The Stone Gallows (26 page)

She sat upright, pushing her knees against the mattress so that her back was right against the wall. Her voice was full of fear. ‘Why's it on fire?'

‘I don't know! I didn't ask!'

‘What do you mean, there's no way out?'

This time, I ignored her, looking around frantically for my mobile phone. Then I remembered: it was in the pocket of my jeans.

Which were crumpled up at the foot of the couch.

In the fucking living room.

Mum always told me to put my clothes tidily on a chair in my bedroom. Now was hardly the ideal time to wish that I had listened to her.

‘Liz, you got your phone nearby?'

She nodded. ‘It's in my flat.'

Crisis always brings out my sarcastic side. ‘So it's within arm's length, then, is it?'

She shook her head, eyes wide.

I bounced over to the window. Nobody around. All I saw were parked cars, pools of yellow light from the few working streetlights. A glimpse of a fox as it crossed the road. I grabbed the sill, tried to force it upward. The damn thing was painted shut. I punched the glass as hard as I could. My fist bounced off, pain shooting up my arm. I stepped back, did a half-arsed scissor kick, my heel thudding as it impacted the glass. A splintering crack appeared. I repeated the move and the window caved in, a chunk of glass opening a gash in my ankle as it fell. I wrapped my hand in a T-shirt, using it to knock the remaining pieces of glass out of the window frame, the sudden chill of the night air on my chest. ‘Help! Help us! We're on fire!'

Somewhere, a dog barked.

‘Please! Help! Call the fire brigade!'

Below me, there was the sound of a door opening. A hunched, hooded figure scurried off into the night. I screamed, but it didn't look up. The arsonist. It was unlikely they would be calling emergency services. I watched as the figure ran across the road and dived into a car. Headlights flickered into life. Tyres screamed as it peeled away from the kerb. The car was low and sleek.

Jason Campbell. The cunt. If I lived through this, then he wouldn't.

Liz howled. ‘Cam! For God's sake!'

I turned and looked at the door. Despite all the bedding I had piled up at the base, the first tendrils of smoke were beginning to creep through and rise like dark, hungry fingers. I could hear the fire, roaring its way through my home like a beast. It was easy to imagine the flames establishing base camp in the hallway before spreading like a virus into the other rooms, destroying everything before them in a furious conflagration of heat and energy. Something – the television, a light bulb, it didn't matter – exploded with a tinkling smash and Liz screamed, a hand raised to her mouth.

I looked to the window again. ‘We're going to have to jump.'

‘Are you crazy? I'm scared of heights.'

‘Yeah, well, I'm scared of dying.'

A few lights had gone on in the flats on the opposite side of the road. I caught sight of somebody leaning out of their window, speaking urgently into a telephone. Although it was always possible that they were just letting their pals know about all the excitement, I decided to hope for the best and assume that they were calling emergency services.

The nearest fire station was just over a mile away. Say sixty seconds for the call to be patched through, and another one hundred and twenty seconds for the firemen to suit up, figure out where the hell they were going, and get on board their fire engine. Then maybe another ninety seconds to get here – and that was an extremely generous projection. The streets round me were narrow, lined with parked cars. And besides, sometimes they had to wait for a police escort because the local kids would stone them to pieces.

Of course, that was assuming that they weren't already attending another call-out.

All in all, the earliest possible time I could expect to see a fire engine was a hopelessly optimistic four and a half minutes.

My toaster was set for less. If we jumped, we would die. If we stayed, we would die slowly.

I had a limited selection of bedclothes. Three sheets, three quilt covers. One set for use, the rest in storage. I threw open the wardrobe next to the bed and started pawing my way through the contents of the top shelf, tossing items over my shoulder in my search.

‘What are you doing?' Liz screamed at me.

‘We need to make a rope.'

‘Out of what? Bermuda Shorts?'

‘There's sheets in here. And quilt covers.'

‘They won't be strong enough!'

She was probably right. Unfortunately, it was the only idea I had, and I was in no mood to debate. If she had a better plan, she was free to raise it at any time in the next four and a half minutes.

