Phil Kurthausen - Sudden Death

‘Charley did the voices. Charley, show yourself!’ shouted Kristos.

On the opposite roof the club’s goalkeeper stood up from where he had been hiding in the shadows.

‘Erasmus, Dave’s dead!’ he shouted over at them.

Cue more hysterical laughter.

Erasmus breathed in and let the urge to break Jones’s fingers disappear with the exhalation.

‘And you thought you’d do that by pretending Wayne had been kidnapped and risking my life?’

Erasmus pulled Jones’s arm away from his shoulder. Wayne looked down at the floor and his face flushed.

Gary raised his hands, palms facing Erasmus.

‘Whoa there, buddy. I thought you were meant to be his scorta , hard as nails, willing to take a bullet. It’s only a six foot gap, you pussy! Charley jumped it no problem.’

‘I could have died.’

Jones relocated his arm around the waist of a pretty young blonde girl. Erasmus noticed she shivered and wondered whether it was the cold or Jones’s touch that brought it on.

‘Look again, scorta .’

Erasmus turned and looked down. Now he looked closely he could see that about ten feet down there was a net, stretched between the buildings, covering the whole of the alley.

‘They put it up there when they built the roof terrace. They didn’t want any drunks falling off. Come on, have a drink, we can toast your cowardice!’

Jones snatched a bottle of champagne from the girl he was holding and offered it to Erasmus. The girl made a pawing motion, like a child reaching for a sticky sweet, but Gary shoved her aside.

Erasmus tried to breathe in and relax but before this thought had time to be put into practice he had already moved forward, grabbed Gary by the back of his neck and was propelling him forward towards the edge of the building.

‘What the fuck!’

Gary’s cries were cut off and replaced by a scream as Erasmus stopped Gary right on the building’s edge and, keeping a tight grip of his collar, pushed him forward so he was suspended above the drop.

‘What do you think of the drop now?’

Gary tried to speak but no words came out, his tongue lopped about in his mouth, waiting for air.

‘Silly games get people killed.’

‘Please – ’

Erasmus extended his arm further. Gary’s toes were now over the edge.

Erasmus felt the anger swirl and break inside him. His fingers loosened their grip.

Suddenly a hand gripped his arm. Erasmus’s turned his head. It was Wayne’s.

‘Don’t,’ whispered Wayne.

Gary was whimpering and the smell of urine was evident. Erasmus pulled him back from the edge and threw him to the floor.

Wayne’s face had turned the colour of sour milk.

‘You wouldn’t have done it would you, Erasmus?’ asked Wayne.

Erasmus ignored him and started to walk away towards the door that led to the stairs. He paused as he passed the girl who Gary had snatched the champagne bottle from. Now he was close he could see she was just a kid, nineteen at the most. Even under all her make-up he could make out the faint outline of a bruise on her right eye.

‘That one is bad news. Leave him,’ he said.

She pouted, large red lips almost clown like under the weight of heavy, red lipstick, but she didn’t look away.

‘I love him,’ was the simple reply.

Erasmus shook his head.

As Erasmus reached to open the door to the stairs it was pushed open from the other side and Dave, the security guard assigned to look after the players, appeared. He looked surprised to see Erasmus and then his face broke into a big grin.

‘Did you jump?’ He started to laugh.

Dave was a big man and used to be taken seriously. It was therefore a surprise when Erasmus didn’t laugh along with him but instead shoved his head fast and hard into Dave’s nose, causing it to make a crunching sound. Dave fell back clutching his broken nose. Special forces or not, if you weren’t expecting a head-butt your nose broke just like any other.

‘Tell your boss, I quit,’ said Erasmus as headed down the stairs.

CHAPTER 6

Erasmus’s office amounted to two rooms in the old, draughty but glorious Cunard Building, one of the three commercial buildings, The Three Graces that stood as proof of the city’s once mighty industrial past on the banks of the Mersey. Rent was cheap here now as the more successful businesses retreated like the tide, away from the riverfront to the newer, less draughty, glass and steel offices that had begun to populate the city.

The first room was an antechamber to the slightly larger second. Pete was sitting in this room in a chair by the desk that functioned both as his desk and reception. He was wearing a white grandad shirt, houndstooth trousers and from his headphones Erasmus could hear the strains of ‘Itchycoo Park’.

As Erasmus entered the office Pete took off his headphones. He looked concerned.

‘Listen, you’ve got a visitor and –’

Erasmus wasn’t expecting anyone as he knew that their diary was empty. If they hadn’t taken the Wayne Jennings case there would be no money coming in at all so a walk-in was good, especially now he had quit the Jennings case.

But it wasn’t good. It was devastating.

He opened the door to his office before Pete could finish. As he entered he had just enough time to register the smooth, lithe curve of the seated woman’s neck and the soft brunette curls that she had swept to one side of that neck before she turned to face him.

He couldn’t help himself, the words were out before his normally reliable brain had time to exercise its veto.

‘Shit.’

She smiled at him but it was a forced smile.

‘ – It’s Karen,’ finished Pete from behind him.

‘Nice to see you too, Erasmus,’ said Karen.

Karen Kelly, the first owner of Erasmus Jones’s heart, the woman he had loved in a way that he knew was impossible for him now, whatever happened, whoever he met, the woman who he would have died for, for which a piece of him had died, and the woman who had left him a wreck and with no option but to run away and join the army, faced him for the first time in fourteen years.

Erasmus wasn’t sure but he felt like he was viewing the scene from above and it seemed as though he watched himself calmly walk around and take a seat behind his desk, like a real solicitor and not one whose heart was pounding as though he had just been in a fire fight. He was only vaguely aware of Pete shutting the office door.

And then he was back in his body and looking across the table at the person he knew he had loved and who had hurt him more than anyone else alive and yet all he wanted to do was touch her. Fuck! He managed to breathe and surprised himself by being able to speak.

‘Karen, I can safely say you are the last person I expected to see in my office today.’

She smiled again, this time it was a little less forced.

‘I’m sorry I have to do this to you. I know things, I could have been different, behaved differently, but … ’ she trailed off.

Inside, Erasmus was screaming obscenities at her. ‘Behaved differently’, well, yeah, that would have been a start. Not turning up the morning they were due to fly around the world together, a trip they had been planning for two years, and announcing that she didn’t love him any more and that she was leaving him for her boss, some seedy thirty-year-old she had copped off with at the office party. Not leaving him to have to take back the engagement ring he had stashed in his backpack to the jewellers and explain to them that it hadn’t gone to plan.

Instead he heard a calm voice that sounded like his say, ‘That’s OK. It’s nice to see you after all this time, Karen. How can I help you?’

She looked on the verge of tears. Time had added some wrinkles, a few laughter lines, but it was still the Karen that he had loved. Erasmus’s stomach did a backflip.