Czytaj książkę: «Sudden Death»

Phil Kurthausen grew up in Merseyside where he dreamt of being a novelist but ended up working as a lawyer. He has travelled the world working as a flower salesman, a light bulb repair technician and, though scared of heights, painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Ken Dodd once put him in a headlock for being annoying.

He has had work broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra, published some short stories and his novel The Killing Pool won the Thriller Round in the Harper Collins People’s Novelist Competition broadcast on ITV in November 2011 and appeared in the final. It was later shortlisted for the Dundee International Literary Prize in 2012.

He lives in Chester.

PRAISE

‘Totally un-putdownable. Quite Outstanding’ Jeffrey Archer

‘This pulls you in at 100 mph. [The] sense of place is terrific. A great central character. I love Erasmus Jones’ Mark Billingham

‘Wonderfully written, tightly written, Erasmus Jones is like Jack Reacher. Wonderful’ Cathy Kelly

‘I read ahead of myself. Just cracking. Macabre, brilliant’ Penny Smith

Dedication

For Dylan & Thea

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Book List

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

PRAISE

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Epilogue

Extract

Endpages

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

July 2nd 1992

She ran, breathing and sobbing hard. She didn’t dare turn around and look back, for the sound of the beasts was still close behind.

The tears that wouldn’t stop blinded her and she tumbled hard onto the cinder path. She lay there for a second and as her eyes cleared slightly she noticed the skin hanging off her knees, revealing lacerations the colour of cough sweets. She held up her hands. Even silhouetted against the sun she could still see the speckled grit that had lodged there as she had broken her fall.

From behind her there came a cackle, a sound that spoke of pleasure in pain, torture and fear. She stood up and ran faster than she ever had before and inwardly screamed at the universe, at herself, for believing that it had all been true.

***

The gap in the trees had been exactly where he had described it in the letter.

She had walked down the cinder path, her head bowed as usual to avoid attracting any unnecessary attention from the ever hungry eyes of the hawks, as she thought of them, those girls with the heightened sense of who was weak and vulnerable to attack, torment and destruction.

But she had been lucky, the path was unusually clear of other pupils. It was a warm day and everyone else had been desperate to leave, a rush and whirr of movement – perfume being applied, shirts rolled up at the waist and buttons undone – and all the time she had moved slowly, as though moving through a different world, a denser atmosphere than the others inhabited. By the time she had put her bag over her shoulder, the changing rooms had cleared save for the tired and grey looking Miss Clarkson, who had wearily ushered her out of the school doors.

When she had reached the end of the cinder path, instead of turning right and heading down the hill that ran to her home, she had turned left. The path ran for a few yards more here and then disappeared, reclaimed by weeds and the trees that surrounded the old Mill House copse

She had come to the gap in the trees, widened over the years by the smokers, potheads and mischievous school children who used this forbidden path. She had never dared come this way before, had never been invited before now but it was exactly as he had described it: a gap marked by the corpse of an old dead elm, dried and decaying.

Her hand had gone to the letter in her pocket. It had been tucked into her bag, placed there while she was doing gym. Resting at the top, the envelope sticking out of the zip so she couldn’t miss it. She had always thought that her half glances had been missed or ignored for the more obvious attentions of the prettier, more confident girls who danced and preened around Mark. But Mark, a golden flop of fringe, eyes the colour of sapphires and a quiet confidence and bearing that made her stomach loop and turn like a Tiger Moth performing acrobatics, had known all along. She had felt sick with the anticipation. For the rest of the afternoon she had struggled to keep her thoughts from colliding with one another, the letter seemed to have derailed all her carefully nurtured linear patterns of thinking. Miss Clarkson had asked her a question in her maths class and Alison hadn’t been aware that she was even being spoken to until she realized that the laughter of the other children was being directed at her.

Miss Clarkson had tutted and under her breath muttered something about periods. The laughter had grown louder but Alison was used to this by now. She had just lowered her head and stared at the desk. She knew the laughter would pass, it always did, it was a creature that constantly needed feeding, needed new targets and all she had to do was wait until some other prey walked unknowingly into the maw and she would be forgotten.

