‘Even if I came forward, I can’t prove it was the same man. I’ve never seen his face clearly.’
Ruby rose from her seat. ‘OK,’ she snapped. ‘That’s enough. You need to go now. Now you know why we don’t have men here.’
They were interrupted by a sound outside – a noise that made the hairs on the back of Sam’s neck stand up. People were running down the walkway outside. It was like the charge of an invading army.
Before Ruby could react, let alone bark out an order, there was a loud thud swiftly followed by the noise of crunching wood. Suddenly a gang of men – at least ten of them – were pouring through an open doorway from the walkway.
Sam felt a shot of adrenaline course through him. He grabbed Zahra’s hand and ran in the opposite direction.
Shouts rang out. Ruby had recovered enough from the shock to resume control. As Sam and Zahra moved swiftly past her, she was reacting with lightning speed, tipping the table over to make a barricade, while screaming for support.
Chapter 24
Bijlmer, Amsterdam
As they darted into the darkness, Sam gripping Zahra’s hand and leading their retreat, the inhabitants of the commune were rousing around them. He heard groans as he stumbled over bedding, screams as people woke more fully and realised they were under attack.
Behind them, chaos was quickly taking hold. They heard objects being thrown, metal hitting the concrete floor, cries of pain from both men and women as weapons or fists made impact.
Sam’s eyes were well adjusted to the gloom now and he could see they were at the far end of the space, away from the floor’s residents. They moved through a graveyard of household objects – battered fridges, freezers and ovens, old sofas and armchairs. If they could make it out on to the walkway, there would, he hoped, be another stairwell to descend to the ground below – and freedom.
They reached an opening in a wall, softly illuminated by the white light of the blizzard. Zahra slowed, then inched out, followed by Sam.
To their right, there was a short stretch of walkway. But where there should have been a concrete wall at the end, there was nothing, merely a view of the next building, some fifty metres away. Sam felt his mouth go dry.
They heard a shout from the other end of the walkway.
‘There!’
There was a sound of boots on concrete. Zahra turned. She was panting, her face balled up in fear. And then she was rushing forward, rounding the corner. Sam followed, willing his body to speed up even as another part of him wanted to glue his feet to the floor.
Turning the corner, it was far worse than Sam had expected. There was still a staircase, but no wall beyond. The stairs below them, deep with snow, were of uneven length, as if something had ripped random chunks from each step. Occasionally there were pieces of remaining wall, but then nothing again – and the certainty that, if you slipped or mistook an overhang of snow for concrete, you would fall to your death seven floors below.
In an instant Sam realised what he was looking at. It was damage caused by the air disaster. A plane had crash-landed on this very spot and all the authorities had done was to demolish the worst-hit portion, leaving the rest standing.
‘There’s no time to stand there!’ shouted Zahra, who was already stepping gingerly down the stairs. It was when Sam followed that he first got a sense of the drop to his left. The ground below was covered with snow but where it met the base of the nearest tower block gave him a stomach-contracting sense of scale.
Zahra was descending with haste, a speed Sam was too terrified to match, clinging to the building on her right. He could see her occasionally slip and quickly correct herself.
Sam inched downwards, placing a foot on each step and then, once it had gripped, moving to the next. The wind was whipping across the estate, sending flurries into his face so that he had to constantly wipe his eyes with a sleeve to see clearly. He felt a gust tug at his coat, as if to drag him off the building into the soft but deadly cushion of snow below.
Zahra was already at the base of the first landing and moving on to the next when Sam realised he wasn’t descending fast enough. From behind him, at the head of the stairs, he heard a voice.
‘He’s there.’
Sam speeded up, slipping as he put a foot down too quickly. He reached out to the jagged concrete on his right for some grip. He winced as his injured hand made contact. Looking down, he realised Zahra hadn’t waited. He pressed on, increasing his pace and hoping to God his shoes gained some traction.
Finally he was at the next landing. He stole a glance upwards, saw two men moving surprisingly quickly towards him, then turned to negotiate the next leg.
