Lazy Blood: a powerful page-turning thriller

by Ross Greenwood

  He could still remember it now, word for word.

  Dear Will,

  Thanks for a great night on Xmas Eve. I know I should wait for you to write, but this time I won’t. I love you Will. I have done, for what seems like forever. I know you wanted to go faster than I did when we were at school, so I hope the other night caught us up!

  Write back to me Will.

  Years of love

  Sara

  He had then turned the envelope over with trepidation and looked at the franking date. It had been sent on the 3rd January, it was then the 27th June. He had lain back on the bed, crumpling his suit and felt like a total shit. Generally going to a wedding on your own is a singularly depressing experience anyway. That little titbit of information was not going to make it better. Then to really make it worse he got steaming drunk. He had been calling his brother ‘Nathan the knob end’ at the bar in a loud obnoxious manner and then slipped into a rant about what a waste of space he was and also a shit excuse for a human being.

  He hadn’t realised the father of the bride had been talking to Will and Nathan’s father just behind them. He had wondered at the time why Nathan was just standing there lapping it up and grinning. His father had grabbed his arm like a naughty school child and dragged him outside and given him a humiliating dressing down. Nathan was the golden boy now. So he had left and gone to sit in the park nearby to consider where it had all gone wrong. When he returned to the party, he had missed the speeches and his mother’s look should have incinerated him in an instant, like a magnifying glass over an ant.

  He was brought back from that horrendous memory to the present by Sara’s horrendous driving. Looking at the gearstick instead of the road, she missed a cyclist by the moss on his tyres, leaving him with an expression that suggested ten years had been shaved from his life anyway. It was Darren who had said some women don’t drive cars, they just steer them like they are possessed. A shiver went through him as he realised it was like being driven by his own mother.

  He looked at her with affection though. She was telling him about Alice’s new boyfriend. He sounded like some squeaky clean lawyer type, very different from Aiden. That took him back to the miserable night after his brother’s wedding. He had gone out with Aiden to cheer himself up. He had wanted to see his old pal too, although he had wondered at the time if he had just wanted to spend time with someone who was doing worse than him in the old race of life and he had definitely wanted to get out of his parents’ house.

  He had been too hungover to face any more alcohol so they had decided on the movies to see the cinematic classic ‘Waterworld’, with Kevin Costner. As they left that bitterly disappointing choice Will had been pondering the quote by Mason Cooley, ‘Regret for wasted time, is more wasted time’, when he had actually walked into Alice. Standing next to her was Sara holding hands with a bloke that could have passed for a young Charlton Heston. Nasty to see. Especially in his present weakened state.

  All three of them stopped and there was a pause whilst Sara looked at him like she had just recognised someone she had caught burgling her house previously but had run away before the police arrived. The void was broken by another man of equal leading-man stature coming up laden down with popcorn and drinks stating it was about to start on screen one. Sara and Alice said ‘Hi ya’ with a distinct lack of eye contact and were zoomed away by their Hollywood dates.

  Aiden and Will looked at each other. Aiden simply muttered, ‘O joy.’ As they watched them trot into the same screen that they had been in, Will clung to the fact that they too, were about to have a torturous experience. Then he realised with a sickening churning in his stomach that they may not be there to watch the film. Sara was dressed in ridiculously tight jeans, high boots and a tight fitted white shirt and she looked amazing. Will rolled his tongue back into his dry mouth.

  As she got to the door she let the others go in first and then, with every fibre of Will’s being willing her to do so, she stole a glance back at him. Will suspected after that if he’d missed that look, he may well have not pursued it. As it was, he did. He returned her imperceptible smile and raised a hand. As they walked back to Aiden’s, Aiden told him with an incredulous face that Alice and he had been on a few dates afterwards, but she had eventually dumped him with a well written Dear John letter, telling him he was boring. Will had laughed at that disclosure, Aiden not so much.

  When he had returned to his own home he had looked for the telephone number of the girl from the previous weekend hoping for some distraction in the old fashioned way but it was nowhere to be seen. To add to his gloom, he had then wasted an entire afternoon frantically ripping the place apart. Another person he had let down and would never see again.

