The Silent Pool (8 page)

‘Wait there,’ he said ‘And thank you.’

Erasmus turned back to Ahmed and helped him up.

‘What do you want?’ asked Ahmed.

‘You see, normal human discourse can be a wonderful thing. We could talk philosophy, economics, football – what do think of the Everton's chances this year? If we just take the guns and attack dogs out of the equation then maybe we could even be friends?’

‘Fuck you,’ said Mohammed, who had started to come round.

Erasmus kicked Mohammed hard between the legs. Mohammed gave a high-pitched yelp and started shaking again.

‘Do you have to do that?’

It was the girl.

‘What?’ said Erasmus.

‘If he doesn't answer do you have to use violence?’

Erasmus considered this for a second.

‘I suppose I could take him to a spa for a treatment, but as none are on the doorstep, violence works, yes.’

‘Your friend is more sensible than you, eh? Come. Let us put this misunderstanding behind us. Ask me your questions,’ said Ahmed.

Erasmus kept the gun pointed at Ahmed. He was breathing heavily and looked pale but his eyes sparked with anger.

‘Well, OK. Now, we are getting somewhere. Did Stephen Francis owe you money?’

‘Stephen. Yes, I remember him. He was a bad one that Stephen. I liked him but he was a chaser and he thought he could catch his losses. Alas, people very rarely do.’

‘How much was he into you for?’

‘This is purely a private matter, yes? If you are recording this conversation then I wish to make it clear that I have a gun pointed at me and I have no involvement with illegal moneylending in any capacity.’

‘I'm not with the police,’ said Erasmus.

‘I'm sure you're not, you have the smell of chaos about you.’

‘Spare me the philosophy. How much did he owe you?’

‘Stephen owed me £50,000.’

‘Are you a Muslim, Ahmed?’ asked Erasmus.

‘Of course,’ said Ahmed.

‘Forgive my ignorance but isn't usury frowned upon?’

‘You are right, Mr Jones, and I would never,
in sha’ Allah
, be involved in such disgusting practices. I abide by Sharia law even when dealing with the
kafirs
. I lent your friend Mr Francis £50,000 and charged him an administration charge of £15,000. All very correct, and Sharia compliant, you understand.’

‘Sophistry. Did you kill him because he couldn't pay up?’

Ahmed started laughing, a deep rolling laugh.

‘Did you only mean to warn him? Did Mohammed hit in him one too many times?’ continued Erasmus.

The laughing stopped.

‘I didn't kill him, Mr Jones. If people fail to honour their commitments things can occasionally happen, but Stephen, well he always honoured his debts. I know it was a great relief to him. If he is dead I can assure you it was not my doing’

‘He's gone missing. You say he paid his debt but Stephen works for the council. Where did he get £50,000?’

‘I assure you that I am not. As for the source of his funds, well, that's no secret. His friends were very generous.’

‘What friends?’

‘Two men. They didn't give me their names just cash.’

‘No names? They just paid you cash and you didn't ask any questions? What did they look like?’

Ahmed raised his hands.

‘Cash is my preferred payment method. I can tell you they both wore red T-shirts. Mohammed thought they must be Liverpool fans.’

Erasmus looked down at Mohammed who was still laying on the ground holding his nether regions. He was nodding.

‘If something has happened to Stephen I can assure you I had nothing to do with it,’ said Ahmed, holding out his hands palm upwards.

‘I don't believe you,’ said Erasmus.

‘I do,’ said the girl.

‘What?’

‘It's true. He had nothing to do with it.’

Erasmus grabbed the girl's elbow and began to frogmarch her away from Ahmed.

‘You're coming with me,’ said Erasmus.

‘Let go of my arm and I'll consider it.’

Erasmus started to drag her forward and then thought better of it. ‘Do you promise not to run off?’

The girl raised her right hand and crossed her index and middle fingers. ‘Guides’ honour,’ she said.

‘Come on then, let's get out of here before these two units come to their senses.’

‘You are not a religious man, are you, Mr Jones?’ shouted Ahmed from behind him,

Erasmus shook his head. ‘I've never quite seen the upside.’

‘Then I will pray that religion finds you before it is too late. And, Mr Jones, I look forward to our next meeting. Perhaps things will be a little different when I don't have a gun pointed at my head?’

