BIll's Report

Bill Whitmore was the kind of man people pointed to when they wanted to prove that good things still happened to good people. At thirty-four, he had built a reputation so clean it almost felt unreal. Colleagues at Aldergate Freight Solutions, tucked in a converted warehouse near Manchester's canal district, called him "the standard" not because he demanded it, but because he simply never gave anyone a reason to think otherwise. He arrived early, left late, and still found time to check on interns too nervous to ask questions. ‎His mornings followed a rhythm perfected over years. Up at 6:00, a short run along the canal towpath, a coffee and toast at the small café beneath his flat, and a quick read of the news before he caught the tram into the city centre. His neighbors set their clocks by his footsteps on the stairwell. His mother, when she called every Sunday from her cottage in the Cotswolds, would tell her friends, That's my son. Never a single trouble from him ‎At work, Bill was the person everyone wanted on their team. He caught errors before they became disasters, mediated arguments between department heads without raising his voice. When the company needed someone to represent them at the logistics conference in Rotterdam, there was no debate about who would go. He shook hands, gave smart answers, and returned with two new contracts nobody had expected. ‎Even his friends, who teased him mercilessly about everything else, admitted there was nothing to hold against Bill. He never missed a round at the pub, helped his younger cousins move flats without complaint, and never missed a birthday. Ask anyone in his circle to describe him in one word, and they would all land near the same idea: dependable. ‎Nobody around him could have guessed that the version of Bill they knew was about to be tested in a way none of his discipline had prepared him for.