Love You Dead

  She didn’t think so.

  Neither of her parents noticed that she had discreetly moved the big photo from its original shaded position into the bay window that got direct sunlight for hours. Already the colour was starting to leach out of her skin. In a while, Jodie thought, she’ll just look like a ghost. And that will be one less picture of her to haunt me!

  The family went to visit Cassie’s grave that afternoon. Her father took the day off work. Her mother hadn’t been back to work since Cassie died, she was still too distraught, still recovering after her breakdown from the shock.

  Come on, woman, get over it! Jodie thought, silently. You believe in God – you go to church every Sunday, so what’s your problem? Cassie’s in Heaven. She’s probably the Angel Gabriel’s pet. Jesus’ pet. God’s pet!

  Not that Jodie believed in any of that stuff. She didn’t think her sister was any of those things. In her view, Cassie was just a bunch of rotting, desiccated skin, bone and hair in a fancy coffin that was rotting too, six feet under, in the huge cemetery off the Old Shoreham Road, where her grandparents were also buried.

  Best place for her. Good riddance, she thought privately as she stood, sobbing and sniffing and pretending to be all sad that her sister was gone, cruelly snatched away – just as the wording said on her neat white headstone with the fancy carved script.

  Cassie Jane Danforth

  Beloved daughter and sister

  Cruelly snatched away from us.

  ‘Cruelly snatched’ – well that bit wasn’t strictly accurate, she thought. Fell to her death whilst walking along a coastal cliff path on a family holiday in Cornwall during the October half-term. Pushed actually. But that was another story – best not to go there.

  Later that evening, home in bed, Jodie wrote in her diary:

  We went for a pub supper after visiting the grave. Mum was too upset to want to go home right away and the poor thing was in no fit state to cook. So we drove out into the country to a gastro pub that mum and dad like, which serves the most horrid prawn cocktail I’ve ever eaten. Tiny little things, not much bigger than the maggots that are eating Cassie, and a lot of them still half frozen – and all smothered in a Marie Rose sauce that’s had a flavour bypass. Mum has it every time and insists I should have it too. ‘It’s a very generous portion,’ she always says.

  A very generous portion of cold maggots in ketchup-flavoured mayo.

  I can’t believe I ordered it again tonight. It was even worse than before.

  Even though he was driving, Dad drank two pints of Harveys and ate a steak pie and beans and ordered a glass of red wine with it – a large glass. Mum had a small sherry and they had an argument about who would drive. She insisted she would drive back. The food arrived but I had to run out of the room and into the toilet, to get away from the nauseating atmosphere.

  It was just so ridiculous. The whole day and evening.

  Mum’s driving for a start. She drives like an old woman – well, she is an old woman, I suppose, forty-six is pretty ancient – but she drives like she’s a hundred and forty-six – at a steady forty-six. She never goes over fifty, not even on the motorway. She never overtakes anything, not even bicycles unless she can see ten miles of clear road ahead. She just sits behind them. Irritating me. But not Dad.

  He even told her to slow down tonight! We were doing fifteen miles per hour behind a bicycle and he actually said to her, ‘Susan, slow down, you’re too close.’

  My family.

  My embarrassing family.

  The things they say.

  But this really made me laugh. Mum suddenly said she wanted to light a candle for Cassie, have it burning on the table with us during our meal. So my dad went up to the bar and asked if they had a candle they could light for his daughter. Ten minutes later the chef and two other members of staff appeared with a small cake, with a candle burning in the centre of it, and walked towards us, all smiling at me and singing HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

  I’m still laughing about that, even though it’s nearly midnight and I’ve got homework to do for tomorrow that I’ve not even started yet.

  But, honestly, I have to say, I’ve not felt so great in a long time!

  34

  Saturday 28 February

  Six hours late. An hour out of JFK the flight had turned back because of a technical fault. They’d been deplaned and sat in the goddam terminal for over four hours before finally boarding again. They’d originally been scheduled to land at 7 a.m., now it was 1.30 p.m. Most of the day wasted.

