A Lovely Way to Burn

Thirty

The streets around Simon’s building were lined with parked cars. Stevie drove a slow circuit in search of a free space, taking left turns that drew her gradually further from her destination. She had tuned into Radio London, hoping for local news, but a panel of people she didn’t recognise were discussing prisons.

‘Criminals are incarcerated because they’re a danger to society,’ a plummy female voice said. ‘To truncate their sentences would not only be an affront to justice, it would be dangerous.’

A male voice broke in, a tired drawl: ‘So you would leave people to rot, rather than release prisoners who’ve been convicted of non-violent crimes?’

It was turning into a bright morning, but the sun was still low in the sky and the streets were cast in shadows. Stevie glanced in her rear-view mirror. There was no one on the road, or the pavement, behind or ahead of her. The district was usually busy with commuters battling their way towards the city centre, and mothers ferrying their children to school, but today it had a dull, Sunday-morning feel that deadened the spirits.

‘There’s no question of people rotting,’ the female voice said. ‘All we’re proposing is that prisoners give up some of their privileges . . .’

‘Privileges.’ The man stretched the word into a sneer.

Stevie saw a space. She guided the car into it, turned off the radio, flipped down the sun visor and examined her reflection in the vanity mirror. Even if she had wanted to, her face was still in too much of a mess to appear on TV, but her bruises were shifting from blue-black to an easier-to-camouflage yellow. She ran a gentle finger across her skin, testing it, thinking for some reason of Rachel, her scarecrow body and fashion-sharp haircut. The memory of the producer’s plea for Stevie to stay and help broadcast another programme was touched with guilt. It had been an appeal for normality, a future to stay alive in. Her own quest to uncover the truth about Simon’s death was similar, except that it wasn’t only the virus Stevie was afraid of.

She took her make-up purse from her bag, applied a smear of foundation, and then a layer of powder to her bruises. It was getting increasingly hard to care about the way she looked, but her face was a weapon that had served her well, and it was important for her to maintain it, just as it was important for a soldier to maintain his gun.

A row of rough sleepers lay in the lee of a building, wrapped in sleeping bags like war dead zipped in body bags. Stevie’s running shoes were silent against the pavement but she could hear the sound of her own breaths, the blood pumping its way through her heart. It was as if a hum, that had been part of the city for so long no one noticed it any more, had suddenly been switched off, leaving an unnerving, white silence in its place.

The sign on the door of the twenty-four-hour grocers declared it OPEN, but the shop had an empty, dead-eyed look. Stevie thought about going in, buying a newspaper and asking the shopkeeper if he had heard any news of the sweats, but some instinct told her to walk on.

The top of Simon’s tower block appeared up ahead, rising sharp-cornered above the other buildings. Stevie took out her mobile and called his landline. She imagined the abandoned interior, the phone ringing unanswered in the neat living room, and in the bedroom where Simon had died. After a while an automated voice invited her to leave a message. She hung up, knowing it was no guarantee that the flat was empty.

When she reached the path outside the tower block, Stevie pulled up the hood of her tracksuit jacket and quickened her pace, aware of the hundreds of windows staring down at her. Somewhere a bin had been overturned and rubbish was strewn across the green. A scattering of papers lay becalmed next to discarded tins and scraps of food. Stevie bent and lifted an official-looking document from the ground, but it was someone’s bank statement, nothing to do with her or Simon, and she let it fall again.

She looked up to the twentieth floor. The building swooned towards her and it was as if she could see the earth moving on its axis. Stevie shook her head and fell into a slow jog, trying to outrun her own insignificance.

A large man dressed in black cargo pants, a leather jacket and a knitted cap at odds with the sunny morning, bolted from the entrance, almost knocking her over as he barrelled past. He had a handkerchief wrapped around his mouth and nose. All she saw of the man’s face was a pair of grey-blue eyes, a fringe of straw-coloured hair and a scrap of white skin, but Stevie’s throat tightened with the memory of strong hands twisting her scarf around her neck. She hunched her shoulders and kept her head lowered, hiding it in the shadow of her hood, hoping he wouldn’t identify her.

She had read that people who had been assaulted saw their attackers everywhere, their features imprinted on strangers’ faces, like the ghost of a loved one conjured by a distant relative’s smile. But she knew without a doubt that the man who had just run past was the stranger who had tried to kill her in the Shop TV station car park. She stepped smartly into the shadow of the doorway and watched until the figure disappeared around a corner.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.’ Stevie closed her eyes for a second and wondered if now might be a good time to take up smoking, then she pushed one of the buzzers at random. When there was no response she tried the one above, and then the one above that, her eyes on the road outside, watching in case the man came back. Her finger was pressed to yet another buzzer when the intercom crackled and a voice trembled, ‘Hello?’

Stevie made her own voice bright and efficient.

‘I’m a doctor on call. I’m here to visit a sick patient, but they’re not answering. Could you let me into the building, please?’

‘A doctor?’

The voice was high and distorted by static. She couldn’t tell if it was male or female.

‘Yes.’ Stevie suddenly wished she had chosen a different identity: a meter reader, a florist or a postwoman, laden with parcels from Amazon. But she knew that none of these would command the same authority. ‘I’m visiting a patient. I need to get to them as soon as possible.’

‘If I let you in, will you see me too?’ The voice was rushed and desperate. ‘Please, I think I’m dying.’

‘Shit.’ She swore under her breath and then assumed her ‘doctor’s voice’ again, the edge of authority. ‘I’m sorry, but you’ll have to contact your own GP. Tell me who they are and I’ll call them for you.’

The static on the intercom hissed and swelled into a snowstorm of sound and Stevie realised that the person on the other end was laughing.

‘Do you think I haven’t phoned my own GP? They’re not picking up.’ The blizzard of static died and the person on the other end said, ‘No one’s picking up.’ The coughing resumed, harsh and uncontrolled, and Stevie pulled back from the intercom, as if she was in danger of catching the virus. When the voice spoke again it was breathless but determined. ‘I won’t let you in unless you promise to see me.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Best isn’t good enough. Promise.’

‘Okay, I promise.’

The lie was almost a whisper, but the person on the other end must have heard it because they said, ‘Apartment twelve, fifteenth floor,’ and buzzed her in.

Stevie ignored the lift and started the long climb up the deserted stairwell to Simon’s landing. It had been a mistake to jog the path to the high-rise. Her legs were still sore from the scuffle in the car park, and the weight of the broken promise made every step an effort.