“So, Amara, what did you do at the weekend? Burn any incriminating evidence?” Maybe he didn’t phrase it exactly like that but he might as well have.
If she was hiding something from us, our deputy director certainly wasn’t giving anything away. “I didn’t do much really. On Friday my husband’s friends came over and we spent all night playing role playing games.”
“Wow! That sounds fun!” Ramesh replied with more than a hint of sarcasm.
“Yep, and you sound rude.” Have I told you how much I love Amara?
I tried to return the conversation to the easy-going feel it had started out with. “How long have you been married?”
“Almost nine years now.”
“How’d ya meet?” Ramesh wasn’t interested in a casual chat and had already slipped into the New York drawl of a hardboiled private eye.
“We met in an online forum for gamers. It’s kind of romantic really. There were people there talking from all over the world and it turned out we only lived two minutes’ walk away from each other. My avatar was me dressed as Sophitia from Soulcalibur and Gareth, that’s my husband, says he fell in love at first sight.”
“That’s so sweet.” I had no idea what she was talking about but this seemed like a suitable response.
Perhaps I’d have had more luck with men if I’d dressed up as a computer game character. Sadly the only one I knew was Super Mario and I didn’t particularly want a boyfriend who found me sexy in a moustache.
“Does your husband hold a grudge against anyone?” Ramesh asked before I could interrupt.
“Did you see Eastenders the other night?”
Thank goodness for TV; the one unifying factor in our divided planet. I reckon that even Israel and Palestine could find common ground if they only spent more time discussing how great Saturday morning cartoons from the 90s were, instead of focussing on the decades of violence, blame and land disputes that have fractured their peoples.
Amara’s perplexed look disappeared and she perked right up. Her fringe seemed to smile along with her. “It was so boring. Have you noticed how they have to have a few really dull episodes between anything good happening?”
There was all sorts of information I was hoping to subtly extract from Amara but my idiot friend had wasted the opportunity. I shot Ramesh an angry glare and we joined in a hearty discussion of TV soap trends. It quickly made me forget my troubles until the bell rang for the end of the lunch. No, hang on, I’m not in school anymore. That didn’t happen.
Sitting back down at my desk plunged me into a temporary depression. The stack of pages I still had to get through looked just as high as when Wendy had delivered it. I carefully keyed in numbers into the columns in tiny virtual boxes. For all I knew, this was the extension of David’s cruel and elaborate joke, which started with him asking me out and proceeded to giving me fake work to do. I mean, how could anyone need the information 9982726YL in the column Transaction data? What did any of it mean?
Eventually I got into the zone and the distractions of the office tuned out. Like a spaceship travelling at warp speed, the world around me blurred and I became incredibly focussed on the task at hand. Time passed by in the most curious of ways; one minute lasted ten before an hour shot by in seconds.
It was almost meditational. My fingers worked away at my computer’s keypad like a nest of furious woodpeckers. People called across the office to one another and, at some point, Ramesh came to talk to me, but none of it sank in. Before I knew it there was only one page remaining and it was past my home time.
The smiley clock in front of me said five forty-five and the office was already half empty. Just then, that monster David emerged from his office and looked right at me. A few hours earlier, the smile he sent sailing through the air, across the neat rows of desks and quietly sleeping computers, would have charmed the pants off me. But after the heartless note he’d sent on its smug yellow background, everything about that man had turned to poison. I was now convinced that he was the savage brute who had murdered our beloved Bob.
I pretended I hadn’t seen him and busied myself with the last lines of my day’s task. It was soon complete and, turning over the final sheet of paper, I came face to face with another yellow note.
***
“You poor thing,” an old woman standing next to me on the tram began. “It must be very hard.” This was not the first time someone had uttered such a statement to me. “I don’t mean no offence like, but, you know...”
