Savage Games

by Peter Boland

  “Has someone taken the soup?”

  Dink squeezed his lips tightly together to stop the answer from accidentally slipping out, not wanting to snitch or perhaps he’d been threatened not to tell.

  “It’s okay,” said Savage. “I won’t be cross, but that’s our soup. We made it. You and me. Just give me a nod. You don’t have to say who it is.”

  Dink held his breath then slowly nodded.

  “Right, you go back to your room and don’t worry, okay. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  Savage followed Dink out of the kitchen and saw him safely back into his room. Once the door was shut, Savage sniffed the air and caught the whiff of cooked vegetables. He followed it up the stairs to the next floor. There were seven bedrooms on this floor and Savage got a stronger smell of soup towards the back of the house. He came to two doors at the end of the corridor and got a waft of cooked food coming from underneath one of them. He also got the pungent aroma of strong weed.

  Savage knocked on the door.

  No answer.

  Pot heads don’t get up for much, except one thing.

  Savage knocked again and said, “Pizza delivery.”

  Chapter 24

  The door opened a crack and Savage got hit by a wave of marijuana smoke mingled with shades of the soup he’d just made. A pair of sleepy half-lidded bloodshot eyes started back. Savage pushed the door, and invited himself in, past the guy who had opened the door. He wore a baggy sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms, and his hair was thick and floppy. The room was large, with an old, battered studded sofa in the middle facing a large, broken flat-screen TV, propped against the wall. All the curtains were closed tightly and a cloud of grey-green spliff smoke hung just below the ceiling. Another guy sat on the sofa with the huge saucepan propped on a low coffee table in front of him. He spooned soup into his mouth in what looked like slow motion.

  “Soup’s good,” said the guy who’d opened the door. “Pizza’s way better. Hey, where is the pizza by the way?”

  “There is no pizza,” said Savage. “I just said that to get you to open the door.”

  “Want some soup?” said the guy on the sofa. He was similarly dressed to his friend except his greasy hair was parted in the middle.

  “I do, actually,” said Savage, lifting the heavy saucepan off the table. “I’ll just take this, seeing as me and my friend made it.”

  “Oh, sure, take it, man.” the guy on the sofa replied, with no malice whatsoever. “Sharing is good. Hey, wanna smoke?” He bent down and picked up a record sleeve that he was using as a tray. It was covered in weed, rolling papers and bits of torn-up cardboard for making roaches.

  Savage wasn’t bothered about the drug paraphernalia, it was the record cover that caught his attention. A copy of The Jam’s first album, In The City. And it was signed.

  Savage put the soup down on the floor and pulled the album from the pothead’s hands, tipping his weed everywhere.

  “Where’d you get this?” asked Savage.

  “Oh, a guy who used to live here gave it to us,” said the one who’d opened the door.

  “What guy?”

  “Lived on the top floor,” he replied.

  “Why’d he give it to you?”

  The guy on the sofa started picking up weed off the floor and rolling it into a joint. “Didn’t really give it to us, it was more of a trade.”

  “Trade for what?”

  “He asked us to get him something to help him sleep.”

  “What was it?” Savage asked.

  “Nembutal, I think.”

  Savage tensed. Nembutal was the drug found in Dave’s blood stream, the drug that killed him. “You’re sure that’s what it was?”

  “Yeah. He traded it for his record collection. It wasn’t enough, so he went and got some cash from somewhere.”

  “Where’d he get the cash?” Savage asked.

  The guy on the sofa shrugged and continued perfecting his rolled-up joint.

  Savage examined the album closely, eyeing the black swirly signatures of Paul Weller, Rick Buckler and Bruce Foxton scrawled across the cover. “How come you didn’t sell this one?”

  “I quite like The Jam,” said the guy on the sofa, taking a lighter from the coffee table. He lit the joint and took a long drag, holding it in. His friend sat down next to him and took the joint off him. Putting it to his lips, he inhaled deeply.

  “You know that guy upstairs is dead, don’t you?” said Savage.

  Both men coughed out the smoke they were holding, gagging and choking at the same time. “What?” one of them said in a strangled voice.

  “We didn’t even notice he was gone,” said the other.

  “It was in the newspapers,” said Savage. “Committed suicide. Know what did it? Overdose of Nembutal.”

  The two of them suddenly went green with nausea and wide-eyed with fear, eyes even more bloodshot than before. The effects of the marijuana probably not helping their paranoid, drug-addled brains.

  “We didn’t know, I swear. He said he needed the Nembutal to help him sleep,” said one of them. That was probably true. He couldn’t imagine Dave would go to these two jokers and tell them he needed the Nembutal so he could kill himself. Even these two dim-witted slackers wouldn’t have been tempted to make that deal.

  “Did you know he had a son?” asked Savage.

  The men shook their head.

  “He died too. Also committed suicide. Did it in the same place. That was in the news. Dead Maids Wood.” If the men had been afraid before, now they were terrified, paralysed with it. “You didn’t have anything to do with it, did you?”

  They shook their heads furiously, so much that it looked like they were going to come off. “No way,” said the one sitting nearest. “I swear, I swear, I swear. We didn’t even know he had a son. Didn’t even know he died.”

