Plastic

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Really, no, I’ll be down in a few minutes.’

  He watched me as I started onto the next staircase. ‘That’s the penthouses up there, love.’

  ‘Oh yes. It’s confusing not having lights.’ I was forced to stop on the landing, but he showed no sign of moving.

  ‘Wait, you said the gas is being tested? So the electric ignitions are all off?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  An idea had occurred to me. But first I needed to search Azymuth’s apartment; I had a feeling I wouldn’t get another chance.

  I waited until Ashe moved away down the stairs, then continued up toward Azymuth’s flat. I found everything as I had left it earlier. The great lounge, guarded by its lugubrious yellow-green canvases, was sunk in crepuscular gloom. I should have collected a brighter lamp from Malcolm’s flat, but there was no time. No sign of Azymuth’s body, either, but the dark Italy-stain still faintly marred the floorboards where he had fallen.

  Crossing to the bookcase that filled the far bedroom wall, I began trying the doors. It was too much to hope that I still had the little key; it had gone missing during my most recent fit of shopping dementia. There was only one thing for it. I pulled off my trainer and whacked the thin crystal panels with the heel, shattering one after the other, all the way along the shelf. My lantern wick died and darkness thickened around me. I found a box of long stove matches in the kitchen, and returned to wedge them along the shelves. Pulling the volumes down in twos and threes, I checked the mahogany planks that lined the case.

  I was sure that it had to be something small and of great personal value, an object the girl could have carried with her all the way from her homeland. Elliot had said she was carrying something when she arrived, a religious book. I pulled down the anatomy hardbacks, riffling through the pages and throwing them onto the floor, emptying the shelves one by one until I could no longer see the highest titles.

  The matches burned too quickly. I was down to the last few and no closer to finding what I sought. The volumes were all similar, medical publications bound in black leather and edged in gold, their exterior elegance masking the horrors of damaged humanity. There were research documents on rare diseases, psychological casebooks, volumes on grafting and surgery, the pages falling open at appalling injuries, sores, abcesses, cancerous growths – it was hard to believe that the body could be so corrupted and remain alive.

  On the top shelf of the last cabinet I found a plastic-covered paperback, the only one, wedged in between taller hardbound tomes. I lit a match and held it over the inside page. Petra’s name was scribbled across the flyleaf in the same handwriting I had seen on her documentation.

  The book was not a religious volume. It was Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less by Jeffrey Archer.

  Worse, it was so scuffed and filthy that it might have spent most of its life stuck up a chimney. I tried to flick through the pages, but the copy was so old that most of them were stuck together with dirt. This was the big prize, the precious treasure she would not part with, the sole item that belonged to her, Petra’s only reminder of family and home? To have so little was pathetic.

  Even though I barely knew her, I saw that this was the link between myself and the girl. She was my opposite in every way, barely more than a child. She owned nothing, but had been brave enough to take a chance and head halfway around the world for an unknown land, with her sad little paperback clutched to her chest, something she couldn’t read but which acted as the symbol of a better life. Filled with hope for the future, she had been cheated and lied to, set to work, used up, tortured – the scarred backs of her hands testified to that – and finally destroyed. Meanwhile, it had taken me over a decade to make a journey of about twenty-five miles. I felt worthless compared to her.

  I told myself that whatever else happened, I would not let her death be in vain.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The Incinerator

  I COULDN’T JUST stuff the book into my back pocket, it didn’t feel right, so I put it in a plastic freezer bag first, then ran out to look from the end window of the hall. Oval patches of street light had illuminated most of the area, but the Ziggurat’s quadrangle remained in darkness. I sensed, then heard, two cars pulling up below, matching navy blue Mercedes saloons that flicked off their headlights the moment they had parked. Three men climbed out of each vehicle. Even from here I could see that they were further up the corporate ladder than the skinhead I had wounded.

