A Corpse Called Bob

by Benedict Brown

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About Me

  Izzy will be back…

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  It’s amazing that no one had tried to kill my boss before. If anyone was likely to inspire murderous rage, it was Bob.

  As I cautiously pushed his door open, I could tell that something was wrong. It wasn’t just the stale odour of cigarettes and alcohol that hit me. His blinds were drawn and the lights were still on despite the bright, south-London sunshine streaming into the main office. What really gave the game away though was that my entrance into Bob’s sanctuary failed to trigger the slightest grunt of disapproval.

  The moment I saw him, I knew that he’d screamed his last insult. His enormous frame was slumped over the desk and his medieval-style letter opener was sticking from his back. He was a giant, struck down by a tiny knight’s sword.

  There was blood all over his monthly planner and his nameplate looked as if it had been corrected by an overzealous primary school teacher.

  R be t H. Th m s was no more.

  I stood looking at the body and a strange sensation passed over me. It was like being up somewhere high and feeling the urge to jump. Instead of doing the sensible thing and calling the police, I went in for a closer look.

  It’s exactly what happens on stupid TV shows. I even heard a little voice in some tucked away corner of my brain screaming, You moron, what are you doing? Only, I’d never seen a dead body before and couldn’t resist. I sleepwalked over, desperate to understand why someone had gone to the trouble of murdering him with such a small knife.

  He’d never been handsome but death hadn’t done Bob any favours. His skin was sickly grey and his dark hair looked greasy under the ceiling lights. I was half expecting him to sit up and tell me I was late handing my work in, or make fun of me for falling for his joke. It wasn’t going to happen though and, for a moment, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for a man I’d previously only had contempt for.

  Which was when the urge got too much for me and I jumped from the cliff. I went round the other side of the desk to take in every detail. His head was tilted awkwardly towards me, his gaze intense and focused. I hadn’t imagined that his eyes would be open and an unsettling shiver phased through me. It was like he was still checking up on me from the beyond.

  Continuing to ignore everything I’d learnt from my life-long obsession with detective fiction, I leaned in close to the body just as Wendy from human resources came in. Wendy, with the coffee-stained teeth and chewed-to-the-quick nails. Wendy, the mini-despot, with her peer review forms and self-evaluation meetings. Wendy, right there, staring at me with a face like a childhood nightmare.

  “The Freak’s killed Bob!” Clearly much smarter than I was, she immediately ran from the room. “Everyone, Bob’s dead and Izzy killed him!”

  The news spread across the office in a wave of repeated exclamations. I thought about going out there to clear my name but I couldn’t face all those horrified eyes upon me so I pulled my mobile from my pocket and took the obvious next step. Given the circumstances, it was the least I could do.

  I could hear Wendy on the office floor, spurring our colleagues on to shock and disgust as an operator answered my call. “Which service do you require?”

  I wondered if I should make my voice sound more distressed. I could just imagine the prosecution at my trial playing the tape as evidence of my detachment from the terrible crime. Except, of course, I wasn’t the one who’d killed him.

  “Police. My boss has been murdered.”

  In perfect Queen’s English, a new voice ran through a series of disappointingly humdrum questions. I figured I at least owed it to my old friend Agatha Christie to take in the facts of the crime scene while I had the chance.

  It was incredible just how much blood there was. Bob was surrounded by the stuff and looked like a child who’d got carried away with his finger painting. It clearly wasn’t the wound on his back that had killed him. The front of his brown shirt had turned rusty red so someone must have sliced his stomach open. Flashes of violence passed through my mind but I tried not to think about what had happened there hours before.

  I wondered for a moment whether whoever had killed him had moved the body, as he was sitting in the wrong place. Deputy director Bob was in front of his desk, not behind it, with shoulders hunched over, like he was in the middle of a drunken nap. His hands were laid flat on the desk, the fingers spread out mid-séance on top of his Porter & Porter headed pad.

  He hadn’t been a tidy man and there was all the usual debris scattered around him – a bunch of lidless pens, a half-eaten apple, a crumpled second class stamp and some aspirin. There was a wine glass, but no bottle and, sat under his desk, was a fancy box of champagne, no doubt kept there for schmoozing clients.

  His computer hummed contentedly, still anticipating its day filled with spreadsheets, inter-office emails and sly searches for naughty matrons in stockings. The monitor cast a white glow across the desk but the open search window would go unused. I memorised every last detail and still couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something important. Where was the vital clue that would reveal Bob’s murderer?

  I answered the operator’s questions and finished the call, but that was the easy part. Next I had to face the whipped-up crowd of my co-workers.

  A big group had formed by reception. They stood at a safe distance as I emerged with a hint of red on one cuff somehow. They stared at me like I was the result of some terrible experiment; a dog with a monkey’s head.

  “You’re going to hang for this.” Wendy stepped forward to be their spokesperson. “Jack, lock her up.”

