You idiot, you should have pretended that you needed help and maybe we’d have become best friends.
Stop talking to yourself, weirdo.
Amara didn’t notice me staring into space again because she’d turned towards Bob’s office. “It is unthinkable what happened to him. I know we had our differences, but I wouldn’t wish such a terrible death on anyone.”
She looked genuinely sad then and shook her head. It was enough to convince me that she’d had nothing to do with the murder and that she should be put forward in the Queen’s Honours List as Britain’s nicest person.
“I’d better be off. It might sound trite to say it, but life must go on.” She squeezed my arm which made me feel all special then walked off to speak to Jack by reception.
You know, we can’t just assume that someone is innocent because they’ve got a friendly manner. First Ramesh, now Amara. There’ll be no suspects left before long.
I ignored myself and got back to work.
Jones, Ellen. 15 Thorne Street, SW13 0PT
Jones, Ellen. 62 Bodmin Street, SW18 4PT
As I zoned into my work and out of reality, I wondered who in that office had the guts and savagery to kill Bob. My mind reeled between the five suspects – including Ramesh of course. At home with cats? Even if there was more chance of my mum being the murderer, my brain was right and we couldn’t rule him out.
It was just then that the consulting team stalked into the office, twenty minutes late. Ten men aged twenty-eight to thirty-five in over-priced suits and hand-stitched leather brogues all with monosyllabic names like Craig, Dev and Nick. They looked like crack pilots preparing to fly off on some dangerous mission.
At the head of the pack was Will Gibbons. As well as being lead consultant, Will was a misogynistic thug and the man recently voted – by me in my head – as most likely to kick a puppy. He was the only person at work who Bob seemed to get along with and yet I’d seen the two of them screaming their heads off at one another down by East Croydon station just a week before the murder. Okay, Will couldn’t have removed the CCTV data so he wasn’t the outright killer, but I figured he at least merited a text message to Ramesh.
Are we absolutely certain it wasn’t Will? He’s just about the worst person I’ve ever met?
Sitting at his desk in the middle of the office, it took him proximately three seconds to reply.
Good point. Maybe he knows something. We’d better not exclude him entirely.
I could tell he was excited. He finished the message with smiley face, smiley face, kung-fu man, pizza slice.
One of the upsides of Bob being dead was that he was practically the only person who checked whether I was doing any work. I spent the rest of the morning gazing around the office at my colleagues. It was frankly disappointing that I had to rule so many of them out of our enquiries. None of the judgy P.A.s could have done it without an accomplice and while I loved the idea that Suzie, my near-mute deskmate, was the brutal mastermind we were searching for, it sadly wasn’t to be.
The whole place was quiet that morning. It felt as if Bob’s shouts, grunts and hurled fountain pens had left a hole in the Porter & Porter soundscape. Voices were whispery, like the mumbled condolences of a new boyfriend dragged along to a family funeral. Mobiles buzzed in people’s pockets instead of the opening bars to “Eye of The Tiger” screaming across the room. We were in mourning. I doubted it would last long.
“Psssst…” Jack the security guard hissed on the return leg of yet another trip to the bathroom. “What did he look like?”
“Sorry?” I pretended to be hard at work as he arrived at my desk.
“I mean Bob, all cut up. What did he look like?”
In all honesty, despite his pallid skin and the litres of blood splashed about the place, Bob looked more tranquil than I’d ever seen him. I don’t think this was the information our moustachioed protector was looking for.
“I couldn’t see his face,” I lied. “He was hunched over.”
“Creepy.” Jack shuddered exaggeratedly. On the other side of the desk, Suzie flicked a glance in our direction and let out a similarly terrified chirp.
“Who d’ya reckon done it then?” He scratched one long strawberry grey sideburn as he spoke.
“It’s hard to say. Is it true that someone wiped the video cameras?”
He peered around to check that no one was listening, but then spoke in his usual loud voice. “That’s right, the hard drives are gone. Don’t know who would’ve done something like that.”
