Dead Simple

  'COMING, DAD!' he shouted again. 'JUST HAD TO TAKE ME A PISS!'

  Keeping his hand in his pocket so the bulge wouldn't show, he hurried back towards the truck.

  Michael pressed the talk button. 'Davey?'

  Silence.

  He pressed the button again. 'Davey? Hello? Davey?'

  White-satin silence. Complete and utter silence, coming down from above, rising up beneath him, pressing in from each side. He tried to move his arms, but as hard as he pushed them out, walls pressed back against them. He also tried to spread out his legs, but they met the same, unyielding walls. Resting the walkie-talkie on his chest, he pushed up against the satin roof inches from his eyes. It was like pushing against concrete.

  Then, raising himself up as much as he could, he took hold of the red rubber tube, squinted down it, but could see nothing. Curling his hand over it, he brought it to his lips and tried to whistle down it; but the sound was pathetic.

  He sank back down. His head pounded and he badly needed to urinate. He pressed the button again. 'Davey! Davey, I need to pee. Davey!'

  Silence again.

  From years of sailing, he'd had plenty of experience with two-way radios. Try a different channel, he thought. He found the channel selector, but it wouldn't move. He pushed harder, but it still wouldn't move. Then he saw the reason why - it had been superglued, so that he couldn't change channels - couldn't get to Channel 16, the international emergency channel.

  'Hey! Enough you bastards, come on, I'm desperate!'

  With only the most local of movements possible, he held the walkie-talkie close to his ear and listened.

  Nothing.

  He laid the radio down on his chest, then slowly, with great difficulty, worked his right hand down and into his leather jacket pocket and pulled out the rugged waterproof mobile Ashley had given him for sailing. He liked it because it was different to the common mobiles everyone else had. He pressed a button on it and the display lit up. His hopes rose - then fell again. No signal.

  'Shit.'

  He scrolled through the directory until he came to his business partner Mark's name.

  Mark Mob.

  Despite the lack of a signal he pressed the dial button.

  Nothing happened.

  He tried Robbo, Pete, Luke, Josh in turn, his desperation increasing. Then he pressed the walkie-talkie button again. 'Guys! Can you hear me? I know you can fucking hear me!'

  Nothing.

  On the Ericsson display the time showed 11.13.

  He raised his left hand until he could see his watch: 11.14.

  He tried to remember the last time he'd looked at it. A good two hours had passed. He closed his eyes. Thought for some moments, trying to figure out exactly what was going on. In the bright, almost dazzling light from the torch he could see the bottle wedged close to his neck and the shiny magazine. He pulled the magazine up over his chest, then manoeuvred it until it was over his face and he was almost smothered by the huge glossy breasts, so close to his eyes they were blurred.

  You bastards!

  He picked up the walkie-talkie and pressed the talk button once more. 'Very funny. Now let me out, please!'

  Nothing.

  Who the hell was Davey?

  His throat was parched. Needed a drink of water. His head was swimming. He wanted to be home, in bed with Ashley. They'd be along in a few minutes. Just had to wait. Tomorrow, he would get them.

  The nausea he had been feeling earlier was returning. He closed his eyes. Swimming. Drifting. He lapsed back into sleep.

  In a crappy end to a crappy flight, the whole plane shook with a resounding crash as the wheels thumped the tarmac, exactly five and a half hours later than its scheduled time. As it decelerated ferociously, Mark Warren, worn out and fed up, in his cramped seat, safety belt digging into his belly, which was already aching from too many airline pretzels and some vile moussaka that he was regretting eating, took a final look at the pictures of the Ferrari 365 featured in the road test of his Autocar magazine.

  I want you, baby, he was thinking. Want you SO bad! Oh yes I do!

  Runway lights, blurred by driving rain, flashed past his window as the plane slowed down to taxiing speed. The pilot's voice came over the intercom, all charm, and apologies once more, laying the blame on the fog.

  Goddamn fog. Goddamn English weather. Mark dreamed of a red Ferrari, a house in Marbella, a life in the sunshine and someone to share it with. One very special lady. If the property deal he had been negotiating up in Leeds came off, he'd be a step nearer both the house and the Ferrari. The lady was another problem.