She couldn’t hurt me. Her words were wind blowing through my pretty blonde hair. Her commiserations were a fine mist of tropical rain on a summer’s day. And yes a woman in her late seventies, wearing a pink knitted bonnet that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Victorian baby, had so much pity for me that she couldn’t resist the urge to approach a total stranger to sympathise with my plight, but at least she hadn’t been so rude as to specify why.
“I mean, you being so tall and all. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
People were beginning to stare. A kid in a full Arsenal kit was looking up at me like I was about to eat her. Other passengers were less obvious about it but still allowed their eyes to flick in my direction when they thought I couldn’t see.
“Thank you. That’s very kind.” I hoped this would shut her up.
She made a frowny sort of smile and kept talking. “It’s different for men, innit? I mean, with men it’s attractive. Sexy, you might say. But for a woman it can’t be easy sticking out like that. You’re like a Tyrannosaurus Rex in a field of daisies.”
And somehow she still didn’t get to me. Giraffe, stick insect, mutated German housewife, such old chestnuts barely scratched the warm fuzzy glow that surrounded me. Any blush in my cheeks was merely the first flush of new romance and all thoughts of embarrassment were kept distantly at bay.
I was still clutching the little yellow square in my hand. “I’ll call you tonight,” was all it said but it might as well have been a novel-length treatise on my beauty for the joy it brought. My king was restored to his throne.
“It’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with it. But I feel bad for the way people must stare at you in public. Can’t be much fun.”
I could have broken down in tears or lost my temper. I could have told her that, though I was tall, at least I wasn’t an interfering old hag clinging on to life by the tips of my yellowed fingernails. Instead, the new inner peace that I had discovered kept me standing there, upright and graceful, bearing her insults like a martyr.
“You know I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy!”
My stop finally came and I alighted, smiling serenely to my adversary before sticking my finger up at her through the window.
Chapter Ten
I guess David is a believer in the wait-three-whole-days-before-calling approach which in the age of WhatsApp and Tinder is practically old-fashioned. He called me that afternoon when I was a few minutes from home.
“I was going to ask you to dinner at mine but then I thought it might be a bit intense so we can go to a restaurant instead if you prefer.”
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
That was the noise my brain was making. It wasn’t easy to conduct a conversation at the same time. “No, that sounds good.”
“Which one?”
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Damn, what had he actually said? “Urmmm… The first one?”
“Dinner at mine. Are you sure? I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”
Whoops, he might be a murderer. Oh, well. Too late now. “No, honestly that would be lovely.”
As I walked along my road, I was finding it very difficult to process what he was saying because I was now about 97%, sure that David Hughes was asking me out.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
“Great. I’ll see you tomorrow then.” His lovely Welsh
accent came on stronger. It made me want to go swimming in his mouth.
I was smiling so much that the muscles in my face were starting to ache. “Perfect. See you then.”
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
West Wickham suddenly looked bright and filled with promise, like Disneyland Paris on a sunny day. I wanted to sing. I wanted to dance. Sadly I was tone deaf with a propensity for falling over whenever I stepped on a dancefloor. And so, as I skipped along the road, singing the theme tune from Happy Days, I did not impress the group of hipster teenagers who were wandering past on the opposite pavement.
They stopped where they were to laugh at me, but instead of hiding in a bush, or pretending I was coughing as I normally would have, I sang even louder. I leaned into my uncoolness, not caring in the slightest what they thought because I had a date with a truly lovely man who – there was a very good chance – hadn’t killed anyone!
I should probably mention at this point that I’m fully aware that finding love is not the only way to achieve fulfilment. I know plenty of women in relationships who are completely miserable. But, still… I got a boyfriend, I got a boyfriend!
Hang on a second. My brain had just about finished yelling for joy. Is the date tomorrow or another night? When exactly are we meeting him?
For goodness sake. You’re the one who’s supposed to keep a track of these things.
Not to worry. He’ll remind us at work.
