David, Amara, Wendy, Will and Jack. I recited my shortened mantra as I sat at my desk the following morning. I knew that one of these colleagues would be the key to getting to the truth of what happened the night Bob was killed. I thought about the names one by one and it suddenly occurred to me that there was someone missing from the list.
David, Amara, Wendy, Will, Jack and Bob. I’d spent so long focussing on who could have killed him that I’d failed to concentrate on the man who’d been killed. There were millions of reasons why someone would have wanted him dead but I’d become fixated on what a bully he was and completely ignored any other motive.
It was obvious that Bob had really lost it in the six months before his death. When he bothered turning up at work he was always in a state, coughing his guts out and stinking of cigarettes. He’d done coke in the toilets, quaffed champagne in his office, fired off rude e-mails to clients, punched Jack and seduced then robbed Wendy. He’d stopped caring about his job and no longer gave a damn what his colleagues thought of him. It would be easy to dismiss his transformation as a midlife crisis but there must have been something driving it. By alienating the people around him, Bob hadn’t just burnt his bridges, he’d called in an airstrike.
Though I couldn’t look through the files on his computer or interrogate him from beyond the grave, there was one place he lived on. A quick search online provided me with Bob’s complete CV. He’d been at P&P since the eighties and listed Mr Aldrich Porter himself as a reference. I found newspaper stories from a decade earlier about the company’s move to Croydon, discussing the investment they were making into the consulting wing of the company which was already being led by a Robert H. Thomas. I learnt everything and nothing about a man I’d known for years. So with no new light shed on him, I returned to more speculative chains of thought.
Bob must have bought the drugs from someone, perhaps he’d got involved with the wrong kind of people and stolen from Wendy to pay them back. Or perhaps Wendy was in debt to the same gang and helped them kill Bob to wipe her own slate clean. Such theories came to me as much from TV dramas as anything I knew about my dead boss and I didn’t hold out much hope for their success.
I wish I’d had the resolve to be able to pick a suspect and stick with my hypothesis to the end. While I still couldn’t imagine squeaky clean Amara or David being the killers, it was hard to choose a favourite between Jack, Will and Wendy. I just hoped that my drink with Amara that evening would make things clearer.
Not wanting to lose my job before I’d worked out who’d filleted my supervisor like a fish, I spent most of Wednesday doing the work he’d have been shouting at me to get on with. David was busy in meetings all morning and was out of the office in the afternoon so I didn’t have him there to distract me and the day dragged by.
At five thirty, I met Amara at the Station Hotel down by the abandoned post office sorting depot. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to stay there – with its view of the East Croydon railway tracks and the noisy taxi rank out front – which was lucky as it had stopped being anything but a greasy watering hole about fifty years earlier.
“I’m so sorry,” she said as we sat down in a rather soggy booth. “I’d forgotten how grimy this place is. I used to come here when I was a kid because it was the only pub around that didn’t ask for I.D.s.”
She looked out of place ordering a sweet white wine, so I’d gone for a pint of nice cold camouflage to try to fit in. The bar was largely populated by old men with very few teeth and plenty of tattoos. The barman kept glancing at the door like he was scared who would come in next.
“I’ll tell you what, we’ll go to a pub I know in the centre next time.”
As much as I loved the idea of drinks with Amara becoming a regular thing, I was playing the part of a troubled colleague and didn’t want to appear too cheerful.
“That’d be nice.” I stuck with my maudlin expression to push the conversation along.
She took a sip from her wine then made a face to show how bad it was. “Izzy, why don’t you tell me what got you so upset at work yesterday?”
I cast my eyes to the sticky carpet and began. “I’m really sorry to take up your time but, ever since Bob died, I’ve been struggling. I can’t get the image of his body out of my head.”
Amara looked as sympathetic as ever. “I can only imagine. Have you considered going to talk to someone? A professional, I mean.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary.” I swallowed a gulp of my beer and wished I’d gone for a kids’ drink. “I’m not depressed, I just need to understand why anyone would do something so brutal. You and Bob didn’t get on, but you wouldn’t have slit him open, right?”
She didn’t answer immediately and I was worried that I’d laid it on too thick. She took another sip of her drink and I anticipated her answer.
“Bob had this unique way of getting under people’s skin. Whoever killed him must have truly hated him and, I’m sorry to say, I can understand why they’d feel that way.”
She paused again to look around her old haunt. Her eyes traced the 1980s football scarves and car number plates fixed to the wall above the bar. “Bob was jealous and controlling from the time I started at P&P. When I got the promotion over him, he made my life hell. It wasn’t just that he thought he deserved the job more than I did, he came to take pleasure in telling me how worthless I was. He was always trying to show me up in important meetings and did everything he could to take over the projects we worked on together. But as cruel as he could be in public, he was ten times worse when there were no witnesses around.”
Her words were so intense and the look in her eyes so hateful that, for the briefest of moments, I thought she was about to confess to killing him. She clearly needed to talk about what had happened just as much as I did.
