Sudden Death

It was dark but not too dark for him to register how far the drop was to the concrete below and for some primal part of his brain to rebel and, without even realising what he was doing, step back from the precipice.

His stomach twisted and sent a rush of adrenaline through his system. Christ, he hated heights. A parachute jump, sure, that was no problem at all. He could step out of the plane and barely increase his heart rate, but when he could see the ground it set him reeling.

‘Erasmus, here!’

This time the voice was louder and it was unmistakably coming from the roof of the building next door.

He took a hesitant half step forward towards the edge and then halted.

The roof on the building opposite was of a similar size to the Blood House roof. Its surface lay mostly in darkness and with very little moonlight Erasmus couldn’t make much out in the shadows save for a large, rusty looking satellite dish.

He looked away from the roof and turned his head at an angle so he wasn’t looking directly at it. Using his peripheral vision, which was less sensitive to lack of light, he blinked every few seconds so his vision didn’t adjust to the lack of light and lose its sensitivity. It was an old army trick. He scanned the roof area without looking directly at it. And then there, on a part of the roof that was darker than the rest, was something that looked like a figure.

Erasmus cupped his heads together and shouted. ‘Dave, is that you? Are you OK?’

The figure moved slightly and then began to speak, repeating the same phrase over and over. Erasmus leaned forward trying to make out the words, trying to convince himself that what he thought he had heard wasn’t correct.

The wind dropped for a second and Erasmus heard him clearly now. He froze.

‘Dave’s dead, help me,’ said the figure.

Erasmus recognised the voice of his client. Something was very wrong.

From behind him there was the clang as the steel door that led out onto the roof hit the concrete doorframe. He stole a quick glance from behind the bar. It was the two bouncers. They had followed him up here. Erasmus noticed that the smaller and older of the two was carrying something in his right hand. Erasmus started to duck back behind the sign but he was too late, he caught the eyes of the older bouncer.

‘There. Go get him, Craig!’

The younger man began to walk forward quickly. He looked excited, always a bad sign, thought Erasmus.

He would have to move quickly. He had two options: give himself up to the bouncers, explain the situation, wait for the police to arrive and then, maybe, finally, take a tour of the building next door so the police could see if his story checked out, by which time it may be too late for his client; or jump.

Erasmus looked at the gap. It was probably less than six feet wide. An easy jump if it was between two marks on the floor. But with a drop of one hundred and fifty feet it became a different prospect all together. Bile rose in his stomach. Maybe the bouncers would listen?

He put his head around the sign again. Craig was standing right in front of him. He was so wide that Erasmus couldn’t see the other bouncer hidden behind his bulk.

Erasmus held his arms up palms open.

‘Listen, I haven’t got time. My client is in danger, he’s over there on the other building and – ’

Erasmus was cut off mid-sentence by the swinging right arm of Craig. Instinctively, he ducked and the sledgehammer fist went sailing over his head: Negotiations were over.

He didn’t have time for finesse. From the crouching position he had adopted, Erasmus jumped up and swung his right foot hard into Craig’s steroid shrunken testicles. Craig’s cheeks hollowed as he sucked in air and then almost immediately expelled it in a shriek. He collapsed to the floor. As he did so, two silvery jets, shot towards Erasmus. He swerved to his left and the shiny projectiles impacted against the wooden sign behind him. They were attached by trailing wires that led back to the Taser in Jeff’s chubby hand.

Jeff spat on the floor and his eyes flashed with anger.

Erasmus blew out a relieved sigh. If the Taser’s barbs had hit him he would now be enjoying the pleasures of 50,000 volts of electricity running through his nervous system.

Jeff hit a button on the Taser’s body and the projectiles whirred backwards. He started to reload the gun with an air cartridge.

Erasmus contemplated charging him. He could easily get to him before he could reload but the Taser had a drive stun mode, meaning that the bouncer would only have to touch the gun’s electrodes against Erasmus to incapacitate him instantly.

No, in the time it would take the bouncer to reload, Erasmus would have to move.

He ran around the rear of the sign and began sprinting at a perpendicular angle to the low parapet wall. An image of a theatre with high walls and velvet curtains from a long, long time ago filled his mind, and then he changed course and headed for the wall.

