Secret Satan - Episode 5
Satan: an introduction
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 Santra, 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.
I mentioned last time that I am used to being in the wrong. I certainly was that Christmas. Many times. I was also in the right a couple of times, but we’ll get to that.
My first major error was the Christmas cards. Richard Balls wanted, apparently, to make a splash.
“Dick wants to make a splash,” muttered Lem, who was sitting beside me in the meeting.
“I want this department to be proactive in its engagement with the wider corporate infrastructure, in a seasonal manner” said Balls.
“What?” said Ned.
“He wants a Christmas comms project,” said Allie, translating.
“What?” said Ned.
“Exactly,” said Balls, “Let’s ideate.”
“What?” said Ned.
“Brainstorm,” said Balls, “Work it as a team, bring our best games to it. There’s a start, right, let’s think about our work as a team, okay? How we might evangelise ourselves within the organisation.”
“You mean like a promo video or something?” said Allie trying to decode.
“It’s November,” said Lem, “With a big ‘No’, as in no time, no resource and no way.”
“Listen guys,” said Balls, “I don’t want to hear ‘no’, don’t give me ‘no. There are no bad ideas.”
“That’s a no, right there,” said Lem
“What about a Christmas quiz?” said Balls, “Like a pub quiz but office situated? Different departments can field teams, have a leaderboard and prize giving at the Christmas party?”
Tony was suddenly less amused.
“Do you know how complicated that is to code?” he said, “I don’t even think the intranet could handle it.”
“Work with me here, team,” said Balls, “We can crack this. I’ve got this room booked for the rest of the morning.”
“Oh god,” muttered Edie on the other side of me, “We’re not getting out of here until he gets his idea, are we?”
Which is when I made my first mistake. I had a good idea.
Well, not good, as such, but workable, practical and good enough for Dick.
“What about Christmas cards?” I said, “Email Christmas cards. Just a form on the intranet that sends an HTML card, pretty straightforward, but it’s something everyone can do - send each other a card.”
“Personalised, accessible, interactive,” Balls was obviously just listing keywords now, “Tony?”
“Yeah, we’ve already got most of the code,” he nodded, “Just a little copy and paste.”
“Just a little copy and paste and a lot of design,” said Ned, glaring at me.
“Not animated, right?” said Lem, in a warning tone of voice on one side of me.
“No heartfelt seasonal messages, right?” said Edie in a similar tone on the other side.
“Designed!” said Balls, “Animated! Friendly brand voice!”
The rest of the team stared at me balefully and I began to realise the terrible error into which I had stumbled.
“I love it,” said Balls, but he was the only one.
They weren’t just annoyed because this now meant they were going to have to do a load of new work in November and December, a time Allie usually tried to keep free because it's, well, Christmas. It also played havoc with all the things we usually spent Christmas doing instead, like the team party.
Balls immediately insisted that we have the party as soon as possible, so that it wouldn’t ‘interfere’ with the Christmas Card project. This triply infuriated everyone.
It was not enough that Richard Balls was now messing with our Christmas party, nor was just that we would no longer have that party to look forward to throughout December, but it was also that the Christmas party was also when we distributed our office Secret Santa presents, so all of that, the sorting, buying and wrapping, all the organisation and secrecy and expense, was going to have to happen even more immediately, like right now.
Not that we had a Secret Santa in our office. We had a Secret Satan.
Yes, this is where I finally explain the title of this story.
So, how a Secret Santa usually works is that everyone taking part gets given the name of one of the other participants entirely at random and then has to buy that person a present. This is an excellent way of avoiding everyone having to buy everyone else a present, while assuring that everyone gets one, and also taking a lot of pressure out of the whole present buying process. The randomisation means you don’t spend a huge about of time choosing the present, and the whole thing is done more in the spirit of fun than trying to pick exactly the right gift. The rule of thumb in our office, for instance, was when in doubt buy sweets, not least because someone - usually Tony - will eat them even if the recipient doesn’t. And the usual spending limit helps too.
We had something like that, but with a wrinkle. A ghastly, horrifying wrinkle.
Me. Although if anyone else called me a ghastly, horrifying wrinkle… I wouldn’t be at all surprised.
At some point in the long ago I had been given, in a Secret Santa, a hideous little statuette. I am partial to a tchotchke, I like a geegaw, and it was perhaps forgivable for someone to buy me a little desk ornament, but what was unforgivable was quite how comically, insultingly ugly it was.
It was a little pewter demon wearing a Santa hat and beard, carrying a sack bulging with human skulls. The whole thing was about three inches high and alarmingly robust, as many dents in the plasterboard office walls could attest. It is hard to imagine why on earth anyone had designed, manufactured and sold the thing, but it is not too hard to imagine why someone had given away because that is what I had done the very next year in the next Secret Santa.
And the person who had got it had given it away again, as soon as they could, which was the Secret Santa after that. And so a tradition was born.
The Satan spent most of the year in the departmental stationary cupboard, where it’s red paste gem eyes would glitter at you balefully every time you went looking for post-its. But one day in early December you would go for a fresh biro and he would be gone.
For each Secret Santa we had two draws, one for the names and one for the Satan. Whoever got the Satan had to furtively recover him from the cupboard, wrap him up and give him as a present to the name they had drawn.
This, then, was our Secret Satan.
There were other rules, of course, some more informal than others. It was generally expected, for instance, that you would usually try and wrap it in a box that disguised its identity, that made it look or feel like something entirely different, or in so many layers of paper that it doubled or tripled inside.
It was generally understood, meanwhile, that this was an inside joke. Only permanent members of staff, only the ‘family’ ever got given Secret Satan. If someone had got both the name of a freelancer and the Secret Satan in the draw, they had to request a new draw, or find some way to swap names with someone.
The Satan shouldn’t, in other words, have gone to Radu, my freelancer and only other team member, and it’s why he was so surprised when it did: he hadn’t been in on the joke and had no idea what was going on.
But that, of course, turned out to be the least of our worries. We should have realised this, though, should have taken that unexpected appearance of Satan as the omen it was.
And so, in the interests of fair play, as promised, I’m pointing it out to you now. As you might expect, Satan popping up where you don’t expect him is a sign that something, somewhere, is very wrong indeed.