Stephen started to cry. He didn't know the right answer, the answer that would save him. He gave the only answer he could: the truth.
The man took off his mask.
‘Wrong answer, Stephen. Turns out you need more than love.’
He began to pull the leather cord tight.
Stephen screamed.
Erasmus looked over at the two men in the corner and knew that things were going to end badly. He had agreed to meet Dan here. Now that was looking like a big mistake. He sighed and waited for the inevitable.
The Mosquito Lounge was one of Erasmus Jones’ least favourite places in the world. It was also the bar where his friend, and main source of work, Dan Trent, liked to conduct business meetings. A relatively new bar that had looked hip four years previously, it now had the settled, tired, post-crash air of resigned desperation. A neon blue mosquito with a red tongue occasionally flashing and giving off a hiss that spoke of an unhealthy combination of poorly wired electrics and water, hung over the stairs that led down to the basement bar.
The bar was one of the many that had sprung up as Liverpool embarked on its year as European Capital of Culture. Europe had poured millions into the city, mixing with the ever available drug money and government funds to form an intoxicating cocktail of new developments, bars, restaurants and call centres, transforming, on the surface at least, the face of the city.
Glass and steel had replaced red brick and Victoriana. Manhattan style lofts had replaced flats, stakeholders replaced citizens and, most obvious of all, bars and a hoped for coffee culture replaced the pubs and clubs.
Now the focus was off, attention and the money switched elsewhere, the city seemed to be breathing a sigh of relief, taking off its glad rags and reverting to a more comfortable, familiar type.
Before entering the bar, Erasmus had been through a familiar routine of patting his jacket pockets, searching for a packet of cigarettes that he knew wasn't there. The smell of stale beer and cheap perfume emanating from the stairwell seemed to trigger the receptors in his brain responsible for his nicotine addiction. Finding no cigarettes, he had given a shrug and popped a piece of gum into his mouth before descending into the bowels of the Mosquito Lounge.
It was dark inside. Ronnie, the septuagenarian owner of the place, thought that daylight polluted a good bar. Hence the heavy velvet curtains over the tiny street-level windows. It took Erasmus a few moments for his eyes to adjust from the gloomy, slate grey light outside to the subterranean murk of the Mosquito Lounge.
The room's walls were lined in purple faux velvet that had been ripped and stained within weeks of opening. The laminated dancefloor that Erasmus crossed to reach the bar was sticky with the residue of a thousand pints of spilled lager. Each step required a conscious effort to lift his foot and move forward. It felt like you could get trapped down here. The bar, like a Venus flytrap, never letting you leave.
Erasmus spotted Dan. He was sitting in his usual place at the end of the bar and pretending to watch a TV screen that was mutely showing highlights from the day's general election coverage. Erasmus looked around to find the real source of Dan's attention.
In one corner of the room, sat at a small table, were two women, a blonde and a brunette. In this light they could be anything from twenty to fifty years old. By the amount of waxy looking cosmetics that they had slapped on, Erasmus guessed that they probably pitched somewhere towards the higher end of that particular scale.
The Mosquito Lounge ticked all the boxes that Dan Trent needed in a bar. These were, in order of importance: firstly, his wife would never ever be seen dead in such a place, neither would her friends or any of his colleagues other than those he invited, and finally it attracted a certain type of woman, usually divorced and with low expectations of life, namely the type of women that Dan Trent, loving husband and father of two young boys, liked.
Erasmus planted himself on a stool next to Dan. Dan didn't even look round.
‘OK, Erasmus. Here's the deal. You push me off my stool and then I get up off the floor and hit you hard, Jackie Chan style. You hit the deck and beg me to stop.’
Erasmus signalled the bored looking bar man who rolled his eyes but nevertheless wandered over to take his order.
‘Mineral water,’ said Erasmus.
Dan turned his head and gave him a look of contempt.
‘Then, the girls come over to check I'm OK and I'll explain we are long lost brothers fighting in a Legends of the Fall type way over our massive inheritance. They get all emotional over the display of testosterone and wealth and we take them back to the Shangri La for some Schezuan then onto the Malmaison for an afternoon of Heat magazine type debauchery. If it's good enough for celebrities, it's good enough for us. What do you say?’
‘How's Grace?’
Grace was Dan's long-suffering wife. Dan groaned.
‘Ahh you've gone and dumped icy water all over my fantasy man. It's not fair, especially given the gift I'm about to give you. And just because you're on the wagon, though you know I think sex addiction is just a made up Hollywood thing?’
Erasmus noticed that the blonde sitting at the corner table was sneaking looks at him that were lasting a couple of moments too long. He pondered the possibilities for a second and then discounted them. He decided to ignore Dan's comments about his sex addiction. It had been a mistake to tell him about it when trying to talk Dan into getting help for tackling his own demons
‘Gift?’
‘Yeah, what does every PI in this city want?’
‘To get a job anywhere else?’ said Erasmus.
‘You need to be careful. We can be a proud bunch here. Especially when southern jessies like you start slagging us off.’ He gave Erasmus a mock punch to the head.
‘You know I love this place. What did you tell me Carl Jung said? “Liverpool is the pool of life”,’ said Erasmus.
‘That's right. And don't you forget it. I am about to do you a massive favour. I know you used to do that secret squirrel stuff when you were in Afghanistan.’
Erasmus groaned. ‘I told you last month, I'm through with it all, I'm studying to be one of you lot. Going over to the dark side.’
Dan mimicked the plucking of an arrow from his chest. ‘I'm wounded, truly I am, but hey, you'll be in need of funds?’
Erasmus didn't reply.
‘I have a client. A very beautiful and potentially very rich client.’
Dan took a sip of his drink and paused for a moment. He smiled as Erasmus took the bait.
‘Go on.’
‘She has an unusual problem.’
‘Tell her to go to the clinic,’ said Erasmus.
‘You wouldn't say that if you saw her, Raz. She's stunning.’
‘Your judgement on such matter is suspect.’
Dan turned and waved at the women sitting in the corner booth. They giggled and one of them, the elder one, by Erasmus’ reckoning, raised her drink in response. Reluctantly, Dan turned back to Erasmus.
‘I see the inner beauty. Look, it's straightforward. My client's husband is missing. She needs you to find him.’
‘Tell her to go to the police.’
‘She has already. He's been gone two weeks. You know what they do, add him to the Missing Persons Register and that's it. You know how many people are on that list? Thousands. Even I