Christopher Fowler - Disturbia

'I don't want to escape and get you into trouble,' she was whispering to him, 'but let me make a phone call, just to a friend who can help Vince, that's all.' She threw him a pleading look. 'That's all.'

Her mobile phone was still in her handbag. If he took her to the alcove beneath the stairs, nobody would be able to hear her. Half of his colleagues were asleep in the big armchairs upstairs. Sebastian and the others had no reason to come down. 'All right,' he said finally, taking her hand. 'I'll be with you, but if you say one word about where you are, we're done for. Understand?'

She nodded thankfully.

'Follow me.'

Tucked safely in the shadows, Xavier Stevens watched and waited. Christ, what a night, he thought. The others were so panic-stricken about its events that they had lost all sense of its sport. Of course it was a serious matter, deadly serious, but Sebastian saw it simply as some kind of power-game to be played out, a way of scoring against his father. He saw right through Sebastian. Like all bullies, the man was a coward at heart. He always found someone else to do his dirty work.

Wells had done some dirty work tonight. He had not enjoyed killing the agent; it seemed unnecessary, but it was what Wells had wanted, and he was willing to pay. He smiled grimly. You could do anything in this city and get away with it, if you were familiar with the right routes.

Stevens moved forward and peered around the corner. Vince was still standing there by the shop window of Rymans, utterly immobilised. Why wasn't he phoning, asking his friends, taking action? Could it be that Wells had misjudged his stamina after all? He longed to step up to Vince and goad him into action, push him, shove him, stab at him, make him do something. Instead, he was forced to crouch and watch and wait while he arrived at his own independent conclusions. Come on, he urged him silently, you can do it, work it out. Stevens checked his watch. Not much time left now. Three more challenges and then the dawn. He wanted to be there when the fireworks began.

I can do this, Vince thought, I don't need anyone else's help. Time to show them what you're made of. He dried his hands as best as he could and reopened the page with numb fingers.

Opened after Defoe's 'Year. The capital letter on 'year' was a giveaway. Defoe had to be Daniel Defoe. One of his most famous works was A Journal of the Plague Year, so he was looking for something that opened the year after the Great Plague ended, presumably in 1666, the year of the Great Fire. Defoe was a famous Nonconformist, so that was the title of the challenge taken care of.

Blake and Bunyan make a show. He didn't know what to make of this, beyond the fact that they were all writers.

Paradise was founded here conceivably referred to Milton and his Paradise Lost, which was contemporary to Defoe.

Seek the Elf King, go below was gibberish. Instinctively he felt drawn to the old inner City of London, but could find no logical justification for his choice. The hand that touched his shoulder while he was attempting to solve the conundrum shattered the page and nearly made him drop in his tracks.

While Masters was rooting about in the attic looking for his notes and clippings, the phone rang again downstairs. Maggie Armitage answered it on the second ring. She listened for a minute, then cupped her hand over the receiver and mouthed 'Who are all these people?' to Stanley Purbrick. This one was called Pam, and she also wanted to know where Vince was.

'I wish we knew, dear,' said Maggie, 'but he hasn't called us in over an hour, and we have no way of contacting him. Yes, I'll let him know you're safe if he rings again. Can he contact you? No, I see.'

Maggie replaced the receiver, puzzled. 'Sounded like she was calling from inside a cupboard,' she said.

The walls of the fuliginous cupboard were coated with coal dust, and once Pam started sneezing she could not stop. Barwick held the door open for her, his clumsy fantasies of seduction thwarted.

'Look here,' he began, starting towards her as she fished about in her bag for a handkerchief, 'suppose we just left, you and I, quickly and quietly by the servants' entrance? We could be far away from here before they find us gone.'

'Okay, but won't you get into trouble?' she said, trying to think through this new development as she blew coal from her nose.

'It'll be a lot worse than that,' said Barwick, grimacing. 'You can't leave the League, not once you know its secrets.'

'Tell me, Horace, why are they making Vince do this?' she asked. 'It's more than just a series of games, isn't it?'

'Oh, much more,' he agreed. 'You have no idea…'

'If you don't agree with what the League is doing, you should tell me. Perhaps we can do something about it.'

'I agree in principal, what with the way the country is going and everything. But what he's planning is simply too dangerous to contemplate. The WBI is a government organisation. He can't do it without Vince, you see…'

'I don't understand,' she persisted as they headed for the stone staircase at the rear of the building. 'You have to tell me what he is going to do.'

'I can't do that. Too risky,' Barwick gasped, the effort of fast movement clearly having an adverse effect on him. 'He would have to kill me – and you. It's better that you don't know anything more.'

'And we just sit back and let this – thing – happen? Can't you go to the authorities? Someone with power?'

'How, when our families are the authorities?' he wheezed. The spiral staircase they had entered turned to the ground floor and a basement beyond. The people with power, we're all related one way or another.'

'You're telling me that this is about Sebastian getting back at his family?'

'Well, in part. I mean, his father, but everyone knows about that. Sebastian can never forgive him for what he did.'

The heavy oak doors to the courtyard stood no more than ten yards ahead. Pam prayed they weren't locked. 'Please, Horace, tell me where Vince is. It doesn't matter if I know now.'

'He should be on the seventh challenge. Xavier Stevens has gone back out there to keep an eye on him.'

'Where, Horace?' She forced her eyes to glisten. 'I must know where. Please.'

Finally he told her the location, proud to be the possessor of such privileged information. They had reached the bottom of the staircase. Freedom lay just a few short steps ahead.

'Listen Horace,' she said, drawing him close, 'you've been really nice to me. I want to thank you. You're not like the others.'

'I've been hoping you would feel that way,' he muttered sheepishly. 'They say hostages often fall in love with their captors, don't they? I've always wanted to meet someone who likes me for who I am, not what my family represents. Money always gets in the way.'

'Only if you've got it, sunshine,' she said, bringing her right knee sharply up into his unprotected groin. 'Don't get me wrong. I still think you're an arsehole.'

Barwick let out a howl and tipped backwards clutching his testicles. The shock set him off-balance and he fell hard on the steps, damaging his coccyx and barrelling down to the wall below. Pam ran for the exit.

The tradesman's door was unlocked. As she yanked it open and dashed out into the floodlit courtyard, something whistled in the air behind her. She looked back and saw St John Warner at the open stairwell window, reloading what appeared to be a crossbow. As she ran on across the gravelled yard, she cursed her decision to wear high-heeled shoes tonight.

Sebastian rested his forehead against the cold diamond pane. He had not foreseen that Vince would draft in others to help him, and at first had felt anger towards his opponent, but now he understood the tightness of it. He was a child of the street, after all; it was fitting that other such denizens should offer him advice, just as he used his own background. The League, its followers and friends were isolated from Vince's kind. They had underestimated the power of the nation's grass roots. This exercise would do them all good. There was a commotion in the courtyard below, and he looked out in time to see St John Warner firing his bloody crossbow at their hostage, for God's sake.