Behind him there was a shout of ‘No!’

Erasmus’s right foot pushed hard against the top of the parapet just as he realised that he was about to die.

CHAPTER 3

Rebecca was in love. She was sure of it. It was the feeling she had only thought possible in an Austen or Meyer novel, not something destined for her. And it was true, you only knew what it could be – how consuming, demanding and overwhelming – once you had experienced it. It was all-consuming, giving yet hungry, and it was like nothing she had ever felt before in her seventeen years.

She had rushed home from school; a day spent thinking about this moment, this time, her love. She could have used her phone but he had been very clear from the start that this was a private love, and he was right. She wanted to share it with her friends, but not her mother, of course, what did she know about love, real love? Yet she knew that in sharing it she risked diluting it, and it becoming nothing more than the currency of gossip and the shrieking hyperbole that her friends reserved for their silly schoolgirl crushes. He had warned about this.

The key had been in her hand since the bell rang signalling the end of another school day. She lived close enough to walk to school but she had sprinted home, unlocked the front door, ignored her mother’s weary greeting shouted from the lounge over the din of the TV and run up the stairs to her bedroom.

She flung her bag on the bed, still covered with a pink bedspread illustrated with little ponies that she loved, and pulled out her laptop from underneath the bed. She sat cross-legged on the bed and turned on the computer. She was breathless with the thought of what awaited.

The old laptop spent an age warming up before the blue screen and icons appeared. She had set her wallpaper to a picture of the Milky Way, which reminded her of her dad, now long gone. He had pointed out the constellations to her on a holiday in France on a clear, cold Brittany night as they stood outside their tent looking into the dark blue of the endless universe.

She didn’t see this now though. Now, she just hit the internet browser icon and clicked on one of her favourites, her only favourite these days if the truth were told. Then she waited.

She didn’t have to wait long. He was never late, he always did what he said would do, and she trusted him that he always would.

This corner of the chat room was always empty, private, reserved for her and her lover. She giggled as she thought of him that way but it was true, she had a lover for the first time in her life. He wasn’t like the boys at school with their immature attempts at impressing her and her friends with their pathetic displays of bravado and nervous gropings. He was a man. Her man.

She checked her watch. It was nearly 5.30 p.m. The excitement that drove her stomach to twist seemed to act like a furnace sending heat lower, causing her to groan softly with need.

There was a ping from her computer as he entered her private space in the chat room.

Ethan’s user ID was E-Z92 and his thumbnail picture – a picture she had spent countless hours studying, worshipping, loving – appeared next to the ID. She knew every inch of his face: the mop of brown hair that threatened to cover his right eye, his beautiful deep brown eyes and the smile, oh my God, the smile that she would do anything for, anything.

She hesitated for a second. This first moment before they spoke was always the worst; the moment of anticipation. Would he still feel the same way? Would the spell be broken?

A sickness replaced the excitement. She should say something. Would he finally recognise her as the girl she was, not the lover she wanted to be?

Letters began to appear on the screen.

Hey Babe, I’ve been thinking about you all day. I’ve missed you, I want you, I need you.

The nerves blossomed inside her giving birth to an almost overwhelming feeling of pure love.

She began to type quickly, not using text speak, which she knew he hated, and was, as she now agreed, the sign of a weak mind.

I’ve missed you too. I spend every moment waiting for us to be together … do you feel the same way?

She hit send and then the nerves were back. Was it too much? She always worried that this was the case. She wanted nothing more than to reveal herself to him, to let him know her, but the magazines, her friends always said no. You had to be a player, follow the rules of the game, hide yourself in case you came across as too keen or, the very worst thing that turned all men off, needy. The other girls teased her at school, said she was too fat to be loved, to know love, but they knew nothing of real love. She had seen them with their silly tales of love bites, grubby unfulfilling sex and there was nothing there that matched this love. She bit her nails as she waited for his response.

It came.

I feel the same way. You know how I feel. The love we have is everything. I miss you when we are apart. Sometimes it’s too much for me to bear. It’s like a pain, a pain that needs more pain to block it out.

She knew what this meant. It was their code.

