Sudden Death

by Nick Hale

The waiter tried to kick out but Jake caught his foot and reached for the man’s other leg, sweeping it away. They crashed together on to the lino floor, and Jake used all his upper body weight to pin the waiter down. The man said something in Russian, then tried to punch Jake in the side of the head. Jake reacted quickly and took the blow on his elbow, then he crunched his own fist into the Russian’s teeth. Blood spattered around his mouth.

  The waiter wouldn’t give up. He jerked his hips and Jake toppled off him, his fingers catching the edge of the bin. Rubbish poured on top of him. He rolled over, fists up and ready to face his attacker.

  But the Russian was disappearing out of a back door. Jake jumped up and went after him. He emerged into an alleyway. The waiter, shirt torn, was pelting towards Brompton Road. Jake sprinted in pursuit, but pain shot through his leg. He pulled up, grimacing. Warm blood was seeping through his trousers below the knee and he could feel the bandage he’d applied earlier hanging loose.

  Jake limped out on to the busy street. He scanned left, then right, but the pavements were bustling with pedestrians carrying shopping bags and commuters walking home from work. The waiter was gone.

  Jake kicked a bin angrily. He headed back down the alley, breathing heavily as he tried to swallow down his frustration. In the kitchen, the napkin was still on the draining board. Jake picked it up and hurried back through into the dining area. Everyone was outside now and he saw that the police had arrived as well: one patrol car and one unmarked vehicle – both silent, but with their blue lights slowly spinning. Jake’s dad was leaning against the wall of the restaurant, rubbing his temples.

  Jake dashed outside. ‘Something’s going on. Did you see the waiter? He tried to kill me. He –’

  His dad grabbed him by the shoulders, scanned him up and down. ‘Are you all right? Slow down, Jake. What happened?’

  Jake took a breath and started again. ‘The waiter attacked me,’ he said slowly. ‘He was throwing away Mr Chernoff’s bowl. I got the napkin. I thought –’

  His dad glanced back into the restaurant, then frowned at the napkin in Jake’s hand. He took it, then pulled Jake tightly to him. ‘You stupid boy. You could have been . . .’ Jake twisted free of his dad’s awkward embrace.

  His dad’s eyes were wet. Were there tears?

  ‘Was . . . was Mr Chernoff murdered?’ Jake asked.

  But his dad was looking over Jake’s shoulder and tucking Chernoff’s soiled napkin into his jacket pocket. A suited man was making a beeline towards them. He nodded curtly to Jake’s dad, flipping open his ID badge.

  ‘Detective Farrimond, sir. The ambulance crew said you were dining with the deceased. I’m very sorry. Can I take your name, please?’

  ‘Steve Bastin.’

  Jake saw the flicker of recognition in the detective’s face, and he was grateful the detective didn’t pursue it.

  ‘And you knew Andrew Chernoff, the victim, Mr Bastin?’

  ‘Only professionally,’ Jake’s dad said.

  What? thought Jake. You were joking together like mates a quarter of an hour ago. You called him ‘Andy’.

  ‘So you don’t know if he was in poor health? Might this have been a heart attack?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Jake’s dad said.

  Jake couldn’t believe the words coming out of his dad’s mouth. Chernoff had looked in great shape.

  ‘Do you know his next of kin?’ the detective asked.

  Jake’s dad shook his head. ‘He has a sister, I think. Lives in the States now. As I said, we weren’t close.’

  ‘Dad . . .’ Jake began, but his dad silenced him with a hard stare.

  The female paramedic came alongside the detective. ‘We’re going to head off now, if that’s OK with you?’

  ‘Excuse me a moment, sir,’ said Detective Farrimond to Jake’s dad.

  As the detective and the paramedic separated themselves and talked in hushed tones, Jake turned to whisper, ‘Dad, Mr Chernoff started getting ill when he was eating.’

  His dad sighed, his eyes not leaving the detective and paramedic. ‘It might have been a coincidence,’ he said.

  ‘But don’t you think we should tell the police?’ Jake noticed his dad’s jaw tighten.

  ‘Let the police do their job.’ His dad frowned.

  ‘What about the napkin? The waiter –’

  Jake’s dad spoke in a low but insistent tone. ‘Jake, drop it . . . I’ll handle this.’

