Sudden Death (17 page)

‘You’re not staying for the rest of the game?’

‘Football’s not my thing.’

Ted harrumphed and turned back to the football.

‘What is your thing?’

Erasmus laughed.

‘Who knows?’

Ted snorted. He didn’t take his eyes off the game.

‘Never trust a man who doesn’t like football, I say. Let me know what you find.’

Erasmus jogged up the steps and then descended the stairs that took him deep below the terraces.

Once he was past the still busy lounges with be-suited men eating small pieces of food and drinking large amounts of alcohol, past the cheery bonhomie and frustrated lives, he reached a door marked ‘Private. No Entry’. He pushed it open and descended down concrete steps that led him deep into the bowels of the stadium. They were empty. Everybody must be watching the game, he supposed. Down here the roars and jeers of the crowd, a dull symphony of anger and joy, were muffled.

Erasmus walked down the deserted corridors, passing the admin offices, down steps that brought him to the lowermost corridor and the treatment rooms. From above there came a huge cheer, a goal perhaps or a sending off. Dr Khan’s office was the last at the end of the corridor, which ended five yards further on at a concrete wall painted with the club’s crest.

The door to his office was closed. Erasmus knocked. He wasn’t sure what he would do if anyone answered. Lie and say he was looking for Ted, he guessed. He needn’t have worried though as no one came to the door. He punched in the door code on the aluminium panel next to the door and a red light changed to green. Erasmus pushed open the door and walked into Dr Khan’s office.

Inside it was dark. There were no windows this deep in the stadium. He hit the light switch and a sickly, yellow fluorescent bulb flickered and clattered into life. The jaundiced light shone on the treatment table upon which he had seen Wayne getting his injections. In the corner of the room was a steel medicine cabinet and at the end of the room a consulting desk made of a rich mahogany that contrasted with the rather shabby air of the rest of the room.

Erasmus tried the desk first. He opened the desk drawers. In the first he found nothing but a yellow legal pad and a calculator, in the second, a copy of a porn magazine called
Nugget
. On the front cover was a picture of a naked woman. What made this unusual was that she didn’t have any arms.

‘Niche,’ he muttered to himself and slid the drawer shut again.

He moved across to the medicine cabinet. A simple combination lock held the door sealed. What had Ted said? All the locks in the building had the same combination.
Well, they better had
, thought Erasmus. He only had one theory as to the combination. He entered Ted’s birthday and then tried the lock. Nothing. He tried another combination of the same numbers and tired again. Nothing. A third and fourth try yielded the same results.

Erasmus pulled at the door in frustration, rattling the steel. He could easily pull the door off its hinges but he didn’t want to let Khan know anyone had been there.

Suddenly there was the sound of a door slamming from outside. Quickly, he moved to the door and placed his ear on the wood.

Silence.

From above he could make out the sound of booing. And then again a bang, more regular now. He realised it was the sound of footsteps on concrete and they were getting louder, closer. Erasmus stole a glance back at the room. There was nowhere to hide. He had to hope that whoever it was wasn’t coming his way.

The footsteps were close now and then they stopped. He was sure the person was in the corridor outside but there had been how many rooms off this corridor? Maybe five or six? The odds were with him.

There was a noise outside. Someone looking for something? And then the door handle moved downwards, catching Erasmus’s belt briefly and then releasing it and continuing downwards. Erasmus held his breath as the person pushed the door. Nothing happened. Whoever it was hadn’t keyed in the code.

He had maybe less than ten seconds. Erasmus ran as silently as he could to the end of the room and jumped on top of the mahogany desk. He reached upwards and pushed a polystyrene square of the suspended roof back. He felt for the joist, his fingers gripped the wood, and then he pulled himself up through the gap just as he heard the loud click of the lock disengaging and the door begin to open. There was no time for him to replace the tile. He would have to hope that the visitor didn’t look up or, if he did, would just assume that this was another sign of the general shabbiness of the ground.

Erasmus flattened himself against the roof tiles and held his breath. He couldn’t see the door from this angle but he could see the medicine cabinet and a corner of the desk. With a growing sense of horror he realised he had left the light on. Surely, the man – from the breathing and sound of movement he could tell it was a man – who had entered the room would notice that fact and then look up at the space in the roof and reach the obvious conclusion.