Her fingers glided over the keyboard. Once she had typed and sent her message she jumped off the bed and went to the wardrobe. Hidden at the bottom under her old and forgotten soft toy collection – he had mentioned some time ago that he thought such things childish in a woman and she had agreed, removing them from her bed that night and consigning them to the wardrobe gulag – was a small tin, the type that some of her more foolish school friends kept their dope hidden in, which she carefully picked up and took with her back to her bed.

Excitedly, she opened the tin and pulled out its contents.

His message was on the screen waiting for her.

For us, to bring us together and take away the pain.

This was theirs and nobody else’s. She understood that he couldn’t be with her, it was impossible; she had seen the pictures of his daughters, the daughters his wife would kill if he left her. Ethan was in an impossible position; their love was all they both wanted, all that mattered. In this universe what else was important? She typed quickly.

I am yours Ethan. For ever. I’m opening myself now.

She nearly added some kisses automatically but they had agreed that this was another childish affectation and she remembered this just in time, her finger aborting the landing before it touched down on ‘x’.

She took off her jumper and slowly unbuttoned her blouse before pulling it down, exposing her left shoulder. The skin was pale and soft and she let her fingers trail lustfully over the flesh there. It was new and unbroken, unlike her right shoulder, which would carry the marks of her love for ever.

She picked up the craft knife and brought the blade down onto her skin. It was sharp and the pain, such as it was, was more sweet and lovely than all the summer mornings of childhood. She inserted the knife deeper now, feeling the flesh resist and then yield as she drew the blade forward, cutting into her skin, marking herself for love, for pain, for him. Blood, their sacrament, warmed her skin and she let it rest there for a second before placing the knife on the tin lid and picking up the cotton wool from the opened tin and dabbing at the sticky warm redness. The white wool darkened quickly and she needed two more buds to remove the blood that collected on her skin.

Her heart rate was up and she could feel it pounding in her chest and through her veins. She placed the cotton buds carefully on the tin and turned back to the computer. A message was waiting for her.

This is for us and us alone. Did you do it my sweet? Did it take away your pain?

It was true, it was always the same, the exhilarating, ecstatic pleasure. But already she could feel the darkness at the horizon inching closer inside her, soon it would be all she could feel and then she would be alone, curled up and waiting, praying for it to pass. Only he could save her from this.

Yes, but I will miss you.

There was a longer than usual pause. She fretted again, this time causing the darkness to accelerate rapidly, the weight of it starting to crush her, blocking her out.

The response was all she could have wished for.

There is a way we can be together for ever.

She began to cry softly.

CHAPTER 4

It had been Pete’s idea. The bad ones usually were.

Erasmus couldn’t say he hated football, it was just he thought the attention paid to it, the billions spent on it, the emotions heightened or ruined by it didn’t seem to be in proportion to the actual physical activity of twenty-two men rushing around a field chasing an inflated ball.

This clearly put him in a minority of one among the other 38,000 people in the stadium who were roaring, cheering, booing and above all, it seemed to Erasmus, swearing all around him. None more so than his friend and colleague Pete Hoare – surname pronounced ‘Horay’ according to Pete’s wife, Deb, and no one else – who had spent the last twenty minutes introducing the people in the executive seats in which they were sat to some of the rarer examples of Anglo-Saxon English.

A player in blue kicked the ball lamely to the opposite team’s goalkeeper.

Pete, dressed in an old style Mod parka over his Gieves & Hawkes suit, leapt to his Italian-leather clad feet.

‘Did you see that? What a massive c – ’ Pete’s eyes flicked towards a glamorous young woman, all blonde hair, winter tan and nails who had appeared next to their seats ‘ – creep, massive creep.’ His voice tailed off, drowned by that most English of cocktails: lust and embarrassment.

The woman looked directly at Pete.

‘Creep? If he’d scored that he’d ’av had a goal bonus, five grand yer know, he’s my husband and he’s a massive cunt never mind creep, love!’

Her thick Scouse accent gave way to a cackle and she tottered away down the steps towards the seats reserved for the player’s guests.

‘Nice,’ said Erasmus.

‘You’re a snob. You know you would,’ said Pete.