  Wearily, he undipped his belt, dug his briefcase out from under his legs and shoved his magazine inside it. Then he stood up, mixing with the scrum in the cabin, leaving his tie at half mast, and pulled his raincoat down from the overhead locker, too tired to care how he looked.

  In contrast to his business partner, who always dressed sloppily, Mark usually was fastidious over his appearance. But like his neat, fair hair, his clothes were too conservatively cut for his twenty-eight years, and usually so pristine they looked brand new, straight off the rail. He liked to imagine the world saw him as a gentrified entrepreneur, but in reality, in any group of people, he invariably stood out as the man who looked as if he was there to sell them something.

  His watch read 11.48 p.m. He switched on his mobile, and it powered up. But before he could make a call, the battery warning beeped and the display died. He put it back in his pocket. Too damned late now, far too late. All that he wanted now was to go home to bed.

  An hour later he was reversing his silver BMWX5 into his underground parking slot in the Van Allen building. He took the lift up to the fourth floor, and let himself into his apartment.

  It had been a financial stretch to buy this place, but it took him a step up in the world. An imposing, modern Deco-style building on Brighton seafront, with a bunch of celebrities among the residents. The place had class. If you lived in the Van Allen you were a somebody. If you were a somebody, that meant you were rich. All his life, Mark had had just that one goal - to be rich.

  The voicemail light was winking away on the phone as he walked through to the large, open-plan living area. He decided to ignore it for a moment as he dumped his briefcase, plugged his mobile into the charger, then went straight to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a couple of fingers of Balvenie whisky. Then he walked over to the window, stared down at the promenade below, still buzzing with people despite the weather and the hour. Beyond that he could see the bright lights of the Palace Pier and the inky darkness of the sea.

  All of a sudden his mobile beeped sharply at him. A message. He stepped over and looked at the display. Shit. Fourteen new messages!

  Keeping it connected to the charger, he dialled his voicemail box. The first message was from Pete, at 7 p.m., asking where he was. The second was from Robbo at 7.45, helpfully telling him they were moving on to another pub, the Lamb at Ripe. The third was at 8.30 from a very drunken-sounding Luke and Josh, with Robbo in the background. They were moving on from the Lamb to a pub called the Dragon, on the Uckfield Road.

  The next two messages were from the estate agent concerning the deal in Leeds, and from their corporate lawyer.

  The sixth was at 11.05 from a very distressed-sounding Ashley. Her tone startled him. Ashley was normally calm, unflappable.

  'Mark, please, please, please call me as soon as you get this,' she urged in her soft, distinctive North American accent.

  He hesitated, then listened to the next message. It was from Ashley again. Panicky now. And the next, and the next one after that, each at ten-minute intervals. The tenth message was from Michael's mother. She also sounded distraught.

  'Mark, I left a message on your home phone, too. Please call me as soon as you get this, doesn't matter what time.'

  Mark paused the machine. What the hell had happened?

  The next call had been Ashley again. She sounded close to hysterics. 'Mark, there's b
een a terrible accident. Pete, Robbo and Luke are dead. Josh is on life support in Intensive Care. No one knows where Michael is. Oh God, Mark, please call me just as soon as you get this.'

  Mark replayed the message, scarcely able to believe what he had heard. As he listened to it again he sat down, heavily, on the arm of the sofa. 'Jesus.'

  Then he played the rest of the messages. More of the same from Ashley and from Michael's mother. Call. Call. Please call.

  He drained his whisky, then poured out another slug, three full fingers, and walked over to the window. Through the ghost of his reflection he stared down again at the promenade, watching the passing traffic, then out at the sea. Way out towards the horizon he could see two tiny specks of light, from a freighter or tanker making its way up the Channel.

  He was thinking.

  I would have been in that accident, too, if the flight had been on time.

  But he was thinking beyond that.

