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.
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.
