by Penny Grubb
‘Like an impression in a bar of soap?’ Annie was amazed.
‘Soap’s no good. You can get this stuff like blu-tak and you oil it so it don’t stick. Got some off me uncle and he made the key up for me.’
‘Didn’t he ask what it was for?’
‘I told him it were a lock-up. He thought it were just for ornery robbing.’
Ordinary robbing? That was OK, was it? She took another incredulous look at the device then put it into her pocket with the envelope.
‘You never used it?’
‘Never. On me mam’s life. I only got it done ’cos o’ them. They …’ She didn’t doubt his sincerity and she could probably put words to the motives that now baffled him. He’d have had those girls hanging on his words in horrified admiration at the thought he could steal an impression of a key and get a copy made. But what should she do with it? Keep it like he asked? Hand it over to the police? He had a point, they wouldn’t give him an easy time if they knew its provenance.
‘Oh shit!’ He was on his feet, the colour gone from his face.
‘What? What is it?’
‘Someone’s coming. You gotta hide. You gotta get out.’
She heard it, too, now. Footsteps from outside. He hadn’t secured the reinforced door. There was no time to be bought that way. Clearly he knew who it was. The wave of fear that radiated from him had her on her feet. She dived for the kitchen area where she eased herself out on to the small veranda and held the door open a crack to listen through.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
Her heart plummeted to her feet. She knew that voice.
‘I just come to clean up, Mr Sleeman. I didn’t get it all done last night.’ She heard him rattling the pizza boxes.
‘The fucking door was open, you cretin. What are you playing at?’
‘I only jus’ got here, Mr Sleeman. I were just gonna shut it.’
‘You lying little git. I saw the light from down below. You’ve been here a good while. And not done much cleaning to show for it. What have you been doing? Robbing stuff, I suppose. Empty your pockets!’
‘Nah, I ’aven’t, Mr Sleeman. Honest. There’s nowt in me pockets. I were just ’aving a sit down. I were tired is all.’
‘I told you to empty your pockets. And when I’ve done with you I’m going to check this place over so you may as well come clean.’
Annie froze from the inside out as she listened to Maz’s whiny voice plead with Vince. There was nothing in his pockets. Anything he wanted to be rid of he’d already passed on to her. He was stalling Vince deliberately to give her time to get away.
She gulped. Time to get away …
Where was this kick-through to the adjacent flat? Was it anywhere she could reach? Of course not. And the very term, kick-through, implied noise not a clandestine escape.
Anyway, so what if Vince found her here? Wasn’t she on a job for his agency? She fought to win the argument with herself. A job for his agency. A job he’d had cancelled. Pat and that giant plaster cast.
When Sleeman’s mate legged her down the stairs …
If Annie were pushed right now, she didn’t have the safety net of a concrete staircase. She had a sheer drop to assured death. But he wouldn’t push her. Why should he? Why was he here? What was his role in it all? Another piece in a jigsaw she suddenly had no interest in completing.
Maz’s voice whined on. He wouldn’t divert Vince for ever. She had to do it. Now. Don’t think. Just do it. She’d seen him swinging there quite secure.
She tried to swallow, but her mouth had dried.
Clinging to the rail, she eased one leg up on to it, then the other. Felt the awful instability of clinging to too thin a handhold. She had to get her hands off the rail, up above her head, on to the ladder. She couldn’t do it.
She moved nearer the side wall. Maybe with that to balance her … Holding her breath, looking anywhere but down, she managed to stand up on the rail, one hand now pushed up on the ceiling of the small veranda. Weight leaning inwards. Daren’t look out, not even upwards, but she must if she was to grab the lower rung of the ladder.
Quick glance up, smothering the gasp of a snatched breath. She inched along, hand pressed to the rough surface of the ceiling.