  “And you wouldn’t know anyone who knows anything about it.” Savage had to be careful. This was starting to sound like an interrogation. Not the actions of the grey man.

  The one who’d made the joint crossed his heart. “Please, I swear, we’re just a couple of stoners. We like getting high and that’s about all we’re good for…”

  “Please, you gotta believe us,” the other guy pleaded. “He just said he wanted it to help him sleep.”

  Savage believed them. They were far too stoned to be lying. And far too stoned to notice anything that was going on in their immediate personal space, let alone the rest of the house and the world outside.

  Paranoia now gripped them. “Please don’t tell the cops.”

  “Yeah, please. You can have all our weed and cash. We swear, he just said he wanted to get a good night’s sleep. This place ain’t the most peaceful. So we got him the Nembutal.”

  Savage thought for a moment, then said, “It’s okay, I don’t need your weed or your cash, but I am taking this record.”

  “Yeah, sure, anything you like, man.”

  Savage opened the door, tucked the record under his arm and picked up the soup pan with both hands. He turned just before he left. “Tell you what. You don’t say anything about this conversation then I won’t, okay.”

  They nodded. “Sure, sure. Anything you say, man.”

  Savage left the room. He heard the door shut and lock behind him.

  A conflict arose in Savage’s mind. He would be quite within his rights to go back in there and bash both their heads in with the heavy soup pan he was holding. And he might still do that. They had supplied Dave with the drug that had killed him. It wasn’t as simple as that. Dave had wanted to die, that much was clear now. Savage had an inkling that had always been the case, and so had the police and his son Luke. No surprises there. It was a suicide, plain and simple. And someone who wanted to die, whether rightly or wrongly, was going to find a way, whether it was jumping in fro
nt of a train or off a tall building. Horrific ways to go. At least with the Nembutal, Dave had slipped away peacefully, like falling asleep. If anyone should be blamed for his death it should be Savage, not the ones that had supplied him the drug. Savage should have been there for Dave, to talk him out of it, to be his friend. Not leave him to die a lonely death, fifty feet up a fir tree. Perhaps Savage should be the one to be punished.

  “Now, that’s what I’m talking about, Savage,” said Jeff Perkins, triumphantly.

  Savage felt his whole body shrink.

  “You should be punished. I mean that’s not an enemy you killed in a war zone, that was your best friend. You weren’t there for him. His death is on you. Go back to those potheads and ask them for some Nembutal, and take it yourself.”

  Savage ignored his jibes and took the soup back down the stairs. He was just about to give it to Dink when he thought of another idea. He knocked on Rosie’s door, using his elbow.

  “What are we doing here?” asked Jeff.

  “Shut up,” Savage said. “Just let me do this one thing first.”

  “What do you want?” came Rosie’s voice through the door.

  “It’s me, John. The guy from the convenience store.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Could you unlock the door, I’m carrying something really heavy.” Savage noticed the deadlock was across but it didn’t actually reach all the way into the doorframe, stopping a few millimetres short of the metal strike plate.

  The door opened slightly. Rosie peered through the gap.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Soup. We made way too much, and I was just wondering if you and Grace would like it, shame for it to go to waste.”

  “I haven’t got anything to give you.”

  “That’s fine. I don’t want anything. Look, it’s yours if you want it. Made it myself. Just fresh veg and that’s it. Very wholesome.”

  Rosie looked at him as if she was trying to get a look inside his soul, see if he was up to something. Kindness probably didn’t happen around here very often. And she seemed like she wasn’t sure how to respond.

  “Look,” said Savage. “There’s nothing wrong with it, if that’s what you’re worried about. You saw us buying the ingredients, it’s just vegetables.”

  After a minute of staring at him she quickly opened the door wide, took the large pot from Savage’s hands and quickly slammed the door shut again.

  “You’re welcome,” Savage said to himself.

  Dink would be annoyed that Savage had given all their soup away. They could always make some more tomorrow. Besides, a single mum with a growing teenage girl to feed would need it more than they would, especially if all she could afford to buy was milk and bread.

  Jeff had become strangely quiet at the sight of Rosie but on the way back up the stairs, he piped up again. “She’s hiding something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. She has that look.”

  “What look?”

  “The I’m-hiding-something look. You must have realised. Come on, keep up. You’re slower than Dink.”

  “Jeff, everyone’s hiding something in this place. That’s why I’m here, to find out what happened.”

  “Nah, this is different. She’s hiding something big. A big secret.”

  “Since when did you get so caring?”

  “I couldn’t care less. I’m just stating a fact. You mark my words. Didn’t you see the pain behind her eyes, like a pair of dams holding back water, deep dark water.”

  “I thought that was just desperation.”

  “No, this is different. She’s up to something. Something nasty.”

  Chapter 25

  Back in his room, Savage called Tannaz, telling her they needed to meet, and that he’d had a breakthrough, of sorts. Tannaz left her hotel room immediately and picked up Savage in a quiet backstreet well away from Tivoli Gardens and the Thornhill Estate—avoiding any prying eyes.

