He awoke on the Sunday morning feeling as tired as ever.
Each night, as soon as he closed his eyes, the dream began.
It was always the same dream.
He was sitting at his desk in the Raven and Skull offices. Nicola was standing by his shoulder screaming words into his ear. ‘You’re a murdering bastard, Geoff Arnold. A lousy murdering bastard.’
‘I’m not a murderer,’ he told her.
His dream self had been saying the words for a week. Now he was beginning to think that the tone of his voice lacked conviction. If it meant he would be able to get a decent night’s sleep, Geoff knew he would happily murder someone.
In the dream, as always happened, he saw the time was close to midday. The second hand of the clock above the office doorway touched noon. In that moment he flinched from the sonorous blast of the explosion. He turned and glanced to where the sound had come from and saw that something horrific had occurred to the wall that housed the lift shaft.
Alarm bells shrieked.
Sprinklers doused everyone and everything with icy water.
‘Murdering bastard,’ Nicola growled.
He ignored her and stood up. The lights were faltering. They seemed to brighten and dim in rhythm to the wail of the siren. The shifting shadows made the movements of those around him seem staccato and jumpy, like old black and white footage of long-dead actors.
Roger Black stepped coolly from his office.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Black demanded. ‘What was that noise? What’s happening?’
‘The lift’s exploded,’ Geoff told him.
Black digested this with a nod.
‘The lift’s exploded,’ Geoff explained, ‘and I think Shaun was in there.’
Black took charge. He told everyone in accounts to abandon the building and then he set off to give that same message to everyone else on the fourteenth floor. He headed in the direction of the CNS offices.
Geoff waited and then watched a flood of staff rush to the staircase doors. The sprinklers continued to piss water on him. The siren of the alarm was relentless. It was a punishing noise. The sound hit his ears with a shrill force and he longed to flee from the building and escape its cry.
‘You murdering bastard,’ Nicola told him. ‘How do you sleep at night?’
‘Not very well at the moment,’ he answered.
Geoff walked over to Roger Black’s office and stepped inside.
He grinned at the gold-plated skull on the desk. It was almost as though the artefact was waiting for him. There was a smear of something red on the jawbone of the skull. The stain transformed the glossy yellow gold into something tarnished. He wiped his hand on its sticky redness and knew, without further investigation, it was blood.
Ignoring that detail he lifted the skull and dropped it into his pilot’s case.
Is this all I have to do?
‘You’re a murderer,’ Nicola told him. ‘You’re an evil, murdering bastard.’
He shrugged off the accusations and locked the skull inside his case. Walking calmly and slowly towards the emergency exit, he began to make his way down the stairs. He paused briefly on the way out and glanced at the damage to the lift shaft.
The explosion had clearly been a massive one. The doorway had been blown out and the cables that supported the lift were nothing more than frayed coils hanging limply over an empty shaft. Geoff was curious to know what had happened because he was suddenly struck by the conviction that he would be the one responsible for the explosion.
‘I’m not a murderer,’ he muttered. ‘I’m not a murderer.’
He was awake and, again, he felt as though he hadn’t slept.
‘What did you say?’ Nicola asked him. She yawned the question in his face with sour morning breath.
‘You need to get in touch with Don,’ Geoff told her. ‘Tell him I need an explosive specialist.’
40
The steak in The House of Usher was not particularly good. It was overcooked and tough and the underlying taste was reminiscent of oily sweat. Geoff could understand why Don had been shouting at a junior chef a week earlier.
Admittedly, the dish didn’t quite taste like shit.
In Geoff’s opinion, Don’s crude condemnation of the food with such a description was a tad harsh. But the meal was far from being worthy of the exorbitant price listed on The House of Usher menu.
Geoff chewed it morosely, trying to find some trace of flavour that his mouth was too tired to detect. No matter how hard he chewed, or how much ketchup he added, it still tasted like oily sweat.
