Dead Man’s Footsteps

31

Abby watched the tip of the iron crowbar in terror. It was jerking sharply, blindly, left then right, levering the doors apart, just a couple of inches each time before they sprang shut again, clamping tight on the tip.

There was another huge crash on the roof and this time it really did feel as if someone had jumped on to it. The lift swayed, thumping the side of the shaft, throwing her off balance, the small canister of pepper spray dropping with a thud from her hand as she tried to stop herself smashing into the wall.

With a loud metallic screech of protest, the doors were opening.

Cold terror flooded through her.

Not just opening a couple of inches now, but wider, much wider.

She ducked down, desperately scrabbling on the floor for the spray. Light spilled in. She saw the canister and grabbed it, panic-stricken. Then, without even wasting time to look up, she launched herself forward, pressing down on the trigger, aiming straight into the widening gap between the doors.

Straight into powerful arms that grabbed her, yanking her up out of the lift and on to the landing.

She screamed, wriggling desperately, trying to break free. When she pressed down on the trigger again, nothing came out.

‘Fuck you,’ she cried. ‘Fuck you!’

‘Darlin’, it’s all right. It’s OK, darlin’.’

Not any voice she recognized. Not his.

‘Lemme go!’ she screamed, lashing out with her bare feet.

He was holding her in a grip like a vice. ‘Darlin’? Miss? Calm down. You’re safe. It’s OK. You are safe!’

A face beneath a yellow helmet smiled at her. A fireman’s helmet. Green overalls with fluorescent stripes. She heard the crackle of a two-way radio and what sounded like a control-room voice saying, ‘Hotel 04.’

Two firemen in helmets stood on the stairs above her. Another waited a few stairs down.

The man holding her smiled again, reassuringly. ‘You’re all right, love. You’re safe,’ he said.

She was shivering. Were they real? Was this a trap?

They seemed genuine, but she continued gripping the pepper spray tightly. She would put nothing past Ricky.

Then she noticed the surly face of the elderly Polish caretaker, who was puffing up the stairs in his grubby sweatshirt and brown trousers.

‘I not paid to work weekends,’ he grumbled. ‘It’s the managing agents. I speak to them about this lift for months! Months.’ He looked at Abby and frowned. Jerked a finger with a blackened nail upwards. ‘Flat 82, right?’

‘Yes,’ she replied.

‘The managing agents,’ he wheezed in his guttural accent. ‘They no good. I tell them, every day I tell them.’

‘How long you been in there, darlin’?’ her rescuer said.

He was in his thirties, good-looking in a boy-band sort of way, with black eyebrows almost too neat to be real. She looked at him warily, as if he was too handsome to be a fireman, as if he was all part of Ricky’s elaborate deception. Then she found she was shaking almost too much to speak.

‘Do you have any water?’

Moments later a water bottle was put in her hand. She drank in greedy gulps, spilling some so that it ran down her chin and trickled down her neck. She drained it before she spoke.

‘Thank you.’

She held out the empty bottle, and an unseen hand took it.

‘Last night,’ she said. ‘I’ve been – since – I think – in this sodding thing – last night. It’s Saturday now?’

‘Yes. It’s 5.20, Saturday afternoon.’

‘Since yesterday. Since just after 6.30 yesterday evening.’ She looked in fury at the caretaker. ‘Don’t you check the bloody alarm’s working? Or the bloody phone in the thing?’

‘The managing agents.’ He shrugged, as if every problem in the universe could be blamed on them.

‘If you don’t feel well you should go to A and E at the hospital for a check-up,’ the good-looking fire officer said.

That panicked her. ‘No – no – I’m really fine, thank you. I – I just-’

‘If you’re really bad, we can call you an ambulance.’

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘No. I don’t need hospital.’

She looked at her fallen-over boots, which were still in the lift, and at the damp stain on the floor. She couldn’t smell anything but she knew it must reek in there.

His radio crackled again and she heard another call sign.

‘I – I thought it was going to plunge. You know? At any moment. I thought it was going to plunge – and I was going to be-’

‘Na, no danger. Got a back-up centrifugal locking mechanism, even if it did. But it wouldn’t have fallen.’ His voice tailed away and he seemed pensive for a moment, his eyes darting to the ceiling of the lift. ‘You live here?’

She nodded.

Relaxing his grip on her, he said, ‘You ought to check your service charges. Make sure the lift maintenance is on them.’

