Sudden Death Read online

  A look of anger flashed on Gary’s face and he leapt to his feet.

  ‘Who the fuck is this nobody? You know the rules, get him out, Ted!’

  De Marco started laughing and slapped Gary on the shoulder.

  ‘He’s right though, Jonesy, yes? We ’av been merda!’

  This broke the tension and Wayne started to laugh followed by the others. Gary hovered over his seat for a second, assessing the support for any further action. Realising there was none, he smiled a violent smile and sank to his seat.

  ‘But, Ted, he is right, you know the rules. Ciao Erasmus,’ said De Marco.

  Ted’s eyes flicked from side to side.

  ‘Yeah, of course, just wanted you guys to meet the new guy.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Erasmus,’ said Wayne.

  ‘And you kid,’ replied Erasmus.

  Ted was pulling at Erasmus’s arm.

  ‘Come on, we need to go.’

  Gary Jones was staring at Erasmus daring him to look away. Erasmus winked elaborately at him and turned away.

  ‘What rules?’ asked Erasmus.

  ‘Only players, agents and invited guests in here. If one says you go you have to go and Jonesy wants you gone.’

  ‘Gary Jones is a charmer isn’t he,’ he said to Ted.

  Ted didn’t look at Erasmus.

  ‘He’ll be gone next season. Hamstrings. They get like ageing racehorses. What did you think about Wayne?’

  ‘He’s a kid.’

  Ted harrumphed.

  ‘A kid with the future of this club on his shoulders.’

  ‘And the man, at the other booth.’

  Ted stopped and faced Erasmus.

  ‘Babak. Just hope you don’t ever have to deal with him. Come on, I’ll give you a lift home.’

  Erasmus’s tenure as a scorta had begun that day two weeks ago. Since then he had followed Wayne around, from training ground to club, from match to club. And always that club was the Blood House and always it ended with a closed door to the Blue Room: the players’ inner sanctum. He hadn’t been inside since.

  ***

  The realisation that he was about to die hit him before he committed himself to the jump. He stopped, teetering on the edge for a second and then he stepped back. Waves of panic engulfed him, sending pins and needles shooting up his arms and converging in his chest. He sank to his knees; trying to catch his breath, force it to carry oxygen to his hungry lungs.

  It had been three years, four months and two days since he had last felt the overwhelming feeling that he felt now. Shit, he thought he had left this behind. He tried to concentrate on the cement floor. As he did so he became dimly aware of people laughing.

  He looked up, straight into the face of Wayne Jennings.

  His hyperventilating began to calm and he realised that he was surrounded by at least ten people, most of whom were laughing hysterically. Erasmus slowly got to his feet.

  Wayne Jennings, the reason he was here, had a hand over his mouth and was shaking his head. Erasmus recognised three of the group as other players – Gary Jones, the captain, De Marco and Kristos – and they had been joined by the two bouncers who were also laughing. The rest of the group were all young girls, tanned and scantily clad even though it was the middle of January. They were holding bottles of champagne and all of them were laughing, apart from Wayne who looked concerned.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Raz, it was a joke. We wanted to see how far you would go to protect me. I can’t believe you were going to jump!’

  Wayne, rosy cheeked and despite the thousand pound suit and shoes, looking like a naughty schoolboy who had just been caught having an extra biscuit, stuck out his hand and helped Erasmus to his feet.

  ‘A trick? Why?’

  Gary Jones slapped his thick forearm around Erasmus’s shoulder. He stank of stale booze and tobacco mixed with his expensive cologne: a stomach churning scent.

  ‘A bet. I bet Wayne that his new scorta wasn’t the real deal, that if Wayne was ever kidnapped by ragheads or scallies, he would be a goner. We thought we’d see. We were hiding over there,’ Gary pointed over to a dark corner of the roof. Erasmus could just make out a small service hut. In his rush onto the roof he had run right past it without seeing it. ‘I tell you, we were pissing ourselves. I couldn’t believe you took out the bouncers as well. Don’t worry, we squared it with them.’