For an agonising moment Erasmus awaited the inevitable. He braced himself for the lies he would tell or the fight he may have. The adrenaline fuelling his system made the sound of his own heartbeat sound like the roar of the crowd so much so that he was sure the man would hear it.

The man moved forward and went straight to the medicine cabinet. Erasmus recognised him: Steve Cowley. He fiddled with the combination lock and a second later it was open. Erasmus could see the tools of the trade inside: vials, boxes and containers of pills. Cowley produced a small blue cardboard box and placed it inside the medicine cabinet, then shut the door and snapped the lock shut.

It was at this moment that Erasmus’s mobile phone began to vibrate in his pocket. The noise of the vibration was deafening to Erasmus’s ear but there was no way he could access the phone without making the tiles beneath him creak loudly.

Cowley looked up, directly into the dark void, at Erasmus.
Busted
, he thought.

Cowley squinted. The dim light and the darkness of the void hid Erasmus’s face but he knew that if Cowley moved, changed the angle, then he would see him clearly. Cowley kept his eye on the void and began to move slowly to one side for a better look.

Suddenly there was a growing roar from the crowd above, followed by a deafening outburst of noise as they went crazy.

Cowley took out his own mobile phone and checked it.

‘That’s my boy,’ he said to himself.

The roar began to subside and at the same time Erasmus’s phone stopped vibrating. Cowley looked up again and then shook his head. He put away his phone and left Khan’s office. Erasmus waited for a moment and then jumped down and went to the medicine cabinet.

He had seen the first two digits Cowley had dialled in and he had a suspicion that the second two were the same. Carefully he moved the dial to 6969 and tried the lock: it clicked open.

Once open Erasmus picked up the small blue box. He didn’t recognise the name of the drug so he took a picture of the box with his iPhone. He opened the box. There were five foil wrappers each containing thirty pills. Erasmus placed one of the strips in his pocket and then carefully replaced the box and shut the medicine cabinet. He hoped Khan wouldn’t notice the missing strip and if he did then maybe he would blame Cowley or the manufacturers.

His phone vibrated again. It was Pete.

Erasmus answered.

‘Raz, where are you?’

‘I’m at the match.’

‘Yeah, I told you it would be a good game. Wayne’s just scored the goal of the season apparently.’

‘I didn’t see it.’

There was an exasperated sigh from Pete.

‘Jesus, are you sure you should live in Liverpool?’

‘Is there a purpose to this call?’

If Pete was offended by Erasmus’s exasperation he didn’t show it.

‘Two-fold. One, Debs says your diet is disgusting and you should come round tomorrow for some real food and wine instead of a takeaway and that pretentious Japanese whisky you drink, and secondly, I’ve got some interesting news about our Rebecca.’

‘I’ve got some interesting news myself. I’ll see you tomorrow. What time?’

Pete gave Erasmus the details. It crossed Erasmus’s mind to take Karen with him. But then he remembered she was still only a client and Debs, well, Debs hated her for what she had done to Erasmus.
No plus one then
, he decided.

CHAPTER 22

Louise hadn’t been sure at first. Quite frankly it was the type of thing she wouldn’t ever have imagined herself doing, but Jenny had been insistent and, well, although she didn’t like to admit it she had been lonely recently.

The kettle clicked off and Louise poured the boiling hot water into the new flask that she had purchased yesterday just for the occasion. Jenny had said she liked her coffee with lots of sugar, it gave her energy, so she was careful to add a couple of teaspoons more sugar than she thought sensible. Louise giggled with nervous excitement. She wasn’t being herself and she liked it.

She hoped the wicker basket wasn’t too much. Given the time of year she supposed they might have to have an indoor picnic but Louise loved it. It was a present from her ex-husband and one of the few things from him that she hadn’t thrown away or burnt.

In it she placed tuna and mayonnaise sandwiches that she had carefully wrapped in baking paper, sliced pork pies and a tupperware containing strawberries covered in melted chocolate, the good kind.