  They drove deep into the New Forest, avoiding the area of Dead Maids, to a pretty little village called Bank, just outside Lyndhurst. The village’s one and only pub had a storybook appearance, nestled in the forest with an old, red phone box outside. Inside, it was everything a country pub should be—all low ceilings, exposed wooden beams and a crackling open fire with a red-nosed local propping up the end of the wooden bar. Intimate nooks and crannies were everywhere, perfect for hushed conversations over a pint. Although Tannaz’s reaction was anything but intimate when Savage told her about the two drug dealers supplying Dave with the Nembutal.

  “We need to give those two a serious beating,” she said, taking a massive gulp of her lager.

  “Keep your voice down,” said Savage.

  “Sorry,” she replied in a quieter tone. “They killed Dave, there has to be some payback.”

  “And what would that accomplish?” asked Savage. “Listen, we’ve always known that Dave’s death may have been a genuine suicide, and this confirms it. Beating the crap out of the two people who got him the drug won’t change that. I mean, if he’d chosen to hang himself would you go and find the DIY store that sold him the rope, so you could beat up the cashier?”

  “Nembutal is different,” Tannaz protested. “It’s used for suicide.”

  “Yep, and it’s also used for insomnia. That’s what Dave said it was for to the potheads.”

  Tannaz frowned, creases racking up on her brow. “They were naïve. That’s like giving a toddler some bleach to clean their hands.”

  “I know this is frustrating, but we can’t change the fact that Dave wanted to kill himself.”

  “How do you know someone didn’t drive him to it?”

  She had a point.

  Tannaz continued, “We have the ‘how’, we still don’t know the ‘why’.”

  “Listen,” said Savage. “I don’t think there’s anything suspicious about Dave’s suicide. His personality, sad though I am to say it, fits the profile. What doesn’t is his son, Luke. His death is still a mystery. That’s what we should be concentrating on.”

  Tannaz thought for a moment. “Okay, but I think we should still keep an open mind about Dave. We still haven’t got the whole picture.”

  Savage took a sip of beer. “Agreed. Any luck with the numbers found in Dave’s pocket?”

  “Nothing. I’ve put them through number-sequence software, analytical software and nothing’s showing up. I’ve put them through prediction modelling, and serial-number search tools. Nothing’s coming back. I’m stumped.”

  “Okay, let’s keep trying, something’s bound to give sooner or later.”

  “How’s it going at Tivoli Gardens, anything emerging? Hear anything about the weird games Wellington likes to play?”

  “Nothing yet. Apparently, people do disappear for a day or two, sometimes more, especially this guy Archie who’s opposite me. Goes off for days now and then. Last time he came back with an Elastoplast on his head.”

  “Sounds dodgy.”

  “Said it was a drink-related injury, which could be true. I get this feeling that it could be Chinese whispers, little more than people doing cash-in-hand work for Wellington, which is why no one talks about it. It could be nothing more than people doing work on the side.”

  Tannaz took another large gulp of beer. “Have you questioned anyone directly, asked what’s going on?”

  “Too risky. I’ve already sailed a bit close to the wind. Need to lay low and let it happen organically.”

  “That could take weeks and months.”

  “True, but if I force it, people will clam up or worse I’ll blow my cover. I think if I haven’t got anywhere in a month’s time I might spread the word that I need some work, see if I can get a peek behind the wizard’s curtain that way.”

  “How will you do that?”

 
Savage kept his voice low. “There are a couple of goons, Vlad and Truck. Really nasty cases who look after Wellington’s properties on this side of Southampton. They exploit the residents, skimming their benefits or demanding payments in booze. I think I could try and get some work out of them, although I’ll probably have to pay them a percentage of it. How about you? Found anything on Wellington?”

  “Nothing,” Tannaz replied, retrieving her laptop from her bag and placing it on the table. “I think we got lucky with his bank account and spotting the payment to the blacksmith for the cages. That seems to be the one and only time he got sloppy. However…”

  “I like howevers,” said Savage.

  “… His son Ben is a different matter. I wouldn’t say I’ve found any clues or anything like that, but there’s something strange going on between him and his father.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Savage.

  Tannaz pointed to the screen and spoke quietly. “This is his bank account. Guess how much he gets paid for running his dad’s property empire?”

  “No idea.”

  “As far as I can see, twenty-eight grand.”

  “A year?”

  Tannaz nodded.

  “Is that all?”

  She opened another window and typed away. “It’s peanuts for such a big job. So that got me curious about other aspects of Ben Wellington’s life. Check this out. He doesn’t own his own house either, can’t afford to. Him and his wife and their two daughters live in one of his dad’s properties, a tiny two-bedroomed place in Millbrook in a road where you really wouldn’t want to bring up kids, and his dad makes them pay rent. His wife works as a teaching assistant. They’re skint, basically. Ben Wellington is chauffeured around in a posh Bentley Continental, but it’s not his. It’s owned and paid for by the company. Wellington’s goons come and pick him up each day. Ferry him around.”

  “How strange,” Savage remarked.

  “Weird, right? I mean, his dad’s a multi-millionaire and his son lives like a pauper, even though he’s running this vast business for him.”