Gareth Dawson Series Box Set Page 11

I’d gone round to his house one evening, not for any particular reason, but just for a catch up. We tried to get together at least every couple of weeks. I knew Jacob was struggling with his workload in the city and didn’t get back to visit his dad as often as he wanted to, so I kind of assumed the role of a surrogate son. Andy and I had sat there for the evening and demolished the best part of a couple of bottles of wine each. He’d got up and stumbled, laughing as he almost fell over. I got to my feet to help him and he commented on how I’d got a much better tolerance for booze than he had. He was right, of course. The wine had barely touched the sides, much less get me as pissed as I wanted to be. The saddest thing was that I started thinking about how much whisky I’d got back at my flat, and whether I’d need to pick up some more on the way home. I’d helped him up the stairs to make sure he didn’t go arse over tit trying to get up them. At the top of the stairs, he stopped and looked at me with watery, red tinged eyes.

  “Wine hath drowned more men than the sea, Gareth. Don’t forget that,” he said, his voice slurring as he spoke.

  I waited for him to say something else, but he never did. He turned away and shuffled into his bedroom, leaving me to see myself out. When I got back to my flat that night, I looked up the quote he’d said on the internet. It was by some old vicar hundreds of years ago, but as I thought about them, the words made sense. That night was the first night for months when I left the whisky where it was and just went to bed.

  A couple of days later, I found myself sitting in the doctor’s surgery mentally rehearsing what I was going to say to him when I got called through. When my name was eventually called, only an hour and a half after the scheduled appointment time, I was still not sure quite how to say what I wanted to ask him. I walked into his room and took the seat that was offered before clenching my fists a couple of times.

  “So, Gareth,” he said, looking at me with kind eyes. “What brings you here today?”

  I’d known Dr Riley for years, but he never seemed to age at all. He had to be in his early sixties, a shock of white hair that made him look like that Einstein chap. I’d always wanted to ask him to stick his tongue out, like in the poster, but could never bring myself to do it. He was dressed in a crumpled white shirt, cuffs rolled up to just below his elbows, and a pair of creased brown chinos. To be honest, he looked more like a mad scientist than a general practitioner, but the rows of fancy looking certificates on his wall were testament to his pedigree as a doctor. I looked at him before glancing away.

  “I need some help, Doc,” I said. He was always “Doc”, never “Doctor”, but I couldn’t remember why that was. I paused, wondering what to say.

  “With what, Gareth?” he asked after I said nothing else. “I can see in your notes you saw one of my colleagues a while ago. Is this to do with Jennifer? Or more specifically, how you’re coping without her?” I took a deep breath before replying.

  “Yes, I mean no. It’s not to do with that.” His eyebrows went up slightly. Busted. “Well, I guess it is, at least indirectly.” Doc Riley said nothing but just looked at me with his eyebrows fixed, questioning me without a word. “It’s the drink. I’m drinking a bit too much.”

  He looked at me for a second or two before turning away to rummage through some papers to the side of his desk. Once he’d found what he was looking for, he turned back to face me. For the next few minutes, he asked me a bunch of questions about boozing. Had I had any blackouts? Was alcohol the first thing I thought about when I woke up? Did I feel like I couldn’t function without alcohol? The answer to most of the questions was “yes”, which I knew wasn’t good. We then went through the amount I was drinking, night by night, and morning by morning. The only question that I couldn’t answer was whether any loved ones were concerned about my drinking. I didn’t think I had any loved ones. Not anymore.

  Doc Riley used a calculator to add the results up and then sat back in his chair. It creaked as he leaned backwards, looking at the paper through reading glasses that it had taken him a while to find. “Hmm,” he said. “Interesting.” I didn’t reply, but just waited for him to continue.

  “What do you think?” I asked when I couldn’t stand the silence anymore. He looked at me, angling his head so that he could see over the top of the glasses.

