Love You Dead (19 page)

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Tooth said. ‘What can you remember about them?’

She apologized for a moment as a group of four people turned up for lunch; she ticked them off her list and led them through into the restaurant. Then she returned. ‘I’m trying to
think. I’m afraid we have a large number of people every day. If you can wait a moment, I’ll go and ask Erwan, the maître d’, if he can recall anything. Can I borrow the
photograph?’

Giving her his most charming smile, he handed it over, maintaining eye-contact flirtatiously.

She returned a few minutes later. ‘Erwan remembers her!’ she said. ‘She was dining with a much older gentleman, and they asked him to call two taxis at about eleven
o’clock.’

‘Is there a particular cab company you use?’ Tooth asked.

‘A local firm, Streamline.’

Tooth thanked her. His charm offensive had got him what he wanted.

He left and walked along the seafront back to his hotel. He stopped outside to smoke a cigarette, then went up to his room and ordered a pot of coffee. As he waited for it to arrive, he worked
on his story.

Then he picked up his phone and dialled the taxi company.

For the next few hours, Shelby slipped in and out of sleep. He tried several times to reach for the glass of Coke on the bedside table, but could not muster the energy. He
listened to the continuous stream of cars and buses and lorries passing outside the window on the busy thoroughfare of Carden Avenue.

His phone rang.

It was Angi, calling to see how he was feeling and if he had been drinking the Coke she’d left him.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Two glasses.’

‘Well done!’

He put the phone back on the table and stared at the glass, untouched since she had left. It was now 1.30 p.m. His stomach felt as if it was on fire. Weakly, he hauled himself up in bed and
managed to swallow some of the drink, then he checked his ankle again. It didn’t look any worse than earlier; in fact, maybe a tiny bit better. Perhaps the antiseptic cream was helping. And
maybe the way he was feeling was down to that damned bug. Dean hadn’t made it to the pub on Thursday night because he’d got it. It was just a twenty-four-hour thing. So many people had
been going down with it in Sussex – it had even made the local news. He’d start feeling better soon.

He had to.

It was Sunday. The one night of the week the couple in No. 27 Roedean Ridge went out. He’d tailed them for the past three Sunday nights, driving in their large BMW down to the Rendezvous
Casino in the Marina Village, where they stayed and didn’t return until well after midnight. Their regular pattern.

He’d found out from contacts that the secluded property belonged to a bent Brighton antiques jeweller. There had to be rich pickings in that house for sure. And if he went in early enough
after they left, he would have sufficient time to find them. In another few weeks the clocks would go forward, which meant an hour less of darkness in the early evening.

He had planned to go there tonight to see if they went out again. He had to pull himself together and do it. He grabbed the glass and drank down the remaining contents, with difficulty.

Then he fell back into a sleep full of weird dreams in which hissing, crackling snakes spun across the floor like Catherine wheels that had fallen off their pins and were spitting sparks and
flames.

He woke again, drenched in sweat, at 4.03 p.m. with another nosebleed. He had to get up, somehow. He could not allow Angi to come home and take him to the emergency doctor. He didn’t want
the risk of having to lie to a doctor about where he worked and then have her phone them.

Up!

He hauled himself out of bed, placed his feet on the carpeted floor, then stood up. Instantly he sat back down again with a thump.

Shit.

He stood up once more, his stomach heaving, ran into the bathroom and sat on the toilet. He remembered something a cellmate had once said to him: ‘When the bottom falls out of your world,
come to Calcutta and let the world fall out of your bottom.’

He stood up and peered down. And a shiver ran through him.

The toilet was full of blood.

He flushed it, then stepped into the shower, feeling scared. What the hell was going on? Was this the bug or was it some kind of a reaction to the bite? And when was it going to stop? The
powerful stream of hot water made him feel a little better.

He dried himself, then saw fresh blood was still coming out of his two-day-old shaving nick. He put more styptic pencil on it, then, to be sure, a larger strip of plaster, rolled deodorant under
his arms and ran a hand across his damp stubble of hair.

