The Silent Pool (22 page)

He reached in and grabbed a frozen loaf. Nothing a few minutes in the microwave wouldn't sort out, he thought, and after that he better pack and ring for a taxi. He gave it a tug but to no avail. It was jammed in place. He tried for a few minutes but nothing. The loaf wouldn't budge. It was frozen in place like some glacial Ice Age man.

He looked around for an implement and saw an old toolbox in the corner of the outhouse. He went across to investigate. Inside was an old rusty hammer.
Perfect
. He took it out and returned with to the freezer with a hammer and steely determination.

He picked his spot, a particularly thick piece of ice that bonded together a pack of peas and the loaf, and began to hit it furiously with the hammer. Bits of ice flew off. He would have to be careful, one of the flying shards could easily take an eye out.

Giles started to chuckle and then began to laugh hysterically at how ludicrous it was. Suddenly he found himself crying as he pummelled the ice way beyond what was required to free the loaf.
It must be the stress of it all
, he thought. Beaten up in his own home and then having to flee the country.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he said out loud.

‘So, you still believe, do you, Giles?’

Quickly a loop of material was slipped over his neck and pulled tight. He gagged as it bit into his Adam's apple.

Giles was leaning over into the freezer and tried to turn his head. The fingers of his left hand pulled at the leather rope gnawing at his trachea.

A hand grabbed his head and held it down. At the same time his body was slammed into the side of the freezer by the weight of the man behind him. His right arm holding the hammer was pinned under his own body and he dropped it into the freezer. His left arm was grabbed and held down, deep in the ice.

He tried to speak, to shout, but his face was pressed hard into the spiky, cold ice at the bottom of the freezer. The ice burnt his cheek. He could feel the weight and heat of the man holding him down as he pressed heavily, almost intimately into Giles back. Blood dripped from his cheek onto the ice by his face and pooled by a frozen sausage.

‘I'm going to ask you a question.’

‘I told the other men I know nothing about the letter, I would never try to blackmail him, never. It must have been one of the others. It's got nothing to do with me!’

Silence. Giles could hear the sound of the man breathing. He felt a warm sensation flooding his pants.

The man gave a low chuckle devoid of mirth. ‘You still don't know what this is, do you?’

He tried to scream but there was no air. He banged his hand on the freezer. The ligature loosened a little. He gasped. ‘What, what, what do you mean?’

There was a rasping sound, like dry lips being licked. ‘This is about complicity. This is judgement.’

A hand forced Giles’ head down into the ice. He felt the shards cut into the soft flesh of his face. A piece of chicken leg rearing up out of the ice pierced his left eye, blood and gore spilt out over the white ice.

His mouth couldn't open to scream.

‘Are you ready for your question?’

Giles tried to nod but the pressure driving his head down was too great. His head was forced to the side and he could see the hammer he had been hitting the ice with laying by a pack of fish fingers. If he could just bring his right arm from underneath him where his own weight was pinning it against the freezer door then he might be able to grab it and strike his assailant.

‘You scream, you die.’

The pressure on the back of his head lessened. He let out a groan.

Giles nodded and as he did so he managed to slide his right arm free. It hung limply by his side, pins and needles running up his arm to this shoulder. He was not even sure he would be able to life his arm if it came to it but he knew he had to.

‘I'll take that movement as a yes.’

‘Yes,’ mumbled Giles. He felt blood returning to his arm. If he was quick he could swing his arm up grab the hammer and then he would smash it into his attacker's face.

Giles’ assailant laughed. ‘Hope is a cancer, it destroys you, Giles. Let me remove your cancer.’

Giles was slammed hard in to the freezer again as the man's full weight bore down on his back. He watched as a large pale hand reached down into the freezer and grasped the hammer. The hand disappeared from sight.

‘I don't know anything!’

Giles screamed as he felt the hammer impact with the fingers of his right hand and smash bone to gristle.

‘Shush, be quiet now. It does not matter.’

Giles passed out for a second and then came to almost immediately, the pain slicing up his arm like molten fire. He looked down at his shattered right hand; one finger had almost disappeared. All that remained was a bony stump sticking out from his hand.

