The Vanity Game (25 page)

Dante says all this quickly, leaning in towards me and looking me in the eyes, and my doubts start to go away. Maybe he's not here to arrest me after all. And Stella – if what he's saying is right – she made it onto the plane. I'm glad to hear that. But fuck, that's kind of funny they reckon Serge tipped her off. As if, but the poor bastard died for it. I think that's what they'd call 'ironic'.

"So what can I do?" I reply, and Dante leans back and smiles a little.

"Well, first off you need to go back. The new substitute is already there. Go with the flow, see what this girl is like. Chances are she'll be shit-scared too. See what you can get her to say. See who's running her. And then call me, and tell me what's going on. We need as much evidence as we can get. And then…" Dante pauses and bites his lip, "we need you to confess … to killing Krystal."

"Wait a minute, I never killed her," I interrupt trying to sound as real as I can.

"Oh come off it Beaumont, look,
something
happened to her. We found a knife with her blood on it buried in your fucking garden."

I shudder at the thought of that carving knife in the plastic bag on the police table.

"Either you co-operate with us and confess or we'll have to re-visit the evidence and move in ourselves. I still want to get justice for that girl but there are bigger fish to fry now, and you can help me fry them, you understand?"

I hang my head and don't say anything.

"You co-operate, and I'll make sure you get off lightly. Say she was involved with Dean and that, hassling you for money way before it all kicked off. She had a coke problem, yeah? And then when we get these gangsters you can be our star witness. You'll get a suspended sentence for manslaughter, I'll get my hands on these criminals and everyone's a winner. What do you say?"

He leans forward with his hands on his knees. His beer belly protrudes and the cheap shirt is stretched to bursting point. He must be about the same age as Serge. As Serge was.

"I don't know. I need to think about this," I tell him, which is the truth.

"OK, well just don't go and do anything daft like try to board a plane to Rio or owt. I'll be right on your tail and so will they. Like I said, you're not exactly hard to find. If the inept fools I work with can follow you, they sure as hell can as well."

They. The whole fucking world, there's nowhere to hide.

"Here's my card, if you've not still got my number," he says, handing me a bit of cardboard.

Then he hoists himself out of the chair and to my surprise pats me on the shoulder, like he's my fucking coach or something. I get up and follow him to the hotel room door. He opens it slowly, looks both ways down the corridor, gives me a quick nod then hurries out, pulling the door shut behind him.

Silence.

I stand there, fingering the card he gave me and noticing how the lettering is slightly raised: 'Detective Inspector G Dante, London Metropolitan Police'. Can
he
really rescue me?

I'm holed up in a hotel room, drunk; a double murderer on the run. A random girl who is pretending to be my murdered girlfriend is living in my house. Another random girl who also looks like my murdered girlfriend but also was my actual girlfriend will be landing in Sydney about now, if she made the connecting flight in Kuala Lumpur. The cop who tried to get me sent down for murder has made me an offer; my only chance. And my agent of eight years, the man I'd come to see as a father figure and who'd betrayed me just like my real dad, has been tortured and brutally killed by the psychopath gangsters that are potentially also after me. These are the stark facts of the situation, and they ain't good.

"Are you bleedin' mad?" Serge would have said if he was alive and had heard about Dante's offer.

"Never, ever, ever trust the Old Bill. Never."

I can hear him saying it so clearly it's as if he's actually in the fucking room. Jesus, maybe he is, his bastard ghost, come here to haunt me. But fuck that, I'm the one who should seek revenge on Serge, not the other way round.

I'm sprawled on the bed. Leftovers of the burger and chips I ordered from room service are on a plate next to me, as are several empty miniature bottles.

The TV is on low. Images of pot-bellied black kids with big, sad eyes flash across the screen. Huge flies keep landing on their faces but they're too weak to swot them away. Famine in Africa, it makes me feel vaguely sick. Do these people actually live on the same planet as me? Our lives are so completely different. My life has more in common with that of a pampered Chihuahua than these skinny kids living in a desert out in Ethiopia, or Sudan, or wherever they are. And then a picture of a grinning young man in uniform and under him, '1000th soldier dies in battle'.

