Meaner Things (5 page)

5.

STROKE OF LUCK

Ten
years
ago

I awoke to the blare of the alarm and the worst headache I’d ever experienced. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes since I’d fallen or the security guards would have been on top of me by now. My first thoughts were of Emma, and what the hell had happened. Angry, confused, I shook my head to clear it and scrambled to my feet.

Searing pain shot through my ankle and I immediately lost my balance. My scream as I went down was drowned by the hellish thrumming of the alarm.

I knew I only had another minute or two at most. Since I couldn’t walk I crawled, dragging the leg with the busted ankle and useless foot behind me. My right shoulder still bled and ached where the Klein bolt cutters had hurtled down on it, so I shuffled across the floor on my left side, good arm extended. I searched among the tools strewn across the floor, found the screwdriver I was looking for, and inched my way across the room towards the red ‘Exit’ sign on the far wall. The doorway was typical warehouse variety: plain brown double doors, three hinges on either side, handle in the middle. Locked of course.

But, as I knew from my stint here last summer, it was not much of a lock. The outside doors were padlocked, barred and alarmed, but inside ones were opened and shut too often for that degree of security. It was assumed that anyone inside the building was authorised to be there, so internal precautions were perfunctory.

I propped myself against one of the doors and reached up. The gap between the two doors was tight but at last I got the screwdriver in, forced it between the door handle and the faceplate, and pulled it sideways with all the strength I had. The wood cracked slightly but the lock held firm.

I slumped back down. By now, the second hand on the clock in my head was coming down on me like an executioner’s axe. If I was lucky, I might have half a minute left to get out of here.

Sheer desperation gave me a reserve of strength I didn’t know I had. I heaved myself up from the floor, ignoring the torment shooting from my ankle up my leg and through my body. The pain was indescribable, but through it all I was still aware of precious seconds ticking away.

I struggled to my feet, leaned against the door and pushed the screwdriver in further. An animal growl escaped my clenched teeth as I wrenched the tool sideways again and again with all my might.

With the full weight of my body behind each lunge, the wood soon splintered. One last two-handed thrust and the lock came apart. I dropped the screwdriver and swung myself out the door.

*

I still couldn’t move my foot beneath the damaged ankle and had to hop along, sidling against the wall to keep myself from falling over. Sweat poured into my eyes and I wiped it away angrily as I looked around me. My knowledge of the building could save me now and I racked my brains to remember details of the building’s layout.

There was a goods elevator opposite, with green floor lights displayed on a brass plate beside it. As I looked, the light changed from third floor to fourth. I was on fifth. That meant one of the building’s two security guards was working his way up, searching systematically, while staying in radio contact with the other guard below. The fourth floor was largely offices, which would take him a while to search properly. If I could just get away from here, I had a chance.

Apart from the elevator there were two stairwells, the central staircase that everyone used and a narrow back stairs that served as a fire escape. The second guard would probably be posted at the bottom of the main staircase, waiting for anyone flushed out by his colleague on higher floors. With government cutbacks, two out-sourced security guards were all this old building could afford.

The back stairs were my only option. I hobbled down the corridor as fast as I could and stopped to catch my breath in front of what looked like a cleaner’s closet but was actually the entrance to the back stairs. I pushed the door open and went in.

The stairs were bare wood and so twisty that they were never used for moving stored materials. I must have made quite a clatter going down the first flight, but the alarm hid the sounds of my hopping and sliding, my bad leg clunking against each step and my sweating body leaning heavily against the creaking handrail.

I was tempted to continue the same way down the next short flight but I knew there was a security guard somewhere on the fourth floor and, even with the alarm, he might hear me if I made too much noise. Slowing down, I edged past the door to the fourth floor, then speeded up again and quickly worked my way down. The continuous movement gave me less time to dwell on the throbbing pain in my ankle.

On the ground floor I had a decision to make. Front or back? The front was where the main staircase came down, near the glass-panelled booth in the foyer in which the security guards normally sat. The second guard would be stalking around there somewhere, shouting into his walkie-talkie to keep in contact with his mate on the higher floors. In my present condition, my chances of getting past the guard in the foyer were slim to zero.

Even if I could get past him, the front doors led out on to a busy main street. There probably wouldn’t be any pedestrians around at this time of night, but there would be plenty of automobile traffic. The back exit opened on to a much quieter side street. It was my best hope.

I waddled down the back hallway and peered out of a small window next to the big roll-up door. There was one more guard on the premises, an outside one who patrolled the back yard area where trucks came to make deliveries. As far as I knew, he never came into the building, his hut being out near the yard gate. I couldn’t see any sign of him.

I hadn’t time for niceties, I had to get out. The cops might be slow finishing their coffee and donuts but they wouldn’t take forever. There was a side-door next to the roll-up and a big fire extinguisher set into an alcove in the wall near to it. I pulled out the extinguisher and pounded it against the door lock. It gave way immediately and the door burst open. I thanked my lucky stars that the alarm was still drowning out the racket I was making.

Ignoring my busted ankle, I charged out into the yard and made for the back gate. When I got to the security hut its door opened and a grim face under a peaked cap looked out. Instinctively I reached out to push him away from me. My fingers must have poked into his eyes as his hands shot up to his face and he ducked back inside.

Depending on what the guard did next, I reckoned I had five or ten seconds to get away. I took another step forward, grabbed the wire mesh gate and pulled.

It was chained and padlocked.