“I’m pretty sure we all have it in us to kill someone, but I wasn’t the one to do it.” She stared down into her wine glass like it was a wishing well. “I can’t stop thinking that one of our colleagues must know what happened. Whoever it was, Bob must have done something appalling to end up the way he did.”
She faded out again but I needed her to keep talking. “He was pretty wild over the last few months. I heard he’d been doing drugs in the office and we all know what happened at the Christmas party. Do you think that could be it?”
She smiled then. She was too clever for me.
“You’re a bit of a Hercule Poirot, aren’t you, Izzy?” Woah, got it in one. “That’s all right, I don’t blame you. But I think that the way Bob was acting was a symptom more than a cause. You see, back in January, Bob’s wife Selina came to see David and I. She told us that he had lung cancer and was refusing treatment. She thought we might be able to talk sense into him for the sake of their kids. David did what he could and offered Bob early retirement but he was having none of it. He thought he knew better than the doctors. He told us we should mind our own business and said he could sort it out himself.”
More pieces clicked into place. The medicine in his coat, his unconvincing claim of invincibility. My brain whirred with the possibilities.
“But he was a mess, surely you could have forced him out. He was losing the business money.”
She looked at me again in that warm but critical way of hers and I knew she was sizing me up. I had to be careful not to overplay my hand.
“David took most of Bob’s big clients away from him. The ones he had left were ancient friends of Mr Porter; pernickety old men who wanted everything done the way it had been forty years ago. They were more trouble than they were worth. And you have to understand…”
Her eyes flicked about the Station Hotel, searching for spies. “I shouldn’t be telling you this stuff. David would kill me, but you’re a clever girl. You’d work it out eventually. You have to understand that Bob was untouchable. He’d done things that no one else would have got away with. David has spent the last five years dealing with problems that Bob created but he couldn’t fire him because
Mr Porter wouldn’t allow it.”
This was what I needed to hear. “Do you know why?”
“At first I thought it was a typical old boys club, but it was more than that. Bob had worked his way up from the bottom. He’d been Mr Porter’s pet for years and would probably have been director if he’d had an ounce of charm. Porter wanted to keep him around but cared too much about his business to put Bob in charge. Which is why he hired David as MD and why I was made deputy.”
Something had changed in the way she spoke. I’d dropped the pretence that I was there for her support but so had she. Amara clearly wanted to tell me this stuff and I couldn’t be quite sure why.
“Do the police know all this?”
“Of course. I went into the station the day after he died. They didn’t seem very interested. Brabazon told me that with all the knife crime going on in London, they’ll be lucky if they have the resources to pursue half the leads they’ve got. I hate the idea that we never find out who the murderer is. If we never know why someone killed him, Bob will always be the victim.”
“How do you mean?”
She knocked back half a glass of wine in one go. “Oh, yuck. That’s awful.” Her tongue sticking out, she used the muscles in her neck to express just how bad her drink was. “I mean until we know the exact reason Bob was killed, it’s as if he’s the only one who suffered. He was never a victim when he was alive so what right has he got to be one now?”
I let her words sink in before replying. “The truth is that I was crying in the bathroom yesterday because I thought that Ramesh was the killer. It turns out I was wrong but the idea that he’d be punished for years and Bob’s pain was over in seconds just didn’t seem fair.”
She smiled. “I heard about your adventure last night. I’m glad that it wasn’t Ramesh. He’s a nice guy. Bit of a pain sometimes, but a nice guy.”
“You can tell me to mind my own business if you like, but can I ask where you were last Wednesday night?”
She hesitated for a moment. “Well, why not? I was with my husband, tucking our kids in and reading The Gruffalo for the seven millionth time when Bob was offed.” She served up a truly wicked smile. “I’d love to have been on the scene to lend a hand but it’s hard for working mothers to find the time these days.”
It was kind of refreshing to hear one of our suspects admit that they were happy that Bob was dead. I’d never imagined it would be careful, considerate Amara though. We finished our drinks and turned to safer topics – our friends, office gossip, TV shows. I was glad she could trust me enough to confide all she had but it still felt weird to be the least important woman in the company sitting in a dive bar with the most senior one.
When it was time to leave, we walked up to the station to say goodbye.
“Izzy, as far as I’m concerned, you can look into this as much as you like. Maybe you’ll find out something that the police don’t know. But please don’t do anything that could get you fired. I’d miss having lovely weirdoes like you and Ramesh around the office. It would be boring there without you.”
“Okay, Amara.” I smiled and waved her off through the barrier thinking, Oops! Too late.
Chapter Sixteen
By the time I got home that night, I was furious.
We should have worked it out.
We should have worked it out.
All the evidence was there that Bob was sick. His reckless, carpe diem behaviour. The unbranded Russian pharmaceuticals. His sickly appearance and regular absences. Plus everyone knows that characters with unexplained coughs are almost always dying of some terrible illness. How could I have missed it?
“Nothing can kill me. I’m invincible!” Bob already knew that he was dying when he screamed those unconvincing words at the office Christmas party. I see that as the beginning of the end for him. As it turned out, he didn’t know how he was going to die, or when, but he knew he didn’t have long to go.
