DEATHLOOP (8 page)

“Let me tell you what happened.”

“I can imagine.”

“No you can’t.”

“I don’t want to know. I hate the place, it’s a dump, we only go there so you can pick up women.”

“That’s not true.”

“And there I am, surrounded by Muggers Anonymous waiting for some bastard
who never comes back!
”

“Sam, listen to me, please… it happened again.”

“I know it happened again, you don’t have to tell me!”

“A stranger dying, and calling out my name…”

Wrong footed, Sam did a double take, took a moment then sank down into his chair, begrudgingly waiting for the explanation.

“I came out of the gents, and for some reason, I went the other way.”

“What other way?”

“I can’t explain it, but the staircase back up to the club is to the right, well you know that, but I went left.”

“So you ended up in Never Never Land is that it?”

“Then, the strange atmosphere again, heavy, airless, I could see something, way off, although at first I couldn’t make it out, but I couldn’t stop myself, or turn back, some old guy, calling out to me in such distress.”

Now Sam was looking at his friend as though he was seriously worried for his sanity.

“Just like before I felt my body seize, then it was like this guy was melting, right in front of me. After a while, I could breathe again, move again, but I was totally freaked out. Sam, I’m sorry mate, it wasn’t deliberate.”

Zack chose not to tell Sam about Veronica, there was no need, not here, not now. A silence fell and he could see Sam trying to make sense of what he had just said, Zack was still trying to make sense of it himself.

A sharp knock on the door made them jump. Rose stuck her head into the room. “The Wahlbergs are here, Geoff would like you to come in now.”

Geoff’s office was massive and doubled as a boardroom sometimes, because the original board room had now been split into four to accommodate more staff. Patrick and another security guard, Gus, were always called upon to set up the vast table here whenever it was required, and Patrick very much enjoyed the task. For a few moments, while he was grappling with the huge pieces of wood he felt indispensable to the organization. Geoff had often commended Patrick, telling him that he had never seen the boardroom table assembled with such speed and with such dexterity, assuring him that as long as he worked at Emerson Buildings it would always be his own special job.

This pleased Patrick no end and he often mentioned the accolade when writing to Genevieve in Awka Etiti. He also told his wife that setting up the table on the 9
^th
floor was not his job really, and by rights he could have refused to do it especially as Geoff Turner did not offer him a penny piece for his endeavours, but Patrick did not mind too much because it was another skill that he could list on his CV for future employment opportunities.

Geoff’s assistant, suburban, clumpy, super reliable Sharon Pearce, with droopy hemlines and droopy hair to match, checked the table for the tenth time: water, fruit, tissues, pens and paper, all present and correct. Coffee and pastries would arrive soon and she had ordered very elaborate sandwiches from the caterers in case things went on a bit, which they tended to do. Sharon smiled up at Zack and Sam as they took their seats opposite the Wahlbergs and their accountancy team, Jack and Simon Sugarman. They were ready to go.

The Wahlbergs were big guns in the city, and were Nyman’s most influential clients, recently poached from arch rivals, Standard Rich and Company. They had an extensive property portfolio, commercial and residential, and were intending to move into retail with the acquisition of a string of shopping malls in the States. They needed a restructuring package, and had approached Nyman’s to get them the best deal. Geoff had asked Zack to step up to the plate and had filled the Wahlbergs in on Zack’s myriad talents, confident they would be duly impressed by their star player. For their part the Wahlbergs were aware of Zack’s reputation and were happy to have him batting for their side, keen to hear what he could come up with.

The Wahlberg brothers, Francis and Clive, were in their fifties and had taken over the business from their father Aldo, who still took an interest in the company and who was here today just to see what Nyman’s had to offer. Aldo was nearly 80 now, but still sprightly with twinkling blue eyes that did not miss a trick. Francis was the intellectual, an opera buff and an expert on Japanese ceramics. Terminally pedantic and penny pinching, (he had been known to cross London on public transport to get a few pence off a pair of shoes). He had an assistant, Marjorie White, who had been with him for years, some said because she was actually too frightened to leave. Clive just rode roughshod over everyone. He prided himself on his ruthlessness, ruthlessness was next to Godliness in his book. He was always bragging about his hospitality boxes at Arsenal and Chelsea, but for the most part, he sat in them alone.

