Sudden Death (6 page)

Ted scuttled away.

The pounding music outside had been reduced to a far away bass thump by the soundproofing of the room and it also took a second for Erasmus’s eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom. When they did the sight was one he hadn’t been expecting. There were two large booths dominating the room, both facing the door that had closed behind him. The first booth was filled with a mixed group of young people and some of them greeted Ted with high fives and handshakes. Next to it was a second booth. In that one, a man sat on his own nursing a glass of mineral water.

Erasmus realised with a start that it was the same man he had seen staring at him at the match earlier that afternoon. The man caught Erasmus’s eye and a smile crawled up his face like a spider moving towards its prey.

Before Erasmus could respond Ted had returned and had hold of his elbow.

‘Come on, come and meet Wayne.’

Ted propelled him forward.

Seated at the first booth were five men and seven women. The woman seemed to be draped around the men in a way that suggested to Erasmus that they had been partaking of some sort of downer, a lugubrious ketamine pall hung over them.

Ted pushed Erasmus forward.

‘Everyone this is Erasmus Jones. He’s Wayne’s new
scorta
!’

The man seated at the centre of the circular seats and directly opposite Erasmus was older than the other men, he looked like he was pushing thirty, and he sneered at Erasmus.

‘So what?’ he said.

‘Erasmus meet Gary Jones, team captain.’

Gary looked away, ignoring the introduction, and kissed the ear of the blonde girl sitting next to him. Ted pretended not to notice.

‘This is Kristos, central defender,’ Ted said gesturing towards a tall, bearded and long haired giant who nodded at Erasmus. ‘This is De Marco, centre midfielder, Charley Bake, goalkeeper – ’ a well tanned and then a pasty ginger-haired men nodded in turn at Erasmus ‘ – and this is Wayne.’

Erasmus recognised him from earlier that day. Out of his kit and now dressed in a white shirt and jeans he looked like any pimply teenager you might see hanging around a bus shelter or park bench. He had a lank dark fringe that hung just short of bright blue eyes. Wayne stood up and put out his hand.

‘Nice to meet you, Erasmus,’ he said and gave him a generous smile that didn’t seem to Erasmus to be the product of a PR company’s brief.

Erasmus shook the boy’s hand.

‘Nice to meet you too, Wayne. Sorry about the result today.’

Wayne gave a half smile and looked down at the floor. Erasmus hadn’t expected the footballer to be so shy.

‘It was my fault – ’

A wet napkin hit Erasmus square in the face. It smelled of stale alcohol and tobacco. Gary Jones was laughing, clearly the originator of the missile.

‘Rules of the Blood House: We never talk about the game after the game if we’ve lost!’

He leant back and looked to his teammates for laughter. Erasmus noticed that De Marco didn’t laugh along with the others.

‘Guess you haven’t had much to talk about for a while then,’ said Erasmus.

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.’