His words died away but he remained there, staring out of the window at Croydon’s skyline. After about a minute with no sound except for the scratching of his yellowed nails on his hairy cheeks, he spoke again.
“Was probably kids.” He sighed a long agonising sigh. “It’s always bloody kids.”
With his investigation concluded, Jack walked back across the office. I was considering whether this slightly doddery relic of an undemanding 1980s employment policy could have brutally slit open my recently departed supervisor when the cartoon hands on my clock told me it was time for lunch.
Chapter Six
As I ate my sun-blushed California salad, I ran through the suspects in my head like a mantra.
David, Amara, Jack, Wendy, Ramesh and maybe Will.
Ignoring for a moment her wonderful temperament and great skin, Amara had plenty to gain from Bob’s death but, with two young kids and all the work she had on, it would be difficult to find a moment in her busy schedule to plot a murder.
Ramesh, meanwhile, had been ritually humiliated on a daily basis. Bob had taken a sick pleasure in dishing out cruelty and my bestie was frequently his target. Plenty of people assumed that Ramesh was gay, it wasn’t just Bob. They noticed his good fashion sense, love of cheesy pop music and over the top personality and quickly identified his sexuality. The one thing they hadn’t factored in was that, for this to be true, he’d have to be attracted to men, a fact that was sadly absent from their criteria.
Bob hadn’t started this unhappy phenomenon, but he’d weaponised it. Turning it into a stick to beat my friend with at every possible opportunity. Ramesh told me countless times about the abuse he was put through, perhaps he’d finally done something about it.
Hairy Jack the security guard had hardly been best mates with Bob and their animosity had boiled over into a punch up at the last office Christmas party. The only other way he was remarkable though was in how little he stood to gain from Bob’s absence. Of course, according to Christie, a complete lack of motive often provides the most likely suspects so I wouldn’t be ruling him out just yet.
Wendy’s awful dress sense was almost enough to convince me she could kill a man. And then there was all the fuss she’d made about finding me in Bob’s office. It seemed a bit overplayed to me. What better way to hide her guilt than to wait for me to find the body and kick up a stink?
Will from accounts had the temperament, the savage look and the physical strength to slash someone open but it seemed impossible he could have killed Bob on his own as he couldn’t get into the server room to delete the CCTV footage. He was still the likely culprit nonetheless.
And last, but not to be dismissed just because he was the most handsome, what about our managing director? If smooth, capable David was hiding some dark secret beneath his shiny exterior, I guess I’d have to be the one to delve into it.
Six measly suspects; they don’t stand a chance.
My spot in the corner of our single floor, open plan office would be a perfect vantage point to spy on our suspects. I was hoping the fact no one knew I was busy sleuthing, (with my over the top sidekick, who would come to all the wrong conclusions and enable me to solve the case) would mean they’d go about their business as normal and reveal all their guilty secrets.
The breakroom got busy at lunch and the rumours and hearsay were soon flying around like bats in a cave. Ramesh turned up and we eavesdropped on several interesting speculations on who the kille
r might be before getting dragged into one of our own.
“I still say The Freak did it,” Will announced as he sat down with a lamb durum from the kebab shop down the road. For once he was not surrounded by his pack of pseudo-yuppies.
“I was in a Burger Baron with about a hundred other people.” My panic re-emerged as I was forced to defend myself.
“Classy.”
“Says the man stinking up the office with Mediterranean take away.”
“Well fine.” He licked a spot of yoghurt sauce from his shirt cuff. “You didn’t actually kill Bob, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t involved. Maybe you got your gay BFF to do the deed whilst you chomped down on a double cheeseburger.”
“Yeah she did!” Wendy screamed across the room. She was huddled together with Pauline from accounts and a couple of others from their gossip gang. “The Freak did it!”