I scrolled back through old phone messages from that sordid Friday night in December and sat on my bed watching the videos one by one. It was a choice between that and lying there cuddling my pillow, dreaming of David.
The moment that people talked about for months after was Bob and Jack’s punch up in the breakroom. It was Will who’d originally filmed it but I’d got the video from Ramesh, who’d had it from Suzie, who’d been sent it by Pauline from accounts and I haven’t a clue how she came across it.
It was a sorry sight really. Two overweight men in their fifties, circling one another like kids in a playground. Their dukes feebly raised, it was as if they were actively trying to imitate olden time boxers.
“You’re a fake!” Bob threw his words at Jack before despatching any jabs. “Acting like butter wouldn’t melt. I can see right through you.”
Jack sent a right hook into the air between them. “What you see is what you get with Bob Thomas, right? You look like a bastard, you act like a bastard; you are a bastard.”
I could hear Will laughing from behind his mobile. “Get on with it and smack him one!”
A few of his finance bros took up the chant. “Smack him one, smack him one!” They didn’t specify who should smack whom.
Wendy wasn’t so impartial and was screaming Bob’s name over and over, her own fists balled up eagerly. Bob took a comedy pause to down a glass of water from the sink so that Jack had to wait for him, still bobbing from foot to foot.
“Bob is wasted.” Will turned the camera around to address his audience. “What a legend!”
Back in the ring, P&P’s long-serving security guard beckoned his opponent forward. “Get on with it. Or are you scared I might hurt you?”
His face dripping wet like a slobbering dog, big Bob Thomas lunged forward. His left arm circled through the air to make contact with the top of his opponent’s head and Jack threw himself theatrically to the floor. The video cut off to the sound of Bob’s fan club cheering.
There were plenty of accompanying videos but that was the one that would be discussed and shared and mythologised. There was one of Wendy letting her hair down on the dance floor as her colleagues sang along to ‘Stayin’ Alive’. David made a speech in a Santa hat before wishing everyone a merry Christmas. Bob challenged Amara to a limbo contest and, for some reason, she accepted. I did not make an appearance because Ramesh and I were hiding in the server room, getting merry on supermarket brand Bucks Fizz.
We were the opposite of Bob in two ways that evening. He appeared in practically every video and, as far as I could tell, consumed no alcohol whatsoever. He must have known he was sick by then and started in on his medication. What else could account for his sudden belief in his own immortality and the violent reaction his stomach had to Wendy’s bedspread later that night?
Watching Bob’s sad, macho display again made me wonder whether he could have been responsible for his own death. Did Bob Thomas subscribe to the credo that it was better to burn out than fade away? He’d already turned down cancer treatment, perhaps he’d paid someone to off him. I didn’t dwell on the theory for long. Bob would never have clocked out when he was still having so much fun.
On Thursday morning, I met David to walk up to the Addington Hills viewpoint for Bob’s memorial. It was a little odd seeing him again outside of work. It felt like years had gone by since we’d kissed in his car and, instead of spending every waking moment thinking about him, I’d been wasting my time trying to work out who killed a man that no one liked in the first place.
I met him by the park entrance. I’m afraid I have to say it; he looked dang sexy in mourning attire. He wore a well-fitted black suit with a rather traditional look to it, the cuffs to his shirt long, the collar high. I had a brief David as a sexy 19th century baron-type fantasy flash through my head.
God, Izzy. Stop being such a perv. We’re on our way to a funeral.
You can talk, mate.
“It’s nice to see you.” He was back to that formal tone that we’d done so well to get beyond two nights before.
When we got to the plateau at the top of the hill, Ramesh rushed towards me. In an all-white suit with matching Stetson, he was not happy.
I couldn’t resist the obvious question. “Why are you dressed like R. Kelly?”
“Will came to my house after work, gave me these clothes and told me I had to do a reading today at the memorial.”
“Seriously, Ramesh! Why didn’t you say no?”
His eyes wild, he looked like he hadn’t slept all night. “Because I’m too polite, Izzy. I’m too bloody polite!”
Three rows of chairs had been set out to face the viewpoint that looked right across London. In front of them, there was a small platform with a large PA. To its right, a string quartet in eveningwear were elegantly sawing.
“How did Will even know what size suit you take?”
“It wasn’t him. Bob set this whole thing up. He’s trolling us from beyond the grave.”
I had about forty other questions I’d like to have asked but, just then, Will got up on the podium to speak. He was dressed in an identical outfit to Ramesh’s and stood before an ornate silver lectern.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if you could all find a seat, the Robert Harold Thomas memorial service is about to begin.”
Oh. So H is for Harold apparently.
Pulling free from Ramesh’s desperate grip, I followed David over to some seats at the back. The portion of the office who’d come to pay their respects/have a morning off had already occupied the front section. The only empty seats in the first row were Reserved for Mr A. Porter +1 but our illustrious patron was nowhere to be seen. I was surprised to see Amara’s family there too, mixed in with Bobs’. All four children were dressed in neat black blazers, ready to be bundled off to the same posh school once the service was over.
A Corpse Called Bob Page 13