He started to faint again.

The man grabbed his head and banged it into the ice.

He screamed.

‘Maybe there is some hope left. Answer the question and you may alive up to see tomorrow's sunrise. I'll walk out of that door and you will never hear or see me again. Do you understand?’

Giles started crying.

‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ he sobbed.

‘Do you believe?’

Giles started crying. He knew there was no way out now. He knew what this was about; he knew who was holding him down.

‘Why do you care what I believe? I don't know what I fucking believe myself!’

The hammer came down on his bloody stump.

Pain unlike anything he had ever thought existed became the only thing in the world. He blacked out again and then came round. His screams were halted by the crush of ice in his mouth. Something that he realised was the remains of his eyeball, flopped onto the side of his face; it was still attached by the optic nerve.

‘Answer the question!’

Through the agony Giles tried to think. The only way to stop the pain was to answer the question. What answer would save him? He thought about school. He had been in no doubt about the existence of God then. In fact, he had had an unhealthy teenage obsession with him, almost his first love affair. But then he'd drifted away from God. Was this his vengeance for his abandonment? He didn't care. He just wanted to give the right answer to make this madman go away. Did God exist, how the fuck did he know?

‘Yes or no, give me your answer now,’ said the man behind Giles. He placed the hammer on Giles’ cheekbone. ‘The truth now!’

Giles head span, he remembered Pascal's wager: You may as well believe in God because if he does not exist it makes no difference but if he does you've covered your bases. He'd remembered; he could live.

Through blood and spittle Giles gave his answer.

There was no response.

‘Well?’ he cried.

‘Wrong answer.’

The hammer cracked Giles’ skull on the first blow.

CHAPTER 27

It was a bright sunny morning, one of those days when you think winter isn't so bad, a mere blip between sunshine before it reveals its true character, thought the Mayor. But the weather wasn't improving his mood one little bit.

‘Seriously you're all kidding me, right?’

Bovind's smile remained fixed in place. The Pastor carried on looking at the Mayor with those grey eyes that spoke of no forgiveness or mercy.

The Mayor turned to Anthony. ‘You, you're my adviser, you tell me, this is a joke, right?’

Anthony, for once in his life, looked unsure. ‘We have a legal opinion from the council's lawyers, this falls within the curriculum. Just.’

Bovind reached for the Mayor and placed his hand on the Mayor's shoulder. His fingers slid gently down his arm. The Mayor instinctively moved away.

‘It's at times like this, Richard, you need to have the Lord's strength. Sure, you are going to receive some slings and arrows but so what, think of the suffering of Jesus on Calvary Hill. You will prevail, you are the saviour of this city.’

The Mayor shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The itch in his backside was playing up; he had an urge to scratch it.

‘This textbook, the new standard issue textbook for all secondary schools in our authority's control was issued by a publishing company owned and funded by your Foundation, Kirk, and it has replaced the standard text on an executive order from my fucking office. Who did this?’

‘It was me but you had already signed it off last week. It was among your executive briefing documents,’ said Anthony.

‘You know I never read those, you are meant to tell me what is important and what is not. This, Anthony, is important!’

Kirk put an arm around Anthony's shoulders. ‘Hey, come on, Richard, don't blame Anthony here. It's a great book, we had top, and I mean top, scholars working on it. It's in thirty-two states back in the US. I think the kids and their parents are going to love it. Remember this is what parents want and it is fair to all other competing theories.’

‘I want to read some passages to you, if I may?’ said the Mayor. He opened the textbook at the page that had caused him to spit out his cornflakes earlier that morning when he opened his newspaper and discovered what he had allegedly ‘forced through’. ‘This is the section headed the “Origins of Life – Intelligent Design” “The theory of Intelligent Design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection”.’

The Mayor paused for a reaction. Only Anthony betrayed any discomfort, shifting nervously from foot to foot.

