A Corpse Called Bob

by Benedict Brown

  “Detectives,” I said when they arrived, sounding all cool and composed. “Thanks for joining us.”

  David sat casually on a coffee table by the door which was guarded by the two P.C.s. I exchanged a smile with the two senior officers as they flanked the table. I could tell they were eager to see what would happen next. It was a big moment for me and I’d like to have run across to David for one more kiss. Instead, I stood up from my chair and began.

  “We’re here today to talk about the death of Bob Thomas.”

  “Not more of your Nancy Drew nosing around?” Will’s canine muzzle was practically growling.

  Brabazon peered down at him warningly and David was just as quick to my defence. “Let her talk, Will, or I’ll have to tell to Mr Porter to rethink about your promotion.”

  I tried again. “I didn’t like Bob. Not many of us did.”

  “Speak for yourself, love.” Wendy was still playing the doting mistress for some reason. “He was a gentleman. A true gentleman.”

  I didn’t let her break my stride. “I wanted to find out who killed him because it’s the right thing to do. David told me recently that, even if Bob wasn’t a good man, he didn’t deserve what he went through and I believe that’s true.”

  Ramesh smiled at me, I could tell that he was as surprised to see me up there as anyone.

  “It’s taken me a while, but last night I found the evidence I needed to identify Bob’s killer. Not only do they work here at P&P–”

  “It better not be Pauline from accounts!” Wendy mumbled over me.

  “–but they’re in this room right now.” I expected a gasp of surprise but presumably most of them had worked this much out already. “It was only the people in this room who had access to the CCTV footage of that night’s fatal events.”

  “I didn’t have access back then, so perhaps I can go,” Will said but Brabazon put one hand on his shoulder to keep him in place.

  “You might not have realised but, over the last two weeks, I’ve been watching every one of you to work out who the culprit was.”

  “I realised.” At least Will could enjoy this small revenge.

  “Me too,” Jack added.

  “It was you on the other end of that videocall whatsit, weren’t it?” Wendy asked.

  Amara just shrugged an apology as she’d also figured it out.

  Busted. Ha!

  “Fine, you all knew that I’d been watching you. But I doubt any of you really considered I’d be the one to solve Bob’s murder.” I’d got them there. “Anyway… where was I?”

  “For the last two weeks you’ve been–”

  “Right. Thanks, Ramesh.” I took a deep breath. This wasn’t going as I’d hoped. “I came to understand that whoever killed Bob felt true hatred for the man.”

  Will started clapping. “Genius. Bravo. What a mind!”

  “I mean to say that the murderer literally despised Bob Thomas. Hated him with every ounce of their being and did what was necessary to get rid of him.” I looked across at the lead detective. “D.I. Irons, please correct me if I’m wrong but three weapons were used in the murder. First a blunt object across the head, which I assume was the champagne bottle that had been removed from the scene. Next a small kitchen knife that had been on Bob’s desk. And finally his prized medieval-sword letter opener, plunged into his back almost like a calling card from the murderer.”

  Seizing a biro from the table, I stabbed Ramesh and he kindly faked his own death. “What does this tell us?”

  “That Ramesh isn’t a very good actor?” Will kept destroying all the tension I’d built up. I’d have to stop asking so many rhetorical questions.

  Walking behind them around the table, I locked eyes on each suspect as I went. “It tells us a number of things. First, the weapons were already at the scene, which suggests that the attack wasn’t pre-meditated but the killer snapped for some reason.

  “Second, it’s clear that, what started out as a crime of anger, perhaps even passion, was finished off in a cold calculating way. The murderer didn’t regret what they had done with the champagne bottle. They didn’t call for an ambulance or, most likely, even check for a pulse, they took the knife and finished the job.”

  I jumped forward again and, holding his head in one hand, pretended to slit Jack’s stomach open with the ballpoint pen. He didn’t play along. “And third, whoever killed Bob wanted us to know that this was personal.” With one final blow, I lodged the pen between my fingers, with my hand laid flat upon Amara’s back.