From the direction of the living room came another explosion that was as loud as a gunshot. Dimly, I wondered if it was the television that I had just finished paying for. I nearly screamed in triumph as I found the spare bedclothes tucked all the way at the back of the wardrobe. I swept them all onto the floor and bent down, my hands flying as I remembered my old cub-scout lessons in how to tie a reef knot, right over left and left over right.

A standard double-sheet is about six foot long by about six foot wide, totalling a diagonal length of about eight feet in total. By tying them corner to opposite corner, I was able to maximise the available length. Even so, I still lost about one foot of each sheet or quilt-cover for each knot, meaning that the total usable length of rope I got was about six feet per item of bedclothing. I needed more length, as much as I possibly could. I grabbed the quilt that had been on the bed from where I had used it to block the crack at the base of the door, stripping it of its cover. I finished by dragging the sheet off the bed.

In total, it took me about ninety seconds to tie all six items together.

Thirty-six feet – maybe. Maybe my math was out and my makeshift rope would come to an abrupt halt a spine-breaking distance from the ground.

We were on the second floor.

I wondered how high that was.

Decided it didn't matter.

I had to make myself shout over the roar of the flames. ‘Liz! I'm going to lower you down.'

She shook her head mutely.

The smoke was getting worse. When I had lifted the quilt to strip the cover, I must have missed sealing the crack when I put it back. My eyes were stinging, my throat burning. ‘Liz! Look at the door!'

Terrified, she raised her eyes. The smoke was pouring in, billowing from underneath the quilt, somehow managing to squeeze through the keyhole. I watched in horror as the paint on the door itself started to blister.

‘Liz, it's not going to hold. We'll die if we stay here.' I bent down, taking hold of her arm, drawing her to her feet, trying to make my hold on her firm enough to reassure but not tight enough to frighten.

‘Liz, you have to do this.'

‘Just leave me!'

‘You know I can't do that.'

‘You'll drop me.'

I held a hand up to her cheek and stroked it, marvelling that even now, she looked beautiful. ‘Liz, I can't do that, either. I won't. I promise.'

‘You promise?'

I kissed her, hard, briefly. ‘I promise.'

Her eyes searched my face one last time, questioning me, looking for an answer that would not be found until she was safe – or dead.

‘You better not.'

‘Thatta girl.' I pushed her to the window, watched as she swung first one leg and then the other over the sill, until she was sitting with both feet dangling into the cold night air. She turned to look at me over her shoulder. ‘What do I do?'

‘Put your hands over your head.' I demonstrated. ‘Like that.'

She did as she was told. I placed the end of the rope in her right hand. She rotated her wrist, wrapping the sheet around it, taking more of the length than I cared for. I said nothing; this would either work or it wouldn't. She grabbed the section of rope above her right wrist with her left hand. ‘What now?'

‘I'm holding it. Just let your bottom slide over the edge and I'll catch you.'

‘You're kidding.'

‘I'm strong.'

‘I can't do it.'

‘Please, Liz. Do it for me. I promise, I won't drop you.'

‘Please don't make me do this,' she babbled, at the stage of panic where she would say anything. ‘Just don't make me do this. I'll do anything else you want. I love you.'

Time was running short.

I raised my foot, placed it against the small of her back, and pushed her out of the window.

9.3.

Of all the times to say those words. If we survived this, we needed to have a talk.

9.4.

She only fell about two feet before the slack ran out in my makeshift rope, but even then she gained sufficient momentum to almost pull me out of the window after her. I was wrenched forward, my waist bouncing off the window frame, my arms almost dragged out of their sockets by the sudden weight. I could hear her screaming, and when I tilted my neck forward, I saw her dangling below me, arms raised above her head, holding on for dear life. Underneath her was the ground, incredibly hard and a hell of a long way down. Something flashed in my peripheral vision and I turned my head. Orange flames were shooting from the window of my kitchen. I decided there and then to wave goodbye to my security deposit.

‘Get me down!' Liz screamed.

