Dead Simple (20 page)

‘Where’s he staying?’

‘In London — at the Lanesborough. He always stays at the best.’ She was quiet for a moment. ‘Of course, I’ve told him, but he said he would come down anyway to give me support. I’ve managed to stop my other girlfriends in Canada — four of them were coming over — and I have other friends in London I’ve convinced not to come — the phone’s been ringing off the hook for the past couple of days.’

‘Here, too.’

‘The problem is Michael has friends and colleagues invited from all over England — and the Continent. I’ve tried to contact as many people as possible, and so has Mark — but — we need at least to look after those who do turn up. And I still think Michael might.’

‘I don’t think so, love, not now.’

‘Gill, Michael played all kinds of pranks on his friends when they got married — two of them only made it to the church minutes before the wedding began, because of what he did to them. Michael could still be somewhere, locked up or tied up, not knowing anything about what has happened. He
might
still be planning — or trying — to make it.’

‘You’re a lovely girl, and you are a kind person — it’s going to be devastating for you to be at the church and he doesn’t arrive. You have got to accept that something has happened to him. Four people are dead, love. Michael must have heard about them — if he is OK.’

Ashley sniffed, then began to sob. For some moments she cried inconsolably, dabbing her eyes with a tissue she had plucked from a box on her bedside table. Then, sniffing hard, she said, ‘I’m trying so damned hard, but I’m not coping. I just — I — keep — praying he’s going to turn up — every time the phone rings I think it’s going to be him — you know — that he’ll be laughing, explaining it’s all been some dumb joke.’

‘Michael’s a good boy,’ Gill said. ‘He’s never been cruel — this is too cruel. He wouldn’t do this; it’s not in him.’

There was a long silence. Finally Ashley broke it. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Apart from being worried sick about Michael, yes, I’m OK, thanks. I’ve got Carly here.’

‘She’s arrived?’

‘Yes, a couple of hours ago from Australia. I think she’ll be a bit jet-lagged tomorrow.’

‘I should come over to say hello.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘You see what I mean — all these people coming from all over the place — we just have to at least be at the church to meet them — and offer them some food. Can you imagine if we weren’t there and Michael then turned up?’

‘He would understand — that you cancelled out of respect for the boys who died.’

Sobbing even harder, Ashley said, ‘Please, Gill, please let’s go to the church and see.’

‘Take that pill and get some sleep, love.’

‘I’ll call you in the morning.’

‘Yes. I’ll be up early.’

‘Thanks for calling.’

‘Night night.’

‘Night!’ Ashley said.

She replaced the receiver then, charged with a burst of energy, rolled over, her breasts spilling out of the open front of her dressing gown, and gazed down at Mark, who was lying naked under the bedclothes beside her. ‘Stupid cow, doesn’t have a clue!’ Her lips burst into a massive grin, her whole face alight with joy. ‘Not a clue!’

She put her arms around his neck, held him tightly and kissed him passionately, on the mouth at first, before working her way slowly, steadily, with maximum possible torture, further and further down his body.

He was sweating under the duvet. Too hot, far too hot, somehow it had worked its way right over his head and he could barely breathe. Rivulets of water ran down his face, down his arms, legs, the small of his back. He pushed the duvet off, sat up, felt a numbing crack to his skull, sank back.

Splash.

Oh Jesus.

Water slopped all around him. And felt as if it were inside him too, as if the blood in his veins and the water in which he lay were interchangeable. Some word for it. Some word he grasped for, and it eluded him, slipped from his grasp each time he closed on it.
Like soap in a bathtub
, he thought.

Cold now. Unbearably hot an instant ago, now cold. So cold. Oh so teeth-chattering-cold-cold-cold. His head was splitting. ‘Just going to check and see if there are any paracetamol in the bathroom cabinet,’ he announced. To the silence that came back at him he said, ‘Won’t be long. Just popping out to the chemist.’

The hunger had gone away some hours ago, but now it was back with a vengeance. His stomach burned as if the acids had now turned on the lining for want of anything else to break down. His mouth was parched. He put a hand out and scooped water into his mouth, but despite his thirst it was an effort to drink it.

Osmosis!