  ‘Charley did the voices. Charley, show yourself!’ shouted Kristos.

  On the opposite roof the club’s goalkeeper stood up from where he had been hiding in the shadows.

  ‘Erasmus, Dave’s dead!’ he shouted over at them.

  Cue more hysterical laughter.

  Erasmus breathed in and let the urge to break Jones’s fingers disappear with the exhalation.

  ‘And you thought you’d do that by pretending Wayne had been kidnapped and risking my life?’

  Erasmus pulled Jones’s arm away from his shoulder. Wayne looked down at the floor and his face flushed.

  Gary raised his hands, palms facing Erasmus.

  ‘Whoa there, buddy. I thought you were meant to be his scorta, hard as nails, willing to take a bullet. It’s only a six foot gap, you pussy! Charley jumped it no problem.’

  ‘I could have died.’

  Jones relocated his arm around the waist of a pretty young blonde girl. Erasmus noticed she shivered and wondered whether it was the cold or Jones’s touch that brought it on.

  ‘Look again, scorta.’

  Erasmus turned and looked down. Now he looked closely he could see that about ten feet down there was a net, stretched between the buildings, covering the whole of the alley.

  ‘They put it up there when they built the roof terrace. They didn’t want any drunks falling off. Come on, have a drink, we can toast your cowardice!’

  Jones snatched a bottle of champagne from the girl he was holding and offered it to Erasmus. The girl made a pawing motion, like a child reaching for a sticky sweet, but Gary shoved her aside.

  Erasmus tried to breathe in and relax but before this thought had time to be put into practice he had already moved forward, grabbed Gary by the back of his neck and was propelling him forward towards the edge of the building.

  ‘What the fuck!’

  Gary’s cries were cut off and replaced by a scream as Erasmus stopped Gary right on the building’s edge and, keeping a tight grip of his collar, pushed him forward so he was suspended above the drop.

  ‘What do you think of the drop now?’

  Gary tried to speak but no words came out, his tongue lopped about in his mouth, waiting for air.

  ‘Silly games get people killed.’

  ‘Please – ’

  Erasmus extended his arm further. Gary’s toes were now over the edge.

  Erasmus felt the anger swirl and break inside him. His fingers loosened their grip.

  Suddenly a hand gripped his arm. Erasmus’s turned his head. It was Wayne’s.

  ‘Don’t,’ whispered Wayne.

  Gary was whimpering and the smell of urine was evident. Erasmus pulled him back from the edge and threw him to the floor.

  Wayne’s face had turned the colour of sour milk.

  ‘You wouldn’t have done it would you, Erasmus?’ asked Wayne.

  Erasmus ignored him and started to walk away towards the door that led to the stairs. He paused as he passed the girl who Gary had snatched the champagne bottle from. Now he was close he could see she was just a kid, nineteen at the most. Even under all her make-up he could make out the faint outline of a bruise on her right eye.

  ‘That one is bad news. Leave him,’ he said.

  She pouted, large red lips almost clown like under the weight of heavy, red lipstick, but she didn’t look away.

  ‘I love him,’ was the simple reply.

  Erasmus shook his head.

  As Erasmus reached to open the door to the stairs it was pushed open from the other side and Dave, the security guard assigned to look after the players, appeared. He looked
surprised to see Erasmus and then his face broke into a big grin.

  ‘Did you jump?’ He started to laugh.

  Dave was a big man and used to be taken seriously. It was therefore a surprise when Erasmus didn’t laugh along with him but instead shoved his head fast and hard into Dave’s nose, causing it to make a crunching sound. Dave fell back clutching his broken nose. Special forces or not, if you weren’t expecting a head-butt your nose broke just like any other.

  ‘Tell your boss, I quit,’ said Erasmus as headed down the stairs.

  CHAPTER 6

  Erasmus’s office amounted to two rooms in the old, draughty but glorious Cunard Building, one of the three commercial buildings, The Three Graces that stood as proof of the city’s once mighty industrial past on the banks of the Mersey. Rent was cheap here now as the more successful businesses retreated like the tide, away from the riverfront to the newer, less draughty, glass and steel offices that had begun to populate the city.