  The detective returned.

  ‘Can we do anything else for you, detective?’

  The investigator shook his head. ‘No, sir. We’ll notify the family.’

  Jake’s dad nodded. ‘And you think it was cardiac arrest?’

  ‘Almost certainly, sir. There’ll be an autopsy; in cases like this it’s procedure.’

  Jake remembered the spittle and the gurgling sounds. He knew they weren’t symptoms of a heart attack. And why wasn’t his dad telling the police about the waiter?

  A flash went off and Jake saw a photographer already on the scene, snapping pictures. When he lowered his camera, Jake noticed his wide-set pale eyes and square jaw. He had the kind of all-American look that Jake had come across so many times at his various international schools.

  The ‘American’ was wearing a dark beanie hat, a strand of blond fringe peeking out above his brow. When he lifted his camera again, a uniformed policeman placed a sturdy arm in front of him and told him to move on.

  The ambulance pulled away from the kerb, sirens and lights off. Detective Farrimond walked over and leant in close. ‘I say, sir,’ he said quietly, holding out his notepad. ‘If you wouldn’t mind . . . my son would be awfully grateful . . .’

  Jake’s dad gave a thin smile. ‘Of course,’ he said, taking the pad and pen. ‘It’s no problem. What’s his name?’

  ‘Er . . . it’s Paul,’ said the police officer.

  Jake rolled his eyes. Why do they always say it’s for their sons? If this man has a son, he’s probably never heard of Steve Bastin . . .

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the detective, beaming as he took back the notepad. ‘He’ll be pleased as punch.’

  Jake and his dad took a black cab home to Fulham in silence. The three-bedroom apartment they lived in was on two floors of a grand Victorian house set back from the road, with a semi-circular gravel drive out the front. The taxi skidded away, leaving them alone. When they reached the door, Jake’s dad fished inside his wallet and took out a twenty-pound note.

  ‘Are you still hungry? Why don’t you order yourself a takeaway?’ he said.

  Jake took the money. ‘Don’t you want anything?’

  Jake’s dad shook his head. ‘Lost my appetite.’ He put his hand on Jake’s shoulder. ‘Listen . . . I’ve got some work to do. We’ll talk in the morning, OK?’

  Jake tried to smile. It had been the same ever since he came to live in London: in the morning, tomorrow, later . . . He wondered, with Chernoff dead, would the move to Russia still happen? One look at his dad’s drawn face told him now wasn’t the time to ask. Even at sixteen, Jake was old enough to see something bigger was going on here. And he intended to get to the bottom of it, with or without his dad’s help.

  Up in his bedroom, Jake turned on his computer. The screen commands blinked into life and Jake’s fingers shook over the keyboard as the full horror of the evening hit home. His stomach felt knotted up.

  I saw someone die tonight.

  It wasn’t that he’d never seen a dead body. His mother was Irish Catholic and he remembered clearly the pale, waxy skin of his grandmother lying in her open coffin before the funeral in Dublin.

  But this was different. This time Jake had watched life fade out of a man’s eyes.

  There was a voice chanting in his head, quiet but insistent:

  I saw someone murdered.

  Jake logged on to the Internet and entered ‘Andrew Chernoff’ into the search engine. There were thousands of entries. The first was a profile of Chernoff from his playing days. He’d bee
n a decent midfielder for Oxford United in the mid eighties, part of the team that took them to the old First Division. His stats were solid, averaging eight goals a season.

  The profile said that he’d finished his playing days with Wrexham and that he’d retired in 1994, aged thirty-six. That made him fifty-two, much older than he’d looked. Like Jake’s dad, he played in the days before big money made footballers into millionaires. Since quitting the pitch, Chernoff had made a name for himself as a top-flight scout, spotting gifted youngsters.

  The second entry was from The New York Times and was dated only a week earlier. It was a piece about Chernoff’s appointment to the St Petersburg Tigers. Apparently he was being paid handsomely to be the talent spotter for Igor Popov’s new team, and had been given a blank cheque-book to travel the world in search of the very best players.

