Liar Liar

134

‘Everybody out. We need to get everybody out.’

The alarms were still wailing but the flow of office workers exiting the building was still just a steady trickle. It was what Helen had expected but still it infuriated her. Why did office workers assume every fire alarm was a drill or a mistake? Did it never occur to them that the fire might be real, that the nightmare which had visited several other families in the run-up to Christmas might be visiting them?

Helen grabbed the fire officers as they presented themselves, urging them to get people moving faster. She couldn’t smell burning, but instinct told her that Ethan Harris was here somewhere, plotting his final move in the game. McAndrew had alerted Helen to Ethan’s latest and possibly final post as ‘firstpersonsingular’, and as soon as Helen read the text of it, she knew that his mother would be his last victim.

Jacqueline Harris was a workaholic and reading between the lines probably an alcoholic too, so unless he was going to burn down her favourite bar, there was one obvious place to strike. The business she had spent twenty years building up. The realization had sent a chill down Helen’s spine: the number of innocent victims from a fire in this building would be pushing a hundred – and Helen was determined not to let that happen.

The human flow seemed to be picking up pace now and Helen scanned the faces that went by. If she were Ethan, where would she go? What would be the best place to start a fire? Ethan had taken the lift up, according to the receptionist, but had never arrived at his mother’s office. So where? The floor beneath? Possible but that was an open-plan office – how easy would it be for Ethan to talk his way in there and start a fire?

Something told Helen that that was too localized anyway, not grand enough for Ethan’s finale. And as her mind turned on this, her eyes alighted on the lift bank. That was more like it. The fire would spread quickly that way, fanning out on to the other floors. If you started a decent enough blaze at the bottom…

The basement. If he was smart, he would have gone to the basement. Helen’s eyes moved to the left of the lift bank, then to the right. And there it was. A simple, unassuming door marked ‘Staff Only’.

Helen took a step forward, but suddenly cannoned backwards. Immediately, she raised her arms to defend herself – but it was just a tearful PA racing for the main exit. The mood in the building had changed now, as the fire wardens scoured the floors, accompanied by uniformed officers, urging people to leave. The sight of a police presence had obviously spooked the building’s occupants – perhaps now they were making the connection between this alarm and the spate of recent fires. They looked scared, confused and very keen to be elsewhere.

Now Helen was fighting a torrent of humanity, surging past her, knocking her this way and that, as she fought her way towards the basement door. She did her best to let them pass, but instinct told her to move fast, so she dodged the fleeing workers as best she could, stumbling as she went. She was so involved in the fight, so determined to get through the human barrier in front of her, that she didn’t see the young guy, dressed in the dirty overalls and cap of the building’s maintenance team, gliding past her on his way to the exit and liberty.