Sudden Death (22 page)

‘What about Wayne being the future of the club?’

Another sigh.

‘It’s not how it used to be, it’s a business now. I want to keep him here, at Everton, but what can I do? I sell him and the club can pay its bills for another season. He is still the future of the club, but it’s the euros he will bring in that will save the club.’

‘I think there is more here that they’re not telling you,’ Erasmus kept his eyes fixed on Cowley as he said this. Cowley didn’t exactly look away but his eyes flickered to the left quickly.

‘I want to thank you, Erasmus. Cowley wouldn’t have come to me if you hadn’t looked into this. I deplore what has been done, it’s not the Everton way, but there is no point in crying over spilt milk. If you send me your final invoice I’ll make sure it is paid promptly.’

‘Sure,’ said Erasmus.

The line went dead.

‘This concludes our business, Mr Jones. You are, of course, bound by client confidentiality so you cannot tell anybody what has been discussed here today and even if you do we will deny it.’ Babak put out his hand, a look of satisfaction was on his face.

Erasmus ignored the proffered hand.

‘You can’t keep Wayne in the dark about this.’

Cowley snapped back, ‘He doesn’t need to know and he wouldn’t believe you anyway, not after you didn’t tell him about De Marco.’

‘You bastard.’

Erasmus considered punching Cowley but Babak leaned forward, blocking him.

Babak’s smile had disappeared. His coal black eyes sparked with anger but he kept his voice flat and moderated. ‘My father was a dentist, did you know that, Erasmus? In a small village called Panka where I grew up. As with many Armenian villages there was a man, there had always been man, who for a small tax would make sure that your premises didn’t succumb to fire or that your face didn’t accidentally fall on a rock. My father always paid him whenever he came to visit. Was he happy to pay him? No, of course not!’ Babak roared with laughter. ‘But he paid because this was this man’s business, had always been his business. But then one year, a cold, bitter year, the harvest failed and people could not afford dentists. They did their own dentistry as and when it became needed: string and doors, pliers, all very barbaric, bloody and painful. My father didn’t have money coming in and he couldn’t pay this man. The man was sympathetic but my father was interfering in his business and I understood, and I do not say this with anything but truth in my heart, I understood what he had to do.’

Babak removed his right-hand glove and held up his hand. The index and middle finger were missing, removed at the stump, leaving a sickening fleshy gap.

‘I was nine years old. He could have cut my father, of course, but then he wouldn’t have been able to work, his business would suffer and then so would the man’s. Business is blind, Erasmus, and it is also unstoppable.’

He paused and examined the gap.

‘Erasmus, my friend, I think you understand. Wayne is no longer your business but he his entirely my business. I think we can part as business acquaintances but let me be clear,’ he wagged his ring finger at Erasmus, ‘if anyone interferes with my business then I must act to protect my interests.’

The smile reappeared and he slapped Erasmus on the back.

Seemingly bidden by some signal that Erasmus hadn’t seen, the passenger door clicked open.

Erasmus paused on his way out of the car.

‘What happened to the business man? I have a feeling the story doesn’t end there?’

Babak shook his head.

‘You’re right, my friend, but it is a sad story. Some years later he fell into a threshing machine. Pieces of him scattered all over the fields, some so small that many were never recovered. The dangers of business, eh?’

Babak wasn’t smiling now. He didn’t take his eyes off Erasmus until the door of the car slammed shut.

Erasmus needed a drink.

CHAPTER 29

There were no way two ways about it. When he got the call from Karen he was halfway to drunk.

He had called Wayne after his conversation with Cowley and Babak. It hadn’t gone well. Wayne was furious that he hadn’t told him about De Marco. Erasmus knew the real reason for his fury was the feelings of grief and loss, which had no other outlet than his anger and Erasmus had supplied a target for that anger. Hadn’t this been the same transference that had led to Erasmus being kicked out of the army?

He had let Wayne unload and then walked down to Keith’s wine bar on Lark Lane. Here the tree-lined roads of the park turned into a lane filled with bohemian shops, bars and delis. It had the feel of Notting Hill but the bite and energy of a place that was still home to a mixed community of struggling artists, students and traditional working-class households rather than the trustafarian offspring of bankers and politicians.