Both Francis and Clive were divorced. Francis despised women almost as much as he despised homosexuals so he preferred to remain solitary now with three standard poodles for company. Clive had an arrangement with an Austrian woman who had inherited a very chic mansion flat in Maida Vale, it suited them both. At least Aldo enjoyed his money. He owned race horses, gambled quite a bit and sometimes sailed around the Mediterranean in his catamaran. But his sons, despite being millionaires in their own right, always looked as though the bailiffs were about to move in.

Sam was distracted. After his conversation with Zack in his office he was finding it difficult to clear his head. Sam would go to the ends of the earth for Zack and Zack knew this, but he had always fought shy of weirdness and there was a time at Cambridge when Zack had become extremely weird, out of his head on LSD of all things, (trust Zack to dig up some fusty old drug like acid to get hooked on), but it fitted in with his super cool image, and the fact that he had got poor old Justin Dunsmore to provide him with a never ending supply only adding to Zack’s kudos.

Sam told Zack that he had gone too far telling Justin that he was on the verge of turning gay to get him to make the stuff. But Zack found it funny and milked the idea for all it was worth, until out of kindness to Justin, the same day he destroyed Zack’s stash, Sam told Justin that it was just Zack’s idea of a joke, and that he was not about to turn gay any time in the near future, he was a confirmed heterosexual and always would be. Devastated at Zack’s treachery, Justin cried for seven days flat rejecting all attempts by Zack to talk him round, and although Zack had threatened to kill Sam at the time, Sam knew he would thank him for it one day.

Sam glanced across at his old friend and inwardly smiled. Who would think it now? Who would think this stylish, professional, corporate lawyer could ever have been such a hopeless case? Sam was in no doubt that he had saved Zack’s sanity, if not his life, and although Zack had never said as much, he knew Zack thought so too. Sam often wondered if that was why Zack had remained so loyal to him through the years. And when Sam was feeling particularly fatalistic he wondered if that was why Zack had thrown him a lifeline all those years ago, knowing instinctively that at some point in the future, Sam, in his own way, would do the same for him. Sam prided himself on being the man responsible for Zack’s new found respectability at Nyman’s and on the surface – the boy done good - but deep down Sam knew that Zack was still capable of just about any kind of madness given half a chance.

Zack too was distracted. As Geoff stood up and welcomed the Wahlbergs, he found himself gazing out of the window at the dreary, but reassuring view. Geoff was speaking, but Zack was not taking in a word of it, it just sounded like a drone. Zack felt he had done a fairly decent job of keeping a lid on things with Veronica but when he saw the look in Sam’s eye just now, it threw him. Sam had picked him up more times that he cared to remember, but Zack knew that Sam was a little weary of it after twenty years, and who could blame him?

Zack could honestly say that even at the height of his drug dependency, he had never been part of anything so completely bewildering as dying strangers calling out to him and asking him for help. He just could not make head or tail of any of it.

“Would you agree, Zack?”

No response.

“Zack,” said Geoff, “can you help me out with this please?”

Then there was.

“No I can’t help you, you demon! KEEP AWAY FROM ME!”

Grabbing the water jug from the table Zack hurled it at Geoff, catching him on the forehead with a nasty clunk. Geoff staggered a little as water drenched him, then the jug fell and smashed against the corner of the table spraying glass all over the floor. Next came a deadly, crushing silence. Everyone round the table frozen in shock, their eyes fixed on Zack as though they were in the presence of a madman and frightened that if they made a move the same would happen to them.

“
God, Geoff, I’m so sorry
,” said Zack, breathless and mortified at what he had just done. “I thought you were… I thought… oh God, please forgive me.”

As the silence persisted, if anything getting louder, the atmosphere unbearable, Sam got up and without saying a word to anyone took Zack by the hand and led him from the room. Sharon Pearce was a little surprised to see Sam leading Zack out of Geoff’s office like this, glancing through the open doorway she stepped inside.

