MONOLITH (3 page)

Even if there had been some kind of warning of what was going to happen neither man would have been able to prevent it.

In the shaft, Bishop was aware of a rush of cold air but that was all.

He was half way between the shaft and the corridor when the full weight and force of the falling lift hit him.

There was no pain as it cut through him, pulverising his body and sending sprays of blood and viscera in all directions as if it had been fired from some macabre garden sprinkler. With such force and weight on the body even bone was shattered with consummate ease, the sound of the cracking quickly eclipsed by the high pitched scream of the lift as it rushed down the shaft and plummeted towards the ground.

Failsafe devices mounted in the rails on either side of it did nothing to stop the descent and the speed was so incredible that sparks flew from the metal as the lift fell.

Inside the car Robert Wilkinson felt the initial drop and in that split second he knew that his companion was dead unless he’d managed to pull himself clear of the shaft in time.

That thought occurred to him briefly and then his mind focussed on what was to be his own fate.

He had no idea how fast the lift was falling but twenty-four storeys would be negotiated he guessed in a little under ten seconds.

Wilkinson shot out a hand and hit the emergency button but he knew it was a futile gesture and he had performed it purely through instinct. The miniscule shred of hope that he could stop the lift before it slammed into the concrete below drove him to make that movement.

He wanted to scream for help but knew that too would be useless. Nothing that he could do would stop the passage of the falling lift. He looked up and then down not really knowing why. Perhaps some twisted blackly humorous part of his mind thought that he could jump seconds before the fatal impact. That was what happened in films or comedy shows wasn’t it? Just before the lift hit the bottom of the shaft you were supposed to jump and the collision would have no effect.

It was one more shred of hope to cling to he supposed as he pressed himself back into one corner of the lift, his arms outstretched on either side of him.

He spoke the name of his partner just once. He said her name under his breath through lips that were already paper dry with terror. He wished he was with her now not here in this metal coffin that was about to slam into the ground doing Christ knew how many miles an hour. He wanted to hold her again and tell her that he loved her. He wanted to hold his twin girls and hear their laughter and to hear them tell him that they loved him. He tried to picture all of his family together in his mind, held there like some kind of mental snapshot. All of these thoughts crowded into his consciousness as the lift hurtled ever nearer to the ground.

He wondered why his past life didn’t flash before his eyes.

He was shaking madly now, entering the early stages of shock at the realisation of what was to happen to him.

You’re going to die.

He closed his eyes more tightly and tried to prevent himself from screaming. Not that it really mattered any more.

His final thought was simple.

Please don’t let it hurt.

The lift had increased its speed to just over ninety miles an hour by the time it smashed into the concrete at the base of the shaft.

ISOLATION

LONDON; JUNE 1933

No one but the old man ever entered the cellar.

The two people who sometimes helped him out in the shop had no need to descend into the subterranean room; everything they needed to perform their duties was on the ground floor.

For the most part he was alone in the shop anyway, just as he was alone in the small flat above the business so he had no need to explain why he was the only one allowed to go into the cellar. Not that anyone would have been in any great hurry to explore the large dark underground area anyway, he reasoned.

It was damp down there and the smell was sometimes overpowering. A dank musty odour of wet stonework and mould and occasionally of sewage. One of the waste pipes in the street had ruptured a while ago and residents of the area were still waiting for it to be fixed. Exactly how much human waste was leaking into the cellars of his and other houses in the vicinity no one knew but the authorities seemed content to allow the festering filth to keep voiding from the damaged conduit. The old man didn’t know if other residents had the same problem because he rarely spoke to anyone who lived near him.

But the smell didn’t bother him, just as the darkness didn’t. When he made his sorties down in to the subterranean room he carried just one lamp with him, the sickly yellow light giving him enough illumination for what he needed to do. He had heard movement down there and he was sure there were rats or mice, possibly both, either living down there or using the cellar as some kind of temporary shelter. There were stories that some of these creatures grew to unnatural sizes and he had actually seen one that he would have sworn was close to a foot long including its bald, scabrous tail but even the thought of sharing the room with rodent and vermin didn’t bother him and they never came near him when he was down there, frightened off by the glow of his oil lamp.

And then there were the spiders. Webs so thick they looked like muslin were spun all over the ceiling of the cellar, particularly thick at the four corners where it seemed such was their density they were actually holding up the brickwork in places. The old man wondered how big spiders would have to be to create webs of such thickness and complexity. He also wondered what they fed on because there couldn’t possibly be enough flies or other insects down there to satisfy the appetites of arachnids of such obviously large size. Perhaps he thought, smiling, they ate the mice.

