Corporate Bodies (12 page)

Charles took another look at himself in the mirror. He pulled the looseness of the double-breasted jacket away from his stomach. ‘At least this is quite flattering to the fuller figure,' he chuckled.

‘No, actually, sir,' said the young man, ‘the style does look rather better on someone with a proper figure.'

‘Oh well, perhaps I should be shopping for a new figure rather than a new suit,' Charles suggested, with a grin.

‘Wouldn't be a bad idea,' the young man murmured, fingering one of his earrings.

‘That one's a good fit,' said Will. ‘Gives you a bit of edge, certainly.'

‘Is “edge” what we're looking for?' asked Charles cautiously.

Will glanced at his watch. ‘We haven't got too long to piss about. I think we should go for it, Charles.'

‘Well, If you're sure –'

‘Yes, we'll have it.'

‘If that's your decision,' sighed the young man, in the manner of someone whose recommendation that Caesar stay at home on the Ides of March has just been overruled.

‘Right, you'd better keep it on, Charles. Oh no, first you need a shirt and tie.'

‘I'm wearing a shirt and tie.'

Protest was vain. He was dragged over to another display and kitted out with a soft cotton shirt whose sleeves were puffy enough to play Hamlet in, and a silk tie with a design that Braque might have knocked up and rejected while prostrated by flu. The tie, he noticed, cost as much as the last suit he had bought.

Paying was a problem. Charles had just achieved the unachievable and, following an ugly sequence of threatening letters, managed to pay off the debts on both his credit cards. At that unaccustomed moment of solvency, he had resolved to impose on himself a rigid regime of economy. That this intention was serious can be judged from the fact that he even – briefly – contemplated counting, and if necessary rationing, the number of bottles of Bell's whisky he bought.

Still, the road to hell is paved with plastic. He drew out the card and once again plunged deep, deep into debt.

He tried to convince himself that the clothes were a valuable investment for his career, but natural cynicism made such casuistry impossible.

While he changed into the shirt and tie, the shop assistant bundled his old clothes into a plastic carrier, which he placed on the floor behind the counter.

‘Could I have those, please?' asked Charles, as he was about to leave.

‘Good heavens,' murmured the young man, lifting his eyes to heaven. ‘You mean you want to
keep
them?'

CHARLES PARIS felt an absolute prune as he walked into the Delmoleen Knightsbridge offices. The shiny material of his new suit flapped irritatingly around him. Surely, not since the days of Demobilisation, had anyone walked around in clothes so patently the wrong size.

He was reassured, however, in the conference room where they met, to discover that Robin Pritchard and the agency man were dressed in almost identical garb, suits hanging in folds around them, bright silk ties progressing uneasily from Cubism to Surrealism. And when he actually came to look at Will, he saw that the writer was wearing much the same uniform. So, though Charles Paris still felt a prune, he was at least at a convention of prunes.

Certainly Robin Pritchard made no indication of their having met before, even though Charles was introduced by the same name. This was probably just professional discretion on the Product Manager's part, though Charles couldn't help wondering whether the suit transformed him so totally that it expunged all memory of his former forklift operator persona.

Robin Pritchard started by saying how very
big
the new product was going to be, how
huge
its launch campaign would be, how
global
its likely outreach, and how
massively
it was going to increase Delmoleen's brand share in that particular market.

Charles Paris sat through all this looking properly executive, the neat briefcase Will had supplied beside him, trying to give the impression that its contents were something of more significance than his old clothes. But his mind was wandering.

He took in the expensive sparseness of the conference room, which was of a piece with the rest of the Delmoleen Head Office. The reception area and corridors were all light grey, with flecked grey carpets. Desks were of darker grey, while low sofas and armchairs were delicately pink, like the underside of a trout. A few discreetly expensive abstract paintings hung on the walls.

