Sudden Death (37 page)

It wasn’t going to be a quick death. He gasped for air and his tongue was forced out of his mouth. His jerking motion span him around so he was facing the door and for a second he thought he heard something above the roaring of blood in his ears. Footsteps? He span around again and saw that Cat had come closer, she was looking at him intently, an expression of sadness and pleasure on her face like the bitter sweetness of finding an old love letter.

He tried to look at Karen but his eyesight, starved of oxygen, was blurring. The wardrobe was a dim brown mass. He tried to mouth the words ‘I love you’ but his mouth, gaping and almost biting the air, couldn’t respond.

Suddenly, Cat turned her head and raised her gun.

Erasmus’s motion turned him around again. He could dimly make out two figures standing at the door of the flat. The lead one had his hands raised.

Cat had the gun pointed at this man’s head. There was shouting but the sounds seemed to be coming from another universe.

He span around, facing Cat. He watched as she pulled the trigger of the gun, yellow flame spitting from the barrel and the noise deafening.

Erasmus’s left hand went to the knife.

There was another gunshot and a scream of pain. Erasmus saw the blurred motion of someone move in front of him. He grasped the knife and pulled it free from his jeans. He raised it and with a quick sawing motion sliced through the cord. He dropped and hit the floor hard. Training took over and despite the burning agony in his throat he rolled away and towards the wardrobe, trying to get any cover.

When he looked up he saw that the figure he had seen by the door was now laying face down and dark red blood was pouring from a large exit wound in the back of the man’s head. Brain matter, blood and bone were splattered on the white wall.

In the corner of the room Cat was wrestling with another man, trying to bring her gun to bear but the man was holding her wrist. Something about him seemed wrong, almost broken. Cat bit the man’s hand, sinking her teeth deep into the flesh. Erasmus could now see that it was Babak locked in a life and death struggle with Cat. He must have come here for more emergency dentistry, or worse, as punishment for Erasmus telling Wayne about his illness. Erasmus guessed the transfer was off. Babak screamed as Cat’s teeth cut through flesh and nerves and hit bone.

Erasmus managed to get on all fours. The effort required was phenomenal, it took every ounce of will power he had left in him. His lungs felt like someone had placed paving stones on them, his throat felt like a million pieces of glass were lodged in there and his muscles were like jelly. But he knew he only had one chance.

Babak smashed his other hand into the side of Cat’s head but she still kept her teeth lodged in his forearm. Babak had turned pale and now Erasmus could see why. There was blood pouring from a gunshot wound in his side. He hit her again but this time it was weaker. Cat relaxed her bite and pushed him hard in the chest. He staggered backwards and fell, slumped against the wall. Cat raised the gun.

Erasmus had taken five agonising steps while Babak and Cat were fighting and now plunged the kitchen knife deep into Cat’s side.

She didn’t scream but turned to face him with a wide-eyed look of surprise on her face. Her pale blue irises flowered with red flecks. She dropped the gun and sank to her knees.
He also dropped to his knees beside her. It was like they were both kneeling for benediction. She looked directly at him and tried to say something but words didn’t come.

Erasmus picked up the gun and then dragged himself across the floor back over to the wardrobe. He flung the door open and reached in to grab Karen from within the swaddling. His hands struggled to find a grip against the sticky, wet cloth but he just bundled her out onto the living room floor. Time, and not finesse, was of the essence.

She had passed out and was pale. He lowered his head to her chest and was rewarded with a gentle yet barely perceptible movement.

Her trousers had been removed and Erasmus could see the small nick at the top of her thigh where Cat had cut her. Deep, dark arterial blood pumped remorselessly from the cut. Erasmus pulled off his shirt and tore it into pieces. He fashioned a tourniquet and tied it tightly around her thigh above the wound. He then cut the plastic tie that held her wrists together behind her back. His mobile phone was still in his jeans pocket. He pulled it out and dialled 999.

Only when he had confirmation an ambulance and the police were on the way did he let himself slump backwards with his back to the wardrobe. He became aware that he still had the plastic noose around his neck. He cut it free and let the knife fall to his side.