  My mother always said you could tell the class of a man by the quality of his overcoat. To that advice I would add a 21st century coda: you can tell a man of means by the fact that he even bothers to own an overcoat, and these were men of means, suited, booted and coming to take care of business.

  At least I was now attracting a higher rank of criminal.

  I couldn’t see police anywhere. I rather hoped they would be watching and waiting to make their move, so that at a senior officer’s signal a hundred uniformed men and women in riot gear would swarm the building to rescue me. There would be a brief but noisy machine gun battle, and I would be carried out to safety wrapped in a Mylar blanket. Instead, I couldn’t even be sure that they had bothered to hang around. But then, what cause had I given them to do so? It was beginning to look as if I hadn’t handled any of this very well. If I had stayed in the right apartment to begin with and not involved Dr. Azymuth, and not stabbed anyone, and then not lied to the police, I might now stand a chance of getting out alive.

  So by now I was a hair-trigger mine of suppressed panic. This state of hysteria allowed me so little focus that I could only run with my instincts. I needed to take evidence with me, proof that Petra and Azymuth had been killed. I thought back to the first conversation I’d had with Ashe. If the electronic ignitions had been off since Friday, the eco-system disposal unit wouldn’t be working until midnight tonight. I was gambling everything on one assumption; that they thought they had incinerated the bodies, but had reckoned without the power being off. Petra and Azymuth would presumably still be where they had fallen, at the bottom of the incinerator shaft. How could they be anywhere else?

  I couldn’t see any way around having to check it out before I could finally leave the Ziggurat.

  But first I had to get the hell out of Azymuth’s flat – it was the one place they would head for. I lit the oil lantern with shaking hands. Pulling the front door shut behind me and pocketing the key, I ran to the back stairs and started my descent. I had reached the fourth floor when I heard them coming up, so I hurried to the end of the building and down the far staircase, knowing that I would still have to cross the lobby to reach the basement steps.

  In the silence of the dark building I could hear men talking above me. There was no urgency in their voices. They could have been heading for a business presentation in a hotel. But instead of shaking hands and exchanging contracts, they would catch me, kick me to death and dump my body with the others. The work was less complex than signing a property deal or a bank loan, merely operating from a different moral perspective. At midnight the electricity would come back on, the incinerator would pop into life and any evidence would be gone forever. Another London disappearance would be added to the list. I had read that over 210,000 people were reported missing in Britain every year. How many more went unreported? I wondered if anyone would even bother coming to look for me. Lou, perhaps, if only to get her mobile and credit cards back.

  Why wasn’t Ashe here now? He had turned up when I didn’t need him, and just when he could prove himself useful he was nowhere to be seen. I ran through the darkened cathedral knowing that just above me, just behind me, just ahead of me, were men whose lives were so shadowed and stained that I could not imagine how they lived from day to day without shaking into pieces. I swung the lantern from side to side, hurtling angles back and forth, expecting any one of them to jump into life.

  They were shouting to each other now, some voices growing fainter as they spread out in their search. There were no echoes to
be heard here; the Ziggurat absorbed all cries of pain or pleasure. I reached the ground floor and began to dart back through the maze of twisted glass, toward the other basement door that, according to my hazy recollection of the plans in the brochure, led to the incinerator. Twice I ran blindly into dead-ended service corridors. The building seemed to be working against me. Looking out through the lobby glass I could see someone standing in front of the cars, watching the building’s entrance.

  I tried to turn the handle of the basement door but it wouldn’t move. The square steel incinerator chute stood beside it. I pulled open the flap to see in, but it was too dark to make out anything. A powerful stench of paint fumes and old cabbages came up at me.

  And then the lantern – useless bloody thing – blew out.

  The darkness slammed in like a suffocating wall. I could not see my own hands. If you panic now, I told myself, you’re dead. Think. You have to see. Where is the nearest working light?