"Private Terry Baines, 21, was killed by an improvised explosive device detonated while on routine foot patrol. Three other soldiers were seriously wounded…"

I sigh and take another sip of vodka and lemonade. Could have been me. I'd probably have joined the army if I'd not become a footballer. What else could I have done? Maybe that would have been better, a real man's occupation, real camaraderie with your mates, not the back-stabbing bitchiness of the modern football game.

I take another sip and try to figure out what to do. Can I really trust Dante? The look he gave me as he was leaving seemed so genuine. But he is the Old Bill, but then, even so, who else can be trusted? I've played the conversation I had with Dante over and over again in my mind. Each time I come to a decision, that yes, I will go along with his plan, be his spy, turn state witness, doubts start to chip away at its foundations and my decision crumbles as I think about the reality of prison, everything I've got to lose. And then I think about The Substitutors and Dante's words, "Now they want to get at you." Christ, if I don't play their game, what will they do to me? The same as they did to Serge? Or worse? What was it he said about killing being a mercy? Christ. Taylor Jones... If that shit is true, then I don't stand a chance.

Now I can't think of either option enough to arrive at a decision because the alcohol has muddled my brain. How's it come to this? Beaumont Alexander, one of the greatest footballers of his generation, one of the most famous people on the planet, banished to this miserable hotel room, alone with fuck all to do but drink himself into oblivion.

I curl up on the bed, holding my knees against my chest. I feel awkward and huge, like a ball of muscle. This is what they've made me into, a plastic Action Man. And she had, of course, been Barbie. This isn't what I wanted. I can see the small boy playing football in the street with other boys. The towers of Wembley looming high above them all. The boy falls over, no, admit it, he was pushed, crashes down hard on the concrete playground. He grazes his knees, the stinging pain making him want to cry out but he can't look chicken, though the other boys laugh at him anyway, call him stupid names. His mum hugs him when he gets home, showering him with kisses, "Poor little Beaumont, one day you'll show them, one day". Always just me and Mum. The day Dad left, yes, I can remember it! Only four years old … the confusion, the strange, alien feeling of heartbreak. The taunts in the school playground… 'Where's your daddy? Swapped your mum for a prettier one?' Not even a birthday card. Then the bastard sends me a letter after he sees me on
Match of the Day
, saying how sorry he is. The hatred and anger feels as raw now as it did the day I got that letter.

The tears are streaming down my face. I can't see any more or breathe through my nose, and I almost choke trying to breathe through my mouth as my whole body shudders with sob after sob. All those years of shutting it all out. Of course it had seeped through from time to time. I tried to blot it out by exercising, training until I was about to collapse, by spending thousands and thousands of pounds on pointless objects, and doing lines and lines of cocaine, drinking gallons of drink, fucking to oblivion. Now the huge, steel doors I created, with thousands of locks and bolts are flinging themselves open and the demons stampede through. And here's the worst, most ugly demon: it looks a bit like Beaumont Alexander, but it's shabbier and meaner-looking and on its forehead it's been branded, the blistering burns spelling out the word 'MURDERER'.

I sit upright on the bed, and almost throw up. There's no way out except one. I've never thought about it before, or have I? Maybe I've not always wanted to die, but sometimes I've wanted to stop living. No messy suicide, just to disappear, to dissolve away and not inhabit this ball of muscle covered in gleaming skin any more. Now living isn't an option, there is no comfortable option. I look around the room. I could hang myself with a sheet … but no, I know I won't be able to bring myself to tie up the noose. I've got nothing to slit my wrists with … besides that would be too gruesome. I'd probably faint at the first sight of blood.