  Jake’s eyes were drawn further down the article to a subheading – ‘Criminal Allegations’ – where the journalist recounted rumours of wrongdoing within Igor Popov’s oil empire:

  Scandal continues to hound Popov, who made his fortune during the deregulation of the energy market following the Soviet collapse. Accusations of fraud, protectionism and intimidation have long been associated with his business dealings, but the Russian government recently dropped its investigations.

  With a fortune currently estimated at $18 billion, Popov is believed to be the seventh richest man in the world.

  An image accompanying the article showed a smiling Chernoff standing on a training pitch with a short man in a sharp suit who was captioned as Popov. Jake stared closely at the face. There was no mistaking the rodent-like quality of Popov’s thick dark hair and sharp eyes. It was wrong to judge, but perhaps there was some truth to the allegations . . .

  Why would my dad want to work for a man like that?

  The article had several links at the bottom, and one was a piece from the business pages: ‘Igor Popov – Gangster or Opportunist?’

  Jake clicked through. The article was by an American investigative journalist called Daniel Powell, whose picture accompanied the byline.

  Jake’s fingers clutched the mouse tighter.

  It was the same man Jake had seen standing outside the Obed restaurant an hour before, taking photographs as Chernoff’s body was loaded into the back of the ambulance.

  Jake swallowed and struggled to understand. There was no way Powell could have reached the restaurant that quickly, unless . . .

  . . . unless he was already following Chernoff.

  3

  Jake woke to the sound of a phone ringing. It took him a moment to realise that he’d fallen asleep across the computer keyboard. The article about Popov was still on screen. The evening came flooding back: Chernoff’s death. His dad’s weird behaviour. He checked the clock; it was nearly midnight. The phone stopped abruptly.

  Must have been a wrong number. Who’d ring at this time of night?

  Jake’s mouth was dry. He needed water. He got up and tiptoed out to the landing. The stairs were in darkness but he didn’t switch the light on, opting to feel his way down. The sound of a muffled voice came from his dad’s study, next to the kitchen. The study door was ajar. Jake stopped to listen.

  ‘How quickly can the lab turn it around, Sam?’ his dad asked.

  The lab? Who’s he speaking to?

  ‘That’s great,’ he said. ‘We can’t afford to wait six weeks for the police to bungle their way through a tox analysis.’

  Jake pushed the door open a fraction and peered through the crack. His dad was sitting at his desk, the phone to his ear as he pushed something with a pencil. Jake couldn’t see what it was.

  ‘I just can’t believe Andy’s been murdered.’ A pause. ‘I know, I know, I’m jumping to conclusions.’

  His dad swung slightly in the chair and Jake saw what was on the desk. Chernoff’s napkin, still stained with food.

  After listening for a moment, his dad looked up towards the ceiling. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m not ready to take on another job. But someone’s going to pay.’ His dad paused then shook his head before responding. ‘Jake’s only just moved in. I can’t up sticks and ship out – not with everything that’s going on.’ Another pause. ‘You too, Sam. I’ll be waiting.’

  His dad hung up. He put the napkin into an envelope, sealed the top, and walked towards his bookcase. Jake fought the urge to scurry back upstairs.

  His dad pulled out two books and placed them on the floor. Then two more.

  What’s he doing?

  Soon there was a messy stack of twenty or so books. His dad seemed to be inspecting the back of the shelf very carefully. Then a metal door swung open.

  A safe! Jake had never known they had one. His dad knelt down and looked to be tying his shoelace. His foot was concealed behind the pile of books. When he straightened up, he was holding a gun.

  Jake’s breathing stopped. The gun must have been in an ankle holster. It had been there all night. All through dinner. All through the conversation with the detective.

  Why does he have a gun?

  Jake remembered his dad’s words. Another job. Someone’s got to pay.

  My dad might be a killer.

  Jake swallowed drily. It couldn’t be true. Could it?

  The doorbell chimed.

  Jake darted from the door and ran up the stairs. He reached the middle step and turned as his dad emerged from the study. He was carrying the envelope.

  ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘I thought you were in bed, Jake.’

  ‘I heard the bell,’ Jake replied, taking a few steps back down.

  His dad got to the door first. On the step was a man dressed in leathers and wearing a helmet. In the street outside, under the driving rain, was a motorbike with its lights on. His dad handed the rider the envelope, nodded, and closed the door.

