How to Kill Your Friends

by Phil Kurthausen

  Meredith showered and then got dressed and for extra verisimilitude, she went to Olivia’s room and knocked on the door. A cleaner was passing when she did this which just showed fortune favoured those who paid attention to such little details.

  After that, she sent Olivia another message asking her to contact her later for drinks if she couldn’t make lunch. Then she decided to go and get some brunch herself as she found she was suddenly famished.

  Meredith wandered through the Gothic streets until she found a small square next to the old Roman wall. She took a seat at one of the metal tables outside and when the waiter came, she ordered scrambled eggs, with jamon, and foie gras. She washed this down with two cups of strong coffee and then a brandy which she nursed as she sat looking out across the square.

  After her meal, she stretched. It was all just a matter of keeping her nerve now and she was sure that wouldn’t be a problem for her at all.

  A man walked slowly and deliberately across the square, with a rolling gait. She recognised the man instantly and the fear and terror rooted her to the spot even though her brain was screaming Go, go, go!

  There was a medical dressing on the back of his head. It was Diego.

  She slammed back the rest of her brandy and thought about her options – she could scream, get the owners to call the police, but what then? Fernández would be called, no doubt, and then Carlos may mention the bag and its contents, money and the towel. She remained sitting as the man walked up to her table and stopped.

  ‘You are to come with me.’

  ‘If I don’t?’

  ‘Your friends will pay the price and I will break one of your arms right now.’

  Friends? Fuck, Inga must have talked. She had known that Meredith was staying at Soho House and Carlos Llul had obviously put the heat on her to tell him where she was.

  She stood up, unsure whether her legs would support her, but the shaking had gone. At least now she didn’t have to worry about what would happen if Carlos Llul found her. She was about to find out.

  27

  ‘All animals are afraid of pain, even those, who like you, are without normal feelings.’

  He was right. Meredith was frightened. She was sick with anxiety and she wanted to be anywhere but here, back in Carlos’s office, with its shutters keeping out all the natural light.

  On the desk in front of him was the stapler and the hole punch. He hadn’t mentioned them yet but there they were.

  She didn’t say anything but instead glanced to the corner where Spider and Inga were sitting. Both of them looked terrified. Spider had a black eye and a vicious looking cut on his lip. Diego stood behind them.

  ‘So, tell me, are you afraid?’ Carlos smiled at her, his face becoming a mass of lines like crumpled brown wrapping paper.

  She looked again at Spider and Inga. Inga looked down rather than return her gaze. ‘Yes, I’m afraid of what you will do to me.’

  Carlos nodded serenely. ‘For you, it is fortunate that I am a man with certain values that would be sneered at today by the likes of you and your friends here. I believe in honour and as you can see, I have not harmed your friend here because she is a woman and I do not hit woman.’

  Inga was shaking.

  ‘And what about him?’ asked Meredith.

  ‘He is less fortunate. You know what you did to me and Diego here and you know that you must pay for this.’

  Meredith leaned forward in her chair. She tried not to look at the stapler and the hole punch. ‘I can give you the money, the €5,000 that was in the bag. It’s yours.’

  Carlos chuckled and held up a mobile phone. ‘After you attacked me, I found out who you were from your friends here and although I am old and can’t pretend to understand how this’ – he waved the phone – ‘makes you money, I can see that you have money and the price of my leniency is set accordingly. To be clear, you will bring me €50,000 within three days or Diego will ruin your face with that.’ He gestured at the stapler. ‘And one thing I do recognise is that this new business on the internet is the same as the old business, and without your face, you will be nothing.’

  ‘I don’t have that kind of money. I don’t have any money. I was only helping them out. The Squad are the ones with money. They don’t give me anything.’

  Carlos held up a finger to his lips. ‘Shush, you stay in Soho House. The people you work with flaunt their wealth online. You have access to this and you will bring it to me by Friday or… well perhaps a demonstration, yes? Diego, if you would be so kind.’