  Standing in the long, snaking queue for passport control at London’s Heathrow Airport, Tooth yawned. He could stay awake for as long as he needed, and sometimes, concealed in enemy territory back in his days in the military, that meant staying awake for forty-eight hours or longer, waiting for a target to appear. But right now he was looking forward to a few hours’ sleep in the room he had booked at the Waterfront Hotel on Brighton seafront. Maybe he was getting old.

  He’d stayed awake in his cramped economy seat at the back of the plane for the entire flight, planning what he needed to do when he arrived.

  Once the plane was taxiing at Heathrow and he was able to get an internet connection, he’d pulled up a street map of Brighton and Hove on his phone, reminding himself of the layout of the city. Looking up the street Judith Forshaw had put down on the hotel registration form.

  Western Road.

  Was it a real or false address? Whatever. The news stories about Walt Klein said his fiancée was from Brighton. A city of just 275,000 people. New York was a city of eight and a half million people and he never had a problem finding anyone there.

  It would be a slam-dunk to find her in Brighton.

  He slipped his passport out of his pocket and checked the details he’d filled in on his immigration form. His name, for the purposes of this visit, was Mike Hinton. He didn’t like travelling on false documents, they added a layer of risk that wasn’t usually worth it. But with his recent history in Sussex, there would be a marker on his real name for sure. Hinton. Mike Hinton. Accountant.

  Ten minutes later the immigration officer studied his passport, then asked him to remove his cap. Tooth lifted up the baseball cap, which he had pulled down low over his face, and gave the woman officer a pleasant smile, whilst trying to mask his concern that she had recognized him.

  She looked at his passport again, back at his face, back at his passport, then closed it and handed it back to him. ‘Have a nice stay in the UK, Mr Hinton,’ she said and smiled back.

  Tooth stepped forward without replying and took the escalator down into the baggage reclaim hall, where he had his holdall to collect. He didn’t like to let it out of his sight, but some of its contents would have been confiscated if he’d tried to take it as carry-on baggage.

  When it arrived he picked it up off the carousel and strolled across to the green exit channel, his laptop bag and holdall both over his shoulder. He always travelled light. It was easier to buy clothes wherever he was, and bin them before leaving. In fifteen years of globetrotting, he’d never owned a suitcase. And for most of his jobs, he was in and out of a place without even needing to unpack what little he had with him. New York had been an exception; he’d been stuck there far too long, because he’d had to deal with assholes.

  He was on his own here. Just himself and a woman who thought she was smart. But she clearly wasn’t that smart. She’d been engaged to a crook with frozen assets, and now she’d stolen, clumsily, something she could never sell, and for which she was going to die.

  Unpleasantly.

  Tooth didn’t do pleasant deaths.

  35

  Sunday 1 March

  ‘A friend of mine told me, many years ago, that the secret of life is to know when it’s good,’ Rowley Carmichael said, his arm tightly round Jodie’s waist, wind whipping their hair about their faces. ‘And right now it’s really good. Incredibly good.’

  She stared up into his eyes, her own sparkling brightly in the st
ern lights of the ship. As brightly as the stars above them, like gemstones in the velvety darkness of the warm night sky; like the diamond engagement ring on the black velvet pad of the ship’s jewellery store that he had bought her just a few hours earlier, the price of which she had pretended not to notice. Although she was already thinking of a couple of shops in Brighton’s Lanes where she would get a good price for it in a few weeks’ time. ‘I know it’s corny, my darling, but I feel like that couple on the Titanic – remember that film?’

  ‘Jack and Rose, weren’t they called?’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.’

  ‘Weren’t they on the prow of the ship?’ he said.

  ‘Want to go up to the prow?’

  ‘Here’s fine!’ Smiling, he raised his flute of vintage Roederer Cristal and clinked it against hers. ‘Cheers, my darling. To the future unsinkable Mrs Rowley Carmichael!’

