It was supposed to be a team building exercise; a chance to re-build morale but it ended up being murder.
The company had seen better days; a recent culling of ‘dead wood’ and, as usual, the wrong people had been let go fostering a lot of ill feeling and someone had the bright idea of creating a bonding exercise for the remaining managers to build better bridges. Someone else, Jeremy probably, thought it would be an ace idea to combine a ‘murder mystery morning’ with an ‘escape room’ without telling anyone.
Whereas most ‘escape room’ enterprises were fun and engaging, Jeremy thought he could do better and create his own on the empty 2nd floor, in the same building they inhabited every day of the week. In all cases cost came before moral -despite this being an attempt to create better feeling between them all. It was off to a great start.
They all congregated in the middle of the second floor office space, all the desks had been haphazardly pushed around, rubbish had been strewn about and all the windows had blackout blinds blocking out the sunny weather outside and despite all this it still managed to look cleaner and more professional than their normal working environment.
Fat Simon, gregarious Gavin, sullen Beccy, exuberant Jeremy, stalwart Sue, practical Helen and Bob were all lulling about trying not to make eye contact when Gavin spied a variety of objects on one of the tables near the window. He dashed over, exclaiming with great delight what he’d found. On this particular table, rather than having a variety of tea and coffee, biscuits and crisps; there was a selection of weapons. A knife, a lead pipe, a length of rope and a child's toy gun.
“Great! We can really have some fun with these.” Gavin exclaimed. Though short of frame and height he easily made up for it in energy.
“There’s not enough weapons to go around though.” Sue remarked. She seemed the opposite to Gavin; her voice never raised beyond a monotone but her sense of humor matched Gavin’s and they could often be found laughing in the tea room, much to Jeremy’s chagrin.
“They’re not to be used just yet, Gavin.” Jeremy interposed, as if to enforce that it was his idea once again and he was the one running the morning's activities. But it was already too late, Gavin had picked up the knife and was about to make a stabbing motion when he checked the blade.
“This thing is real!”
“Of course it’s real.. What do you expect? It’s not going to be used… it’s just for show.” Jeremy snapped.
“I know who I’d like to use it on.” Gavin whispered to Beccy. Beccy nodded knowing all the while that it was an impossibility for Gavin to whisper anything. There was but one volume and no filter. Beccy thought the world of him but it could be hard work at times!
“There’ll be none of that, Gavin.” Jeremy retorted and looked at Simon who was turning a violent purple. Considering his bulk this wasn’t that different to his normal colour, but there was no enmity between Gavin and Simon and everyone knew it. Both would happily have torn each other to shreds months ago if it hadn’t been for Jeremy’s intervention. Part of this stemmed from the recent lot of redundancies but also down to the amount of people that Simon had personally bullied out of the organisation. No one could understand how Simon had managed to stay persona non-grata all this time -virtually untouchable.
Gavin put the knife back on the desk and stepped away, avoiding Simon’s gravitational pull. “As long as we keep them all away from Simon.. He’ll probably do himself an injury!”
“Despite appearances we’ve only got this floor on loan this morning and we need to be careful we don’t damage anything.” Jeremy explained. “There are state-of-the-art cameras up there and there.” He pointed and everyone moved around to look. “So everything’s going to be recorded for training purposes later… it can even see in the dark, would you believe! No idea why….”
“What are we doing here, Jeremy?” Helen asked. She was the most non-commital of all the managers there. As long as she could come in and do her job with the minimum of fuss… This was a complete waste of time for her…
“Well… it’s a team building exercise.” Jeremy explained. Everyone groaned. “And we definitely need it! After everything else that’s gone on we need to unruffle some feathers and all get along!”
“So why just us?” Bob asked. Bob often felt as if he was in the wrong story. He alone just wanted to work to the best of his ability, which often ran contrary to the rest of the management, who seemed more hung up on pecking order and fallibility.