  ‘Who was that?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Just a courier,’ his dad said breezily. ‘Player contract, y’know. Lawyers rest for no man. Sleep well, hey.’

  A draught blew in from the door, making Jake shiver. His dad seemed like an actor, reading lines. How could he lie so easily? ‘Sure,’ Jake said, trying to control his voice. ‘I’m just going to get a glass of water.’

  As he filled his glass in the kitchen, he heard the door to the study click shut.

  Could he trust anything his dad said any more?

  An hour later, Jake was playing an online boxing game when he heard an engine outside. His first thought was Police. They’d probably run checks by now and realised his dad wasn’t telling the truth earlier. Maybe they’d already found evidence linking him with Chernoff’s death. Would they search the house? Find the gun in the safe? Traces of poison? Jake’s mind reeled. He imagined his dad being led away in handcuffs. A part of him thought: That’s what you deserve.

  He went to the window. Outside, a sleek black Mercedes had pulled up. A man climbed out of the driver’s seat and put up an umbrella. He opened the rear door for another man, obviously his boss. Together, they made their way towards the front door of the apartment. Jake left his bedroom and hopped down the stairs. The bell rang just before he got there. He opened the door immediately.

  Jake recognised the man standing in the doorway straightaway. He was short and wiry, wearing a black dinner jacket and bow tie. His face had shifting, suspicious features. The face from the newspaper article.

  Igor Popov.

  Jake couldn’t tell if it was the chill from outdoors, or something else. The temperature seemed to drop five degrees. Behind Popov, a shaven-headed, black-suited bodyguard the size of a bear was shaking the raindrops off the umbrella.

  ‘This is Mr Bastin’s residence?’ said Popov in a heavy Russian accent.

  ‘Who is it, Jake?’ asked his dad. He was at the top of the stairs wearing his dressing gown.

  ‘Steven!’ said Popov, ignoring Jake and holding out both hands. ‘Steven, I came as soon as I heard. I was at the opera in Covent Garden. I’m so dreadfully sorry about our friend. Andrew w
as a credit to football.’

  With his hand on the banister, his dad descended as quickly as his limp would allow. He eased Jake aside and gestured with a sweeping hand. ‘Please, come in, Mr Popov.’

  There was something in his dad’s tone that Jake hadn’t heard before. He sounded like a servant speaking to his master.

  Popov seized Jake’s dad’s elbow in one hand and the other went round his back in a light embrace. When he pulled away, Jake thought he saw a mist in Popov’s eyes. Whether it was genuine or not, he couldn’t tell.

  ‘Andrew was a good friend,’ his dad said. ‘And in good health. As far as I know.’

  Jake stared at his dad. Now Chernoff was a good friend again! And ‘in good health’!

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Popov. ‘A tragedy.’ He pointed to Jake. ‘And this must be your son. The likeness is unmistakeable.’ Popov held out his hand to Jake. ‘Igor Popov. Pleased to make your acquaintance.’

  Jake stepped up and took the hand. ‘Jake Bastin,’ he said. ‘You’re the man who wants to take my dad to Russia.’

  He spoke the words neutrally, but the smile on Popov’s face slipped to half-mast for a second, then returned with a flash of white teeth. He looked past to Jake’s dad.

  ‘So Andrew told you of my offer before . . .’ he paused. He looked at Jake again. ‘Jake, I have a great respect for your dad. He was a phenomenal player, and he’s a real statesman for the game –’

  ‘Jake,’ said his dad. ‘I’d like to speak to Mr Popov alone.’

  Jake was about to argue, but Popov spoke first.

  ‘There’s no need to send the boy away, Steven. How will he become a young man if he is always sent away when the men talk business? Let him stay, why not?’

  Jake’s dad pressed his lips together in a smile. ‘As you wish, Mr Popov.’ He gestured to the study. ‘This way, please.’

  The books were back on the shelf, but Jake couldn’t forget what he’d seen earlier that night.

  The bodyguard followed them into the room, then stood by the door. Jake couldn’t help feeling that they were being caged in.

  ‘Mr Popov,’ his dad said. ‘Let me get straight to the point. I’m not sure that I can accept your generous offer –’