Christopher Fowler - Disturbia

'To give up now is the same as admitting you've been wrong all along,' he wheedled.

'You can do what you like,' Vince answered wearily, 'I'm going home for a hot bath and a large whisky, and I'm going to ask a nice thick Camden plod to stand on guard outside the flat, just in case you get any bright ideas.'

'Then you should know before you decide to abandon the challenge -'

'I've already decided. I should be doing your job, mate, I'd be much better at it.'

'- that your agent will no longer be handling that pernicious diatribe you call responsible journalism. She was killed at her apartment a few minutes ago. Surprised an intruder and was brutally stabbed to death. An awful lot of blood, apparently. Sprayed gouts of it across the ceiling, would you believe. Knifed in the neck, the lungs and the kidneys. Ruined the hardwood floor. A very thorough job, though. She squealed like a pig being slaughtered. The main thing is, we got your copy from her, which just leaves the one you gave your darkie pal.'

'Fuck you, Sebastian. You're lying.'

Despite the temperature, Vince broke out in a hot sweat. Christ, not Esther, not her. What had she ever done to hurt anyone? His hatred of Sebastian swelled into something insane and almost tangible.

'I wish I was, Vincent. None of us wanted this to happen, but there you are, it has and it will again unless you continue the challenge.'

'If you're telling the truth, why should I? There's no one left to publish the damned thing now.'

'How delightfully callous and self-serving of you. I had no idea you possessed such a streak. The game, dear oafish lad, the game cannot be abandoned. We've quite a wager going this end.'

The phone line wasn't secure. Didn't he care about the call being monitored or recorded? Vince prayed he was starting to get careless. 'No. I won't do it for your amusement.'

'Then do it in the memory of your publisher and your dear dead agent. Do it for the homeless boy you befriended, and the dealer in the nightclub. Do it for Louie. Do it for Pam .'

He expected they'd try for Louie; he could handle himself, but Pam? How did they know about her?

'What do you mean, Sebastian?'

'She followed us home. Can we keep her?' The receiver clicked down. The call had been made from a public telephone, he could tell. He prayed that Sebastian was bluffing about Esther, but Pam – without a moment of hesitation, he turned back to the strengthening rain and the litter bin where he had discarded the envelope of the seventh challenge.

It seemed obvious that the mobile telephone had been designed by a white man; the little velcro flap he had to open on the carrying case before he could put his ear to it stuck itself to dreadlocked hair and pulled a piece away every time he made a call. Louie winced as he detached the thing from his head. No answer from Pam or Vince. It was probably just as well; the glowing numerals on his watch warned him that it was past four.

What a night – the band had performed terribly and hardly anyone he knew had bothered to show up. On his way home he half-digested a pungent kebab prepared by a grease-spattered Camden Town vendor with filthy fingernails, and had almost reached his flat when some kind of typhoon set in. He smoked one very strong joint and drank a couple of cans of Red Stripe, but that did not explain why there was someone standing on the first floor scaffolding outside his bedroom, or why the lower half of the window was up, admitting the pelting rain.

His first thought – that Vince was playing some kind of trick on him – vaporised when he saw the size of the man. He was taller than Vince, hunched forward with his back turned, used to moving in a surreptitious manner. He reminded Louie of the skinny burglar in the cartoon version of 101 Dalmatians. Clearly he had just exited the flat and was about to climb down to street level. The council were arranging for the front of the building to be repainted, and had warned him about security, but he had never considered the possibility of owning anything that someone else might want.

As the burglar turned and stepped back to the edge of the scaffolding platform, Louie lunged out through the window and grabbed his ankles. The effect was dramatic. The man above lost his balance and tottered back with a yelp of surprise, but as his feet were anchored he fell forward and turned upside down so that he was hanging by his boots. Louie released his hands and the burglar hit the street, landing on his head. The fall did not render him unconscious, but when Louie jumped down and sat astride his chest, he started blacking out. In the breast pocket of the intruder's jacket was a clear plastic envelope containing a computer disk. Since Vince had entrusted the manuscript to him, it had resided safely in the vegetable crisper of Louie's refrigerator. The disk was still ice-cold.

'Who put you up to this?' Louie asked, raising his victim's face from a puddle and breathing Red Stripe into it. No answer was forthcoming, so he dropped his new friend's head on the pavement a few times. The noise made him squeamish, so he slapped the pained face beneath him on the chops, then raised his skull by tightly holding onto his front teeth.

'Tell me where Vincent is. Have you done something to him?'

Although the burglar's arms were pinned he tried to beckon Louie closer by rolling his eyes, but when his captor leaned forward he nearly had his ear bitten off. Louie had no compunction then in sitting back hard until he heard one rib crack beneath his thighs, then another. When the burglar began to whimper in pain, Louie felt sure that he would find out anything he needed to know.

Vince wiped a string of icy mucus from his nose with the back of his hand and dug deep into the bin. The envelope was covered in chips and soaked in the remains of a can of cola someone had dropped in. He tore the sopping paper open and read:

Opened after Defoe's Year,

Blake and Bunyan make a show.

Paradise was founded here,

Seek the Elf King, go below.

Where was he supposed to go this time? For the sake of Esther and Pam it would be necessary to unravel the latest puzzle quickly, but where in London was it waiting for him? He looked down at Trafalgar Square, where throngs of clubbers were waiting for night buses, then up towards Cambridge Circus at the thinning traffic. The first thing was to get off the street and make a call to his lifeline, presuming that Dr Masters and his Insomnia Squad were still living up to their name.

He realised he must have been standing in the sweeping rain for several minutes, trying to formulate a plan, when a young woman, naked from the waist up and wrapped in a vast sheet of clear plastic called out 'You all right, Vince?' as she passed. Vince's ears and hands were numb. The girl should have been frozen, but if she was she didn't show it.

'Hey, Meat Rack,' he shouted back, recognising her, 'what are you doing dressed like that?'

A nightclub in Adelaide Street was emptying out its customers, and pavements that had been deserted moments before were filled with a laughing, chanting urban tribe. It was as if a rainbow had splintered into human life and spilled itself across the wet brown roadway. The girl stopped and walked back. 'Christ, Vince, nobody calls me Meat Rack any more, I'm just plain Caroline again. The old crowd's all split up. Nobody stayed around. I'm surprised you're still here. This city's gone to shit. It's all over.'

'You look like you're still having fun.'

She looked around at her friends. 'Us? We're just partying in the wreckage, baby. Picking over the ruins.' He looked at her in wonder. Hadn't someone else said the same thing tonight? She pointed out a skinny Asian man next to her. 'You remember Miserable Phil, don't you?'