There was nothing about the place that obviously said Delmoleen. Compared to the Stenley Curton site with its huge logos, or Ken Colebourne's office decorated with product pictures, the Knightsbridge premises were reticently anonymous. Only a small steel plate on their portico mentioned the Delmoleen name. They could have been the headquarters of an insurance company, an advertising agency, a merchant bank, a hotel chain, anything.

Presumably it was here that Brian Tressider had his office and spent most of his time. Charles wondered idly whether the Delmoleen video would include shooting at the London end. There wasn't much chance of his being required if it did. The London-based executives were probably quite capable of speaking for themselves and, though he did now possess the right suit for a managerial role, his facial similarity to the speaking forklift operator might not pass undetected.

His mind came back to Dayna Richman's murder – came back rather guiltily, it must be said. He had been trying not to think about it for the last few weeks. It wasn't the memory of Trevor's knee in his crutch that put him off, nor was he deferring in response to Ken Colebourne's bribery – it was just that he didn't know how to proceed on the case. Without any good reason to return to Stenley Curton, it was hard to continue the investigation.

And, in a way, the investigation was complete. Charles Paris was convinced that Trevor had killed Dayna, though he couldn't precisely define the man's motive. Presumably, sex was at the bottom of it somewhere. It usually was when a man and a woman were involved. A lovers' tiff, something along those lines . . . Anyway, the prospect of finding any proof of what had actually happened seemed ever more remote.

‘And the really important, revolutionary, mould-breaking thing about the product is that it's
green
.'

Robin Pritchard's pronouncement brought Charles back to the present with a jolt. The Product Manager looked triumphant. The agency man, who already knew what the product was, shook his head in benign amazement at the boldness of its concept. Will Parton, who didn't yet know what the product was, looked as impressed as only someone pitching for a lucrative contract can.

They all turned to Charles Paris for his reaction. He decided that an expression of awestruck reverence would be appropriate and, since they all looked away with satisfaction, presumably he had got it right.

‘Now when I say
green
,' Robin Pritchard continued, ‘obviously I'm using the word in the environmental sense . . .'

‘Obviously,' Will Parton agreed.

‘So all the ingredients will have been organically grown, and not only will they – the ingredients – be listed on the wrapper, but their provenance will also be detailed – you know, to show that they have been processed in a way that has done the minimum harm to the environment . . .'

Will, who Charles had heard on many occasions say that he didn't give a damn about the environment so long as he had a fridge that worked, nodded enthusiastic endorsement of Robin Pritchard's words.

‘What is more, the wrapper will be made from wholly recycled paper and be coloured by pigments that are totally biodegradable. Not only that, but, for every unit sold, a sum of money will be donated to an environmental charity – you know, to replace some of the rainforest, do something for the ozone layer, whatever . . .'

‘How much?'

‘How much?'

‘Yes, how much will be given to the environmental charity?'

Will's question seemed to fluster the Product Manager. ‘Well, the precise, er . . . the precise details are yet to be worked out. I mean, we are talking a percentage here, and inevitably a fairly small percentage –'

‘But the purchasers needn't know that,' the agency man chipped in smugly. ‘The campaign will emphasise the
fact
of the donation rather than the precise
amount
.'

‘Exactly,' said Robin, ‘but, nonetheless, given the number of product units we are hoping to shift, we are talking a very considerable sum of money.'

‘Certainly, certainly,' the agency man conceded magnanimously. ‘And the environmental value of the product will obviously be stressed at every point of the campaign.'

‘And so,' said Will, ‘every unit that's sold, for the rest of time, will be raising money for the environment.'

‘Well, no, not
for the rest of time
,' said Robin Pritchard cautiously. ‘I mean, we do obviously have to think of our profit margins. No, the donations will be made only over the initial three-month period of the launch.'

‘And then they'll stop?'

‘Yes, in effect they will. I mean, you can't go on doing that kind of thing for ever. Delmoleen's not a charity, you know.'

‘Of course not.'

‘But again,' the agency man chipped in, ‘while our campaign will stress the donation element over the launch period, it would not be of interest to anyone for us to make too much of a song and dance about the moment when that element is dropped.'