Even though it had been a sunny day, hot and sticky, the path had quickly become dark as the canopy formed by the oaks and the hawthorn blocked out the light. It was a little colder in here but she was happy about this as it cooled her and she knew that she was flushing already as the nervous excitement sent blood rushing round her body. So many times that flush had been the source of ridicule for her classmates and Mark couldn’t have helped but notice. She placed her hands on her cheeks. They were burning and for a second she considered turning back but then she thought of all her heroines of literature. Would they have turned back, would Cathy have not gone to Heathcliff?

She had taken a deep breath, smelling the sweet rich smell of the woods, and then walked on.

A hundred yards down the path she had come to a clearing. In the middle of the clearing were the crumbling remains of the old mill that set beside a small stream. Beams of sunlight penetrated here and within them droplets of water were leaping, forming a small shimmering rainbow that made her gasp at its beauty. She was so transfixed by this sight that she almost didn’t notice Mark step from the shadow of the mill.

‘Hello Ali,’ he had said and then grinned at her.

She had gone to speak but the words had caught in her throat, which seemed to have narrowed to the size of a drinking straw. The world turned and empires rose and fell as she tried to speak.

He had walked towards her.

Luckily her body, usually so much her enemy, started to work.

‘Hi Mark, I got your letter.’ She dug the letter out of the chest pocket in her blouse and held it up.

He had nodded and carried on walking towards her. He flicked his head to one side, clearing the thick golden fringe that had obscured one eye. He smiled at her and she didn’t blush, but feeling a newly discovered confidence, she smiled back.

And then he was holding her and kissing her. He smelled of sweat and sunshine and something darker and more frightening and yet at the same time intoxicating. She opened her mouth and then his tongue was in her mouth, roughly searching. She had read about this, but oh my, the difference was the difference between life and death. She felt her teeth hit against his and she tried to say sorry but his tongue was back, forcing the words back to where they belonged.

His hands moved from around her back and started to unbutton her blouse. She let the letter fall to the floor as she raised her hands to try and stop him but he was quick and powerful and really she didn’t want him to stop, not ever.

He ripped open the last buttons and then reached around and unclipped her bra. It fell to the floor. Instinctively she covered her breasts with her hands. He stood back, a strange smile on his face.

‘Let’s see you then,’ he said.

‘Mark, I wanted you to know … ’, and then she decided no more words, to say it was to unmake it. She let her hands drop to her sides and smiled at him. She revealed herself to him.

He folded his arms and looked at something behind her.

Someone started to laugh but it wasn’t him.

‘Oh my fucking God, she only went and did it. Hey Alison, smile for the camera! Nice scars. Fuck!’

She wheeled around and there sitting on the top of the mill wall were three demons, black plastic faces with red lips painted in evil grins. The Witches, for that was how she thought of them, were laughing hysterically. One of them was holding a camera and the flash exploded into diamond hard light.

She turned back to Mark, her face flushed, her throat as compressed as a strangler’s victim.

‘Why?’ escaped from the clutches of her throat.

Mark stopped laughing and suddenly he looked unsure. Maybe he saw something, the murder he had committed, the innocence he had killed, but he looked like a frightened boy now and not the man he had been moments before. He was staring in horror at the white scars that covered her arms, shoulder and stomach.

A hand pushed her to the floor.

‘Because we’ve seen you, we’ve all seen you mooning over him as if you’d ever have a chance and you needed to be told.’

The tallest witch was standing back taking picture after picture, the sound of the camera’s motor seemed as loud as a jet engine.

‘So have a guess what pictures are going to be all over the fence tomorrow and in every class room and posted to your dad!’

The girls laughed as one.

Alison scrambled away at the same time she tried to cover herself up. She picked up her blouse but it was snatched away by the girl with red hair.

The camera kept on clicking, the film turning.

Alison rolled over in the dirt and snatched up her bra and bag. She got to her feet and she ran.

‘Oi, where do you think you’re going!’ shouted the witch holding the camera.

Alison ran straight at her sending the camera tumbling to the ground. There was a screech of anger.

‘You’ll fucking pay for that. Get her!’

Alison ran and the beasts followed.

They had been no match for her speed though and after she fell on the cinder path she had run with every part of her mind and body and soon they and their cries had fallen behind. As she ran, she sobbed, but when she came to the front door of her house, the sobs fell silent, the fear disappeared and a cold, emotionless calm settled upon her.

