The Enigma of Apocalypse Heights: (Quigg #7)

by Tim Ellis

  Kline pulled a face. ‘Did you look yourself?’

  He couldn’t remember. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘You stay here, I’ll go down there and get the truth out of her. She could be one of the killers.’

  ‘Take one of the constables with you – just in case.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  What the hell had happened to him in Flat 26/3? In his mind he had a picture of Safari Tremaine naked, but was that because he was fantasising, or did it actually happen? Could he have had sex with her? He couldn’t tell Kline that. It was time to go home, time to get back to the normality of his life. Ruth would be in her room with his new son – Luke, Duffy would be snug and warm in bed with Máire at her breast, the twins would be running riot around the house with the nanny threatening to kill the “little bastards” if they didn’t stop. Yes, a bit of normality was just what he needed.

  Perkins’ phone played the Pink song again. He was glad it wasn’t his phone. Where was his phone?

  ‘Is that for me?’ Perkins called from the living room.

  He was too tired to pander to Perkins’ paranoia.

  ‘Quigg?’

  ‘Nobody answered the door,’ Kline said.

  ‘She must have . . .’

  ‘So, Byrd and me broke the fucking door down.’

  ‘You can’t . . .’

  ‘You need to come down and take a look.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just get your arse down here.’

  He finished the tea and made his way out of the flat, along the corridor and down the stairs.

  Kline and Byrd were waiting for him outside Flat 26/3.

  ‘Well? What’s so urgent that you’ve dragged me down here again?’

  They stood to one side. ‘Take a look,’ Kline said.

  He moved towards the door, but had to cover his mouth and nose. ‘What’s that smell?’

  Byrd shone a torch inside.

  ‘Are there no lights?’

  ‘Not working, Sir,’ Byrd said.

  He made his way into the flat. Paint was peeling off the walls and ceiling, the floor was littered with waste, and rotting food lay on the breakfast bar and in the half-open fridge. He wandered into the bedroom and pictured Safari Tremaine on top of him, but it was surely a fantasy – no one had made love in this filthy bed for a very long time.

  He scratched his head. ‘I don’t understand. I’ve been in this flat twice today. Both times I spoke with Safari Tremaine.’ He’d done more than speak to her, but had he? Was it all a figment of his imagination?

  ‘I don’t know where you were or who you spoke with,’ Kline said, ‘but nobody has lived here for a while. The door wasn’t open when Byrd and I got here, and there was no one in the flat to open it for you, so you couldn’t have been in here, which makes me wonder where you were and who you’ve been talking to.’

  ‘And me,’ he said. He looked in every room trying to make sense of the situation.

  It was dark outside now. Standing in front of the large window in the living room, he could see the lights of Hammersmith and the surrounding areas rolled out like a carpet before him.

  St Thomas’ Church on Godolphin Road in Shepherd’s Bush was somewhere down there. His children and the women he loved would be waiting for him. It was time to call it a day, time to get out of this crazy place. Maybe it would all make sense if he stepped away and looked at it objectively.

  ‘Let’s go home, Kline,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll go upstairs, let Perkins know what we’re doing, and come back refreshed tomorrow.’

  ‘Works for me,’ she said.

  ‘What about you, Byrd?’ he asked. ‘When are you off shift?’

  ‘Eight o’clock tonight, Sir.’ She made a show of looking at her watch. ‘But I have no idea when that might be. I expect the night shift will turn up when it’s time.’

  ***

  They left the flat and walked towards the stairs.

  ‘Not again,’ Kline said.

  Byrd looked at her. ‘What?’

  ‘No fucking stairs.’

  They all stared at where the stairs should have been, but there was just a bare wall.

  Byrd touched the wall as if her brain refused to believe what her eyes were telling her.

  Quigg shuffled back, pushed the button for the lift and pressed his ear against the metal doors.

  After a while he said, ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Byrd asked.

  ‘Someone’s playing stupid fucking games,’ Kline said. ‘That’s what’s going on.’

  ‘How long did you have to wait for the stairs to reappear on the twenty-seventh floor?’

  ‘If I was ever on that floor. I don’t know . . .’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Probably about an hour.’

  ‘We’ll just have to wait here then,’ Quigg said.

  ‘I don’t see why we should have to stand around in the corridor if we do have to wait,’ Kline said.

  She went and banged on the door of Flat 26/2 like someone possessed. ‘Come on Mrs Sonia Pearcey – open the door.’ After waiting for less than thirty seconds she began kicking the bottom of the door and making enough noise to wake the dead. ‘Police – open up, or we’re going to break the door down.’

  Quigg slid between her and the door. ‘No you’re not.’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘You’re going to calm down. You’re a police officer, you can’t go round breaking people’s doors down without justification.’

  ‘She’s not answering.’

  ‘That hardly constitutes justification for forcibly entering a property. We’re not vigilantes or looters, we’re better than that. When we’re up to our necks in alligators, and everyone else is losing their head, we have to remember that we came here to drain the swamp.’

  ‘What the fuck are you on about?’