*

I felt like a balloon that had just been pricked with a pin. My ankle was screaming at me for attention, but all I could do was stand still and take the weight off it. Any second now the guard would reappear with God-knows-what weapon in his eager hands. I imagined a baseball bat cracking my skull. To get so far and now be beaten by a locked gate . . .

Physically I was numbed, but my mind was still in overdrive. Big blue recycle bins at least a metre tall stood right next to the guard’s hut. I grabbed one with both arms and yanked it across the door of the hut, pushing it tight against it. I could barely move the thing but sheer terror gave me the strength of the damned.

I seized hold of another bin – bizarrely my brain had time to register the ‘Flattened Cardboard Only’ sign on the front of it – and hauled it over to the gate. Now I somehow had to get on top of it. I managed to get my good foot into the long horizontal slot three quarters of the way up, grabbed a handle at the top edge, and swung myself onto the lid.

The gate was still about a foot higher but fortunately the top of it was not barb-wired. I stood up, shaky and weak, and was about to jump over when a hand grabbed my leg and I crashed back down onto the top of the bin. As I came down my foot shot out behind me and made contact with what felt like someone’s face. In two seconds I was up again and jumped over the gate without giving myself time to think about it.

I landed on my good foot, which promptly slipped from under me, but I fell on my pain-free side and was able to get up quickly. I was far from safe yet. A streetlight almost directly above me illuminated the whole area I was standing in. To get away from it I hobbled across the road toward the relative darkness on the other side.

A police car, its red and blue strobe light flashing, pulled up at the end of the street.

*

If they saw me, I was finished. I got across the street and hobbled as quickly as I could in the opposite direction to the police car, not daring to look back. I still had to pass several more buildings before I’d reach the end of the block. Worse still, there was another streetlight up ahead that I had to pass directly under. I’d never make it.

I passed another structure, an old brownstone office building, saw an alleyway to my left and ducked into it. High walls rose up on both sides and the darkness here was nearly total. I was sweating like a pig and yearned to be able to sit down, stretch out the leg, rest and recover. But I pushed myself on, deep into the alley, my shoes squelching through mud or God knows what.

I tripped on something that felt like a brick, stumbled forward and, through sheer exhaustion, lost my balance completely. My forehead thumped against a metal railing and I dropped like a stone.

I lay there for several minutes, stunned and groggy, my forehead thrumming like an engine. When my head cleared a bit I got on my knees, leaned to one side and vomited. I put a grubby hand to my forehead and winced; when I took the hand away it was wet and sticky with blood that looked black in the dim light.

The blare of the warehouse alarm had diminished as I’d got further away from it and now it stopped completely. The silence was stunning after so much noise and I almost thought I’d lost my hearing. Then a car engine started up and grew steadily louder.

The police vehicle slowed and stopped in front of the alleyway entrance. I could make out ‘POL’ in big blue letters on the side. The red and blue lights on top were now switched off. Two cops got out.

I could barely walk and had no idea what lay further down the alley or even if it was a dead end. If I tried to get away I would blunder into more obstacles and the racket would attract these cops like flies to a turd. I had to find a hiding place. Real fast.

I hauled myself to my feet and felt around me with my arms. They bashed against the metal railing I’d head-butted and I discovered it was a handrail for a set of concrete steps leading up to the back entrance of a building. I checked the door and found it was locked. No surprise there.

A glance back told me that the two cops now had flashlights and were walking across the sidewalk to the alley. I moved to the right, out of the way of the handrail, and felt my way along the opposite wall. My hand brushed against an old-style round garbage bin and I almost knocked its lid off, but grabbed it just in time before it clattered to the ground.

I kept going and found a big rectangular bin, the sort with a hinged lid on top. The cops were at the front of the alley and were training their flashlights into it. I felt around the lid of the bin, discovered it wasn’t padlocked, and raised it a little. A revolting stench of rotten vegetables and used cat litter made me gag. Either some of the garbage bags had burst or a lot of lose stuff had been tossed in on top of them.

My two pursuers were in the alley now, each with a flashlight in one hand, the other resting on the butt of his side-arm. In a minute or two they’d be onto me. I desperately needed a hiding place and had no time to be fussy.

The lid of the bin was plastic, not metal. Lightweight and silent to open. I raised it as high as I could and swung myself up and in. Fortunately it was three-quarters full and I didn’t have far to fall. Instead, I flopped quietly down into a squelchy mass of garbage and eased the lid back down so that it made no noise.

I clenched my mouth tight shut and breathed through my nose. The putrid stench was almost unbearable and I could feel small, hard things in gritty gravel under my hands. My head seemed to be near something only slightly less repulsive – the rotting vegetables my nose had detected earlier.

It was foul, but it was preferable to the alternative. I sank a little deeper, tried to reduce my breathing to absolute minimum, and prayed that the cops wouldn’t open the bin and look inside it.

*

I couldn’t hear much with the lid closed tight and didn’t dare raise it even a fraction, in case one of the cops happened to be directing his flashlight in my direction. For the first time I realised how utterly helpless I now was. My fate was out of my hands. I’d made my stinking bed and had to lie in it.

Minutes dragged on and I still heard nothing. I desperately wanted to get out of the filthy garbage but fought back the urge and made myself stay put.

It was the right decision.

One of them started whistling. I took this as a good sign, indicating that they’d looked around the alley and decided there was no-one there. They were more relaxed now, might even have taken their hands off their weapons. So I imagined it.

Then the round lid I’d almost knocked over earlier tumbled off its bin and fell on the ground, making a ‘cymbals clashing’ sound. One of the cops hadn’t been as careful as me. That meant he was very close, and probably looking straight at the big bin I was lying in right now.