East of the City (43 page)

‘Bullshit,’ Tubs muttered, but I signalled for him to shut up.

I said, ‘Aiding and abetting? So I’m not in the frame for Sebastian’s murder any more? What happened, you couldn’t jog Max’s memory on the brooch?’

Fielding handed Tubs back his mobile, and Tubs made a show of wiping it clean. Facing me again, Fielding said, ‘Where’s Pike?’

I pointed. ‘You’ve trashed my home, you’ve lost me my fucking job, you’ve waved your frigging handcuffs all round the Room with my name on them, and now that you know it wasn’t me, what? I’m meant to help you?’

He considered a moment. Then pushing my finger aside, he said, ‘That’s right. That’s what you’re meant to do.’

Rising, I pushed my face up very close to his. ‘Go fuck yourself.’

And that’s when the alarm started sounding, way up in the main stand. Tubs turned first, then Fielding’s offsider. The noise pulsed loud, a wailing siren I’d never heard before. In the kennels, the dogs went wild. Finally Fielding said to me, ‘You’ll keep,’ then he turned too.

Up in the stand the crowd was moving like a wave, rolling back from the top right-hand corner. But people down on the terraces weren’t moving fast enough, a lot were turning round to gawk at what was happening behind. Those spilling down from the upper tiers just kept on coming, not waiting for a clear passage, you could see crushes forming in the aisles. And between the pulses of the siren now you could hear shouts and screams. A few seconds later, the first people started to fall.

A track official, white coat flapping, came sprinting from the darkness. He shouted for someone to back up the watertruck. The last word I heard him cry before disappearing was, Fire.

Then Fielding’s offsider pointed. ‘Up there.’

Now we all saw it. From the top right of the stand, the stewards deck, the smoke rose in thick black clouds.

The screams from the stand got louder.

Tubs faced me, he looked shocked.

I said, ‘Where’s Katy?’  But even as I spoke, he started to run, heading for the stand.

I legged it after him, fast.

When I caught him up, he waved a hand towards the fire. ‘She thought she’d seen Pike up there,’ he said, wheezing. ‘I couldn’t stop her.’

You could have kept your big mouth shut, I thought angrily, but this wasn’t the time. I sprinted past Tubs, Fielding shouting at me from somewhere way behind.

At the bottom of the stand I hit the body of the crowd, the whole mass rolling away from the danger, shouldering and shoving. I looked over their heads, up to the tiers where people were still pouring down. There was no way I could get through the tightly packed bodies.

‘Katy!’ I screamed. ‘Katy!’ But my voice was swallowed up by other voices, everyone shouting for someone in the crush.

Jostled and spun, I looked up to the smoke and my heart seemed to seize for a moment. Tongues of orange flame flickered behind a window. Then the window burst, the showering glass brought another roar from the crowd. The siren wailed like some hopeless cry for help.

Tubs had said she’d gone up after Pike.

I ran to the side of the stand, towards where we’d seen Pike disappear. I tried to replay it in my mind, tried to picture if Pike had had time to get up there, time for Katy to see him. Maybe. Just. Free of the crowd now I sprinted along the side of the stand. About halfway along I found a door, I grabbed the handle and pulled. It was a concrete stairwell, the stairs leading up to my right. I dived in and started up, taking the stairs two by two.

The stairwell muted the sounds from outside, and the bare bulbs threw a sickly yellow light over everything. After two flights I slowed, put my hands on my hips and breathed. I climbed and breathed. I put my hand on the railing, taking the steps one at a time now, and it was then, in those moments of relative quiet, that I felt it creeping over me, the cold tightening in my gut and the sweat on my palms, and I knew I was back there. Back there, the night Mum and Dad died. I was sinking beneath a suffocating blanket of fear.

Footsteps came clattering down the steps above me.

'Katy!'

But the next moment a steward appeared, an old man, he grabbed my arm as he went by, saying, ‘Clear the stand. Everybody down.’ Yanking my arm free, I started up again. He shouted after me, ‘What you playing at? There’s no-one up there,’ but I kept going, then I heard his footsteps clattering below me, heading down.

Five more flights, and I couldn’t hear the crowd any more, only the siren. From above came a dull roar like the wind. I was sweating freely now, my mouth wide open, sucking in air. My eyes started to itch, I rubbed them. Smoke. Then I hit the landing, saw the door, but I’d lost track of how far I’d come.