  He sipped the whisky, then sat down on the sofa. After a few moments, the phone rang again. He walked over and stared at the caller display. Ashley's number. Four rings, then it stopped. Moments later, his mobile rang. Ashley again. He hesitated, then hit the end call button sending it straight to voicemail. Then he switched the phone off, and sat down, leaned back, pulling up the footrest, and cradled the glass in his hands.

  Ice cubes rattled in his glass; his hands were shaking, he realized; his whole insides were shaking. He went over to the Bang and

  Olufsen and put on a Mozart compilation CD. Mozart always helped him to think. Suddenly, he had a lot of thinking to do.

  He sat back down, stared into the whisky, focusing intently on the ice cubes as if they were runes that had been cast. It was over an hour before he picked up the phone and dialled.

  The spasms were getting more frequent now. By clenching his thighs together, holding his breath and squeezing his eyes shut, Michael was still just able to ward off urinating in his trousers. He couldn't do this, could not bear the thought of their laughter when the bastards came back and found he had wet himself.

  But the claustrophobia was really getting to him now. The white satin seemed to be shrinking in around him, pressing down closer and closer to his face.

  In the beam of the torch, Michael's watch read 2.47.

  Shit.

  What the hell were they playing at? Two forty-seven. Where the hell were they? Pissed out of their brains in some nightclub?

  He stared at the white satin, his head pounding, his mouth parched, his legs knocking together, trying to suppress the pains shooting up through him from his bladder. He didn't know how much longer he could hold off.

  In frustration, he hammered with his knuckles on the lid, and hollered, 'Hey! You bastards!'

  He looked at his mobile again. No signal. Ignoring that, he scrolled down to Luke's number then hit the dial button. A sharp beep from the machine, and the display on the screen read out no service.

  Then he fumbled for the walkie-talkie, switched that on and called out the names of his friends again. And then that other voice he dimly remembered.

  'Davey? Hello, Davey?'

  Only the crackle of static came back to him.

  He was desperate for water, his mouth arid and furry. Had they left him any water? He lifted his neck up just the few inches that were available before his head struck the lid, saw the glint of the bottle, reached down. Famous Grouse whisky.

  Disappointed, he broke the seal, unscrewed the cap and took a swig. For a moment just the sensation of liquid felt like balm in his mouth; then it turned to fire, burning his mouth, then his gullet. But almost instantly after that he felt a little better. He took another swig. Felt a little better still, and took a third, long swig before he replaced the cap.

  He closed his eyes. His headache felt a tiny bit better now. The desire to pee was receding.

  'Bastards ...' he murmured.

  8

  Ashley looked like a ghost. Her long brown hair framed a face that was as colourless as the patients' in the forest of drip lines, ventilators and monitors in the beds in the ward behind her. She was leaning against the reception counter of the nursing station in the Intensive Care Unit of the Sussex County Hospital. Her vulnerability made her seem even more beautiful than ever, to Mark.

  Muzzy from a sleepless night, in a sharp suit and immaculate black Gucci loafers, he walked up to her, put his arms around her, and held her tight. He stared at a vending machine, a drinking water fountain, and a payphone in a perspex dome. Hospitals always gave him the heebie-jeebies. Ever since he'd come to visit his dad after his near fatal heart attack and saw this man who had once been so strong now looking so frail, so damned pathetic and useless - and scared. He squeezed Ashley as much for himself as for her. Close to her head, a cursor blinked on a green computer screen.

  She clung to him as if he were a lone spar in a storm-tossed ocean. 'Oh, Christ, Mark, thank God you're here.'

  One nurse was busy on the phone; it sounded like she was talking to a relative of someone in the unit, the other one behind the counter, close to them, was tapping out something on a keyboard.

  'This is terrible,' Mark said. 'Unbelievable.'

  Ashley nodded, swallowing hard. 'If it wasn't for your meeting, you would have been--'

  'I know. I can't stop thinking about it. How's Josh?'

  Ashley's hair smelled freshly washed, and there was a trace of garlic on her breath, which he barely noticed. The girls had had a hen party last night, arranged in some Italian restaurant.

