‘I’ll just be a moment,’ I told him, quickly heading for the bedroom.
It was there on the night stand, a slender metal pick less than two inches in length. It looked as if it might unlock a child’s toy. I hoped I hadn’t ruined the chance of finding fingerprints on it. Carefully turning it over in Azymuth’s torch beam, I could make out the word MOM on one side. An American abbreviation for mother? It looked as though it belonged to something that would be owned by a woman. Suddenly the torchlight went away as Azymuth headed out into the hall. A moment later he called to me.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.’ But he was talking to someone else. I moved closer to the door.
‘–hanging around here.’
‘–with your lady friend.’
‘And I already told you, I don’t think she –’
‘–care what you think. He wants to talk to her.’
‘I don’t know where she is, she’s just –’
‘–name and address. All you have to do is tell me who she is.’
As the conversation’s implications hit home, I peered over at the mirror reflecting the scene in the hall. Azymuth was talking to a man in a blue nylon Nintendo jacket who had a meniscus of stitches running across his shaved head like the seam in a baseball. Stitch-Head was back, and he knew the doctor. My hand slipped across my mouth, wedging between teeth.
‘I can speak to Mr. Rennie myself and straighten this out,’ Azymuth offered.
‘There’s nothing to straighten out. He doesn’t want to talk to you. Your services are no longer required. Didn’t you get the message? We’re not doing the top end of the market anymore, so we don’t need the plastics.’
‘He still owes me a considerable amount of money.’
‘You know how to get paid, doc.’
‘I told you, I have no idea where she lives.’ A series of beeps sounded. Stitch-Head was making a call. He dropped his voice for the phone conversation. I heard single words, a low mumble, a phlegmy arc of dark laughter. Silence. Then a scuffle, a slither of nylon, a light thump against a wall.
I looked in the mirror once more. Azymuth had tried to make a run for it, and Stitch-Head was holding him with an arm across the throat. I gave a yelp, but he appeared not to hear. He was digging into his pocket, pulling out another of the plastic parcel tags. He locked it in place and tightened it sufficiently to drop Azymuth to his knees. The doctor was bent double, gagging and coughing on the pale beech boards, his veins bulging.
‘Just tell me who she is.’
I edged toward the balcony doors and eased open the lock.
‘Tell me who she is, doc.’
I knew that the doors would grind in their tracks, but had no choice. Pushing the heavy glass wall back inch by inch, I strained to hear.
‘I know when you’re lying, doc. Tell me and I’ll take it off.’
Seven floors down, no other exit.
‘Say the words or I’ll fucking kick you to death.’
The wind was blowing hard and nearly toppled me as I stepped onto the balcony. The sour river air carried the doctor’s rising screams into my head, whether I wanted to bear witness or not. I was penned into poisoned ground, and nothing would let me leave it.
I watched in horror, and saw.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Escape
I STOOD BESIDE the lounge window, in the shadow of its tall curtains, hardly daring to look as Stitch-Head kicked Azymuth again and again, his movements exactly repeated like some arcane automaton.
The doctor, curled tighter than a question mark, absorbed the kicks without flinching or making a sound. The scene unfolded in silence, a dumb show playing to an audience of seagulls. Reflected clouds shifted across his attacker’s face as he concentrated on the job at hand, as earnest as any craftsman tackling a task where it was important to be thorough. I heard what I thought was the sound of breaking ribs.
Unable to bear it any longer, I edged my way along the balcony and climbed back into the bedroom, carefully avoiding the step. The journey to the front door was a distance of no more than ten feet. It might as well have been five miles.
I could hear the sounds in the flat once more. Azymuth was finally whimpering, a high thin sound like a dog wanting to be walked. I had no thought of helping him. These people were not in my world. The most important thing was to get out without being seen. It didn’t help that I was wearing heels, but I was loathe to remove them in case I dropped one. Every step I took across the floor sounded like someone tapping in a nail. Even as a little girl, you could always hear me coming. My bracelet rattled as I slowly opened the door. I felt sure even my sunflower earrings were making some kind of noise.
