I looked at him with my stern, be-serious-for-once face as we walked towards the station. “Go easy, Ra. I don’t think that a couple of half days are worth more of our co-workers being slaughtered.”
His voice got all sombre. “You’re right. No one deserves to be hacked up with a fruit knife. Which is why we have to find Bob’s killer.” Even when he was trying to be serious for once, he sounded like he could break out in giggles at any moment.
We walked along quietly and my own words echoed in my mind. It was true. The fact that Bob had treated us like the runts of the office for years, didn’t justify his sorry end. “Come on,” I said as we walked past Sainsbury’s. “Tell me what the police asked you.”
His standard goofy smile was back on his face. “The usual stuff. They wanted to know where I was on Wednesday night and all about my relationship with Bob. They didn’t seem too worried that I didn’t have an alibi and told me to get in touch if I thought of anything.”
“Will was as white as copier paper afterwards. Wish I knew what they’d said to him.”
“Totally. He and Bob were always pratting about together and ever since yesterday, he’s been acting weird. He’s snappy or friendly, easily spooked or all calm. Will knows something, that’s for sure, and I don’t trust him for a second.”
“We’re not going to find out what he’s up to without a plan,” I said as we arrived at our tram stop. “I’ve been watching the other suspects all day and no one’s done the slightest thing of interest. Where’s the suspicious skulking? Where’s the smoking gun which will lead us to the killer?”
Ramesh let out a miserable sigh. “As far as I can tell there weren’t even any footprints around Bob’s door. Trust our colleagues to take all the fun out of a murder.”
We squeezed in on the bench beside an Adidas-emblazoned woman with a young baby. I looked at the electronic arrivals board which helpfully informed me that my tram to New Addington would be arriving in nine hundred and ninety nine minutes.
“The police didn’t want my help either.” I got busy making faces at the baby as we discussed Bob’s violent death. “I’m not saying we’re experts or anything but you’d think that with all the cuts to public services, they’d appreciate the offer.”
“Okay.” Ramesh sat up straight and suddenly seemed more decisive than normal. “We need to be more active. We can’t just sit around and wait for someone to make a mistake.”
“Maybe you can find an excuse to poke around on their computers?”
“It’s probably illegal.” He looked put out as a tiny Nike-bootied foot kicked his arm. “But I’ll give it a go. I should tell you though that, if I’m the killer, I’ll plant incriminating evidence to throw you off my trail.”
“Thanks for your honesty.”
“I mean it. I definitely had the motive. Who else hated Bob more than I did? And my alibi is pathetic. I suppose the police could check CCTV footage in my area to show I went home before the murder but there’s nothing to say I didn’t jump in a taxi and come back?”
“Good point.” The baby was making a cute little gurgling noise and it made me want to smush his cheeks. “And I’ve always thought you had the look of a felon.”
Ramesh got all serious for a second. “It’s a shame though. Because I know I didn’t kill him and I wish I could prove it to make our job easier.”
The electronic board suddenly showed 1 minute and my tram appeared at the end of the street.
“Yeah. Real shame.”
“I’ll call you tonight,” he said over the sound of people bustling forward and the little boy crying.
“I won’t answer!” I waved goodbye to the baby and got on board.
It’s actually faster for me to go by bus than tram but I love shooting along through stopped traffic and the quiet buzz of the motor as we speed down the tracks. Yeah, – no big deal – but unlike 95% of other cities in Britain, cool Croydon has a modern tram system. Take that, Central London.
When I got home, Dad’s car was outside our house and I could see through the window that he, Mum and Greg were deep in conversation.
“You’re being ridiculous, Gregory.” My mum’s voice reached me before I’d set foot on the drive. “Why would a total stranger walk in off the street and kill a man? We’re talking about South London, not the mean streets of Chicago.”
I walked along the path and through the door that nobody had bothered to close. This is South London, I thought to myself, not the trusting streets of some small American town.
“I’m afraid I’m a bit confused by the whole thing,” Dad was saying as I went into the lounge to find them looking at three of Greg’s easels that had been set up with large flip charts in place of his artworks.
