Lockdown
Page 26
He knew there was no point in trying to take it too fast. He had to go steady, one rung at a time, one step after another. Don’t look down. And as soon as the thought entered his head, he looked down. He seemed to have come an incredibly long way in a very short time. His heart filled his chest so that he thought he was going to choke. He missed his footing and almost fell. His fear was debilitating. Look up, he told himself. And as he did, he saw Blume transfer from the inside of the ladder to the outside, so that he would be above it as it curved around the top of the wheel. MacNeil pressed on.
The wind was tugging fiercely now at his donkey jacket, whistling amongst the spokes all around him. For all the pain that burned them, he felt his hands start to go numb with the cold. The ladder was beginning to tip him backwards. Time to transfer. He swung around and caught an outside rung and fumbled for a foothold with his ungainly Doc Martens. He was so scared there was hardly any strength left in his arms. And for several moments he simply clung to the very outside edge of the wheel, the city canted at an odd angle below him. He could see the four chimneys belching out their human waste at the old Battersea Power Station. I Think, Therefore I Can. Welcome to the Ideas Generation. It seemed so long ago that he had driven past those hoardings in search of a man called Kazinski.
Away to his left, beyond St. Thomas’ Hospital, was the building site where it had all begun. This time yesterday morning he had been dreaming about playing truant from work, asleep in a single bed in Islington, too short for his six-foot-four frame. This time yesterday morning, Sean had still been alive. How easy it would be just to let go. Just to drift away into the night, and put an end to all this. How much easier life would be in death. It was a seductive notion. It caressed him, tempted him. Until he thought of Amy.
He gritted his teeth and started to climb again, up and up, following the outer curve of the wheel as it arced towards its apex. By now, he was crouched on top of it, holding on for dear life as the wind did its best to yank him free. He looked up and saw the topmost pod almost directly above him. He could see two figures moving about inside, and the merest whisper of a shadow somewhere at its centre. It might have been Amy, but he wasn’t sure. What he was sure of was that Blume was safely inside, and that he was out here, horribly exposed to the night, four hundred feet above the icy cold waters of the Thames. Another few rungs, and he was directly beneath the pod, where they couldn’t see him. He clung on to the tubular superstructure and craned to see a way up. The doors of the pod split in two and slid out to either side. He could swing himself up on the left-hand door and get on to the narrow ledge they used for boarding and disembarking.
He crouched there in the shadow of the capsule, buffeted by the wind, eyes closed, summoning the courage. If he failed, then he failed. He thought of the inscription on the statue below. They went because their open eyes could see no other way. He opened his eyes. It was time to go.
At almost the same moment that he swung himself up to grab the pneumatic bar that controlled the door, the whole wheel juddered and began to move. Dr Castelli had figured out the controls. But it was enough to force a misjudgement, and MacNeil missed the bar. His bandaged hand grasped fresh air and he felt himself tipping impossibly backwards. The city tilted below him and he saw the river turn through ninety degrees.
His elbows struck the boarding platform, and he found himself hanging from it, his face at floor level, looking into the pod. All the time slipping, losing his grip, legs kicking the air beneath him, knowing he was going to fall.
He barely heard Amy screaming.
III.
Pinkie had been astonished to see Mr Smith clambering across the top of the wheel and reaching out for a hand up into the pod. He had always known that Mr Smith was a man possessed, by who knew what demons, but this seemed like an extraordinary feat, even for him.
And then MacNeil had appeared, and they had all seen him. His jacket billowing out in the wind, his upturned face pale and frightened. He had seemed very fragile, somehow, for such a big, strong man.
But for Pinkie none of it mattered any more. Job done. It was just about time for him to check out. He felt weak and faint, slightly delirious. And he was amazed to see MacNeil’s big frame suddenly swing across the opening to the pod, and then fall away, only to clatter on to the little ledge outside, hands fighting for something to grasp, and failing to find it.
He heard Mr Smith shout his derision and saw him step forward to the door. He kicked MacNeil in the face and then stood on his bandaged hands. Pinkie looked at those hands, ragged bandages wrapped around painful burns. And it came to him for the first time that it had been MacNeil who had come charging through the flames to drag Pinkie from the burning car.
‘Don’t do that,’ he told Mr Smith. But the only sound that came was some whispered, strangulated breath. ‘It’s not fair,’ he said. But Mr Smith wasn’t listening. ‘Stop!’ he roared. A fearsome gurgle. Mr Smith heard that alright. He turned as Pinkie raised his SA80 rifle.
‘Pinkie, what are you doing?’
The remaining bullets in the magazine propelled Mr Smith right out of the door, and he soared like one of his own angels of death into the night.
MacNeil was going. He couldn’t hold on any longer. Pinkie heard Amy’s sobs of frustration and impotence. Such a shame, he thought. He dropped the rifle and staggered to the door. He met MacNeil’s eye. He saw his fear. And he felt his own life slipping away. He dropped to his knees. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, and meant it. But knew that nobody would ever hear him.
MacNeil was gone when Pinkie caught him. And Pinkie held him now, his life literally in Pinkie’s hands. Perhaps they should go together. Or would a life saved by this dead man’s hand give his own life, finally, the meaning it had always lacked?
*
MacNeil closed his eyes. He didn’t understand any of this. But there were no questions he could think of that were worth asking when you were going to die. He knew this was the man he had pulled from the burning car on Lambeth Bridge. And he had no reason to be grateful to MacNeil, condemned as he had been to what must have been several hours of living hell. He hung there at the end of an arm of charred and weeping flesh, and as he looked into the man’s eyes, it was like staring into the abyss. A huge void, empty of anything. Another hand grabbed his collar and pulled. A superhuman effort. Legs braced against each edge of the door. A deep rasping sigh issuing from burned-out lungs. MacNeil got a handhold on the edge of the door, and then a knee on the ledge, and he fell inside, sprawling on the floor, utterly spent.
He rolled over to look up at his saviour. But there was no one there. He had gone, somewhere into the abyss that was his own soul.
MacNeil turned and saw poor Amy, tears streaming down her face, and managed to pull himself up on to legs like jelly. He slumped beside her on the bench and took her in his arms.
In the distance, the first glimmer of light in the winter sky reflected all the way upriver from the east, and MacNeil felt the first tickle at the back of his nose, and the first roughness at the back of his throat.
End
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to offer my grateful thanks to all those who gave so generously of their time and expertise during my researches for Lockdown. In particular, I’d like to express my gratitude to pathologist Steven C. Campman, MD, Medical Examiner, San Diego, California; Professor Joe Cummins, Emeritus of Genetics, University of Western Ontario; Dr A.W. (Freddy) Martin (CRFP), Past President of the British Association of Forensic Odontologists; Detective Sergeant George Murray, Northern Constabulary; Graham and Fiona Kane for letting me plagiarise their home; and Alison Campbell Jensen for her cinnamon and cloves.
nds