He was alone in one of the restaurant’s window seats, awaiting the arrival of Don’s contact. His seat gave him a view of a concealed courtyard with lush lawns and a decorative fountain. In the summer afternoons he had seen seating around the fountain. The summer seating allowed alfresco diners to enjoy their midday meal in picturesque surroundings.
This evening there was no seating outside. Geoff could only see a solitary couple standing beside the fountain. She was short and dumpy. He was tall and smartly dressed. They were arguing bitterly. Geoff recognised them as Richard and Chloe from the offices of Raven and Skull although he was surprised to see them together. They struck him as a very unlikely couple. He had always thought Richard was happily married to someone attractive and wealthy whilst Chloe’s abrasive personality made her too unattractive to date.
As though she was trying to prove Geoff’s point, Chloe kept pushing a finger in Richard’s face and shaking it in a gesture of obvious angry accusation. Richard seemed to accept her ire with equanimity. There was such an absence of emotion in his features that Geoff wondered if Chloe was safe in his presence.
‘Are you the guy looking for explosives?’
‘Jesus!’ Geoff cried in a shocked whisper. He gestured with his hands for the woman to lower her voice. Richard and Chloe and their argument in the courtyard were immediately forgotten. Panicked, he checked the other diners in the restaurant to see if anyone had overheard the word ‘explosives’. He had still been feeling sleepy before she arrived at his table. Now the residues of weariness were tossed aside by the adrenaline rush that coursed through his body. ‘Couldn’t you use a code word or some clever euphemism?’ he asked, hoarsely.
‘Bombs?’ she suggested.
Geoff rolled his eyes. He supposed the tiredness was making him irritable and nervous. It was likely that his lack of a proper night’s sleep was possibly clouding his judgement. Perhaps, he reasoned, the woman wasn’t being as loud as he feared. He gestured for her to take a seat and took a moment to appraise her.
She was a tall, leggy blonde with a substantial bosom. Dressed in leather pants and a low-cut top she did not look like the illicit explosives expert he had been expecting. She looked attractive.
‘My name’s Terri,’ she said extending a hand.
‘I was expecting a man,’ Geoff admitted.
She nodded. ‘That’s because you’re probably a sexist prick.’
He shrugged and decided that was the most likely reason. He also noticed that none of the other diners glanced at them when she used the phrase ‘sexist prick’. His worries that anyone was eavesdropping seemed laughably self-involved. Waiting until Terri was settled, and after ordering a glass of wine for her and letting her consider the menu, Geoff asked, ‘How much did Don tell you about my needs?’
‘He says you need something that will destroy CCTV cables and something that will cause a substantial diversion on the upper floor of an office block.’
Geoff nodded. ‘Is that possible?’
She shrugged. ‘With enough explosives anything is possible. I suppose the thing that’s the main issue is how much do you want to pay. And how much collateral damage can you tolerate?’
He frowned. She was talking about unnecessary deaths. She was asking him how many deaths he could live with on his conscience. He wasn’t sure he could live with the burden of any deaths, necessary or otherwise. Worried that such consid
erations would make him look weak, Geoff said, ‘I want deaths kept to a minimum.’
‘That’s more expensive.’
He grimaced. ‘How much will an explosion cost?’
She asked him to explain exactly what he needed.
Carefully, he went over his plans, discussing the layout of the Raven and Skull offices on the fourteenth floor and his need to take something from them during a substantial distraction. Terri was vaguely familiar with the offices. She said her mother, Fiona, used to work for Raven and Skull, although she’d recently been relocated to different offices. As a child Terri had occasionally accompanied her mother to the Raven and Skull building on those rare days when she hadn’t been able to organise childcare.
‘It’s a small world,’ Geoff observed.
Terri shook her head. ‘It’s not that small a world. It’s just that we seldom realise how closely all our lives are interconnected.’
The words seemed profound and important but he was too tired to dwell on their meaning. His head throbbed with his desire to sleep.