  “Oh, ummmm. I’ll have to think about that.” Our over-the-hill security guard hadn’t left his little cupboard by the entrance.

  “I didn’t kill him.” I held my empty hands out in front of me as if to prove my innocence before noticing more blood and putting them away again. “I only just got here. Half of you saw me arrive.”

  Ignoring my defence, Wendy paced up and down in front of the crowd like a Nazi general retrained for the modern workplace. “The Freak was standing right over him. I saw it with my own two eyes.” To be clear, people normally only call me Freak behind my back.

  “That’s not what happened.” The bracelets on my wrist jingled. The reality of the situation had finally got to me and I’d started to shake. “I’ve called the police, they’ll be here soon.”

  “Oh yeah? The perfect way to hide your guilt.” Spittle frothed from Wendy’s mouth as her rage peaked. “They’ll string you up!” Either she didn’t know that the death penalty was banned in Britain or thought my crime so terrible that it would be brought back just for me.

  “I arrived five minutes ago. Do you seriousl
y think I could have killed Bob without any of you hearing?” This at least generated a murmur of discussion over the possibility of my innocence.

  With his vegetable brush moustache bristling nervously, Jack’s eyes flicked between us like he was watching a tennis match. “I think maybe it would be better if we calmed down a tad.”

  “Don’t get taken in by her lies!” Wendy wasn’t giving up so easily. In her standard-issue grey twinset, she was enjoying her role as evil-cheerleader and refused to let a little thing like facts spoil her fun. “She probably killed him in the night and came back this morning to cover her tracks.”

  “What’s going on?” Will from consulting had turned up with a couple of his finance bros in tow.

  “Urrmmm it looks like Bob might be dead.” Jack was terribly polite about the whole thing.

  Wendy, not so much. “And The Freak killed her.”

  Will’s face seemed to collapse in on itself. Though he was the kind of guy who spends his free time hunting hamsters and ripping the wings off butterflies, he was also Bob’s only close friend in the office. “How could…? What's wrong with you?”

  One of the receptionists ignored Porter & Porter’s strict anti-smoking policy and lit up a cigarette. Several others copied her, plonking themselves down on top of their desks and loosening top buttons. As if this strange behaviour was a sign of the impending apocalypse, a couple of interns by the entrance started making out.

  “I didn’t kill him!” I was shouting by now. “And there’s nothing wrong with me.”

  Our deputy director Amara poked her head out of her office to mouth angrily at us. “On the phone! Be quiet!”

  Jack the security guard had decided it was time to take action and strode from his cabin. “Perhaps we should put Izzy away somewhere safe. Just until the police get here.”

  Wendy and Will’s faces lit up as they began a creepy pincer movement towards me and I thought about running away.

  By 9:05, when our managing director David arrived, I was pinned to the floor under two accountants and the woman who had hired me. From my vantage point beneath Wendy’s bottom I could see the smiley-face clock on my desk tick tick ticking away as it smirked at my predicament.

  “What’s going on?” David yelled as he emerged from the lift. “Why on earth are you smoking?”

  With ashtrays having been removed from the office sometime in the 90s, Wendy stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette into a plastic coffee cup.

  “Thank you. Now will someone please tell me why you’re sitting on Izzy?”

  It was a bittersweet moment for me. Yes, it stung that my colleagues thought I was a murderer, but it was nice to discover that the head of the company knew my name.

  “Bob’s dead. The Freak killed him.” Wendy’s voice faltered a little as she restated her case in front of the boss. “I saw her standing over the body.”

  David glanced in the direction of Bob’s office, but shed no tears. His deceased deputy was not the person to inspire such emotion, even after he’d been hacked up with… with a small letter opener? That didn’t seem right but I hadn’t spotted any other weapon.

  Despite the pressure on my chest making it difficult to breathe, I couldn’t help running through the evidence in my head. I knew I hadn’t killed Bob (promise!) but somebody had. Given the location of the murder and the fact that most victims know their killers, there was a pretty high chance that it was one of my workmates.

  “Do you have any other evidence?” David walked right up to where I was being squashed. “Or any reason to believe Izzy would try to escape?” The crowd had lost its vigilante spirit and his questions were met with silence. “Let her up, please.”

  I felt a bit of shuffling on top of me as the two accountants got off my back. Wendy was more reluctant but finally teetered up onto her comfy white pumps. David came forward to offer me his hand. Vertical once more, I felt like a battered volunteer in a beginners’ self-defence class.

  “Did anyone check Bob’s pulse?” David’s strong, steady voice calmed my firing nerves.

  “He’s definitely dead.” The coagulated sheen to Bob’s blood, like leftover jelly after a children’s party, told me that he’d been sitting there for a while.

  “You made sure of that, you savage.”

  “Take it easy, please, Wendy.” David put his hands out like a referee. “Have the police been informed?

  I perched myself on my friend Ramesh’s desk to recover my breath. “Yeah, I called them.”

