Authors: Peter James
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Police Procedurals, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Murder, #Crime Fiction, #Thrillers
Love You Dead (16 page)
But Tooth wasn’t here to judge the man.
A siren wailed. Another plane roared overhead. He put a cigarette in his mouth, cupped his hand over his lighter flame and lit it.
He waited, smoking it down to the butt, until the last vehicle had left the cemetery gates, then trampled it out in the grass. He walked back to his rental Ford, climbed in, started the engine
and put the heater on full blast. Then he drove out of the cemetery, too. He headed to the storage depot where he deposited his gun and knife, then on to JFK Airport.
He dumped the car at the Sixt rental area in the parking lot, called his client from a payphone there and updated him.
‘Go to England,’ Egorov instructed him.
Friday 27 February
It was Angi’s birthday. Shelby told her he’d been given the night off from his warehouse job – by agreeing to work tomorrow, Saturday night, instead –
so he could take her out to celebrate.
Angi had only recently moved to Brighton, from landlocked Coventry, having split up with her partner, and she was enthralled by the novelty of living in a seaside resort. So although he had no
appetite today, he treated her to a fish and chip dinner with champagne at the Palm Court restaurant on the pier.
As she sat opposite him eating heartily, dousing her batter in salt and her chips in vinegar and ketchup, he sipped his glass of champagne and pushed his food around the plate, barely managing a
couple of small mouthfuls.
‘What’s the matter, my sexy man – not hungry?’
‘My appetite’s for you,’ he said with a forced smile. ‘You’re making me so crazy for you I can’t eat!’
He felt her foot, minus shoe, pressing between his legs.
‘I like you being crazy for me,’ she said. ‘I want you always to be crazy for me.’
He smiled again. He wasn’t actually feeling that great, but he didn’t want to spoil her big day. He finished his glass of champagne, called the waiter over and ordered a pint of
lager, hoping that alcohol would make him feel better. Hell, he’d splashed out on a taxi here, so they could have a proper celebration, so might as well get his money’s worth, he
figured.
He’d woken that morning to find a small swelling on his ankle. But nothing that bothered him too much. It didn’t seem to have grown any bigger during the day. But he definitely
wasn’t feeling right tonight, not one hundred per cent, not firing on all cylinders. He was a little giddy and a bit clammy, as if he had a touch of flu.
Of course, that was probably thanks to the horrible ride Angi had insisted he take her on, the Booster, before going to the restaurant. It had soared them up in the air, flipped them over and
then over again. And then, when he thought he couldn’t take any more, they’d gone over yet again. And again. His brain still felt as if it was revolving.
Angi looked at him and frowned. She took a tissue out of her handbag, leaned forward and dabbed his chin. ‘It’s still bleeding.’
Shelby touched his chin where he’d nicked himself shaving earlier. He’d put a styptic pencil on the cut, which normally did the trick. But as he removed his hand he saw fresh blood
on his finger. He pressed the tissue to his chin, called a waitress over and asked if she could find a small plaster for him.
Then he downed the lager fast and ordered a second pint. Angi’s plate was clean, he realized, as she picked up her last chip, mopped up the blob of ketchup on her plate and popped it in
her mouth.
‘Was it the ride?’ she asked, chewing, looking at his huge, barely touched portion of cod.
He nodded, forlornly. ‘’Fraid so. Never been very good with them.’
‘Feeling queasy, are you?’
‘A little,’ he admitted.
‘I know a good cure for that!’
He felt her foot pressed into his crutch, stroking from side to side.
‘Hmmmmn,’ she said. ‘I’m sensing some improvement.’
He gave her a weak grin. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I’m sensing that too.’
‘I think I need to take you home to bed,’ she said.
‘The night is young,’ he said, evasively, unsure he could manage anything right now.
‘My point exactly.’
She wiggled her foot.
He downed his second pint, hoping that might do the trick. It didn’t. It sent him running to the toilets where he threw up violently.