  'Not good. Zoe's with him.' She pointed and Mark followed the line of her finger, across several beds, across the hiss-clunk of ventilators, and the blinking of digital displays, to the far end of the ward, where he could see Josh's wife sitting on a chair. She was dressed in

  a white T-shirt, tracksuit top and baggy trousers, body stooped, her straggly blonde ringlets covering her face.

  'Michael still hasn't turned up. Where is he, Mark? Surely to God you must know?'

  As the nurse finished her call, the phone beeped and she started talking again.

  'I've no idea/ he said. 'I have absolutely no idea.'

  She looked at him hard. 'But you guys have been planning this for weeks - Lucy said you were going to get even with Michael for all the practical jokes he played on the others before they got married.' As she took a step back from him, tossing hair from her forehead, Mark could see her mascara had run. She dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve.

  'Maybe the guys had a last-minute change of mind,' he said. 'Sure, they'd come up with all kinds of ideas, like lacing his drink and putting him on a plane to some place, but I managed to talk them out of it - at least I thought I had.'

  She gave a wan smile of appreciation.

  He shrugged. 'I knew how worried you were, you know, that we'd do something dumb.'

  'I was, desperately worried.' She glanced at the nurse, then sniffed. 'So where is he?'

  'He definitely wasn't in the car?'

  'Absolutely not. I've rung the police - they say that - they say they--' She began sobbing.

  'What did they say?'

  In a burst of anger she blurted, 'They won't do anything.'

  She sobbed some more, struggling to contain herself. 'They say they've checked all around at the scene of the accident and there's no sign of him, and that he's probably just sleeping off a mighty hangover somewhere.'

  Mark waited for her to calm down, but she carried on crying. 'Maybe that's true.'

  She shook her head. 'He promised me he wasn't going to get drunk.' Mark gave her a look. After a moment, she nodded. 'It was his stag night, right? That's what you guys do on stag nights, isn't it? You get smashed.'

  Mark stared down at grey carpet tiles. 'Let's go and see Zoe,' he said.

  Ashley followed him across the ward, trailing a few yards behind him. Zoe was a slender beauty, and today she seemed even more slender to Mark, as he laid his hand on her shoulder, feeling the hard bone beneath the soft fabric of he
r designer tracksuit top.

  'Jeez, Zoe, I'm sorry'

  She acknowledged him with a faint shrug.

  'How is he?' Mark hoped the anxiety in his voice sounded genuine.

  Zoe turned her head and looked up at him, her eyes raw, her cheeks, almost translucent without make-up, tracked with tears. 'They can't do anything,' she said. 'They operated on him, now we just have to wait.'

  Mark stood still, staring down at Josh, whose eyes were closed, his face a mess of bruises and lacerations, the bed surrounded by racks of machinery. There was a drip line cannulated into his hand, and another opaque line was forked into his nostrils. A thick breathing tube, fed by black bellows, distended his mouth. Wires ran out from the sheets and from his head, feeding digital displays and spiky graphs. What flesh Mark could see was the colour of alabaster. His friend looked like a laboratory experiment.

  But Mark was barely looking at Josh. He was looking at the displays, trying to read them, to calculate what they were saying. He was trying to remember, from when he had stood in this same room beside his dying father, which were the ECG, the blood oxygen, the blood pressure readings, and what they all meant.

  And he was thinking. Josh had always had it made. Smooth good looks, rich parents. The insurance loss adjuster, always calculating, mapping out his life, forever talking about five-year plans, ten-year plans, life goals. He was the first of the gang to get married, as he wanted to have kids early, so he would still be young enough to enjoy his life after they'd grown up. Marrying the perfect wife, darling little rich girl Zoe, totally fertile, allowed him to fulfil his plan. She'd delivered him two equally perfect babies in rapid succession.

  Mark shot a glance around the ward, taking in the nurses, the doctors, marking their positions, then his eyes dropped to the drip lines into the back of Josh's hand, just behind the plastic tag bearing his name. Then they moved across to the ventilator. Then up to the ECG. Warning buzzers would sound if the heart rate dropped too low. Or the blood oxygen level.

  Josh surviving would be a problem - he'd lain awake most of the night thinking about that, and had come to the reluctant conclusion it wasn't an option he could entertain.