The smell of Danny’s cooking led me home and I could see from the garden that my front room was once again occupied by a bunch of howling sexagenarians.
“You’re being ridiculous, Gregory.”
“Rosie,” I heard my stepfather saying as I unlocked the front door. “I’m afraid I have to agree with your first husband. There’s no doubt that Wendy was at her stamp collecting meeting on Wednesday night.”
“But that’s the perfect cover. Why can’t anyone see that?” Mum’s voice rose indignantly with every sentence.
The Hawes Lane Amateur Detective Society had grown. In addition to my three main parents, Mum’s hairdresser and a couple of neighbours were all contemplating the flip charts.
“Ahhh,” Dad said upon noticing me. “The woman of the hour.”
“Izzy! Don’t go on anywhere near your boss.” The lady from number 32 seemed very worked up. “He definitely can’t be trusted.”
From the look of things they’d been busy. The Clues and Hypotheses pages were suddenly covered in neat black lists. Lines ran between different elements and key themes had been circled or underlined in thick felt-tip.
I was feeling a little overwhelmed. “How do you know this stuff?”
“Your friend has been very helpful.” Dad gave up his space on the sofa and settled down on the floor.
On cue, Ramesh walked in holding a tray of tea things. I knew I should never have given my mum his number in case of an emergency.
“Who wants sugar?” He walked straight past me.
I considered complaining at them for messing about in my life, but I was still on a high so I sat down between the guy from number 27 and the woman from 32 and tried to catch up. “How do you know where Wendy was when Bob died?”
“I went through her computer like you told me.” Ramesh didn’t look up as he poured out six cups of tea from Greg’s giant pot. “There’s a photo on Facebook of her at a stamp collector’s meeting in North London. It was even shared on the organiser’s page so it seems pretty genuine.”
“Sounds rather convenient to me.” Mum wasn’t giving up on her suspicions. “How do we know it’s not an old photo which she reposted at that particular time to give her an alibi?”
“Come along, Rosie.” At least my Dad was coming out of his shell a bit. “Where’s the motive?”
Jumping up from her armchair, Mum began to hold court. “The way I see it, Wendy had more to gain than most. We know she’s in debt on her credit cards. Bob owed her a ton of money he wouldn’t give back and she’s clearly not satisfied with her job anymore. That all adds up to one desperate woman. Whatever was going on between her and Bob, she won’t have told the police about it.”
“It’s not exactly a cast-iron case, is it, darling?” Greg picked up a marker from the coffee table and drew a box around the first suspect on the list. “This is who my money’s on. David Hughes is head of the company and well placed to hide his guilt. He’s clearly only dating Izzy to find out what she knows.”
I couldn’t let that pass. “Thanks very much, Stepdaddy dearest!”
“No offence, Izzy, but think about it. Perhaps you saw something in Bob’s office that morning and he wants to work out if it meant anything to you.” He had a point there. “Perhaps he’s got wind of your investigation and he’s running scared.”
“Haaaaaaaaa!” I failed to hold in an unbelieving stab of laughter but it was quickly drowned out as everyone in the room started putting their ideas forward.
Without any evidence, Mum’s hairdresser was convinced that Wendy had done it because she was after Bob’s job. Mrs 32 thought that Jack must be the culprit. Mr 27 figured that that we hadn’t found a scrap of evidence on Amara because she’d covered her trail so well and the only person who stayed quiet was my beloved best friend, who was handing out fresh steaming mugs across the room.
“So what do you think, Ramesh?” The fact there was no cuppa for me made me question how great a guy he was after all.
He tried to hold back his goofball grin but it shone through all the same. “Don’t ask me. I still think Will’s behind it. I found nothing whatsoever on his computer. Nothing on his social media. No communication with Bob of any kind but it still feels like he’s hiding something. Anyway, he’s younger than the others. Anything incriminating would most likely be on his phone.”
Dad wasn’t finished with his theories. “One thing we can say for sure is that Ramesh didn’t do it.”