Terri asked him about building materials and he answered as best as he could. Geoff produced his drawings and explained the illustrations patiently. Terri asked the occasional question and relabelled some of his notes so that doorways and scales were more accurately recorded. When she pointed at the cluster of CCTV cables in the centre of the diagram, and asked him why they were all collected there, Geoff explained that the cables were fed into a conduit that ran into the lift shaft.
‘Interesting,’ she murmured.
He was struck by the memory of his dreams from the previous week. In each dream he had seen smoke and rubble billowing from the devastation where the lift shaft had once sat.
‘I’m not a murderer,’ he thought defiantly. ‘I’m not a murderer.’ Aloud he said, ‘That’s going to be the best place for an explosion, isn’t it?’
She nodded. ‘You’ll want the destruction of the cables and the distraction of an explosion. A device in that location will satisfy both of those requirements in the same moment.’
Device, he thought. That was the euphemism she could have used when she approached the table. He was about to say as much when activity outside the window caught his eye.
Richard and Chloe had been joined by a third figure.
This was an angry looking biker. He snatched hold of Chloe’s arm. He held tight and pulled her away from the other man.
‘This looks like it’s going to get serious,’ Terri muttered. ‘If the police are going to get called down for this, I’ll have to make a quick exit.’
Geoff ignored her. He was watching the action outside the restaurant.
The biker pushed Chloe to the ground and then stormed towards Richard. His hands were balled into big, beefy fists. His features were a scowl of outrage and menace.
‘I know these people,’ Geoff said, absently.
The biker snatched at Richard’s collar and managed to grab hold of his tie. Holding him steady with his left hand he drew his right fist back as though preparing to deliver the sort of punch that would tear a man’s head from his shoulders.
Terri pushed back her chair. ‘I’m getting out of here,’ she said. ‘This is going to turn into a reportable incident and I can’t afford to be a witness. Can you?’
Geoff didn’t answer. He watched Chloe intervene at the last moment. She jumped from the ground and grabbed the biker’s arm.
The biker tried to shake her off but the woman was surprisingly tenacious. She kept hold of his wrist and tried pulling him away. Her mouth was open and it was clear that she was screaming at him to stop behaving like a thug. Geoff couldn’t hear what was being said but he could read the sentiment in her straining features.
‘This double-glazing is very efficient for keeping out the sound,’ Geoff marvelled.
‘I’m leaving now.’ Terri touched him on the arm to get his attention. ‘Have we concluded our business here or do you want to make use of my services?’
The argument now seemed to be a feud between Chloe and the biker. Chloe was pointing her finger in his face and waving it with short, sharp staccato gestures. The biker did not appear to take kindly to such attempts at dominance. When he backed away from her there was reluctance in every step and his fist was raised in a warning.
‘I want to make use of your services,’ Geoff said, absently.
Terri had been on the verge of leaving the table. She sat back down. ‘It won’t be cheap.’
‘How much?’
‘For the device you need, I’d want ten grand.’
Ten grand, he mused. Everyone wanted ten grand from him. Except for those who wanted twenty grand. He continued to watch the scene outside.
The biker had turned his back on Chloe. Chloe appeared unhappy with that affront. She began to beat her fists against his shoulder blades with a speed and ferocity that, had it not been for the intense expression on her face, would have looked comical.
At some point, Geoff realised, Richard had managed to disappear. The biker scoured the courtyard looking for him and then turned to face a furious Chloe. He roared a question at her and, although the double-glazing was preventing any sound from filtering into the restaurant, Geoff could understand what was being said.
‘Where is he?’
Chloe swiped at his face with her hand.
At first Geoff thought she was slapping at him. It was only when the three red lines appeared that Geoff saw she had scratched him with her nails.
The biker wiped away a palm full of blood and reacted furiously. He drew back one meaty fist into a punch and then lowered his hand as though thinking better of the action.
