Dead Simple (10 page)

‘I was his secretary for six months, OK? I don’t think there’s much I don’t know.’

‘So you know about his Cayman Islands company?’

Genuine surprise in her face. Her eyes shot to the left. Construct mode. She was lying. ‘Cayman Islands?’ she said.

‘He and his partner’ — he paused, pulled out his notebook and flipped through several pages — ‘Mark Warren. You’re aware of this company they have there? HW Properties International?’

She stared at him in silence. ‘HW Properties International?’ she echoed.

‘Uh huh.’

‘No, I know nothing about this.’

He nodded. ‘OK.’

The tone of her voice had shifted subtly. Thanks to Roy Grace’s teaching he knew what it meant. ‘Tell me more?’

‘I don’t know much more, I was hoping you could tell me.’

Her eyes shot to the left again. Construct mode again. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s probably not significant anyway,’ he said. ‘After all, who doesn’t want to avoid the tax man?’

‘Michael is shrewd. He’s a clever businessman. But he would never do anything illegal.’

‘I’m not suggesting that, Miss Harper. I’m trying to establish that perhaps you don’t know the full picture about the man you are marrying, that’s all.’

‘Meaning what?’

Again he raised his hands in the air. It was five to seven.

He needed to go. ‘It doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all. But it’s something we have to be aware of.’ He gave her a smile.

It was not returned.

On the unstable television screen in the chaotically untidy Portakabin annexed to his dad’s house on the edge of Lewes, with its view out on to the yard filled with car wrecks, Davey was watching the American cop show,
Law and Order
. His favourite character, a sharp cop called Detective Reynaldo Curtis, was eyeballing a low-life, holding him by the dewlaps with a clenched fist. ‘I’m in your face, know what I’m saying?’ Reynaldo Curtis snarled.

Davey, in his baggy jeans, and baseball cap tugged tight over his head, lay back on his beat-up sofa munching a Twinkie bar from a supply that was delivered to him weekly from the States by mail order and shouted out, ‘Yeah, scumbag! I’m in your face, know what I’m saying?’

The detritus of Davey’s quarterpounder and fries dinner lay on the curled carpet tiles at his feet amid the piles of junk — much of it salvaged during his work with his dad — that covered just about every inch of the floor, shelf and table space of his domain.

Beside him sat the pieces of the walkie-talkie he had found a couple of nights back. He’d been meaning to try to fix it, but hadn’t got around to it yet. Idly, he picked the main body of it up and peered at it.

The casing was badly cracked. There was a loose bit of plastic with flanges and two AAA batteries that he had retrieved from the road when he had dropped it. He’d really meant to put it back together but somehow it had slipped his mind. Lots of stuff slipped his mind. Just as fast as most things came into his head, they went out again.

Stuff.

There was stuff all the time that made no sense.

Life was like a jigsaw puzzle where bits were always missing. The important bits. Now there were four bits to the walkie-talkie jigsaw. The cracked box, two batteries and the thing that looked like a lid.

He finished his Twinkie, licked the wrapper, then tossed it onto the floor.

‘Know what I’m saying?’ he announced to no one. Then he leaned forward, picked up the burger’s polystyrene box and rummaged around through the mess of ketchup with his finger. ‘Yeah! I’m in your face, know what I’m saying?’

He chuckled. There was a commercial break. Some smarmy media fuckwit talking about building society rates. Growing impatient, Davey said ‘Come on, baby, let’s get back to the show.’

Instead, another commercial came on. On the screen a baby crawled across the carpet talking in a deep male adult voice. Davey watched for some moments, transfixed, wondering how a baby could learn to speak that way. Then his attention drifted back to the walkie-talkie. There was a telescopic aerial, which he pulled out as far as it would go, then pushed back in again. ‘Kerloink!’ he said. Then out again. ‘Kerloink!’

He pointed it at the television screen, staring down its length, taking aim as if it were a rifle. Then the show came back on.

