A Shock to the System Page 3

  But I wouldn’t continue them, Graham wanted desperately to say. Wanted to be back before the selection board and say it to them. Good God, had he been backing the wrong horse all these years? Had all those tedious sessions of agreeing with George been wasted?

  ‘Don’t think they do want my policies continued,’ the old man went on truculently. ‘Said they wanted a “new broom”.’

  ‘And who. .’ asked Graham thickly, ‘who is the new broom?’

  ‘Robert Benham.’

  ‘Robert Benham! As Head of Personnel!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But he’s only thirty-four!’

  ‘That, to the rest of the board, seemed to be a point in his favour.’

  ‘And he’s only been with Crasoco three years.’

  ‘That, too. It’s the Management Consultants’ jibe about our being insular. Benham’s worked for American companies, he’s been all over the place.’ George Brewer shrugged hopelessly. ‘Graham, there’s nothing I can do. I’ve been overruled — yet again — and Robert Benham is to be the next Head of Department.’

  Graham Marshall took a deep breath. ‘Does he know yet?’

  ‘No. I must tell him now. I thought the least I could do for you was to let you know first.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I trust your discretion, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  George looked at him with old, watery eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, Graham. I’m afraid we’re both in the same boat.’

  ‘And both sold up the same river.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Betrayed, totally betrayed. Graham Marshall could feel the fury building inside him. For nearly twenty years he’d played the company game. And now, just when a major prize was within his reach, the rules had been arbitrarily changed.

  That evening, when he joined George Brewer and Robert Benham for a celebratory drink in the company bar, Graham found the bitter truth of Oscar Wilde’s dictum, that “anyone can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success”.

  His nature was not particularly fine, nor was it practised in that kind of sympathy. Nor, come to that, was Robert Benham a friend. Through the afternoon following Graham’s announcement, Graham kept coming back to the realisation that this was the first public competition he had failed, and the habits of success were hard to break.

  Robert Benham was very cool about his elevation. He could afford to be. Graham, from his own experience, knew how easy it was to avoid brashness and show sympathy in a moment of triumph. The winner always has time to be magnanimous; it is the also-rans following him in who are left breathless and unprepared to comment on their failure.

  So Robert Benham, short, dark, and — to Graham’s mind — sloppily dressed in a leather-patched tweed jacket, had no difficulty in appearing diffident and modest. He was more relaxed than Graham had ever seen him; the constant aggression he showed at all other times was now curbed. Having achieved his ambition, he didn’t need it for a while. Again, from his own experience, Graham could recognise this unassailable calm.

  And he could almost recognise his own words when Robert Benham murmured to him, in his flat Midland voice, ‘Never had a bigger surprise in my life, Graham. I was convinced you were going to get the job. Hope management know what they’re playing at.’

  What was more, he could recognise how insincere the words were. Of course Robert Benham hadn’t been surprised. The appointment had merely confirmed his own opinion of himself.

  Just as it would have confirmed Graham’s self-image. . had he got it.

  Had he got it. He was still having difficulty in assimilating the idea of failure. He had lived so long with the conviction of taking over from George that it would take some time to dismantle the superstructure of consequences that had been built on to that fantasy.

  But at the same time he knew how total the failure was. Forty-one was young for someone to become Head of Department; it was much older for someone to fail to become Head of Department. The stigma would stay. For the first time, Graham realised how his concentration on the one particular job had disqualified him from others. The shrewd thing would have been to have spent the last ten years moving around, going to other departments, even other companies.

  As Robert Benham had.

  What had Robert Benham got that he hadn’t? Nothing, Graham decided, just the same qualities in greater concentration.

  And youth. And no wife and children and massive mortgage to slow him down.

  Background?

  Not as good as Graham’s. State education, primary and comprehensive. Out of school at sixteen and into a job. Then, in his early twenties an external degree, and subsequently business school. No public-school gloss.

  The rules had certainly change. Once again, Graham felt contempt for his father’s memory. ‘Public school and university, they’re the keys to the system — got to have those if you’re going to get anywhere, Graham.’

  Untrue. A deception. All the miserable years of penny-pinching in Mitcham had been unnecessary. Like his car maintenance, like his savings policy, Eric Marshall’s plan of education had been simply incompetent.

  ‘Fact is, I’ll be making some changes when I take over,’ Robert Benham confided, after George had nipped out to the Gents for the second time in an hour’s drinking. Really, the old man seemed to be falling apart.

  ‘For a start, Graham, I’m going to see that everyone works a lot harder. Hell of a lot of slackness has crept into the Department while George has been in charge.’

  He hastened to qualify this. ‘Not you, of course, Graham. Always had great respect for your application and sheer bloody graft.’

  Patronising, almost like a school report. Makes the most of his limited abilities. Again, Graham knew he had said the same to candidates he had beaten in previous contests.

  ‘But what I want to do is get a new attitude going, really shake people up a bit. Stop them thinking they’re on to a cushy number and can just wind down to retirement. Get some concept of productivity into the Department.’

  ‘Yes. Sure,’ Graham agreed enthusiastically. Just as enthusiastically as he had endorsed George’s plans in the past.

