DEATHLOOP Read online

  “Mate,” said Sam, “what’s new?”

  “I am a free man, that’s what’s new. Susan is no more.”

  Sam sagged. He looked tired suddenly. “So what’s wrong with Susan? Apart from the obvious that is.”

  “She’s unstable.”

  “And what did I say right at the beginning?”

  “I know, the oracle spoke, and yet again I chose to ignore him.”

  “Is she still opening beer bottles with her teeth?”

  “That’s the least of it. She’s been going on about this French film for weeks, so we went to see it last night in East Finchley for God’s sake, and it was monstrous, of course it bloody was.”

  “She took you to see a French film in East Finchley? Hells bells, what next? A pig roast in Tel Aviv?”

  “Plus, I missed the Wanderers because of it.”

  “Ah well, now you didn’t mention that,” said Sam. “Any woman who comes between a man and Bolton Wanderers is signing their own death warrant.”

  “I knew you’d agree, Mr Stein.”

  The Bolton Wanderers thing started as a joke. One sunny day in Cambridge a group of friends, including Zack and Sam, finding themselves in the middle of a field, stoned out of their heads on a reckless jumble of stimulants had decided to vie for the most hopeless football team of all time. Zack said Bolton Wanderers which had won hands down. Not many of them knew about football then, it certainly wasn’t the sexy game it is today, and Bolton Wanderers just seemed pretty much a lost cause.

  “Imagine,” said Zack, “wandering around Bolton. Bolton of all places! I’d die first!”

  Sam pretended to be deeply offended by Zack’s remarks, insisting he was a lifelong ardent supporter.

  “Take it back, sir, how dare you disparage Bolton Wanderers, the football team of my youth!”

  “I won’t take it back!” said Zack, “I’ll be damned if I will!”

  “Then I’ll fight you to the death. Be prepared to die, you varmint!”

  “That’s cowboys,” said Zack.

  “It can be anything I say it is!” said Sam, flamboyantly, pulling off a nearby branch to use as a sword.

  It was one of those wonderful, stupid moments you never forget, a bunch of guys, young, optimistic, with huge potential, and no responsibilities, enjoying just being together and finding everything farcical.

  Later on, maybe out of loyalty to the imagined favourite football team of Sam’s youth, Zack found himself developing a genuine interest in the club, and was now the ardent supporter Sam had once professed to be. Sam found this odd and amusing, and was rather touched by it. Bolton Wanderers became their secret shared interest, and although Sam struggled to remain committed, (he’d forgotten about the game the night before for instance), Zack was. Somehow it was like Zack telling him how much he cared. Sam loved it when Zack talked about Bolton Wanderers, it made him feel secure.

  Zack started on his cappuccino as Sam gazed across at him with his usual amiable scrutiny. How could any man be as handsome as this, Sam asked himself for the umpteenth time. There was good looking and there was ridiculously good looking, Zack fell into the latter category. No sign of those looks fading either. If anything, they’d become more defined, more arresting as time had passed. Deep brown eyes that sometimes looked jet black, a Gallic nose, a perfect jaw line, high cheek bones, and the teeth of a Hollywood icon. How wonderful to be Zack Fortune, Sam had often thought, but second best was being Zack Fortune’s closest friend. As a consolation prize Sam had to settle for that and he wasn’t complaining.

  He looked up to see a girl behind the counter wrapped round in a bottle green apron, staring at Zack, unable to believe her eyes. Sam smiled at the girl, silently saying: ‘Yes, I know love, it’s not fair, is it?’ but the girl didn’t even notice.

  CHAPTER 3

  The offices of the law firm Nyman, Holder and Drew were situated on the 9th floor of a sleek office block, Emerson Buildings that dominated the city skyline. The company employed 40 staff and here at eight thirty this morning it seemed all of them were criss-crossing in and out of rooms, along passageways, hell bent on doing important things. Zack strolled into his office soundlessly, the thick carpet absorbing his tread. Inevitably Rose was already there, fussing round his desk. She looked up on his arrival, a hint of acknowledgement but only a hint, as though all reactions from this woman were at a premium.