He looked at his brand new watch, which his dad had given him for his birthday yesterday. It was for timing motor races, and had all kinds of buttons, dials and digital displays that he hadn’t quite figured out yet from the instruction book. His dad promised to help him read it, get through the tough words. He needed to have it all working OK for this Sunday, the Monaco Grand Prix, it was important he had it ready for that.

There was a knock on his door, then it opened a few inches. His dad stood there, dressed up in a hunting cap with ear flaps, battered old windcheater and wellington boots. ‘Five minutes, Davey.’

‘Awww. It’s
Law and Order
. Could we make it fifteen?’

Cigarette smoke drifted into the room. Davey saw the red glow as his dad took a drag. ‘If you want to come shooting rabbits, we have to leave in five minutes. You must have seen every show of
Law and Order
they ever made.’

The ads ended, the show was coming back on. Davey raised a finger to his lips. Grinning in mock despair, Phil Wheeler backed out of the room. ‘Five minutes,’ he said, closing the door.

‘Ten!’ Davey shouted after him, American accent now. ‘Compromise! Know what I’m saying?’

Davey turned his focus back on the walkie-talkie, thinking it might be cool to take it out rabbit shooting with him. He peered closely into the battery compartment, figured out which way they were supposed to go in, and inserted the batteries. Then he pushed one of two buttons on the side. Nothing happened. He tried the second button and instantly there was a crackle of static.

He held the speaker part to his ear, listening. Just static. And then, suddenly, a male voice so loud he could have been in the room with him.

‘Hello?’

Startled, Davey dropped the walkie-talkie on the floor.

‘Hello? Hello?’

Davey stared down at it, beaming with delight. Then there was another knock on his door and his father called out, ‘I’ve got your gun, let’s go!’

Then suddenly afraid his father might get mad if he saw the walkie-talkie — he wasn’t supposed to take anything they found around wrecks — Davey crouched down on the floor, pressed the other button, which he assumed to be the
talk
one, and hissed furtively, in his American accent, ‘Sorry, can’t talk, he’s in my face — know what I mean?’

Then he shoved the walkie-talkie under the bed and hurried from the room, leaving the television, and Detective Reynaldo Curtis, having to cope without him.

‘Hey! Hello! Hello! Hello!’

Silence came back at him from the ivory satin.

‘Hey, please, help me!’

Michael, sobbing, stabbed the
talk
button repeatedly. ‘Please, help me, please help me!

Just static crackle.

‘Sorry, can’t talk, he’s in my face — know what I mean?’

A strange voice, like some ham actor playing an American gangster. Was this all part of the joke? Michael guided the salty tears down to his dry, cracked lips, and for one fleeting, taunting instant savoured the moisture, before his tongue absorbed them like blotting paper.

He looked at his watch. More hours had gone past: 8.50. For how many more hours was this nightmare going to go on? How could they be getting away with it? Surely to God Ashley, his mother,
everyone
, for Christ’s sake, must be on to the boys by now. He’d been down here for — for—

A sudden panic hit him. Was it 8.50 in the morning or evening?

It had been afternoon just a while ago, hadn’t it? He’d watched each hour on the hour go past. Surely he could not have been so careless to lose track of a whole twelve-hour chunk? It had to be evening now, night, tonight, not tomorrow morning.

Almost forty-eight hours.

What the hell are you all doing?

He pressed his hands down, pushing himself up for a moment, trying to get some circulation going into his numb backside. His shoulders hurt from being hunched, every joint in his body ached from lack of movement — and from dehydration — he knew about the dangers of that from sailing. His head throbbed incessantly. He could stop it for a few seconds by levering his hands up to his head and digging his thumbs into his temples, but then it came back just as bad as before.

‘
Christ
, I’m getting married on Saturday, you fuckwits! Get me out of here!’ he shouted as loudly as he could, then pounded the roof and walls with his feet and hands.

The imbeciles. Friday tomorrow. The day before the wedding. He had to get his suit. Haircut. They were going away on honeymoon on Saturday night to Thailand — he had a ton of stuff to do in the office before then, before going away for two weeks. Had to write his wedding speech.

Oh, come on, guys, there’s so much I have to do! You’ve paid me back now, OK? For all the shit I ever did to you lot? You’d paid me back with interest. Big time!