In the distance he could hear the sound of sirens. He looked over at Babak. He couldn’t tell whether he was alive or dead. And then he noticed that Cat wasn’t there. A trail of blood led to the door. He looked around in panic but he couldn’t see her.

A door banged open, there were many footsteps on the stairs and then a paramedic was leaning over him. He passed out.

EPILOGUE

From where they were sitting on Everton View they could see the city laid out below them as it tumbled down from the Victorian terraces and warehouses to the modern steel and glass towers that lay at the shore of the dark grey strip of the river. To the left you could see Paddy’s Wigwam, the Catholic cathedral, and then slightly to the right, linked by Hope Street, the towering gothic splendour of the Anglican cathedral. Erasmus loved this spot; it felt like the city belonged to him in this place.

‘Rebecca says hello. She thinks you’re a real hero.’

He laughed and looked back towards the river.

‘We got lucky.’

‘We did, didn’t we?’

‘If Wayne hadn’t called Babak things could have been very different.’

Somewhere out on the Mersey he could hear the sound of a buoy’s bell distantly clanging, warning sailors of the hidden hazards of the channels.

‘You know they’re catching salmon in the Mersey these days. It’s not like it used to be.’

Karen smiled.

‘You wouldn’t eat them though, would you?’

There was silence between them for a second.

‘I felt so ashamed about what I did when I was a teenager. We did torture poor Alison. But, and this isn’t an excuse, it just feels like it was a different person. If I could go back in time I would tell that stupid, insecure, mixed-up girl that the other girls felt like that too, that I didn’t need to pick on someone else to make myself feel better. Do you understand what I mean? It’s like someone else did it? Like it wasn’t me at all, just a version of me, unformed, unsure, but most of all frightened.’

Erasmus nodded. He was thinking of Afghanistan and the faces of dead friends. Even now the memories of their faces were fading and the deeds he had committed seemed like memories of an old nightmare. But mostly he was thinking about Cat.

‘They still haven’t found the body yet,’ he said. ‘They followed the blood trail, it led down to the Mersey.’

‘If she went in there they will never find her.’

Erasmus thought that was true. The current ran strong and swiftly to the Irish Sea and then onwards into the shipping lines that led to the new world. He didn’t think they would find her.

The silence descended again.

Karen stood up.

‘I’ve got to go. Rebecca gets home from school in an hour.’

He looked up at her and felt the yearning and the insurmountable gulf at the same time. What she had done to Alison, not telling him, and his thing with Cat. It was just too much water pushing them further away. He could see that she felt the same.

‘Sure. It was good to catch up.’

‘I’ll see you around, Erasmus,’ there was a catch in her voice.

‘See you around.’

He watched her go. A minute passed and then Erasmus lit a cigarette. He looked out over the Mersey again, breathing in the salty air. A flurry of wind carried some stinging, metallic particles and the deep, fleshy smell of the grain in off the docks.

He pulled out his phone. There was a message on there from Abby. He read it again for the fourth time that day and smiled. It was all he needed at the moment. Sometimes you didn’t need to go back: ‘Sorry I missed all your calls. I love you, Daddy. Call me tonight! :-)Xxx’

It was going dark now and The Three Graces laid long dark shadows over the steel grey Mersey. Erasmus stood up and pulled the collar of his jacket up against the cold. The buoy’s bell rang again somewhere unseen out in the river.

It was time to go.

Still on the edge of your seat? Keep reading for an excerpt from
The Silent Pool
, the addictive first book from Phil Kurthausen

PROLOGUE

‘Do you believe?’

In the cold of the early morning, the warmth of the man’s breath on Stephen’s neck, as he whispered those words, was almost comforting.

Before he could consciously form an answer, a low ‘yes’ slipped from Stephen’s mouth.

Stephen turned around to face his questioner but in the busy crowd of human traffic no one stood out among the dark eyes and downcast faces of his fellow wage slaves heading for the heart of Liverpool’s business district.