About there now, just the right point to reach out into the air …
She crawled one of her hands along the stippled concrete … felt at the changing texture as it neared the outer edge. Her jaw began to shake, the chattering of her teeth was involuntary. Either she got down now and faced Vince, or she must make one bold grab for that rung.
She tried to tell herself that whatever Vince chose to do, it had to be less risky than hanging over a sheer drop at this height. But this intimacy with her own mortality didn’t allow her to kid herself. No way could she trust Vince to save her from an ‘accidental’ fall. Here she was at the heart of something he’d worked to keep hidden. Tiny memories flashed by … his cold eyes … his lack of interest in her as a person. Scott and the way he’d said, ‘You don’t have to work for Sleeman.’ The only witness was Maz and Vince would have no worries about keeping him quiet.
Her chest constricted, the deep breaths she tried to take stalled themselves. She counted anyway. One … two … three … Praying it wasn’t her last moment on earth, Annie loosed her hand from the security of the concrete surface, reached up and round the corner, above where she could see. Her weight had to move with it, to tip towards the emptiness.
Her fingers felt cold metal, closed on it, grasped it tight. Without stopping to think through the next move, knowing that she could use the momentum, she let her other hand follow. Her hands gripped tight. Her feet barely danced on the rail. She was outside the shelter of the building, buffeted by the wind, helpless. No way back.
Maz with his longer legs could have used the rail to boost himself up. She had nothing, just the strength in her arms to rely on. She hauled up, felt the sting of blood in her mouth as she clenched her teeth too hard. Another gasping breath, a quick look up to locate her target and she let go with one hand and grabbed for the next rung.
Got it. A bit of leeway now to rest on one elbow and let the pounding in her chest slow. But she mustn’t let herself stop. Other hand up to the next rung … and the next … and at last her feet found purchase on the bottom of the ladder and she could breathe freely into the buffeting wind.
Now she’d stopped to catch her breath she could see exactly where she was. On the short makeshift ladder that was hooked … barely … over the steel rail at the roof’s edge. A horrible vision came to her that one more move and it would slip free and send her plummeting down.
She must get right up on to the roof as quickly as possible. Up there it was safe.
After one more attempt at a deep breath, a flexing of muscles, she turned her head sideways and glanced down.
The whole world swam around her. There was nothing … nothing between her and the tiny patchwork estate far below. Tiny figures scurried about their business, never looking up. She fought back an urge to scream, but the breath had rushed out of her body. Clutching at the ladder, eyes squeezed tight shut, she couldn’t suppress a whimper as a gust hit her and the metal swayed.
For a moment she curled in on the certainty that she couldn’t move … that she must stay still and cling to this flimsy support. If Vince saw her … A vision flooded her mind. Vince appearing above her, reaching out to loosen the ladder …
There was one way to go. She didn’t stop even to try for the deep breath that should signal decisive action. She moved one hand to the top rung. One foot up. Other hand. A heart-stopping pause at the edge of the roof, at the perimeter of safety. In this pummelling wind, how to make the critical move needed to get from the side of the building to the top. No handholds. She must let go and throw her body weight forwards and over, but what if a circling eddy of wind chose that moment to tip her back again, out beyond the reach of the thin metal frame?
She knew if she didn’t g
et over the edge immediately, she’d freeze and never move again. The tightness in her chest rose to her throat. She pushed up with her feet and hurled herself forwards and over with a force that sent her headfirst into something hard and unyielding. Instinctively she flattened herself to the surface and lay still as the sharp pain in her head subsided.
After a moment when the surface beneath her remained solid, slowly and very cautiously, she sat up and looked around.
It was flat. The top of a box. She’d expected a wall of some sort, but there was just the maintenance rail the boy had told her about, a steel girder round the edge to hold the cables for maintenance cradles. She’d imagined a forest of tiny buildings holding the machinery that kept the whole tower alive, but there were just a couple of unevenly shaped protuberances to house the tops of the lifts and whatever else the building needed. Body firmly pressed to the surface of the roof, she eased herself round. And there right in front of her was the aerial she’d seen them bring that first night.
