Peter May - Cast Iron

He tore his eyes away from her and saw that the shape of the window, made by the outside light on the opposite wall, was gone. The dull burn of the single bulb overhead now filled the room with its sad electric light. And it occurred to him that this room being in darkness would help their cause. He scrambled to his feet. ‘Come on, I’ll give you a punt up. Use your sleeve to protect your hand and unscrew the bulb. If it’s dark in here they’ll not be able to see in.’

‘It’ll make them wary,’ she said, standing up to join him.

‘Yes, but if they can’t see where we are it’ll still give us the advantage.’ He crouched once more, interlacing his fingers to give her a stirrup, then slowly rose, straining to take her full weight as she reached for the bulb, one hand on his head to steady herself. He heard the scrape of metal on metal as it unscrewed, and then darkness as she jumped down clutching the bulb. He heard her smashing it on the wall, and by the last light of the day leaking in through the window above, saw her holding the jagged end of it in her hand, like a weapon.

‘I hope I get the chance to stick this in one of their faces,’ she hissed, and he could feel that the adrenalin was already pumping through her system.

He guided her to the right side of the door and stood her with her back to the wall, then took a deep breath before banging on the door and shouting. ‘Toilet!’ No point in losing the momentum of the moment.

They waited for nearly a minute, but there was no response. He banged again and kept shouting until they heard a door slamming somewhere in the house, and then footsteps in the corridor. Sophie closed her eyes and tried to control her breathing.

The footsteps stopped outside the door and there were several long seconds of silence. Then a voice. ‘What’s happened to the light?’

‘The bulb burned out,’ Bertrand said. ‘Can you hurry, please, I’m desperate.’

‘Stand back against the far wall!’ the voice came from the other side of the door, and then they heard the scrape of the key in the lock. Another moment of silence before the door was kicked in, bursting open in an explosion of dust. Bertrand stood, braced and ready, and saw the owner of the voice standing in hooded silhouette against the lit corridor behind him, a baseball bat dangling from his right hand. The shadow of his companion was cast in elongated distortion across the floor.

Bertrand leaped on him before the man’s eyes had a moment to adjust to the darkness of the room. The two of them crashed out into the corridor, Bertrand’s muscled forearm like a steel rod around his neck. The baseball bat rattled away across the concrete. Bertrand backed into the wall and Sophie stepped into the light, driving her foot hard into the man’s crotch. Bertrand felt the man’s whole body judder, and the pain that exploded from his mouth was almost palpable. Then he went limp, falling to the floor, pulling his knees up to his chest in the foetal position and rolling around, whimpering in agony.

But Bertrand had no time even to move before the second man was on him, his fist smashing into a face already bruised and swollen from the headbutt of the previous day. And the two men fell to the floor. Bertrand was almost blinded by pain. He felt a fist slamming into his gut and forcing all the air from his lungs.

Then the man’s whole body shook and went limp, becoming a dead weight on top of Bertrand. The sound of the baseball bat striking his head had made the oddest hollow sound, like wood on a leather ball. Bertrand looked up to see Sophie standing above them, before a shadow rose up behind her, enveloping her almost like a glove and pulling her down. The first man had recovered sufficiently to rejoin the fight.

Bertrand fought to drag himself out from under the man that Sophie had struck with the bat, but the blow to his head had not been enough to disable him entirely, and he was already pulling himself to his knees as Bertrand rolled free. Bertrand could see the door ahead of him at the end of the corridor. But Sophie was down, and both men were now back in the fight.

‘Run!’ Sophie screamed at him. He hesitated, and she bellowed with all her might, ‘Go! For God’s sake, go!’ And he turned and sprinted down the hall, towards the light at the end of it.

The sounds that followed him turned his blood to ice. Their wounded captors bawling with fury and venom. Sophie’s scream echoing off cold plaster walls and concrete floors. He very nearly stopped and turned back. But he knew she would be furious with him. All this would have been in vain. A painful and pointless exercise.

The door at the end of the hall opened into a room that leaked warmth and cigarette smoke out into the cold of the corridor. In the middle of the room two chairs were pushed back from a table scarred with cigarette burns and scattered with playing cards. There had been a game in progress, and a cigarette still burned in the ashtray. A kettle stood on a unit against the back wall, alongside a tray of food ready prepared to take along to the prisoners.

A door at the other side of the room opened straight on to a narrow staircase that led steeply up into darkness. Bertrand took the stairs two at a time, trying hard not to listen to the bedlam he had left in his wake. At the top, he fumbled in the dark to unlatch a door that opened into the tiled entrance hallway of what must once have been a grand manor house. Soft light burned in art deco uplighters. Wooden panelling, scarred by the years, and cream-painted walls that had seen better days.

At the far end of the hall, a rising moon was already casting colourless light through stained glass in the main door. A broad staircase rose behind him to a half landing, before dividing and leading up, left and right, to a gallery running all around the upper floor.

He didn’t stop to think, but ran for the door, feet clattering on the mosaic of tiles beneath them. Past double doors that stood open. The light of a fire flickering in a hearth. And then men’s voices shouting, and moments later, footsteps coming after him.

To his enormous relief, the front door was not locked. He threw it open and ran out into the night. Down a short flight of steps and on to a gravel driveway. Cold air caressed him like the chill touch of death, and he shivered as he ran past several vehicles parked in the drive, one of them almost certainly the van that had brought them here.

He could hear his pursuers not far behind him, but couldn’t afford to turn and look. Immediately off to his right, trees threw deep shadows in the moonlight, and he plunged off into their embrace, finding himself immediately swallowed by darkness and wild, uncultivated woodland.

Briars and tangling shrubs snagged and tore at his trousers as he crashed through the undergrowth. His lungs were bursting now, but he was driven on by fear and sheer determination, arms pumping, legs straining every sinew as he forced them forward against the pain of each stride.

He could hear and feel that he was putting distance between himself and the men who were chasing him, and in a slash of moonlight he saw a bank of ferns falling steeply away from what looked like a deer track. Below was the sound of running water, and he saw moonlight coruscating on its broken surface.

Bertrand jumped the path and slid on his backside down towards the flickering reflections below until he felt cold water break over his feet and legs, and he tipped forward, suddenly, involuntarily, into the stream. The shock of it very nearly took his breath away. It was only a foot or so deep, the bed of it littered with stones worn smooth over eons, and he got to his feet, dripping wet, and stumbled forwards toward where a large fallen boulder cast its shadow on the water. He doubled up and rolled under the overhang and into the protection of its darkness. He came to a brutally sudden, gasping halt, pressed up against wet, cold rock, and tried to hold his breath, straining to hear above the running of the water.