The smell, the rats, the mice and the spiders, all combined to make the cellar a forbidding place to anyone but the old man who never seemed to bother he was sharing it with so many other creatures.

The darkness seemed to welcome him, sliding a black conspiratorial arm around his stooped shoulders every time he entered the cellar and the old man liked that feeling.

When he was down there he would occasionally hear people on the street above passing and sometimes he heard them when they spoke but most of the time he paid them little heed. What they had to say didn’t interest him. When he was in the cellar he had only one thing on his mind.

Now he stood outside the cellar door and selected the large key he needed to unfasten the padlock that helped to make the underground room so secure. A padlock and two deadbolts as well as the lock on the door itself all combined to make access to anyone other than the key holder impossible.

One of the people who sometimes worked for him had asked him once what he kept down there but the old man had merely smiled and waved away the question and it had not been raised again.

He removed the padlock, unlocked the heavy door and slipped the two deadbolts, the sound echoing in the silence. He turned up the lamp he was holding, held it higher above his head and pulled open the cellar door. It took some strength to do it but the old man managed without a problem.

The hinges needed oiling and squealed in protestation as he pulled the door open wide enough to allow him access. He stood at the top of the flight of stone steps for a moment, the odour filling his nostrils then he closed the door behind him again, locked it from the inside this time and made his way down the stairs.

As ever the blackness welcomed him.

And it wasn’t the only thing that welcomed him.

Sirens in the London night were nothing unusual Jessica Anderson was thinking as she made her way past two middle aged men standing in the doorway of the pub in St. Martin’s Lane.

The emergency signal was like a soundtrack for some parts of the city after dark.

One of the men leered openly at her and nodded. His friend just grunted into his drink. Jess forced her way out from the noisy confines of the building and onto the street where she almost collided with some tourists who were standing immobile outside the entrance consulting a map and babbling on in what she thought was a Scandinavian accent. Why did people stand in doorways while they figured out how lost they were? Why did they suddenly stop dead while wandering along pavements? Jess ignored the urge to ‘accidentally’ barge into them as she made her escape from the pub.

She had barely stepped outside and reached for her cigarettes when her mobile began to ring.

Muttering irritably and with an unlit Silk Cut still stuck between her lips Jess dug in her pocket for the phone and looked at it.

She smiled when she saw the caller i.d. was showing Spike.

‘Hey, you,’ she said, wedging the phone between her shoulder and ear while she tried to light the cigarette with a disposable lighter she had in the bottom of her handbag. ‘What have you got?’

The Scandinavians turned and glanced at her as if she was speaking to them, perhaps puzzled by the Irish lilt to her accent. For a second they thought about asking her directions then thankfully moved on. Jess returned her attention to the phone call.

‘Two ambulances, two cop cars and a fire engine heading for the Crystal Tower,’ the voice at the other end of the line told her.

‘Why?’ Jess enquired. ‘What’s happening?’

‘A nine, nine, nine call came in about thirty seconds ago from some cleaner at the building reporting an accident. It sounds pretty serious, could be fatalities. I heard the cop cars responding on their radio.’

‘Thanks, Spike. Anything else happening I might be interested in?’

‘It’s pretty quiet tonight so far. A couple of car smashes in the West End and a break-in at one of the riverside suites at the Savoy. One of the occupants was attacked when he disturbed the thief. Nothing else for you. Not much blood and guts around tonight.’ He paused to sneeze loudly.

‘Bless you,’ Jess smiled.

‘How many accidents is that since they started building the Crystal Tower?’

‘Too many. I think they’re well into very high double figures now. I’ll check it out. Thanks again.’

‘You owe me lunch.’

‘Yeah, me and everyone else you’ve called with the same information.’

She smiled and snapped the phone shut cutting him off.

As she stuffed it back into her pocket she moved nearer to the roadside shooting out a hand to attract the attention of an approaching taxi. As it swung into the kerb a man in his late twenties ran in front of her and put his hand on the door handle. He turned and smiled at her.

‘You don’t mind do you, love,’ he said. ‘But this is an emergency.’

‘I do mind actually,’ she snapped. ‘I saw it first.’

The grin dropped from the man’s face and he backed off as Jess barged past him and clambered into the back of the taxi.

‘Sorry,’ he said, sarcastically. ‘Fucking slag. What’s wrong with you, you miserable bitch is it the time of the month?’