She let herself into the house with her key and stood silently for a moment. The house was quiet. That afternoon quiet, when the only sounds were the distant rustle of her father’s paper coming from the study where he locked himself away, and from where she knew he would not venture until the late summer evening darkness descended like a shroud over the house. She couldn’t let him see her like this so slipped off her shoes and walked as quietly as she could through the house. As she passed the door to his study the sweet smell of black cherry tobacco seeped through the closed door, and the sound of a stifled sob.

She took the stairs one at a time, her bare feet soft and noiseless on the carpet. Creeping past her father’s bedroom she thought she heard a noise, and for a second she thought it sounded like a brush being pulled through long hair. It was a memory of a sound she had last heard many years before. Still, she froze by the open doorway, one foot suspended in the air, straining to catch the memory of that sound but there was nothing save for a far away crow’s caw.

Next to her father’s room was her bedroom and as soon as she was inside she shut the door softly behind her.

She flopped exhausted into the chair in front of her desk. She caught sight of herself in the mirror. The mascara she had applied so carefully only forty minutes previously now marked the track of each tear.

But the tears had stopped now. Something else had replaced the shame, the anguish and the heartbreak. This new feeling was hard and resolute, like the sharp edge of a steel blade.

Alison opened a drawer and took out a small black doll. The doll was wearing a black felt coat and a square black hat. The cloak was covered in thin, spiky gold stars. She called it Sleeping Beauty because the doll’s face was as white as ice just like the princess in the story. It was a troll. It had been made by her Icelandic grandmother for Alison’s mother when she was a child. When she was small Alison had imagined she could still smell her mother on the felt. She held it to her nose and inhaled deeply.

After a few seconds she returned it to the drawer. She opened another drawer and took out an extension cord that she used to plug in her hairdryer when the one socket was overloaded with other plugs. Her father had given her it only the week before and mumbled something about his little girl being grown up now.

She stood up and pulled the chair she had been sitting on into the middle of the room. She stood on the chair.

There was a noise from downstairs or maybe closer. She looked around. Her wardrobe door had slipped open revealing the darkness of its interior stuffed with clothes and the old toys that had recently been relegated there. She would have to hurry as soon her father would be calling her to dinner and when she didn’t come he would look for her.

She reached up and slipped the extension cord around the light fitting. She had to push to one side the Paddington Bear lampshade that hung from the fitting but this was easily done. Quickly now, she tied a knot and then looped the plug end into a simple granny knot. She placed the loop around her neck.

There was another noise, a rustling like rats under the floorboards. She ignored it and kicked the chair away.

Alison dropped two feet, her toes lightly brushing against the carpet. She pirouetted like a broken jewellery box ballerina, twisting as the cord spun her around. And as the breath began to leave her for the last time she looked directly into the darkness of the old wardrobe and there she saw, unmistakably, a pair of red bloodshot eyes looking straight back at her.

She span once more and then was gone.

CHAPTER 2

The girl sucked in her bottom lip and looked at Erasmus with as lascivious a glare as he had ever received. She was young, early twenties he would have guessed if he was inclined to give it much thought, which he wasn’t. Her short denim skirt had ridden even higher up her slim thighs than he thought physics would allow, and now she placed a tanned hand under his shirt and on his chest, and then ran it, long manicured nails digging into his skin, slowly down his torso, stopping just above his groin. She paused for a moment and then slipped her fingers underneath his belt

Erasmus groaned, a groan of pleasure but also of despair. He thought of his mobile phone tucked away in his inside jacket pocket. Martha’s number was in there. It wasn’t too late, he could take a step back, look at his behaviour objectively for a second – that’s all it would take. Enough time for him to recognise the old behaviours for what they were, call Martha, and tell her he needed her help. He had done it before and she had never failed to pick up, as he had never failed to pick up when she had called on the diminishing number of occasions when she had succumbed.

His right hand moved towards his jacket and his phone. The girl’s large green-flecked eyes, pupils dilated, flickered and she grabbed his hand and took his fingers between her lips, sucking and biting the nails.

This time his groan was pure lust. All thoughts of calling Martha departed. He was lost. He moved forward and placed his left hand on her buttocks and drew her near to him.

She laughed and then pushed him back against the sink. Slowly she undid the three buttons on her tight electric blue blouse, revealing a black silk bra, and then tossed the blouse on the floor. He grabbed her now and pulled her to him. She kissed him passionately, her tongue exploring his mouth.

