Down Among the Dead Men
Down Among the
Dead Men
Ed Chatterton
Copyright © 2013, Ed Chatterton
To Liverpool and Los Angeles
Down Among
the Dead Men
Ed Chatterton is the prize-winning author of more than twenty children's novels (published under the name Martin Chatterton). In addition to his career as a writer, he has enjoyed international success as an illustrator as well as working as a graphic designer, university lecturer and commercials director. Born and raised in Liverpool, he now divides his time between Australia and the UK and is married with two children.
Down Among the Dead Men
is his second crime novel and he is already hard at work on the third in the DI Frank Keane series.
PART ONE
LIVERPOOL
'If we imagine no worse of them than they of themselves, they may pass for excellent men.'
Theseus, Act 5, Scene 1,
A Midsummer Night's Dream
, William Shakespeare
Prologue
Nicky's panicky fingertips trace the cramped horizons of his terrifying new world and deliver the same bleak conclusion he'd arrived at a hundred times already since he coughed himself awake.
This is for real.
The things in his life that he'd attached importance to before this – haircuts, ambition, music, films, attitude – fade away with such rapidity that it makes his head spin. This is the lesson he is learning: there is here, there is now, and everything else is bullshit.
He already has several splinters in his fingers and with his hand once more scrabbling furiously in a futile search for something to give him hope, another jams itself underneath a thumbnail. The pain is excruciating but Nicky embraces it like a friend. For a few sweet seconds his mind is emptied of all but pure feeling, before the nightmare reality of the situation rushes back in a vertiginous pitch-black tsunami of fear and hopelessness and absolute gut-wrenching horror.
The sixteen-year-old, his body trembling spasmodically, lies naked inside a solid wooden box – Nicky won't allow himself to use the word
coffin –
feet flat against an immoveable wall, legs slightly bent and thin arms pressed in tight against his body. He can, by breathing out and lowering his chest, twist his arm up just enough to reach his face.
He fights the urge to start crying again but it comes anyway, his breath erupting in ragged bursts and rebounding hot and sour from the hard surface a couple of centimetres above his damp face. He aches, with a simple childlike desperation he wouldn't have believed possible a few days ago, for his mother to hold him in her arms, his father to scoop him up, to keep him safe, to fight off the wolves.
To get him out of here
.
There's something he needs to remember about his parents – something important – but the only thing that penetrates the fog cloaking his brain is the awful dread certainty that they won't be coming for him.
That no one will be coming for him.
Things like this happen to others, to unlucky people you read about and then forget, glad you aren't one of them. Or else to people who'd slipped through the cracks: addicts, drifters, prostitutes. Not suburban teenagers. Not Nicky Peters.
Not me
.
Yet, here he is. The evidence is right there that this time it's he who is . . . what, exactly?
With an almost physical jolt the word comes to mind.
Victim.
With an effort of will Nicky slows his breathing and tries to get back some small measure of control. Time passes. Nicky's not sure how long. He wonders if it's something to do with . . .
that
. He can't even think the words, let alone think about what's been going on. What he'd done was wrong – what
they'd
done was wrong – but that wouldn't lead to this, would it? Would it?
He can remember being hurt. Someone was moving him somewhere. His mind is foggy, memories frustratingly intangible. Ghosts at the edge of the forest.
Then there are sounds coming from outside. Someone's there.
The noise brings the tiniest flicker of relief as Nicky realises that he is not, as he feared, buried underground. He begins to sense a room, a space surrounding his box. He opens his mouth to yell for help and abruptly stops himself. He's seen enough movies to know whoever is outside does not wish him well. He knows how this turns out and it makes him want to cry.
Nicky concentrates; he's always been a serious boy. He's got good ears and the sounds gradually form an unwelcome picture.
Someone is working hard. Objects being moved, the scrape of metal on hard floors. A series of ripping sounds; tape being stripped from a reel. The crackle of heavy plastic sheeting. The occasional grunt of effort.
Outside Nicky's box someone is busy.
