Stalker

137

Gasping with pain, Erik pokes the copper pipe through the roof of the cage, uses one bar as a pivot and tries to prise the next one up. The lever is still a bit too short, even though he hangs off the end with the whole of his weight. There’s a crash as the pipe slides out. Erik falls to the floor, hitting his good arm against the mesh.

Breathing hard, he gets up and switches the torch on, and sees that he’s managed to bend the metal another few centimetres.

He listens out for noises from the tunnels, but he hasn’t heard anything since Nelly chased after Jackie.

Erik has scanned the cellar with the torch, but hasn’t been able to find a better tool than the length of copper pipe he managed to drag towards the cage.

The welded joints of the cage are all solid and carefully made, but with the help of the pipe he’s succeeded in bending one of the bars in the roof to the point where he’s starting to believe it might be possible to break it. It could take hours, days, even, but it isn’t completely impossible.

He pushes the pipe through the mesh in the roof, then stops.

Shuffling steps are approaching along the passageway. Erik pulls the pipe back and hides it under the mattress, picks up the torch and listens. There’s someone there, he heard right, there are footsteps approaching.

He switches the light off and thinks that he has to play along, no matter what happens. He hasn’t got a choice, it would be far too easy for Nelly to kill him in the cage.

He waits in total silence, listening to the crunching footsteps and the sound of breathing in the room outside the cage.

‘Erik?’ Jackie whispers.

‘You have to get away from here,’ Erik whispers quickly.

He switches the torch on and sees that Jackie is standing a metre away from him. Her face is dirty and bloody, she’s gasping for breath and seems to be in a very bad way.

‘Nelly’s dead,’ Jackie says. ‘I killed her.’

‘Are you hurt?’

She doesn’t answer, takes a couple of steps towards him, reaches the mesh and sticks her hand in. He strokes her fingers and shines the light up at her to look at her injuries.

‘Can you manage to get out and fetch help?’ he asks, stroking the hair from her blood-streaked face.

‘I’ve got the key,’ she says, and coughs weakly.

She leans against the cage, pulls the chain over her head and gives him the key.

‘I killed her,’ she gasps, and sinks to the floor. ‘I killed another human being…’

‘It was self-defence,’ Erik says.

‘I don’t know,’ she whispers, and her face dissolves into tears. ‘It’s impossible to know…’

Erik reaches his hand out beside the hatch, puts the key into the padlock, turns its and hears the click as the loop slides out of the casing.

He climbs out with the torch in his hand, and hugs Jackie on the floor. Her breathing is erratic and shallow.

‘Let me look at the wound to your back,’ he whispers.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ she says. ‘I need to get home to Maddy, just give me a few moments…’

Erik shines the torch at the peeling walls, the table and shelf.

‘I think the door to the kitchen is locked, but I’ll go up and check,’ he says.

‘OK,’ Jackie nods, and makes another attempt to stand up.

‘Stay where you are,’ Erik says, and heads up the steep steps.

On the brown, anti-slip linoleum there are bloody boot-prints. He gets up to the heavy metal door, jerks the handle down and pulls and pushes the door, but it’s locked.

He yanks the handle and looks round with the torch to see if the key’s on a hook anywhere, but can’t find anything and goes back down to Jackie. She’s managed to rise from the floor, leaning on the mesh of the cage with one hand.

‘The door’s locked,’ Erik confirms. ‘We’ll have to get out through the tunnels.’

‘OK,’ she replies in a quiet voice.

‘I think she killed the police officers who came,’ he says. ‘They will come and find us, but we have no idea how long that’s going to take, and you need to get to hospital straight away.’

‘We walk,’ she pants.

‘You can do it,’ Erik says, putting her hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ve got a torch, I can see where we’re going.’

He leads her into the passageway, round an armchair and a small padded footstool. Some old window frames are leaning against the wall and dusty light bulbs sit in yellowed sockets.

They cross another passageway with steep steps leading downwards, and pass a toppled cupboard, treading carefully across the broken glass.

In the light of the torch and with Erik’s help, getting through is straightforward, and they emerge into a large room with long tin washbasins, rows of taps, and cubicles with crumbling plaster.

On the ceiling there are empty strip lights with no coverings. The cables are just hanging down. A large trough full of soil stands in the middle of the floor. Rust has eaten through the green metal of the trough, and the stick that Jackie used to guide herself is lying on the floor beside it.

They carry on through the room into a corridor lined with dented clothes lockers. There’s a water-pipe attached to the ceiling, but one end has come loose and is hanging down like a spear, curving under its own weight.

Erik shines the torch along the narrow passageway. The walls have collapsed and parts of the ceiling have fallen in, the passage is full of bricks, grit and wood, all the way up to the ceiling.

Erik opens a door and they carry on along a different tunnel, turn right, go through a rounded arch and are suddenly out in the fresh air.

They’re standing in a large room, and a sharp wind is blowing. The roof has gone, and the tall chimney is visible against the dark sky. The light of the torch shimmers off a huge metal extractor hood. The tiled floor is dirty and cracked.

Tall weeds are growing through an aluminium ladder lying on the ground in front of a huge oven. Erik barely has any strength left in his injured arm, but he manages to lift the ladder and pull it free of the weeds. He shoves some fallen bricks and gravel aside with his foot and props the ladder up against the wall.

He helps Jackie to climb up, and follows right behind her. She slips and he drops the torch when he catches her. It clatters down between the rungs, hits the ground and goes out abruptly.

The pain in his arm is throbbing as though it’s trapped in a piece of machinery by the time they emerge into the tall grass growing around the ruins. Jackie is leaning hard against Erik as they make their way through thistles and low bushes. An empty police car is parked up, its headlights shining straight at the yellow house. They walk past it, across the rough yard and out onto the track, away from the house.