  He had then sat at his scratched table and thought about Sara. He knew there was an element of wanting what you can’t have, especially with him not having anything at the moment but eventually he picked up a pen and wrote to her.

  So here we are Will thought, three years on. It had turned out that she had really liked this Heston bloke and it was all a huge decision for her. Will had expected her to dump him and that would be it. Instead it had ended up as a big drama, agonisingly conducted through Royal Mail. Just as it got to the point where he felt like telling her to choose ‘El Cid’, so exhausted was he by all the palaver, she arrived at his house on the morning of his birthday in November and they had gone straight to bed. They had then seen each other sporadically until they had settled into a twice a month arrangement. He would return to Peterborough one weekend and a fortnight later she would go and visit him. It was hardly rock and roll.

  Sara pulled up outside Aiden’s and stalled the engine. Will recalled one of his dad’s little phrases, ‘Mark my words, you will end up with someone like your mother and will be thankful for it’. A deeply disheartening thought at twenty-five, Will concluded. He saw Darren and Dean parked outside the house on the other side of the road a few cars up with a wildly gesticulating Carl in the backseat clearly in the middle of some amusing tale where something unpleasant happened to him.

  Laughing now, Sara kissed him properly, wet and keen and made a ‘Mmmm’ sound.

  ‘I will see you at my house,’ she said. ‘Three o’clock no later,’ she added with a stern look.

  ‘We are only going for a pizza,’ he laughed. ‘Darren is only back for a flying visit, Carl is off to Liverpool, and Aiden has…’ He tailed off and gave her his best winning smile.

  ‘I’m sorry Will, but my parents said no to him coming. It’s a full house and you know how they are about Christmas being just family.’

  Will kissed her again and got out the car. It was his turn to go to hers this Christmas, something he was not overly enthused about. He had asked if Aiden could come for dinner as by all accounts his mother was in a weary way. He had asked for Aiden’s benefit and for his own, so he could have an ally as he never really felt that welcome there. He strongly suspected that he had been bad-mouthed due to his elusive behaviour over the preceding years and her dad usually looked at him like he was an unwelcome cat that had sneaked into the house and needed shooing out. Her mum, too, looked at him in a slightly unusual manner. Maybe it was his paranoia but it always seemed as though she was pleasantly tolerating him and making the best out of a bad situation. It was like he was a phase to be endured, until her only child wised up and got a decent human being.

  20

  Will rapped his knuckles on what he assumed to be Dean’s car, startling Carl so he banged his head on the window. It was a silver Vauxhall Cavalier SRI that looked like it had been a lovely car once, until it had been driven full pelt round the world twice - in first gear. Gesturing for Dean to turn off the noisy engine Will waited next to the car, waving smoke out of his face as Darren got out.

  ‘Are you coming in?’ Will asked. He studied Darren’s face as Darren looked at the fading door and the piles of rubbish that were now accumulating in the front garden. He had lost a little more weight, or maybe just trained i
t off. He looked like the older, harder brother of the Darren he went to school with. He retained the same intense eyes as if life around him was a finely balanced game of chess and he was always considering his next move, or maybe, the next five moves. His hair was now in a crew cut showing off a few scars where the hair now refused to grow.

  He surprised Will and nodded his head. ‘Yes, this last time. The world is changing, so it’s time I changed. I’ll tell you more about that later.’ He then purposely strode towards the alleyway between the houses. Will followed after him, stepping over faded sweet wrappers and mouldy leaves.

  Will and Darren stared at each other, no words necessary as they got to the back door. The back garden too looked neglected and that had been Aiden’s mum’s pride and joy and they both shared a look. Darren took a deep breath and knocked lightly on the door. A minute passed, so Will knocked louder this time and when no response came Darren tried the door. He pushed it open and gestured for Will to go in. Will edged into the kitchen as though he was entering a mine field.