  The crazy woman, the concierge. Madame Funes had an onyx desk lighter. I ran back to her office, listening for the voices above, and noisily forced the door behind her desk, hurling myself at it, knowing the sound would carry through the building. The bar fell off and the lock popped. Actually, it came right out of the wood and clattered across the floor, so much for quality workmanship. Grabbing the lighter, I ran back to the shaft and tried the hatch again, holding the slim blue flame before me.

  This section of the shaft was so close to the basement that there was no holding container attached to the steel door, just an open chute. It looked as though there was a short drop inside, no more than eight or ten feet. Nothing at the bottom but brown rags and bundles of paper, nothing sinister, although who knew what the rags were resting on? Realising that I had probably allowed my imagination to spiral away, I lowered the lighter with a sinking heart.

  I didn’t even hear them coming up behind me. If I had, I would have screamed the place down and fought back. Instead, the hands that seized my ankles were raised so suddenly that I was tipped up and over into the chute. Moments later I fell into the shaft.

  I landed on my back, my short fall broken by paper and wadded-up bundles of painters’ cloths, but a sharpness jarred beneath my right shoulderblade, cutting the skin, and there was something sticking in my thigh. As my breath came back I tried to turn around. I was in the base of a fifteen-foot-square steel box, the bottom of the incinerator shaft. Reaching down with my foot, I could just feel the plates of the fire grate underneath me.

  The claustrophobic darkness here was total and alarmingly warm, as though the thing was on a low light. I’ll never get out of this alive, I thought, whatever happens, there’s no way back up.

  The lighter had been knocked from my hand. I had lost my charm bracelet in the fall. I touched dirty steel walls, kicked out with my feet, but there was nothing like an escape door. My fingers brushed something spongy and moist, like fat mushrooms. Recoiling, I dropped to my knees and felt for the lighter.

  After agonising moments of digging through the foetid, slimy rubbish that had spilled from split Sainsburys bags, my fingers closed around the oblong onyx base. The shaft was full of paint-fumes, but I had no choice. I carefully turned the lighter upright and flicked it. On the third try, the flame caught with a pop and grew.

  Azymuth’s face was staring back at me, no more than three inches from the tip of my nose. His bulging, bloodshot eyes were wide open, and his lower jaw rested against his throat, his grey tongue thrust out absurdly. He didn’t look dead at all, he looked like he was screaming his head off.

  I tried to turn, but my legs were caught. I glanced down and found myself tangled in rolls of cloth. The more I twisted, the more enmeshed I became. A scarred hand was sticking out between my knees. As I twisted harder, Azymuth’s head bounced up from beneath the sheets like some demented Punch and Judy character.

  I’d meant to be brave, but instead I yelled with all my might, panicked and dropped the lighter onto the paint-soaked rags.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Bullets

  ‘YOU MUST CALM down and stop screaming. I locked the top door from the inside but it won’t take them long to find the other entrance. Give me your hand.’

  Stefan held open the steel incinerator hatch, which was below me, not where I had been looking for it at all. I dropped forward into his arms and clung tightly until he had lifted me free, but then his strength failed and he dropped me. Pieces of fiery rubbish were falling all around us. ‘You could have burned yourself alive in here, silly English lady, what on earth were you thinking?’

  ‘I was looking for a way out. I thought you’d gone.’

  ‘I could see them waiting for you through the front door. A policeman went upstairs looking for you. Did you not hear either of us calling out?’

  ‘The building deadens the sound depending on where you are. It’s dark even in sunlight – I couldn’t see anyone. Azymuth’s body is in there.’ I was shaking so hard as he led me away from the incinerator that I couldn’t stand upright.

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘I’ve cut my leg. And my shoulder.’

  ‘Let me see.’ He examined the wound on my thigh. ‘I have to clean it. There are men are all over the building. The place is swarming with them. But only one policeman. What did you do? How did these people know you would come back here?’

  ‘Elliot probably told them. Or any of the residents, I’m sure they all know at least part of what’s been going on. Stefan, did you warn them?’