Suddenly, there was a burst of static in his ear mic.

‘I’ve lost him.’

Erasmus groaned but this time it was a groan of disappointment. He gently pushed her back.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘Work.’

She cocked her head to one side.

‘What is it you do?’

He half smiled and shook his head.

‘You don’t want to know.’

He opened the door of the cubicle and gave her an apologetic salute.

Even against the banging bass of the club and the whoops and cheers of hundreds of drunken and drugged revellers, Erasmus heard the message loud and clear through his earpiece.

‘I can’t find him!’

He began moving quickly towards the exit, pushing people aside gently but firmly so he could carve a path through the heaving, sweating mass of bodies. It was like swimming through flesh.

A bearded man, dressed to Erasmus’s mind like a cross between a thirties miner and a day-tripper, tried to grab him. He slipped under the man’s arm and brought his mouth close to the man’s glistening face.

‘Get out of my way now.’

The man stared back at him with pupils like black plastic buttons. His dopamine grin changed to a cocaine snarl and he pushed Erasmus in the chest. Erasmus glanced up at the suspended gantry that ran around the circumference of the dance floor. He spotted two bouncers, one of whom was scanning the dance floor for incidents just like this.

His earpiece growled static and then another message.

‘He’s on the roof. Get up here now! I think he’s about to do something stupid!’

He had no time to debate the issue with Cocaineman, who had now raised his hands and wiggled his palms in the internationally accepted gesture of ‘come on then’. Erasmus sighed.

‘When will you kids learn to just say no?’

Erasmus pulled his right arm back and balled his fist but it was just a feint. It would make what he actually planned to do easier. Cocaineman obliged and, anticipating a punch to the face, started to sway back. Erasmus dropped to his haunches and swept his right foot around in an arc taking the man’s legs away from under him in one smooth movement. He dashed forward and caught the guy’s head before it hit the floor and lowered him the few inches to the dance floor.

Cocaineman looked stunned and his breathing was laboured.

‘Do us both a favour and stay down,’ said Erasmus.

Erasmus stood up and began to walk quickly towards the exit and the lift that would take him to the top of the building.

‘You need to get up here now. I can’t see him!’ The voice in his earpiece sounded desperate now.

From behind him he heard a scream. Erasmus turned round and saw that Cocaineman hadn’t taken his advice and was back on his feet. Worse, he had pulled out a knife. Erasmus sighed.

People had instinctively moved away from Cocaineman, but not so far that they wouldn’t see the action. The crowd surrounding him were filled with a nervous but visceral bloodthirsty excitement.

The blade was six inches long and, reflecting the light from the strobes, it looked like a whirring, diamond power tool. Cocaineman was grinning, no doubt enjoying the reversal of power that his hyper firing synapses were telling him had just occurred. He was wrong.

There was another scream. Erasmus noticed a tall, pretty, heavily made-up girl run long pearlescent white finger nails over the bare skin of her arm and her red lips part in expectation. Wherever there is a fight there’s always a crowd waiting to watch the blood, thought Erasmus. He looked up and saw the bouncers were on the move heading for the metal stairs down to the dance floor. In a way it was a relief, there was no need for subtlety any more.

Cocaineman swung the knife at him in a lazy arc. Erasmus moved back an inch on his heels and the knife’s path missed him.

‘What did I tell you?’

Cocaineman ignored him and pulled back his arm ready to strike again. He never got the chance.

Erasmus transferred his weight onto his toes and then in one fluid movement pushed forward over his right knee, his right palm slamming hard into Cocaineman’s nose. He held back slightly as he didn’t want the bone fragments and destroyed cartilage that he could feel crunching beneath his palm to travel upwards into the chemical mess of Cocaineman’s brain: Erasmus figured he had enough trouble in there to be going on with.

Cocaineman didn’t even have time to scream before his eyes rolled up into his sockets and he collapsed unconscious to his knees, and then slumped onto the floor.

The girl with the pearlescent nails let out a small satisfied sigh.

Erasmus winked at her and then jumped over the man’s prone body and headed for the emergency exit. He risked a look back. The two bouncers had reached Cocaineman and were slapping him around the face to revive him. Nice doorman medical technique, thought Erasmus.