  ‘Cheers to my unsinkable husband-to-be!’ she said, sipping her drink, then standing on tiptoe to kiss him. A long, long, lingering kiss as they both leaned against the stern rail, whilst she struggled not to let her revulsion show. His mouth was slimy, and his tongue felt like a foraging rodent running amok inside her own mouth. Fifty feet below them the wake of the ship glistened with phosphorescence before fading into the darkness of the Indian Ocean.

  ‘I still can’t believe you agreed to marry me,’ he said. ‘Incredible! We’ve only known each other properly for a few days.’

  ‘I still can’t believe you asked me,’ she replied with a smile.

  ‘I couldn’t be happier, it wouldn’t be possible,’ he said.

  Looking adoringly into his eyes, she was thinking that she could, she could be much happier. ‘Wouldn’t it be romantic to be married on this ship?’ she said.

  ‘On this ship – you mean – on board?’

  She nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yes! Wouldn’t that be amazing? Just so romantic? I read somewhere that ship’s captains can marry people!’

  ‘I love your wildness,’ he said. ‘How spontaneous you are! This is crazy! OK, let’s do it, let’s go and find the Purser and ask him the procedure!’

  ‘God, I love you so much,’ she said. ‘I just love looking at you!’ But as she continued staring at him she suddenly realized who it was he reminded her of. That faint flash of recognition she’d had on their first date.

  Her father.

  Below her feet she could feel the slight thrumming of the engines. She breathed in the scents, of varnish, fresh paint, the salty tang of the sea and the occasional whiff of diesel fumes. It was their first night at sea. The first port of call for the MS Organza, after departing her moorings in Dubai’s Port Rashid cruise terminal earlier that morning, was Mumbai in three days’ time. She was a handsome ship, resplendent in her gleaming white livery, barely one year old, carrying 350 passengers and from the sharp service, it felt there was double that number of crew. Rollo had already booked a four-week leg of a round-the-world cruise on the ship before they had met. It hadn’t taken much persuading for her to join him.

  She’d gone home in the early hours of Friday morning to pack her bags for the cruise, and then had taken her cat to board again at Coriecollies Kennels. Tyson hadn’t been too happy about that, but then again, he was never too happy about anything. He’d get over it, and she’d make it up to him on her return. She’d also set up the timed feeds for the rest of her menagerie.

  Their cabin was a glorious suite, with a balcony.

  ‘Did you remember to take your insulin, my love?’ she asked.

  He patted the pocket of his white tuxedo, then pulled out the blue NovoRapid injector. ‘Yep!’ He put it carefully back in his pocket.

  ‘You gave me such a scare the other night. I thought I had lost you – before I’d even properly got to know you. What do you remember about it?’

  ‘Well, not much. It was a blur. That happens if my sugar levels get too low, I’m not able to think straight and then I pass out. It was my fault, I thought we were going to have some dinner, so I’d taken my jab and pill. Then somehow we never got as far as the door.’

  She grinned. ‘So it was my fault, really! I just couldn’t keep my hands off you. I couldn’t wait until after dinner, I had to have you, then and there. Right there! But, Jesus, I got so scared when you collapsed on me. The paramedics were really concerned when they arrived, you were delirious. Then I got really angry with you when you refused to let them take you to hospital.’

  ‘I just needed sugar. I was fine. God, the thought of dying and losing you when we’ve only just met . . .’

  She reached up and kissed him. ‘Don’t ever do that to me again, promise?’

  ‘I think I learned my lesson.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That when we’re in the bedroom together it’s impossible to keep my hands off you.’

  ‘Don’t ever let that change!’

  ‘I won’t.’ He caressed her hair, running his fingers through her ringlets.

  ‘Good!’

  ‘You know, I still can’t believe we met. I mean, we have so many things in common. Our love of art, opera, theatre, food, wine – and travel. Do you believe in soulmates, my darling?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t, until I met you. But that’s how you make me feel.’

  ‘Me too! I think we met before, in a previous life, and now we’ve found each other again.’

  ‘It’s how I feel, exactly,’ she lied, sweetly.