One thing she could be certain of; she would stay here and starve before even considering going back down the way she’d come up.
Chapter 21
Annie closed her eyes and let her head fall forward until her face rested against the rough surface. What had she done? A tremor took hold of her that had nothing to do with the chill of the breeze. Scott’s words burnt across her mind. A single look and the great detective surmises … What had the great detective surmised this time? A single snarl in Vince’s tone and she’d assumed what – that he’d kill her? She tried to recreate her sudden fear. Unexpectedly, a sliver of it remained.
She lifted her head. The promise of a storm that she’d seen out over the sea in Withernsea swirled high in the sky. It gave her a sudden boost of energy.
Within a hair’s breadth of death, but she was alive.
Would Vince really have pushed her from the high balcony? She’d hidden from him and she’d found what he’d wanted hidden from her. She’d crossed a line, shown what she could do when she had to. She’d never forget how it felt to hang over that drop. Every detail would stay with her, every nuance. It might be the start of a nightmare or a source of inspiration. She was too hyped up to tell.
Now she’d got over the need to crouch down into the tarry surface, she stood tall, let the wind try to drag the hair from her head as it lashed round the outlandish world up here. The city lay spread out below her. It couldn’t see her but she could see it.
Tell me your secrets, she urged.
She laughed. As the gusts grabbed the laughter from her throat and whipped it away, she laughed louder, shouted out to the world that she was alive.
The need to be practical stopped her and she reached into her inside pocket for her phone.
‘Pat, it’s Annie.’ The strange high from where she’d shouted out over the city dropped her without warning. Her voice wobbled.
‘Annie? What’s up? What’s happened? Where are you?’
Facts. Stick to the facts. ‘I’m on the roof of Mrs Earle’s tower block.’ Why wouldn’t the howling of the wind grab the catch in her voice and dissolve it into the sky before it reached across the airwaves to Pat?
‘On the …? Sounds like you’re in a railway tunnel. What the fuck are you doing up there!’
How could she begin to answer that? ‘Look, can I tell you later? The thing is … can you get me down?’
‘What d’you want me to do? Come round with a rope and crampons? How did you get up there? Can’t you go back the same way?’
Flashback to a spinning landscape. Sharp intake of breath. ‘No. I need someone to bring the lift. Someone with an access key.’
‘Does it need a key from the top?’
Brilliant! Whoosh! Right back on that high. Was it the bullying air currents that affected her mood so unpredictably? And why hadn’t she thought of checking the lift first? She spun round, gaze speeding over the roofscape as she spoke. ‘I don’t know. I’ll check.’ She ran towards the nearest of the two structures.
As she approached, the door in the side wall swung inwards. She skidded to a halt and flattened herself round the back of it. The high still held her. No fear, just grim satisfaction. If it was Vince, she’d outflank him before he’d taken in a breath. A slight figure emerged. Maz. Vince must have gone and he’d come to look for her. She stepped into view and saw relief spread across his face as he beckoned.
‘It’s OK,’ she told Pat. ‘I can get at the lift. I’m on my way. We’ll talk when I get back.’
As she clicked off the phone, she caught the words, ‘Count on it.’
‘Quick, quick,’ Maz hissed at her with frantic hand signals. ‘You’ve gotta get out before he knows.’
He dashed across the roof surface towards the ladder. So that’s what had brought him up here; he wasn’t on a rescue mission. Vince was still around but diverted for long enough for Maz to retrieve the ladder.
As the lift door opened on the top floor, he jabbed at the ground floor button in a show of gallantry and told her to, ‘Gerrout quick. He don’t know you been here. Watch out in the car-park. He’s gone to get summat.’
Annie smiled and let him dash off, but as the doors began to slide shut, she slipped between them and stood once again on the top landing. She moved from the lift, away from the entrance to the flat. She waited.