  Meredith watched frozen with horror as Diego swiftly pulled out a box cutter and before anyone could react, slashed it across Spider’s face. Before he felt the pain a curtain of blood began to descend from the slit described across his face from above his right eye, across his nose and down to his chin.

  Inga screamed and then Spider did so too. Carlos raised a hand.

  ‘Be quiet or there will be more.’

  Diego handed Spider a cloth. He held it to his face and then began to rock back and forth in his chair.

  ‘Do you understand me and understand what will happen?’

  Meredith nodded.

  ‘You have three days. We will be watching. Diego, show them out.’

  Outside, Spider sat down on the pavement and just stared into space. Inga was crying, dark smudges of mascara turning into long dirty streaks down her cheeks.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ said Inga.

  Meredith looked at her curiously. ‘What do you mean “we”?’

  Inga seemed shocked. ‘You heard him: if you don’t get that money, he is going to hurt us.’

  Meredith was thinking. She understood clearly, unlike Inga, that they would have to leave Barcelona and never come back. It was over for them here. But, unlike Inga and Spider, she couldn’t leave, not with Fernández on her tail. She was stuck.

  She started to walk out of the alleyway.

  Inga called after her, ‘What should we do?’

  Meredith looked back briefly. ‘Run,’ she said, and then turned away.

  Inga began to sob but this time Meredith didn’t look back. They were all on their own now.

  28

  Meredith didn’t feel better after her second martini but the third brought a dulling of the fear and she knew that a fourth would put real distance between her and anxiety.

  She played with the stick, twirling the olive around in the glass and enjoying the oily slick it left on the surface of the drink. It made her feel in charge of this moment. The warmth of the alcohol in her veins contrasted with the cool of the hotel’s air conditioning, making her the master of this environment for this precise time. Maybe this is what mindfulness is all about, she thought. Martinis are a quicker way of arriving at peace than meditation.

  ‘That looks like a fine drink. I’m on duty, but why not!’ Fernández slipped onto the barstool next to her and beckoned the barman over.

  ‘Inspector, how are you? You should have one, it makes things a lot warmer in this goddamned icy air conditioning.’

  ‘Another two of those,’ said Fernández to the barman, pointing at Meredith’s martini, and she twisted the stool so she was facing her.

  Meredith kept facing forwards towards the bar. Fernández could wait if she thought she would play her game and beg for a treat.

  ‘We can’t seem to contact Olivia. Have you seen her today?’

  ‘No,’ said Meredith.

  ‘Where have you been today?’

  Meredith snorted with laughter as an uninvited image of Spider’s flesh opening entered her mind. ‘Just hanging with some friends.’

  ‘And they will confirm this?’

  ‘Yeah, why? What is it you think has happened now?’

  ‘Señorita Lowe hasn’t been seen since yesterday. Your friends are worried.’

  ‘She’s a big girl, I’m sure she’s fine,’ said Meredith, and she took a sip of the fresh martini. ‘Are you not going to taste your drink?’

  Ferná
ndez didn’t look away. ‘I’m here to conduct a search of her room. My officers are doing that right now.’

  ‘And yet here you are with me.’

  Fernández smiled. ‘And yet here I am with you. Why do you think that is?’

  ‘You like martinis?’ Meredith laughed at her own joke and then shivered involuntarily. It was way too cold in here. She raised a finger and pointed at the air conditioning unit. ‘Too cold,’ she shouted at the barman. He nodded but didn’t do anything about it.

  ‘I think the temperature is fine in here. Are you feeling okay, Meredith?’

  Meredith looked down at her glass. What would happen if she just smashed it into Fernández’s face? ‘I’m just fine and dandy, yeah. So, why are you sitting here with me then, if it’s not for the martinis? Do you need a friend?’

  At that moment Fernández’s police radio crackled and a voice that Meredith assumed to be Miguel’s said they’d found something and she was to come up right away.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ said Fernández.

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Meredith and then finished her drink in one long hit.