Feeling slightly human again, he dressed in his dark clothes and trainers, and went downstairs. The two large tumblers of Coke that Angi had poured were on the kitchen table. He sat and sipped
the first, slowly, thinking about the blood in the toilet. He must have burst a blood vessel in his backside, he decided.

Comforted by that explanation, he drained the glass and began to work, as Angi had instructed, on the second. After a couple of sips, he started to feel hungry. He stood up and walked,
unsteadily, over to the fridge and opened the door. But everything he looked at – a wedge of Cheddar, a lettuce, a carton of tomatoes, a packet of ham, some eggs, sausages, bacon, a
supermarket moussaka – all made him feel queasy again.

He closed the door, thinking. Maybe a joint might make him feel better. Kill or cure?

He stood up on a chair and reached for the tin marked
BREAD
, where Angi kept her stash. He lifted it down, put it on the table, removed the packet of cigarette papers,
the plastic bag full of weed and a strip of cardboard, and rolled himself a fat joint.

Knowing she would not be happy, he replaced the stash in the tin and put it back on the shelf, then went out into the tiny back garden to smoke it.

Yes!

Wow, oh wow! That was powerful stuff. Wowwweeee!

When Angi arrived home, just after 6.30 p.m., he was standing in front of the television in the sitting room, with his fists balled, dancing to the sound of the Eagles, ‘Peaceful Easy
Feeling’ blasting from the speakers.

‘You’re feeling better!’ she greeted him, joyfully.

‘Magic!’ he said, still dancing. ‘Magic that Coke!’ He took her in his arms and nuzzled her neck. ‘You know what, you’re a genius! Magician! Will you marry
me?’

‘You already asked me that, and I said yes. Did you forget?’

‘Just checking!’ he said.

‘Checking?’

‘In case you’d gone off me during the night.’

‘In sickness and in health,’ she said. ‘The marriage vows. OK? I’ll be sick one day, too. Will that turn you off me?’

‘Never!’

‘What time are you off to work?’

He glanced at his watch. ‘At 7.30. Just under an hour.’

‘Have you eaten anything?’

‘No, but I’m ravenous.’

‘I’ve defrosted a moussaka. OK?’

‘I’m so hungry I could eat the carton!’

‘I’ll save that in case you want to roll another joint,’ she said, tartly.

Then he realized. Despite his elaborate precautions of replacing everything in the bread tin, and smoking it outside, he’d stubbed it out in the ashtray on the kitchen table.

The woman who answered the Streamline Taxi company phone could not have been more helpful after Tooth explained his predicament, in the very posh English accent he had
practised for an hour before he made the call.

‘Oh, hello, this is Andrew Mosley, General Manager of The Grand. We have a slightly delicate situation. Last Tuesday night we had a couple dining here who were – how should I say it
– playing away. You sent two cabs, booked in the name of Carmichael, just after 11 p.m. One collected a gentleman, the other a lady. I’m afraid the lady’s in a bit of a state.
She’s just rung to say that during the course of the dinner she lost the very expensive engagement ring her husband had given her. She thinks she took it off in the ladies’ toilet when
she washed her hands. He’s due back tomorrow from a business trip and she’s terrified he’ll go berserk if she’s not wearing it. Luckily one of our cleaners found it on the
floor, but of course we’ve had no idea, until she just rang, who it belonged to. She’s desperate to have it returned, but in her panic she forgot to give us her address or phone number!
Could you possibly trace the booking and find out her address for me, and I’ll get someone to run it over to her this afternoon?’

Shelby clipped on his seat belt then reversed his Fiat Panda out of the driveway and onto the street. Normally Angi would stand in the doorway to wave him off, but tonight,
angry at him, she’d even turned her head sideways when he’d kissed her goodbye.

He struggled with the gear lever, crunching the gears loudly as he tried to engage first. Then the car bunny-hopped forward and stalled. He pressed the clutch in and twisted the key. The engine
turned over and fired. As he started forward, the car bunny-hopping again, he heard the almost deafening blast of a horn as a van shot past him, nearly taking out a car coming in the opposite
direction.