‘OSMOSIS!’ in a burst of elation he shouted the word out at the top of his voice, repeating it over and over. ‘Osmosis! Gotcha!
Osmosis!
’

Then suddenly he was hot again. Perspiring. ‘Someone turn the thermostat down!’ he shouted out in the darkness. ‘For Christ’s sake, we’re all boiling down here; what do you think we are, lobsters?’

He started giggling at his remark. Then, right above his face, the lid of the coffin began to open. Slowly, steadily, noiselessly, until he could see the night sky, alive with comets racing across it. A beam of light shone out from him, dust motes drifted lazily through it, and he realized all the stars in the firmament were projected there from the light. The sky was his screen! Then he saw a face drift across, through the beam, through the dust motes. Ashley. As if he were looking up at her from the bottom of a swimming pool, and she was drifting face-down over him.

Then another face drifted over — his mother. Then Carly, his kid sister. Then his father, in the sharp brown suit, cream shirt and red silk tie that Michael remembered him in best. Michael did not understand how his father could be in the pool but his clothes were dry.

‘You’re dying, son,’ Tom Harrison said. ‘You’ll be with us soon now.’

‘I don’t think I’m ready yet, Dad.’

His father gave a wry smile. ‘That’s the thing, son, who is?’

‘I found that word I was looking for,’ Michael said. ‘
Osmosis.
’

‘That’s a good word, son.’

‘How are you, Dad?’

‘There are good deals to be had up here, son. Terrific deals. Heck of a lot better. You don’t have to fart around trying to hide your money in the Cayman Islands up here. What you make is what you keep — like the sound of that?’

‘Yes, Dad—’

Except it wasn’t his father any more he was talking to, but the vicar, Reverend Somping, a short, supercilious man in his late fifties, with greying wavy hair and a beard that only partially masked the ruddy complexion of his cheeks — ruddy not from a healthy outdoors lifestyle, but from broken veins from years of heavy boozing.

‘You’re going to be very late, Michael, if you don’t haul yourself out of there. You do realize that if you don’t reach the church by sunset, I cannot marry you, by law?’

‘I didn’t, no — I—’

He reached up to touch the vicar, to seize his hand, but he struck hard, impenetrable teak.

Darkness.

The slosh of water as he moved.

Then he noticed something. Checking with his hands, the water was no longer up to his cheeks, it had subsided, to the top of his neck. ‘I’m wearing it like a tie,’ he said. ‘Can you wear water like a tie?’

Then the shivers gripped him, clenched his arms so that his elbows banged against his ribs, his feet knocked, his breathing got faster, faster until he was hyperventilating.

I’m going to die, I’m going to die, here, alone, on my wedding day. They are coming for me, the spirits, they are coming down here into the box and—

He put his jerking hands together over his face. He could not remember the last time he had prayed — it was sometime long before his dad had died. Tom Harrison’s death had been the final confirmation to him that there was no God. But now the words of the Lord’s Prayer poured into his head and he whispered them into his hands, as if not wanting to be overheard.

A crackle of static broke his concentration. Then a burst of twangy country and western music. Followed by a voice. ‘Well, good morning, sports fans, this is WNEB Buffalo bringing you the latest in sports, news and weather on this rainy ole Saturday morning! Now last night in the playoffs…’

Frantically, Michael fumbled for the walkie-talkie. He knocked it off his chest and into the water. ‘Oh shit, no, oh shit, shit shit!’

He fished it out, shook it as best he could, found the
talk
button and pressed it. ‘Davey? Davey, is that you?’

Another hiss and crackle. ‘Hey, dude! You the dude with the friends in the wreck on Tuesday, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hey, good to talk to you again!’

‘Davey, I really need you to do something for me. Then you could make a big announcement on your radio station.’

‘Depends what other news there is on the day,’ Davey said, dismissively.

‘OK.’ Michael fought the urge to snap at him. ‘I need you either to get someone on the phone that I can speak with via your walkie-talkie, or for you and your dad to come and rescue me.’

‘I guess that would depend on whether y’all are in an area we cover, know what I’m saying?’

‘I do, Davey. I know exactly what you are saying.’