Dropping his hand to his crotch, he located the torch and switched on for a few precious seconds, rationing the battery. The white satin seemed to be ever closer to him; last time he looked it seemed a good six inches above his face, now no more than three, as if this box, coffin, or whatever it was, was slowly, steadily caving in on him.

He took hold of the tube, dangling limp in front of his face, again squinted, trying to peer up into it, but could see nothing. Then he checked he was pushing the right button on the walkie-talkie. He pressed each one in turn. Listened first to static, then pressed
talk
and shouted as loudly as he could, then pressed the
listen
button again. Nothing.

‘
Nada!
’ he said out aloud. ‘Not a fucking sausage.’

Then an image of a frying pan on his mother’s stove came into his mind. A frying pan filled with sausages, eggs, bacon, tomatoes, crackling, fizzing, popping, hissing. He could smell them, dammit, smell the bread too, frying in another pan, the tin of baked beans heating up.

Oh Jesus, I’m so hungry
.

He turned his mind away from food, from the pain in his stomach that was so bad it felt its own stomach acids were eating their way through his stomach lining. Somewhere inside his pounding skull his brain was reminding him of something he had read; it was about a breed of frogs — or toads — he couldn’t remember which right now, which gestated its babies in its stomach rather than womb. For some reason the stomach acids didn’t harm the babies.

What’s to stop us humans digesting our own stomachs?
he thought, suddenly. His brain was racing now, remembering bits of all kinds of stuff.

He remembered reading some years back a theory about Circadian rhythms. All other living organisms on this planet lived a twenty-four-hour cycle, but not humans — our average was twenty-five and a quarter. Tests had been done putting human beings down into dark places for weeks on end, with no clocks. Invariably they thought they had been down there for a shorter period of time than was the case.

Great, I could be one of their fucking lab rats now.

His mouth was so dry his lips stuck together and it hurt to part them. It felt as if their skin was ripping.

Then he shone the torch straight up, looked at the ever-deepening groove he had made in the wood above his face, picked up his leather belt and again began to rub the corner of the metal buckle backwards and forwards against the hard teak — he knew enough about wood to know this was teak — and that teak was just about the hardest wood — closing his eyes tight, in pain, as specks of sawdust struck them, and gradually the buckle became hotter and hotter until he had to stop to let it cool down.

‘Sorry, can’t talk, he’s in my face — know what I mean?’

Michael frowned. Who the hell was this putting on the fake American voice?

How could any of them think this was funny? What the hell had they told Ashley? His mother?

After a few minutes, he stopped scraping, exhausted. Had to keep going, he knew. Dehydration made you tired. Had to fight the tiredness. Had to get the hell out of this damned box. Had to get out and at those bastards, and there was going to be hell to pay.

He struggled on for a few more minutes, scraping, sometimes catching his knuckles, trying to keep his eyes screwed tight against the sawdust that fell and tickled his face, until he was too tired to go on. His hand dropped down and his clenched neck muscles relaxed their grip. Gently his head dropped back.

He slept.

The evening was prematurely dark. Mark parked his car just beyond a bus stop a short way up the road, then waited for some moments. The wide street, lacquered black by the torrential rain, was quiet, a trickle of cars passing. No one seemed to be out walking; no one to notice him.

He pulled on a baseball cap low over his face, then, turning up his anorak collar, ran to the sheltered porch of Michael’s apartment block, glancing at each of the parked cars in turn, looking for someone seated in there in the dark. Michael was always telling people that Mark was the detail man in their partnership. Then he would qualify that with a remark that Mark hated.
Mark is incredibly anal.

But Mark knew that he was right, that was exactly why Double-M Properties was so successful, because he was the one who did all the real work. It was his role to scrutinize every line of the builder’s estimates, to be there on site, to approve every single material that was purchased, to watch the schedules and to cost everything down to the last penny. While Michael spent half his time swanning around, womanizing, rarely taking anything too seriously. The success of the business was his, he believed, and his alone. Yet Michael had the majority shareholding, just because he’d had more cash to put in when they had started up.