Sudden Death (25 page)

‘Oh yes, didn’t he tell you, Wayne, the only reason he is pretending to be your friend is because Ted hired him to be your friend.’

Wayne shook his head in disbelief.

‘I thought we were mates?’

‘We are, Wayne. Can’t you see what he is trying to do? He is hiding something from you!’

‘You fucking cunt!’ snapped Cowley.

Cowley threw a wild punch at Erasmus. It was a haymaker and Erasmus easily ducked inside it and threw a quick flurry of jabs at Cowley’s chin. Cowley hit the deck, landing on his backside, a look of bemusement on his face as though he had no idea how he had managed to get there.

Erasmus turned and saw Wayne brandishing the Xbox controller with tears in his eyes.

‘You lied to me!’

‘But only to help you,’ said Erasmus.

‘You told me your dad was dead,’ Wayne said softly.

Erasmus’s mouth opened and shut. He had forgotten telling Wayne that his father had died in order to bond with him. Shit.

‘Fuck you. Get out! You’re just like the rest!’ Wayne shouted.

Cowley pushed himself up to a sitting position with his back against the couch. His eyes slowly refocused.

‘Yeah, get out, Erasmus. Enjoy the outside while you can,’ he slurred.

Erasmus took a step towards him and Cowley covered his face with his hands.

‘What do you mean by that?’

Cowley looked frightened now. The rage replaced by naked fear.

‘Did you put the doll in my car?’

Cowley’s eyes swapped fear for defiance.

‘What the fuck are you on about? What doll? You’re losing it, Erasmus.’

Erasmus looked back at Wayne and saw that the moment wasn’t right for explanations. Wayne was glowering at him, mistrust and anger mixing together to form a toxic brew. He breathed deeply, tried to let the air push down the rage and panic.

‘OK. I’m going.’

Erasmus picked up his coat and walked up the spiral staircase. At the top Jane was waiting. She was smoking a cigarette and she pulled it from her lips as he approached. Red lipstick smeared the filter. She opened the door and held it open for him. As he walked out he felt a sharp nip on his left buttock. He turned round and Jane licked her lips, winked at him and then the door slammed shut in his face.

The Grapes, hidden in the dimly lit alleyway, was a corner pub that had once served the servants of the merchant classes that lived in the grand Georgian houses of Rodney and Catherine Street. Now it served a mixture of LIPA students, bohemian layabouts and the locals who had never let its sop to bohemia – a few fairy lights, cheap air freshener in the toilets – ruin the authentic nature of a good alehouse. It also had the advantage of being off the beaten track and the last place in the world he could imagine seeing another lawyer, or anyone associated with football as they tended to drink in the newer, flashier bars in Liverpool 1.

Erasmus ordered a pint of Deuchers IPA and took a seat in the corner. The pub itself was tiny; essentially an L-shaped bar in an old terrace house where the living room and kitchen would have been, and a yard for smoking.

When Cat entered the bar a few minutes later the only other patrons, an old man sitting at the bar nursing a large whisky and three identikit students with beards, Breton jumpers and tight jeans, all looked round and checked her out. Erasmus didn’t blame them. She looked stunning. Tight black leather pants ended at clumpy worker’s boots, together with a green bomber jacket. She looked like some male fantasy from a video game. He wondered whether the effect was intentional or just a lucky co-incidence?

She spotted him, made her way over to the small table and sat down on the seat next to him. She removed her headphones.

‘Thanks for coming,’ he said.

‘No problem. Ben is teaching away this weekend, taking some kids on an outbound course so it’s good to have company.’

He let this hang in the air for a second too long. Had she just sent him a clear signal?

After what seemed an age, he heard himself speaking. ‘I wanted to thank you for helping with Rebecca. I said I’d buy you a drink so what will it be? The Grapes is your oyster!’

Cat looked around.

‘Well, I can see you’ve pushed the boat out.’

Erasmus pretended to be hurt and pulled an imaginary arrow from his chest.

‘The Grapes is one of Liverpool’s finest and most select institutions.’

She laughed.

‘Lucky for you I like this kind of place. I’ll have a Havana Club, seven years, and Coke, large.