Nevertheless, I decided I would have to manage three and a bit yards of total silence before legging it out of the building. What I had not accounted for was my reaction to the pool of blood shaped vaguely like an elongated map of Italy, shockingly red against the creamy polished wood. It stemmed from Azymuth’s head, starting in a satanic halo. I bit my hand harder, but a sound like a trodden puppy escaped my lips. It was just enough to distract Stitch-Head from his occupation and grant me his attention.
I could not get past him, and was forced to return to my position beyond the bedroom doors as he strolled toward me. Searching for a way out, I looked across the vertiginous wall of balconies to the roof, where something was being constructed around the lift machinery housing. A yellow rubble pipe extended from the site to the ground, jointed like a series of plastic dustbins with their bases cut out. The mouth of the tube began at least six feet beyond the end of the balcony.
There was no way back and no way out. As Stitch-Head stepped through the doors I reached a decision, clambering onto an aluminium terrace chair set against the balcony wall, then up onto the wall itself.
The wind from the river was much stronger away from the lee of the building. In my high, very pointed heels, I knew I would only be able to keep my balance for a few seconds at the most. My stomach was flopping over with fear, but I was also aware that the rough concrete top of the wall was ruining the knees of my tights.
‘Come on love, don’t be daft, get down,’ Stitch-Head instructed. He didn’t want me falling into the traffic-filled street, although from my own experience it was debatable whether anyone below would notice.
His hands reached up to haul me down, and at the very moment he touched me my stomach churned and kicked, and I threw up on him. He was studying his soaked shirt in horror as I swung around to face the plastic pipe and the wind took away my balance.
I half-fell, half-leapt toward the chute, and managed to miss it by a good four feet, tumbling head-first into the cold night sky.
A net of springy green nylon mesh had been fastened around the pipe in a shallow funnel to catch stray debris. I fell into it like a trapeze artiste missing a cue. Screaming as I bounced up and down with the net between my knees and nothing but the ground yo-yo-ing far beneath me, I now found myself lower than the balcony edge, and could see nothing above it but the sky.
Stitch-Head stuck his surprised face over the parapet, then reluctantly attempted to climb down after me. He was a big man, and the mesh started to pull free with his added weight, tearing loose along the wall edge. I scrambled away, trying to leave the net, but every action caused a reaction that pulled me back. It was all very undignified. As I reached the mouth of the pipe, I knew I would have to climb inside. The drop, I felt sure, would kill me. Poised across the top with one leg in the hole, I hung indecisively until Stitch-Head had closed in, the mesh tearing around him.
Then I pulled in my other leg and removed my hands from the sides.
All I could do to break my fall was thrust my limbs out against the walls of the tube. I managed to keep braking my descent as the yellow pipe twisted and revolved under my weight, threatening to pull itself apart. It was like being in a waterchute without lubrication. The joined sections slowed me down, and at one point I stopped altogether. I tried to imagine how
a dancer or gymnast would cope with the shifting plastic pipe, but doubted any of them had ever fallen off the top of a high building.
The skin tore on my hands and elbows, and one of my heels snapped off as I fought to keep from dropping too fast. Finally I could support the weight of my body no longer, and fell the remaining way.
I landed on a sheet of plasterboard placed across a skip, which softly shattered. It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought, but it must have looked pretty bizarre. I imagined builders watching from the other side of the road: ‘Look, someone’s thrown out a perfectly good housewife.’
At least that’s the last I’ve seen of this building, I thought, Jeffrey Archer’s welcome to it.
I raised myself up from sore knees and checked for damage. Then I climbed out and ran on shaking legs; what else could I do? Certainly, I was surprised by my own energy – I felt nothing until I had distanced myself from the place and reached the main road. Numbness was replaced by a wall of pain. Everything hurt at once.