It was a while before the lift returned. She was ready for it, calm now. Vince marched out, muttering angrily below his breath, and headed for the flat.
She let him disappear inside, then walked towards the reinforced door confident that he wouldn’t invite her in. The spy hole faced her as she knocked. She made sure she was visible to anyone looking through it.
Bolts slid back, locks clinked. The reinforced panel opened a crack and Vince’s face appeared, glaring into hers.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ His gaze raked her up and down and she realized that she’d brought a lot of the roof with her. She’d just have to hope the garbage she wore wasn’t identifiable as roof debris.
‘I followed you.’
He looked shocked and then amazed. Before he could speak, she went on. ‘I want to talk. Shall I come in, or shall we go back down?’
Breath held now because there was no way she’d cross the threshold of this flat ever again. But he must believe she didn’t know what was in there. And this time it wasn’t him catching her out, she’d caught him. For all he knew, she had backup. Surely, he wouldn’t risk anything silly.
‘I’ll come down,’ he snarled.
At once, Annie said, ‘I’ll see you in the car-park,’ and rushed off so as to get the lift before he’d got his act together. She didn’t want to have to stand in that small box with him on the journey down the building.
Less than five minutes after she’d made her way back to Pat’s car, Vince appeared in the entranceway. His tall, solid form sauntered across the concrete expanse. In front of the car he paused to give her a hard stare then he walked round to the passenger side and climbed in.
‘Well?’
She told him about the drug dealing, about Tuesday and Friday nights.
He didn’t try to contradict her and only interrupted to ask questions about the timing, the amounts, who bought the stuff. She didn’t have answers to most of it. He sat looking out through the windscreen. It was impossible from his face to get any sense of how he felt, how much was news, how much he already knew. Somewhere inside her Annie had the impression she’d shocked him.
The seesaw of emotion held Annie in its grip as she drove back across the city. By the time she pulled up outside the apartment block, she felt nervy and on edge; wished she’d never made the call to Pat. She needed the security of the nearest place she had to home, but wanted to be alone, not to have to explain. Not yet.
Half a hope that Pat would be engrossed in a film died as she clicked the door open. Pat’s greeting was bawled at full volume. ‘I told you to come straight back after you’d seen the Martins.’
The excuse she’d rehearsed no longer had any substance, but she used it anyway. ‘I thought you meant …’
‘No, you bloody well didn’t!’
‘How should I know what you mean?’ Annie yelled back. ‘You never tell me anything!’
‘You’re employed to do as you’re bloody well told!’
Suddenly, Pat sat up and stared hard into her face. ‘Have you taken something? You’re all over the place.’
‘No, of course I haven’t. What do you take me for?’
‘Then what’s the matter with you?’
‘It’s being on that roof. Have you any idea how bloody high it is?’
‘Did you go and look over the edge? You did, didn’t you? Idiot. What did you do that for?’
‘No I didn’t. I mean not like that.’
Flashback … the ladder … the awful stretch to reach it.
‘You’ve gone white as a sheet,’ Pat said. ‘You didn’t say how you got up there. I assumed the lift. Was it the lift?’
She shook her head.
‘Then how?’
‘Off the veranda of their flat.’
‘Jesus! You idiot! What the fuck possessed you? You could have been killed!’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ Annie screeched the words and slammed out of the room. In the bedroom she paused. What was the matter with her? She looked down at her hands. They were shaking and felt cold as though she’d crawled through snow. She’d never felt like this before … never done anything like this before. A wonderful rush of triumph took the shivers right up through her body. She must get off this rollercoaster. She’d pushed beyond some sort of limit, shown just what she could do. But forget it … it would never happen again. Never. Where was the route to equilibrium? In normality. Getting out of these mucky clothes covered in streaks of oil and tar from the roof top would be a good start.
Ten minutes later she re-entered the living room. ‘Sorry about that. I …’