  “I’ve been a general practitioner for almost forty years, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone still alive who can drink what you’re drinking.” He had a faint smile on his face. “In fact, in my professional opinion, you should be dead already.” Although the wry smile remained on his face, his creased forehead told me that there was a seriousness behind his words.

  “That bad?” I said in a resigned voice.

  “Can I be honest?” he asked. I nodded in reply. He put the paper on his desk in front of him. “This amount of drinking, it’s not sustainable. I dread to think what state your liver must be in, but I have a professional admiration for its ability to process such vast amounts of alcohol.” His frown smoothed out, and his smile broadened. “Can I have it when you die? Medical science could benefit from it, I suspect.” I smiled back at him, not feeling like it but figuring that it was the best thing to do. He leaned forward, his face back to being serious. “I have one more question for you, Gareth. If I may?”

  “Of course,” I replied.

  “I asked you just now if you had ever thought about harming yourself, and you denied it most vehemently.” I wasn’t sure what “vehemently” meant, but I had a rough idea.

  “No, I would never do that,” I whispered, unsure where he was going.

  “Well Gareth, I hate to break it to you, but that’s exactly what you’re doing to yourself. Committing suicide, sip by sip, bottle by bottle.”

  I left the surgery about twenty minutes later, having gone way over the allocated ten minutes that was all the NHS allowed for each patient. The sign on the wall was telling the other patients still in the surgery that the waiting time was now two hours but try as I might, I couldn’t summon up any sympathy for them. I had a bunch of paperwork in my hand that Doc Riley had printed off for me, and another appointment for a week’s time. The other thing I had was something that I’d not had since the night Jennifer died. The tiniest shred of hope that things might turn around. The first thing I did when I got back to my flat was open the cheap whisky I’d bought the day before but had been too pissed to drink, and tip it down the toilet. It was ironic, as that’s where it would have ended up anyway, but this way it hadn’t been in my stomach for a while before making it to the toilet bowl. I looked at the wine in the fridge for a few seconds, thinking about emptying that as well. I decided against it, remembering Doc Riley’s words about taking it one day at a time.

  The next morning, I felt so much clearer despite a bottle and a half of wine the night before. One of Dr Riley’s suggestions was to replace the drinking with something else, something more productive. Perhaps something I’d used to enjoy, but hadn’t done for a while. I’d texted Tommy the night before to tell him that I was going to take the day off, so with the whole day in front of me I dug my old trainers out from the back of the cupboard that they’d lived in for God knows how long, and put them on. My original plan had been to go for a run, but I ended up just going for a walk as I didn’t fancy being seen out running in daylight. One step at a time after all. That’s what Doc Riley had told me.

  I stuck to beer and the occasional bottle of wine, then gradually eased up on both as well over the course of a couple of weeks until I wasn’t drinking much at all. I also managed to get out and go running a few times, which to my surprise was a big help. Doc Riley had been right. My biggest victory was knocking the cigarettes on the head, replacing them with large amounts of nicotine gum. Over the course of a few weeks, I went from a wheezing sweaty overweight jogger to a slightly fitter version, one who didn’t have to stop and lean up against things every few minutes. I still only went out at night though, to hide under the cover of darkness.

  What I discovered was that the d
eep-seated anger still burning inside me wasn’t affected in the slightest by not drinking, or more specifically, not drinking as much as I had been. It was always there, like a malignant companion. Being sober just helped to crystallise it to the point where my idle daydreams started to get more detailed. My need for alcohol had been replaced by something much darker, much more sinister.

  The tipping point, for want of a better word, was when I was out running one night and I saw a familiar looking red BMW with personalised plates driving towards me. It was Robert, still behind the wheel although he was still banned. He’d kept the same car that he’d killed Jennifer with and was now driving around in it. I watched, incredulous, as Robert drove past me, music thumping from the stereo in his car. He was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music and didn’t even notice me as he drove past. Not a care in the world. If I had to pinpoint the moment that I’d decided to act on my anger, it would be that precise moment. Why should he not have a care in the world? Jennifer was dead, at his hands, and I was a broken man. That wasn’t fair.