Jess raised the middle finger of her right hand towards him as the taxi pulled out into traffic.

‘Prick,’ she murmured under her breath.

The driver glanced over his shoulder at her.

‘Can you take me to the Crystal Tower please?’ she asked, frowning as she noticed the No Smoking sign on the glass partition between herself and the driver. She pushed the cigarette back into the packet and settled back into the seat as the driver guided the cab through the traffic.

The journey took less than twenty minutes.

‘I thought this place didn’t open for another few months,’ the taxi driver said as he looked for a convenient place to drop Jess off. He glanced ahead towards the looming edifice of the Crystal Tower which speared upwards into the night sky.

‘It doesn’t,’ Jess told him, digging into her bag for some money to pay him. ‘But I’ve got some work to do here.’

‘What do you do?’ the driver wanted to know.

‘I’m a photographer,’ she told him.

She glanced at the meter, saw how much the fare was and then clambered out pushing a twenty at the driver before he could announce how much she owed him or make any enquiries about her profession. She didn’t wait for him to give her the two pounds change, merely thanked him and hurried across to the pavement where she strode towards the building she sought.

There were several emergency vehicles parked outside all with their flashing blue lights now turning silently. Using the Leica D-Lux she always carried on her she pulled the camera from her jacket pocket and took some shots of the outside of the tower then she quickly selected a Canon SD790 which she took from her handbag as she approached the main entrance of the building. There were two policemen outside in what appeared to be deep conversation with a couple of paramedics.

Jess noticed a small white van parked a hundred yards from the building with SKY TELEVISION OUTSIDE BROADCAST stencilled on its side.

Spike had called others apart from her she thought as she drew nearer to the cluster of uniformed figures barring the way into the Crystal Tower.

She hesitated and watched the little group for a moment, noticing that a small gathering of passers-by, obviously attracted by the arrival of so many emergency vehicles in such a short space of time, had begun to collect close to the high temporary fence that surrounded the approaches to the Crystal Tower.

She took some pictures of the group just for the hell of it and then noticed with delight that the two policemen were moving away from the building entrance, one of them towards this steadily growing throng and the other in the direction of a nearby police car. The paramedics had disappeared back inside the Crystal Tower so, for the time being the entrance was unguarded.

Jess took her chance.

She slipped through the main door and into the spacious lobby of the building the sound of her heels echoing on the cold stone floor. She was struck immediately by the sounds coming from her left. She could hear voices and what sounded like the mechanical grinding of machinery. With one hand on her camera she headed towards the sounds, moving up a small flight of steps and around a corner until she found the source of the noises.

There were several men in uniform, some of them firemen others paramedics and policemen. She could also see others dressed in dark blue overalls and even a couple of men in expensive looking suits who seemed to be directing operations like soldier ants amid a swarm of workers in a freshly disturbed nest. All of these men were moving about amongst each other talking and pointing agitatedly in the direction of what Jess swiftly realised was a bank of lifts. She took several shots of the organised chaos around the lift doors then moved closer, trying to see through the melee of uniforms.

It was from one of those shafts that smoke was billowing.

Jess took more pictures.

‘Who are you?’

The voice came from behind her and she spun around to see a tall man with rimless glasses and pinched features standing before her. He was wearing a charcoal grey suit that fitted him perfectly but looked less than impressive because of the flecks of dandruff on the shoulders.

‘How you get in here?’ the man persisted and Jess detected more than a hint of an accent. Eastern European she guessed.

‘I’m with the Health and Safety Department,’ she lied effortlessly. ‘We heard about the accident and they sent me down here to get some pictures.’

The man looked at her blankly for a moment then shook his head.

‘Where is identification?’ he said, sharply.

‘I left it in my car,’ she told him, shrugging. ‘I only need to take a few more pictures and I’ll be out of your hair.’

The man looked puzzled.

‘How many were injured?’ Jess went on, nodding towards the lift shafts. ‘I was told four.’

‘Two killed,’ the man said, frowning. ‘Not four.’

‘Do you know their names?’

‘Identification,’ the man snapped. ‘Now.’

Jess knew she was on a loser now.

‘I’ll go back to my car and get it,’ she told him, stepping away but turning one last time towards the lift shaft from which the smoke was still rising.

As she did she saw two paramedics emerging carrying a stretcher. Exactly what was on it she couldn’t be sure but, from where she was standing it looked like a mound of raw meat wrapped in dark material.

Jess pointed the camera in that direction and fired off several shots.

It was then that the man in the charcoal suit grabbed her by the shoulder.