Secret Satan is a seasonal murder mystery in 24 episodes. When one of his work colleagues is murdered with a Secret Santa present the office Christmas party, Linus Sweet decides to try and find out whodunnit. At first it seems like the answer lies in their office's version of Secret Santa, which they call Secret Satan. But as Linus investigates, he begins to unwrap more mysteries. All may not be as it seems. In fact, this might not even be just a murder mystery, either.
Only a bunch of truly odd, over excited and slightly deranged group of co-workers would have their office party on Christmas Eve. So that’s what we did.
We even went back to the same pub where it had all started on the first of December, with Tony Flint’s death. It seemed appropriate somehow. I mean, it was obviously massively inappropriate, of course, but that’s what seemed appropriate, given all the other inappropriate things we had done in the interim.
This time, though, we were able to enjoy our drinks in peace and while several of us got slaughtered, no one was actually murdered.
“I’m still not sure,” said Soo, “Haven’t we just proved to everyone that there was cocaine in the office?”
“They thought that already, remember,” I said, “Everyone just assumed that Tony owned the cocaine that killed him, so it's not like we’ve made them think anything new.”
“But we haven’t proved anything against Dicky,” said Ned, “I mean, all that stuff with you and him running about. He’s just going to start blaming Radu.”
“Radu’s out of it already,” I said, “And anyway, he’ll have an alibi for it all, because it wasn’t him. And that’s if anyone listens to Dicky in the first place, I think we’ve established him as a fairly unreliable narrator by now.”
“The word is,” said Allie, who always knew all the gossip, “That Dicky is going to be allowed to resign. No sacking, no records, just some gardening leave and gone.”
“I’m glad. I feel a bit sorry for him,” said Soo, “He didn’t do anything really.”
“He gave my window seat to Flunt,” said Lem.
“He made us do those stupid cards,” said Ned.
“That was Linus, remember?” said Lem.
“I’m glad too,” I said, interrupting before anyone else wanted to remember anything stupid I had done, “We didn’t want to prove anything, after all. The last thing we want is anyone looking too closely. We just wanted to create enough chaos to distract everyone from Flint’s stupid dead man’s switch. Stupidly clever. Cleverly stupid.”
“That’s been pulled, by the way,” said Allie, “The whole project.”
“I dialled in remotely this morning and deleted everything,” said Soo, “Made sure I emptied the database too, all of Tony’s messages should be gone.”
“Nuke the site from orbit,” I said, “Only way to be sure.”
“Well,” said Ned, “That’s one victory, at least.”
“Loath as I am to credit Linus with too much,” said Edie, “But there’s more victories than that. Not only are we shot of Dicky, but we’ve also shown that he ran the department badly, that drug use and mad behaviour was rife and, most importantly, it had nothing to do with us.”
“Or at least appeared to,” I said, “Fortunately, we all do still get to do all the drugs and mad behaviour.”
“Well, hopefully,” said Edie, “This will mean they think a bit more carefully about who they put in charge of us next time.”
“No more Balls-up,” said Lem, raising his glass.
“No more Balls,” we all toasted.
“You never know,” said Soo, “Maybe he’s learned something. Maybe it’ll change him.”
“Are you suggesting this is some kind of Christmas Carol thing,” I said, “Tony Flint dead as a coffin nail visiting Dicky Scrooge to make him see the error of his ways?”
“What does that make you?” said Lem, “The Ghost of Christmas Prats?”
And so we sat in the pub in which, twenty three days earlier, our least liked colleague had been murdered with Turkish Delight and we got merry, as the season dictates.
Here it was, at last, Christmas Eve, and everything appropriately wrapped up with a bow and a sprinkling of a white powder that wasn’t quite snow all over it. And here’s the end of my story. All three acts: set-up, complication and resolution; the murder mystery, the twist and the con - they’re all done. We’ve done all the beats of a Hollywood movie: we had that cold-open with the flash forward to the murder, we had what gets called the ‘fun and games’ section, with the murder mystery and my coked up, drunk antics, we had the ‘all is lost moment’ when we realised that Balls was onto us and the whole thing might be revealed, we even had the ‘rescue from without’, when Guiseppe stepped in to help Balls out of the building. We even stopped in the middle for a PowerPoint presentation, a bit I am particularly proud of.
But that’s all done now. We’re just in a little coda scene, that final cosy moment when the adventure is over, everyone’s emerged unscathed but maybe - hopefully - a little wiser, and we can all sit back, share a quip and reflect.
We ought to have something insightful here. Something that sums up what we might have learned. You might look at us all, actually enjoying ourselves and each other’s company for what felt like the first time in at least a month and probably some time longer, and wonder if you could say something like Soo’s Christmas Carol proposition. That the ghost of Tony Flint and reached into our inboxes like some electronic seance and guided us down a strange path that ended with Richard Balls standing in a whirling white flurry like a drugged up snowman, and did not redeem him - he’s irredeemable - but us, the team. Brought together, made whole by working together, at last, and sharing this adventure.
You could say that. But you’d be wrong. The truth was that we were all laughing and joking and drinking because we were all somewhat hysterical. We couldn’t quite believe that we had just done what we had just done and apparently gotten away with it. The truth was that one of us had murdered another member of the team and the rest of us had got together and successfully covered it up for them.
Oh well, the internal comms that it was our job to create and disseminate were always stressing both individual initiative and collaborative working, so at least we were living up to our corporate values.
Or maybe you could say something about Christmas Eve. How it marks the end of the year so much more than New Year’s Eve does. How the mayhem of the Christmas season, rushing to buy presents, organise social gatherings, solve murders, is a little microcosm of the preceding twelve months, haring around trying to achieve ultimately pointless tasks for an completely arbitrary deadline.
Or maybe you could say something about an office party on Christmas Eve. How all these perfect strangers, forced into daily, vexing intimacy by the demands of work and society, are able to come together, against all the odds, in convivial merriment, setting aside their mundane problems for one glowing, golden moment.
You could say any or all of those things, but actually, all that mattered, to me at least, is that I had been handed a mystery and I had solved it. I had played detective and won. And, on top of a murder mystery, I had also got to orchestrate a heist and run a con, all three major crime capers rolled up into one. And on top of, on top of that, like putting on baubles over tinsel on a tree, I got to do all of it at Christmas.
What I’m saying is: despite everything, despite the murder and drugs and insanity, I had a good Christmas. And I hope you do too.
“One for the road? Go on, then.”
Merry Christmas.