  “Okay, good. So can one of you tell me exactly what happened?”

  With her henchman accountants standing behind her like trainers at a boxing match, Wendy started her tale. “I went in to see Bob and The Freak was there. She was standing right up next to him and there’s blood all over her.”

  “Thank you, Wendy.” David put one hand on her shoulder. “But please don’t use such disrespectful language.”

  As much as I’d grown used to my nickname, which was given to me after a never-ending growth spurt during secondary school, hearing it used so openly could still bring back the electric pang of those early years.

  Handsome, approachable David Hughes, with his neat black suit, business-smart haircut and strong Welsh accent, returned to his line of questioning. “Did anyone hear Bob cry out? Is there any other reason to believe that Izzy is to blame for his death?”

  Several faces in the pack of rabid finance workers suddenly looked guilty. Some avoided David’s gaze while others wore the hangdog frown of punished toddlers.

  “I’m not one for puns, but I caught her red handed,” Wendy tried one last time as the sound of police cars pulling to a halt in the street below made its way up to us through the cracked-open windows.

  Sirens faded to nothing. Doors clicked open then slammed shut. An unnatural stillness gripped the office and it felt for the first time like someone had died.

  Right on cue, Bob’s secretary burst into tears. “I just can’t believe he’s gone.”

  Wendy lit her friend a cigarette to calm him down.

  “For goodness sake, Wendy.” David really lost his temper this time. “The police are coming.”

  With the cigarette still glowing in her outstretched hand, Wendy stared back vacantly.

  “It’s illegal!”

  It took another moment for her to cotton on before she crushed the smouldering tube into the carpet with a careless heel. This earned her another bewildered look from our boss just as the lift dinged and the police walked in.

  Chapter Two

  I can’t say I exactly love my job. I’ve suffered through four years at Porter & Porter and would look for something new if it weren’t for my pathological fear of interviews. I’ve only actually had two in my life but that was plenty to realise that I’m not cut out for them.

  During careers week when I was sixteen, our school counsellor asked me to describe myself. I was hoping to come up with something confident like hardworking and honest with a lot of ambition, but instead I stood at the front of the class and burst into tears.

  As if the stress of the interview wasn't terrifying enough, I’m shockingly bad at self-analysis. Some people are physically incapable of rolling their tongues, I’m physically incapable of knowing anything about myself with any certainty.

  When faced with a question like, What are your strengths and weaknesses? The only trick I’ve developed is to take all the things that my biggest admirer – my mother – and greatest detractors – any one of my ex-boyfriends – have ever said about me and try to identify the hard facts.

  My mother often tells me that I “have the strength and perseverance to be Secretary-General of the U.N.”, whereas my last boyfriend once suggested that I would “make a good test subject for knock-off anaesthetics.” Finding the balance between these two perspectives, I can tell you beyond any doubt that I am both somewhat persistent and the kind of person doctors be happy to include in a medical trial.

  I made it through my interview at Porter & Porter be
cause I was the sole applicant for the stellar role of Assistant Data Analyst’s Assistant. I got the job despite the fact that, when Wendy asked me whether I was good at problem solving, I reeled off the pin numbers to my bank cards like I was scared she’d mug me.

  In terms of physical appearance, Mum claims I have “eyes like a diamond mine”. My university boyfriend’s parting shot at the end of the relationship was that I had “a face like a plate.” Perhaps the one thing they all agree on is that I am tall. “Tall, proud and graceful,” Mrs Rosemarie Palmer. Or “like Nelson’s column with the body to match,” seventeen-year-old Gary Flint, the day after my long-anticipated first kiss. So, I’m tall with eyes and a face. I think that should help you build up some sort of picture of me.

  I was definitely taller than the two police officers who took me to the station for questioning on the morning I found Bob’s body, a fact they made sure I knew through their upturned glances and the slightly wary way they coerced me downstairs and into their car. I’m only six foot three, I wanted to tell them, not Godzilla.

  Croydon Police station looks like it was made out of Lego by an unimaginative toddler in the 70s. As I was escorted from the car, the thought of what was about to take place filled me with a sense of stomach-aching dread.

  I was missing out on the events unfolding back at Porter & Porter but at least I got to sit in an empty room for an hour with nothing to read. The only entertainment was a noticeboard with campaigns against shoplifting and for community-mindedness. So, with nothing else to do, I tried to picture everything I’d seen in Bob’s office.

  I’d once read a book called “Twenty Tips to Improve Your Memory” and, if I closed my eyes, I could picture Bob in his ugly brown woollen suit – the only one he ever wore – but with the matching tie missing for once. Bob, with his head resting on the desk, his gaze cast towards the neatly halved apple on an espresso saucer and his mouth hanging slightly open. Bob, with no shoes and only one sock on.

  I hadn’t thought about it at the time but I could swear that’s what I’d seen. One white sports sock on his left foot and his brown slip-ons nowhere in sight.