I gave Mum a kiss and plonked myself down on the sofa by Dad. “What’s all this then?”
“This is for you.” Mum’s tone suggested I should be eternally grateful. “There’s one for suspects, one for clues and one for hypotheses. We’ve already got you started.”
By started, she meant that they’d written up her designated headings in thick black marker on the otherwise blank pages.
“You’ll have the case solved in no time.” Greg was even more sarcastic than I was.
Never one to sit around for long, Mum jumped up with a marker in both hands. “So, tell us what you learnt today.”
I sunk down into the sofa and wished they’d leave me alone to have a nap. In five minutes flat, Mum had extracted the basic information from me and the list of suspects was complete.
“Only six?” Standing in front of the mantelpiece, scribbling away with her markers, she was full of energy. “Six suspects is child’s play. You’ll have it solved in no time.”
“I think that what you need to focus on is the murder scene itself.” My Dad had caught up and, in his quiet, hesitant way was almost as animated as Mum. “There’s bound to be something there that’ll set you on the right path.”
I wasn’t so confident. “It’s not as simple as sitting around and thinking about it.”
“The half apple on Bob’s desk is interesting,” Greg replied as if he hadn’t heard me. “It must have been cut in two and yet there’s no knife there. Sounds like the missing murder weapon to me.”
Yeah, yeah, Greg. I’d worked that out myself, thank you very much.
“I mentioned that to the police and they immediately went looking at the knives in the breakroom to check.”
Mum wrote, apple/murder weapon, up on the clues board. “And what about the absent shoes and the one sock?”
There was a murmur from my two dads.
“You have to ask yourself why he took them off,” Daddy number one told us. “Perhaps he’d been having a shower or clipping his toenails.”
“All right. That’s enough,” I interrupted before the others could offer their perspective. “It’s like you’re doing a jigsaw puzzle for me. You’re taking all the fun out of it.”
“Really, Izzy. We’re only trying to help.” Mum showed me her puppy-dog eyes to make me feel guilty. It always worked.
“Fine. I’m sorry. You’re wonderful parents and I appreciate everything you do.” To counteract the force of her supreme mum-powers, I smiled sweetly.
“Come along, Ted.” My stepfather was better at getting the hint than Mum. “How about a cup of tea?”
“Here you go, grumpy.” Mum tucked one of the markers into my top jacket pocket. “See what you can figure out without your silly old parents getting in the way.”
She began to head out after her– what’s the male equivalent of a harem? But I caught her by the hand. “You’re not old, Mum.”
“Ahh, darling.” She smiled at me then in a way that made her pretty face curl up like a fortune telling fish as she squeezed my hand in hers.
“You’re silly, but you’re not old.” Like an emoji at the end of a text message, I stuck my tongue out to make sure she knew I was joking. Her smile held firm and she cantered off towards the garden.
> Alone in the lounge, I sat looking at the lists in Mum’s neat, ex-teacher’s script. I hoped that, if I stared at them long enough, some deep, hidden truth would emerge. The list of suspects was no more than a collection of names, but the clues were different. As I read over each item, I could picture where I’d seen them in Bob’s office.
I closed my eyes to beam myself back there. The tiny sword – standing proud from his back like a flagpole on the moon – shone under the fluorescent strip lights. His blood was like a lake in the night time, a black mirror reflecting nothing. But it was the missing items that stood out most. The shoes and sock, his brown woollen tie and the knife for his apple.
The blood covered Bob’s desk, but there was no sign of it anywhere else, which means he was killed right where I found him. And yet, there was no sign of a struggle; no smudged bloodstains or toppled picture frames. To me that suggested Bob had been unconscious when the knife went in. So what had knocked him out? Was it the contents of the packet of medicine on his desk? Or had he overdone it with the champagne? Bob was a big bloke and would’ve needed a good few bottles to get him so drunk he passed out. It seemed unlikely.