I pulled the door open and had a sudden vision of flames flaring out to engulf me. But it didn’t happen. On the other side of the door, there was smoke, thick smoke, but no flames. I went in there, calling Katy’s name. The siren was loud again, wailing.

Ahead, to my right, something moved. A man, I saw him coming down some stairs. The smoke was thicker there, it seemed to be rolling down from the fire up on the next level. He came towards me coughing, half-choked, holding a hankie over his mouth. Another steward, his eyes were fixed on the door behind me. He hardly seemed to notice I was there.

‘Is there anyone up there?’ I shouted. When he didn’t answer I stepped between him and the door. I put a hand on his chest as he tried to get by. I shouted my question again, in his ear.

He nodded, dazed. He was old and thin, I thought maybe he was in shock too.

‘A man,’ he said. He edged his way round me.

‘Just a man?’

‘One man,’ he said, ‘and one woman. I saw them.’ He pointed behind me, the way I’d come. ‘Top of the stairwell, there’s a fire-door.’

He pushed past. I stood staring at the steps he’d come down. The smoke was thickening all the time, and that roar like the wind, I realized with a jolt that it was the fire, blazing somewhere out of sight. I followed the steward, went back out to the concrete stairwell and on up the last flight of stairs. The staircase ended on a narrow landing; in front of us was a red metal door. ‘You’re sure you saw them?’

He said he’d seen the man going into the storerooms, then a few minutes later, a woman. He described them briefly. It couldn’t be anyone but Katy and Pike.

He reached his palm out to the door, testing the heat. But when his hand touched the metal, he flinched. That seemed to finish him. Whatever reserves of courage had kept him there while everyone else had fled, they were gone now. He looked straight at me and started talking about his wife, like an apology or an excuse, I don’t know what really, maybe just the ramblings of a frightened old man. Then he turned his back on me, gripped the railing with both hands and stumbled away down the stairwell.

On the other side of the door, I heard something explode. My legs were trembling, I couldn’t control them. I leant my back against the wall. Heat radiated off the metal fire-door, the skin prickled on the left side of my face.

It was happening again. Not Mum and Dad this time, but my sister. My head fell back, and I screamed like an animal, ‘Katy!’

Behind the door the fire roared on like a train.

‘Collier!’

The call came twice before I opened my eyes. Swinging to look down the stairwell, I answered, ‘Fielding! Up here. Top of the stairs!’

When I put my hand to my face, there were tears. I wiped them away with my sleeve. Then I slung my coat on the doorhandle, grabbed the handle through the coat, and heaved. The door didn’t budge. I braced my foot against the doorframe, tried again, but it wouldn’t come. The fire must have warped something, or melted it, the bloody thing was stuck fast. Grabbing my coat, I ran down to the next landing where I met Fielding coming up.

‘What are you,’ he said, catching his breath, ‘the fucking fire brigade?'

'My sister’s caught up there. And Pike.’

He thought about that for a moment. ‘Bully for Pike,’ he said.

I shoved past him into the room where I’d seen that old bugger coming down the stairs. It was completely filled with smoke now. Bending low, holding my coat to my nose and mouth, I ran to the stairs and stumbled up.

The fire was enormous. Not tongues now but great surging waves of flame, they made a wall to my right. To my left, and ahead, the fire hadn’t reached yet. I crawled up the last step, got down on all fours where the smoke was thinner, and shouted for Katy.

There was a tug at my ankle. I looked back and saw Fielding. He was wiping his eyes and coughing as he came up beside me from the stairs.

‘What the fuck’s your sister doin’ up here?’

I pointed to the flames. I had to shout above the roar. ‘They must be trapped in there. Can’t get out the fire-door, it’s jammed.'

He looked at the flames, then back at me. It must have been there on my face, plain as day, the fear. More than fear, it was terror. Mum and Dad, and now Katy. She was going to die.

I stared at the fire, hypnotized by the leaping flames.

Then Fielding shouted something at me. It didn’t register, so he poked me in the ribs, and I turned to him. We were lying on our bellies now, he pulled himself nearer to me, rising up on his elbows. The bastard actually grinned this time as he shouted, ‘Not your lucky day.’

