Питер Мэй - Lockdown

‘Pinkie, I have a problem.’

Pinkie could not imagine what possible problem there could be. ‘What problem?’

‘That young man you found for me... he didn’t follow through.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean he didn’t dispose of the bones. He dumped them on a building site. And now the police have them.’

‘Shit!’ Pinkie felt anger tighten the muscles of his neck and shoulders. That little bastard! ‘You want me to off him?’

‘I want you to keep a watching brief, Pinkie. Make sure the bones don’t lead them anywhere. You know what I mean? Take whatever action you need to tidy things up.’ Mr Smith sounded very calm, but Pinkie knew that he wasn’t. He’d witnessed his temper, knew he was capable of things Pinkie could never have contemplated. In truth, Pinkie was a little scared of Mr Smith.

‘How am I going to get around?’

‘You can take my car. It has clearance to go just about anywhere.’ There was a pause at the end of the line. ‘I think I have found a way to monitor whatever progress the police might be making. That way we’ll know exactly what it is you might have to do.’

‘Why don’t we just take out the cops?’

‘No, no,’ Mr Smith said quickly. ‘If anything were to happen to the investigating officer that would only draw attention. And that’s the last thing we want.’

Amy drove east on Tooley Street in her little yellow Toyota. It was the Japanese motor manufacturer’s concept welfare vehicle, especially adapted to take her wheelchair. A clever arrangement with a backward-sliding driver’s door and an extending ramp with a short rise and fall that slid her neatly in behind the wheel. It had not come cheap — none of the accoutrements of disability did — but the compensation money had enabled her to equip herself for a life as normal as she could make it.

It was easier getting around now that the streets were mostly deserted. Not that she ventured out much these days.

She passed a convoy of military vehicles speeding west and glanced north towards the river and the tilting curves of the glass and steel edifice that was City Hall. All that glass, the Mayor had once said, should be seen as a metaphor for the transparency of government. Now you could see right through it. Because it was empty. Hollow promises which had come to nothing. For all their planning, they had never envisaged anything on this scale.

She turned north on Three Oak Lane, where presumably three oaks had once grown. But they were long gone. In Gainsford Street she turned into the multi-storey car park and drove up the ramp to her parking place on the second floor. It had been the only spot she could get at the time, and it left her always at the mercy of the lift. If it was working, there was no problem. If it was not, then she was in trouble. Today it rumbled down to the ground floor without a hitch, and she steered herself across the cobbles to the gated entrance of Butlers and Colonial Wharf, a collection of new-build and warehouse conversions around an open concourse. The whine of her electric motor seemed very loud in the quiet of this still grey day, a strange blue light leeching all colour out of the honeyed brick. There was not a soul to be seen. Once, in a bygone age, these streets and alleys and buildings would have heaved with life. Dockers and warehousemen and stevedores. Ships sailing up the estuary to the Pool of London to unload exotic foodstuffs and spices from the far reaches of the British Empire. Girdered metal bridges ran at peculiar angles overhead between towering warehouses. A huge, arched gateway gave on to the Thames, where workers had queued daily in the hope of picking up a few hours’ work. Now these were the homes of those renaissance city dwellers who could afford them, serviced by the wine bars and gourmet restaurants which animated the cobbled lanes. The silence was eerie. Not a single echo of the past remaining.

Amy tilted up the ramp to her front door and unlocked it to let herself in. This had once been a warehouse for the storage of spices. The old lady who sold it to her told her she had toured the building in a hardhat before the conversion work began. ‘It was heavenly, my dear,’ she’d said. ‘The whole place smelled of cloves.’

It was on three floors and Amy had the top two. Quite impractical for someone in a wheelchair, but she had been determined not to sacrifice anything to her disability. If she’d had the money before the accident, she would have loved to live in a place like this. Now that she could afford it, she was determined not to make any compromises. So she had installed stair lifts on both flights of stairs and a wheelchair on each floor. She slept on the first floor and lived on the second — in a huge open space up amongst the rafters which she had subdivided with furniture and bookshelves. In the far corner she had an open-plan kitchen, and on the back wall, French windows led out on to a square metal balcony where, in summer, she could sit and read and soak up the sun.

Amy transferred from her wheelchair to the bottom stair lift. She had developed strength in her arms to heave herself about, although there was not much weight in her slight frame. Sometimes she found the lift frustratingly slow. Today she simply closed her eyes and drifted up with it, cradling the small package in her lap. It had been a traumatic morning. To find herself identifying with a murder victim was a unique experience. But something about this poor little girl had touched her in a way she had not believed possible. She thought of all the corpses she had handled, the heads she had brought home to work on, and how she had always been able to separate herself from the unpleasant reality of her job. Until now. There was something about that collection of small bones which somehow still contained the spirit of the child. Amy found it disturbing, and when she held the skull in her hands, she could almost have sworn she felt the child’s fear, passing through bone into her very own flesh.

All the doors on the first floor landing were closed, and only the light filtering up from the front door permeated the darkness. There was a faintly unusual smell hanging in the air, but Amy was distracted, putting down her package to enable the move to the wheelchair at the top of the stairs, and it didn’t really register. She didn’t mind the dark. Sometimes she would sit for hours with the lights out and pretend that none of this had ever happened. That she would simply decide to turn on the light and get up and do it.

She steered herself along to the foot of the second staircase and stopped in sudden confusion, unaware of the shadow moving through the darkness behind her. The stair lift was not there. She craned her neck to peer up and saw that it was at the top of the stairs. How was that possible? She had left it on the landing when she went out this morning. And in that moment she registered the faintly lingering scent which had eluded her just seconds earlier, and her heart seized. Just as a hand came around from behind and clamped itself over her mouth. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t open her lips, and the strength in the arm from behind held her firmly in place. She put both hands up and grabbed the sleeve as her attacker moved silently around to scoop her up and out of her chair.

Amy was helpless, legs dangling uselessly. All she could do was hold on to him as he moved across the landing and kicked open the door to her bedroom. In three strides he reached the bed and laid her down amongst the quilt and cushions. He took his hand from her mouth. ‘You bastard!’ she screamed, and she reached up and grabbed him by the neck, pulling with all her strength until he tipped towards her and she found his lips with hers.