Mohammed was now in the recovery position, his breathing more regular.

‘Don't count on it,’ said Erasmus.

He gave Mohammed a kick to his side for good measure, sending him back into a prone position. Then he threw the gun far and high into the scrap metal mountain and turned to leave. The girl shook her head.

Outside he pulled her away from the entrance. ‘OK, who are you and why are you following me?’

The girl smiled. ‘Aren't you going to thank me for saving your life?’ she asked.

Erasmus grinned at her. ‘Where are my manners? Thank you, thank you very much.’ The smile dropped like an anchor. ‘Now tell me, who the fuck are you?’

The girl reached into her handbag – Erasmus could see the notebook in there that she had at the café – and pulled out a card, which she handed to Erasmus. He read it: Rachel Harrop, journalist,
Liverpool Echo
.

‘Oh shit. Come on we need to talk,’ he said.

‘You can buy me a coffee. We both know you like coffee, Erasmus.’

‘How do you know my name?’ he asked but she was already walking away from him. Erasmus looked to the sky and then followed.

She led him to a low rent coffee bar off a side street of Smithdown Lane. The café was empty apart from an old woman playing the rather incongruous fruit machine in the corner. Rachel insisted on buying and fetched them two coffees.

As she approached the table Erasmus could see that the cockiness had gone. She looked pale and shaky and the coffee was slopping out of the cracked mugs she carried. Erasmus stood up and took the mugs from her, placing them on the table. He guided her into her chair.

‘Post combat stress. You need sugar and then rest. Hang on.’

Erasmus went to the counter and bought a chocolate bar from the bored looking woman behind the counter.

‘She had a skin full, has she?’ said the woman, laughing so hard that the fat under her arms flapped like an giant bird's wings.

Erasmus ignored her and returned to the table. He broke a chunk of the chocolate bar off and handed it to Rachel. ‘Eat it.’

She half smiled and then took the chocolate and popped it in her mouth. ‘I don't know what happened, I felt fine back there, elated even, and I hate violence.’

‘It's normal. You'll feel better in a minute. If you tell me why you're following me it may take your mind off things.’

‘Ha, I knew it was a ploy you being kind.’ She took a deep breath, composed herself and then looked at him. ‘What do you know about the Bovind Foundation?’

‘I know Bovind is one of the richest men on the planet, his company invented Lightspeed, the family friendly web browser. He's from Liverpool originally, isn't he?’

‘He is but you'd never guess it now. He speaks and looks like an American. But more importantly he has that crazy messianic religious belief of the truly deluded and self righteous.’

‘So you're not a fan. But what does Bovind have to do with me?’

Rachel studied Erasmus carefully. Her glasses and sweater reminded Erasmus of one of the girls from
Scooby Do
.

‘To my editor Bovind is Liverpool's only hope of staving off the city's bankruptcy. There are rumours the Mayor's office is about to announce a unique funding deal: Liverpool the city as sponsored by Intracom. My editor sees this as the best thing that could happen to the city. They are even running a feature on him this week. The working title's “Liverpool's Messiah”. Trust me my sources are impeccable. Bovind is coming to the rescue tomorrow.’

Colour had returned to her cheeks. Erasmus handed her some more chocolate, which she eagerly accepted.

‘So what's the problem with someone saving the city? My daughter's classes were cancelled yesterday because the city can't pay the teachers. Maybe your editor is right and, by the way, what does this have to do with you following me?’

Rachel nodded slowly. ‘Lightspeed in every classroom means your kid only gets to see what they, Intracom, want her to see. It's the only software that can robustly censor out porn, violence, the dark netherworld of the web that you gravitate to when you're growing up. But it also ranks searches according to their own criteria.’

‘Every search engine does that, even Google, it's how they make money.’

‘The difference is that Intracom do it according to their own secret algorithms. Nobody knows how they work but you just try typing in “evolution” and see what comes up. The top search results are all pseudo-scientific organisations promoting Intelligent Design. Intracom are influencing how knowledge spreads.’

‘Come on, these are conspiracy theories. And anyway they can't influence textbooks.’

Rachel raised an eyebrow. ‘Jeez, do you talk to your kid much lately? Intracom own the publishing houses that publish the standard school book works in Biology, Physics, Maths.’