  Robert reached into his pocket for a box of small cigars and proffered them. Graham refused. Robert took one and replaced the box. Instinctively Graham found the gold lighter in his hand, cocked and ready. God, so quickly he was slipping into a subservient role to his new boss. He hated himself for it.

  ‘Won’t necessarily be popular, what I’m suggesting, Graham, so I’m going to need a lot of support. And advice. Lots of areas of the company I know nothing about, so I’m going to be relying on your experience, consulting you a lot.’ A pause. ‘If I may, Graham.’

  So ingenuous. So magnanimous. So humble.

  Just as he would have been, if he had got the job.

  ‘Of course,’ said Graham. ‘Anything I can do to help, Robert.’

  The drinking session went on for a long time and it was half past eleven when Graham lurched off the Tube at Hammersmith.

  He was, he realised, very drunk. Fiercely he clutched his umbrella’s ridged handle. His briefcase had been left in the office. Graham had been intending to take some work home that evening, but it was too late for that. Anyway, what was the point of doing extra work now he wasn’t going to become Head of Department?

  What was the point of anything?

  The injustice of Robert Benham’s appointment rose like vomit in his throat as he went through the barrier, with a reflex flick of his season to the ticket-collector.

  There were few people about. It was chilly. Rain fell outside the station. He crossed automatically to the subway that led to Hammersmith Bridge and Boileau Avenue.

  Rain had trickled down the steps, forming wide puddles, which he sidestepped with the rigid concentration of the very drunk.

  The old man was slumped against the tiled wall at the foot of
the steps leading up to the pavement.

  Graham Marshall hardly noticed the shapeless figure. There were often down-and-outs in the subway. His own thoughts were too turbulent for him to be aware of anything else.

  As Graham drew alongside, the old man straightened up.

  ‘Spare us a quid, guv.’

  Graham caught a sour whiff of stained clothes on unwashed flesh as he continued on his way up the steps. He felt the rain as he emerged, but did not put up his umbrella. The handle remained clenched rigidly in his hand.

  He was some way along Hammersmith Bridge Road before he realised the old man was following him. There was a peculiar slap-slap of feet in ill-fitting shoes on the wet pavement.

  Graham lengthened his stride. Headlights of the occasional car crossing the bridge laid ribbons of white on the shining black road. Traffic hummed and swished on the flyover above, eliminating the slapping sound of the feet.

  ‘Hey! Guv!’

  He strode on, unaware of the rain or his legs automatically tracing their daily route home. In spite of its fierce tension, his body felt weak and out of control.

  He was past the pub and on to the bridge before he realised that the old man was still following.

  ‘Guv!’

  The closeness of the voice was a shock and he gave an involuntary half-turn before striding on. He had an impression of a fuzzed outline of rags.

  Next there was an arm on his sleeve. Graham swung round in fury. The lights of Hammersmith were behind the old man. He was still just an outline and a smell. Nothing.

  Graham felt huge, unfocused by the alcohol, a cartoonlike bulk looming over the stooped figure.

  ‘Guv, can you spare us a quid? Please. I made a mess of my life. But I only have to look at you to see you’re a success.’

  Had he chosen any other word, the old man would have lived.

  But suddenly he was everyone who had ever deceived Graham Marshall. He was Eric Marshall, he was George Brewer, he was Robert Benham. He was provocation beyond human endurance. And he had to be obliterated, removed from the face of the earth.

  All the fury of Graham’s disappointment, of his forty-one wasted years, went into the blow, as the ridged umbrella handle smashed down on the faceless head.

  With no sound but a little glug like a cork coming out of a bottle, the old man crumpled to the ground.

  Graham looked round. There was no one on the bridge and, for the moment, there were no cars.

  He looked at the umbrella handle, fearing the viscous gleam of blood. But the overhead lights caught only on the ridges of polished wood. It was unmarked.

  Instinctively, Graham bent down and, without feeling the body’s weight, picked it up and tipped it over the parapet of the bridge.

  He was walking again before the small splash sounded.

  He was inside the house before the realisation of what had happened hit him.

  In the bathroom, as he raised the toothbrush to his lips, he suddenly knew he had committed murder.

  He doubled up, vomiting into the basin.

  ‘Oh God,’ Merrily’s little voice drawled behind him. ‘Have you had too much to drink?’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Graham Marshall passed a terrible night. The alcohol put him off to sleep quickly, but he awoke within an hour, sweat prickling along his hairline and soon drenching his nightshirt. The duvet pressed down damply as if to smother him, and the undersheet ruckled into torturing ridges. His arms started to tremble uncontrollably.

  Merrily slept on beside him, unperturbed, the evenness of her breathing a continuing reproach. ‘The sleep of the just.’ The phrase came jaggedly into his mind — the sleep enjoyed by the righteous, by those good citizens who were not murderers.

  His teeth started to chatter. He twitched noisily out of bed. Part of him wanted to wake Merrily, not to tell her what had happened, but just to have some reaction, some comment on his nervous collapse. The rhythm of her breathing broke, but settled almost immediately back to its infuriating regularity.