The caretaker made a comment, something else about the managing agents, but she barely heard it. Her relief at being freed was only fleeting. Great that she was out of the bloody lift. But that did not remotely mean she was out of danger.

She knelt down, trying to reach her boots without going back in the lift. But they were out of reach. The fireman bent down and hooked them out with the reverse of his axe. He clearly wasn’t stupid enough to go in there himself.

‘Who alerted you?’ she asked.

‘A lady in – ’ he paused to read a note on his pad – ‘flat 47. She tried to call the lift several times this afternoon, then reported she heard someone calling for help.’

Making a mental note to thank her some time, Abby looked warily up the stairs, which were covered in the workmen’s dust sheets and littered with plasterboard and building materials.

‘You should get plenty of fluids down you, and eat something as soon as you can,’ the fireman recommended. ‘Just something light. Soup or something. I’ll come up to your flat with you, make sure you’re all right.’

She thanked him, then looked at her Mace spray, wondering why it hadn’t fired, and realized she had not flipped the safety lock. She dropped it in her bag and, holding her boots, began to climb the stairs, carefully negotiating the builders’ mess. Thinking.

Had Ricky sabotaged the lift? And the phone and the bell? Was it too far-fetched to think he had done that?

All the locks were as she had left them, she was relieved to discover when she reached her front door. Even so, after thanking the fire officer again, she let herself in warily, checking the thread across the hall was intact before locking the door again behind her and securing the safety chains. Then, just to be sure, she checked each room in the flat.

Everything was fine. No one had been here.

She went to the kitchen to make herself some tea and grabbed a KitKat out of the fridge. She had just popped a piece in her mouth when the doorbell rang, followed immediately by a sharp rap.

Chewing, nerves jangling in case this was Ricky, she hurried warily to the front door and peered through the spyhole. A slight, thin-faced man in his early twenties, with short black hair brushed forward, wearing a suit, was standing there.

Who the hell was he? A salesman? A Jehovah’s Witness – but didn’t they normally come in pairs? Or he might be something to do with the fire brigade. Right now, dog tired, very shaken and ravenous, she just wanted to make a cup of tea, have something to eat, then down several glasses of red wine and crash out.

Knowing that the man would have had to pass the caretaker and the firemen to get here eased her fears about him a little. Checking that the two safety chains were properly engaged, she unlocked the door and pushed it open the few inches it would travel.

‘Katherine Jennings?’ he asked in a voice that was sharp and invasive. His breath was warm on her face and smelled of peppermint chewing gum.

Katherine Jennings was the name under which she had rented the flat.

‘Yes?’ she replied.

‘Kevin Spinella from the Argus newspaper. I wonder if you could spare a couple of moments of your time?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and immediately tried to push the door shut. But it was wedged open by his foot.

‘I’d just like a quick quote I could use.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I have nothing to say.’

‘So you are not grateful to the fire brigade for rescuing you?’

‘No, I didn’t say-’

Shit. He was now writing that down on his pad.

‘Look, Ms – Mrs Jennings?’

She didn’t rise to the bait.

He went on. ‘I understand you’ve just had quite an ordeal – would it be OK for me to send a photographer round?’

‘No, it would not,’ she said. ‘I’m very tired.’

‘Perhaps tomorrow morning? What time wouldbegood for you?’

‘No, thank you. And please remove your foot.’

‘Did you feel your life was in jeopardy?’

‘I’m very tired,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Right, I understand, you’ve been through a lot. Tell you what, I’ll pop back tomorrow with a photographer. About 10 tomorrow morning suit you? Not too early for you on a Sunday?’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t want any publicity.’

‘Good, well, I’ll see you in the morning then.’ He removed his foot.

‘No, thank you,’ she said firmly, then pushed the door shut and locked it very carefully. Shit, that was all she bloody needed, her photo in the paper.

Shaking, her mind a maelstrom of thoughts, she pulled her cigarettes from her bag and lit one. Then she walked through into the kitchen.

A man seated in the rear of an old white van that was parked in the street below also lit a cigarette. Then he popped the tab of a can of Foster’s lager, being careful not to spray the expensive piece of electrical kit he had alongside him, and took a swig. Through the lens inserted in the tiny hole he had drilled in the roof of the van, he normally had a perfect view of her flat, although it was partly obscured at this moment by a parked fire engine blocking the street. Still, he thought, it relieved the monotony of his long vigil.

And he could see to his satisfaction, from the shadow moving back past the window, that she was in there now.

Home sweet home, he thought to himself, and grinned wryly. That was almost funny.