Peter James - Not Dead Yet

Grace shook his head. ‘It stays with me. No one will ever know we had this conversation. So tell me more? I didn’t think burglary was Smallbone’s game.’

‘It ain’t. He just wanted to fuck you over. Embarrass you.’ Then Spicer gave a wry smile. ‘I don’t think he likes you very much.’

‘That’s a shame. My mantelpiece will look very bare this Christmas without my usual card from him.’

‘No I don’t need help, thank you. Do I look that fucking frail?’

The doorman of The Grand Hotel was taken aback, but outwardly kept his composure. ‘Very good, sir, just trying to be helpful.’

‘When I want your help, I’ll tell you.’

Drayton Wheeler walked on through the lobby, perspiring heavily, struggling from the weight of the sealed brown box under his left arm, and his two heavily laden carrier bags.

He passed a couple of photographers and the same oddball group of people occupying a bay of sofas, several of them holding CD booklets and record sleeves, who seemed to be camped out here, sad fans of that superbitch cow actress. How wrong was she for the part? His part. The one he had written. He pressed the button and waited for the lift. His anger was all over the place, he knew. He had shouted at two different pharmacists, the idiot on the checkout desk in the Waitrose supermarket, the cretin in Dockerills hardware store and the total asshole in Halfords.

He got out at the sixth floor, walked down the corridor, then struggled to get his key card out. He pushed it in then removed it.

The light flashed red.

‘Shit!’ he shouted. He rammed it in then pulled it out again, the weight of the package under his left arm killing him. He put it in again, the right way around this time, and the light flashed green.

He half kicked, half pushed open the door and stepped into the small room, staggered over towards the twin beds and dumped his packages down on one, with relief.

He needed a shower. Something to eat. But first he needed to check everything, to make sure the fuckwits hadn’t sold him the wrong stuff.

He hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign outside the door, turned the security lock, then ripped open the first package, took out the car battery and set it down on top of the Sussex Life magazine that lay on the small round table. Then he dipped into one of the carrier bags and pulled out a heavy metal tyre bar, and then six thermometers which he placed next to the battery. Then he removed the bottle of hydrochloric acid, labelled as paint stripper, which he had bought from Dockerills. He placed that on the table, on top of another magazine, Absolute Brighton . Then he added a bottle of chlorine. He opened the last carrier bag, which was from Mothercare.

He stood back for a moment, clasped his hands together, and smiled. The great thing about dying, he thought, was that you no longer had to be worried about anything. A quotation was spinning around in his head and he tried to remember who said it.

To dream of death is good for those in fear, for the dead have no more fears.

That was right, oh yes. Do you know that quotation, Larry Brooker? Maxim Brody? Gaia Lafayette?

Know who you are dealing with?

A man who has no more fears!

A man who has the chemical components to make mercuric chloride. And who knows how to make it!

He was a successful industrial chemist long before he became a screwed screenwriter. He remembered all this stuff from a long time ago.

Mercuric chloride is not a salt but a linear triatomic molecule, hence its tendency to sublime.

Did you know that, Larry Brooker? Maxim Brody? Bitch queen Gaia Lafayette?

You will soon.

His phone rang. He answered it aggressively, not in any mood to be disturbed.

An irritatingly cheery young woman said, ‘Jerry Baxter?’

He remembered the voice. ‘Uh huh.’

‘You didn’t turn up for your costume fitting today. Just wanted to check if you were still interested in being an extra on The King’s Lover ?’

He held his temper. ‘I’m sorry, I had an important meeting.’

‘No problem, Jerry. We’re shooting crowd scenes outside the Pavilion on Monday morning, weather permitting. If you’re still interested, could you come tomorrow?’

He said nothing for some moments, thinking hard. Then he said, ‘Perfect.’

Cleo found a parking space two streets away from her home, shortly after 5 p.m. on Friday evening. The rain had stopped and the sky was brightening. As she climbed out of her little Audi she felt leadenly tired, but happy. So incredibly happy, and with the weekend to look forward to ahead. As if responding to her mood, the baby kicked inside her.

‘You happy too, Bump?’

She lifted her handbag off the passenger seat, locked the car and started walking home, totally unaware of the two pairs of eyes watching her from behind the windscreen of the rented Volkswagen that had been following her from the mortuary.

‘ Warum starrst du die dicke Frau an? ’ the boy asked.

In German, she replied, ‘She’s not fat, my love. She’s carrying a baby.’

In German, he asked, ‘Whose baby?’

She did not reply. With hatred in her eyes she watched the woman.

‘Whose baby, Mama?’

For some moments she said nothing, feeling deep turmoil inside her. ‘Wait here,’ she said. ‘I’ll be right back.’

She left the car and walked up the street for some yards past the Audi. Trying to appear nonchalant, and not to draw any attention to herself, she turned around until she could see the front of Cleo’s car.

There was a patina of dust on the bonnet, and several spatterings of seagull droppings, one lying on the duct-tape repair to the roof. But the wording she had carved was still there, clearly visible.

COPPERS TART. UR BABY IS NEXT.

Anna paced around her Gaia museum, her Gaia shrine. A Martini glass in her hand. She was drinking – deliberately drinking – a cocktail that was so not Gaia. It was a Manhattan. Two parts bourbon, one part red Martini, Angostura bitters and a maraschino cherry on its stalk, in a Martini glass.

She was drinking it to spite Gaia.

She was drinking it to get drunk.

It was her third Manhattan of the evening. Friday evening. She didn’t have to go to work tomorrow. So she could get totally smashed.

She had never been so humiliated in her life as she had been on Wednesday. Her face was still burning. She could hear the silent laughter of all the other fans on the sofas.

Standing in front of a life-size cardboard cut-out of her idol, she stared into those blue eyes. ‘What went wrong? Hey? Tell me? I’m your number one fan and you turned away from me? Tell me why? Hey? Tell me? You found someone else? Someone who’s more into you than me?’

Not possible.

No way.

‘You’ve made my life worth living, don’t you know that, don’t you care? You’re the only person who’s ever loved me.’

In her left hand she held a knife. A kukri. The knife one of her father’s ancestors had taken from a dead soldier way back during the Gurkha wars. Gurkhas were brave people. They did not care about dying.

If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or is a Gurkha.

What do you think about that, Gaia? Are you lying or a Gurkha?

Or just a parvenue from Whitehawk in Brighton who thinks you are too big to bother to acknowledge your fans?

She strutted very slowly down the steep wooden stairs, went through into the kitchen and filled her glass with the remainder of the drink that was in the silver cocktail shaker. Then she went back upstairs to her shrine.