  She let out a little eek and a guilty smile. “Ooh, that sent shivers through me.” Will and Wendy frowned at her. “Oh… sorry.”

  “The murderer removed various items from the room. The knife and bottle of course that, covered in blood, would have been hard to clean the fingerprints from. There were also several pieces of Bob’s clothing missing. A tie, his shoes, and one sock and, for a long time, I couldn’t imagine why they’d been taken.” I glanced at Will to see if he’d react to this but he maintained his put-out expression.

  I’d probably already gone round the table three times by this point and decided my ominous stroll had turned into a cheery jog so stopped back in my place once more. “The murderer escaped the way they’d come in. Through the fire exit which, as anyone who’s ever wanted a quiet cigarette knows, has no alarm or even video cameras and can be easily jimmied open with a credit card.

  “The following morning, I, Izzy Palmer, came into work and decided to leave Bob a folder full of documents that he’d spent the previous day demanding. I peeked inside to find the lights all blazing and Bob Thomas dead. Being of an inquisitive nature and perhaps, deep down, having always thought of myself as a potential detective, I went in for a closer look which is when Wendy burst in on me to kick up a stink.”

  She didn’t like the spotlight of suspicion being turned on her and immediately started shouting. “And who’s to say that you haven’t concocted this whole thing to hide the truth. Who’s to say you weren’t the one what killed ‘im?”

  She’d gone along nicely with my plan. “Just like that. You screamed and yelled and spat your words across the office so that everyone knew what had happened. You accused me of murdering Bob without any evidence or the hint of a motive. You were loud and public and emotional, just as you were at Bob’s memorial service a week later. Despite the fact his own wife was present, you made a scene, crying on your frenemy’s shoulder. And why was that?”

  She didn’t speak this time. She gathered up the folds in her floral skirt and gripped them tightly.

  “The truth is that you and Bob had enjoyed a short and underwhelming affair that culminated not in him taking you as his mistress or leaving his wife. No, Bob concluded your romance by stealing one of your most prized possessions. A stamp worth eight thousand pounds which you desired so much that you put yourself in debt to add it to your collection. You may have acted the grieving mistress, but there was little love left between you when Bob died, isn’t that right?”

  Wendy’s was still short of words as her bottom lip began to tremble. I saw Brabazon’s eyes flick across the room to his partner’s. Irons responded with a no hurry hand gesture.

  “In fact, you were furious with him. You saw the endless deliveries coming to the office and realised all the money he was spending – expensive champagne, the best food Croydon had to offer, not to mention the fancy letter opener that he loved to show off around the office. So you demanded that he reimburse you for what he’d taken. Bob made his excuses, but your patience eventually ran out.”

  No longer looking at me but staring straight forward out of the window, she pursed her lips so that the folds in her chin came together like the pleats of her skirt.

  “One night, when you knew he’d be in the office late, you snuck inside. Perhaps you tried to seduce him, slowly removing articles of his clothing before he told you to stop. When that didn’t work, you gave him an ultimatum; the money now or he’d suffer the consequences. But inst
ead of the eight thousand pounds he owed you, he offered you the sixty-one pence stamp from his desk and you saw red.

  “You grabbed the champagne bottle from his desk and, with all the strength you could call up, smashed him across the head with it. You took the knife to make sure he was dead and then, as a final revenge, stabbed him in the back with the expensive silver letter-opener that he’d bought with the money he owed you. It was the easiest thing in the world to post some old photos to the stamp collecting group on Facebook that you yourself run. Anyone would think you were in north London at the time you were actually disembowelling your ex-lover.”

  The room fell silent for a second before, her voice hoarse and close to breaking, Wendy said, “I’m not a murderer. I did nothing of the sort.”