The shining light of the consulting department, Will was most definitely the person I’d get rid of if I was given carte blanche with a letter opener. It wasn’t just that he was arrogant, he was his dead boss’s protégé – a study in Bob – and everything he said reminded me of his odious mentor.
“And where were you on Wednesday night?” I asked the silver-suited consultant.
“I was with a lucky young lady showing her a good time.”
“Does she have a name?”
“Funnily enough I didn’t get it. We weren’t really there for conversation.”
“Who has time?” Ramesh said. “When you’re paying by the hour I mean.”
“We met in a bar and she wasn’t big on talking.” Will sounded more insulted by the idea he could have paid for sex than the suggestion he killed Bob.
“How convenient.” I stared him down. “So then you don’t have an alibi?”
“We don’t all still live with Mummy and Daddy, Freak. I reckon about half the office would’ve been at home alone on Wednesday night. That doesn’t mean we all killed him. Why would I even want to?” He jutted out his jaw and bared his teeth like an offended Doberman. Despite his swish clothes and slickly styled hair-do, Will couldn’t disguise the decidedly canine features of his face.
“Wasn’t Bob your boss before he was promoted?” I didn’t give him time to answer. “As senior member of the consultancy team, wouldn’t that make you the obvious person to replace him?”
Everyone in the breakroom had stopped to listen and the place was now consumed by their anticipation. Suddenly silent, Wendy looked on in wonder, like I’d discovered Will’s smoking gun.
“Let’s calm down,” he said with uncharacteristic restraint. “I’m sorry I said you were the killer and I’m sorry I was rude to Ramesh. I wouldn’t kill someone just for a promotion.”
“What would you kill them for?”
There was a communal gasp and Will smiled back at me. “Nice try. If you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”
He picked up his wrap and made his exit to the murmur of suspicious voices. With its ever present assortment of cooing assistants and preening executives, being a Porter & Porter staff member is like working alongside a Greek chorus.
“Pretty damning, don’t you think?” Ramesh chimed in.
“No, not really. A less than romantic method for meeting a woman is hardly evidence of a capacity to kill. That and the fact that he couldn’t have accessed the CCTV mean we’ve got no case against him.”
“All right, who’s next?”
After lunch, the super-boss appeared with the two plainclothes officers who had interviewed me the morning before. David looked exhausted. Whilst I’d been lazing about at my desk all morning spying, snooping and drinking tureens of hot chocolate, he’d been suffering through a patented Irons and Brabazon grilling.
“If I could have your attention, please.” With Amara at his side, he addressed the office. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to you all together yet and I’m sorry about that.”
David was in his mid-to-late thirties but had always seemed younger. That morning, his face was creased and pale like he’d aged a decade in a day.
“You all know what happened here on Wednesday night. It goes without saying that we are deeply saddened by Bob’s death and I’m sure you’re eager to get to the bottom of this tragedy.”
David stepped back reverentially and Amara assumed control. “The two officers leading the enquiry are here to talk to you today. I’m going to hand you over to Detective Inspectors Irons and Brabazon. We ask that you cooperate in any way you can.”
Amara mouthed a few words in the direction of D.I. Irons and she stepped forward to speak.
“I’m just here to reiterate how important it is that you share with us any information which may lead to a better understanding of what happened to Mr. Thomas. We now have a confirmed time of death of nine o’clock on Wednesday night. We haven’t had any reports of anyone arriving or leaving at that time but maybe you noticed someone acting strangely, or hanging around the building that day. Perhaps you have info on Mr Thomas that could explain why someone would want to harm him. If anything occurs to you, whatever it might be, please get in touch.”
Standing behind the officers, Jack from security was surveying the crowd with his chest puffed out like he thought he was part of the investigation, rather than one of the suspects. When D.I. Irons finished speaking, the room came back to life and my colleagues returned to their desks or opted for post-lunch coffee and more dissection of the facts.