  It took two days for the lab tests to come back and prove that it was Olivia’s DNA on the towel from Ferran’s apartment. Miguel and his team had discovered the towel stashed at the bottom of the wardrobe and Fernández hadn’t returned to finish her drink.

  The search for Olivia had begun immediately and had made the national news with regular bulletins speculating on her whereabouts and linking her disappearance to Amy’s death, which had been given renewed vigour as a formal murder inquiry was announced with plenty of salacious photographs, new and old, culled from Instagram and splashed all over the media.

  Fernández told the remaining Squad members to stay in the hotel if at all possible, to avoid the scrum of photographers and press that besieged the entrance. Policemen were guarding the entrances, too. Fernández said that they were to keep the press away but Meredith couldn’t help but worry that she had posted them there for other reasons.

  Another consequence was that their numbers had gone through the roof. The likes for all their old posts were astronomical and Adam was being bombarded with offers from new, more edgy brands who wanted to be associated with what the press was calling the ‘Instagram Murder’.

  There was an international manhunt for Olivia as her passport was missing. The prevalent theory – once the information about her phone records was leaked, which showed that her phone had a non-standard termination of its connection to the Sitges mast, indicating that it had not been turned off as usual by the user – was that Olivia had killed herself because of her guilt at murdering or accidentally killing her best friend.

  The night that the tests confirmed that it was Olivia’s DNA on the towel they had all got together for a drink in the rooftop bar. It was a sombre occasion and Adam had been drunk again. He was determined that Olivia couldn’t have been involved in Amy’s death but when Richard had mentioned that sometimes she had been jealous of Amy’s success as the face of The Squad, he had put his drink down and retired to his room from whence he had not emerged since.

  Being trapped in the hotel did have one unexpected advantage. It meant that when the deadline came and went for Meredith to deliver the €50,000 to Carlos, she could feel relatively secure in her gilded prison. Inga and Spider’s fates were unknown to her but she hoped Inga had heeded her advice and left the city.

  Meredith passed the time updating The Squad’s Instagram feed with photos they hadn’t used from previous shoots. Adam wouldn’t leave his room to take any more shots.

  She had approached Dylan to sit for some more photographs. He was doing his usual lap after lap of the rooftop pool and she had knelt by the edge to try and speak to him but he had ignored her, instead grinding out seemingly endless laps with his metronomic front crawl, even though she was sure he had seen her. She had asked Richard if everything was okay with Dylan.

  He replied, ‘Dylan’s not in a good place, darling.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked as just the two of them shared cocktails one evening.

  ‘Because he blames you for everything that’s happened. He says that everything turned to shit once you turned up.’

  ‘Amy had contacted Ferran before I even knew you guys were in the city.’

  Behind Richard, a group of teenagers settled around the daybed next to them. They were giggling and taking pictures of each other.

  ‘Yeah, I know, but like I explained, he is Australian so it’s less about what’s up here’ – he pointed to his head – ‘than how he feels in his gut.’

  A series of pops from Champagne bottles being opened came from the group next to them and Richard cast them a dirty glance. ‘YouTubers.’ He almost spat out the words. ‘No doubt they’ll be up to some horrendous prank involving torturing a homeless person. I can’t stand them.’ He raised his voice and shouted at them, ‘Film us and I’ll get you turfed out, all right?’

  This was greeted by a forest of raised middle fingers and one of the younger black girls shouted, ‘Fuck off, grandad!’

  ‘Kids today,’ muttered Richard.

  ‘You’re twenty-eight,’ said Meredith.

  ‘I know, it’s fucking ancient. Come on, let’s get pissed whilst we wait for our freedom.’

  The next morning Meredith awoke with a horrifying lassitude. At first, she thought it was simply her hangover biting and causing her to feel as if it would be impossible for her to ever leave her bed. She wondered whether this was guilt. She knew what guilt was, of course, and intellectually had observed it in others, but she had never felt it in ways that she had read about or observed.