  ‘Thank you, I am not so bad as all that. There are different degrees of breaking the law, you know, it’s not just one side or the other, like if you do some deals you’ll also help commit a few murders, fucking hell, what d’you think I am?’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s been a very confusing weekend for me.’

  We were in the section of the basement where I had first talked to Ashe, moving under the lobby in the direction of the river. I could hear a commotion above, and wondered how we were supposed to get out.

  ‘They let you in because you know them, don’t you?’ I asked Stefan.

  ‘Sure, of course I know them. We must leave this way now.’

  ‘You lied to me. You said you didn’t know that man with the stitches across his head.’

  Stefan shrugged. ‘We talk about this later, okay? Let’s get you out.’

  ‘Petra – the girl I saw murdered– she hid a book in Azymuth’s flat.’

  There was no time to explain everything, although given what happened afterwards it would have been better if I had. ‘I think they were trying to frighten the answer out of her before they realised I was there. Her hands were scarred. Why would they scar the backs of her hands, Stefan?’

  ‘Those marks were nothing to do with torture. She... well, she had an accident. You don’t understand how it was.’

  ‘I interfered,’ I explained, ‘but Petra was dead when they came back up. They think I know where the book is and I do know, I do know, I just don’t understand why anyone would want it. Look.’ I pulled the freezer bag from my back pocket. The paperback had now broken its spine, and was in an even more ruinous state than when I had found it. I passed the bag to Stefan as he pulled me through the basement corridors. He turned the volume over in his free hand and peered through the plastic at the filthy pages.

  ‘You know what this is?’

  ‘It’s an absolutely terrible novel.’

  Stefan sniffed the cover. ‘Couldn’t you smell anything?’

  ‘I thought it was musty, all that dirt.’

  ‘It’s not dirt, Mrs. English Lady. It has been soaked in heroin. A common transportation method used through the Afghanistan-Pakistan smuggling routes. Cheap paper absorbs a lot of liquid. All you have to do is soak the pages in water to recover the full amount of the drug. If you’re travelling illegally, it’s better than wearing a money belt.’

  ‘I thought she was keeping it for sentimental value, as a family memento.’

  ‘We
sterners,’ Stefan snorted. ‘Your charming romantic notions about the East never cease to amaze me.’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ I said stubbornly. ‘The street price of heroin has fallen through the floor. I saw it on Channel Four. It isn’t reason enough for a company to take the risk of killing someone, not in this city. Can you talk us out of here?’

  Stefan turned to me. ‘If they get difficult I will have to give them the book.’

  ‘Tell them to take the bloody thing,’ I told him, ‘just get us out in one piece.’

  ‘All right. They will see us if we walk back into the lobby. But there is no other way.’ He pushed open the door to the concrete staircase. ‘You must stay quiet and let me do the negotiating.’

  At first I thought we were in luck. The lobby looked deserted. Then I realised there was someone leaning against one of the pillars. Silhouettes split as he moved into the light from the street.

  ‘Stefan, what are you doing?’ A young man who looked alarmingly like David Beckham approached him. Slim featured, smart coat, with a pleasant if peculiarly high voice, he was entirely lacking mean-spiritedness or a sense of threat.

  ‘Hello Josh, what are you doing down here? I thought you were going home after you finished filming.’

  ‘I am. Just clearing up a few odds and sods, nothing very interesting. Can you walk away for a few minutes? I need to speak to the lady.’

  ‘She cut herself. Took a bit of a fall. She’s going to need stitches. I was just helping her out of the building.’

  ‘You don’t need to do that. Mr. Rennie’s on his way over, and he won’t want anyone to leave. Not even you, mate.’

  ‘She’s had a hard time, Josh. She’s got no quarrel with you. Let her go home.’

  I started to move away from Stefan, but he gripped my hand and pulled me closer. I didn’t want him to end up at the bottom of the burning shaft with the others.

  ‘I wish I could, Steff, but we can’t have every fucking housewife in London nipping round the shops and telling the neighbours what goes on. We’re trying to run a legitimate business.’