Friday 27 February
Tooth sat in the back of the limo taking him to JFK Airport. Whenever possible he took limousines in New York. He hated yellow cabs. He hated the often erratic nature of the
drivers and the cramped rear quarters of many of the vehicles, sitting with his face pressed up against a scratched Perspex screen, having to endure an endless loop of advertising videos. He only
took a yellow cab when he needed to.
Like last Saturday.
He wasn’t looking forward to his shitty Continental night flight to London, in coach. He always flew coach, because no one took any notice of coach-class passengers. None of the cabin crew
remembered them. And he had always survived by being a chameleon, by not being noticed or remembered. Just as he had in his days as a sniper in the military. He was good at being patient, waiting.
He had nothing else to do with his time. No one to care for or worry about. Except Yossarian. And Yossarian was fine right now. Mama Missick would be spoiling the dumb mutt rotten. Just like
himself, just like the dog, big old ugly Mama Missick didn’t have anyone else in the world. They were three of a kind. Stuck together. Riding the carousel that was spinning at 1,040 mph. This
meaningless Planet Earth. Riding and waiting for oblivion. Well, Mama Missick was different. She was waiting to go to Heaven.
Luckily for her, Tooth figured, one day oblivion would take care of her disappointment.
Tooth didn’t do Heaven.
The past
It happened eighteen years ago, but Jodie could remember it vividly. It
was
funny. Whatever her parents thought, Jodie found it funny. Almost hysterically funny. It still brought a big
smile to her face. A smile of glee, a smile of satisfaction, a smile at the whole ridiculousness of it all.
But of course she hadn’t dared to smile at that actual moment. She’d managed to look every bit as shocked as her parents.
It was the first anniversary of Cassie’s death. Her sister was receding into the past in both her memory and in the photographs around the house. She was pleased to see that the really big
portrait photograph of her, the one that sat in its frame on the windowsill in the lounge, the one in which she looked so truly beautiful, was starting to fade significantly.
There were so many photos of Cassie that the house had the feeling of a shrine. A shrine to Cassie. Beautiful Cassie. Daddy’s pet, Mummy’s pet, teacher’s pet. Perfect Cassie.
Jodie often wondered whether, if it had been her instead of her sister, would there have been this same outpouring of grief? This same kind of shrine?
She didn’t think so.
Neither of her parents noticed that she had discreetly moved the big photo from its original shaded position into the bay window that got direct sunlight for hours. Already the colour was
starting to leach out of her skin.
In a while
, Jodie thought,
she’ll just look like a ghost. And that will be one less picture of her to haunt me!
The family went to visit Cassie’s grave that afternoon. Her father took the day off work. Her mother hadn’t been back to work since Cassie died, she was still too distraught, still
recovering after her breakdown from the shock.
Come on, woman, get over it!
Jodie thought, silently.
You believe in God – you go to church every Sunday, so what’s your problem? Cassie’s in Heaven. She’s
probably the Angel Gabriel’s pet. Jesus’ pet. God’s pet!
Not that Jodie believed in any of that stuff. She didn’t think her sister was any of those things. In her view, Cassie was just a bunch of rotting, desiccated skin, bone and hair in a
fancy coffin that was rotting too, six feet under, in the huge cemetery off the Old Shoreham Road, where her grandparents were also buried.
Best place for her.
Good riddance
, she thought privately as she stood, sobbing and sniffing and pretending to be all sad that her sister was gone, cruelly snatched away – just as
the wording said on her neat white headstone with the fancy carved script.
Cassie Jane Danforth
Beloved daughter and sister
Cruelly snatched away from us.
‘Cruelly snatched’
–
well that bit wasn’t strictly accurate, she thought
. Fell to her death whilst walking along a coastal cliff path on a family holiday in
Cornwall during the October half-term. Pushed actually.
But that was another story – best not to go there.
Later that evening, home in bed, Jodie wrote in her diary:
We went for a pub supper after visiting the grave. Mum was too upset to want to go home right away and the poor thing was in no fit state to cook. So we drove out
into the country to a gastro pub that mum and dad like, which serves the most horrid prawn cocktail I’ve ever eaten. Tiny little things, not much bigger than the maggots that are
eating Cassie, and a lot of them still half frozen – and all smothered in a Marie Rose sauce that’s had a flavour bypass. Mum has it every time and insists I should have it too.