  36

  Sunday 1 March

  Shelby had stayed in bed all Saturday, vomiting regularly, and with an intermittent nosebleed. He’d vomited several times more during the night. He awoke, groggily, to see a concerned-looking Angi standing over him, dressed and holding a glass with a dark brown liquid in it.

  ‘How are you feeling, my love?’ she asked.

  His head was swimming and he felt as if he was going to be sick again. His throat hurt from the acidic bile, which was all he had to puke up the last time, some hours earlier. ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Ten thirty. It’s Mum’s sixtieth birthday today, remember?’

  ‘Urrr.’

  ‘How do you feel? Do you want to come?’

  Her parents lived in Watford. It was a good two to two and a half hours’ drive away. No way could he face that. Nor her deadly dull mother who didn’t like him anyway. He shook his head slowly from side to side, feeling the roundabouts.

  ‘I have to leave in a minute. Try to drink some of this.’ She handed him the glass.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Coca-Cola. I’ve been stirring it to get the fizz out. The sugar in it’ll do you good. You’ve got to get something down you, you need electrolytes. You didn’t eat anything last night. This will make you feel better.’

  She helped him sit up and stared strangely at his face.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Where you cut yourself shaving – on Friday. It’s bleeding again.’

  ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘You must have knocked it and opened it up. I’ll get a fresh plaster in a minute. First drink this.’ She guided the glass into his hands and tilted it up towards his lips.

  He sipped a little and screwed up his face. ‘Yeccchhh.’

  ‘Trust me,’ she said. ‘This will make you feel better. You’ve got a tummy bug – there’s a lot of it going around at the moment.’

  ‘I hope I haven’t given it to you.’

  ‘I feel fine,’ she said. ‘I’ve prepared two more glasses of this. Try to drink one every few hours, it really will make you feel better.’

  ‘Coke?’ he said.

  ‘Trust me. Coke was originally created for stomach ailments.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  She shook her head. ‘It was a medicine originally, then people started to like the taste. I always drink it if I’m ill.’

  He sipped some more, dubiously, unsure if he would be able to hold it down, and after a few moments, he realized it wa
s actually making him feel a little less nauseous.

  ‘Come on, get some more down – for me.’

  He took a larger sip. Then another. ‘Thank you, nurse.’

  She kissed him on the forehead. ‘Don’t go to work tonight. If you give me their number, I’ll phone them and tell them you’re still ill.’

  He shook his head. ‘No – I – I’ll see how I feel. I’ll stay in bed and see how I feel later. I can’t skip work again.’

  ‘I’ll speak to them, explain you’re too ill.’

  He sipped some more Coke. ‘This is making me feel better. If I’m not right this afternoon, I’ll ring the emergency doctor.’

  ‘Phone me if you’re not feeling better and I’ll leave early and come back to you.’

  ‘You’re an angel.’

  She grinned and kissed him again. ‘I know.’

  ‘Bitch!’

  ‘You are feeling better, aren’t you?’

  ‘Come home as soon as you can. I’ve a feeling I might be really randy.’

  ‘Keep the feeling!’ She waved him goodbye and slipped out of the bedroom. Moments later she rushed back in with a plaster and handed it to him. ‘Sorry, nearly forgot!’

  As soon as she was gone he pushed back the duvet. He’d kept a bandage round his ankle, intending to tell Angi he’d cut it tripping over some boxes at work, if she asked.

  Gingerly he swung his legs over the side of the bed, leaned down and removed the bandage.

  And stared in shock.

  The skin around the bite was swollen, black and yellow and weeping blood.

  Was it this that was making him feel so ill? A reaction to the snake bite? What had that thing been?

  He dabbed the wound with a tissue, found some antiseptic cream in the bathroom cabinet, applied some and put on a fresh bandage. When he had finished he opened his laptop and started searching snakes. All he could remember was that the snake was brown and had a black marking on it. There were dozens and dozens of different species and types. He stared at the images without recognition. He’d only seen it fleetingly, in the beam of his phone torch.