If Snow Hadn't Fallen (A Lacey Flint Short Story) (8 page)

For one thing, those eyes, the only part of her I could see clearly, were just so intense. Catching the light from somewhere, maybe from the flat above me, they were gleaming, and the expression was one I simply couldn’t read.

The plan, so far as I’d had one, had been to approach her quietly when she showed up, to welcome her inside, encourage her to tell her story, to hold her hand as we went together to the police station. None of that seemed possible right now.

But someone had to move, because the longer we stood and stared at each other, the harder it became to break the deadlock. Yet still she continued to stand there, as though someone had dropped a life-size granite statue into my garden.

Looked like it was going to be me, then.

I reached for the door that led to the conservatory. At the same moment, she stepped back and faded into the gloom.

‘Wait!’ I called out. By the time I reached the back door, I couldn’t see her.

I opened the door, but stayed within the psychological shelter of its frame, still feeling the need for the protection of my own home. I could see nothing of the woman. When I was certain she was no longer close, I stepped outside.

It wasn’t possible. She could not have vanished. My garden was white with snow. Except it wasn’t really, not now that I was out there. The snow-covered jasmine that scaled the wall to my right was washed orange by a nearby streetlight, and the moonlight had spun a path of pale gold which ran from one corner of the garden to its opposite diagonal. The white of the snow had become silver, even blue, in places, and the dark and shadowy corners had, in contrast, become deeper and gloomier.

Surely, though, there was nowhere to hide? The path was too narrow, the foliage on either side too thick. Leaves would be trembling, snow falling to the ground like shaken sugar if she were tucked amongst the shrubbery. There hadn’t been time, not if she moved like a mortal woman, to run the full length of the garden and tuck herself away behind the shed. And yet, where else—

I heard movement, a scraping sound. She was behind me. I turned and saw her halfway up the wall. She climbed impossibly quickly, springing up like a cat, before pausing at the top and leaping out of sight.

No point trying to follow her. I knew I could never move half as fast as she’d just done. And I was the fittest person I knew.

A starving Muslim woman who could scamper up eight-foot walls like a squirrel? In floor-length robes? This wasn’t feeling normal to me. And the door to my shed, where I store my fitness equipment and which I always keep locked, was open.

My garden was just too dark, I decided as I neared the shed. The walls were high and overhanging trees cut off most of the light from either the moon or the streetlamps. With the snow, it was bad enough. When it had gone, it would be worse. I needed lights out here.

And my sense of unease wasn’t helped by remembering the last time I’d come out here to investigate an intruder. It had been some time in the early hours, and as I’d approached the shed,
I’d
seen the warm flicker of candlelight. My punchbag, hanging from a hook in the centre of the roof, had been ‘adorned with the addition of a real human head.

I wasn’t in the mood for any grisly early Christmas presents this evening. I pushed at the door, relieved – I think – to find the shed in darkness. Switching on the light didn’t throw up too many surprises either. Everything was much as I’d left it. The punchbag rotated slowly, but it always did when I opened the door. On the other hand, the padded mat that I use for floor work appeared to carry the indentation of a human form. I bent down and touched it. Slightly warm. And that was a chocolate wrapper on the floor.

The woman had eaten in here – the chocolate was the same brand I’d bought in the supermarket – and had lain down on my exercise mat. So Tulloch had been right. She was homeless. I’d given her my address and she’d moved in.

17

WHEN I WOKE
in the night, it was to the immediate thought that she was back. The electronic clock told me it was just after two in the morning. I’d been asleep for under three hours. I was groggy, with that ache in my chest and weakness in my limbs that told me the only sensible place to be was back in the land of nod. But I’d heard something that hadn’t been the usual nighttime noise of a kicked beer-can or a horny cat. I sat up and the air around me felt unusually cold.

I’d left the door open. Even now, she was inside, letting cold air and malevolence sneak through the flat.

