Dead Simple Read online

  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.

  18

  '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 crutch, 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 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.

  He made his way across the ward, past four occupied beds, to the corner where Josh had been last night, expecting to see Zoe at his bedside. Instead, he saw a wizened old man, with wild white hair, sunken, liver-spotted cheeks, cannulated and intubated, with a ventilator beside him.

  Mark scanned the rest of the beds, but there was no sign of Josh.

  Panicking that his health had improved and that he had now been moved to another ward, he hurried back to the reception desk and positioned himself in front of the nurse who was on the phone, a plump, cheery-looking woman of about thirty, with a pudding-basin haircut, and a badge that said 'ITU Staff Nurse, MARIGOLD WATTS'. From her demeanour she seemed to be chatting to her boyfriend.

  He waited impatiently, resting his arms on the wooden counter, staring at the bank of black and white monitors showing every bed, and the colour digital displays beneath each of them. He shifted his position a couple of times in rapid succession, trying to catch her eye, but she seemed to be mainly concerned about her dinner.

  'Chinese, I think I fancy Chinese. Peking Duck. Somewhere that does Peking Duck, with the pancakes and--'

  Then finally she seemed to notice him for the first time. 'Listen, I have to go. Call you back. Love you too.' She turned to Mark, all smiles. 'Yes, can I help you?'

  'Josh Walker.' He pointed across the ward. 'He was over there ah - yesterday. I'm just wondering which ward he's been moved to?'

  Her face froze as if she'd suffered a massive infusion of Botox. Her voice changed, also, suddenly becoming tartly defensive. 'Are you a relative?'

  'No, I'm his business partner.' Instantly Mark kicked himself for not saying he was his brother. She would never have known.

  'I'm sorry,' she said, as if regretting she had terminated her call for him. 'We can only give information to relatives.'

  'You can't just tell me where he has been transferred to?'

  A buzzer sounded. She looked up at the screens and a red light was flashing beside one o
f them. 'I have to go,' she said. 'I'm sorry.'

  She rushed from her station across the ward.

  Mark took out his mobile. Then he saw a large sign: 'THE USE OF MOBILE PHONES IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN IN THIS HOSPITAL'.

  He backed away, hurriedly retracing his steps to the lift, then took it to the ground floor. Totally gripped with fear he raced through a labyrinth of corridors until he reached the main entrance.

  Just as he walked up to the reception desk he heard a loud, near hysterical voice, and saw Zoe, eyes raw, tears streaming down her cheeks, blonde ringlets totally unkempt.

  'You and your friend Michael and all your stupid bloody jokes,' she shouted. 'You stupid, bloody immature jerks.'

  He stared at her in silence for some moments. Then she collapsed in his arms, sobbing uncontrollably. 'He's dead, Mark, he just died. He's dead. Josh is dead. Oh God, he's dead. Please help me, what am I going to do?'

  Mark put his arms around her. 'I -1 thought he was OK, that he was going to pull through,' he said, lamely.

  'They said there was nothing they could do for him. They said if he had lived he would have been a vegetable. Oh God. Oh God, please help me, Mark. What am I going to say? How do I tell the children their daddy's never coming home? What do I say to them?'

  'Do you - do you want a - a cup of tea or something?'

  Through deep gulping sobs she said, 'No I don't want a fucking cup of tea. I want my Josh back. Oh God, they've taken him down to the mortuary. Oh Christ. Oh God, what am I going to do?'

  Mark stood in silence, holding her tightly, stroking her back, hoping to hell his relief did not show.

  20

  Michael woke with a start from a confused dream, tried to sit up, and his head instantly crashed against the coffin lid. Crying out in pain he tried to move his arms, and his shoulders met the unyielding satin first on the left and then the right. He tossed and thrashed in a sudden claustrophobic panic.

  'Get me out of here!' he screamed, turning, thrashing, gulping air, sweating and shivering at the same time.

  'Oh, please, get me out of here!'