‘It’s a very generous portion,’ she always says.
A very generous portion of cold maggots in ketchup-flavoured mayo.
I can’t believe I ordered it again tonight. It was even worse than before.
Even though he was driving, Dad drank two pints of Harveys and ate a steak pie and beans and ordered a glass of red wine with it – a large glass. Mum had a small sherry and
they had an argument about who would drive. She insisted she would drive back. The food arrived but I had to run out of the room and into the toilet, to get away from the nauseating
atmosphere.
It was just so ridiculous. The whole day and evening.
Mum’s driving for a start. She drives like an old woman – well, she is an old woman, I suppose, forty-six is pretty ancient – but she drives like she’s a
hundred and forty-six – at a steady forty-six. She never goes over fifty, not even on the motorway. She never overtakes anything, not even bicycles unless she can see ten miles of
clear road ahead. She just sits behind them. Irritating me. But not Dad.
He even told her to slow down tonight! We were doing fifteen miles per hour behind a bicycle and he actually said to her, ‘Susan, slow down, you’re too
close.’
My family.
My embarrassing family.
The things they say.
But this really made me laugh. Mum suddenly said she wanted to light a candle for Cassie, have it burning on the table with us during our meal. So my dad went up to the bar and asked
if they had a candle they could light for his daughter. Ten minutes later the chef and two other members of staff appeared with a small cake, with a candle burning in the centre of it, and
walked towards us, all smiling at me and singing HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!
I’m still laughing about that, even though it’s nearly midnight and I’ve got homework to do for tomorrow that I’ve not even started yet.
But, honestly, I have to say, I’ve not felt so great in a long time!
Saturday 28 February
Six hours late. An hour out of JFK the flight had turned back because of a technical fault. They’d been deplaned and sat in the goddam terminal for over four hours before
finally boarding again. They’d originally been scheduled to land at 7 a.m., now it was 1.30 p.m. Most of the day wasted.
Standing in the long, snaking queue for passport control at London’s Heathrow Airport, Tooth yawned. He could stay awake for as long as he needed, and sometimes, concealed in enemy
territory back in his days in the military, that meant staying awake for forty-eight hours or longer, waiting for a target to appear. But right now he was looking forward to a few hours’
sleep in the room he had booked at the Waterfront Hotel on Brighton seafront. Maybe he was getting old.
He’d stayed awake in his cramped economy seat at the back of the plane for the entire flight, planning what he needed to do when he arrived.
Once the plane was taxiing at Heathrow and he was able to get an internet connection, he’d pulled up a street map of Brighton and Hove on his phone, reminding himself of the layout of the
city. Looking up the street Judith Forshaw had put down on the hotel registration form.
Western Road.
Was it a real or false address? Whatever. The news stories about Walt Klein said his fiancée was from Brighton. A city of just 275,000 people. New York was a city of eight and a half
million people and he never had a problem finding anyone there.
It would be a slam-dunk to find her in Brighton.
He slipped his passport out of his pocket and checked the details he’d filled in on his immigration form. His name, for the purposes of this visit, was Mike Hinton. He didn’t like
travelling on false documents, they added a layer of risk that wasn’t usually worth it. But with his recent history in Sussex, there would be a marker on his real name for sure.
Hinton.
Mike Hinton. Accountant.
Ten minutes later the immigration officer studied his passport, then asked him to remove his cap. Tooth lifted up the baseball cap, which he had pulled down low over his face, and gave the woman
officer a pleasant smile, whilst trying to mask his concern that she had recognized him.
She looked at his passport again, back at his face, back at his passport, then closed it and handed it back to him. ‘Have a nice stay in the UK, Mr Hinton,’ she said and smiled
back.
Tooth stepped forward without replying and took the escalator down into the baggage reclaim hall, where he had his holdall to collect. He didn’t like to let it out of his sight, but some
of its contents would have been confiscated if he’d tried to take it as carry-on baggage.
