The Manhattan Puzzle (28 page)

The door to the corridor opened without a sound. Her breath was coming fast. Maybe that guard was walking back to the elevators. She had to look.

She put her head beyond the door.

There was no one in the corridor or at the elevators. She spun around. There were two doors between her and the red-brick wall at the end of the corridor. She walked fast. The first door was locked. She put her hand on the second door. It had a fire exit sign on it. It opened soundlessly.

Through the door there was a concrete stairwell. The stairs were dusty, abandoned-looking, framed by dull green iron hand rails that spiralled into the air. She looked up. The air was musty, yellowy. It was far colder than in the corridor too. She put on her jacket and started moving up the stairs, fast.

A distant muffled bang echoed from somewhere up above. At each level there was a door. The first two doors were locked. She got the impression that there was nothing behind these doors but concrete. Her hands were shaking with the cold now. Adrenaline had kept it from her mind for the first few flights of stairs, but now she couldn’t avoid it.

It wasn’t until the third floor up, about halfway to street level, she guessed, that she found a door that would open.

It creaked loudly. Her heart thumped hard as she pushed it.

Li headed for the elevator.

As the glass doors of the reception area closed behind him he heard the exhalation of breath from the American. The man probably expected to make the biggest killing of his life in the next few days. He probably also thought he was about to get one over on a stupid Chinese billionaire, even though two of Li’s men had been in the man’s offices for the past few days

Li smiled and pressed the blue back-lit basement button. Greed, that self-inflicted slavery, was the best motivator. It kept people tied to the wheel when most rational players had long ago departed. He rubbed a hand through his hair. There were other things to worry about now.

What was it the Americans called them, flies in the ointments? What a strange expression.

He thought about what his driver had just told him, and about the call he’d received from inside BXH. Li knew well the benefits of having people on the inside. He would have been dust a long time ago if he didn’t. One call could be enough, he knew, to make the difference between him being caught red-handed or smiling in innocence, like the time the ICAC raided his office in Hong Kong.

This time he would not take any chances. The final words he’d said to the driver had made that clear.

‘I want it all over with tonight. Tell that to Lord Bidoner.’

When she opened the door, the light from the fluorescent tube above Isabel’s head spread out like a wave along the corridor in front of her. It had wooden and frosted glass partitions on each side. They extended into the darkness. She reached around the wall by the door and found a light switch.

When she turned it on a row of ancient frosted-glass circular light fittings lit up all along a panelled corridor to an elevator far in the distance. She walked towards the elevator. Was she crazy, trespassing like this? Halfway along the corridor there was a door in the partition on either side. She opened one. The entire space inside the room was taken up with brown metal filing cabinets. Each had a number, and each row of filing cabinets had a long yellow metal sign hanging above it, with more numbers on it.

It was like looking at the forgotten archives of a long-lost empire. She got a spooky tingling feeling all over. She went across the corridor. The other room was the same. But there was an area at the end of this room separated by frosty glass from the filing cabinets.

Presumably this was where anyone wanting to access files would come, back in the old days, when they were still being used. How long ago was that?

A mahogany table at the top of the room had the word ‘Supervisor’ painted elaborately on it in yellow curly writing on a chunky piece of wood, as if someone might turn up at any moment to take up the post.

She said the word – Sean – but her voice simply echoed. He wasn’t down here. She was just being stupid. She made her way back to the fire-exit stairs.

She was almost at the next floor walking up when she heard a noise from down below. She stopped.

There was someone coming.

Whoever it was, was still near the bottom, but was definitely coming up fast. The pressure inside her chest increased. She ran lightly up the next flight of stairs. She didn’t want to be found, hauled away, thrown out of the building.

Thankfully, the door on the next floor opened. The pool of light from the stairs lit up a concrete open area stretching away in front of her. It looked as if everything had been stripped out of this space. She found a bare light switch and turned the lights on.

There was a line of large sarcophagus-like food freezers along one wall at the far end, near a single elevator door. There must have been ten freezers. This was probably where they kept the food for the CEO’s executive dining suite or whatever dining facilities they had up above.

She ran across the concrete floor, her shoes slapping loudly. She almost stumbled at one point as her toe hit a ridge in the concrete, but she recovered. The noise of her feet echoed horribly around her. Would someone hear the commotion?

It was like being a runaway with dogs at her heels. Her breath was coming in gasps. She was swearing to herself.

The only light now, with the door to the stairs closed behind her, was from the string of yellow bulbs running down the centre of the room, where the corridor should have been.

The brick-lined walls on either side were half in shadow. It appeared as if she was running across a concrete-floored plain, the type of thing you might see in a computer game.

She focused on the freezers. They were all a foot or two away from the wall on the right, as if whoever had put them there had wanted a gap behind them for some reason.

The nearest freezer was bigger than the others. It was one of those oversized ones you see in restaurant-based reality-TV programs. You could have kept a small European car in it. The others were half its size. From what she could see, as she ran up to them, they all had big locks on them, silvery steel locks the size of your fist. There wouldn’t be any hiding in any of these freezers, even if she wanted to. She ran on, heading for the elevator.

The door was dented, but it had to work, didn’t it? How else would anyone get down here to access these freezers? And then she saw a dark stain, which spread out onto the concrete from under the last freezer. It must be leaking, she thought.

As she came nearer, she saw the stain was dark red. It almost looked like blood. It was shiny too, as if it had a skin on it. And it seemed to be expanding.

She expected to smell something bad, but aside from a tinny smell, there was no other odour at all.

A giant cockroach scurried out of her path. It must have been three inches long. She slowed. The elevator was a few feet away.

She hit the call button. The light came on behind it. There was a distant rattling. Every muscle in her body relaxed. She would get away.