‘No, of course not,' Will Parton concurred.

‘So, as you'll have gathered, this thing is going to be really big. What do you say, Will?'

‘Certainly sounds
big
, Robin. And very exciting.'

‘Charles?'

He didn't quite know the correct response. Will had told him to say nothing, but to do so to a direct question seemed downright rude. So he just shook his head in astonished disbelief and said, ‘
Big
.'

Robin Pritchard nodded, gratified, but Charles couldn't help adding, ‘Sorry, you haven't said what the product is yet . . .'

‘It's the Delmoleen “Green”,' the Product Manager announced momentously.

‘Ah.' Charles nodded. ‘Green what?'

‘It's just called the “Green”. That's the beauty of the name, its sheer, minimalist simplicity.'

‘Yes. Yes, of course. But what is it? Is it a breakfast cereal or a biscuit or a . . .?'

‘Oh, right. With you, Charles.' Robin Pritchard pursed his lips. ‘The Delmoleen “Green” is such a revolutionary concept in biscuitry that it's very hard to define. I guess the nearest existing product to what we're talking about here is a muesli bar.'

‘A muesli bar?'

‘Right. The Delmoleen “Green” has all the virtues of the traditional muesli bar . . .' (Charles found it difficult to imagine that muesli bars had been around long enough to have their own traditions) ‘. . . and those of the current “State of the Art” muesli bar – I'm talking 100 per cent natural ingredients, high wholegrain dietary fibre content, low sugar, low saturated fat, the obvious stuff . . . The Delmoleen “Green” has all that and a bit more – but it also has the special feature which is going to take it rocketing to the top of the Crunchy Bar and Snack Biscuit Brand Share.'

‘What's that?' asked Will Parton, dead on cue.

‘It's green,' Robin Pritchard whispered reverentially.

‘Green?'

‘Yes, 100 per cent green.'

Charles Paris, confused, couldn't stop himself from saying, ‘But you said that. You said it was green. It's called the Delmoleen “Green” –'

‘And it's green.'

‘Ah.' That still didn't clarify things much for Charles.

But the Product Manager's next words did. ‘It is green in colour. Green like Nature, green like little green apples, green like the leaves of spring, green like . . .' He ran out of poetic inspiration, ‘green like – green. Coloured, of course, from natural dyes, the Delmoleen “Green” will be the only product in the entire
global
muesli bar range that is actually coloured green.'

An impressed silence ensued.

Then, tentatively and sycophantically, Will Parton asked, ‘You don't mean that the wrapper will be green in colour too?'

‘You said it,' a complacent Robin Pritchard confirmed. ‘Now, is that marketing or is that marketing?'

Will Parton shook his head in slow, stunned amazement. ‘I'd say that's marketing.'

The Product Manager smiled the kind of smile Tamburlaine might have allowed himself when he entered the vanquished Persepolis. He looked at his watch. ‘Now we have a table booked for lunch to get down to the nuts and bolts of the launch, but before that I have a little surprise for you.'

‘Oh?' they all said, elaborately wondering what it could be.

Silently Robin Pritchard pressed down the key of an intercom and murmured, ‘Ready, Janice.'

The door opened and a smartly-suited secretary entered. She carried a silver salver. On it lay three rectangles of what looked like green fibre matting.

‘No? It isn't?' asked Will (overacting a bit, in Charles's estimation).

‘Yes, it is. You three will be the only people outside Delmoleen ever to have tasted a Delmoleen “Green”.'

Appropriately honoured noises were made, as the girl handed around the sacred batons.

Among the many, many foodstuffs that Charles Paris enjoyed, muesli bars did not figure at any level. And a green muesli bar would, under normal circumstances, be something to be consigned instantly to the dustbin.

The idea of eating a green muesli bar immediately before lunch was even more disgusting.

But he, like Will Parton and the agency man, lifted one of the rectangles off the salver as if handling a Dead Sea Scroll.