I let out another sob, my misery is overwhelming. A gun, that would be ideal ... just one pull of the trigger … like Taylor Jones, he had the right idea. I understand now why he wanted to broadcast his suicide live on the internet. His final parting shot to the cruel, greedy and stupid world that had ruined his life.

An overdose. That will be the easiest thing, a few painkillers and some alcohol. Yeah, how hard can it be to gulp a few tablets down with the rest of the mini-bar? It might even be a pleasant way to die, just going off to sleep. But all I've got are a few Xanax, some other mood-regulators and four paracetamol. It's worth a shot. I unscrew the cap on the Xanax and tip the contents into my mouth. There's about five of the tiny pills and I wash them down with a small gin. They scratch my throat. Then I push each paracetamol out of its little foil cocoon and swallow them one by one, followed by a shot of Famous Grouse. I feel really sick but I guess I should write a note.

There's a pen and paper on the bedside cabinet next to me, headed with the hotel's name and address. I pick up the pen but my hand won't co-ordinate itself the way I want it to.

"D E AR MUM, SORRY" I manage to scrawl, but then I don't know what else to say. I lean back to try to give it some thought.

'Quick,' my brain's telling me, 'the bathroom'. There's a stabbing pain in my stomach, as if I've swallowed a knife. I don't have a clue where I am, and wherever I am, it's spinning, but I somehow manage to fall forwards and crawl to a toilet in time for the first violent retch to come. I don't know how long I spend, hunched over the toilet bowl, puking until it feels like my actual guts are coming up, but it slowly comes back to me where I am and what I've done. Now I don't want to die, definitely not now, I desperately want to live and for this pain to go away. When I can, I'll crawl back into the bedroom and call an ambulance, because I think now I am actually dying, and I'm shit scared.

Eventually the spasms subside and I sit back against the bath, exhausted. Now an ambulance doesn't seem such a good idea. My mind is too scrambled to think of anything concrete, it's just a bag of feelings: fear, sadness, anger, sickness.

I slowly stand up and go over to the sink. My own reflection shocks me. My skin looks grey and is covered in a shiny film of sweat, there are deep, dark circles under my eyes, and my hair is a mess. I splash cold water over my face and wash out my mouth. The electric light of the bathroom hurts my eyes, and the ventilator fan's buzzing pounds on my brain like a hammer. As I stagger back to my bed, craving the warmth of the thick duvet, I catch sight of the note on the table. The illegible hand-writing… 'Dear mum, sorry'.

How pathetic. I can't even write my own suicide note. I think about Mum. What would she have done if her only son had been found dead in a hotel room, OD'd on pills? It would have broken her heart, finally.

The sight of the empty mini-bar bottles scattered on the carpet make my stomach turn again, but I take a gulp of water and it calms me. At least the pain has gone. I crawl back under the duvet, pull it over my head and pass out again.

I wake up in the silent hotel room and it's light outside. It feels as if someone is playing my brain like a drum and I have a dull pain in my stomach.

It all comes back to me what happened last night. Suicide, was that really what I wanted? Did I really want to just die and let them take over my life? Fuck no, I have to fight them. What if taking all those pills has messed up my insides and I'm slowly dying? It certainly feels as if I might be, but I don't feel so sick any more. In fact, I feel ravenously hungry. I slowly sit up, and a pain goes splintering through my head, like my skull is cracked or something. What was I thinking last night?

I manage to place an order for a Full English from room service and I lie back down and stare at the ceiling; the blank whiteness is calming.

Dante… I have no choice but to accept his offer. I'll go back to her, to
them
, live like that for a bit and then let Dante get me out of it. It was
my
house after all, and
my
life. What else can I do? What was I really thinking running away and ending up here in the hotel like a caged animal with nowhere to go. Dante is right, I have to go back.

The coffee and the fry-up make me feel a bit more human, and after that I'm able to have a shower and pull on some clothes. Then I sit on the bed and turn on my phone. It beeps like crazy with texts and voicemails, but I'll see to them later.

I take Dante's card out of my pocket and tap in his number.