  Rose Crawford was mixed race, early forties, but looked a good ten years younger, and with dyed blonde hair cut close to her head and her willowy, athletic figure she cut quite a dash. A single mother, Rose had gone to college to study business management in order to support her twins, now twelve years old. Everything about her suggested wisdom, restraint, discretion and understanding. Zack knew they would hit it off on sight.

  “Hey, Rose, what about that sky this morning, weird or what?”

  “Was it?” asked Rose, surprised.

  “You must have noticed, sun up, it looked like the sky was on fire.”

  “Not in Shepherds Bush it wasn’t,” she said. Then, after a moment’s thought, “the vagaries of our post code lottery I expect… a letter to the mayor do you think?”

  And with that Rose was gone, like she’d evaporated. Zack sat down at his desk, glanced at an open diary, but almost immediately got up again and went to find Sam. Sam was on the phone as Zack walked in so he hovered, waiting for him to sign off.

  “Sam, did you see that sky this morning?”

  Sam looked blank. “And this is a trick question is it?”

  “It looked like it was bleeding.”

  “Bleeding? The sky was bleeding?”

  “Or on fire, crimson, dark red…” Zack’s voice trailed off, “what is this?” said Zack.

  “I wish I knew, mate, I wish I knew.”

  “I can’t believe no one else saw it.”

  “Can’t say I did, but I’m not a morning person as well you know. That was my wife on the phone, Lady Clarissa.”

  “Well thanks for that, but I do remember her name after all these years.”

  “Twelve o’clock, she told me to remind you.”

  “Remind me of what?”

  “This regression thing,” said Sam, dropping his voice to a whisper.

  “Oh God, no,” said Zack, remembering, “get me out of it, Sam, please.”

  “No can do, mate, you promised, I was there, I heard you.”

  “But I was pissed, you promise anything to women when you’re pissed.”

  “Then a lesson learnt I’d say… be there or be square.”

  The kind of salary Sam pulled in meant that Clarissa didn’t really have to work at all. At first she did. Trooping into a small publishing house, battling with weighty tomes on gardening, DIY, and self-help manuals, books she had no interest in, working for fusty old Norman Bell, a man she had even less interest in. So when he mooted one day that a recession seemed imminent, and that unfortunately there would have to be redundancies, Clarissa nominated herself as first to go. Her severance pay was agreed on the spot.

  “He said – ‘oh all right then’ - just like that. I mean, really, that man!” said Clarissa to Sam, as soon as he’d got back from work.

  “But you wanted to go, you offered.”

  “That is not the point,” said Clarissa, a hectoring note in her voice.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No of course it isn’t! He should have at least pretended to be sorry. Norman Bell has no social graces - that’s his trouble. He just wouldn’t know where to start.”

  If anything demonstrated the difference between men and women this did, Sam decided a little later as he loaded the dishwasher. A man would be cock-a-hoop at this outcome, a lousy job kicked into touch, endless days of indolence stretching out in front of him while he lived off the fat of the land, or at least the fat of his redundancy money, but a woman? Oh no, she’d want full value, the wringing of hands, the shaking of the head, the ‘how on earth will we manage without you’ scenario, before
she felt she’d got her money’s worth.

  Although Sam would never have owned up to this, he was not remotely surprised by Norman Bell’s reaction. Sam had always got the impression that Norman thought Clarissa a liability rather than an asset to his little company, and yet a kindly man, unable to deal with confrontation, he hadn’t been able even to float the idea that Clarissa might be better suited working elsewhere.

  Secretly, Sam was surprised Clarissa had lasted this long, (he wouldn’t want her anywhere near his office), because Clarissa hated the restraint of having to do certain things at certain times – like turn up, and work, it wasn’t her bag really. Sam told her not to bother getting another job unless she wanted to. Clarissa decided she didn’t, and realising she would probably die before she had read anywhere near all the novels you were meant to read before oblivion came knocking, she decided to get cracking and make a start.