“Is everything all right, Mr Turner? The sandwiches have arrived…” she said, now noticing water all over the place, “
oh dear
, had a little bit of an accident have we?”

Downstairs, Betty and Patrick noticed Sam leading Zack by the hand out of the lift, across reception to the revolving doors and to the street outside and both, in their own way thought it quite peculiar.

Patrick had given up finding things in London surprising. He had told his wife Genevieve in his letters that things were so much more complicated in London. “A very different kettle of fish to Awka Etiti,” were his exact words. But he was still a practicing Christian, and he knew God understood that he was forced to engage in social intercourse with these heathens in order to make ends meet. He told Genevieve that during his prayers, God had said to him: “Unfortunately, because of pressing economic considerations there is nothing you can do about it for the time being, Patrick, you just have to go with the flow.”

For her part, Betty had always wondered about Mr Stein and Mr Fortune, and to see them like this, hand in hand, seemed to confirm it. It got Betty thinking about this Jason boy. He certainly looked like one of those rent boys come to think of it, and there was no telling what those characters got up to. Betty had thought she was immune from all that sort of unpleasantness here in the city, which was one of the reasons she worked as far away from her council estate in Essex Road as she could. She would have a word with Geoff Turner about all this because it was getting out of hand, Geoff Turner would know what to do.

In Zack’s bedroom Sam helped Zack get undressed, pulled back the covers and made him get into bed. Sam had done this many times before and he liked to think it had always worked a treat.

“Sam, I don’t want to get into bed, I don’t need to.”

“Shut up,” said Sam, pulling the duvet over him.

“Sam, this is madness, I’m not ill.”

“No?”

“I’ve just committed professional suicide, I know that, but I’m not ill.”

Zack felt cooped up in bed and wanted to get out of it, but he knew Sam would not allow it because Sam had done this countless times before when Zack had been drunk, stoned, obsessing about some girl, or sometimes when he was just being a pain in the arse and driving everyone nuts. “Listen mate, you shoot off,” said Zack, keen to escape from his incarceration, “not a good idea for both of us to get fired.”

“No way, let’s talk this thing through,” said Sam, sinking into the little bedroom chair, his arms folded, looking like he was going nowhere. “So what’s your theory, come on, you first.”

“God, I don’t know,” said Zack, with a weary sigh. “Maybe Susan’s put a curse on me, or maybe she’s teamed up with my entire back catalogue and they’ve all put a curse on me.”

Sam found this explanation very touching. Zack had this weird contradiction when it came to women. Sam had once called him a romantic bastard which Zack agreed was just about right. He was very old fashioned in many ways, a gentleman in fact, until he wanted out of a relationship that is, then he became a monster, tossing women aside like old crisp packets.

“Remember that girl, what was her name?”

“I knew you were going to bring her up… Amber.”

“Writing ‘Zack Fortune is a fucking shit’ in large letters on the side of the science block, she must have been so thick.”

“She
was
thick,” said Zack.

“First thinking that she was telling anyone anything they didn’t already know…”

“Well thanks for that, I appreciate it…”

“And secondly, thinking it would destroy your reputation. As it was, your reputation shot off into the stratosphere from whence it never came down.”

This was absolutely true. Zack had always been mighty grateful to this girl especially as the janitors couldn’t get the paint off for two weeks. Every chemical they tried failed to budge Amber’s heartfelt message to the world, which meant that all the first year students, recently arrived, were wild with curiosity about this Zack Fortune, and consequently a complete pushover. (Justin Dunsmore told everyone that he could have knocked up a chemical that would have got the graffiti off in seconds flat but as he very much shared Amber’s sentiments at the time, he refused to do anything about it.)

The day before, when Sam had told Clarissa about Zack’s encounter with the suicide, she looked very anxious, although said nothing, then slipped off into the kitchen to start dinner. A few minutes later Sam went to find her and asked her what was up. Finally, Clarissa admitted to Sam that Zack had stormed out half way through their session which was absolutely the worst thing he could have done.