Just a crank
, he thought,
a further sign of the decay of standards and moral decline of the city
. At least it was metaphysical yobbery and not a punch in the face, yet the question had caused Stephen’s internal warning system to crank up and send a fizz of adrenaline through his bloodstream that left him feeling uneasy. It took him a second to work out why but when the realisation came it brought on a wave of instant nausea. He didn’t recognise the voice but he recognised the question.

Stephen stood there for a moment, an obstacle in the path of the early morning commuters battling their way up the hill. Someone bumped into him and muttered ‘stupid wanker’. Stephen barely noticed the abuse, he was too busy trying to rationalise what he had just heard. It must be a coincidence. He had been suffering from a cold and work had been stressful recently, the councils’ cutbacks had hit the education department especially hard and his workload was becoming unmanageable. The city was in the seventh week of a teachers’ strike and every day brought fresh abuse from the pickets that Stephen had to pass by to get to the council offices. That sort of stress could lead to all sorts of things, maybe even hallucinations?

Yet, Stephen had
heard
the man ask the question. He stood for a moment, stung by the cold wind full of salt and industrial metal particles that whipped in off the Mersey. He needed a drink.

There was a Starbucks opposite the council offices and although Stephen never went in there due to the possibility of bumping into ex-colleagues or striking teachers, this morning he needed to sit down and make sense of what had just happened. He ordered a double espresso and took a seat in an armchair facing the window. He sipped the bitter liquid hoping it would kick-start his brain, remove the fugue that been responsible for his imagination misfiring.

From here he could see the four teachers who made up the picket line outside the entrance to the council building. They stood around a brazier and carried hand-painted dayglo signs covered with slogans demanding to be paid. Not an unreasonable request, but an impossible one as the city’s finances stood.

The pickets looked like PE teachers, thought Stephen, and he bet that was why they were chosen. Every morning they subjected the few remaining council workers who still had jobs to a torrent of verbal abuse.

In the warmth of the coffee house, Stephen began to make sense of what had just happened. Stress was a killer and he knew from past experience that it could make people do the strangest of things. He must have misheard, there was no other explanation other than someone else knew and that was impossible. Stephen made a mental note to speak to his boss, Emma, about his workload when he got into the office.

He let out a breath that he felt he’d been holding for the last ten minutes and took a sip of the coffee.
Disgusting
, he thought, he even let out a little laugh. He checked his wristwatch. He was late and had to get moving.

He looked across at the picket line. A fifth man had joined the group. He had his back turned to Stephen. The man was wearing a corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows and Stephen decided that the man was probably a Geography teacher.

Stephen took another sip of his coffee and then looked up again.

Fifty yards away, on the opposite side of the street, the man was standing still as office drones flowed around him. Suddenly he turned around and looked directly at Stephen. He wasn’t moving, he was watching; watching him. Stephen saw the man move his head slightly to one side and then smile.

Stephen recognised the man instantly.

He felt his sympathetic nervous system go to full thrust, chemicals flooding his muscles and brain, preparing him for action. It was the same feeling that Stephen, a poor flyer, felt seconds before take-off when the plane stood on the edge of the runway and opened its throttles, no turning back.

Stephen’s world shrank to one choice: run or die.

He ran.

He jumped out of his chair and ran out of the café. He risked a quick look across the street, the man had vanished but Stephen knew he would be near. He snapped his head left and then right. Right. Towards the docks was the only real option.

He plunged into the crowd of commuters and early morning tourists sending Styrofoam coffee cups flying and eliciting furious insults in a host of different languages. He didn’t have a plan; he just had to get away. He ran – legs pumping, muscles burning – focusing only on the narrow tunnel of pavement immediately in front of him.

He passed a policeman holding a submachine gun, guarding the entrance to the James Street train station. The policeman barely gave him a glance as he streaked past: Stephen didn’t fit the current profile.

He ran fast and hard, not daring to look back. He knocked a businessman’s briefcase flying, papers scattering behind him. As he ran down James Street his legs carved longer strides as the road sloped downhill towards the Mersey and the Pier Head. He turned left, if he could get to the Albert Dock there would be more tourists, people he could hide among, maybe jump in a cab down there and put some real distance between him and the man.