  He looked at her outline, padded by the duvet, and felt unreasoning hatred. ‘The sleep of the just’ — again the phrase gatecrashed his mind. But it was the injustice of her sleep that hurt him. She had not had to suffer the provocation that he had. She had not had to murder an old man.

  He lurched out of the bedroom. The skin felt tight and tingled on his scalp; he had a clear image of his brain drying up, shrivelling, sucking the flesh inward.

  He went downstairs to the sitting-room and had a large Scotch, which he knew was a bad idea, but at least controlled the shaking for a moment.

  All too quickly the thoughts returned.

  He had committed murder.

  A new inward trembling started, sending out fierce little shudders from his stomach, as the reality took hold of him.

  What he felt was simply fear. There was no remorse — certainly no guilt — for what he had done. The old man had insufficient identity for him to feel such personal emotions.

  And certainly Graham’s agony had no moral cause. Abstract morality played no part in his scheme of things. Abstract thought of any kind was alien to him. If he had stopped to examine his motives — which he never did — he would have found their sole impetus had always been the pursuit of success without social indiscretion. This had led him to a pattern of behaviour which was, from the outside, often indistinguishable from that of a moral person. But its imperatives were always those of expediency; they were not dictated by any system of belief. He believed in nothing except his own ability to recognise the next move required and to make it.

  But the events of the day had given that belief a hammering. His failure to get George Brewer’s job had written off his life. The murder, and his subsequent arrest, would just be public recognition of that fact.

  Fear of discovery was the only cause of his nervous collapse.

  And, even through the paralysis of fear, he felt anger, fury at the injustice that had subjected him to the old man’s provocation. He regarded the murder as his misfortune, but not his fault.

  He had to sleep. Alcohol wasn’t going to do the trick. There must be something else in the house. Wasn’t there some draught Merrily had given the children when they were wakeful? The stuff hadn’t been used for years, but it might still be around.

  His angry scrabbling in the bathroom cupboard woke Merrily. She appeared again, bleary in the doorway. ‘What are you looking for?’ the little voice asked.

  ‘That stuff you used to give the kids. I can’t sleep.’

  ‘Oh, the Phenergan. I chucked it out before we moved.’

  ‘Damn.’

  ‘Why can’t you sleep?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why can’t one sleep?’

  ‘Are you worried about the job?’

  ‘Job?’

  ‘George’s job. Have you heard anything about the board?’

  It was absolutely instinctive, but Graham didn’t know why he said no.

  He had a triple hangover on the Friday morning — first, from the alcohol; second, from the loss of George’s job; and, third, from the knowledge of the murder.

  He couldn’t eat any breakfast; Merrily and the children seemed more alien than ever; so he mumbled something about having to be in early, and left at about quarter to eight.

  He was almost on Hammersmith Bridge before he thought about the route he was taking. A panic seized him. He felt he should run away and hide. There would be a little crowd of policemen in the middle of the bridge, questioning the passers-by, waiting for him. His step faltered.

  But logic stopped his flight. His only chance lay in behaving normally, doing exactly as he had always done, exactly as he had done before he was a murderer.

  He dared to look ahead. There were no policemen on the bridge; only the usual trail of pedestrian commuters moving faster than the solid mass of cars on their way into London.

  With a great effort, he didn’t break step when he reached the scene of the crime. He flashed a look at the da
mp pavement, fearing bloodstains.

  There was nothing.

  The parapet too looked unmarked.

  As he walked along he looked down at the Thames beneath. The tide was high, its level increased by the recent rains. The dull water flowed on strongly, its surface broken only by slow-turning driftwood and high-riding plastic containers.

  For the first time, Graham Marshall almost believed the murder hadn’t happened.

  Any serenity he experienced was short-lived. As he approached the office, again he faltered, convinced that there would be a policeman waiting inside for him. And again he managed to damp the panic down. His only hope was to behave naturally. The day before no one had thought of him as a murderer; he must act exactly as he had the day before.

  Inside the building the commissionaire gave the usual respectful greeting as Graham flashed his identity card. George Brewer’s Stella was getting in the lift. It was early yet; just the two of them travelled up to the fifth floor.

  ‘I’m very sorry about the job,’ said Stella.

  ‘Oh. Thank you.’ To his amazement, his voice sounded normal. Or if it was a little thicker than usual, that could be put down to disappointment about the job. To people who didn’t know about the murder, there would always be an alternative explanation.

  ‘I was flabbergasted,’ she went on. ‘I’m not sure whether I’ll enjoy working with young Mr. Benham.’

  He looked at her. He’d always rather fancied her in a resigned way, though never really contemplated being unfaithful to Merrily.

  And now. . For a man who had committed murder and was shortly to be arrested, for someone like that even to fancy a woman was ridiculous.

  On the other hand. . To his surprise, the thought came into his mind that any other transgression was meaninglessly trivial compared to the crime of taking human life.

  ‘I didn’t realise,’ he said, ‘that you went with the job.’

  ‘Oh yes. The desk, the chair, the fitted carpet, rubber plant, and me.’