  Suddenly Darren pushed him and Will staggered forward and slid on what appeared to be a blackened banana and tripped into a load of bottles. The bottles bounced all over the hard floor, making a loud tinkling sound, leaving Will feeling like he was playing whack-a-mole as he tried to still them all at once. ‘You bell end,’ he snarled at Darren who was looking very pleased with himself. Darren then frowned, at the same time as Will creased his nose.

  There was a funny smell in the kitchen. It reminded Will of the disposal chute at the bakery. Sweet and rancid at the same time and it was then as he looked for the source that he noticed the work tops were cluttered with old takeaway boxes and dirty plates. The sink was piled high with mugs, nothing else, like a tower of skulls. Wanting to break the nervous pressure that was building inside him Will opened the door to the hall and bellowed, ‘Aiden,’ up the stairs. Darren came past him and went into the dining room and Will followed. It was empty of life but looked like squatters had been staying there. Pizza boxes covered the table but had been arranged in a pattern, almost like a modern day laminate. There was the same musty smell here. Will watched Darren’s eyes jump from culprit to culprit, like Robocop looking for crime, as he scanned the array of half eaten tins of food, semi-drunk bottles of milk and rejected toast crusts that littered the floor. Darren then froze, eyes widening, as he caught sight of the photograph of Aiden and Freja sitting on the car looking at the camera.

  A full minute passed and then a tear crawled down his cheek. Steadily the volume of water increased and he closed his eyes as they began to stream down his face. Will began to step out of the room, to give his friend this last goodbye. Unexpectedly, a dull solid thud echoed from above and both Will and Darren’s heads snapped toward the ceiling. They both edged to the bottom of the stairs and looked up. Darren wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve and then put his arm across Will’s chest. He made the universal sign for quiet with his hand and then took the lead up the narrow staircase.

  Will followed, trying to mimic Darren’s crouching gait. He copied the technique of keeping one foot close to the bannister and the other close to the wall and together they ascended in near silence, the only sound the slight sucking of the filthy carpet, as though it was loathe to let them advance. All the doors were closed at the top and there was a heavy curtain pulled across the only window so it felt like it was dusk, despite the fact it was not even midday. The only sound Will felt he could hear was the roar of his own blood rushing round his own body and he moistened his lips. He shifted the weight of his straining muscles.

  He then put a foot on the top step and broke the peace as the floorboard let out a high pitched sound like the wailing of a mother shrew that had come home to find an owl sitting in her empty nest. He immediately took his foot off the offending step which then let out the same sound in reverse. He looked at Darren in disgrace, who just shook his head and mouthed the word ‘Dick’ to him. Darren opened the nearest door to them. He did it swiftly and stepped back against the doorjamb as though a swarm of bats would escape. It was Freja’s old room. The curtains were pulled back so a weak wintry sun highlighted a mass of swirling dust which they had disturbed. Will could almost feel the thick air and knew the room was empty.

  The next room door was pushed open and the mystery was solved. Freja and Aiden’s mother was lying on the floor next to the bed. One naked leg caught in the sheets, causing her nightie to ride up to her waist. A more emaciated human being Will had never seen. The air was dank with sickness and a myriad of other bodily smells that pharmaceutical companies prevent us from recognising and Will put a hand to his mouth.

  Will took a step closer to the prone form. He found himself examining the body as though it was something he had just run over. It seemed to have a yellow hue, but that could have been because the only light was coming from a weak single bulb on a nightstand. If it wasn’t dead he suddenly knew, it would be soon. He went to pull the blanket over the scrawny bottom, to save it some dignity, when he saw a slight bunching of the back muscles.

  Then a long slow fart was pushed into the air. It was like the dying gasp of a wounded soldier. It lasted about ten seconds, a strange meandering sound as though the body barely had the strength to expel it. It tailed off with a gentle high pitched parp. Sickened and amused at the same time, Will raised his eyebrows at Darren who looked mortified. Suddenly a smell so nauseating, so fetid and heavy, that it felt like his brain was being pulled through his nostrils, assaulted him and he gasped in shock. Returning his shocked look to the body, he started when he realised the eyes were now open and then a skeletal hand shot out and grabbed his knee.