Shit. He checked his mirrors. Nothing behind him now. He accelerated and again the car jerked forward. Handbrake, he realized, and released it. Then he drove on, winding down past a pub called
The Long Man of Wilmington, his vision blurry. He leaned forward in the darkness, peering through the windscreen, and switched on the wipers. But the screen was clear. Headlights came towards him.
Two of them suddenly became four. He swerved slightly to the left and the car juddered over the kerb and on to the pavement.

Shit, shit, shit. He steered back onto the road, missing a tree by inches. He was clammy with perspiration. Ahead was a mini-roundabout, and suddenly he could not remember where he was supposed
to be going.

Roedean. Kemptown. He halted at the roundabout. There was nothing coming to his right. But he stayed there, eyes trying to focus. Checking then double-checking the road was clear. Then he heard
an impatient toot behind him.

He wound down his window, pushed his arm out and gave the car behind two fingers. ‘Fuck you!’ he said.

Suddenly a shadow loomed towards him. A man, towering over him. Shelby smashed the gear lever into first and jerked forward, turning left into London Road, accelerating hard. He saw red tail
lights ahead. Bright headlights coming towards him, one set after another. Each so bright they felt like they were burning his retinas, as he if was staring at the sun through binoculars.
‘Dim your lights!’ he shouted. ‘Dim your lights, bastards! Dim your lights!’

Then red lights in front were growing brighter. Brighter. Brighter still. Shittttt! He stamped as hard as he could on the brake pedal. The little Fiat slewed forward, its tyres squealing, and
came to a halt just inches from the tail-gate of the lorry right in front of him.

He sat still, his whole body palpitating, his head swimming. After a minute or so the lorry moved forward again, over the green traffic light and on past Preston Park. He ought to turn round, he
knew, he wasn’t up to this – turn round, go back to Angi, go back to bed. But he drove on, fighting it, trying desperately to concentrate, to focus. ‘Focus!’ he shouted at
himself.

His voice sounded strange. Sort of echoing around inside his skull.

He stared at the tail lights of the lorry, imagining it was towing him, that there was a long rope between them he needed to keep taut. No slack. He was safe all the time he stayed behind this
vehicle. Just follow it. Follow it. He braked when it braked, accelerated when it accelerated. They crossed over more green traffic lights. Stopped at a red. Moved on. Keeping that rope taut.

But the lorry indicated right.

‘Gooshbye,’ Shelby slurred. He was going the other way. Left. East.

Then he frowned.

He was at a roundabout. Right in front of him were the dazzling lights of Brighton Pier. Shit. He’d come too far, totally missed the earlier turn-off he’d intended taking into Edward
Street.

Bugger. Shit. But no matter. He could go along Marine Parade instead.

He continued to stare at the lights of the pier – and of the Brighton Wheel to the left. So many lights. Like a thousand torches all beaming straight into his eyes.

He heard the toot of a horn behind him. He put the car into gear and stalled it. He pushed in the clutch and the engine turned over without firing. There was another toot behind him, louder and
longer. He twisted the key in the ignition and the engine again turned over without firing.

No, don’t do this to me. Do not fucking do this to me.

Headlights flashed behind him now, flooding the interior of the car with a light so bright it was blinding him. Another blare of the horn. He tried again and the engine stuttered into life,
backfired, then caught.

Drenched in perspiration, he crunched the car into gear and jerked forward, then stalled again. He was losing track of where he was and why he was here.

He’d engaged third instead of first. The lights behind him again flashed angrily. He started the car once more, got first, then shot forward, right in front of a taxi coming across the
roundabout which also flashed its lights and hooted angrily at him. He accelerated hard onto Marine Parade, the front of the taxi filling his mirrors, still flashing its lights and hooting at him
in fury.

He changed up a gear, holding the accelerator pedal to the floor, looking at the lights behind him, in front of him, all around him. Mesmerized. Two big orange globes like setting suns loomed
ahead.

Then, right in front of him, almost in silhouette, he saw a woman pushing a buggy.

Zebra crossing.

The orange globes.

The woman staring at him. Frozen.

He was closing on her.

His foot stamped on the brake pedal. But it wasn’t the brake, it was the accelerator.

He swung the steering wheel wildly to the left. Almost instantly the car stopped dead, with a massive jolt, a metallic boom and, simultaneously, a loud bang, like a gunshot.