  Finding out where he lived was easier than I thought it would be in the end. I saw him again a few nights later, but he was on foot this time. I just followed him home to a small block of flats on the Yarmouth Road where he let himself into the main door. I saw lights come on in a ground floor flat a few seconds later. I had been sure that he lived down on Riverside somewhere, in one of the posh new developments near the football stadium, and the more I thought about it, the surer I was. Jennifer told me once about Robert losing the plot over someone using his allocated parking space underneath the flats, and it turned out that it was some bloke who’d gone to a football match at Carrow Road. Robert must have moved since then, although why he would move from a nice flat on Riverside to a shabby looking block on the outskirts of the city was beyond me.

  Once I’d got his address, I hung around outside the block a couple of times to get an idea of his routine. I was quite used to blending into the background. It was a skill that had served me well in my previous career. Over the course of a couple of weeks, I established a vague idea of where he went, and when. I watched him go to a pub called The Griffin one Thursday evening, which was probably the closest pub to his flat and would, therefore, be his local boozer. It was a squat white building just off one of the main roads back into Norwich from pretty much anywhere to the east of the city. Anyone driving from Great Yarmouth back to Norwich would have to drive right past it, but it wasn’t the most popular of pubs by a long stretch. I’d been in there a few years ago, I couldn’t remember why, but I remember that it was a bit crap for a pub.

  When I watched Robert leave The Griffin that Thursday night, he’d obviously drunk a fair amount judging by the way he was walking. He was still leaving well before closing time, which I was quite happy about as I’d spent the previous hour waiting for him to leave. I watched from my vantage point across the road as he disappeared down an alleyway at the side of the pub, coming back a moment later zipping up his fly. He couldn’t even be bothered to go to the toilet before he left the pub. I followed him at a distance as he made his way home. I’d already decided that if I saw him driving again, I’d call the police and grass him up, which was something I’d never done in my life, but other than that one evening I saw him he never seemed to use the car. The idea of him being arrested and jailed for driving while disqualified was a pale punishment, anyway. Him being on foot made it a lot easier to follow him though, so I wasn’t complaining.

  A couple of days later, I changed my routine and went for a run fairly early on a Sunday morning, joining all the other overweight occasional runners in the area. I made sure that I went past The Griffin pub as well as from the pub to where he lived. There was a sign outside the pub advertising “Quiz and Chips” on a Thursday evening. I stopped by the entrance to the alleyway, trying to look like a jogger having a breather, and looked to make sure that there was no one around. Seeing nobody, I walked down the alley to see what was down there. The main thing that I was looking for was security cameras, but as I’d figured, there weren’t any. Tommy had done over this pub a few years ago. I couldn’t remember why I’d not been on the job, but he’d said it was an easy entrance for almost bugger all reward. The pub obviously hadn’t bothered beefing up their security since Tommy’s visit. The alleyway led to a small enclosed yard full of empty beer barrels behind the pub. There was a trapdoor that led down to the cellar with a big thick padlock on it, but other than that there was nothing security wise. It was also not overlooked by anything or anyone.

  I left the alleyway and jogged slowly towards Robert’s block of flats. It was maybe a ten-minute run, so only a mile. I kept looking out for cameras, net curtains with nosey old people hiding behind them, anything that might make it a dangerous route for someone who wanted to avoid being detected. There were a couple of shops on the way. I made a mental note to ask David to have a look at them. He was much better at spotting things like cameras than I was although I couldn’t see anything obvious.

  As I reached the outside of the block of flats that Robert lived in, I had the beginnings of a plan in the back of my mind.

  16

  The day it all came together started off pretty much like any other day. I woke up, I went to work, and I did what I would do any other day of the week. It was cold for November, getting colder every day, but when I looked out of the window before I left for work I didn’t think it would snow. I left the flat and then had to nip back inside to get a pair of gloves and a woollen beanie hat I’d forgotten. It was chillier than I’d thought.