Zahra was nowhere to be seen.
Chapter 25
Bijlmer, Amsterdam
Where was she? She couldn’t have made it to the bottom of the flight below already.
Then he understood. She’d fallen.
His heart stopped. This was all his doing. He’d killed her.
The men were closing fast and he knew that whatever thoughts he had to face would have to wait. He pressed on, the anguish like a lead weight. About three steps down, he slipped.
His right foot lost its grip and suddenly his lower body was pitched forward. He reached out for the wall, hand grabbing in vain at coarse concrete, and then he was landing, a painful crunch of elbows and lower back making contact. With a sensation of pure unadulterated terror, he realised he was still moving – a bed of icy snow like a slalom – towards the drop on his right. He scrambled with his hands for something to grip, his fingers merely combing through powdery snow. It was his right foot that saved him, finding some obstacle below the snow, and bringing the rest of his body to a halt. He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them. To his right, about six inches away, was the edge.
From behind him, a voice called out. ‘He’s fallen. We’ve got him!’
Sam glanced back. The nearest man was just above him. He was caught. There was no way he’d be able to get up and move with enough speed to escape.
And then the man above Sam slipped. He watched in horror as he stepped forward and, like him just moments before, lost his footing. But unlike Sam, this man’s trajectory was less staggered. He tipped headfirst, as if a hand had given him a firm shove. There was no time to reach out to grip the wall. In a matter of seconds, he went from stepping forward, to stepping into space. There was a brief flash of dark hair, terrified eyes and flailing arms as he shot past Sam, and then he was gone, a bloodcurdling scream piercing the dense, snow-filled air.
Sam’s heart was thudding in his ear – his own near-death experience put into true perspective by what he’d just witnessed. He wanted to move, to lift himself up off this man-made precipice, but he couldn’t. He was consumed with terror. And completely rigid.
It was then he heard a soft voice to his left. A voice he thought he’d never hear again. He turned and realised that what he’d taken to be solid wall was in fact a dark hole. An opening in which he could just make out Zahra’s face.
It was the hope he needed. He found strength again, scrambling with his hands to crawl left, climb through the hole and drop to the floor, some two feet below.
His eyes took a moment to adjust but then he made out Zahra pressed against the wall next to him, her body crouched below the opening, a finger to her mouth.
They sat, as still as headstones, Sam’s heart galloping. And then a figure appeared at the hole. Sam held his breath. As the man crossed the opening – his bulky figure clad in a bomber jacket, head encased in a hoodie – the grey light of the storm briefly dimmed.
The man muttered to himself. ‘Fuck this. Fuck this.’ It was an English voice; an Essex accent, maybe South London.
Zahra threw a hand to her mouth.
The man was moving slowly, taking his time, all too aware of his colleague’s fate. He was so close, Sam could hear the man’s laboured breathing, each intake of air an expression of fear.
Sam was conscious that the m
an was probably using the wall to steady himself. Which meant that, were he to probe it in the right place, he too would discover the opening – and them.
But he didn’t. He moved past, the darkness lifted and once more the subdued light of the storm seeped into their hiding place. Sam finally exhaled.
Zahra was mute beside him. When, a moment later, she turned and her mouth opened to speak, it was as if she were choking on her words. Eventually she managed to whisper a short, croaked sentence.
‘That was him,’ she croaked. ‘That was the man who threatened me at Creech Hill.’
Her eyes blazed and her voice returned, quiet but raging. ‘And you brought him here.’
Chapter 26
Bijlmer, Amsterdam
‘How was I to know I was being followed?’
‘I was safe here,’ she hissed.
‘Christ,’ muttered Sam, angry at a society in which a frightened immigrant might consider a tower block without amenities of any sort – the kind of place where people lay dying of hypothermia on stinking stairwells – ‘safe’.
