Sudden Death Read online

  ‘What are you doing, Ben?’

  Ben looked up. His face and balding head looked whiter than cold chicken in the glare of the halogen security lamp.

  ‘You fucked her and now I’m going to fuck you.’

  Ben swung the crowbar and smashed a rear light.

  ‘Christ,’ Erasmus muttered as he walked slowly over to the car. When he was within a few feet of Ben he held out the whisky bottle.

  ‘You’re pissed,’ said Ben, even now unable to keep the teacher’s patronising tone from his voice.

  ‘That I most certainly am. Swap?’

  Ben looked at the whisky bottle with disgust.

  ‘I don’t drink.’

  Erasmus nodded slowly.

  ‘Figures. Let me help you.’

  Erasmus drained the last of the whisky and then smashed the bottle over the boot of the car. He was left holding the broken, jagged neck.

  Ben raised the crowbar and took a step backwards.

  ‘I’ll hit you, I warn you!’

  Erasmus threw the bottleneck to the floor and then, taking care not to fall over again, raised his right foot, paused, and then brought it down hard on the remaining rear light, smashing it to pieces.

  ‘What’s between you and Cat is between you two.’

  He moved to the side of the car and took aim at the rear door panel. He kicked it hard with the side of his boot, causing a huge boot-shaped dent.

  It was a good job the rest of the apartments were empty or the police would have been on their way by now, he thought, and then he smashed in the front left headlight with his foot.

  ‘What are you doing? You’re mental!’

  This caused Erasmus to start laughing almost hysterically.

  ‘You’re the second person today to tell me that today! There’s definitely a consensus building.’

  The remaining headlight was treated to the full force of Erasmus’s boot.

  Ben was backing away from the car now, the crowbar at his side.

  Erasmus booted another panel concave.

  ‘Better hope it’s not catching, Ben!’

  ‘Stay away from Cat!’

  Erasmus stopped laughing and looked at Ben. A weariness that had been threatening to smother him finally descended.

  He sighed and his shoulders slumped.

  ‘I don’t want anything to do with Cat. Go home to her and be grateful for what you have.’

  ‘You need help,’ said a retreating Ben over his shoulder.

  Erasmus didn’t have a reply. All that came into this mind was the thought that there was an unopened bottle of Yamakazi tucked away under the sink in case of emergencies. That was all the help he needed.

  He headed inside, music and whisky awaited. What else did he need?

  He awoke some hours later in darkness. He was still on the sofa, no doubt where he had passed out. The flat was still and quiet but he was certain of one thing, there was somebody else in there with him. It wasn’t that he could hear a noise but rather there was an absence of something small, a change in the way the air moved, an added impediment to sound waves. Whatever it was it caused a chill to run through him. Not for the first time in his life Erasmus reflected that nothing sobered you up as quickly as cold fear.

  In the gloom he could see the red digital readout on the front of the cooker: 4.16 a.m. Slowly he swung his feet out and placed them on the floor. The movement caused a sharp dagger of whisky pain to shoot through the left side of his head. He stifled an urge to groan and instead got to his feet.

  He headed for the kitchen. In the darkness he didn’t notice a small pile of CD cases that he had stacked near the sofa. His right foot hit them and sent them scattering over the hard wood floors, the noise almost deafening in the poised silence.

  Things happened fast after that.

  From the direction of the bedroom there was an unmistakable sound of quick footsteps. Maybe Ben had returned? He had probably left the front door unlocked; it wouldn’t be the first time.

  Erasmus paused, waiting to see if stealth was still the preferred course. The bedroom door banged shut and there were hurried footsteps, men running, down the corridor towards the kitchen, towards him.

  He pulled open the cutlery drawer and plunged his hands in, desperately looking for the carving knife. Behind him the door to the living room swung open with a crash, he didn’t have time to look behind him. The knife wasn’t there, it must be in the sink with every other piece of cutlery he owned, the thought of an ex-girlfriend castigating him for not washing the dishes popped into his head, he took a step to the right and saw it there in the pile of dirty dishes that rose from the sink like some post-apocalyptic ceramic city.

  He grabbed the handle of the knife and turned to face his unknown assailant.

  ‘You?’

  ‘You better believe it, Erasmus.’

  Too late he saw the Taser’s blinking blue lights. He raised the knife but the wired prongs were already airborne and a second later Erasmus was on the floor with 50,000 volts rampaging through his central nervous system causing him to spit and jerk on the laminated floor of his kitchen like bacon on a griddle.

  CHAPTER 37

  Karen reread the email and this time she couldn’t stop the bile from rising and filling her mouth. She raised her hand to her mouth and stopped the foulness from spilling out onto the computer keyboard. She swallowed it back down, all concerns other than the email and its contents had become meaningless.

  It couldn’t be a coincidence. It just couldn’t be.

  She looked at the screen and checked the date. The email had been sent four days ago.

  She fought the rising panic and picked up the phone by the computer. She dialled Erasmus’s number but it rang out, skipping to voicemail.

  ‘Erasmus, it’s Karen. Please can you call me as soon as you get this message.’ And then, ‘It’s urgent.’