I scrambled to my knees, then lashed at him with my foot as he got up. It hit him in the chest and he went over backwards, tumbling down the stairs. I looked down. He I hadn’t gone far, just a few steps, he was clutching the banister, trying to get himself the right way up again.

Turning, I crawled away from the stairs. The flames didn’t hypnotize me now, I wasn’t locked into those awful moments from the past. I was here, now, at the Stow. And it wasn’t Mum and Dad, it was Katy. I could still do something, I still had that choice.

In front of me the fire was a wall. I shielded my face from the heat and glanced back. Fielding’s face appeared at the head of the stairs. He didn’t come on. He didn’t go away either, he just watched me and the wall of flames. After a second I realized that was all he was going to do. When I faced the fire again, he shouted, ‘Go on then! Go on!’

But in my mind I was already way, way beyond Fielding. I was terrified, sure, but I guess I was even more terrified of the whole thing happening again, and of losing my sister. I’d finally got to the only place that mattered.

Suddenly part of the ceiling collapsed, a beam swung down, spraying plaster, and a gap opened in the wall of flame. The heat flared, then the fire fell back on itself. I didn’t even think, I just pulled my coat up over my head and shoulders, bent double, and ran straight in.

The heat raked my face and hands, I was terrified of falling, and then the flames seemed to close over me. It must have been only a second, but it felt like forever, and I was through. To what? More fire, but scattered, not like the wall of flame behind me. Turning, I glimpsed Fielding back there behind the flames, gaping. But in the next moment the fiery wall was solid again.

I spun round. ‘Katy!’

I couldn’t see a bloody thing. My eyes closed up against the heat, I had to shade them with my hands. I stumbled forward a few paces hopelessly.

‘Katy!’

I was too late. Too late.

And then, from the flames and the smoke, a figure rose up like a ghost. It staggered towards me, dropped, and I caught it in my arms. It was Pike. Clutching at my shirt, he looked up wildly. His face was burnt red, the skin was peeling away from his cheeks.

‘Collier?' he said, choking.

He looked over my shoulder at the flames. I hauled him up by the wrists. His hands were black from the ash, and bleeding. 

‘Is it burning? he croaked. ‘Is it burning on the other side?'

I shook him. ‘Where’s Katy?'

He stared past me at the wall of flame.

‘Did you see a woman?' I screamed at him. ‘A woman?'

Still staring past me, he slapped his chest with a bloodied hand. He said something about pictures, he was half out of his mind with fear.

‘Stay here!’ I shouted, hoarse now.

He bent towards me like he hadn’t heard. I cupped my hands to my mouth, and then it happened. He tore my coat off my shoulders. He tried to wrap the coat over himself as he stumbled towards the wall of fire, I didn’t have time to react. Then he tripped and went down on his knees, straight into the fire. He tried to get up, but his leg was caught on the coat, he went down again. His hands reached forward instinctively, into the fire, to save himself, while his body arched back and away. His head twisted round, I saw his face. His open mouth trying to scream a scream that wouldn’t come. I watched, horrified, as his hair went up in a halo of fire. And then the scream came. Mercifully, his body surrendered. He went limp, collapsed, crumpling like a broken doll into the flames.

I bent over and retched on the smoke, but nothing came up, only bile. The heat was burning my skin now, I stumbled away, wiping my mouth, and praying. I prayed I still had time to reach Katy, that she might still be alive.

The next minute or so I don’t really remember, not properly. I remember seeing Pike go down, and I remember stumbling around like a blind man through the smoke and flames. But I must have been dazed, I suppose, because when I came across Katy’s handbag I didn’t know what I was looking at. I was crouching right over it, staring at it, but not taking it in.

Then I knelt. I picked it up and turned it over. Green, with big white clasps, definitely Katy’s. I reached round and tucked it under my belt at the small of my back, then I lifted my head.

'Katy!'

Dropping down under the worst of the smoke, I crawled. A few seconds later my hand touched a hand. It didn’t move. I ran my hand along the limp arm, then I pulled myself forward to see the face.

Katy.

‘I’m here. It’s Ian. Don’t worry, I’m here.’

She didn’t move or open her eyes. She just lay there on her side, it was like she was sleeping. Frantic now, I ran a hand over her other arm, then down over her body, and her legs. I thought maybe something had pinned her down, but there was nothing. She seemed to have just dropped there. The fire had blazed all around and left her untouched, it was a bloody miracle. But why was she lying there like that?