She was right. I had to stop daydreaming (or, indeed, nightmaring) and get busy. I started to lower the rope, hand over hand, making sure that I had a good fistful of material each time. Before long, my shoulders started to burn and my back ache. At a guess, Liz weighed between one-twenty and one-forty pounds, significantly heavier than anything I usually lifted. My exercise routine consisted of fast reps with no more than thirty kilos on the bar; I was strong, but not prepared for this. We both hung on for grim death as I inched her down the front of the building. Every time she swung close enough, she kicked out with her feet, doing her best to stop herself from being scraped along the sandstone. Grunting with exertion, I closed my eyes and put my mind to the task, counting off each handful as it passed.

Time seemed to slow, the world becoming nothing but sensation; the pain in my hands and arms, the heat on my back, the fear in my heart.

My eyes stung and my lungs felt as if they had been filled with acid.

And then I dropped her.

I don't know what happened. Perhaps my grip on the sheets wasn't as tight as I thought. Perhaps my hand spasmed and relaxed its hold.

Perhaps I wasn't as strong as I thought I was, or I lost concentration.

All I knew was that suddenly the sheets started running loose through my fingers and she was falling. She didn't scream but howl, like a hunted animal who almost makes it to freedom only to have it snatched away at the very last moment. I think I screamed as well, frantically trying to catch hold of the makeshift rope as it whipped through my fingers. I managed to grasp it but couldn't hold on, my palms and fingers burning as the cotton dragged between them. I willed myself to dig deeper, to ignore the pain and reach inside to find the reserve of strength that heroes talk about but real people rarely discover.

And then. . . nothing.

The tension on the rope was gone. So was the screaming.

I opened my eyes. Liz lay on the ground in a crumpled heap.

9.5.

She had been less than halfway down when she fell. Maybe twenty-five feet in all. She had probably landed on her feet, the bones of her lower body accordioning upwards like a badly shuffled deck of cards, multiple fractures to the lower back, pelvis and hips, everything below the knee a splintered mess of fragmented bone.

Wheelchair case. For life. Probably still able to feel pain and move her arms. If she was lucky, she would be able to change her colostomy bag unaided.

Of course, she might have twisted as she fell, landing on her back, or her skull. On her back, she might still survive, but the nerves of the spinal cord wouldn't. And the skull?

It didn't bear thinking about, but I thought about it anyway.

9.6

I had to get down there. I had to know how badly she was hurt.

My fears about the rope being too short had proved groundless; in the end, it had been just long enough. What I had badly under-estimated was my strength. I thought that just because I could do two hundred forearm curls with a twenty kilo dumbbell, I was qualified to pretend I was Fireman Sam.

The paint on the inside of the door was gone, melted by the heat on the opposite side, replaced by a blackened, bubbled surface of carbon. One of the panels finally collapsed in on itself. The fresh oxygen caused a huge gout of flame to shoot twelve feet across the room before retreating; I felt my eyebrows singe and the hairs in my nostrils crisp. The fire itself sounded like a terrible, ravening beast; something that had been locked away in Dante's seventh level of hell, suddenly given free reign to wreak havoc upon earth. As I watched, it poured itself through the inside of the door, spreading up to the ceiling.

I tried to remember everything I knew about pyrotechnics. It wasn't much; my childhood may have been spent setting fire to anything and everything I could get my hands on, but I had been far too busy riding my BMX through the flames to stop and look at the mechanics of it. As a copper, I had attended my fair share of house fires, but I usually arrived after the fact, when all that was left was a pile of smoking rubble and a few black-faced survivors, who usually weren't in the mood to talk about it, and a stumbling, shambling drunk who was disappointed that his chips weren't ready.

One thing I did remember was the fire triangle. To burn, a fire needs three elements; oxygen, fuel, and heat. Take one of these things away, and it will die. Supply all three in abundance, it will thrive.

This one was thriving. This one was as lively as a basket of puppies on crack.

By lingering directly in front of an open window, I might as well have been hiding underneath a tree in the middle of a thunderstorm.