Peter James - Dead Simple

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 Orcadian 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.

19

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 DoubleM 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.

There were forty-two bells to choose from on the entryphone panel. He pressed one at random, deliberately on a different floor to Michael's. There was no answer. He tried another, with the name 'Maranello'.

After a few moments a crackly male voice in a thick Italian accent said, 'Hello? Yes? Hello?'

'Delivery,' Mark shouted.

'Delivery what?'

'FedEx. From America, for Maranello.'

'You what? Delivery? I -1 not -1 -1 no--'

There was a moment's silence. Then the sharp buzz of the electric latch.

Mark pushed the door and walked in. He went straight to the lift and took it to the sixth floor, then walked down the corridor to Michael's flat. Michael kept a spare key under the doormat in case he locked himself out - which he had done once, drunk and naked. To Mark's relief it was still there. A single Yale key, covered in fluff.

As a precaution he rang the doorbell and waited, watching the corridor, anxious in case anyone should appear and see him. Then he opened the door, slipped in and quickly closed it behind him, and pulled a small torch from his pocket. Michael's apartment looked out onto the street. There was another apartment block opposite. It was probably safe to turn the lights on, but Mark didn't want to take chances. There might be someone out there watching

Pulling off his sodden cap and coat, he hung them on pegs on the wall, then waited some moments, listening, nervous as hell. Through the party wall he could hear what sounded like marching music, from a television turned up too loud. Then with the aid of the flashlight, he began his search.

He went first into the main room, the lounge/dining area, shining the beam onto every surface. He looked at the pile of unwashed dishes on the sideboard, a half-drunk bottle of Chianti with the cork pushed back in, then the coffee table, with the television remote lying next to a glass bowl containing a large candle, partially burnt. A pile of magazines - GQ, FHM, Yachts and Yachting. Beside them a red light winked busily on the answering machine.

He listened to the messages. There was one, left just an hour ago, from Michael's mother, her voice nervy.

'Hello, Michael, I'm just checking in case you are back.'

Another was from Ashley, sounding as if she was on her mobile in a bad reception area. 'Michael darling, just calling to see if by chance you're back. Please, please call me the moment you get this. I love you so much.'

The next was from a salesman asking Michael if he would like to take advantage of a new loan facility Barclays Bank was offering to its card holders.

Mark continued playing the messages right through, but there was nothing of interest. He checked the two sofas, the chairs, the side tables, then went into the study.

On the desk in front of the iMac was just the keypad, cordless mouse, a fluorescent mouse pad, a heart-shaped glass paperweight, a calculator, a mobile charger and a black jar crammed with pens and pencils. What he was looking for was not there. Nor was it on the bookshelves or anywhere in Michael's untidy bedroom.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

He left the apartment, walked down the fire-escape steps and went through the rear exit into the dark of the car park. Bad news, he thought to himself as he furtively made his way back to the street. This was really bad news.

Fifteen minutes later he drove his BMW X5 up the steep hill alongside the huge sprawling complex of the Sussex County Hospital, and pulled into the car park for the Accident and Emergency department. He hurried past a couple of waiting ambulances and into the brightly lit reception and waiting area, familiar to him from his visit the previous day.

He walked past the dozens of people waiting forlornly on the plastic seats, beneath a sign which read 'waiting time - three hours', and along a series of corridors to the lift, and took that to the fourth floor.

Then he followed the signs to the ICU, the smells of disinfectant and hospital food in his nostrils. He rounded a corner, walked past a vending machine, and a payphone in a perspex dome, then saw ahead of him the reception desk of the Intensive Care Unit. Two nurses stood behind the counter, one on the phone, the other talking to a distressed-looking elderly woman.