  She wanted Inga to be okay more than she wanted Inga to suffer at the hands of Carlos. But if the Swedish girl was harmed then Meredith wouldn’t feel as though this was her fault, and some sort of burden, like hunger or pain, that she should inflict on herself. It would simply be cause and effect, avoidable if people had made different choices.

  Like Amy. She easily could have worked with Meredith and Meredith would have been happy to accept any type of role, but she didn’t and, well, things happened.

  Life was about evolving and Meredith had tried to work with The Squad and become part of a group. Amy should have tried making a similar evolution.

  Meredith would have stayed in bed all morning but the damned air conditioning rendered her environment unbearable. It was so icy it made her blood chill. She had set it on twenty-two degrees but still it pumped out frozen tendrils that felt like they were clawing at her skin.

  Eventually, she could stand it no more and jumped out of bed and turned the unit off. Within minutes the hotel room began to heat up, making her brain swell.

  She considered having a drink. There was a chilled Penedès in the minibar, but it was too early and although she didn’t usually mind drinking alone, today, she felt the need for company. She called Edu who answered eagerly on the second ring.

  ‘Meredith, how are you? I see your Squad on the news already twice today. There was a picture of you on the beach and you looked so beautiful.’

  ‘I’m well, thanks. I was wondering if you fancied coming over to the hotel? I’m a total prisoner here at the moment and I could use the company. We could have lunch on the terrace.’

  In the background, she could hear the sound of power tools and laughter.

  ‘I’m so sorry but it is impossible today. We are preparing for the Diada Nacional de Catalunya and I’m needed here.’

  Meredith had known he would say this, but still, she was disappointed. She was getting used to him being around and maybe this was what it meant to have a relationship that wasn’t just about sex. He irritated her to hell but yet she still wanted him to just be here with her.

  ‘You guys must have been super-bummed when Al-Qaeda took out the world trade towers and ruined September 11th for you.’

  He chuckled. ‘It’s good to celebrate something positive and our brand of art terrorism is better than theirs, no? Yo
u are funny Meredith. It’s one of the reasons I love you.’ He didn’t seem embarrassed by his dropping of the L-bomb but maybe it was just a translation issue. She ignored it.

  ‘Okay, well enjoy your fun and I’ll catch you on the flip side.’

  ‘We will, and if you can slip away from the hotel you know where we will be at 4am tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, have a great time without me.’ She put the phone down and rolled back onto the bed.

  Even wearing nothing it was too hot without the air conditioning but she wouldn’t put it back on again: it made her anxious. So instead she lay there wondering what to do. She had no more cards to play. Olivia’s body hadn’t been found. And if it was found, the story told itself. Jealous Olivia got into a fight with her friend, killed her on purpose or by accident and then killed herself because of the guilt. That’s what people did, it was almost classical Greek tragedy and it spoke to the ages and to all common sense. But Fernández was the problem. She knew, somehow, she knew and she wouldn’t rest until Meredith was in jail.

  But what could she do? She could only lie here in this room and broil in the heat. If she left the hotel the press would follow her and worse may be waiting. It was six days since she had been due to pay Carlos the money. Wouldn’t it just be her luck to avoid the police but to be killed by some two-bit South American gangster due to the many fuck-ups of Spider and Inga. She almost hoped that they had been caught by Carlos.

  There had been one call from Inga the day after the money was due, but she hadn’t taken it and no message had been left. After that, she had blocked her number.

  She lay on the bed for hours, not sleeping, but just breathing and looking up at the ceiling. Meredith realised that she needed someone to be here with her and that she was not enough on her own. Belonging to The Squad had given her purpose but perhaps if this slipped away it didn’t matter. Edu had said he loved her and she had heard this from others over the years, said in passion, said in seriousness but never before had it made her not want to laugh at the person saying it. He had said it without expectation or hope, but rather matter-of-factly as though it were just acknowledging the way things were for him. Meredith wasn’t sure she was capable of love. It seemed as alien as guilt to her but she was missing something, of that she was sure, and perhaps this absence once filled, perhaps that was love or as close as she could get to love.