Altered Life

by Keith Dixon

CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ON MY WAY HOME I carefully thought over what Tara had said before deciding to ignore it. I reckoned that she was stressed and didn’t know what she was saying. It seemed to me that a contract that had yet to be delivered or signed was no contract at all. So she couldn’t fire me from it. Besides, my client was Laura, and by five o’clock, after another session on the Internet, I knew I had to speak to her again. There was something she and everyone else in Brands was keeping from me. ‘I’ve been told Tara sacked you,’ she said over the phone, her voice echoing from the loudspeaker device she was using. ‘I suppose you know she’s not happy with what we’ve been doing. She gave me a roasting.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘I think you’re very high maintenance for someone who’s supposed to be working for us.’

  ‘So do you want my report or not?’

  ‘You have a report? I didn’t even know you could write.’

  ‘I never said it was in writing.’

  ‘OK, come in on Monday morning. We’ll wind it up then. This has all been a big distraction anyway. I can’t get any work done worrying about what you’re up to next.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ I said. ‘I do enough worrying for both of us.’

  I spent the weekend in my garden, chopping wood for the fire and fixing a fence that had blown down two weeks before. I pushed Brands and their troubles completely out of my mind and felt healthier for it. I knew by now the symptoms of obsessive devotion to a client and didn’t want to succumb to it this time. You get no extra thanks and very little understanding, so why bother? Instead I relaxed, played some music and got some sleep – not knowing it was the last proper rest I was going to get for a while.

  When I arrived at Brands’ office on Monday, I parked at the front and went through the carousel door into the lobby.

  Betty Parsons, the office manager I’d met on that first day, was standing in front of the lift, staring at its aluminium doors and looking like a staff sergeant waiting for the troops to assemble. She turned her large glasses on me and nodded briefly without smiling.

  ‘We won’t keep fit like this,’ I said. I didn’t know where the impulse to be jolly came from and regretted it immediately.

  ‘They’re re-carpeting the stairs,’ she replied coldly. ‘Everybody’s got to use the lift today. I don’t use it as a rule because it sticks. I prefer the stairs. And I don’t like your attitude, Mr Dyke. This company is in mourning and I think you should remember that.’

  ‘Ah.’

  I turned and looked at the lift doors and knew she was examining me. We stood quietly until the lift came, then rose in silence to the top floor. When the doors opened I followed her out and through the main office. She marched briskly to her desk. Although in her fifties and stick thin, she held herself upright and looked the world right in the eye. Just long enough to spit in it.

  Laura was on the phone. She waved at me with a pale hand and pointed to a chair, which I took. Around me there were young men and women in jeans and T-shirts seated before large monitors, wearing headphones and intently creating digital media ... whatever that was. There was a low thump of bass coming from one of the workstations—one of the programmers broad-casting his musical taste for the rest of us to enjoy. I wondered how they managed to continue working with their leader having been killed so brutally. What enabled them to carry on even though someone they saw every day had been murdered in an office twenty yards away? What did they think about it and did they care?

  I deposited my file on Laura’s desk and, seeing that she was still deep in her phone conversation, went over to Betty, who was getting comfortable, re-arranging papers on her desk and organising various foods into drawers—apple, crisps, chocolate bar. She had the furtiveness of a squirrel, her hands moving backwards and forwards like tiny paws. She looked up at me and her face seemed as long and unforgiving as an Easter Island statue.

  ‘Betty, I want to ask a favour,’ I said. She stared at me as though performing a favour for me was at the very bottom of her to-do list. ‘I’m still finding out about the people who work here, or worked here in the past. I suppose you have CVs of people who Brands have employed—details of their work history and so on?’

  She was on the point of replying when her eyes looked up and past me. I turned and saw that one of the young programmers was standing at my back. He was smiling inanely at Betty with his long hair falling down over his face.

  ‘Bets, I’ve left my card in my other jacket. Can I—you know?’ He made a smoking gesture with his hand, taking out and putting in an imaginary cigarette. Betty reached into her drawer and pulled out a small credit-card sized object and handed it over without expression.

  ‘Thanks, Bets. When cancer calls you can’t say no.’

  He turned and left.

  ‘They stand outside the back door to smoke,’ Betty said. ‘Rory didn’t like them to stand at the front of the building—gives a bad impression, all those cigarette ends, so messy. It’s a terrible habit, makes your clothes smell and everything. They need a swipe card to get back in if the door swings shut.’

  I nodded. At least she was talking to me. ‘Do many of them smoke?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t keep count. It’s their business.’

  She went back to organising the items in her desk drawers. I said, ‘So about the CVs?’

  She looked up. ‘I’m afraid not, Mr Dyke. We keep information like that private except when clients ask for it—when they want to know who’s going to be working for them, like, doing the consultancy.’

  ‘Isn’t this a special situation?’

  ‘Nobody here murdered Rory,’ she said. ‘So I don’t think we’ve got to change the way we do things just because you ask me. In the case of the police, like, that was different. They have a right to it.’

  ‘So Inspector Howard already has this information?’

  ‘Of course. Sent one of his men over for it. I’d think it was one of the first things an experienced investigator would do, you know, to narrow down the suspects.’

  This was such a clear insult, I smiled.

  ‘So how do you think I could find out more about the people who work here?’

  ‘You could ask them. I understand Miss Marshall has already given you some numbers.’

  ‘You don’t miss much, do you?’

  ‘That’s my job, to know what’s going on with the people around me.’

  ‘But how can I talk to them if you won’t give me the other numbers I need?’

  ‘I’ve told you, they’re private telephone numbers. I’m not going to give them out. If you want to speak to someone in particular, you should phone into the switchboard and they’ll connect you. If Carol on reception can’t put you through, you’ll be transferred to their voice mail or mobile phone. Leave a message and they’ll phone you back.’

  ‘You make it sound easy.’

  ‘We think so.’ She looked at me calmly. ‘It’s a rotten thing what’s happened here, Mr Dyke. It’s bad enough having police coming in and asking all sorts of questions and disturbing everything—we don’t see why we need a separate person investigating as well. We want Rory’s murderer caught right enough, but we’re not hopeful. Some people think it’s exciting having a detective around. As for me, I don’t think you’re much of a help.’

  ‘We’ll see, won’t we?’ I said. Smiling, I added, ‘Any ideas who did it?’

  She recoiled as if I’d said a rude word. ‘You shouldn’t ask me that,’ she said. ‘Rory was a handful, but he didn’t have enemies who’d take things badly enough as to kill him. Not that I know of, anyway.’

  ‘And you knew him well.’

  ‘Seven years I’ve been here. Seen the company grow from one room to something I’m proud to be part of.’

  ‘I suppose it’s different now, though—all these computer whiz-kids and big money coming in.’

  ‘You have to grow. If you don’t grow, you stagnate. We can’t afford to do
that.’

  This sounded like something she’d been taught to say. I was about to ask her more when I felt a light pressure on my shoulder. Laura had come up behind me. ‘I’m free now,’ she said. ‘You’ve got half an hour. Let’s go find a room.’

  We turned and left Betty staring after us. Her face was composed and serious, but her words echoed with an absence of passion that I’d heard before in people who weren’t telling the whole truth.