Before Erasmus could say whether he would or wouldn’t, another very different figure emerged from the entrance to the lounge area at the top of the steps. Erasmus would have placed this man in his late fifties or early sixties. It was difficult to tell because the man’s silky, long white hair, white teeth and tan seemed somewhat at odds with the wrinkles and body flexibility that Erasmus could also see. He was dressed in a navy blue suit and had what looked like a divers watch on his right wrist.

‘Here’s our man,’ said Pete and bounded up the steps towards him.

The man greeted Pete with a sparkling smile. He was Ted Wright, theatre impresario and owner and chairman of Everton Football Club, and the man, who twenty-four hours ago had rung Pete telling him he needed the assistance of Erasmus Jones as a matter of urgency.

Pete and Ted exchange a few words and then turned and walked down the stairs towards Erasmus.

Ted showed his teeth again and extended his right hand, the left hand he placed on Erasmus’s shoulder, pulling him towards him.

‘Erasmus Jones, great to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.’

He had been around enough alpha male activity in the army to know when someone was trying to assert dominance. At Sandhurst they had watched a video of the then Israeli president Ehud Barak and Yassar Arafat trying to put an arm on each other’s shoulder and shepherd the other through an open door, and it had been almost comical the way that both had danced and twisted at the door, trying to avoid the other taking the alpha position of the shepherd. Erasmus hated those displays. In his experience they usually led to someone getting hurt so he just shrugged self-deprecatingly and smiled.

‘Nice to meet you too, Mr Wright.’

‘Call me Ted, everybody does, well that or something much worse!’ He laughed theatrically. ‘Come on down here, I want you to watch the rest of the game with me.’

Ted placed his hand in the small of Erasmus’s back and gently pushed him towards the plush row of seats five rows further in front.

Ted turned to Pete.

‘Sorry, but only room for one down there.’

Pete looked disappointed.

‘No problem. Let’s hope the boys can turn this around, eh,’ said Pete to the retreating back of Ted.

Ted ignored him and led Erasmus to the front row of the seating block. These were deep, blue leather seats, a stark contrast to the wooden ones that filled the rest of the ground.

In the middle of the row there were two empty seats. With Ted still pushing gently they made their way along the row, Erasmus muttering ‘sorry’ and ‘excuse me’ every few steps as he bumped into the feet along the narrow gap. Erasmus recognised the new mayor and a minor pop celebrity sitting in this, the rich man’s aisle.

‘You take that seat,’ said Ted from behind him, pushing him towards the furthest and most central seat. ‘It’s the best seat in the ground.’ He bared white teeth that would have looked more appropriate on a twenty-five-year-old. ‘It’s my seat.’

Erasmus let himself fall into the seat and Ted sat down next to him. The seats were wider than those he had left but still Ted’s wide thighs strained against the top of Erasmus’s legs.

As they took the seats a chorus of boos rang out from the stand opposite.

Ted smiled, his unnaturally white teeth flashing in the tungsten glare of floodlights, and raised his hand in acknowledgement.

‘Arsenal fans?’ asked Erasmus.

‘Nope,’ said Ted through a fixed smile, ‘just some fucking ingrates who call themselves fans of this club.’

The boos were almost immediately replaced by a communal howling as a player in red scythed down a player in a blue shirt. It was the noise of a million disappointments and the cry of a hungry beast looking for meat.

Ted was so close that his cologne, so heavy and thick it seemed to surround him like a planetary atmosphere, lodged in Erasmus’s throat like a sticky sweet.

‘Do you like football, Erasmus?’

Erasmus had never been a good liar and now was not the time to start. He coughed, clearing his throat.

‘I don’t see the point. There are so many books to read, places to visit, women to know so why would I want to spend any of that time on watching a bunch of men chase an inflated pigs bladder around a muddy field.’

Ted placed his right hand over Erasmus’s left wrist and leaned in close bringing Erasmus closer into the smell of musk that hung over him. It reminded Erasmus of his long dead Uncle Charlie who had washed with coal soap and worn lashings of what his dad called ‘Christmas perfume’; cheap, heavy and sweet. He had an idea that Ted’s cologne wasn’t cheap.

‘See over there,’ he nodded towards the opposite stand, ‘down near the pitch, that small standing area?’

Erasmus saw a part of the stand was fenced off and even from here he could see that this part of the stand was full of teenagers.