She closed the lid of the picnic basket and looked up at the kitchen clock. Jenny would be here to pick her up in five minutes. Louise hadn’t felt up to driving all the way up to the Lakes. She could drive, of course, it was just her confidence had taken a knock when Chris left her, and she hadn’t quite got back into doing a lot of the things that she used to take for granted.

That counsellor her doctor had sent her to – fat lot of good he had been – had suggested that she might be having a breakdown, whatever that was. She had had to explain to her that yes she was sad that Chris had left but that it was for the best and things would work out over time. And wasn’t it true that they had? Work had been very understanding at first and let her have some time off. The sleeping hadn’t become easier but once she, and work, had decided that it would be better if she took a longer period off work, she hadn’t needed to be so alert in the daytime and the lack of sleep hadn’t been such an issue.

And now with the internet there just wasn’t the same need to leave the house as there had been in the past. You could do everything online: order food, buy clothes, do your bills, email your friends, and even make new friends like Jenny, people who took an interest in you for who you are, not who you were or weren’t married too and whether you had any children.

She had met Jenny on one of those sites reuniting old school friends. It had been a bit embarrassing at first when she received the email, because she couldn’t quite remember Jenny. She hadn’t pretended to know her, that would have been dishonest, but she hadn’t told her she didn’t remember exactly either. Not that it mattered. School hadn’t been a particularly happy time for Louise and it was all a long time ago. Jenny had eventually explained that she was in the year below Louise and that they had only spoken a couple of times so that explained her memory problems. The truth was her memory was suffering, maybe it was the insomnia or maybe it was the dreams – so much worse than the insomnia – that terrorised her nights. Dreams of blood and a child hanging from a rafter. She shook her head violently. Nasty thoughts needed to be shaken away.

Had she just thought that or said it out loud? Sometimes she couldn’t tell which it was. It was easy to make that mistake when you lived on your own.

She patted Milligan. He was so excited to be going out for a walk. It had been such a long time since he had had a proper walk. He licked her hand. She must remember to feed him properly before they set off so he wouldn’t be tired and hungry halfway through their walk.

‘A waterproof coat is absolutely essential. Make sure you’ve got it on when I pick you up. I want to see it.’ That’s what Jenny had said. Louise had had to buy a new one online, of course. It had come two days ago. It was bright orange and she had hung it over the back of one of the chairs at her kitchen table. She slipped it on now and pulled up the zipper to her neck. Cosy. She giggled again.

The doorbell rang. Louise’s tummy span with excitement. She was looking forward to the walk, anxious about leaving the house, of course, but excited about meeting Jenny, Jenny who seemed to understand her more than anyone else had done in a long time, perhaps for the first time.

She walked out of the kitchen and into the hallway. Behind the thick, obscured glass she could see a dark figure waiting on the doorstep.

In her excitement she tripped on the boots she had bought online and left in the hallway. Jenny had said that they would need stout walking boots. Stout walking boots! As if she possessed such things!

She hesitated at the door, her hand on the latch. She took a breath, composed herself and then opened the door.

She started to smile and then felt the smile was dragged down by the weight of a thousand screams that would never come.

‘I know you, you’re not Jenny,’ she heard a voice say from a million miles away.

‘No, no I’m not.’

‘I know who you are.’

A crooked smile like the crudely sewn on grin of a scarecrow appeared on her visitor’s face.

‘That makes this so much easier for both of us then.’

The door slammed shut.

CHAPTER 23

Erasmus didn’t like schools. This school, unlike the one he had gone to as a child, was new, but the atmosphere was the same: barely restrained violence of children growing up.

The corridors were glass and steel as opposed to the dusty, green tiled passages of his school, a place that still held a terror in his mind, equal to, if not more so, than some of the battlefields he had fought upon.

He straightened his tie before knocking on the maple wood door to Rebecca’s form room.

The door swung open immediately. Greeting him was a petite girl in her mid twenties maybe, wearing a plaid shirt and with one of the most welcoming and beautiful smiles he had seen in some time. Her hair was cut into a bob and she looked to Erasmus like she had stepped straight out of Central Casting for a Sorbonne student circa 1968.