Keith’s was the kind of bar Erasmus liked: scruffy tables and good booze. He took a table in the corner and ordered a bottle of Barolo from Mary the pretty waitress who served him. Mary’s hair colour seemed to change every time he saw her. Today it was electric blue.

‘Still no girlfriend then,’ she said plonking the bottle on the table with one glass.

‘You know I’m waiting for you, Mary,’ he replied.

She giggled and placed one hand on her hip.

‘You’re waiting for no one. You were born to be alone, Erasmus.’

‘It’s not true,’ he said and although he knew she was joking he was surprised to find that this casual comment had struck home on some level.

He and Mary had had a one-night stand a year or so back. It was inevitable he would have hit upon her at some stage but afterwards they had both been able to place the experience in the context it deserved: two lonely people hooking up. They still flirted but it was boxing with faceguards on.

‘Mmm,’ she purred. ‘I tell you what, find me a woman who believes that and bring them to me and I’ll buy you the wine. Enjoy the bottle.’

She sashayed away.

He checked his phone. He had tried to call Abby three times already but her new mobile phone rang out each time. He had even – and this had been the step that had sent him to running to Keith’s – signed up to Facebook and tried to add as her as a friend. Even though he knew she never went five minutes without checking Facebook it had been four hours and still the request went unacknowledged: a sad flag hanging limply.

He was halfway through the bottle when Pete rang.

‘Am I a techno god or what?’ said Pete.

Erasmus, pissed off at Babak’s threats, and now wound up by Mary’s one-line demolition of his love life was in no mood for Pete’s banter.

‘What is it?’

‘Christ, who stuck a stick up your arse? Anyway, we struck lucky. I happened to be checking the live feed on Rebecca’s computer because Debs has her friends round on Saturday evening for coffee, except it’s not coffee it’s wine, and if I didn’t have somewhere to go and hide away from the Abba and conversations about why their husbands are selfish bastards I swear I’d kill myself. Anyway, I check the feed and boom, there they are, chatting away.’

‘Who?’

‘Ethan and Rebecca. Who else?’

Erasmus sat bolt upright, the half cut sensation disappearing as adrenaline took over.

‘What were they talking about?’

‘She’s meeting him tonight at six o’clock.’

‘Where?’

‘They didn’t say. Just “our place”.’

He looked at his watch. It was 5.15 p.m. The sobering effect of Pete’s news was instant.

‘OK, listen, keep on the live feed. It covers her mobile, doesn’t it?’

‘Yeah, but only if she messages through Facebook.’

‘OK, keep me posted. I’m going to call Karen.’

Erasmus ended the call and rang Karen. She answered straight away.

‘Listen, I don’t mean to worry you but is Rebecca in?’

Her voice became tinged with panic almost immediately.

‘She is, she was, hang on, I’ll go and check.’

He heard the phone being placed down and then her footsteps as she ran up the stairs to Rebecca’s room. He didn’t have to wait long for her return and he knew immediately that something was wrong. She was trying to remain calm but terror was in charge now.

‘Rebecca’s not there. Please God. How did you know?’

‘Pete told me she was going to meet Ethan.’

‘Oh Christ,’ she cried.

‘OK, here’s what you’re going to do. Try her mobile and call me back if you get in touch with her. I am going to find her.’

Karen’s voice was thin and wavery. ‘Where is she?’

‘I don’t know but I do have a hunch. I’ll call you back.’

‘Erasmus?’ There was a catch in her throat.

‘Yes?’

‘Find her.’

‘I will,’ he said with more conviction than he felt.

Erasmus hung up and hit another number. A female voice answered.

‘Hi, is that Cat?’

‘Erasmus Jones, I didn’t think we would be talking again so soon.’

She sounded pleased to hear from him. Her voice playful and, did he imagine it, flirtatious? He wondered what her boyfriend Ben would have made of that? Erasmus had got the distinct feeling that Ben was the jealous type.

‘Listen, Rebecca has gone missing and I remember you telling me about the place, the Hill where some of the kids thought suicides took place. Where was that?’

There was a pause.

‘Hang on.’

He heard shuffling as though she was moving. When she came back on the line she was whispering.