His mind rapidly processed the implications of the man’s arrival, how the tables had suddenly turned. How he’d gone from amateur investigator to hunted quarry. That man wouldn’t give up till he’d found and eliminated them both.
‘This doesn’t end until we find out why that man is after me,’ he said. ‘After us. What he thinks we know.’
‘I told you, I have no idea.’ Her voice had changed tone. It sounded broken.
Even if she didn’t know why they were being pursued, Zahra was confident about the identity of the man who’d just come within a whisker of their hiding place. But as Sam weighed that up, Zahra reminded him of a more pressing issue.
‘We need to get out of here,’ she said. Her survival instinct, which had served her so well, was kicking in. ‘That man will be back.’
‘I’m sorry, but what’s your plan? We can’t just keep running.’
She lifted herself from the floor. ‘What else do you suggest?’
‘We have to find somewhere safe,’ said Sam, pushing himself up to a standing position.
Zahra gave him a withering look. For her, there was nowhere safe.
Sam had another thought, and not a pleasant one. The attack might have been crude but the fact was, the man had found him here. Which suggested a level of sophistication, an ability to trace. They had to disappear below the radar.
‘There is somewhere,’ Zahra said, interrupting his thinking. ‘In Rome. An Eritrean community. I know people there.’
This would do, thought Sam. A place that was familiar to Zahra, which was important. And one that gave them distance. ‘I have money,’ he said. I can help you get there.’
Zahra nodded, almost imperceptibly. It was not an agreement as such. But Sam sensed that at least she recognised his worth. He was needed, if only as a wallet in the short term.
Zahra moved into the shadows, Sam following. The building had stilled around them. Where, Sam wondered, was the man? Was he waiting in the dark, hiding behind one of hundreds of pillars to pounce?
They inched towards the walkway. Sam had no idea what floor he was on. It mattered little. If you discounted the exposed steps on the outside of the building, there was only one way down – and that was via the stairwell he’d climbed.
‘We can’t go out the way I came in,’ Sam whispered. ‘He’ll be waiting at the bottom.’
Zahra shot Sam a look. He couldn’t make out her expression in the darkness but the message was clear. She was making the decisions.
Sam sensed that this floor was all but uninhabited. Beyond the traces of former residents – the crunch of glass underfoot, a sweet-smelling cocktail of alcohol, rotting food and piss – it was near silent.
The light was changing, a ghostly white slowly leaching into the building as they neared the walkway.
Zahra was first through the nearest opening, moving, for Sam’s money, too fast as she headed down the walkway. Unlike the cleared seventh floor, this one was covered with snow, Zahra’s footsteps making tell-tale prints in its pristine surface, each step a soft squeaky crunch that made Sam tense with fear.
She was at the stairs a moment later, Sam just behind. Zahra was now descending with way too much speed. Did she know something that he didn’t? Was she leading him straight to the man – and then planning to run? How far would she go to survive?
As the stairwell closed in around him, Sam sensed another companion by his side, the suffocating presence of claustrophobia, a cold hand gently but surely encircling his throat.
A couple of floors down, by which time Sam’s breath was coming in shallow gasps, Zahra cut back on to a walkway. She turned to jerk her head quickly, urging him to follow.
A glance over the balcony to his left told Sam that they were now on the second or possibly first floor. He saw Zahra dart across the snow-covered walkway and then disappear through an opening.
He followed her through the gap. The floor was lit with a soft white glow, as if the walls were emitting their own light. Zahra moved with speed towards the rear of the building. Her haste sent a bottle flying across the concrete floor to hit a concrete pillar, the noise amplified in the cavern-like space. Sam heard a distant voice – a man shouting what sounded like instructions. At this early hour in the morning in a place as dead as a tomb, it had to be their pursuer. Fear coursed through Sam. The chase was on again.
Zahra was at the far wall, her torso a silhouette against a window that had long ago lost its glass. He was a few paces behind when he saw, to his horror, her climbing on to the ledge and then, without a second’s hesitation, jumping.