Panic floods the boy and despite himself he cries out. 'Hey! Please! Help me! Please!'
The movements stop and Nicky hears someone come close. So close he can hear them breathing.
'Quiet, Nicky,' says a soft, soothing voice. 'No one can hear you.'
Nicky begins to cry again.
He knows who's out there.
One
'Fucking get stuck in, Chrissy,' says Jesus and, as always when the big man tells him to do something, Chrissy does as he's told.
The kid shifts his stance and comes in hard with a flurry of light jabs.
Frank Keane dabs his headgear back into position with the heel of his right hand and tucks an elbow tight against his ribs to defend himself. He's already hurting, and as Chrissy ups the tempo, Frank knows it's going to get worse before it gets any better. It's been a long while since he's had a work-out like this and he's feeling every minute of the lay-off.
'Bollocks,' grunts Frank as he rolls with the fresh onslaught. The word is filtered through his gumshield but the kid hears and smiles. At sixteen, Chrissy Cahill is a handy amateur welterweight prospect with several junior titles to his name. Sparring with a forty-year-old, even one with Frank Keane's decent record, is not part of the boy's usual training regimen. Frank's there for variety, a favour to Jesus Penaquele, Chrissy's trainer.
Jesus – only Penaquele's mother uses the Hispanic pronunciation and she's ninety-seven – is a large man in his sixties with a drinker's face and a keen eye for a likely winner. He has lived in Liverpool his entire life.
Back when Jesus was thinner he'd been Frank's trainer, and sometimes more than that in the bad year after Frank's dad had passed. Frank hadn't been much younger then than Chrissy Cahill is now, and Penaquele had let the boy's grief come out in the ring and the gym. It was only later that Frank had realised how smart and caring Jesus had been. Over hot breakfasts cooked up by Jesus's foul-mouthed wife, Val, after early-morning runs, he
had talked to the boy about boxing and football; doing what he could to show Frank how to become a man at a time when there was no one else.
Jesus Penaquele took Frank as far as a national junior bout, where they both found out he'd reached the highest level he'd ever reach as a boxer. That was OK; the game was never going to be Frank's life.
Chrissy Cahill's different. He's a real comer, a genuine contender. One last hurrah for Jesus maybe.
Penaquele's ringside now, pacing restlessly, his hands in pockets, his head tilted. For a big man he's sure-footed, unconsciously echoing the footwork of his protégé in the ring.
'Pick it up, Chrissy. Stop playing pat-a-cake with the old cunt. Give him a bit of the good stuff. He can take it. Head like a fucken rock. Just like all coppers.'
A couple of the other kids laugh. Even through the head protector, Frank can hear the edge in the laughter. They all know he's a bizzy.
'Fuck him up, brother!'
Frank lifts his chin and beckons Chrissy towards him. 'Listen to what Jesus's saying. It's OK.'
Chrissy shrugs and bounces onto his toes. 'If you sure, man.'
Frank tucks in tight and tries to call up some of those long-buried ring smarts.
I can't be that rusty
.
The kid hits him with a couple of stingers on the side of the head and Frank works backwards into the corner. He's just about to congratulate himself that he can deal with the boy when he's caught in the ribs with a left he never saw. Frank grunts and realises that the two to the head were just range-finders. Chrissy's moved up several gears and inside twenty seconds Frank's clinging on.
Turns out he
is
that rusty.
'Fucking hell, Frankie,' he hears Jesus shout, 'give the lad a bit of honest work, eh?'
Frank's been boxing long before he was a copper, most of it right here. Nothing much has changed at the Breeze Hill Boxing Club since he started, except for the flat screen TVs on each wall playing classic bouts on a loop and some expensive-looking fitness
equipment dotted around the unlovely hall; no doubt the result of some freelance wealth redistribution that Frank chooses not to think about.
The kids look pretty much like they did when Frank was their age. Better gear maybe. No one turns up in anything except the latest and newest. By comparison, Frank's well-worn Lonsdale shorts and gloves are antiques. Apart from Penaquele, Frank's the oldest participant at the club.