Bolton, J. - Now You See Me

At the side of the building, I remembered an old metal fire escape led up to the first floor. It was still there. What I didn’t remember from my last visit was the pair of sunglasses, their frames wrapped around the metal rail. They looked a lot like Emma’s.

‘DC Flint to Control.’

A moment’s pause while I listened to static. And something loud and steady that I thought might be my own heartbeat. Then, ‘Go ahead, DC Flint.’

‘DC Flint requesting immediate back-up,’ I said. ‘Serious injuries, maybe fatalities, suspected.’

I backed away from the metal steps and looked up. At the top a window had been broken and the door wasn’t quite closed. Someone was inside.

Tulloch didn’t want another woman’s death on her conscience. Shit, neither did I. And I was a whole lot closer to the action.

On the first two steps up my legs were shaking, the way legs do when you’ve spent too much time on the treadmill. By the fifth step they were on autopilot, taking me steadily upwards, and the stairs creaked with every step.

I reached the top and risked taking my eyes off the building for a second to scan the street. I was going to kill Anderson. I would knock Joesbury to the ground and stamp on his head. Where the hell were they?

Knowing I was taking a risk, but unable to do nothing, I took my mobile from my pocket and speed-dialled Emma’s number. Then I pressed my face close to the broken window and listened. On the street, cars went by. Somewhere in the sky there was a helicopter. Hardly a second of silence. Then one came and I could hear the ringing. Faint but clear. Emma’s phone was somewhere inside this building.

Then the ringing was completely drowned out by a loud and terrified scream. When it stopped I was on the other side of the door.

There is something so unnerving, even at the best of times, about buildings out of context. A school at night will be spooky. A department store, once the customers have gone home, even more so. This place, that I remembered so well from years ago, seemed unable to leave its past behind. As I peered forward into the darkness I could almost hear the squeals and splashes of children playing, and those strange rhythmic echoes that you only hear in buildings with large spaces and water.

I swear I could still smell the chlorine.

A few feet away a streetlamp was shining in through a window. In its soft, orange glow lay a shoe. On tiptoe, I walked up to it and bent down. There was no dust on it. This shoe hadn’t been here long. It was Emma’s. I knew it.

Breadcrumbs, yelled the voice of common sense. This is a trail of breadcrumbs. He’s leading you in.

Common sense won. I was out of there. I took a step back towards the door just as I heard the fire escape creak. Outside, someone had stepped on it.

Not a trail then, a trap.

29

HORRIBLY CLOSE TO PANIC, MY EYES WERE DARTING round like those of a terrified mouse. I was in a large space that had once been an office. Desks and chairs were still scattered around. In the centre of the room, dividing one half from the other, stood a row of lockers. I moved quickly across and stepped into the shadows behind them. From somewhere in the building I could still hear Emma’s mobile ringing, but if I tried to stop it now, the beeping sound my own phone would make would give me away. Sometime in the last few seconds I’d stopped breathing. Softly, I made myself exhale.

Whoever was coming up the stairs was making more noise than I had. A heavier person. I heard the gentle swish of two pieces of wood sliding together as the door was pushed open. A footstep inside. Then another.

Silence. He was listening, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Any second now he’d see Emma’s shoe, spot the trail in the dust I’d made when I’d moved it. He’d know I was here. The footsteps started again, more softly this time. He knew where I was.

A black shape appeared from behind the row of lockers. In the darkness it looked massive. Then it stepped into a pool of light and I thought I might die of relief.

‘I’m here,’ I whispered.

Joesbury shot round as I hurried over to him, surprisingly pleased to see someone I thoroughly disliked. Even feet away he was still little more than shadow, but his eyes were shining at me. Not in a friendly way.

‘There’s someone here,’ I told him, ‘I heard a scream. He’s inside somewhere. We have to—’

Joesbury held a finger to his lips and then raised his radio. ‘She’s here,’ he said into it. ‘Yeah, toss you for who throttles her when we get out. Can you hear a phone?’

I couldn’t catch Anderson’s reply, but a second later Joesbury was moving towards the furthest door of the room and beckoning me to follow. At the door he stopped and listened, then pulled it open and stepped through.

I did the same. We were in the gallery that runs almost the full circumference of the larger of the two pools. In the old days, when swimming had been strictly segregated, it had been known as the men’s plunge. Up in the gallery there was still bench seating from when schools had competed here and proud parents had needed somewhere to sit. Joesbury made his way slowly down the wide, shallow steps of the gallery, peering along each row of benches. He was carrying a torch, but he hadn’t turned it on. The ringing sound of Emma’s phone had become louder.

Looking back to check I was still with him, Joesbury made his way to the side of the gallery where we could get down to ground level. We passed dead rodents and take-away wrappers. I stepped over broken glass and what looked horribly like human excrement. When we emerged at the bottom of the stairs, DS Anderson appeared through an archway at the far end of the hall. From memory I thought it led to the smaller of the two pool halls, the one reserved for women back in Victorian times. Anderson saw us and shook his head. He’d found nothing. Joesbury had moved to the pool, his feet just touching the edge of the carved stone that rimmed it.

Without water the cavity looked vast. It was nearly thirty yards long and fifteen wide. In the old days, the pool had had a five-yard-high diving board and the deep end had been very deep. Since then, the cavity had been used for dumping. Cafeteria chairs, lifebuoys, lifeguards’ seats, even part of the old diving board had been thrown in.

Joesbury was looking at a huge canvas sheet that bulged upwards from the floor of the pool. The ringing sound was coming from beneath it. Realizing my phone was still making the call, I reached into my pocket and switched it off.

‘That was me,’ I explained in a quiet voice, when both men looked surprised. ‘It’s Emma Boston’s phone. I was calling it. I followed the sound inside.’

Joesbury switched on his torch and shone it down. Even with light it was impossible to say what lay beneath the canvas.

He turned to Anderson. ‘Any possibility of back-up?’ he asked.

Anderson spoke into his radio for a few seconds. Then he looked up. ‘About five minutes away,’ he said. ‘The boss has called out the Ninjas too. They’ll be here in ten.’

Ninjas is Met slang for CO19, the armed police division. Tulloch must be seriously concerned to have requested their presence.

‘Tell them to contain the building,’ Joesbury instructed, speaking in a low voice as Anderson had done. ‘Four entrances, including the fire escape. And make ’em come in carefully. I think it’s safe to say this is a crime scene.’

As Anderson stepped away to pass the instructions on, Joesbury turned back to me. ‘Call her again,’ he said. My hands were shaking but I did as I was told.

From beneath the canvas Emma’s mobile resumed its shrill ringing tone and Joesbury muttered the sort of word you wouldn’t use in front of your granny. Putting his torch on the floor, he crouched low and jumped down.