With the sound of footfall gathering behind him – one, maybe two, people moving up the stairwell at a pace – Sam rushed to the window. He looked below. Here was the source of that eerie white glow. Snow, catching the first of the morning’s light – a brightness that disoriented, obliterating horizon and depth. Sam squinted. A snowdrift had gathered at the base of the building, a bed of white ten feet, maybe more, below the ledge. A figure was emerging from what looked like a burrow. It was Zahra, her landing cushioned by the depth of the snow. She turned to look up and shouted one simple instruction: ‘Jump!’
Sam heard his pursuers getting closer, knew he had to leap before they saw him at the opening. He lifted his right leg and left hand to the ledge, pulling his body up, crouched long enough to taste a rush of bile in his mouth, and jumped.
Chapter 27
Bijlmer, Amsterdam
Sam landed in a belly flop, his whole front making contact. He felt a jolt ring through his body, like he’d just been given a large electric shock. Underneath the first foot or so, the snow went from pillow-like to hard and compacted.
A figure was at his side. ‘Run!’ shouted Zahra.
Sam’s feet scrambled in the snow for purchase, his eyes dazzled by the brightness. As he rose from the ground, he saw Zahra plod away from the building, as visible against the white of the snow as a smudge of charcoal on white paper, each step slow as her feet sunk deep. He wanted to shout at her to hide, tell her to cling to the side of the building, but then he saw the prints her feet had made and, looking back, the huge patterns their falls had created. Whichever way they headed, their trail was there for all to see.
He moved forward, each step ponderous as if the snow were trying to drag them downwards, suck them into a deep frozen grave. It was then he heard a voice behind them. ‘They’re there!’
Sam turned. The building was hard to make out now that his eyes had adjusted to the brightness. But he recognised the voice. The man was at the empty window. ‘Jump!’ he was shouting. ‘Go and get them!’
Sam turned round, tried to move faster, but the snow protested at his new pace. With each step, the soles of his shoes gathered more snow, slowing his movements further.
Behind him, an argument had erupted.
‘I’m not jumping, man!’
‘I paid you to find them. Now jump!’
‘Fuck off! I’ve had enough.’
‘For Christ’s sake!’
There was a moment’s pause and then Sam heard the crunch of a body making contact with the ground, followed by a groan. A quick glance confirmed his worst fears. The man was now about fifteen feet from him, currently lying on the ground and still cursing, but before long he’d be up and moving after them. The blood pulsed in Sam’s ears. He pushed on, his legs like lead weights. Ahead, Zahra was moving faster now, as if on more compacted ground.
There was another groan from behind and Sam turned again to see the man’s bulky frame rise from the ground. There was a skid of legs, another expletive and then he was up. The head hidden inside the hoodie appeared to lock on to Sam.
A few feet on and Sam hit the ground that Zahra was on. Snow that was compacted, less giving. He broke into a jog, putting more ground between him and the man. Up ahead, Zahra was about to round a corner, to disappear behind the nearest block. A glance over her shoulder and another flick of her head confirmed to Sam that she still wanted him to follow.
Sam ran faster, chasing Zahra round the side of the building. The light was changing fast, a bright day dawning on a white landscape. Sam could hear the man grunting behind him. Sam thanked God for the man’s bulk, which would be working against him in this sprint for survival. He turned for a second. Another mouthful of bile rose in his throat. He was wrong. The man had actually gained on them.
Zahra was now crossing open ground, heading back in the direction of the road. If they cut left in a minute or so, they’d reach the Metro station.
Sam’s lungs protested, as if he were ascending a mountain and the air were thinning. Zahra had reached a fence and crawled through a small hole at its base. Sam was at the opening seconds later, ducking down to move through. Exposed lines of wire snagged at his coat. He turned to free himself and saw, with sickening clarity, that the man was now a matter of feet from him, so close Sam could see his eyes, framed by a black ski mask under his hoodie.
Denial (Sam Keddie Thriller Book 2) Page 9
