious. I thought you’d gathered that.’

  ‘No. I hadn’t. Go on then – who’re we talking about?’

  ‘Well, obviously – Ken Colebourne.’

  ‘Ken Colebourne.’ Will was silent for a moment. ‘We are talking about the same murder, aren’t we? The girl Dayna in the warehouse . . .?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who was crushed by the forklift truck – or rather by the pallets pushed by the forklift truck – during that lunch-break when we were making the video . . .?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you think Ken Colebourne did it?’

  ‘I’m certain.’

  ‘Well, you’re wrong, Charles.’

  ‘I’m not wrong. I can’t be wrong.’

  ‘Oh, everyone can be wrong, Charles. Even you.’

  ‘But –’

  Will Parton spelled it out. ‘During that lunchtime, you may recall, Griff Merricks and I and the rest of the crew were invited to the Executive dining room. And you weren’t, because you were improperly dressed.’

  ‘I’m hardly likely to forget that.’

  ‘No. Well, we were escorted to the Executive dining room by Ken Colebourne. He sat with us right through the meal.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘He only left when he was summoned by a phone call announcing that there had been an accident in the warehouse. I’m sorry, Charles, but your murderer had a perfect alibi for the time of the murder – and I should know, because I am that alibi.’

  Charles Paris was totally deflated. In the Deflation Olympics he would have defeated all comers, even pancakes. ‘Oh,’ he said feebly.

  ‘So sorry to be a spoilsport, love, but I’m afraid you’ve got to start thinking of another perpetrator for your precious murder.’

  And even as Will said the words, Charles did think of another perpetrator.

  A woman. A woman who was in love with Brian Tressider.

  They sat opposite each other in an otherwise empty lounge. She had her coat on, ready to leave the hotel.

  ‘I know exactly what happened that day,’ said Charles.

  ‘Oh yes?’ She remained cool, unruffled by his accusation. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It was Dayna’s boasting that signed her death warrant. She made no secret of her ambitions. She intended to use her sexual charms to make her way up the company. That didn’t worry you particularly one way or the other. It was only when she set her sights on Brian that you really saw red.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘And when you heard that she was going to start working in London.’

  That did produce a reaction. A slight indrawing of breath. ‘Yes. Yes, that was what did it.’

  ‘Because it was history repeating itself, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Heather.

  ‘You’d known Brian from the time you started working at Stenley Curton. He rose up the management ladder and was going to be transferred to London . . .’

  She nodded.

  ‘And at the same time you also had the offer of a job in London . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ she murmured.

  ‘And you were all set to take it, all set to make the break from your family, to start your own independent life, to be near Brian, maybe see how things worked out between you . . . when your father died.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I can’t imagine your mother was ever an easy woman, Heather . . .’

  ‘No, she wasn’t.’

  ‘But, with your father�
�s death, she started making even greater emotional demands on you.’

  ‘You could say that, yes. In fact, from that moment she trapped me completely. She saw to it that I would never get away from her. Even when she dies, I’ll still be trapped. There’s not enough of my life left for me to do anything useful with it. Assuming that I had the will to do anything, anyway.’

  ‘So you stayed in Stenley Curton. You monitored Brian’s progress from a distance. Then, after a while, you heard he was going to get married.’

  ‘Yes, I cried for weeks when I heard that. I’ve got reconciled to it, of course. Brenda’s the right sort of woman for someone in his position. But, even now, I occasionally have unworthy thoughts about them. Like, for instance, I sometimes get an evil satisfaction from the fact that they don’t have children.’

  You might be surprised to know what else they don’t have, thought Charles.

  ‘But no, it was right. If Brian was going to get to the top, he needed a kind of social leg-up, and that was what Brenda supplied for him. She was at least the right class.’

  ‘Unlike Dayna . . .’

  ‘Dayna was just a common little scrubber. For her even to think she stood a chance with Brian . . . well, it was disgusting.’

  ‘Yes. Killing her was a spur-of-the-moment thing, wasn’t it, Heather?’

  The woman nodded. ‘She’d just been in my office, doing all her usual stuff, crowing about the job she’d got in London, crowing about her power over men. That’s what I couldn’t stand – the way she talked to me about sex . . . as if it had nothing to do with me . . . as if I didn’t have any kind of sexual identity of my own . . .’

  ‘Anyway, that got me furious, but I certainly wasn’t contemplating murder. And then my mother rang. And I answered the phone and Dayna left the office. But, as she went out, she said something that implied that she had a video tape of her with someone high up in the Delmoleen management . . . of them, you know, making love . . .’

  ‘And you thought she meant Brian?’

  Heather nodded. Charles could envisage the scene. He was now coming round to the view that Dayna never had had any video of herself with Ken Colebourne. She had seduced him into her bed, yes, but there had been no camera running. That had all been bluff.

  Still, she needed something to convince him that it was for real, and thought of Trevor’s little cache of pornography. If Ken made any demur about paying her and needed frightening, well, maybe playing him a carefully chosen moment from one of Trevor’s tapes might show she meant business.

  ‘I should’ve realised earlier, Heather, that you’ve got very adept at doing other things while your mother’s talking on the telephone. That day, you left her wittering on, and went through into the warehouse. You hadn’t made any plans. Maybe you just intended to reason with Dayna, something like that. But then you saw where she was, scrabbling behind the pallets. And you saw that the forklift engine was running . . .’

  ‘Yes. I couldn’t think why it was.’

  ‘You have Trevor to thank for that . . . for reasons that aren’t important. So it was easy enough to push the truck into gear, pull down some cartons to make it look accidental and . . . leave things to take their course. Then back into your office, to find your mother continuing her monologue, unaware that you hadn’t heard the last few minutes of it.’

