The Sleeping Dead (5 page)

He looked back into the drawer again. Mints. Loose change. Ruler. Nothing of any use.

Sellotape. It was a poor idea, but the only one he had. He picked up the roll of clear tape. Jackson started to tape the pad of sodden tissues to the man’s neck, winding it around and around. He was conscious to avoid drawing the tape across Fairls’s throat. The result looked awful, a plastic nest that wound over Fairls’s left eye and then down around his shoulder, but Jackson kept paying out the tape until he reached the cardboard roll. He didn’t know if it made any difference, but at least he felt like he was doing something.

“I’m going to get help,” he promised. Fairls didn’t twitch, and Jackson thought the man was probably beyond any knowledge of what was going on around him, but he wanted to let Fairls know he wasn’t running out on him.

“Don’t die,” he said and rushed to the door. When he looked over his shoulder, Fairls seemed to have been bound to the desk in some bizarre B-movie death scene, the clear tape already stained with blood.

Jackson ran back to reception and then out into the corridor. He passed the sign that read M
ED
W
AY
A
SSOCIATES
—it seemed hours since he had walked out from his interview and found Malcolm Laine standing beside the elevators.

The corridor was empty. Silent. Jackson looked left and right, trying to decide which was the best direction to search for help. He had been too preoccupied with thoughts of his impending interview to pay attention to the other offices. He thought maybe he had seen a solicitors’ office, and maybe an accountants’.

He turned right, for no other reason than to turn left would take him closer to the bank of elevators and the shattered glass that marked Malcolm Laine’s last moments.

So, right. Past the walls that marked MedWay’s offices and around the corner. He reached the end of the corridor without finding a door to any other offices.

He turned the corner, onto another empty corridor. As if Fairls had sent home not just everyone in Medway, but everyone who worked on the eighth floor. Halfway along the corridor was a door and a glass plaque beside it declared it to be the head office of Creative Partners.

Jackson pushed open the door. The reception was empty.

There was a pile of papers heaped on the coffee table in front of a line of chairs. The setup was too similar to MedWay and it made Jackson wonder if, beyond the translucent doors, he would find another chief executive lying across the desk with a pair of scissors clutched in his hand.

He started to back away. The desire to turn and run was almost overwhelming. But to run would mean abandoning Fairls. To Jackson, it only felt a narrow margin between abandoning him and being responsible for his death.

“Hey!” he shouted. The words echoed within the reception area.

Jackson went behind the desk and picked up the phone. He dialled 999 but at least now he wasn’t surprised when the static rose against his ear and then turned to a busy signal.

He was putting it off, he understood that. Putting off the moment when he would see what was on the other side of the door. But he thought he already had a good idea. He thought he could taste fresh blood at the back of his throat.

“Help? Anyone?” he called.

No response.

Jackson left the desk and went up to the door. He rubbed his palm against his trouser leg to rid it of sweat and the dried remains of blood from John Fairls. Even so, when he turned the handle, his palm slipped on the metal surface and the door refused to open.

Someone was screaming. Quietly. Their voice almost scratched to a whisper. Someone was screaming and someone else was sobbing and Jackson could hear the voice in his own head getting louder and more insistent and telling him that there could be no help here, that entering would just drag him into more chaos. He had to get out. Leave Creative Partners. Leave MedWay Associates. Get out of The Pinnacle. Find Donna. Yes, that was it. Meet Donna at Café Reynauld and put Laine and Fairls and Medway behind him.

He pushed open the office door. It stopped halfway, blocked.

“Hey!” Jackson called. “Hey, anyone in there?”

He heard people shuffling. He tried to push the door open farther but it was stuck and at the edge of the door he saw a jumble of chairs piled there to stop anyone from getting in.

“What’s going on?” Jackson shouted through the door. The hoarse screaming continued. The sobbing—a man, Jackson thought—became quieter and quieter until it faded to silence, although Jackson guessed that the man was probably still crying, but just so quiet now that he couldn’t hear him.

“Can…”

Something large and black cut through the air. Jackson saw it at the last possible moment, just before it slammed into the door.

“What? Did you…” But before he made any accusation, another missile followed the first. Smaller, but more accurate this time. A blue stapler clanged against the frame of the doorway. Another couple of inches and it would have connected with Jackson’s head.

“Go away.” The voice was low and harsh. Jackson thought it was probably the man he had heard sobbing a few minutes earlier.

“What’s wrong? I can help.”

“No you can’t. No one can help.”

Jackson leaned on the door, his shoulder against the wood. It creaked, nothing more. There was no chance he could open it without the help of the man on the other side.

Another missile smashed against the wall—a little farther away this time. At least the aim of whoever was throwing wasn’t improving. Jackson thought it might have been a glass bottle. It exploded into thousands of fragments.

“You can’t stay,” Jackson urged. “Let me in and I can help.”

The slice of a face appeared through the crack of the door. An eye, blind with blood, peered out.

“Just go!” the man said. His teeth were stained red, as if he had been chewing raw meat. He blinked and his eye filled with fresh blood.

Jackson realized the man was forcing the door closed.

“Are you sure?”

The man nodded. He opened his mouth and Jackson thought he was going to say something else, maybe an explanation of what was happening behind the door, but then he started to cry once more, a low, ragged sobbing. And when he wept, the first tear that ran down his cheek was bright red.