  The first room was an antechamber to the slightly larger second. Pete was sitting in this room in a chair by the desk that functioned both as his desk and reception. He was wearing a white grandad shirt, houndstooth trousers and from his headphones Erasmus could hear the strains of ‘Itchycoo Park’.

  As Erasmus entered the office Pete took off his headphones. He looked concerned.

  ‘Listen, you’ve got a visitor and –’

  Erasmus wasn’t expecting anyone as he knew that their diary was empty. If they hadn’t taken the Wayne Jennings case there would be no money coming in at all so a walk-in was good, especially now he had quit the Jennings case.

  But it wasn’t good. It was devastating.

  He opened the door to his office before Pete could finish. As he entered he had just enough time to register the smooth, lithe curve of the seated woman’s neck and the soft brunette curls that she had swept to one side of that neck before she turned to face him.

  He couldn’t help himself, the words were out before his normally reliable brain had time to exercise its veto.

  ‘Shit.’

  She smiled at him but it was a forced smile.

  ‘ – It’s Karen,’ finished Pete from behind him.

  ‘Nice to see you too, Erasmus,’ said Karen.

  Karen Kelly, the first owner of Erasmus Jones’s heart, the woman he had loved in a way that he knew was impossible for him now, whatever happened, whoever he met, the woman who he would have died for, for which a piece of him had died, and the woman who had left him a wreck and with no option but to run away and join the army, faced him for the first time in fourteen years.

  Erasmus wasn’t sure but he felt like he was viewing the scene from above and it seemed as though he watched himself calmly walk around and take a seat behind his desk, like a real solicitor and not one whose heart was pounding as though he had just been in a fire fight. He was only vaguely aware of Pete shutting the office door.

  And then he was back in his body and looking across the table at the person he knew he had loved and who had hurt him more than anyone else alive and yet all he wanted to do was touch her. Fuck! He managed to breathe and surprised himself by being able to speak.

  ‘Karen, I can safely say you are the last person I expected to see in my office today.’

  She smiled again, this time it was a little less forced.

  ‘I’m sorry I have to do this to you. I know things, I could have been different, behaved differently, but … ’ she trailed off.

  Inside, Erasmus was screaming obscenities at her. ‘Behaved differently’, well, yeah, that would have been a start. Not turning up the morning they were due to fly around the world together, a trip they had been planning for two years, and announcing that she didn’t love him any more and that she was leaving him for her boss, some seedy thirty-year-old she had copped off with at the office party. Not leaving him to have to take back the engagement ring he had stashed in his backpack to the jewellers and explain to them that it hadn’t gone to plan.

  Instead he heard a calm voice that sounded like his say, ‘That’s OK. It’s nice to see you after all this time, Karen. How can I help you?’

  She looked on the verge of tears. Time had added some wrinkles, a few laughter lines, but it was still the Karen that he had loved. Erasmus’s stomach did a backflip.

  ‘I don’t know whether you know but me and Tony had a daughter, Rebecca, not long after we split up.’

  Split up? It was like calling a mugging an exchange of ideas about wallet redistribution, thought Erasmus. The daughter, he knew about. He had been told by a friend a couple of years after. It had been vinegar in an open wound but by then Erasmus had seen and done things that put things in a different perspective.

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘She’s in trouble.’ She began to sob and then while Erasmus struggled with conflicting emotions over whether to move around the table and try and comfort her, she pulled herself together.

  ‘Me and Tony split up five years ago and since then there’s been nobody else, at least nobody important. I’ve had to try and steer her through her teenage years alone and you know how hard they can be. Did you ever have kids?’

  His stomach again, this time somersaulting at the thought of lost possibilities and alternate futures.

  ‘One, a girl.’

  He looked out of the window at the Mersey. It was broiling, grey and angry.

  ‘It’s a cliché but you know it’s true; they change everything. Your life really isn’t your own any more, you would do anything for them, die for them at the drop of a hat.’

  Erasmus wanted to say that was how he had felt about her. He said nothing instead.

