Chris Simms - Killing the Beasts

'No, it's just you've had it for years.'

She leaned forward. 'Then why change it if there's nothing wrong with it? You lot today, you buy something and throw it out after a few weeks.'

'OK,you win,' he said, holding up his hands. 'Shall we go to the cafe at your local Co-op? A nice bit of cake and a brew?'

'Lovely!'

He beckoned to the waitress and flipped out a large wad of notes. Peeling off the top one he said casually, 'Keep the change.' He searched her face for any sign that his nonchalant use of money impressed her. But all he got was a bright and emotionless thank you.

July 2002

'Morning Sarah,' said Tom, trying to put a bounce in his step as he crossed reception, sunglasses on.

'Good morning, Tom. Popular as ever,' she said, holding up the pile of letters and phone messages.

Tom took it with a forced smile, went through to Ian's office, dropped them on the table and retreated straight to the single toilet on the ground floor. He locked the door behind him, then took the sunglasses off. Staring grimly at his ravaged face in the mirror, he reached into his pocket for the eye drops he'd just bought. He tipped his head back and, pulling his eyelids down, administered a drip of liquid into each. It was cold and tingled, making him blink rapidly. But the liquid closed up the spider's web of tiny veins, making his eyes look whiter and less hungover.

Next he took out the tube of concealer he'd taken from Charlotte's enormous make-up bag and applied a smear to the dark smudges of skin below each eye. Checking the mirror again, he saw that he looked a whole lot better — not like someone who had been to bed the wrong side of midnight for weeks on end.

Lastly he took the little bag of powder from his suit jacket. Holding it up, he noted that there was barely enough left to fill up its bottom corner and thought it was lucky he'd got the fresh bag from Brain. The moistened tip of his forefinger poked inside. He took a deep breath and dipped his finger in again: the drug seemed to be having less of an effect. Perhaps it lost its potency after a little while.

Ready to face the day, he went back through to Ian's office and started trying to prioritize his tasks for that morning. But the sheer number of things to do prevented him from starting anything. Half the letters were marked 'urgent' and the phone on his desk was already flashing with unanswered messages. Rubbing a hand over his chin, he turned on the computer and went to his Cornwall link.

Just a few days more to go, he told himself. The thought gave him enough strength to answer his ringing phone. 'Tom, hi. It's Sarah. There's a van here. A delivery of X-treme chewing gum, display cart and leaflets. Shall I get one of the boys in the studio to take it all upstairs?'

Tom knew that he couldn't afford to have the items hanging around in the office for long. He would have to get rid of it all. 'No, don't worry about it. It's going straight back out. I'll help him take it through to the store room at the back.'

He took his jacket off and walked through to reception. A man wearing green trousers, white polo shirt and a green baseball cap was placing several more boxes on to the stack piling up in front of Sarah's desk. Each one was labelled 'X-treme. Contents — 36 packets.'

'Cheers, mate. Could you give me a hand humping it through to the back?' asked Tom.

'Sorry pal,' he replied without a hint of apology in his voice. 'I'm a van driver, not a labourer. I just deliver the stuff to your premises.'

There wasn't time to argue. Tom crouched down and picked up the outermost column of boxes. By the time he got back to reception Creepy George was standing there. 'Sarah said you needed a hand.'

'Yeah, thanks,' said Tom, masking his irritation that someone else now knew about the delivery.

'Right,' announced the driver, carrying in some large cardboard tubes. 'The promotional panels for the cart are in these. They fit on to your standard Cooper's Barrow.'

'Right. We've got a couple out back, 'Tom replied.

'And these,' the driver tapped two boxes that were slightly smaller than the rest,' are your competition entry forms.'

Tom signed for everything and, with George's help, began ferrying them through to the back storage room.

Later that night, once everyone else had left, George went back to the storage room. He had a whole pile of merchandise samples he'd skimmed from previous deliveries hidden in his bedroom. After picking up a box of chewing gum from the top of the pile, he examined it, in two minds whether to steal it or not. Citrus flavour with energy-giving guarana. It sounded a bit weird to him.

But it always gave him a kick to put one over on the company, so through force of habit he put the box under his arm and set off for home.

A few days later one of the directors from London called. Putting aside the delivery schedules for the printer in Dublin and praying he wasn't going to be asked for any status reports, Tom waited for Sarah to put him through. 'Hi, Andrew.' He was careful to sound upbeat. 'How can I help you?'

'Hi there, Tom. Listen, Jim Morrell has finished his search of the computer system. There's some good news and some bad news.'

There was silence as Tom sat back in his chair and shut his eyes. 'OK — perhaps the good news first?'

'Good news is, he's found nothing amiss with the files on the main server. Tracking back through all the activity on Ian's computer, it's apparent he'd been accessing a lot of files and printing them off. But nothing more.'

It was all too little too late — they'd had to struggle along with misfiled documents for the last month. If that was the good news, Tom wondered, what was the bad?

'Now, the other news isn't so welcome. He found quite a few locked files — ones needing a password for access. Apart from the ones in finance, they shouldn't have been there.'

'So who had created them?'

'They were all on the computer of a George Norris.'

'Creepy George?'

'I'm sorry?'

'Creepy George — it's what we call him up here.'

'To his face?'

'No, we're too childish for that.'

'Well, the name isn't too far off the mark. Perhaps add on perverted and sick.'

'What do you mean?'

'It took Jim a while to get into them — he treated it as a bit of a challenge eventually. And he thinks he's only found a fraction of the offending material. He suspects a lot more has been transferred on to a laptop to keep it clear of the main server.'

'What offending material?'

'You've heard of snuff movies?'

'Oh God, you're not serious?'

'Not movies. Photos. Lots of them. They're of women and they don't look asleep. More collapsed. Maybe dead, maybe unconscious. Clothed, semi-clothed, some naked. Indoors, outdoors. He's been downloading a lot from a US site called — you're not going to believe this — comatosex.com. It has information on date-rape drugs too — benefits and disadvantages of each type. Where you can order them from.'

'Jesus Christ, how do these sites get away with it?'

'God knows, but it gets worse. You know the staff photo gallery on our company web site?'

'Yes.'

'Was there a photo taken recently of Julie Bowers? Her one on the Manchester site is different from our one down here.'

'Yes — George insisted on taking it a few weeks ago.'

'Well, he's been using a shot of her face, eyes shut, and mounting it on the corpse of another female.'

'Corpse?'

'Well, you know, a torso. Someone sprawled out on the floor in a dressing gown against the same blue background cloth as the company mugshots. He's used Photoshop to comp the two images together. At first we actually thought it was Julie.'

'Oh, Christ. So he's actually taking these shots himself?'