Later, lying naked in bed with a dozen scented candles burning around them in the room, and Norah Jones singing on the stereo, Ashley lit a cigarette, then held it up to Mark’s lips. He took a deep drag.

‘Gill’s right,’ Mark said. ‘I don’t think you should go to the church, and you definitely should not go ahead with the reception.’

Ashley shook her head vigorously. ‘We absolutely should. Don’t you see? I’ll turn up there at the church…’ She paused to take a drag, then blew the smoke out slowly, deliciously, towards the ceiling. ‘Everyone will see me, the poor abandoned bride, and they’ll all feel so sorry for me.’

‘I’m not sure I agree; it could backfire.’

‘How?’

‘Well — they might think you’re insensitive, insisting on going ahead — that you’re not respecting Pete, Luke, Josh and Robbo. We both need to be seen to be acting as if we care about them.’

‘You and I have been in touch with their families. We’ve both written them all letters, we’re doing all the right things there. But we’ve been discussing the wedding for the past three days.
We are going ahead!
We have to pay the bloody caterers whatever we do, so we might as well look after those people who make the effort to turn up. It probably won’t be many — but surely that’s the least we can do?’

Mark took the cigarette from her and drew hard, inhaling the smoke deep into his lungs. ‘Ashley, people would understand. You’ve battered me with your logic for three days and you haven’t listened to me. I think this is a huge mistake.’

‘Trust me,’ Ashley said. She gave him a fierce look. ‘Don’t start wimping out on me now.’

‘Christ, I’m not wimping out — I just—’

‘Want to bottle out?’

‘This is not about bottling out. Come on, partner, be strong!’

‘I am being strong.’

She wormed her way down his body, nuzzling her face in his pubic hairs, his penis limp against her cheek. ‘This is not what I call strong,’ she said mischievously.

Grace started his weekend the way he liked, with an early-Saturday-morning six-mile run along Brighton and Hove seafront. Today it was again raining hard, but that did not matter; he wore a baseball cap with the peak pulled down low to shield his face, a lightweight tracksuit and brand new Nike running shoes. Powering along at a good, fast pace, he soon forgot the rain, forgot all his cares, just breathed deep, went from cushioned stride to cushioned stride, a Stevie Wonder song, ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’, playing over in his head, for some reason.

He mouthed the words as he ran past an old man in a trenchcoat walking a poodle on a leash, and then was passed by two Lycra-clad cyclists on mountain bikes. It was low tide. Out on the mudflats a couple of fishermen were digging lugworms for bait.

With the tang of salt on his lips, he ran alongside the promenade railings, on past the burnt-out skeleton of the West Pier, then down a ramp to the edge of the beach itself, where the local fishermen left their day boats dragged up far enough to be safe from the highest of tides. He clocked some of their names —
Daisy Lee
,
Belle of Brighton
,
Sammy
— smelled bursts of paint, tarred rope, putrefying fish as he ran on past the still-closed cafes, amusement arcades and art galleries of the Arches, past a windsurfing club, a boating pond behind a low concrete wall, a paddling pool, then underneath the girdered mass of the Palace Pier — where seventeen years back he and Sandy had had their first kiss, and on, starting to tire a little now, but determined to get to the cliffs of Black Rock before he turned round.

Then his mobile phone beeped with the message signal.

He stopped, pulled it from his zipped pocket and looked at the screen.

You can’t tease a girl like this, Big Boy. Claudine XX

Jesus! Leave me alone. You spent the whole evening attacking me for being a cop, now you’re driving me nuts.
So far his only experience at internet dating wasn’t working out too well. Were they all like Claudine? Aggressive, lonely women with a screw loose? Surely not, there had to be some normal women out there. Didn’t there?

He pocketed the phone and ran on, knowing he owed her a reply, but wondering if it was better to just continue ignoring her. What could he say?
Sod off and stop bothering me? It was nice meeting you but I’ve decided I’m gay?

Eventually he decided he would send her a text when he got back. He would take the coward’s route:
Sorry, I’ve decided I’m not ready for a relationship
.

His relaxing mind turned to work, to the paper mountain that seemed to be forever building and building. The Nigerian trafficking of young women; the trial of Suresh Hossain; the cold case of little Thomas Lytle; and now the disappearance of Michael Harrison.