  He slid down the wall and sat on the floor. ‘It’s a metaphor. We have to keep calm under pressure.’

  ‘Or we could just break the door down.’

  ‘Go and knock on the other doors, Byrd,’ he said. ‘Let’s find out where everybody is.’

  Byrd wandered off along the corridor.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ Kline asked. ‘There should be people all over the place.’

  ‘Phone Perkins – find out what’s going on at his end, and tell him what’s happening to us.’

  Kline made the call.

  The phone in Quigg’s pocket rang.

  ‘Fuck,’ Kline said. ‘You’ve got Perkins’ phone.’

  He pulled the phone from his pocket and began trawling through the phonebook. ‘Mmmm!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Perkins knows some people.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘The police commissioner, the Mayor of London, then there’s someone called Chastity, a Mistress Serenity and a Lady Jane Darke.’

  ‘Interesting. Call one of them . . . the women, that is.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ He found an innocuous name and tried to call, but there was no dialling tone. ‘No signal.’

  Kline tried to call people in her phonebook. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Where’s Byrd?’ he asked.

  ‘BYRD?’ she shouted down the corridor.

  He put his hands over his ears. ‘Do you have to make so much noise?’

  ‘No answer.’

  ‘You’d better go and find her.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I don’t feel too good.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake.’ She wandered off along the corridor after Byrd.

  What was going on? He was getting tired of asking himself that question. He was a detective inspector, wasn’t he? He should know what was going on. Was Perkins right? Was this about aliens? How could stairs disappear and lifts stop working? What about the residents – where were they? What had happened to Safari Tremaine? What had happened to her flat? What had happened to him?

  A murder had taken place on the floor above, a t
errible murder involving a witches coven or a Satanic sect. They’d cut Lance Flowers up, drunk his blood, removed his heart and his intestines as part of their crazy ritual, and stupid blundering Quigg had no clues as to who might have done it.

  God, he was so tired. His hands were shaking and his mouth felt like the Gobi Desert in the summertime. He was running round in circles and getting nowhere. Had Kline found anything in Flowers’ flat? Where was Kline? Shouldn’t she be back by now?

  ‘KLINE?’ It was a weak shout, but loud enough.

  ‘Yeah, I’m here.’

  ‘Where’s Byrd?’

  ‘That’s a very good question. Where is Byrd?’

  ‘You’ve lost her?’

  ‘Me? You lost her. I was trying to find her.’

  ‘But where’s she gone?’

  ‘I’ve got this sneaking suspicion that I have justification for breaking down some doors now.’

  ‘She’s really not down there?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Did you . . . ?’

  ‘She’s not down there.’

  ‘Okay, I was only asking.’

  ‘Well, ask someone else.’

  With difficulty, he pushed himself up. ‘We’d better try and find her then.’

  ‘You look closer to death than you do to life.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Kline knocked on 26/4 – no answer. The names on the brass plate were Mr & Mrs J Moore. She kicked the door in.

  Quigg didn’t have the strength to stop her. He also reasoned that if Byrd wasn’t in the corridor, then she must be in one of the flats, so they had justification.

  They switched the lights on and wandered inside. It was a normal-looking flat where people obviously lived, but where were the residents?

  Kline opened the fridge. ‘There’s food in here.’

  ‘We can’t steal people’s food.’

  She stuffed a chunk of cheese in her mouth. ‘We could requisition food under the Emergency Order Act.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of that.’

  ‘Oh, it definitely exists, and this is an emergency. I’ll just write your name and address on a piece of paper . . .’

  ‘My name and address?’

  ‘You’re the senior officer.’ She pushed another lump of cheese into her mouth. ‘I’m eating this food under your orders and this is an emergency. Hence, an emergency order act.’ She laughed and nearly choked on the half-eaten cheese.

  ‘Come on, we’re meant to be finding Byrd not eating other people’s cheese.’

  He walked towards the door.

  ‘I’m gonna come back and make myself cheese on toast or something.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘I thought you had a thing about stealing food.’

  ‘If there’s an Emergency Order Act, then we’d better use it or lose it.’

  ‘That’s the idea. I think you might have moved up the chart.’

  ‘Chart! Did you say . . . ?’

  ‘You must be hallucinating. I didn’t say anything about a chart.’

  ‘I could have sworn . . .’

  The name on the brass plate of 26/5 was Mr Thomas Newby.

  Kline banged on the door. ‘Open up – armed police.’ She banged again. ‘The stun grenades and teargas are coming in next.’

  No response.

  ‘Okay, men.’ She kicked the door in . . .

  Kline soon got bored. The other flats were occupied, but empty of inhabitants.

  When they reached Flat 26/7 she just kicked the door open without even knocking.

  The smell hit them as soon as they entered the flat.

  ‘Jesus!’ Kline said.

  Quigg switched the lights on.

  Byrd was in the living room – stripped naked and nailed upside down to the wall like a work of art. Thick rusty nails had been hammered through her wrists and ankles, and the contents of her abdominal cavity spilled out through a horizontal cut across her bikini line and dangled down over her pendulous breasts and face.

