Love You Dead

41 Sunday 1 March

For the next few hours, Shelby slipped in and out of sleep. He tried several times to reach for the glass of Coke on the bedside table, but could not muster the energy. He listened to the continuous stream of cars and buses and lorries passing outside the window on the busy thoroughfare of Carden Avenue.

His phone rang.

It was Angi, calling to see how he was feeling and if he had been drinking the Coke she’d left him.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Two glasses.’

‘Well done!’

He put the phone back on the table and stared at the glass, untouched since she had left. It was now 1.30 p.m. His stomach felt as if it was on fire. Weakly, he hauled himself up in bed and managed to swallow some of the drink, then he checked his ankle again. It didn’t look any worse than earlier; in fact, maybe a tiny bit better. Perhaps the antiseptic cream was helping. And maybe the way he was feeling was down to that damned bug. Dean hadn’t made it to the pub on Thursday night because he’d got it. It was just a twenty-four-hour thing. So many people had been going down with it in Sussex — it had even made the local news. He’d start feeling better soon.

He had to.

It was Sunday. The one night of the week the couple in No. 27 Roedean Ridge went out. He’d tailed them for the past three Sunday nights, driving in their large BMW down to the Rendezvous Casino in the Marina Village, where they stayed and didn’t return until well after midnight. Their regular pattern.

He’d found out from contacts that the secluded property belonged to a bent Brighton antiques jeweller. There had to be rich pickings in that house for sure. And if he went in early enough after they left, he would have sufficient time to find them. In another few weeks the clocks would go forward, which meant an hour less of darkness in the early evening.

He had planned to go there tonight to see if they went out again. He had to pull himself together and do it. He grabbed the glass and drank down the remaining contents, with difficulty.

Then he fell back into a sleep full of weird dreams in which hissing, crackling snakes spun across the floor like Catherine wheels that had fallen off their pins and were spitting sparks and flames.

He woke again, drenched in sweat, at 4.03 p.m. with another nosebleed. He had to get up, somehow. He could not allow Angi to come home and take him to the emergency doctor. He didn’t want the risk of having to lie to a doctor about where he worked and then have her phone them.

Up!

He hauled himself out of bed, placed his feet on the carpeted floor, then stood up. Instantly he sat back down again with a thump.

Shit.

He stood up once more, his stomach heaving, ran into the bathroom and sat on the toilet. He remembered something a cellmate had once said to him: ‘When the bottom falls out of your world, come to Calcutta and let the world fall out of your bottom.’

He stood up and peered down. And a shiver ran through him.

The toilet was full of blood.

He flushed it, then stepped into the shower, feeling scared. What the hell was going on? Was this the bug or was it some kind of a reaction to the bite? And when was it going to stop? The powerful stream of hot water made him feel a little better.

He dried himself, then saw fresh blood was still coming out of his two-day-old shaving nick. He put more styptic pencil on it, then, to be sure, a larger strip of plaster, rolled deodorant under his arms and ran a hand across his damp stubble of hair.

Feeling slightly human again, he dressed in his dark clothes and trainers, and went downstairs. The two large tumblers of Coke that Angi had poured were on the kitchen table. He sat and sipped the first, slowly, thinking about the blood in the toilet. He must have burst a blood vessel in his backside, he decided.

Comforted by that explanation, he drained the glass and began to work, as Angi had instructed, on the second. After a couple of sips, he started to feel hungry. He stood up and walked, unsteadily, over to the fridge and opened the door. But everything he looked at — a wedge of Cheddar, a lettuce, a carton of tomatoes, a packet of ham, some eggs, sausages, bacon, a supermarket moussaka — all made him feel queasy again.

He closed the door, thinking. Maybe a joint might make him feel better. Kill or cure?

He stood up on a chair and reached for the tin marked BREAD, where Angi kept her stash. He lifted it down, put it on the table, removed the packet of cigarette papers, the plastic bag full of weed and a strip of cardboard, and rolled himself a fat joint.

Knowing she would not be happy, he replaced the stash in the tin and put it back on the shelf, then went out into the tiny back garden to smoke it.

Yes!

Wow, oh wow! That was powerful stuff. Wowwweeee!

When Angi arrived home, just after 6.30 p.m., he was standing in front of the television in the sitting room, with his fists balled, dancing to the sound of the Eagles, ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’ blasting from the speakers.

‘You’re feeling better!’ she greeted him, joyfully.

‘Magic!’ he said, still dancing. ‘Magic that Coke!’ He took her in his arms and nuzzled her neck. ‘You know what, you’re a genius! Magician! Will you marry me?’

‘You already asked me that, and I said yes. Did you forget?’

‘Just checking!’ he said.

‘Checking?’

‘In case you’d gone off me during the night.’

‘In sickness and in health,’ she said. ‘The marriage vows. OK? I’ll be sick one day, too. Will that turn you off me?’

‘Never!’

‘What time are you off to work?’

He glanced at his watch. ‘At 7.30. Just under an hour.’

‘Have you eaten anything?’

‘No, but I’m ravenous.’

‘I’ve defrosted a moussaka. OK?’

‘I’m so hungry I could eat the carton!’

‘I’ll save that in case you want to roll another joint,’ she said, tartly.

Then he realized. Despite his elaborate precautions of replacing everything in the bread tin, and smoking it outside, he’d stubbed it out in the ashtray on the kitchen table.