Jackson stepped back into the corridor and as soon as he left the offices of Creative Partners he felt relieved. Out in the corridor it was almost possible to believe that there was nothing wrong, that ad agency staff weren’t torturing each other behind makeshift barricades and chief executives weren’t hacking at their own necks with blunt scissors. For a moment it was possible to forget that the world had simply tipped on its side and gone mad.

He trudged back to MedWay’s offices, already knowing what he was going to find behind the door to John Fairls’s office, but needing to be sure.

John Fairls lay across his desk. The improvised bandage was still fixed to his neck, but the tissue was thick with blood. Jackson touched Fairls’s hand—it was cool. Not cold, not yet, but cooler than it had been. Cooler than it ought to be. He searched for a pulse on the man’s wrist, but he knew that the effort was halfhearted. He just had to look at the man, at the pool of blood and the way his lips had taken on a blue tinge, to know it was too late for John Fairls.

“I’m sorry,” Jackson whispered.

You should have done more.

Jackson stared at the corpse. For a moment he thought the voice had come from John Fairls’s mouth. He nodded in agreement; he should have done more. He should have moved faster. He should have found help—if not at Creative Partners, then at the next office, and if that wasn’t possible, then at the next office after that. Or after that. Or… He should not have given up. He should have screamed down the corridors and carried on searching until he found someone who could…

Could what?

Find someone who could help. Someone who could take control.

He had to get out of here. Get out of The Pinnacle.

He closed the door to John Fairls’s office and walked back through the reception area.

6

In the corridor he pulled his phone from his pocket and dialled 999. This time instead of a busy signal he received a recorded message stating,
The network is currently experiencing excessive traffic, please try later.
He tried Donna’s number and got the same message. He typed a brief text: W
HERE ARE YOU?
But when he pressed send, the circle on the screen rotated feebly for a minute before finally flashing M
ESSAGE NOT SENT
across the screen.

Eight floors down to the ground. It would take less than a minute in the elevator, but Jackson couldn’t face the thought of walking into that enclosed space.

On the other side of the door, the pastel-shaded walls were replaced with severely whitewashed breeze blocks, as if the architect had assumed anyone needing to use the stairs would be too focused on getting out to care about their environment.

Concrete steps ran down in blocks, corkscrewing to a vanishing point. Jackson leaned over the red railing and looked down, but the view churned his stomach. The way the steps marched down and down reminded him of an Escher print.

Jump.

He stumbled back from the edge, because for a moment it seemed the most reasonable suggestion he’d ever heard. It seemed like the only possible response to the situation. He could imagine climbing over the security railing and then simply letting his body drop. It was the right thing to do. It was the
only
thing to do. He wouldn’t have to deal with the image of Malcolm Laine battering his brains out against the glass window or John Fairls driving the scissors into his neck. It took courage, he understood that. The idea of standing there and simply allowing gravity to sweep away all his problems took a certain steely pragmaticism. He thought that he was strong enough to—

“Shit.”

Jackson stared down into the abyss, his ankle already wrapped around the railing even though he had no memory of returning to the edge of the stairs. For a moment he was frozen—trapped between a fear of falling and a fear of not falling. He wondered if it would hurt. He wondered how long it would hurt. Not long. Not if he did it right. There was a perfect drop down to the bottom of the stairwell and he thought that if he hit the ground fast enough and hard enough, he wouldn’t feel anything.

He bit the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. The pain was bright and perfect.

For an instant the world was still. No more voices. No more screaming from behind closed doors. No more images of bloody smears upon clear glass. Stillness. Silence. Sanctuary.

Jackson wanted to exist only in that moment. To remain caught in the one perfect second when he didn’t have to worry about what had happened or what was going to happen next. When all he had was a single, perfect now.

He heard his own ragged breathing reflected off the breeze block walls. He felt the thump of his heart and the thrum of his pulse in his throat, feathering like a tiny bird. He could taste the sharp tang of fresh copper at the back of his throat.

He backed away from the railing, unwinding his fingers from the tight grip they had on the metal. He shuffled until he had his back to the walls, shoulders pushed tight to the hard surface, as if he was afraid a gust of wind might pick him up and carry him over the edge.

He crouched down and covered his ears with his hands. The voices whispered to him and he concentrated on ignoring them.

He began to walk down the stairs, trailing his fingers along the wall, as if he needed the physical contact to reassure him that he was safe. He understood that he needed to stay away from that dull red railing and the gap on the other side that spiraled down to the bottom of the building.

Jackson found himself standing with his thighs pressed up against the railing, staring down into the abyss once more. He wasn’t sure if he could hear an actual voice telling him to climb over the railing, or if it was more subtle than that—a sensation. An urge. But he could feel it thrumming through his nerves.

He ran to the wall before the lure of the drop became impossible to resist.

“What’s happening?” he whispered. The stairwell picked up his words and echoed them back to him. Twisted them. Mocked him. Now he
was
hearing voices. He smiled at the observation. And then laughed—a hard bark: “Ha! Ha!” with no humor in it. The stairwell returned the sound.

He ran down the next flight of stairs, almost tripping over his own feet. His hands slapped against the wall and he bent his head for a moment to catch his breath before throwing himself down the next flight. He needed to get to the ground quickly, to escape the temptation of the long drop from the stairwell.

At the bottom of the next flight of stairs he came across a door similar to the one through which he had entered. Black paint showed the number seven.