Only one person approached the police. I watched from my desk as Wendy walked over to them, jabbing her finger in my direction, her cardigan shaking with rage. It was ten minutes before D.I. Brabazon came to talk to me. He was surprisingly chatty.
“Don’t worry about her. There’s always someone who’s convinced they know who the killer is.” He was looking even more action figure-ish today. His wide, triangular sideburns looked like they’d been inked on with a felt-tip.
“Have there been any breakthroughs?” I asked.
“We’ve plenty of leads to follow.” He paused and looked at me as if he’d just noticed I was there. “What about you? Have you thought of anything else that might be useful?”
“The apple.”
He looked at me like I was a child. “What apple?”
“The apple on Bob’s desk was cut in half. I imagine the autopsy showed he’d eaten half of it and yet there was no knife in his office. Either the murderer washed it and put it back or there’ll be a red-handled fruit knife missing. Who knows, there might even be blood traces in the breakroom.”
“Hmmm.” He clicked on the ballpoint pen in his hand for a moment. “Good point.”
“You know, I might be able to help you. If you share what you’ve already found out, I could keep watch on the suspects here in the office.”
“Like an undercover agent, you mean?” He managed a smile for the first time.
“Something like that, yeah.”
“Do you have any experience?”
“I, urmmm… I’m a big fan of crime fiction.” I might have blushed a little as I told him this.
“Good afternoon, Miss Palmer.” He began to walk away.
“I’ve read every last Agatha Christie,” I said a little too insistently, so that everyone in a three-desk radius turned to judge me. “Even the short stories!” It did not make him reconsider.
I watched from my dugout as Irons and Brabazon took over David’s office and called people in one by one to talk to them. They were clearly sticking to the theory that one of our five suspects had been involved. David had already been quizzed at the station, which just left Jack, Amara, Wendy and Ramesh to call by the makeshift interrogation room for five minutes each.
I thought that would be the end of it but then a message went out for Will to take his turn. When he emerged a few minutes later, all his macho bravado had deserted him. His face was ashen and he barely raised his eyes as he navigated the maze of desks on the way back to his own. It removed all doubt that we were right to include h
im on our list of suspects and I wondered what the police had got on him.
The detectives left about an hour later, but not before a team of scene of crime officers had appeared to seal off the breakroom. They removed one red-handled knife in a ziplock bag but there’d been two there last week.
I thought I’d take advantage of the fact that no one cared what I did all day to check out a theory. It made sense that the killer had got rid of the CCTV footage from the office, but they would still have been caught by building security if they’d used the lifts or gone out through the foyer. This surely meant that, as the police were yet to make any arrests, the killer had left through the fire escape.
I traced the path they would have taken to avoid any cameras. Hugging the wall outside the office, I worked my way along the corridor to the emergency exit.
“Got a bit of a bad back,” I had to explain when a delivery driver emerged from the lifts and looked at me like I needed a lobotomy.
I wriggled about on the wall like a bear against a tree trunk until he was gone and I could continue on my way. The stairwell down to the rear exit was free of cameras. I walked down all four floors to check and came out at the bottom by the fire doors which were supposed to be alarmed but everyone knew they weren’t. Wendy and her mates always went down there to smoke in peace and quiet. Just outside, a mound of cigarette butts and heel-stamped drinks cans were piling up on the shabby concrete.
I was about to head back inside when I noticed the remains of a broken bottle among the other detritus. Most of the pieces had been removed, but I could tell it was the narrow-mouthed, wide-based shape common to champagne. Though the main label was missing, the tag around the neck proved that it was the same expensive brand that Bob had in his office. I took a photo on my phone then walked round to the front entrance to go back up in the lift. I suppose it would only be fair to let the ungrateful police in on what I’d discovered.
Chapter Seven
“I could get used to people being knocked off in the office,” Ramesh declared after David let us go home again early with the police still busy in the office. “Let’s hope it’s a serial killer.”
A Corpse Called Bob Page 5