  ‘She’s still breathing.’ Kline knelt down, took a pair of plastic gloves out of the back pocket of her jeans, put them on and moved Byrd’s hanging intestines to one side. ‘Hang in there, Byrd – we’ll get you to the hospital.’

  ‘Who did this to you?’ Quigg asked.

  ‘Name her,’ Byrd whispered with her last breath.

  ***

  ‘What the hell does it mean?’ Kline asked.

  They’d moved back into the corridor and were sitting on the floor facing each other. Byrd had been left where she was. It would have been good to have taken her down and covered her over as an act of respect, but not only was it a crime scene, Quigg didn’t have the strength to start hauling bodies about.

  ‘The upside down cross is something to do with black magic or Satanism, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that, I think we’ve established that everything, which has happened falls within that category. I mean the “Name her” thing.’

  ‘As far as I can see, there are two parts to it. First, we don’t know what name people are referring to. And second, we don’t know who they want us to name.’

  ‘You’re a great help.’

  ‘I’m more concerned with who killed Byrd.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Kline agreed, looking up and down the corridor. ‘I could do with a fucking bazooka, or something.’

  ‘If we can’t get off this floor, then neither can the killer.’

  ‘You’re full of the joys of spring.’

  ‘And not only that – Byrd was in uniform and he had no compunctions about killing her.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘He doesn’t care that we’re coppers.’

  Kline stood up. ‘We can either go and find him, or wait for him to find us.’

  ‘Sit,’ he said. ‘We haven’t finished talking yet.’

  ‘There’s a time for talking . . .’

  ‘And this is it – sit.’

  Reluctantly, she slid back down the wall.

  ‘I’m not going to be much help if we do go up against him,’ he said, ‘and as good as you are I don’t think you’ll stand much of a chance . . .’

  She opened her mouth to protest.

  ‘. . . You saw what he did to Byrd, and I don’t want to lose another partner – it’ll make me look very bad and the paperwork is a nightmare.’

  ‘You’re all heart.’

  ‘There are other options besides the two you’ve mentioned. We could barricade ourselves into one of the flats and wait for the stairs to reappear, or we could try and find a way out of here.’

  ‘I thought there was no way out of here.’

  ‘I have a couple of ideas.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘I think there’ll be a shaft that brings all the services to each floor.’

  ‘A shaft?’

  ‘For electricity, gas, water and so forth. They put everything into a shaft so they can easily maintain, replace and upgrade the services.’

  ‘Hey, I never knew that. So, there’ll be a ladder?’

  ‘That’s my guess.’

  ‘Twenty-six floors?’

  ‘We could go up instead of down?’

  She rubbed her chin between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. ‘It’s still a long way. Maybe we only need to climb up one floor?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What’s your other idea?’

  ‘The lift.’

  ‘That doesn’t work.’

  ‘We can force the doors open with something.’

  ‘And there’ll be a maintenance ladder in there as well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kline pulled a face. ‘I think I prefer the services shaft.’

  ‘If it exists.’

  ‘You want to make your fucking mind up.’

  ‘Instead of building two shafts, the engineers might have used the lift shaft for both the services and the lift.’

  ‘How do you know all this shit?’

 
‘I don’t, I’m simply making an educated guess.’

  ‘Well, here’s another educated guess for you – what if all the services run up the outside of the building?’

  ‘Then we’re limited to the lift shaft.’

  ‘Any idea where the services shaft might be?’

  He pointed to a square access panel in the ceiling that he’d just noticed. ‘Probably up there.’

  ‘Oh great! Tell me you have ladders in your pocket.’

  ‘Go into the flat and see what you can find. Maybe a chair on top of a table will do it.’

  ‘Do I look like someone who does removals?’

  ‘You know I’d help, but . . .’

  ‘. . . You’re a lazy bastard.’

  ‘Your communication skills with senior officers needs some more work.’

  She dragged a table and chair out of the flat, stacked the chair on top of the table and began climbing up the precarious furniture tower.

  ‘Byrd had a torch.’

  ‘Fuck! You could get that for me.’

  ‘You know I would if I could, but . . .’

  ‘I’m beginning to think you’re a con artist, you know.’ She jumped down, returned to the flat and retrieved Byrd’s torch. ‘Right, I’ll go first. You follow, and no staring at my arse.’

  Quigg held the chair and stopped it from sliding off the table. ‘Do I look like I’ve got the strength to ogle your backside?’

  Kline jumped onto the table first, and then climbed up onto the chair. She pushed the access panel up and to the left out of the way, gripped the sides of the opening and hauled herself up. Once her body was completely through the hole, she stuck her head out. ‘You’re not going to be able to get up here, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You knew, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Go and get help. If you can make it outside – call the Chief for reinforcements.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, I’ll barricade myself into that flat where you stole the cheese.’

  ‘Requisitioned it.’

  ‘I’ll write an IOU out for when the occupants return.’

  ‘Very community-spirited of you. Be careful, Sir.’

  ‘And you, Kline.’

  She put the access panel back.