Except I knew how carefully I’d locked the doors and windows after my adventure in the garden. I’d even switched on the alarm. For a modest, rented flat in south London, my home has state-of-the-art security. Joesbury had arranged it for me when it had looked as though our Ripper copycat was getting just a bit too focussed on me. The windows were double-glazed and lockable, the two outside doors had bolts top and bottom and heavy-duty deadlocks. There were security cameras and an alarm, both of which had at one time been wired up to Scotland Yard. I was no longer on a direct line to the Yard, but everything else was still in place. She could not be inside. But she had come back. There was definitely someone moving around out there. And that was the sound of the outside door handle. Well, I’d practically invited her round, and maybe this time she’d talk.

Not wanting to take her by surprise, I switched on a small bedside light and then, more nervous than I’d have liked to admit, raised the window blind and peered through.

Beyond the conservatory, my garden seemed dark and empty. If anyone were in the shed, I was too far away to be able to tell. I pulled on a sweatshirt before unlocking the door between bedroom and conservatory.

The glass extension at the back of my property is heated, but not efficiently, and I felt a sharp dip in temperature as I stepped from one room to the other. The quarry tiles felt as though I were stepping out across a frozen pond. I pushed the key into the lock and something made me pause. Something made me wipe the glass clear of condensation and lean my forehead against it to look out.

There are many ways in which fear can grab your heart and squeeze tight, but few, I think, can beat the experience of starting out scared, finding the courage to face your fear, and then realizing that what you are up against isn’t fear but mind-numbing terror.

The men who’d set fire to Aamir Chowdhury, and taunted him while he burned to death, were in my garden, not three yards from the door I’d been on the brink of opening. The wolf was closest, his loose, dark clothes in sharp relief against the white backdrop, his teeth gleaming like headstones in the moonlight. Just behind him was the green, huge-eyed alien, and over their shoulders I could see the goblin. Exactly as I remembered them, only this time they’d come for me.

I didn’t scream. My survival instincts weren’t going to waste energy on anything as pointless as making noise no one would hear. Nor did I freeze in horror, beyond that first split-second. I fled, fumbling for the phone I keep by my bed at night, meaning to put another door, ideally another lock, between them and me. But the key fell out of the bedroom door and as one of them started to bang on the glass of the conservatory, I didn’t stop to pick it up.

In my kitchen I leaned against the wall for a second. I had time, surely, to summon help. The reinforced glass of my windows and doors might break under enough force, but not easily or quickly.

Someone was at the front door. The door was making the noise it always did when the postman was trying to deliver something. That was the letter-box being opened, but what landed on the carpet wasn’t paper. That was the sound of liquid being poured. And then the entire room was filled with the smell of petrol and I got it at last. They were pouring petrol through my letter-box. I’d only seen three members of the gang in the garden. The other two were at the front, soaking my carpet with petrol, and a lit match would surely follow.

I dived forward, knowing that if the match came now it could be the end of me. Petrol fumes, as much as the liquid itself, ignite and I was already right in amongst them. The carpet was greasily wet but I reached the letter-box and managed to push it shut. I heard a muttered curse on the other side of the door. It would be the Queen out there. The Queen and the zombie. The Queen of England was on the other side of my front door, trying to douse my home with petrol before setting me on fire.

My radio was on the table and would be faster than the phone, but to reach it I’d have to take my hand away from the letter-box, and the second I did that the match could come my way.
With
some difficulty, working with only one hand, I managed to dial 999 and waited to be connected.

Something bounced against the front window and landed with a soft thud in the slush outside. The glass held. But if they’d come determined to burn me alive, they’d probably brought petrol bombs. If they managed to get a can or a bottle filled with petrol in here, I had no hope. Once the fuel ignited, it would create a massive fireball as the droplets of fuel spread out around the site of impact. A huge fire would follow as the rest of the fuel burned. I had no sprinkler system, and even if I had, water is no use against petrol bombs.

‘Police,’ I told the operator, and thought about my options.

Someone was pushing against the letter-box, trying to force it open again. It gave a fraction before I pushed it shut. I had to keep it closed. Petrol alone couldn’t hurt me. Just as long as it wasn’t ignited. But the hands on the other side of the door were stronger than mine and there were more of them.