He hit the metal bar and the exit door burst open leading to a service corridor. Erasmus walked briskly to the end of the corridor and opened the door at the end. It led into the lobby of the club. There were velvet drapes hanging from the double height ceiling and a statue of a large golden cow squatted in the middle of the lobby, totally dominating the space. This was the icon of the Blood House, a refurbished dance and drugs palace that operated in the building where once Liverpool’s oldest slaughterhouse had stood.

Erasmus ran across to one of the drapes and pulled it aside, revealing a lift. He hit the call button. Above him he heard the sound of pulleys and machinery begin to whirr.

‘Can you see him, Dave?’ said Erasmus into his microphone. There was no reply, only the low sizzle of static.

Behind him he could hear leather soles on tiles. The bouncers were right behind him, running down the corridor.

The sound of the lift grew closer.

The head doorman was Jeff Dooley. He was forty-five, a former bare-knuckle fighter and too canny to lead. He left that to Craig, his assistant, who at twenty years his junior should damn well have the breath to run ahead, even though his steroid fed body hadn’t actually been developed for speed during the thousands of hours of gym work that he subjected it to. But it wasn’t just that. Jeff had seen the man take down Barry Gilligan, Cocaineman as Erasmus thought of him. Barry wasn’t professional but he wasn’t a pushover and the stranger had blown through him like a tornado through Texas. Best to leave the point work to Craig, thought Jeff, fingering the plastic grip of the weapon on his belt and flicking open the clip on the leather holster.

Craig burst through the door and Jeff slowly followed.

In the lobby of the club the front door banged on its hinges as the hard, cold wind whipped in off the Mersey, got funnelled up through the concrete canyon of Water Street and slammed into the front door. The door crashed against the frame again, this time so loud that Jeff thought it would shatter.

Craig pulled the door shut.

‘He’s gone,’ he said.

There was a loud ding as the lift arrived on the ground floor and the doors opened. Jeff pulled back a velvet drape revealing an empty lift. He shook his head.

‘I don’t think so,’ Jeff said looking up. ‘He’s taken the stairs. He’s headed for the roof, come on.’

Jeff stepped into the lift and Craig followed.

Erasmus was more out of shape then he had realised. As he crashed through the fire door and out onto the roof of the Blood House, the icy air from the Mersey stole away what little remained of his breath. He stood still for a second, panting slightly, and looked around. The roof of the bar had been turned into a terrace, no doubt trying to mimic some New York hotel but in the dark, cold of a Merseyside winter it was deserted and had all the charm of a northern seaside town out of season. Incongruous sun loungers lay in a regimented pattern around a frozen shallow pool that in the summer was blue and fresh but in the winter was left cold and empty.

The one benefit of the roof terrace was the view of the city that it afforded. From here he could look down Water Street and to the riverfront. The tall stone walls of two of The Three Graces, the Cunard building and the Liver building, framed the dark, broiling Mersey. It was chillingly beautiful.

He took a breath and started forward looking for Dave. He tried the microphone.

‘Dave, are you there?’

He shouted the same question.

His replies were static and silence.

Erasmus hurried around the side of the pool and towards the bar area at the far end of the roof. If Dave wasn’t behind it, lying unconscious or worse, than there was nowhere else he could be up here.

The bar was maybe thirty feet long and behind it was an open storage area for beer and wine crates. Erasmus jumped on the bar and slid across it. There was nothing there save for a few bottle tops and a soggy dead firework. The storage area was blocked off from his view by a ten feet high sign that ran the length of the rear of the bar and which depicted striking dockworkers holding a girl in a forties polka dot bikini aloft on their shoulders. An image that summed up the bar, and in many ways Liverpool: an awkward history, socialism and faded glory.

Erasmus ran to the end of the bar and into the storage area. This was just a piece of roof, maybe two metres long, and empty save for two aluminium beer barrels that Erasmus guessed some minimum wage student barman had neglected to bring down at the end of summer.

Of Dave and his client there was no sign.

‘Erasmus!’

He looked around but he couldn’t see anyone yet he had definitely heard his name being called. Erasmus walked to the edge of the building. He made the mistake of looking down. The side of the Blood House building fell away into a narrow dark slit, the alleyway that separated it from the adjacent building, which was slightly lower. From the alley far below came the sound of clattering cans and debris swirling around in eddies caused by the strong, grit-filled wind.