  ‘It’s not as if I don’t know everything she has to say by heart, anyway,’ said Heather with sudden viciousness. ‘God, she’s a cow!’

  Charles tended to agree with this assessment, but didn’t comment. ‘I’ve been rather slow, actually. I should have realised earlier. Really, from the moment that you gave Trevor an alibi.’

  ‘That was a spur-of-the-moment thing, too. I didn’t want there to be any sort of investigation, so I thought, if I got him in the clear, then there wouldn’t be.’

  ‘Hm. What, of course, I should have realised was that, once Trevor’s alibi was shot to pieces, yours was too. Or your alibi was only your mother at the end of a telephone line.’

  Heather smiled. In some strange way, their conversation seemed to have gratified her. ‘So, full marks, Charles Paris. You’ve worked out exactly how the crime was committed.’

  ‘After a few false starts, yes,’ he agreed wryly.

  ‘And what do you propose to do about it now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are you going to turn me over to the police?’

  ‘I don’t really know what that would achieve.’

  ‘Justice would be seen to be done.’

  ‘Yes, but . . . Justice in the abstract is a fairly meaningless concept.’

  ‘Not everyone would agree with you on that.’

  ‘Maybe not, but . . . I don’t know. Obviously the death of any human being is a kind of tragedy, but nothing I’ve heard about Dayna Richman suggests to me that she was any great loss. If I thought your killing her was something rational and premeditated, I’d feel very differently. As it is . . . I find it odd to hear myself saying this, but her death really doesn’t worry me that much.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘What about you? Does it worry you?’

  ‘Surprisingly little. In fact, from the moment it happened, I’ve hardly thought about her death at all.’

  An unexpected smile irradiated her face. For a second, she looked almost beautiful. The idea of her as a partner for Brian Tressider did not, at that moment, seem incongruous.

  Charles sighed. ‘And when I come to think of it, I really don’t know what purpose would be served by your going to prison.’

  ‘What do you mean – going to prison?’ Heather burst out with sudden venom. ‘Don’t you understand – I’ve been in prison for the last twenty-seven years!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charles Paris. ‘Yes, I understand.’

  There was a silence. Heather toyed for a moment with the handle of her bag. Then she rose to her feet. The brief moment of beauty was past. She looked what she was – an awkward, middle-aged spinster.

  ‘I must go and ring her,’ she said.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  PARTON PARCEL didn’t, as it transpired, corner the market in corporate work. As the recession deepened, corporate budgets were cut back, and the reduced number of contracts that were around went to more established companies.

  Anyway, Will Parton got commissioned to write some television scripts about an English detective and an Australian detective doing a year’s job-swap. The series was, needless to say, being co-produced with an Australian company, and episodes were to be shot alternately in London and Sydney.

  Will cursed his luck, complaining that the commission meant he’d have to put off getting down to his stage play. Still, the bills have to be paid, he said hopelessly, before settling down with relish to begin work on the first script.

  For Charles Paris, the work vacuum was not so quickly filled. Indeed, what he’d thought of as his worst year ever looked like being superseded in the badness stakes by the next one. Maurice Skellern said in all his years in the business he’d never known it so quiet.

  The agent, incidentally, did find out about the corporate work and was very aggrieved by what he saw as his client ‘going behind his back’. Charles, retrospectively and apologetically, paid Maurice 15 per cent of what he’d earned from Delmoleen. What really annoyed him was that while he did so, he actually felt guilty.

  Charles kept meaning to contact Frances, but kept putting it off. He thought, after their last encounter, it might be as well to cool things down for a while. Wait until another nice entertainment she’d really like to go to came up. The trouble was, now he’d lost his contacts in the corporate world, invitations to such events seemed to have dried up.

  In fact, at times it seemed to Charles Paris that the only lasting thing he’d gained from his corporate experience was the suit. That remained in his Hereford Road bedsitter, on a hanger in the curtained alcove that served as a wardrobe. It hung next to his former suit, the model it had superseded. And with the
passage of time, as if by some kind of osmosis of contiguity, it became as defiantly unfashionable as its predecessor.

  Delmoleen, under the continuingly vigorous leadership of Brian Tressider, rode the recession better than many of its competitors. His wife, Brenda, continued in her professional role as a tower of strength.

  Daryl Fletcher ceased to be a salesman and joined the Marketing Department of Delmoleen, where he was widely tipped to take over as Marketing Director when the current incumbent, Paul Taggart, retired. Daryl replaced the existing wheels on his Cortina with Firestones on Compomotive 3-piece rims and added some really rad graphics.

  His wife Shelley got pregnant. Which was what she’d always wanted to do. She settled down to have lots of babies.

  Robin Pritchard got head-hunted and joined another company as Product Manager for a revolutionary new ladies’ depilatory, whose outreach was destined to be ‘global’.

  Which was just as well, really, because he’d left the company before the failure of the Delmoleen ‘Green’ launch.

  In spite of the findings of test-marketing, the public did not take to the product. For one thing, they were sick to death of muesli bars. For another, they were also sick to death of being told that things they bought were ‘environment-friendly’.

  Mainly, though, they just didn’t like the taste. There was a pretty general consensus that the Delmoleen ‘Green’ had the flavour and consistency of a table-mat.

  Also, the buying public just didn’t yet appear to be ready for the concept of a green muesli bar. According to retailers, a lot of purchasers had brought their Delmoleen ‘Greens’ back, complaining they were mouldy.