  She hesitated, contemplated calling the police but then put the mobile phone in her jeans pocket. She knew what the police would say. The detective she had called when Rebecca went to Helsby Hill had been kind and as much use as fly swat against a tank. He had agreed in all the right places, mentioned he had had teenage children and then at the end told her he was sending her details of counselling services offered by the local authority. To cap it all he had expressly pointed out one that specialised in advising the parents of troubled children.

  Karen took a deep breath and told herself to think and not react. What she wanted to do was to storm upstairs, grab Rebecca, shake her, tell her she loved her and to get it into her head that something bad, something really bad was happening but she knew the response she would get, the angry eyes that would look pityingly at her, and more lies.

  She reread the email.

  The email was a group email to Ella Logan’s friends from her husband Clive in Australia. Karen had only met him the once before the wedding. He had seemed like a nice man, if a little bland for her charismatic and adventurous friend. That had been fifteen years ago and aside from Christmas cards and the odd Facebook update Karen had pretty much lost touch with Ella. They had had two things in common: they’d been friends at school, part of a close knit gang who had shared their first cigarettes together, discussed their first kiss, their schoolgirl crushes, and there were only two other people in the world who fell into that category for Karen; and they both had teenage daughters. If it wasn’t for that, they definitely wouldn’t have stayed in touch, the other things they shared were too painful for all but this limited contact.

  Ella’s daughter, Melanie, was eighteen, a little older than Rebecca, but the brief emails Karen and Ella had exchanged bore out the commonality of experiences they had both gone through in bringing up a teenage girl.

  But now that shared experience had twisted, come together and rotted.

  From: Clive Logan

  To: Karen and Ors

  Subject: Sad News

  I’m sorry to have to email you this news but you need to know and I don’t k
now how else to do it.

  It seems impossible but it is true that our beautiful daughter Mel passed away last week. It was very sudden and has left us both devastated. Ella is not taking any calls at the moment but if you want to contact her then please send me an email to this address and I will make sure she receives it.

  I don’t know what else to say. I am typing this but it feels unreal. Mel, our little ‘Red’ is dead.

  I will email the funeral details to this group when I have them.

  Yours truly,

  Clive

  Karen knew, even though there was no cause of death given, how Melanie had died. The ‘sudden’ told her everything. There was something else as well, something that had lodged in her mind like a dirty penny in the mud. A photograph she’d seen.

  Karen logged onto Ella’s Facebook page. It was already full of consolation messages. It wasn’t these she had come to see though; there was something else, something older. She had tracked back through Ella’s timeline. Last year, nothing there dislodged the penny, but the year before, there was the filthy penny.

  It was just a normal photograph, the type you would see on any proud parent’s Facebook page. It was a summer shot of a barbeque in what Karen presumed was Ella’s back garden. A group of happy looking family and friends milled about eating burgers, drinking cold beers, a happy scene captured and frozen in time, probably never to be repeated for that family. In the foreground Clive was clowning about for the camera. The sun and the beer had given him a ruddy, rosy-cheeked complexion. Hadn’t Ella hinted in an email that he had been drinking too much? But what made Karen stop and cry out was the figure of Melanie, sitting at a table with some similar aged kids, in the background. In every respect she looked like a happy-go-lucky kid, except for one thing, the bandage on her right arm.

  Karen composed herself and then sent an email to Clive.

  I’m so sorry to hear about your loss. I never met Mel but from the stories Ella told me it was clear she was a charming, generous, beautiful spirit and I cannot begin to imagine how you both must feel.

  It is trite but if there is anything I can do, if Ella needs to talk, then please let me know. There is one last thing, I know Melanie wasn’t ill and I wouldn’t ever ask this but I find myself in a situation with my own daughter where I need to, so I hope you understand. The question I have is did your daughter take her own life? I ask because my daughter cuts herself and I am very afraid she is on the path to much worse.

  I am sorry to intrude on your grief this way but I hope you understand why I must ask.

  Yours in deepest sympathy,

  Karen

  She hesitated for a second and then hit send. Upstairs she heard Rebecca pad around her room, get something out of her cupboard and then return to the chair that Karen so hated, the chair by her desk that faced the computer.

  Karen tried Erasmus again, voicemail once again. She left another message. She thought for a second and then dialled again, this time the phone was answered straight away.

  ‘Hello?’ the voice was upbeat and happy, as though someone had just cracked a joke. There was one face still smiling, thought Karen.

  ‘Hello, is that Pete?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘It’s Karen, I need to know, do you still have that software on my daughter’s computer, the one that tracks her keystrokes?’

  ‘I do but … ’ he sounded hesitant.

  ‘No, buts, I need you to reactivate it straight away, I need to know what my daughter is doing.’

  Pete groaned. ‘Listen, I’m not sure that is a good idea. Snooping is – ’

  ‘It’s not fucking snooping when you’re doing it to save her fucking life,’ she snarled.

  ‘What does Erasmus say?’

  ‘It’s not his call, it’s mine,’ her voice cracked. ‘Please Pete, imagine if you thought one of your girls was in danger.’

  There was silence for a moment.