I was connected to the police operator. I explained the situation, gave my address clearly, stressed the need for urgent assistance, suggested the attendance of the Fire and Rescue Service and added that I was a police officer working with DI Tulloch, who also needed to be informed. And if that gives the impression that I wasn’t practically screaming and sobbing with terror then we’ll just go with it, shall we?

A loud crashing sound came from the conservatory. They’d hurled something large and heavy at the glass. I didn’t think they were inside. I hadn’t heard the sound of glass breaking, but it could only be a matter of time. I had to lock the bedroom door but I couldn’t move. While I held the letter-box in place, there was no easy way they could get a flame inside. Once they did, I’d had it. The place was awash with fumes. I had petrol on my hands and in my hair. My phone stank of it.

My phone! I’d just made a call on a mobile phone in a fog of flammable fumes. Just about the worst thing I could have done except …
Don’t switch on the lights! For God’s sake, Lacey, don’t switch on the lights
.

The letter-box was pushed against my fingers again and this time it moved. So I ran. I know, it was stupid, it was an act of mindless panic, but I couldn’t help it. I ran to the bathroom and grabbed every towel I could lay my hands on. The only really effective way of dealing with petrol fires is by using specially made chemical foam, and I didn’t have any of that. Failing a
foam-filled
fire extinguisher, my best chance would be to smother the fire with sand (didn’t have that either) or something heavy enough to separate it from oxygen. Like wet towels. I ran the bath and basin taps to soak the towels and, a tiny bit reassured that I hadn’t yet heard an explosion, risked opening the bathroom door again.

I couldn’t hear a thing. Not even the traffic outside.

I ran across the living room and shoved the smallest of the towels into the letter-box to jamb it shut. The largest I wrapped round myself, leaving just the smallest gap to see out of.

Still no sound from outside. Did I dare hope they’d gone? Then the best and most beautiful sound in the world. That of a police siren, heading my way.

18

‘WE DIDN’T RELEASE
information about the masks,’ said Anderson. ‘Or rather, we said the assailants were masked, but without giving any details. Lacey, are you sure about the ones you saw tonight?’

Half an hour later, I was having another new experience – being interviewed in bed. My flat was awash with police officers and firefighters. The firemen were cleaning up the petrol and nailing the letter-box shut; the coppers – those who weren’t talking to me – were searching the garden. Anderson had given me time to shower, then, seeing me shivering, had suggested I sit on the bed and wrap the duvet around myself. Mizon had made me strong, sweet tea.

‘Positive,’ I said. ‘Alien, goblin, wolf. Wolf seemed to be in charge again. The Queen and the zombie must have been out front.’ I half laughed, managing to splutter tea down my chin. ‘All the time I was trying to hold the letter-box shut, I kept seeing HM,’ I went on, ‘in one of those pearl-encrusted brocade dresses she wears, trying to light a match on her tiara.’

I didn’t need to glance up to know exactly what kind of look was being shared above my head.

‘Can’t be the same masks, though, Sarge,’ said Mizon. ‘Aren’t they in the evidence store back at the station?’

‘They certainly should be,’ agreed Anderson. ‘So our friends bought exact replicas, because they knew that’s what would put the wind up Lacey the most.’

‘When they go down for twenty-five years, I’m sure the knowledge that they were spot on will prove some comfort,’ I said, more to keep up team morale than because I had any real confidence that the arrest and conviction would come about.

A blast of cold air hit us as Tulloch came in from the back garden. In spite of everything, I really had to admire the way she could look so good at 3.30 a.m. on a December morning. Her skin and hair were perfect. Her fitted coat was the colour of pale amber and her black boots shone like those of a household cavalry officer. At the sight of the three of us, sitting on my bed like some sort of grown-up slumber party, her eyebrows raised, but she made no comment.

‘Well, I’m sure you’ll all be encouraged to learn that a very clear print was left outside that our guys are pretty certain matches one in the park on the night of the murder,’ she said. ‘If it’s confirmed, then we know Chowdhury’s murderers were here tonight. Question is, why?’