I missed the pedestrian signal and I was nearly killed running across the Albert Embankment against the lights. A van screamed to a halt in a shower of obscenities, and a Nissan Sunny ran straight into the back of it. As I cut away from the river, anxiously looking for light and the safety of other people, my remaining heel snapped. I’ll have to take those back, I thought, gasping for breath. I hope I’ve still got the receipt. I slowed to a walk and looked behind me. Stitch-Head was right there, but not running, just talking into the phone. How the hell did he do that? Then I realised that in my panic I had come the long way around the building.
He was clearly expecting me to stay on the main road, so he was taken by surprise when I broke away toward Lower Marsh, where the ancient street market was still crowded with customers. I stole a glance at my watch, puzzled; the stalls should have packed up by now. What was going on?
In seconds I was in the thick of them, shoppers ambling past stalls of fruit and clothes, a scene that had hardly changed in centuries. But there was something odd: no sound came from anyone.
It was then I realised that they were examining the merchandise too carefully, as though they were working on their motivation, and knew they were television extras. At the next corner I faced a battery of lights covered by sheets of opaque plastic, and saw that they were filming some TV soap because there were no actual celebrities, only actors who were vaguely recognisable for playing nurses and policemen all their lives. This is it, I thought, it’s just as I imagined, I’ve finally become a walk-on in my own life. Mrs. Bloke has found a place to live where she can wander around all day gormlessly examining grapefruit and squeezing loaves of bread.
I could see Stitch-Head a fair way back in the crowd, steadily ploughing toward me, easing startled extras aside. The kids who had been employed to keep civilians away from the wide-shot had pulled out walkie-talkies and were looking ineffectively puzzled. Ahead, the road was closed off with a portable steel barrier, forcing me to the side of the stalls. Any second now I would be beyond the crowd and back in danger. My broken heels were killing me. I suddenly had no idea what I was doing or where I was going.
It never crossed my mind to ask someone for help because I knew that they were actors, not real people. Besides, part of me was still a housewife. I longed to stop and fondle produce. Asking for help was not in my daily lexicon. Mind you, being chased across town by a highly motivated gargoyle was not a normal part of my weekly schedule either.
All I could think to do was drag the barrier aside, allowing the extras to spill out into the road ahead. Someone was shouting at me. Another white van – surely not the same one that nearly ran me down – pulled into the part of the road not covered by the shoot. Presumably he was as puzzled as I had been by the appearance of the night-market.
The confusion got worse. Having been instructed to cut the scene, the stall-holders started calling out for instructions, the fake customers refused to move aside, and there, right at my side, was Stitch-Head, lunging forward with something metal in his hand, a knife or perhaps even a gun.
An African man was selling kitchenware from a decorating table, hundreds of identical apple corers with yellow plastic handles, but he didn’t appear to be part of the crew, just some chancer who had pitched his stall alongside the actors. I grabbed one of the corers as I dropped beneath the table in panic, stabbing out at the skinhead’s chubby leg as he passed.
I promise you, this isn’t natural behaviour for me. I have never intentionally attempted to injure anyone in my life, even though my mother-in-law gave me enough encouragement. The blade, an item sold on its extreme sharpness, passed so smoothly into the muscle of his right calf that for a moment I thought I’d missed. He bellowed, I stood up in fright, the table went over scattering knives everywhere and he slammed into me.
In the seconds that followed I thought he must have suddenly developed a stomach ache, then saw that his left hand had a crimson seam. He had hurt himself on something that had fallen from the table, an absurd accident, could I be that lucky? Then I saw the yellow plastic corer in my right hand, and realised that I had stabbed him a second time, in the side.
Now that the ferocity had left his eyes he looked pale and rather smaller than he had on the balcony. The actors around me were pulling faces at each other, more concerned about being upstaged than witnessing a real-life drama. The African was ranting and waving his arms furiously, but no-one was pointing the finger of blame or trying to stop me.
Stitch-Head was lying drunkenly on the pavement, twisting about like a worm on a hook. Me, I still looked more like a housewife than someone who would snatch your mobile. At the edge of the set, kids in hoodies were standing by with their hands thrust deep in their pockets, trying to be identical and feeling nothing but embarrassment.