“We lead by example, Bob… or we should do…”
Suddenly the office went dark and just like a cliche someone screamed, there was a large crash and the whole floor seemed to shake. The lights flashed back on, dazing everyone and there, lying sprawled across the remnants of the desk where the weapons had been, now just a mess of splinters and shards, was Simon face down on the floor.
“At least we know what made the earth move!” Gavin quipped.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen.” Jeremy gasped.
“No shit.” Beccy replied.
“No… really… it was supposed to be me lying on the ground, and you were all supposed to find out who killed me and why.” Jeremy explained and almost tripped over the prone lump of Simon's body.
“Is he dead?” Helen asked, stricken by this sudden change of events.
“Well.. I suppose he might have fallen in the dark…. Lucky he didn’t take one of us with him.” Sue replied.
“That’s not the attitude!” Jeremy remonstrated. “We need to check to see if he’s still breathing and roll him onto his stomach.”
“You’re kidding me.” Beccy retorted. “We need to wait for the police to get here.”
“We’re locked in here for another 30 minutes and there may be a murderer here. Does anyone want to take the risk?” Jeremy explained, mopping his prodigious brow with a handkerchief.
“Half an hour?” Helen exclaimed. “Are you serious?”
“How was I to know something like this was going to happen?” Jeremy replied, sheepishly. “We need to turn him over just in case he is still breathing.
It took them nearly five minutes to roll Simon over by which time it became obvious that there was no way he was going to be given the kiss of life -not that there was anybody willing to volunteer. The knife was sticking out of Simon’s heart, almost fully embedded up to the hilt.
Everyone looked at Gavin.
“C’mon.. I hated the bloke, but so did most people. I had actually walked away from the table and from him, not to mention the knife.”
“Yes, but you could easily have picked it up in the dark and stabbed him.” Jeremy replied with an accusatory edge to his voice.
“I can barely see in the daytime, hence my thick prescription lenses; let alone in the dark.. Anyways, he was between me and the knife. There’s no way I could have been that agile in that amount of time; gotten around him, picked up the knife and stabbed him in the heart.” Gavin explained. “So much for the building of bridges, anyway. You were mighty too quick to make that suggestion, Jeremy. Maybe you had a reason to kill him?”
“What possible reason would I have to kill him?” Jeremy blushed, almost as if the thought had occurred to him many times.
“Well… Simon was a bit of a millstone for you…” Beccy replied. “You were scared of him. For all your dreams of leadership we all know who really pulled the strings here.”
“That’s not true… What about Sue? You couldn’t stand him!” For someone pertaining to being the manager Jeremy was busy pointing fingers everywhere.
“He was a letch and a bully.” Sue snapped back. “Yes, I hated the bastard. I lost too many members of my team due to him pawing at them and then, when they resisted his advances, trying to bully them out of the job… Something that you never stopped, I hasten to add. But I didn’t kill him… believe me, I wanted him dead.. But not that quickly.. I would’ve wanted him to suffer first!”
Everyone seemed to have a motive to kill Simon, and before long everyone was bickering except Bob who just kept quiet until everyone finally shut up.
“I think we’re missing an obvious solution here…” Everyone stood and looked at Bob who turned to look at the camera in the corner. “We only have to wait a few minutes more and we’ll finally find out.”
Those five minutes were interminable. Whatever the outcome of the camera footage one thing was clear, the team building experience had been a complete failure and people now saw Jeremy for what he really was.
Upstairs everyone crouched over the monitor… The police had been called but they still needed to know what happened. The film was fast-forwarded to the time of the blackout and they saw it all…The next 30 seconds were enlightening to say the least.
Gavin could be seen standing exactly where he was when Jeremy had remonstrated him, next to Beccy… but Simon was already reaching for the knife on the table when everyone had turned. Everyone could be seen clearly, Jeremy had already walked around and had pointed at the cameras whilst everyone had their back to the desk where the weapons were. But to everyone's shock Simon was lunging towards Gavin just as the lights went out. He tripped over himself in the dark, twisted to steady himself before collapsing face down on the table, the knife embedding itself in his corpulent folds. Gavin took one last look at the screen and sighed.
“I did say he’d do himself an injury.”