I had to wonder again why he’d be sitting in front of his desk instead of behind it. Bob had a huge leather executive chair that would have looked at home in a Bond villain’s lair. Whenever I was in there with him, he put on this big show of raising his seat up so that he was much higher than me. He wouldn’t have let just anyone sit in it. So who was there? An enemy, a friend or a lover?
My poke around in that neon-lit room in my head was suddenly invaded by foreign objects and inconvenient visitors. There was my father in his dirty overalls telling me he’d looked all over and couldn’t find his screwdriver. My teacher from nursery school dropped by too, and for some reason my clothes were covered in milk.
I woke up to find myself laid out on the sofa. The mental sojourn to Bob’s office had only been sustainable for so long before I’d nodded off. Though my dream had made little sense, I’d woken up with one fact finally clear in my head.
I had something to add to the middle flipchart. Underneath the other clues I wrote, Champagne bottle and then put a star beside all the missing items.
The list of hypotheses was blank but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. I held up the marker and started to write.
Whoever killed Bob took away his tie, sock, shoes, the champagne bottle and the knife from his apple to cover their tracks. Is there anything else missing?
I stood back to see how all those disparate threads might come together. It was only the first step but it felt like I was going in the right direction. Suddenly my head was flooded with ideas and I popped the pen lid off once more.
Bob was unconscious when the knife went in. Perhaps someone smacked him with the champagne bottle then finished off the job. Who was he drinking with?
Chapter Eight
Fridays are my night to binge on bad food and worse cable TV. I try to stick to shows within the range of channels 250-280 which provides me with a healthy selection of food, travel and lifestyle programming. I know I could put on Netflix or iPlayer and watch things I actually want to see, but to be honest that feels too much like homework.
“Come out with me, tonight.” Doctor Danny bounded into the back lounge, just as I was settling down to my evening’s entertainment.
“No, thanks.” I plumped a cushion theatrically. “I just got comfortable.”
Danny always threatened to drag me out on the town when he was in the country but I wasn’t taking the bait. If he’d galloped into my room, naked from the hair down, and claimed me as his love-woman (sorry, not good at sexy talk) then maybe I’d have gone for it. The thought of spending a whole evening in public with him as I nervously tried to decipher whether his boyish enthusiasm was flirtatious or, of all things, brotherly, was not my idea of a good time.
“Go on, Izzy, a load of my college mates will be there. You know Jonesy and Sasha.”
Do I?
“And you’d love Lyds and Miguel.”
I looked at the muscly arms protruding from his tight, white t-shirt and dismissed the very idea from my mind. “Nope, sorry. Say hi to Johnny and Sasha though.”
“Oh go on, darling,” Mum yelled from upstairs. “Don’t be such a stick in the bog.”
No matter where my mother was in the house, she somehow knew everything that was going on. I’d long suspected a system of hidden microphones.
She came storming down the stairs to poke her nose in. “You must go. Greg and I are off to our therapy retreat.” Which I’d already heard far too much about and I’m pretty sure was a nudist convention. “You’ll be all alone.”
“Exactly.”
Danny looked disappointed but Mum wasn’t giving up. “Really, Izzy, where’s your spirit of adventure? I sometimes wonder whether we brought home the wrong baby and my real daughter is off trekking across a desert somewhere or dancing on a bar.”
“Oh, Mother. I’m sorry I never lived up to your expectations. If only I’d known you wanted me to be a globe-trotting stripper.”
“Such a sourpuss.” Danny had slipped into the voice I can only assume he uses for child patients. “You’re missing out, Izzy.”
“Come along, Rosemarie.” Greg was holding a suitcase and looked tired before the weekend had begun. “We’ll miss the special badminton.”
Mum ignored her husband in order to make one last plea. “Darling, promise me you won’t spend your whole weekend in front of a screen.”
“Urrmmm, no.” I grinned belligerently at her.
“It’s no use, Danny. She’s as bull-headed as a farmer.”
“That’s not a saying and it makes no sense.”
