picture what would happen if he threw himself in?
‘Yes. Still here.’
‘The question is why. D’you have any kind of answer?’
I think. ‘Normally suicide is connected to some variant of depression.’
But that’s inadequate. Sunny Chen’s mental pain was a highly focused and particular form of derangement. He had a conviction that he was unable or unwilling to fully convey: a story about hungry spirits that for whatever reason he found untellable. The cargo on my shoulders shifts, then resettles in a new way. Did my investigation trigger his suicide?
‘Anyway, bud, you’ll need to incorporate something on his death in your report. Stephanie Mulligan can give you some input, if you want the psychological angle.’
‘No thanks.’ I say it too quickly and with too much force.
Stephanie Mulligan has been with Phipps & Wexman for four years. She is a competent and extremely ambitious operative who will probably be running the Psych Department within a few years. She is generally considered to be extremely attractive despite her bra size being probably no more than 34A. I try to avoid her. Whenever I think about her no amount of mental origami can counter the damage she inflicts on my nervous system. My attitude towards her is complex for reasons I don’t enjoy going into.
‘She’s done some work on work-related suicide. Could be of help to you.’
‘If I need it, I’ll look it up.’ Too fast, again.
He sighs. ‘Whatever. But turn it around quick.’ I trudge along the muddy path, my anorak brushing against wet swatches of broom, wishing Ashok hadn’t mentioned Stephanie Mulligan. I thought I’d relegated her to the past. ‘So how are you doing otherwise, Maestro?’
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘I’ve been enjoying nature. And I have a goldfish.’
‘Good. Sounds like a start. So. Clear your head, then finish that report and call me when you’re done. It’s a tough call I know. Don’t think I’m unsympathetic. But I’m counting on you to deliver.’
He knows I will. When Professor Whybray recommended me to Phipps & Wexman it was Ashok Sharma who spotted my talent for identifying and tracking patterns, ‘like one of those French pigs that root for truffles in the forests of la Wherever-the-Fuck’, as he put it. It was he who took me on.
After we’ve said goodbye I switch off my phone and breathe in deep lungfuls of dark, saturated air. Sheep are scattered here and there, white blobs in a murk of collapsed bracken and heather. I turn and head back for the black granite boulder that marks the turn of the sheep-path. Seagulls wheel overhead.
‘Sunny Chen is dead. Sunny Chen is dead. Sunny Chen is dead.’
If I say a thing aloud it can sound like someone official speaking, and then I can begin to believe it. I walk faster, visualising the pulping machine, and the heap of woodchips and sawdust in the skip below, stained red from Sunny Chen’s blood. Sunny Chen mashed to hamburger. I have to go through the whole process with him. I don’t know why. Not just once, but again and again, with his heart and his da Vinci aortas and ventricles sliced through by the whirring blades, and the crimson blood splattering against the stainless steel walls of the machine.
When I first asked Sunny Chen how he felt about the whistle-blower he’d said, I would like to kill him. Later, when he burned himself in effigy, he was showing me he planned to do just that.
I missed it. But someone else might not have.
In the absence of anything you could call a body, the police would have had to scoop up the pulped sawdust to verify Sunny Chen’s DNA. They’d probably have used an ordinary shovel. Then they’d have put the material into a Ziploc plastic bag for analysis.
A company can lose millions of pounds through an act of sabotage or through bad publicity generated by a disgruntled worker. It will need a complete rebranding, and may have to relocate. Profit is an end product of a motivated workforce. It
‘Yes. Still here.’
‘The question is why. D’you have any kind of answer?’
I think. ‘Normally suicide is connected to some variant of depression.’
But that’s inadequate. Sunny Chen’s mental pain was a highly focused and particular form of derangement. He had a conviction that he was unable or unwilling to fully convey: a story about hungry spirits that for whatever reason he found untellable. The cargo on my shoulders shifts, then resettles in a new way. Did my investigation trigger his suicide?
‘Anyway, bud, you’ll need to incorporate something on his death in your report. Stephanie Mulligan can give you some input, if you want the psychological angle.’
‘No thanks.’ I say it too quickly and with too much force.
Stephanie Mulligan has been with Phipps & Wexman for four years. She is a competent and extremely ambitious operative who will probably be running the Psych Department within a few years. She is generally considered to be extremely attractive despite her bra size being probably no more than 34A. I try to avoid her. Whenever I think about her no amount of mental origami can counter the damage she inflicts on my nervous system. My attitude towards her is complex for reasons I don’t enjoy going into.
‘She’s done some work on work-related suicide. Could be of help to you.’
‘If I need it, I’ll look it up.’ Too fast, again.
He sighs. ‘Whatever. But turn it around quick.’ I trudge along the muddy path, my anorak brushing against wet swatches of broom, wishing Ashok hadn’t mentioned Stephanie Mulligan. I thought I’d relegated her to the past. ‘So how are you doing otherwise, Maestro?’
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘I’ve been enjoying nature. And I have a goldfish.’
‘Good. Sounds like a start. So. Clear your head, then finish that report and call me when you’re done. It’s a tough call I know. Don’t think I’m unsympathetic. But I’m counting on you to deliver.’
He knows I will. When Professor Whybray recommended me to Phipps & Wexman it was Ashok Sharma who spotted my talent for identifying and tracking patterns, ‘like one of those French pigs that root for truffles in the forests of la Wherever-the-Fuck’, as he put it. It was he who took me on.
After we’ve said goodbye I switch off my phone and breathe in deep lungfuls of dark, saturated air. Sheep are scattered here and there, white blobs in a murk of collapsed bracken and heather. I turn and head back for the black granite boulder that marks the turn of the sheep-path. Seagulls wheel overhead.
‘Sunny Chen is dead. Sunny Chen is dead. Sunny Chen is dead.’
If I say a thing aloud it can sound like someone official speaking, and then I can begin to believe it. I walk faster, visualising the pulping machine, and the heap of woodchips and sawdust in the skip below, stained red from Sunny Chen’s blood. Sunny Chen mashed to hamburger. I have to go through the whole process with him. I don’t know why. Not just once, but again and again, with his heart and his da Vinci aortas and ventricles sliced through by the whirring blades, and the crimson blood splattering against the stainless steel walls of the machine.
When I first asked Sunny Chen how he felt about the whistle-blower he’d said, I would like to kill him. Later, when he burned himself in effigy, he was showing me he planned to do just that.
I missed it. But someone else might not have.
In the absence of anything you could call a body, the police would have had to scoop up the pulped sawdust to verify Sunny Chen’s DNA. They’d probably have used an ordinary shovel. Then they’d have put the material into a Ziploc plastic bag for analysis.
A company can lose millions of pounds through an act of sabotage or through bad publicity generated by a disgruntled worker. It will need a complete rebranding, and may have to relocate. Profit is an end product of a motivated workforce. It
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