  Feeling about twenty per cent guilty for being so cruel, I let her suffer a moment longer. “No, that’s right, you didn’t. And nor did you accuse me of being the murderer and make a big scene at the funeral to hide your guilt. You did all that to show off to your workmates. Being Bob’s bit on the side was a real boon in your ongoing war with Pauline from accounts and the other ladies in your morning tea circle. You had something you could laud over them and, even after he was gone, you wanted to make the most of it.”

  There was a short burst of heavy sighs as everyone in the room caught their breath. Even David over by the door seemed tense and it was the second time he’d heard this.

  “No, Wendy’s not the murderer. So that only leaves five of you. There were five little piggies but only one had roast beef.”

  “Oh get on with it,” Will snapped again. “This is ridiculous.”

  I enjoyed seeing how each of them reacted. Though Will fumed and complained, Jack hadn’t made a sound. Ramesh and Amara meanwhile seemed thoroughly entertained.

  “So if not Wendy, who? Sometimes in these sorts of mysteries, the last person you’d ever expect is the very one who turns out to be the killer. There’s somebody in this room who I trusted more than anyone. Who I truly believed could never do such a thing as cut the life from another human being.”

  Ramesh smiled even more. “Oh, goody. My turn!”

  “I wouldn’t be so smug if I were you, buddy. I saw through your alibi.” He suddenly didn’t look so chirpy. “If there’s anyone here today who wanted to see Bob dead it was you. You were the one he’d bullied and victimised for years. You were the one who went home every night and cried. It was Bob’s mission in life to make you suffer and boy did he fulfil his goal. It didn’t take much for me to find the hundreds of videos, documents, and even dreadful songs that depicted your obsession with the man who’d made your life hell.”

  I paused, my gaze fixed hard on him. “But there were two things in particular that gave you away. The same week that Bob was murdered, you shared a video online telling the world that you wished he were dead and that you were going to do something about him once and for all.”

  Ramesh’s smile had gone into hiding. Gripping the side of the dark wooden table with both hands, tiny droplets of sweat abseiled down his face despite the cold waves of conditioned air that were cutting through the room.

  “The morning after he died, you came to the office and deleted all the nasty e-mails you’d sent him. I can only imagine the wicked threats you’d made but it was that hasty cover-up that made the police suspicious.

  “You weren’t afraid though. You had a backup plan, a foolproof alibi in fact. You explained to the detectives that, at the moment of the crime, you were online, counselling your followers on how to deal with a bully. And not only that, you had the video and witnesses to prove that poor, innocent little Ramesh had nothing to do with his boss’s bloodthirsty slaying.”

  Pushing his chair back, Ramesh shot up to standing but Brabazon shouted at him to stay put.

  “It was a clever trick. Pre-recording your message and then setting it to broadcast at just the right moment. You even gave a shout out to the specific users who were watching you, which wasn’t too difficult to organise considering that the same sad devotees always tuned in. Inspector Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber here couldn’t–”

  “Hey, go easy!” Irons barked. I might have been getting a bit carried away with my role.

  “Sorry… The good officers of the Metropolitan Police force may not have had the resources to fully check whether there was a technological solution that could account for you being in two places at once, but one phone call to a techy friend of mine helped clear it up.”

  This time, Ramesh couldn’t control his urge to run. He jumped to his feet, dived past D.I. Irons and was at the door in a flash. The two constables outside wouldn’t be so easily got around and dragged him back into the room.

  He was practically crying as he hung from their arms. It was quite painful to see my best friend in the world reduced to such a pathetic state.

  “Please,” he begged. “I’m too pretty to go to jail. They’ll eat me alive!”

  “You know, I’d feel an ounce of sympathy for you if you hadn’t strung me along all this time.”

  His tears finally broke and he gave up struggling. “I’m sorry, Iz. I really am.”

  “You’re not sorry.” My words were coated with disdain. “You’re a killer and, the next time I see you, will be in court.”

  The atmosphere was shattered and the five other suspects let out a relieved sigh, knowing that it was finally over for them.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  A silence lingered. Even the police seemed taken aback by the way things had unfolded. Ramesh had stopped short of outright confessing but it wouldn’t take much to break him.