He got the drinks. When he returned from the bar she had removed her jacket, revealing a tight grey bra top. He concentrated on looking at her eyes.

She took a large sip of her drink and then licked her lips.

‘Mmm, I’ve been looking forward to that. I didn’t think they’d have anything but beer and a house wine in here.’

Erasmus shrugged. ‘It’s a broad church The Grapes. Listen, can I ask you a question?’

She eyed him suspiciously over her glass.

‘If you are going to hit on me you’ll need to buy me at least another drink.’

He laughed. ‘I promise I won’t. I want to ask you about Rebecca.’

She set her glass down on the table.

‘Pity.’

‘So what do you think? Do you think she’s telling the truth?’ he asked her.

Cat cocked her head to one side.

‘Do I believe a teenage girl who thinks she is in love will just give up on that love so her mother feels better? Do you remember being a teenager, Erasmus? Look at the definition of “selfish” in the dictionary, it cross-references “teenager”.’

‘That’s what I think too. I think Karen is kidding herself.’

Cat pulled out a packet of cigarettes and placed them on the table in front of her. She made no move to take one out but instead tuned the box onto each side repeatedly.

‘So what are you going to do? Go to the police?’

Erasmus shook his head. In the opposite corner of the room sat, where he always sat, old Bob was nursing a pint and murmuring to himself. Erasmus caught the words ‘she loved me once’. It was a familiar mantra.

‘With what? It’s hardly a crime for Rebecca to have a boyfriend on the internet who her parents don’t approve of.’

‘But you think he’s older than her?’

‘Yes, she talks about his wife but she is over sixteen. It’s not a police matter and the self harming, well, you probably know better than me how common that is?’

Her eyes flickered down towards the table. Erasmus followed them and noticed the white tracer lines of scars on Cat’s exposed forearms.

‘Common,’ she said quietly.

He looked at her and she looked back at him defiantly.

Cat stroked the cigarette packet. He decided to change the subject, something in her eyes told him to back off.

‘I thought you didn’t smoke?’

A suggestion of a smile appeared on her face.

‘There’s probably a lot you don’t know about me. I haven’t had a cigarette in four years but when I did I bought one last pack and smoked all of them except one, the last one in this box. I told myself if I ever wanted one I could have one so I never really gave up, you see, I just paused for a very long time. If I had thought for those first few weeks I would never have one again I would still be smoking now. Knowing your own psychological triggers is important. They are still a crutch, you see, it’s just this cigarette will probably never be smoked.’

‘Yet you still carry it around. Do you want to smoke?’

She laughed. ‘God no, you may have read something about them killing you? It’s just I don’t want to say “never”. It’s a bad word.’

She let go of the pack and now Erasmus noticed that the Marlboro light packet’s colours were faded and the box battered.

‘I was hoping I could ask you a favour?’

She raised an eyebrow.

‘Go on.’

‘Rebecca has stopped emailing Ethan and stopped using the chat sites. If Ethan is still in contact with her then he is probably doing it the old-fashioned way: letters or in person. I know Karen, despite what she believes, or rather convinces herself to believe; she is watching Rebecca like a hawk.’

Cat leaned back, arching her back in a way that made Erasmus shiver.

‘You want me to spy on one of my students,’ she said after a second.

‘That’s about the size of it.’

Cat put down her empty glass on the table.

‘OK.’

Erasmus was surprised. He had been expecting an ethical debate and had anticipated resistance.

‘You look surprised? Listen, not all of us are morally warped by politically correct mental gymnastics. A child’s welfare is at stake, you didn’t even have to ask me, I’ll be looking out for her.’

‘Thanks.’

She picked up her empty glass and raised it ostentatiously.

‘You can buy me another drink though. A teacher’s salary isn’t the greatest, you know,’

‘Of course.’

He picked her glass up and made his way to the bar. Owen, the scruffy owner was polishing a pint glass with a filthy rag. He stuck out his bottom lip and nodded appreciatively.

‘Nice, Erasmus, very nice.’

‘Women, they’re all evil,’ said old Bob in the corner. He wasn’t looking at them, he was looking across the room at Cat. A line of drool hung from his cracked lips. Erasmus looked away.

‘She’s a client, nothing more. Same again,’ said Erasmus. His tone, normally friendly with Owen, was flat.