‘Sorry about that. Ben doesn’t like me taking work calls after school. The place is Thor’s Rock on Helsby Hill. There is an overhang of sandstone and a little cave. We used to go there as kids as well. If you don’t know it you’ll never find it though. I can meet you at the visitor’s car park at the Hill and show you the way.’

He knew it, it was the hill that overlooked the Stanlow oil refinery and every flight in out of Liverpool flew over it. Usually on approach it felt like you could reach down and almost touch its sandstone face.

‘OK, I can get there in twenty minutes. What about Ben?’

‘Don’t worry about him. I’ll tell him I’m going to see one of my friends to talk about problems in her relationship. He will have switched off before I’ve finished the sentence. I’ll be waiting for you.’

Erasmus left a twenty on the table and left Keith’s at a brisk pace. It took him two minutes to run to the flat and jump into his Golf. He was over the limit but he had no choice. He eyed the ashtray. It was full of copper coins. If he was pulled over those were going in his mouth, an old army trick they had used to fool the military police’s breathalyser kits. Not big, not clever, but effective.

Erasmus floored the accelerator. It was 5.25 pm and Rebecca was mean to be meeting Ethan in thirty-five minutes. It would take him twenty minutes to get to the bottom of the hill and then God knew how long to get up it and find the rock that Cat had mentioned.

It actually took seventeen minutes for Erasmus to make it to the car park at the bottom of Helsby Hill. Gloomy and ominous in the fading winter daylight, it looked to Erasmus like a smaller, squatter version of Devil’s Tower, the mountain in
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
that had drawn Richard Dreyfuss’s character towards it.

His phone guided him to the car park, a small, empty asphalt space in dense woodland. There was only one other car in the car park, a red and white Mini. Erasmus pulled over next to it. He could see Cat inside.

His phone rang. It was Pete.

‘She just logged on again from her mobile. Asked him when he was coming, he said he was on his way up the hill now.’

Erasmus had a bad feeling.

‘OK, I’m here now. We are going up the hill.’

Cat stepped out of her car. Her hair was tied back, framing her large eyes and mouth. She looked even prettier than Erasmus remembered. She handed him a torch.

‘Here, it will be dark by the time we reach Thor’s Rock.’

He took the torch and turned it on. The light was fading fast now and the shadows of the trees hanging over the car park were merging into darkness.

‘Thanks. Listen, I think Rebecca’s internet boyfriend Ethan is on his way up there as well. He could be dangerous.’

She looked at him quizzically.

‘He has a name now?’

‘Don’t ask me how we know. We just do.’

Cat mimicked zipping her mouth shut and throwing away the key and then strapped on a head torch.

‘Well, we better get going then. Follow me.’

Without waiting for him she set off into the trees, following a barely visible path. Erasmus followed her as she set a vicious pace up the steep path that headed straight up through the woodland that covered the side of the hill. Erasmus was fit but he found himself blowing after five minutes. Cigarettes and alcohol had a lot to answer for and he inwardly reproached himself as Cat’s toned legs disappeared around a bend in the path ahead of them. He ran forward in time to see the cone of light from her head torch sweep ahead of him ten yards or so in front.

He checked his watch: 5.56 p.m.

Ethan must be there by now, or was somewhere up ahead on the path.

It was dark now and any fading light strangled by the closeness of the wood that gripped the path. Somewhere to the left of him in the woods there was a crack, the sound of something heavy stepping on a branch. Erasmus stopped and swept his torch around in the direction from where he had heard the sound.

All he could see were the trees pressing in. He turned back to the path and realised that he had lost sight of Cat.

‘Shit!’

He ran ahead, not scanning the path for obstacles and a second later he tripped on something in the path and fell heavily to the floor, his face smashing into the dirt. He sprang up and carried on running. The path turned again and Erasmus saw, maybe fifty yards ahead, the beam from Cat’s torch for a second before it disappeared.

She screamed. Erasmus sprinted as fast he could, legs burning with the effort required to tackle the gradient.

He nearly went flying again but stopped short of the dark object in the path. It was Cat, and she was lying on her side clutching her ankle.

‘What happened? Are you OK?’

She held out her hand.