  ‘I think she’s become part of something bad, something really bad and dangerous.’

  Erasmus needed a drink and quick. The adrenaline causing his stomach to pitch and roll had flown through his nervous system and it was lighting up like a forties telephone switchboard. Unless he added booze he would be on the floor breathing through a paper bag before he knew it.

  ‘Drink?’ he asked and, not waiting for a reply, fished out a bottle of Yamakazi he kept on standby for emergencies. Luckily, there were two semi-clean glasses in the desk drawer and he filled both up with generous measures. He passed one to Karen and drank his in one, replenishing it straight away.

  Karen looked on agog.

  ‘Shock of seeing you,’ he explained. ‘So what kind of trouble?’

  ‘Can you remember what it was like when you were sixteen? The strength of your emotions, how passionate you felt about the world, how it left you breathless with excitement at the possibilities?’

  Erasmus could and even with the benefit of twenty years experience that had slowly crushed those dreams and passion, he could still remember the feelings that a piece of music, an argument, and the possibility of love, could bring.

  ‘I can, but I can also remember the angst, being miserable as sin and thinking I was being deep and lost in an existential fugue rather than sulking.’

  Karen leant forward and Erasmus found himself mirroring her, shortening the distance between them across the desk.

  ‘About two years ago Rebecca changed. I was expecting it, of course, but it’s still a shock to the system when it happens. I wish I could apologise to my parents for what I must have out them through. She went from being a kind and sweet child to a selfish, sulky teenager who would shut the door to her room if she heard me coming upstairs and who barely talked to me, and this happened so quickly.’

  ‘Par for the course so far though.’

  ‘It’s not that I’m worried about, all that is normal. Annoying, but normal. What I’m worried about,’ she began to choke up again, ‘is what happened two days ago.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘The last six months, she’s been acting even worse than normal. Not coming down for dinner, barely communicating even when pressed and then I noticed she was covering her arms. It reminded me of a girl from school. When this girl turned fourteen she stopped
doing PE. This wasn’t unusual, to be fair. Lots of us felt uncomfortable as our bodies began to change and the list of excuses for missing PE was always long. But she missed week after week and there are only so many times you can blame your period. She also took to wearing long sleeved blouses even in summer. Some of the girls bullied her.’ Karen’s eyes flickered to the side for second and she paused as though composing herself. ‘You know how children can be.’ She cleared her throat and continued ‘Eventually, the gym teacher, a tough old woman called Agatha had enough and when faced with her latest excuse, grabbed hold of her in the changing rooms and shook her, ripping the top of her blouse. She let go of her when she saw what was beneath the material. Old, white scar tissue crisscrossing her arm and newer pink tracks. She had been cutting herself. So, when Rebecca started covering her arms I was suspicious. But when I found a craft knife in her bag I knew.’

  Erasmus always wondered how his experiences, day by day, changed him but the slow drip of the world meant it was hard to tell. Here, looking at the woman he had loved, he saw the change that life wrought on the once young. The Karen he had loved had been daring, fearless and full of adventure. It was difficult to square this with the anxious, worried woman in front of him.

  ‘I accessed her Facebook account. I’m not one of her friends, I used to be but she removed me, and her privacy settings are set on high. I guessed her password though. It was “Timmy” the name of our old dog. I logged on, violated her privacy but when you become a mother, you do things, anything.’ She looked down at the desk and then took a sip of the whisky he had handed her. ‘Her regular Facebook account was an eye opener, for sure. She has been smoking, a bit of drink, that I guess I expected, and so far, nothing that we didn’t do, Erasmus. Surprisingly, it seems that she is still a virgin. I can see from your face that you think I’ve gone too far.’

  And it was true. Erasmus was trying to square what this Karen was telling him with the Karen who had been such an outspoken supporter of Human Rights, demonstrating against any number of dictatorial regimes.

  ‘Being a parent changes everything.’ She looked at him quickly and then away again. ‘I found something though. Her browser history showed she had been going to sites that dealt with self harm and – ’ her voice caught ‘ – suicide.’