  He involuntarily jumped back and hit a solid object, which was Aiden and he would have fallen back on the creature if Darren hadn’t grabbed him by the upper arm and held him. How the hell had a twenty stone giant made it up the stairs without them hearing. Aiden was clutching a bottle of vodka and was gently sobbing. He stepped past Will and picked his mother up off the floor as though she was a rare, expensive, spilled parchment and gently placed her on the bed. Darren had gone white as a sheet and he mumbled, ‘I’ll wait in the car.’ He slipped out of the room like a wraith.

  Will tried to compose himself.

  ‘Sorry man, we thought it was a burglar,’ he whispered. Aiden didn’t bother to clear his eyes and spoke in a strong loud voice as though it would clear the air.

  ‘You don’t need to whisper. She can’t hear you. My mum left a long time ago. All this thing does now is ask for vodka when it wakes.’ He paused and then shrugged as though he needed to tell someone. ‘Her liver has failed. Her kidneys too I think. The doctor said it’s a matter of days, weeks maybe. He said vodka is as good as morphine. I forgot you were coming.’ He sat on the side of the bed and held his mother’s hand. ‘I’m sorry Will, you shouldn’t have to see this.’

  Will had never been more at a loss for words in his entire life. He returned his gape to the person who had once been one of the most powerful life forces he had ever encountered. The skin seemed to sag around her ears, leaving her nose protruding like an exposed cliff. His mouth moved but no sounds came out.

  ‘Can I help?’ he eventually managed to stutter.

  Aiden put a heavy hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Yes, it’s bath night tonight.’

  Will was too dumbfounded to disguise his features and a look passed his face as though he had done a massive fart and then followed through. Aiden laughed.

  ‘You’re a good friend Will. Go. This is my burden to bear and I’m happy to carry it.’

  Will stood there stunned and Aiden got up and hugging him, turned him around and gently pushed him toward the door. Will stopped at the top of the stairs, but couldn’t bring himself to turn round and on wooden legs staggered down the steps. He burst through the back door almost at a run and he knelt, head tilted back, hauling huge great gasps of clean winter air into his lungs.

  21

  Will drained his second beer a
nd finally gathered his thoughts. The others had been talking but he hadn’t heard a word. He took a deep breath and joined the land of the living. Darren seemed indifferent to their recent harrowing experience and was explaining the Balkan war zone to Carl, Dean nodding beside him and Will tuned in.

  ‘It’s carnage out there. Starving people shooting each other over bread. Snipers picking off desperate mothers as they search for food. Mass graves everywhere. It’s genocide man. And these are normal people, in jeans and trainers.’

  An unusual phrase, Will thought as the spotty waiter put their empty plates down and said, ‘Help yourselves please.’

  ‘The SAS are already there,’ Darren continued. ‘But now they want the best to keep the peace.’

  ‘This is what we’ve been trained for,’ Dean cut in. ‘This is what we are ready for.’ The pair of them looked at each other and grimly nodded.

  Will considered whether having these two fervent-eyed individuals there was going to improve the state of affairs. He stood up and said, ‘Let’s eat.’

  He stood staring down at the collection of congealing pizzas and sodden pasta dishes and felt like his mouth was full of cotton wool. He took two slices of pepperoni, returned to the table and ordered another beer. The others came back, plates laden with calories and Will looked at Carl properly for the first time. He seemed different. More poised and confident.

  ‘Glasses?’ he enquired.

  ‘I had laser surgery,’ Carl grinned. ‘Gruesome and expensive, but I love it.’

  Will smiled. It was good to see him looking so well. He was still painfully thin, but his clothes looked expensive and his watch loudly declared money. He took a bite of his greasy cardboard.

  ‘So tell me Carlos, what’s new?’

  ‘The accountants took me on after my degree. Sixty grand a year to stare at spreadsheets. Can you believe it, just to stare at companies VAT returns. Work is good and my love life is great.’ Carl puffed himself up.