  Will let out a high-pitch whistle. “Bloody hell, was it really him?”

  “I did not see that coming,” Jack pronounced with a laugh.

  “Never the ones you expect,” Wendy said. “Though I knew from the beginning he’d done it.”

  D.I. Irons stepped forwards to read out her detainee’s rights. “Ramesh Khatri, I’m arresting you for the murder of…”

  Irons’ big moment was interrupted by my so-called friend bursting into laughter.

  “And I thought you said I was a bad actor, Will?”

  Irons herself couldn’t resist a smirk. I was surprised how far she’d gone along with the act.

  Supporting his weight once more, Ramesh stepped free of the constable’s grip. “You fell for it, Will. You totally fell for it.” He took a step forward to foppishly bow at the end of the conference table.

  “You absolute git.” Will wasn’t happy to have been tricked.

  “Izzy,” David said, leaving his perch to deliver a critical stare across the room at me. “No more messing around.”

  “That wasn’t me.” My voice got all squeaky as I tried to defend myself. “He was improvising. I knew he’d do something like that.”

  Ramesh sat back down and the four officers returned to their posts. When the room was still again, I was ready to continue.

  “Nope, sorry everyone. It wasn’t Ramesh. Though he had every reason to kill Bob after the cruel and bigoted comments he’d had to put up with on a daily basis. He really was at home on the night of the murder. If you watch the video of his live stream, the things he says fit too perfectly with his follower’s interaction for it to be pre-recorded. Which is lucky for him as he really is too pretty for jail.”

  “Ahh, thanks, Iz.” We BFF-thumbs-upped at one another across the table.

  “And there’s someone else here today who couldn’t have killed Bob.” I paused, scanning the faces of the remaining suspects before pointing to the end of the room. “Though he knew full well what a wretched person Bob was, and he’d had to deal with his bad behaviour for years, our beloved boss David cannot be the killer. He was having dinner at his Auntie Val’s house that night, as he does every Wednesday. I’ve met her and she’s lovely.”

  David smiled at me kind of shyly which, I must say, I found incredibly cute. If it hadn’t been for all those people there, and the fact I was building up to
my big moment, I might have had to ravish him on the conference table.

  Go on. Do it anyway!

  Shhhh!

  “So what about the final remaining member of upper management?” I turned to Amara, who was still smiling like this was all just a game. “The woman who Bob had forced to sit through a tribunal hearing after he falsely claimed she’d been promoted over him due to ageism. The same woman who had been a long-term friend of the Thomas family, their kids going to school together and the two mothers maintaining close links despite countless obstacles. The very woman who urged me to investigate Bob’s killing, hoping, no doubt, that I would pick another suspect, any other suspect, as the murderer. What about Amara Donovan?”

  I leant over the table, my eyes fixed on hers. “No. She didn’t do it either. And from everything I’ve seen, she really is the friendly person she comes across as.”

  She looked a little uncomfortable but remained cheerful all the same. “Thanks very much, Izzy. That’s kind of you to say.”

  I thought about asking if we could still be friends but decided it would sound a bit desperate. “Four down. Two to go.” I started walking again, slower this time, gradually working my way around the room. Sitting on either side of the table, Jack and Will glanced at one another, then back at me.

  “So who will it be? Will Gibbons, Bob’s partner in cruelty? Or Jack Campbell, our trusted security guard who Bob insulted and humiliated in front of the whole office?”

  Jack let out an indignant huff.

  “Will who admired Bob so much that he rose up the ranks to be like him? Or Jack who was very familiar with the security systems, not just in P&P but this whole building. Jack who Bob was blackmailing and had already announced at the Christmas party wasn’t the whiter than white protector he appeared to be. Jack who had used his poorly paid job to hide the drug dealing ring he ran from his cupboard at work. Jack, who killed Bob when he threatened to uncover that dark secret.”