Erasmus felt a guilty pang. ‘What's this got to do with me?’

‘Kirk Bovind is the biggest fundraiser for the World Evangelical Church.’

‘The Third Wavers. Stephen was a Third Waver,’ said Erasmus.

A look of triumph appeared on Rachel's face.

‘But so what, so are half this city, and a huge proportion of the US and rest of the UK,’ said Erasmus.

‘I'm a junior reporter, yeah. I get to deal with the crazies, the ones who confess to a dozen murders and think that they are Napoleon, yeah. But occasionally in the shit there is a pearl. Stephen was one of those pearls, maybe even my ticket to a national. He rang me two days before he went missing, told me he knew a secret about the Church and Bovind. I was due to meet him but he disappeared. Did you know he was last seen entering the Beatles museum?’

Erasmus shook his head. Seemed like Rachel had had more success than him and Pete.

‘I did some digging, old school journalism, asked around, spoke to a barista who saw him in a Starbucks opposite the council office the day he went missing and then left heading towards the Albert Dock. I went into every shop on the dock and then struck lucky: he went into the Beatles Museum at 9 a.m. on a Wednesday morning! Why would he do that on a work day?’

‘A fan of the Beatles?’

Rachel tutted. ‘The spotty youth who was working the ticket booth remembered Stephen. It was so early in the morning and it was so unusual for him to have two customers at that time of the day?’

‘Two?’

Rachel looked triumphant.

‘Someone came in two minutes after Stephen entered. There's something else as well.’

‘Go on.’

‘He's not the most reliable of witnesses though. He was stoned out of his mind when I talked to him. But he did say he doesn't remember either of them leaving the museum. The exit is the entrance. So where did they go?’

Erasmus didn't know but he was willing to bet there was a service entrance somewhere in the building. As part of his training for 14
^th
Intelligence Company he had had it drilled into to him to look for alternative exits in every building he entered. Even now it was a habit he couldn't break.

‘So why were you following me?’

‘I started following Jenna and she led me to you. I thought you two might be having an affair, maybe you knocked off the competition, but after today I can see we both want the same thing, we both want to find Stephen.’

The mention of Jenna in the context of an affair with him distracted Erasmus for a second. Rachel caught the change in him.

‘Are you?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘Having an affair with Jenna Francis.’

‘Of course not,’ said Erasmus, but he had a suspicion that the growing flush on his face was betraying him. Rachel looked delighted that she had hit home.

‘Why did Stephen approach you?’ asked Erasmus, hoping to move the conversation along quickly.

‘I did a fluff piece on Bovind for my editor. It nearly made me puke doing it. It was hardly Woodward and Bernstein you know. All about him being a philanthropist, a man of God, the saviour of the city. I tried to put in some stuff about Lightspeed, refer to the search rankings but my editor was having none of it. Not my finest hour. It went in the paper on a Friday carrying my byline, that same evening I got a call from Stephen. He was emotional, angry at me; he said I didn't know the truth and that Bovind wasn't a saint, but that he was the Devil.’

‘The Devil?’

‘His exact words. He then told me it wasn't safe to talk on the phone and we arranged to meet up. I turned up, he didn't, and next thing his wife has reported him as missing. Suspicious huh?’

She looked up at him.

‘What should we do?’ she said.

‘We? I'm going home for a large drink. I suggest you do the same and make sure you get some sleep.’

‘But what about you, what do you know? You promised me you would tell me?’

She was talking to Erasmus’ back.

CHAPTER 10

Malcolm Ford looked out from his office on the twenty-third floor at the top of Beetham Tower. The floor to ceiling plate-glass windows afforded him a magnificent view of the city at night. He could see the blinking green and red harbour lights at the mouth of the Mersey estuary, and then south towards Perch Rock and the lighthouse that stood by the fort guarding a dock that had silted up many years ago. The Mersey lay in the centre of his view, dark and brooding. From his vantage point, Malcolm Ford felt that the city belonged to him. Far below he could see a pedestrian, probably a drunk staggering home from a bar at this time of night. He was the size of an ant. Malcolm cocked his hand like a gun and shot him as the staggering man made his way home to his tiny life.