Phil Kurthausen - Sudden Death

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.