“I guess we’ll just have to leave old sourpuss to her solitude.” Danny made another soppy face and it made me love him both more and less.
“Bye bye, Danny, my angel.” Mum moved in for a cuddle. She blatantly loves him more than me.
“You enjoy yourself, Rosie.” He’s such a suck-up.
“Oh, I will.” With a leer, she sidled out of the room.
“If I can’t convince you to come, I’ll be off too.”
Danny tried one last cutesy look on me and then I was alone at last. I had a jug of pre-mixed mojito at my side, a frozen pizza in the oven and “World’s Stupidest Chefs” was just starting on the screen in front of me. I was set for the night.
My phone buzzed. I knew I should have turned it off.
Izzy, I’ve just had a twenty-minute conversation with my cats. Please save me.
It was my erstwhile sidekick.
Sorry, Ramesh. Can’t move. The television won’t let me.
Please! I’m about to watch the Eurovision Song Contest. Come round and we can pretend we don’t enjoy it.
I didn’t know it was on this weekend.
It’s not.
Sorry. Busy. Send my love to Mr and Mrs Cuddles.
No, Izzy… Nooooooo!
I closed the app and managed to watch five minutes of halfwit cooks dropping things, falling over and messing up recipes before I was interrupted once more by my mobile’s angry illumination.
“Hi there,” a voice said. I’m not trying to be mysterious, I had no idea who it was.
“Yes?” I replied, equally vaguely.
“Izzy, it’s Tarquil.”
Ah ha. Tarquil! the only man I’ve ever started talking to based solely on the ridiculousness of his name.
“Wow. It’s great to hear from you.”
I’d been chatting with him a month earlier but not heard anything since. It was too good to be true.
“I’ve been pretty busy with work recently but I’m free tonight if you fancy meeting.” His voice was as posh as his name.
“I did have other plans.” I looked up to see a chef with his shoelaces tied together.
“Go on, it’s my treat. Name the restaurant.”
An hour and later, I was sitting at a table for two in Croydon’s premiere dini
ng venue. Le Sheek is on the top floor of the Porter & Porter building and affords a view across London’s most populous borough. I know people give Croydon a hard time for being cultureless, ugly and generally a bit naff but ever since I was a kid I’ve loved its skyline. Driving into town with my parents I felt like Little Orphan Annie on a night out in Manhattan, with the shabby charm of the long-gone Safari cinema just as glamorous to me as Radio City. Plus Christie’s Death in the Clouds kicks off at the old Croydon airport and what higher recommendation is there than that?
I was happy to be looking out across the Fairfield Halls and over to the clock tower on Katherine Street, especially as I’d never be able to afford a meal at Le Sheek under normal circumstances. I was almost as cheerful forty minutes later when Tarquil still hadn’t shown up. The insistent waiters’ glances and suggestions I order something other than a bottle of their third-cheapest wine barely bothered me as I knew that, at any moment, I would meet the polite, handsome man who had invited me.
It was only when I’d been waiting for an hour that I finally accepted he wasn’t coming and a tangible channel of anger shot through me. I felt like smashing the restaurant to pieces, tossing glasses of water into the snobby waiters’ eyes and blustering out. I wanted to but I didn’t. In fact I sat there for another ten minutes working out the least embarrassing way to escape. I considered faking a phone call and telling the concierge that poor Tarquil had been in an accident but, in the end, I left thirty quid on the table and slunk out when no one was looking.
The lift arrived with a fake retro ding, and I pushed through a pack of eager diners to be alone in the wood-panelled box. I was surprisingly miserable about the whole thing. After all, it wasn’t the first time someone had backed out of a date with no word. I could only assume that dear, darling Tarquil had peeked his head into the restaurant and not liked what he saw.
I wouldn’t have felt so disappointed if it hadn’t been for the time I’d spent imagining the ridiculous names he and I would give our children. And the only reason that I’d allowed Tarquil to fire my imagination like that was because he’d seemed so different from most of the blokes I met online. He actually seemed nice.
A Corpse Called Bob Page 6