  Reading had always been Clarissa’s thing. She could spend weeks just going from book to book, imagining the life that was being described to her, becoming part of it but then always feeling very let down when the story came to an end, like she had to deal with reality again and she’d prefer not to thank you very much. She also felt a strange sense of abandonment too. She realised this was absurd, but for a while she resented these authors drawing a line under things, rejecting her involvement with their world and their characters. This feeling continued until she was immersed in another book, and another. She didn’t dare admit this to anyone of course because she knew it was rather strange.

  But then Clarissa and abandonment had history, it had been a fixture of her childhood after all. Her father first, unable to bear his wife’s interest in their daughter became jealous and withdrawn. He found that he could not tolerate the intrusion of this small creature into their once perfect world, (he’d had no idea it would be so loathsome), so one day he just upped sticks and left. Then it was the turn of her mother. Reeling from her husband’s desertion, blaming Clarissa for it entirely and hardly able to gaze at this daughter of hers without wanting to thump her, she accepted a job teaching English in Tokyo and was never heard of again.

  An older aunt stood in, brought Clarissa up as though she were her own, and she was adequate, she did her best, but there was an elephant in the room and everyone knew it. Clarissa’s parents did not want her, they did not love her, and for all the elaborate reasons and excuses why the two of them had gone off, it boiled down to this. But no one dared say so. Perhaps it would have been better if they had.

  Clarissa often wondered if that was why she found herself attracted to Sam. No one wanted him either, so she would want him. She would want him as much as he wanted her. Perhaps that was all there was to it, although she didn’t dwell on this much anymore. But then, after believing she knew everything there was to know about her relationship with Sam, in the middle of her reading spree, Clarissa discovered a book about codependency, and although she would concede this to no one, it rang a bell. Everyone worried for Sam in case Clarissa left him, but Clarissa knew that if they were ever to separate, Clarissa would suffer the most. She needed Sam to need her, and thankfully, need her, Sam did.

  A year earlier, entirely by accident and against Sam’s advice, Clarissa had become involved with New Age concepts. An old friend, Kelsey, had started up a New Age book shop in Richmond and had asked Clarissa to help her out occasionally because Kelsey’s primary occupation was acting, and on the rare occasion when a job came up, Kelsey was of course keen to take it. Standing behind the counter day in day out Clarissa started reading about the occult, about past life regression and reincarnation. She became fascinated by past life regression particularly and read as much as she could on the subject. If only these had been the books she’d had to deal with in the publishing house things might have been different, but Norman Bell, a strict Catholic, would never have given such contentious issues the time of day.

  Sam was convinced that all this mumbo jumbo was another one of Clarissa’s fixations. She’d had her fair share over the years after all. So he just smiled politely and pretended to listen, believing it would be something else next week. But for the first time Clarissa did not tire of her new passion, like she had with Troika pottery, the life and times of Betty Boothroyd, car mechanics, Twin Peaks, ‘cutlery through the ages’, the life and times of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Georgian embroidery samplers, gorillas, French polishing, Isadora Duncan, Lindisfarne, the island and Lindisfarne the 60’s pop group to name a few, but had continued to read and investigate and had become so immersed in these things, Sam found it impossible to get her to talk about anything else.

  Clarissa had gone on three courses to train in past life regression, although she kept quiet about each one because she knew Sam would hit the roof, especially if he found out how much they cost. The first one was a simple course in hypnosis which she managed to master days before anyone else. Then it was hypnosis with reference to past life connections, the third, putting all this into practice attempting to get people to dip in and out of previous lives when they were in a hypnotic state. By this time Clarissa was hooked, especially when one of her subjects started speaking in tongues. Percival Hollingsworth, the stringy 60 year old who ran the Rebirth Psychic Centre in Dollis Hill was flabbergasted. Although stuff of legend, he had never actually seen this with his own eyes. From then on he regarded Clarissa as next in line to the throne, he almost genuflected each time he saw her.