‘That’s the kid’s pen. I used to stand there, forty years ago now, watching the greats: Ball, Kendall, Harvey. I have been in the theatre business all this time, and I’ve seen and met them all. Queens, princes, the rich, the poor, the brilliant and the best this world has to offer. And do you know what? I learnt everything about life, loss and love in the first seventeen years of my life, standing over there.’

Erasmus noticed that Ted’s eyes had become moist. He remembered that Ted had, before making his millions in the theatre world, once been a TV actor in a soap opera.

‘Dads would bring their sons, it was a rite of passage. All that life has to offer can be found in this game and, more importantly, in this club. This club is my life, and the life of forty thousand others in this ground. It is everything to the working man: his theatre, his palace, his place of dreams and fantasy.’

Erasmus studied Ted, trying to make out whether any of this was an act, but the tears and the grip on his arm told him that they were not, or that Ted Wright, former actor and theatre impresario, was a master in his line of work.

‘Why are they booing you, your fans?’ asked Erasmus.

Ted leant back in his seat and laughed.

‘We win they cheer me, we lose they boo me and send me excrement, and worse mind, through my letterbox. It’s just the way it is.’

‘Doesn’t sound like much fun?’ said Erasmus.

‘Fun? What the hell has fun got to do with it? I do it because I have to. I’m the guardian of this club! It was here before I was and it will be here after I’m gone and that’s a fact. Tell me, when you were hunting Taliban, was it fun?’

Erasmus said nothing.

‘I know about you, Mr Jones. I make it my business to find out about who I’m going to be working with. Drummed out of the Military Legal Service for picking up a weapon, leaving base and killing two Taliban who had maimed a class of little girls. A rather unusual legal practice and frankly just the type of person who does things because they need to be done, and not because they are fun. Am I right?’

Erasmus breathed in long and hard. Finally, he let the air out. He felt some, but by no means all, of the tension go with it.

‘Pete told me you wanted to speak to me about something?’

There was another roar from the crowd. Ted’s head snapped round towards the pitch.

One of the Everton players had slipped through the mass of red defenders and was bringing his left foot back to strike the ball. A pulse of excitement shot around the ground, transmitting itself through the people around them and suddenly everyone jumped to their feet.

To Erasmus’s amazement he found that he too was standing. Never underestimate crowd dynamics, he thought.

‘Go on, Wayne!’ screamed Ted.

A furiously loud shout of ‘penalty’ broke and crashed all around him as one of the Arsenal defenders kicked the Everton player’s standing foot away from him.

The referee blew his whistle and pointed to the penalty spot. More cheers.

Ted turned to Erasmus.

‘Wayne Jennings, the best player this club has ever produced. You don’t follow football but I presume you have heard of him?’

Erasmus just shrugged but even Erasmus, a sports hater, had found it difficult to avoid the existence of Wayne Jennings, the Premierships youngest ever goalscorer and England’s new hope for glory. He wasn’t going to let Ted know this though. He wondered at the reasons for his own contrariness, maybe it was a reaction to the fact that he had jumped up with the rest of the fans seated around him, an assertion of grumpy individuality. He knew any number of his ex-girlfriends and colleagues would say he was just being a twat.

Ted shook his head.

‘Score this goal and we’ll win and then be off the bottom. Come on, Wayne.’

An almost funereal hush had gripped the fans, men held each other in ways they would consider cause for a fight and shame outside of the ground. The tension was palpable as the young striker, Wayne Jennings, picked the ball up and placed it on the penalty spot.

The opposition goalkeeper moved from side to side and bent his legs at his knees in an effort to distract Wayne. He seemed to ignore the keeper, looking at the ground beneath his feet, until the last second before he looked up briefly and then began to run towards the ball.

There was the crackling sound of forty thousand breaths being held in the cold, November air.

‘Come on, Wayne,’ whispered Ted.

Two things happened at once. First, Erasmus noticed that although the crowd were all looking at Wayne running up to take the penalty, there was one face to his right, maybe twenty yards away, that was turned away from the goal, and the action on the field, and was looking directly at him. It was a man, maybe late forties, jet-black hair greased back and a lined face that spoke of an upbringing nearer to the equator than Bootle. The second was Wayne Jennings lifting his left foot to strike the ball, seemed to freeze in mid air, his foot extended back to almost a horizontal plane, and then wobbling as his right foot collapsed under him, before he fell crashing to the ground, his weaker right foot catching the ball by accident and knocking it forward no more than twelve inches.