‘That was chivalrous,’ Geoff muttered.
Terri pressed her mouth close to his ear. ‘That was probably for the best. He’s a big bloke. If he’d punched her with that right hook he was raising, he would have taken her head off. She’s wouldn’t have gotten up from that punch.’
Geoff nodded agreement. The warmth of her breath on his ear was enough of a distraction to make him forget about Chloe, Richard and the biker. He turned back to her ample bosom and asked if she could have the device ready for the following morning.
‘Of course. Can you have the money by then?’
He nodded.
He was about to add something further, invite her back to his place so she could collect the money herself, when someone in the restaurant shrieked and pointed out towards Chloe and the biker.
Chloe was flat on the lawn beside the fountain.
‘What happened?’ Geoff asked.
Terri shrugged. A handful of other diners were pointing at the scene. Some of them were pulling out mobile phones and Geoff heard someone talking with the police. Listening to the chatter of excited voices, from the other diners and from Terri, Geoff didn’t take his gaze away from Chloe.
She remained motionless on the floor.
‘Did that biker hit her?’ Geoff asked Terri. ‘How did I miss seeing that?’
‘It’s just struck ten o’clock and it’s past my bedtime,’ Terri told him. She leant across the table and gave him a peck on the cheek.
Geoff barely noticed the pressure of the attractive woman’s lips on his face. He was mesmerised by the sight of Chloe’s unmoving body.
She’s dead, he thought.
‘In twelve hours from now I’ll have a device for you with a timed detonator,’ Terri said. She was checking her wristwatch. ‘I’ll meet you in the smoking shelter outside your offices at ten tomorrow morning.’ She drained her glass of wine and stood up. ‘The device will be large enough to cause a huge distraction. If it’s placed in the right location it will certainly blow out the CCTV cables. And, unless you’re very unfortunate, it won’t take more than six lives at the most.’
41
Nicola didn’t appear in the office until ten thirty the following day. Her eyes were swollen from crying. Her cheeks were dull from a poor night’s sleep. She looked dishevelled and completely unlike her usual w
ell-groomed fashion-conscious self. For some reason Geoff couldn’t quite fathom she even appeared shorter. ‘Did you hear about Chloe?’ She was struggling to contain tears. The whites of her eyes were red and glistening. ‘Did you hear?’
Geoff glanced up from the accounts he was pretending to work on. He tried to look concerned. ‘Chloe? What happened to her?’
‘Last night she got into a fight with her boyfriend, Kevin. He claims he caught her cheating. Witnesses say he punched her in the face. The blow was so hard it killed her instantaneously.’
‘Jesus,’ Geoff muttered.
‘Donny says it happened near his restaurant. Of course Kevin’s denying that he punched her. He says it was her boyfriend. The bloke she was screwing behind his back.’
‘That’s terrible,’ Geoff said.
‘I’m worried this is my fault,’ Nicola told him. ‘Richard wanted to see Chloe last night. I’d organised for them to meet up. I wonder if Kevin misunderstood what was going on between the pair.’
‘Terrible,’ Geoff repeated.
He tried to sound sympathetic but it was difficult to pretend that he cared. He was still tired. Sleep had been a long time coming as he tried to come to terms with the fact that he had seen a woman’s freshly slaughtered corpse the night before. He had watched a life ending and he had not cared.
What sort of inhuman monster had he become?
When sleep did arrive it had not provided any rest. Once again he had been dreaming his way through scenes of damage and destruction in the Raven and Skull offices. There were broken pieces of building, active sprinklers, dirty smoke and incessant alarms.
It worried him that the chaos had given him an erection.
Following his poor night, Geoff had endured a busy morning where he exchanged ten grand in notes for a small metal box that was meant to be a powerful explosive device. He worried that the box might not work and that he’d paid out ten grand for nothing. He worried also because Terri had pressed her lips close to his ear and whispered, ‘Be careful. This explosive is an unpredictable commodity.’
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