Shocked by my own lack of remorse, I turned and fled. I knew I would have to break my own promise and return home. I needed to hide in familiar surroundings before I succumbed to the madness of the streets. I told myself that my resolve had not failed, that I had simply been pushed out of my depth. My holdall was back in the Ziggurat, but nothing on earth would ever get me back there. Besides, I had Lou’s money, and that was enough to take me away.
A pair of luminous yellow jackets were pushing in my direction. Someone had actually called the police. It was time to get out of town. My one remaining advantage was that I could blend in with any group of ordinary passers-by, so I headed for the station as fast as my shattered heels could carry me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Ransacked
THE FACE IN the mirror came as a shock.
I thought I looked normal, but in the train’s toilet, my dirt-streaked cheeks, upthrust hair and torn clothes – hardly noticeable in London – were a little too deranged for suburbia. I looked like a bag lady who had been encouraged to dress normally by welfare officers in order to get her through a court examination. Washing my hands and attempting to repair the damage to my clothes with handfuls of cold water only worsened my appearance.
Hamingwell had never seemed strange to me before this evening. Now it looked less like a place to live than one of final repose. I had expected there to be ghosts in London. Instead, I saw them here. Perhaps ghosts need deserted places to find a voice. They couldn’t make themselves heard above the din of so much living in the city.
I walked from the station on broken heels. My skirt was torn, a vertical spatter of blood at the crotch. I looked like Jack the Ripper’s blind date. I was wearing my torn puffer-jacket pulled over a T-shirt; you could have found better dressed crack-whores. But there was no-one around to see. The wives had done their weekly Tesco run. Their kids were sealed in their bedrooms hammering the hell out of their consoles. Their husbands were 50-hour-a-week career men picnicking al desko in their offices or sleeping their home-hours away on couches, unwatched cable channels flickering in every lounge.
I turned into my street and discerned movement. A familiar silver Saab slewed to a stop beside me.
The passenger window disappeared and Lou leaned over.
‘June, did the police call? I’ve been try to get hold of you but your mobile’s off.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s dead. Police?’
‘You’ve been broken into. Only a short while ago. Isn’t that why you’re here?’
Lou was my keyholder. ‘Did the alarm go off?’ I asked.
‘No, that’s the funny thing. The constable reckons it was a professional job. He’s quite cute.’
‘I don’t understand, why is he talking to you?’
‘I see everything that happens around here, don’t I? Jesus, it’s bad enough having Hadrian under arrest without –’
‘They’re keeping him in?’
‘They reprioritised the mail-order bride thing when they found out he was dealing ecstasy on the net. One of the junior officers fancied himself as a codebreaker and figured out that Hade was selling drugs under the local patrol car call-signs. They’ve bagged up the entire contents of his bedroom and taken it away as evidence. At least it will save me vacuuming. I’m joking but I’m upset, okay? It’s how I cope.’
‘I know that,’ I said gently.
‘The neighbours’ shutters have been twitching like semaphores. But what happened to you? It looks like you’ve been in some kind of explosion. If this is the latest London fashion I’m not keen. Don’t tell me you’ve had a vajazzle. Wait, let me park, don’t go into the house without me.’ Lou slid the car into a handicapped drivers’ space and jumped out, cuckooing it shut. ‘Nobody knew how to get hold of you. The police tried you at the Ziggurat. Oh shit, there he is.’
Inside the wrought iron front gate, letters, receipts and documents were scattered across the lawn. In fact, the bill for the lawn was on the lawn. The constable found a set of crumpled school swimming certificates sticking out from under a bush. ‘Penelope June Cryer, Upper 4B,’ he read out. ‘Thirty Yards Bronze.’ A jewelled brooch, a gift from my grandmother, was hanging in the roses like a crystallised flower. Other pieces of unworn costume jewellery lay sparkling in the grass like frosted shards from a rainbow.
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