Then she saw them: two shoes visible behind the last freezer, sticking out. And she recognised the shoes. And she knew immediately that the stain ebbing out from under the freezer didn’t mean that it was broken.

She walked towards it.

And she was floating.

Her mind was saying –
No, please, no.

And then there was a noise. A door banging.

‘Hey, stop right there.’

A man had come through the door from the stairwell at the far end of the basement. He was bald and wearing a buttoned navy-blue coat. It was the guy from Greg’s apartment block. The guy who’d come after them.

A shiver of recognition passed down her body.

‘Stop.’

Time slowed. She stared at him.

The man was running towards her, moving purposefully, head down. But still she had to look at what was behind the freezer.

There was a hammering in her brain, as if there was a crazed carpenter banging at her skull from the inside. She had to move to avoid the expanding pool of blood at the front of the freezer.

Iciness gripped at her chest. And then heat rushed through her body.

Detective Grainger was lying behind the freezer, oddly snug in the gap, her hands tight at her side. She was peaceful-looking, except for the gaping wound at her neck. It was seeping blood from a glistening slash.

And crawling over the detective’s face were cockroaches.

Bile rose in her throat. She swallowed hard.

Could this be an accident?

Stop being stupid.

The elevator pinged loudly.

She took one last look. The gold wedding ring on Detective Grainger’s hand sparkled.

She walked fast towards the open elevator. The warm flush that had passed over her was gone. All her muscles were trembling now. She was a drum that had been struck hard. Too hard.

She glanced over her shoulder. The man was near. His shouting echoed, almost unintelligibly. He had something in his hand. Something black.

It was either a taser, or a gun.

She stepped into the elevator. She had enough time.

Just.

She pressed the button.

Nothing happened. She didn’t panic. Calm had taken over. Some calculating auto-pilot that knew just what to do. And all she had to do was stand there.

‘STOP. Get out of that elevator.’

She could hear his feet slapping on the concrete. He was almost on her.

As the bald guy reached towards her his face contorted, all bulging blue veins and white eyes, as the doors closed with an uncaring glide.

Bang!

There was an explosion as he hit the metal. The doors buckled a little. They opened half an inch. A shadow loomed. She stepped back, her breath catching in her throat.

Then she was going up. And the banging was coming from below. And then it stopped. He’d probably got the doors open.

But she was gone.

She shivered violently. A torrent of anxiety was passing through her.

She bent down, could smell a lemony polish. She looked around. The inside of the elevator was a gleaming panelled-wood refuge. She leaned against the wall, crouching. It felt as if she’d just missed being hit by a truck.

She looked at the button she’d pressed. It was a middle button. Another one of the buttons had the words ‘Post Room’ beside it. Another, at the top, had the letter P beside it. Was that the penthouse?

She pressed the P, and straightened herself up. She had to look normal in case anyone else got in.

It wasn’t going to be easy. An image of Detective Grainger’s slumped body was still in her mind. A physical wave of revulsion passed through her. She shook, as if she was ill. She had to report this to Grainger’s colleagues.

Who could have done this? She gripped her arms around herself.

And what about that bald guy? Was he involved in the murder? Then she imagined him contacting other people, getting them to intercept the elevator. But at least they wouldn’t know which floor she was getting out on until the elevator stopped.

The elevator kept going up. She willed herself to calm down. Maybe he hadn’t alerted anyone. But who the hell was he?

She was leaning against the back wall, staring at the doors, waiting for them to stop and for someone to be standing there. A disturbing flashback of Detective Grainger kept playing in her mind. Over and over.

She’d have to call the detective’s colleagues, tell them what had happened, do something about her lying there. It wasn’t right. All those cockroaches. Another wave of nausea ran through her. Poor woman. Just doing her job. She closed her eyes.

Would Sean get blamed for this too?

If the NYPD had been looking for him with their guns holstered, they’d certainly hold them in their hands after they heard about what had happened to one of their own.

The elevator stopped.

The doors opened, rattling at one point as if they were bent. She held her breath. She was looking into a dark corridor. Reflected lights from another building twinkled through a window at the far end.

Her mobile beeped. She pulled it out.

There was a voice message waiting for her.

The office in Whitehall was almost empty. Only four other staff members were monitoring news sites and video feeds.

Henry Mowlam and Major Finch were watching a security camera feed from the exterior of the BXH building in New York. It was three forty-five in the morning London time and ten forty-five in the evening in New York. The crowd outside BXH was getting bigger. And people were still arriving, which, given the weather, was a small miracle.

Then the camera view changed and Lexington Avenue appeared.

‘You did leave a voice message for her, didn’t you?’ said Finch.

‘I told her to contact me urgently. I couldn’t have made it any clearer that we needed to speak to her,’ said Henry.

‘Good.’

‘Why haven’t we got internal access to the BXH building cameras?’ said Henry.

‘Ask the Prime Minister, Henry,’ said Finch.

‘I will, the next time I see him.’

‘You keep an eye on things while I brief the others.’ Finch gathered up the print-out they’d been arguing about and headed for the conference room, where two senior Bank of England executives were waiting, their heads close together, exchanging whispers.

Henry didn’t mind that they were involved. It would relieve some pressure to know that the UK financial authorities were monitoring what was happening to BXH. Tens of thousands of UK employees would be directly impacted if anything happened to the bank. Henry didn’t want to have to worry about that. He had other things to concern himself with.

The plan of the lowest level of the BXH building, and its likely significance as a location marker for a tomb of some type was what he’d been arguing with Finch about. He had convinced her not to tell anyone his pet theory yet, and he was glad of that victory.

Now he had to work out what they would do when Sean Ryan was captured, because he surely would be. The murder case was increasingly looking closed against him following his confession.