Daddy number three didn’t agree and pointed at Daddy number one with a teaspoon. “That’s not a very scientific approach, Ted. Just because he seems like a nice lad, that doesn’t preclude him from being a brutal killer.”
Dad blew on his tea. “Ramesh wouldn’t have brought us information exonerating Wendy if he was the killer.”
“Maybe that’s what he wanted us to think. There are four other suspects.” Greg pointed to the chart once more. “He could eliminate Wendy to put us off the scent.”
“Greg’s right.” From the sound of Ramesh’s voice, I could tell he’d burnt his tongue. “You can’t rule me out. I’ve got no alibi for a start.”
“I believe you, Ramesh dear.” Mum had found another young man to adopt.
I sat for a while longer as the group worked through various theories and even made it to a second page on the hypothesis pad. It felt totally unreal to me. The way they spoke about the people I’d worked with for years turned them into faceless chess pieces.
Once everyone had drunk their tea and shuffled off, it was left to me and Ramesh to clear up.
“I told you this afternoon,” he said as he plonked a fistful of teaspoons in the sink. “I sent you everything before I left work. I would’ve waited for you but you seemed busy.”
“Sorry, I was a bit distracted.”
He stopped what he was doing for a second and peered out of the kitchen window at Danny tending to his campfire in the garden. “I wish I could get hold of our suspect’s phones. Amara and David have nothing personal on their computers and Will’s Facebook is weirdly anonymous. All he posts about is football and beer.”
“I’d say that was the breadth of his interests, but even for Will it sounds excessively macho. I keep thinking we can cross him off the list because we’ve got basically no evidence on him. And it’s not as if he gets on well enough with any of the other suspects to be working with one of them. But everything he does is sketchy and I can’t shake the feeling that he’s involved somehow.”
“Absolutely, the guy’s dodgy.” Ramesh
brushed some crumbs into the bin. “The weirdest thing I found today was an e-mail to David from Bob’s work account. He wrote it shortly before he was killed but the network was offline that night so it didn’t send. All it said was, It’s already done.”
I put on some rubber gloves and twanged one cuff like a surgeon getting ready to wield the knife. “Not so weird. They could have been talking about anything. A project. A piece of work.” The bubbles were getting out of control so I turned the tap off and got to work. “Anything else stand out?”
“You’ll see the overdraft reminders from Wendy’s bank. God knows what she spends her money on. Her whole life seems to revolve around stamp collecting, which makes her a psycho in my book. The e-mails she sent to Bob are interesting; she was furious with him. Apart from that, Jack spends massive amounts of time watching animal videos online, Amara has the most sparklingly organised e-mail on earth. Oh and David works much too hard.”
“Urghh, he sounds awful. I’ll probably have to cancel my date with him.”
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” It was Ramesh this time. He has a worrying amount in common with my internal monologue. “When? Where? Tell me all the details.”
“Urrrmmm… I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
Dinner that night was another exotically named casserole dish and I had to remind myself that I was now practically spoken for and could no longer perv on Danny as he served up the food. It was difficult; his top was so tight that it looked like he’d painted it on.
“You know that I’m heartbroken,” he said once we were all sitting down. “Going out with an eligible bloke for once. One day I’ll give up on you altogether.”
I made a noise like a confused elephant calf and spent the meal once more trying to work out if Danny meant anything he said to me.
I scurried off to my room as dinner was over. Lying in bed beneath my poster of James Blunt, (my celebrity teenage crush, whose accent I still find almost supernaturally sexy) I wiled away the hours looking at the files Ramesh had downloaded from our colleagues’ computers. There were screenshots, spreadsheets and whole searchable e-mail logs for all our suspects’ work accounts. The email from Bob to David was sent an hour before he died. The subject line read, “The List” but I couldn’t find any other reference to it in their earlier correspondence.
A Corpse Called Bob Page 8