‘It gets worse. Evolution is mentioned after all. Four pages in, ah here it is.’ He held the book up, open across two pages. In the bottom right-hand corner of the page there was a box. ‘The writing is in purple on a blue background and this is what is says. “There are alternative theories to that of Intelligent Design such as Evolution but these are susceptible to criticism – see the argument against evolution and irreducible complexity on page 29.”’

The Mayor slammed the book shut.

‘Well?’

‘I suppose they are just competing theories,’ said Anthony, looking at a spot somewhere above the Mayor's head

‘Competing theories! One is based on evidence, see fucking fossils etcetera, and the other is based on faith, fucking faith!’

‘Please don't curse, Richard,’ said Bovind. His smile remained fixed but his eyes flashed with anger. The dreamy quality of his voice didn't alter.

‘You have bought this city and I expected there to be a price to pay but this is too fucking much!’

The Pastor moved as fast as a cat, jumped out of his chair and grabbed the Mayor's wrist. He held it tightly, his thumb pressing hard on the carpal nerve and brought his face within an inch of the Mayor's.

‘Mr Bovind does not ask people twice. He asked you not to curse. Apologise,’ he drawled.

The pain in the Mayor's wrist was excruciating but he remained silent.

The Pastor pressed down.

‘Gentleman, perhaps we can just all relax, sit down, maybe?’ said Anthony.

The Pastor did not take his eyes away from the Mayor's.

The Mayor looked down. He thought he might pass out or even wet himself the pain was so excruciating.

‘Sorry about swearing. Unforgivable.’

The Pastor let the Mayor's hand out of his grip. The Mayor held his hand to his chest, long rods of hot pain coursed up from his wrist. He had an urge to cry.

Bovind didn't stop smiling. It was though his consciousness had departed for those few seconds, deliberately avoiding any unpleasantness.

‘That's quite all right, Richard, perhaps we can move on to another topic, the next tranche of my funding. Is that acceptable to you?’

The Mayor, shaken, rubbed his arm, which was sending out sharp stabs of pain. He looked over at Anthony. Anthony avoided his gaze.

‘Please, carry on,’ said Mayor Lynch.

CHAPTER 28

Erasmus met Dan in Trials, the pub next to the Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts. It was an institution for the city's lawyers, and was often full of judges, briefs and their clients, and therefore a place Dan avoided if at all possible: there too many prying eyes. However, he had asked Erasmus to meet him there because he had been banned from the Mosquito Lounge. He was rather vague about the reasons why, just referred to a ‘misunderstanding’ with one of the bouncers about the man's wife, when he had called to arrange a meeting.

They had taken a table in the corner of the room. It was on a raised dais and you could see anyone walking into the bar. Dan said it was for security purposes but Erasmus knew it was because Dan wanted to check on the talent as it walked in.

Dan had arranged the meeting as reconciliation, and to talk about the possibility of Erasmus receiving some regular instructions again from the firm.

Once they ordered some wine he cut straight to the chase. ‘It ain't happening for a while, I'm afraid. The Bean has got us all working on the Bovind account. It's massive. The firm that gets the Foundation's business is going to be the major player in the city, and maybe, the country. You wouldn't believe the size of this thing. His project for Liverpool is off the scale. I'm talking a new university and hospital, both funded by the Foundation, social housing, I even heard a rumour he wants to buy John Lennon airport and rename it.’

‘What to? The Kirk Bovind airport? Is he miffed because Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, is this his revenge?’

‘Don't laugh. This man has the money to do it. He's going to change the face of this city and then, you know what I think, he's going to change the country. The sort of money he has can change pretty much anything, especially in these times.’

Dan shot a glance towards the door where a well-groomed young female lawyer had just walked in. He made a low noise in the back of his throat that Erasmus was sure Dan was not aware he was doing.

‘I don't trust them. I told you what happened at the school. His man, that Pastor, going to burn the place down, I'm sure of it.’

Dan waved his hands as though dismissing the idea. ‘You don't know that! He was just trying to scare you, these guys – whatever you think of them – are men of God. You might disagree with their tactics but they do want things to improve. It's weighing the good against the bad and I think Bovind is doing more good. You can't deny that the atmosphere has changed in this city. Money matters.’