The groans were deafening as the opposition keeper raced out and picked up the ball.

Erasmus looked back from the action and towards the man who had undoubtedly been staring at him. He was gone, his seat now empty.

‘Jesus!’ cried Ted.

He bent over and held his right palm to his forehead. An unhealthy looking flush had appeared on his face breaking through the tan.

‘It’s not the end of the world,’ said Erasmus.

‘It just fucking well might be. Follow me. To business,’ said Ted.

Ted started walking back down the row, his girth forcing people back into their seats. He didn’t bother with any apologies. Erasmus followed him and supplied them to the pissed off people that Ted left in his wake.

Ted, moving faster than his size or age would suggest was possible or healthy, shot up the steps towards the exit. As he did so Erasmus realised why he moved so quickly. Boos and taunts rang out from what seemed like thousands of people in the stands. You wouldn’t want to hang around in this environment, thought Erasmus.

‘He’s a fucking wanker, drop him!’

Erasmus recognised the voice. It was Pete and he was pointing at the pitch. Erasmus tapped him on the shoulder.

‘Come on, Pete.’

Pete looked up and if he was embarrassed by his comments about Ted Wright’s star player he certainly didn’t show it.

‘Sure thing, he does need dropping though,’

Ted hadn’t stopped and showed no sign he heard the comment. He was now disappearing down the stairwell that led from the stands.

Erasmus and Pete followed.

The stairs led down into an empty lounge area full of set tables awaiting the post match influx of hungry and, by the sound of the groans coming from the stands above, disappointed spectators. The room reminded Erasmus of a shabby but once grand hotel, posters of ex-players covered the walls and there were lots of shiny plasma screens dotted around the room. But look a bit closer and you could see flaking paintwork and worn carpet.

Ted turned to check they were still there.

‘This way,’ he said and he pushed open a service door before stepping through.

Pete and Erasmus exchanged a bemused glance before following.

Beyond was a corridor dimly lit by industrial low wattage bulbs. Pipes and bundles of cable lined the walls. Some of the cabling had long streaks of copper wire that had burst through the perished rubber.

Ted was chuckling.

‘I know what you’re thinking! How do we get the Fire Safety certificate each year? Let’s just say the inspector is an Evertonian and the council leader brave enough to piss off half his constituents hasn’t been born yet.’

Ted didn’t look at them as he talked, he kept walking at his eerily fast pace, his little legs scuttling along the narrow corridor. They followed him along the corridor, which twisted and turned through the bowels of the stadium, for a couple of minutes. Finally, they came to another service door. Ted stopped, pulled out a key on a silver chain from under his shirt and used it to unlock the door.

‘Through here,’ he said with a flourish of his arms.

The door opened out into what looked like a large study more appropriate to a country home than a football stadium. The back wall was made up of bookshelves and a rich brown mahogany desk sat in front of them. But what was really impressive was the outer wall of the study. This was a floor to ceiling window that looked out onto the pitch.

Pete whistled.

‘Nice,’ he said.

Ted manoeuvred his bulk around the desk.

‘Assume you’re not talking about the team. It’s one-way glass.’ He jabbed a fat finger at the window. ‘The buggers can’t see us. Drink?’ he asked.

The fans outside might not be able to see in but they weren’t insulated from the cacophony of boos and jeers rolling down from the stands at the hapless home players.

Pete nodded.

‘No thanks,’ said Erasmus.

Ted poured out two large glasses of whisky and passed one to Pete. He then crashed back into his chair and let out the sigh that comes to all men of a certain age when they return to a sitting position.

Erasmus decided he had wasted enough time here. He hated football and so far the cruel pettiness and barely restrained violence he felt had done nothing to change his view of the sport.

‘So, I know that you instruct one of the magic circle firms for your corporate and transfer work and you use a local firm, Cuff Roberts, for the smaller stuff just so you can boast you support local businesses, so why in the world would you want to instruct us?’