  Finally, when she could keep all this to herself no longer she told Sam what she had been up to. Sam stared back at her like a man about to go into cardiac arrest. Could it just be Clarissa’s usual exaggeration or could it actually be true? The idea of Clarissa presiding over a man speaking in tongues was too bizarre to contemplate, but even when questioned closely Clarissa’s story remained the same, indicating a certain degree of truthfulness. Sam’s heart sank. This silly fad as he thought it was, had blossomed into a full blown obsession.

  “I’m going to be a genuine regression therapist soon,” said Clarissa, bursting with excitement, “with my name on a certificate and a plaque on the door, how about that?”

  Sam was so depressed by this piece of news he couldn’t even muster a reply. Eventually Sam told Zack, knowing full well what his reaction would be and it’s true to say that he was not disappointed. Zack found it hysterically funny and ragged Sam endlessly, until in the end Sam told Zack to shut up, it was bad enough being married to a trainee shaman, he really didn’t need Zack to keep going on about it.

  Clarissa continued studying and carrying out her research, sometimes at the British Library. An Indian reference book was her favourite, one that she could barely open it was so huge, then, refining her technique, becoming more and more skilled, and practicing on an occasional basis with other like-minded folk. However, in order to obtain proper qualifications she had to pass a pretty strict test and so in preparation, at the end of a particularly boozy afternoon, after Clarissa had begged Zack to be her guinea pig yet again, Zack had finally given in.

  Zack had told Clarissa in no uncertain terms that she’d be better off working behind the counter at Oxfam than spending her days on this trash and Sam wholeheartedly agreed, until Clarissa told them to stop ganging up on her, they knew nothing about past life regression so she would prefer it if they reserved judgement until they did. Zack was kicking himself that Clarissa had at last managed to beat him into submission but how the hell could he get out of it now? Ex-girlfriends had often questioned Zack about Sam and Clarissa, but especially about Sam. They just didn’t get it, no one did.

  In their first month at university, a couple of days before they palled up, Zack overheard some posh kids calling Sam a Jewish midget. “A hideously ugly Jewish midget to be precise,” one of the girls had said, fully aware that Sam was within earshot. Sam blushed various degrees of scarlet, desperately trying to marshal enough dignity to walk away, torn between a shrug, a laugh. In the end he just looked close to tears as he pretended suddenly that he’d f
orgotten to be elsewhere and bombed off like a manic little cartoon character, accompanied by the posh kids’ laughter.

  Zack thought about this for a full day and a half before walking up to Sam, alone as usual, sitting on a wall, (like Humpty Dumpty he’d often thought), and asked him if he was doing anything later that night.

  Sam blinked back at him in shock. “Er… no… no,” he said.

  “Good,” said Zack, “because there’s friends of mine I’d really like you to meet…” and that was it. He’d collected Sam rather like a milk bottle. People still stared for a while, the God, Zack Fortune, hanging around with a miniature Elephant Man? What was the crack? But after a while, they got used to him. Relaxed, Sam could be great company, so funny he could reduce a room to hysteria in minutes flat.

  Not long after they met, Sam told Zack that he’d had an older brother, Michael - handsome, rich, making a fortune doing something dodgy but lucrative in the city, obviously their parents’ favourite of the two sons, he’d married a top model and life was sweet. Until that is Michael became involved in drugs as so many of the city boys are wont to do and died one night at the age of 23 in an orgy of amphetamines and cocaine. His parents were bereft, especially his mother who could not accept the tragic hand fate had dealt her, and who had framed Michael’s baby shoes and toys, mounting them along the hall of their house as some grotesque tribute to her dead son.

  Sam told Zack that when he went round for dinner his mother would gaze at him across the table and it was clear what she was thinking: ‘Why didn’t God take you instead of him? Why did he leave me with this freak… the runt of the litter, the little ugly one… please God, tell me what I have done to deserve this?’

  Sam seemed to think his parents had only ever put up with him because of Michael. Sam was the lame duck, but it was all right because they had Michael, the swan. Without Michael, however, their tolerance of Sam was tested. Here he was, as large as bloody life, a reminder of how totally useless he was, and a reminder also of just how perfect Michael used to be.