In which the evils of accountancy are explored. A grudge comes to an end and an innocent man dies.

John Smith is a rather ordinary man much like his name suggests. He is a very normal man of average height and average build. His face is one of those faces that could belong to any odd number of people. Mister Smith is in fact so ordinary that if being ordinary was a skill he would be a master.

But of course it isn’t which is a good thing since being a master in any field would make him extraordinary. Speaking of extraordinary, Mister Smith’s normalness makes him rather extraordinary and thus qualified for a certain position, to which we will get to later.

 Although Mister Smith works for the money grubbing financial corporation known as Earl & Aries, in short E.A, he himself isn’t a greedy man. Like the average working man he is slightly underpaid for the work he does.

This however has never bothered Mister Smith since he enjoys the work he does. Numbers make sense to him and he is rather fond of the view his small office has on the city of London. He is a man who likes to create order where there is chaos, as long as it doesn’t force him to leave the confines of his beloved office of course.

 After working all day, six days in a row, Mister Smith takes the underground to Ealing Broadway from where he walks to East Dulwich Grove where he owns a modest apartment which he shares with his cat, mister Diggle.

Mister Diggle is by all accounts a very sensible name for a cat. After all if you name your cat fluffy you’re just describing what your cat feels like. Like every morning mister Smith wakes up at 6:00. He never sleeps in, not even on Sundays, and proceeds to take a shower.

 After shaving he will put on his black suit, of which he owns seven exact copies, and have breakfast.  At the age of forty two Mister Smith knows exactly what he will do at each hour of the day, every day of every year.

 It has been said that a man knows everything he needs to know at the age of forty two, even though some millionaires might claim that they made their fortune at the age of forty three and thus didn’t know everything at the age of forty two, Mister Smith thinks that it is indeed the case.

 Currently mister Smith is having breakfast while reading the morning newspaper, he will lay it apart so he can make the crossword puzzle when he gets home, like he does every morning. He is still under the impression that he will have a completely normal day like yesterday and the day before that.

 What he doesn’t know is that he will die today. If he had known he would probably have found a good place to live for mister Diggle, rescheduled the meeting with the executives from Tesco regarding the ridiculous amounts E.A asks for the different parts of the same financial report and he would have made the crossword puzzle before going to work.

 He would have done all these things despite knowing that he would die if he went to work. A good normal working man would after all never call in a sick day if he was in fact not sick. As it is mister Smith doesn’t know which is why he is enjoying his paper and a cup of tea, earl grey naturally.

 After cleaning away his breakfast mister Smith leaves Dulwhich Grove and heads for the underground. At 8:30 sharp he stands in front of his favorite building in Canary Wharf, or maybe in the entirety of London.

He works the entire morning on several big reports for large corporations from all over the globe. At 12:00 he stands in front of the office of his boss. Mister Aries’s office door opens at 12:09 and mister Aries comes out, followed by his secretary.

 She smells weird and looks a little bewildered; she smiles at him when she walks away. “Mister Smith how fortunate that you are here, very fortunate indeed.” Of course fortune has nothing to do with Mister Smith’s timely arrival. He is after all responsible for his boss’s schedule.

He just smiles and nods though, making schedules is fun after all. Like every Wednesday he and mister Aries go over all the cases which are deemed worthy of mister Aries’s attention and that is where we leave mister Smith for a moment, walking towards the exit with mister Aries.

You see, Mister Smith is going to be killed but so far I have forgone to mention how this terrible thing is going to happen and why. It all comes down to one man, Benjamin Grimes. Mister Grimes formerly happily married, now just married has made a very peculiar decision this morning.

He has decided to bring happiness back in his marriage. And after thinking long and hard how to do such a thing he decided that a drink would clear his mind. The only conclusion he could come to, after several pints of beer is to remove the obstacle standing between him and his wife.

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 Some hotshot banker guy or whatever named Aries. Mister Grimes has often thought that something more was going on at work than well, work. He may be unemployed but that doesn’t give this guy the right to “work” his wife.

How he had wished she could just go back to being that dentist’s secretary but oh no, she had to go get the job offer of her life. Mister Grimes has made his decision which is why he is currently hanging around Canary Wharf waiting for mister Aries to come out of the office building in front of him, loaded gun in his pocket.

There is only one problem, mister Grimes has no idea what mister Aries looks like. Being a resourceful man mister Grimes however noticed that everyone coming from E.A carries a notepad with them. And fortunately for mister Grimes on the cover of every notepad the name of its owner is written in big silver letters.

Mister Smith has reached the end of his report while walking towards the exit of the building and looks up at mister Aries expectantly. The other man looks back at him and nods a few times. “Yes mister Smith I see that these matters require my attention, good work as always.”

On the outside it may not look like it but this is one of the highlights in Mister Smith’s week. “There is nothing more rewarding or important than a job well done.” His father always used to say. Nothing was ever truer than those words in the eyes of Mister Smith.

 “Oh and Mister Smith? Yes sir? Would you mind checking the calculations I’ve made here, I’m not completely sure if I’ve done everything correctly.” Mister Aries hands our mister Smith his notepad. “It will be on your desk in two hours sir.”

Mister Aries nods smiles and waves before walking away. It is rather sad what happens next. The moment mister Smith steps outside to go to the small coffee shop where he always enjoys a cup of tea and a tuna sandwich, because who in his right mind doesn’t like a tuna sandwich, he gets shot.

Mister Grimes sees that his morning skulking around the building where his wife works has paid off when a man carrying a notepad, with the name J. Aries on it written in silver letters, comes out of the building.

Without hesitation he steps towards the man and just when the man looks up he shoots him. Two bullets in the chest just like they always do in the movies. The man topples over and falls face first to the ground.

 Immediately panic breaks lose, alarms go off, the police is called and hundreds of pictures are taken of the man lying in the ever growing pool of his own blood. The police arrive within a minute and after a short chase Mister Grimes is taken into custody and brought to the nearest precinct.

Mrs. Grimes divorced mister Grimes shortly after his trial. She remained a proud employee of E.A marrying some middle management guy named Gates. Mister Grimes was judged and found guilty of murder.

He spent five years in jail after which he was released for good behavior. He moved to Eastern Germany four years later where he became a potato farmer.

Most of you would think that this is a rather unsatisfying ending and I completely agree with you.

The problem with this story is that there were a lot of fortunate people in this story. So many in fact that you could start doubting if fortune had so much to do with it, if it at all had to do with anything. While poor mister Smith was lying in the pool of his own blood lying face down on the rather clean streets of Canary Wharf he had no time to think about fortune or such things.

 The only thing that crossed his mind while his last breath was leaving his body was that it was so very inconvenient that he couldn’t check mister Aries calculations and how it would upset mister Aries’s entire schedule.

 It is rather sad that there was no one to attend Mister Smith’s funeral. Maybe it was better that way, mister Smith wouldn’t want to have caused any inconvenience by dying. Mister Smith had no will or any form of settlement in case of his untimely death which is why all his belongings went to a distant relative who had never even met Mister Smith.

 A perfectly ordinary man had died and almost no one had noticed. Those that did notice would later say that it was better this way. An innocent man had died yes, but it was a man without friends or any real family.

It could have been a father or a man with many friends but it was just mister Smith. In the entire universe only one man had noticed Mister Smith’s potential, had noticed how extraordinary mister Smith was.

 Of all people in the entire world there was only one mister Smith. Nobody knew it, not even mister Smith but there was somebody with a plan for Mister Smith. There was somebody with a plan and it wasn’t God.