  It was a Thursday, which as well as being quiz night at the Griffin was also a day to catch up on office related stuff. Tommy and David had done a few home visits that needed writing up, and I’d undertaken an assessment of a marketing startup in the middle of Norwich. Why a startup wanted to spend hundreds of pounds on security was beyond me. There was nothing at all in the place that was worth nicking, but I left that part out of my final report.

  The three of us had a quick lunch in the office before going our separate ways. I had to go back to a previous client for a follow-up visit, Tommy was going to see a potential new client, and David had an assessment to do for another friend of Andy’s. Although we were well enough established now to make it with no help from him, pretty much every week a new client called who was “a friend of Andy’s”. Given that all of his friends seemed to be well off, we weren’t complaining. There’d been several visits I’d done with Tommy where I’d known we’d be able to make an absolute packet from the place if we turned it over. There was a painting on the wall of one of Andy’s friend’s houses that Tommy swore was an original painting by some eighteenth-century painter he knew. I’d been sceptical at first, figuring that Tommy knew as much about eighteenth-century painters as I did, which was next to nothing, but he’d kept going on about it and even shown me a photo of the painting taken on his phone. The next day, Tommy had brought a flyer from an auction house he’d printed out off the internet. He’d waved it at me.

  “There you go, Gareth,” he’d said. “Bloody told you so.” I looked at the flyer and the small thumbnail picture on it. Tommy was right, and the guide price for the painting was £25,000 to £30,000. For a painting of a boat.

  Later on that evening, we’d met up in The Heartsease for a few beers. I wasn’t completely teetotal then, but not far off it. I was on a three pint a night limit which worked well seeing as there were three of us. One round each, nice and tidy. By the time I got to the pub, the other two were already there.

  “Evening gents,” I said as I walked up to them and sat down on a rickety chair which creaked as I eased myself onto it.

  “How do?” Tommy replied, while David just nodded at me. “You have a good afternoon?”

  “Yeah, I did,” I said. “Another happy client. Plus, we got a good commission off the security stuff they bought. How about you?”

  “Another big old house with an old couple knocking r
ound it. Very nice area, just near Eaton. Like a bloody oven inside, though. God knows what their heating bill must be like.” Eaton was one of the posher areas on the outskirts of Norwich which had aspirations to be a separate village but was in reality still a suburb. The usual demographic that lived there was rich and elderly. The fact it was close to the hospital no doubt helped with that, and I knew in the past the area had been a happy hunting ground for Tommy. “They wanted to have a think about it, but I reckon they’re in for a few grand of security at least. We’ll get an assessment out of it, if nothing else.”

  I nodded at Tommy, pleased that he was getting the hang of bringing new clients in. He had just the right mixture of cheek and guile, and older people loved him. I looked at David, who seemed lost in his thoughts.

  “How about you, David?” I asked him. “How did you get on?” He regarded me through his greasy fringe, almost looking offended at the question. One thing was certain about David, he would never be front of house.

  “Yeah, standard visit really. Easy money. Not much in the way of improvements to suggest in the house itself.” He glanced sideways across at Tommy. “At least not that I could see.” David was very much the junior member of the team in that respect. His skill set was far more technical. “So then I did the assessment of his home network.” I knew this was the main reason for the visit, and that the security assessment of the house was more for show than anything else. David took a sip of his beer, flicking his fringe as he put the glass back on the table.

  “Well, how was it?” Tommy said, his impatience obvious. David paused before replying.

  “Man, he had the largest collection of porn I’ve ever seen in my life,” David laughed, a rare sight and as I saw his yellowed teeth, I was reminded why this was. For a while, I’d been considering stumping up for him to go to a cosmetic dentist as a kind of staff benefit, but I’d not had that conversation with him yet. “He was talking about how tech-savvy he was, and that his network was pretty much impenetrable while I was stealing his wi-fi and scrolling through his files.” Tommy and I both laughed at the thought of it.