Liar Liar

116

‘They’ll be here in five minutes. What do you want to do?’

Sanderson’s voice was as tense as her expression. Following Sharon Jackson’s tipoff, she and Helen had raced over to Mandy Blayne’s house, gaining a head start on the emergency services. Helen had called them in as a precaution, but as reports of a house fire in St Denys began to filter through via police radio, it became clear to both of them that they had been too slow to stop Naomie’s latest attack.

Helen paused, before responding to Sanderson’s question. Mandy’s house was ablaze and there was no sign of its unfortunate owner. Smoke billowed out of the windows on both floors, but more so on the lower level suggesting the fire had not fully taken hold yet. Was Mandy even in there? Helen couldn’t be sure, but Naomie hadn’t put a foot wrong so far, so they had to assume the worst. Waiting for the emergency services to arrive was the sensible thing to do, but the whole house might have gone up by then, by which point any chance of rescuing Mandy would have passed.

‘We’ve got to go in,’ Helen replied, already marching towards the back of the house. The front door was locked from the inside and Helen felt sure that Naomie would have entered the house from the rear, where her trespassing would go undetected. ‘But I’m going in alone. You wait here and -’

‘No chance,’ Sanderson replied firmly. She had let Helen go into a fire on her own before and the memory still haunted her. ‘If you’re going in, so am I.’

Helen nodded her assent – there was no time to argue now – and they marched round to the back door. As Helen expected, one of the panes had been broken and the open door lolled on his hinges. Helen hurried inside, Sanderson close behind. Immediately, they were assaulted by an intense heat and smothered by a cloud of thick smoke that made it impossible to see each other, let alone the geography of the room. Grabbing Sanderson before she lost sight of her completely, Helen dragged her junior officer back out of the house to safety.

‘What now?’ Sanderson barked through a coughing fit.

Helen was already casting her eyes over the back of the house for another means of entry. There was no shed, no sign of anything that might contain a ladder, so acting on instinct Helen grabbed a wheelie bin and rammed it up against the wall.

‘Climb on and give me a hand up,’ she said quickly.

Before she had finished her sentence, Sanderson was on top of it, holding out her hand to pull Helen up. Helen climbed up and pressing her heel into Sanderson’s interlinked hands made a sudden, upwards lunge for the first-floor windowsill. Her fingers scrambled up the rough brickwork and just as she felt her body begin to fall again after its swift ascent, she caught hold of the windowsill with three fingers of her left hand. She hung there for a moment, out of Sanderson’s reach now and suddenly exposed, before, swinging her body to the right, she managed to get some purchase with her other hand. Now the momentum was with her and, using her legs to push herself up the brickwork, she jammed first one elbow, then the other on to the narrow sill.

The window was a cheap double-glazed unit and Helen was relieved to see that the small ventilation window at the top was ajar. Manoeuvring her right knee on to the sill, Helen pushed upwards and, catching hold of the lip of the open window, hauled herself upright. Reaching down inside, she levered the main window open and seconds later she was crawling along the floor of what appeared to be the spare bedroom, keeping her head as low as possible and her eyes pointed down, moving in the thin layer of clear air underneath the blanket of smoke.

‘Mandy?’

Her shout was loud, but seemed to rebound off the dense smoke. There was no reply. Crawling out on to the landing, Helen made to move towards what she assumed was the master bedroom, then stopped in her tracks, her eyes drawn to another door which remained firmly shut. Instinct now guided her towards it and as she neared it she heard a strange noise from inside. Signs of life? It was the most unnatural, animalistic noise she had ever heard, but as she reached the door Helen realized that the sounds emanating from behind the door were human – a grotesque mixture of coughing, gasping and crying.

‘Mandy?’

Still no reply, so moving up into a crouched position, Helen covered her hand with her sleeve and forced the handle down. Pushing inside, she was relieved to see a young woman cowering in the bathtub in front of her.

She had made the right call in coming here, but their escape now depended on swift and decisive action. Helen was already beginning to feel light-headed as the smoke crept into her mouth and nose, despite her attempts to shield herself from its effects. It took her back to her last major case and a scene she’d rather forget.

‘Mandy, I’m a police officer. I’m here to help you, but we need to go now.’

The naked woman in the bathtub looked at her as if she was mad. She stared at Helen uncomprehendingly, stunned by this sudden apparition in her bathroom.

‘Mandy, please.’

Helen took another step towards her, offering her hand. But to Helen’s alarm, Mandy backed away, crouching down into the water, raising her arms to fight off her attacker. She was screaming now, high and keening, her whole body trapped in a suffocating panic that would be the death of her – and possibly Helen too.

Helen reached forward but was beaten back. Flicking Mandy’s flailing arm aside, Helen lunged for her now, but as she did so felt the woman’s teeth sinking into her arm. Withdrawing her arm sharply, she now feinted to the left, drawing Mandy’s defence that way, before slamming the open palm of her right hand on to her antagonist’s face.

The connection was hard and true and for a moment Mandy just blinked at Helen, rocked by the severity of the blow. Helen seized the moment, leaning in to grasp the woman under both arms.

‘If you want to live, Mandy, you need to come with me. But you need to do it quickly and you need to do it now.’

And with that she hauled the young woman up and out of the bath. Seconds later the pair stumbled back into the inferno, disappearing into the thick, black smoke.