  ‘I’ll turn it back on but I’m sending you a link so you can access the connection directly so it’s up to you if you want to spy on her. It’s your call.’

  ‘Thank you, Pete.’

  ‘Sure, I’ll send it right away.’

  She rang off.

  Seconds later there was a beep from her computer announcing she had mail. She opened her mail client but it wasn’t from Pete. It was from Ella.

  Yes. It’s the Black Rose. Do you remember, Karen?

  Karen put her hand to her mouth and tried unsuccessfully to stifle the howl that tore up from the pit of her stomach.

  CHAPTER 38

  It was the phone ringing that woke him up. Its digital scream cut straight through his unconscious state and rattled the bars of his sleeping mind.

  He jerked awake and for a second wondered why he was lying naked in the empty bath. He looked up just in time to see the broken and bloody skin hanging off the knuckles that were hurtling towards his face. There was a loud click as they connected and the pain stormed on a wave of darkness, trying to extinguish the light that had only just come back on. Erasmus embraced it, willed himself to pass out and it seemed like he might be about to, his head lolled to one side and his eyelids began to drop as though weighted down with lead curtains.

  ‘No you fucking don’t, my son.’

  The cold water from the shower hit him full in the face, heading the darkness off at the pass.

  Erasmus opened an eye and saw two men standing over him.

  One was Dave, a thick bandage swaddling one side of his face, and the other was Babak. Dave held the shower and was squirting cold water over Erasmus. Babak stood further back. He was flicking through a new biography of Hemmingway that Erasmus kept in the bathroom. He looked up at Erasmus and then put a hand on Dave’s shoulder. Dave turned the shower off.

  Erasmus could taste blood in his mouth and the dark metallic tide swimming in from his nose contained small sharp fragments of bone. He spat it out, the dark red sputum falling on his soaking wet shirt.

  Babak tutted. ‘How soon we become animals. Hemmingway understood that, of course, his writing explored that place between the savage animal world and our so-called civilized world. He knew that the difference was one of abundance and nothing more. When we have enough to eat, enough shelter, enough sexual partners then we have time for civilization. Take away a man’s house, his food, his woman and then we are the same as the apes, nothing more. And that’s what you tried to do, Erasmus. You tried to take away my food, my living.’ Babak smiled and shook his head. ‘And I can’t have that. Oh my no.’

  Erasmus sat up. He only had a dim recollection of the night before. He had come round after being Tasered and he remembered taking a beating but the details wouldn’t come. It felt like his stomach was wired to the mains, every nerve ending inflamed and screaming.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Erasmus.

  Babak chuckled and put down the book on the cistern.

  ‘Oh come now, Erasmus, I am sure you do. You jeopardised Wayne’s transfer to Anzhi.’

  Babak produced a pair of black leather gloves from his back pocket and put them on slowly. Erasmus stared at the hideous gap between the fingers of Babak’s right hand. His own hand was a mass of pain and sickness. He guessed from the sensation of wetness from behind him where his hands were tied that the wound had reopened.

  ‘But the deal is still on. I just got mistaken. I thought that Cowley was planning to do something bad to the girl, to the child.’

  Babak smiled.

  ‘Perhaps he should have done so. You see Wayne is more than a footballer, he is a brand and other brands want to be affiliated with him. You tried to tarnish that brand and by association my client’s brands. This will not do.’

  He slipped on the last glove.

  Erasmus instinctively backed up in the bathtub.

  Dave was standing back now and had levelled the Taser at him.

  ‘If you try to attack me David here will electrocute you again. I should warn you that the manufacturers do
warn against getting electrocuted more than twice in twenty-four hours.’

  Babak chuckled at his own joke.

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  All pretence of a smile disappeared.

  ‘I am not a savage, I am a businessman. We did not have a written contract but our dealings are subject to rules. You interfered in my commercial interests and I need you need to pay a penalty. We need to make sure that you understand the consequences, that you won’t interfere again. It’s purely commercial. A penalty clause, if you will.’

  ‘I haven’t got any money.’

  Babak pretended to look around conspiratorially and then laughed again. ‘What a surprise! The penalty isn’t money, Erasmus. Did I tell you what my father used to do back in the old country?’

  Erasmus nodded. Of course he remembered.

  ‘He was a dentist, not trained, you understand, but in his village he was the dentist, there was no one else. He developed some rudimentary and yet effective methods. He taught me some of them.’

  Erasmus raised his left hand. He had seen what Babak was holding: a pair of black steel pliers.

  ‘No, no, no, Babak, it doesn’t have to be like this.’

  Babak nodded his head.

  ‘A penalty clause, that is all. David.’

  Dave moved forward and dragged Erasmus to a sitting position. He slammed him back against the tiles and slipped the shower cord around Erasmus’s neck and pulled it tight. Erasmus spluttered and gagged as his windpipe was crushed and just when he thought he might pass out Dave relaxed his grip slightly allowing air to make its way to Erasmus’s suffocating lungs.

  ‘I can’t wait to see this,’ whispered Dave.

  Erasmus began to struggle but his naked body just slipped and slid against the cold ceramic of the bath. His hands were bound behind him with a plastic tie and he couldn’t get any purchase on them to try and slip the bind.