Owen stuck his hand further into the pint glass. After thirty years running pubs in some of Liverpool’s toughest wards he had learned when to shut up and pull a pint.

‘A Deuchers and a Havana club, seven years, and Coke, coming up.’

Back at the table Erasmus set the drinks down. Cat was playing with the cigarette packet again. Erasmus realised straight away that the atmosphere had changed. It was as though she had made a decision while he was at the bar and now that the direction of travel had been set everything had changed – body language, pheromones, the situation – and a danger signal was flashing red.

Cat thanked him for the drink and sank it in one go. She stood up and smiled at Erasmus. He looked at her in surprise.

‘I feel in the mood for getting drunk. I’m going to the bar so you better drink up quickly.’

He did and the next few hours where spent drinking in the company of a woman who he felt like he’d known for years. Later on, they even talked about their first sexual experiences, a sure sign of approaching inebriation. His was a drunken night in his parents’ garden shed, freezing cold and involving jumpers, scarves and other layers of clothing as much as flesh. Hers was much cooler, the stuff of teenage girl fantasies, with a French exchange student called Pierre who had smoked Galouise and pretended to read Sartre. They had laughed together at the awkward memories.

And then Cat had touched his hand.

‘Erasmus?’

‘Yes.’

‘You said you loved Karen but you weren’t sure she loved you? What happened between you two?’

The question had taken him unawares, his guard completely down and before he had a chance to think he had answered.

‘I didn’t realise then but I have a problem, a commitment problem.’

Cat burst out laughing and before he could help it, so did he, and they drunkenly clung to each other’s shoulders as they laughed hysterically, tears running down their faces.

‘I didn’t take you for a
Cosmo
reader.’ She stopped laughing. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

He half smiled.

‘Yes. I have heard it called all sorts of things, sex addiction, which I don’t think it is – ’ She arched an eyebrow at this. ‘Rejection of intimacy, which it might be, but most of all it’s a fear of commitment. Karen left me because she could see it all, she could see the search for experience, the postponing of settling down, the years stretching out with always tomorrow as my mantra.’

Cat leaned in towards him.

‘Death. You’re scared of death. You see marriage, kids, as the inevitable procession towards the grave.’

‘I was married, I have a child.’

‘But you’re not with them, you’re not with anyone.’

She stroked his hand and he didn’t stop her.

His lips parted and he exhaled. He wanted to tell about Afghanistan, about the children laid out in the mud, their eyes and noses gone, their hands removed, but he couldn’t. He could never tell anyone.

She placed her other hand over his and leaned forward across the table. The music playing in the bar was Massive Attack’s
Mezzanine
, its intoxicating bass line heightening the erotic charge between them.

‘You know what you said earlier about Karen? That so many of us choose to believe what we want to believe? It’s easier sometimes. You know I could choose to believe Ben isn’t interested in Jennifer, the other teacher who has gone away with the kids on a field trip this weekend but I’ve seen the way he looks at her and well, I’m an Occam’s razor kinda girl. I go with what I think is most likely not what is palatable. Unlike your girlfriend Karen.’

She looked up at Erasmus defiantly. The girlfriend grenade had been thrown and she was happy to stand back and watch it explode.

Erasmus shifted uncomfortably on the small bar stool. Her cool blue eyes didn’t move from his. He held her gaze. She was sexy as hell but in the milliseconds it took for that thought to appear another had bulldozed its way into the picture: an image of Karen sitting on the steps of Georges Hall on an impossibly hot day a lifetime ago, an NUS banner by her feet and Erasmus’s hand in hers.

‘Ben’s away tonight, maybe you should come back to mine for a drink?’

‘Karen’s not my –’ He paused. ‘It’s complicated.’

Cat let go of his hand and stood the cigarette box on its longest edge.

‘Complicated meaning you don’t want to join me for a drink? Don’t worry about it.’ The spell was broken and Cat stood up and grabbed her leather jacket from the back of her chair.

‘It’s not that but –’ He gave up.

‘Do you love her?’

Erasmus looked up. He couldn’t deny it. ‘I do, I always have.’

‘And does she love you?’

He thought about the way they still finished each others sentences after all these years, he thought of the night they had had together.