The Lazarus Hotel (18 page)

‘Same way I got in,' Richard said briskly. ‘Up the track.' He took the cords off his shoulder, began laying them out across the dome.

Will watched in horror. ‘I hope you're not thinking—' His teeth chattered uncontrollably.

‘Listen, Will.' Richard straightened up, eyeing him levelly. ‘You can't stay here. We're taking you back upstairs. There's heat and food, and Tessa can check out your head and your ribs, and you'll be OK. You'll be safe enough. Midge'll go first – he's better at this than I am– and you'll be roped to him. I'll be right behind. If you freeze, or if you slip, I'll hold you. A few minutes is all it takes. It's not difficult. If you can climb a ladder you can do this. OK,' he hurried on, ‘I know you'd rather not climb a ladder. But with your neck at stake you'll be surprised what you can do.'

‘I can't do that,' said Will with certainty.

‘You got no choice. I mean it, Will – you're going up there if I have to carry you.'

In the end Will allowed himself to be manoeuvred to the track, his hands to be placed on the frets. Midge led, trailing the makeshift rope like an umbilical. When the cord tightened about his waist Will obeyed its summons. Richard's hand in the small of his back both held him safe and left him no room to retreat. After only a brief pause he started to climb.

The idea that time is a constant is patently absurd. Midge, accustomed to using the shaft as other people use staircases, climbed up to and then past the open door in the space of a few minutes, throwing the safety cord to Larry. But at the other end of the same cord, his hands raw, his muscles cracking with tension, his eyes stretched with a terror he could control but not contain, Will hung in the void almost for ever before Tariq gripping one wrist and Larry the other hauled him bodily into the corridor.

He said, inanely, ‘Hello.' Then his knees folded under him and he sat down with the surprised expression of a puppet breaking a string. The laughter of sheer relief rippled through the anxious gathering.

Richard came next, twisting awkwardly, extending his left hand to Tariq, gripping the edge of the door with the other.

In a fraction of a second everything changed. Richard's right hand skidded wildly; instead of guiding him to safety Tariq was left carrying his whole weight, his hand Richard's only contact with reality. Richard let out a startled squawk as his feet swung in space. His flailing right hand found the track again but grease on his fingers ruined his grip. Whatever he touched took the slippery contagion and would not support him.

A moment later Larry realized what had happened. ‘Hold him!' He hauled Will to his feet and stripped the cord off him like undressing a child. There was nowhere to tie it so he knotted swift loops in both ends and tossed one to Joe. ‘And you hold that, tight!' Full length on the floor with his head and shoulders in the void, he fished for Richard's foot.

Time warped again. It took Larry maybe a minute to make his catch and join Joe on the rope. But Tariq was holding Richard much longer than that. He had all the time in the world for two perfectly coherent thoughts. The first was that Richard was heavier than he looked: he couldn't hold this thin cord much longer without it cutting through his flesh. And the other was that if that was what it took that was how it would have to be, because he'd rather die than turn his back on another desperate human being.

Then small strong hands – Sheelagh's – joined his on the cord. Her support may have been more moral than practical, but it kept him going until Joe and Larry were able to share the strain, pulling Richard to safety over the lip, landing him like a gasping, exhausted fish. The doors closed on the void with a faintly disappointed hiss.

For a long time no one spoke. They sprawled in the corridor recovering breath and nerve. One hand after another patted Will's arm or shoulder as if to confirm that he was alive. But no one spoke. Even when Richard realized Midge wasn't with them, had vanished again into the empty carcass of the building, he managed only a pant of regret.

Joe was the first to find a voice, and it climbed in a gravelly plaint at how near to disaster they had come. ‘What the hell
happened?'

‘Grease.' Richard held up his right hand, palm out. ‘Must have been left over from when they installed the lift. Mustn't have expected people to be climbing up and down the shaft. No imagination.' He had to break the sentences in half to get them out a breath at a time.

The older man peered at his hand with an intensity no one else understood. Then he cleared his throat. ‘If that was left by the men installing the lift, this must have been where they ate their sandwiches. That isn't grease. I think it's butter.'

Richard stared at the pale oily residue in amazement. ‘Where the hell did I pick that up?'

Tariq hauled himself up, padded over to the lift. The doors were closed now; there was an oily smear to the left of the join. ‘Here, by the looks of things.' He exhaled in a silent whistle. ‘Thank God you didn't touch it on the way down. You'd never have made it.'

On her knees beside him Tessa peered into Will's eyes, felt along his ribs till he winced. ‘Come into the cottage hospital. I'll see if I can make you a bit more comfortable.' With Joe to help, Will made it to his feet and, shakily, into the room where Miriam Graves still slept impervious to all the drama.

A frown creased Richard's freckled brow. ‘I don't get this. If that's where it came from, how
did
I miss it on the way down? But there was nothing wrong with my grip right up to the moment when I had no grip at all.' He stood at the door making t'ai chi movements, trying to remember exactly where he put his hands as he climbed into the shaft. Still he could make no sense of it. He must have held the side of the door, couldn't have reached the track without. Defeated, he shook his head. ‘It couldn't have been there earlier.'

‘It must have been,' Tariq said reasonably. ‘How could it have got there in the fifteen minutes you were down below? You think maybe Larry got bored holding the door open and sent out for a sandwich?' He meant it as a joke. When Richard failed even to smile his eyes widened and his voice stumbled. ‘In God's name, what are you thinking? That it wasn't an accident? You're crazy. Why would Larry want you to fall? Why would anyone?'

Sheelagh was standing beside them, following their exchange intently. She said quietly, ‘I know who might want you to fall, and it isn't Larry.'

They stared at her. ‘Who?'

‘That crazy boy. No,
don't
look at me like that,' she said, fielding Tariq's dismissive glance. ‘Think about it. We've already had two incidents he was responsible for. Doesn't that alone make him prime suspect for a third?'

‘We don't know that he hit Miriam. And though you could blame him for Will's fall it wasn't deliberate. And he helped us to get him back when we couldn't have managed alone.'

‘We gave him no choice! Larry was about to beat the crap out of him and he knew it – he'd have said and done anything then. Yes, he helped Richard get to Will. But if he greased the handholds he never intended them to get back. It was only good luck that saved them. He made damn sure he wasn't there to, didn't he? Isn't that a little suggestive too?'

‘But – why?'

‘Because he resents us and he's scared of us. Because this is his home and his adventure playground, and it was all his every night when the builders went home. When we moved in he felt invaded. God knows how he expected to get away with murder. He may be just crazy enough to think that if he got rid of us no one else would come.'

Richard was slowly shaking his head. ‘It doesn't work. No, listen.' Sheelagh swallowed her interruption and listened. ‘Midge went down the shaft ahead of me and when we came up he kept going. He never touched that door again. How did he grease it so that I missed it going down but met it coming up?'

Tariq shrugged. ‘Maybe it was there all along and you were luckier where you put your hand first time. Maybe it really does date back to the builders'sandwiches.'

‘And maybe you'll keep making excuses for that boy until he finally kills someone,' snapped Sheelagh in exasperation. ‘I'm not suggesting that we lynch him on the basis of what I suspect. I'm suggesting we take precautions in case I'm right, and if we get another opportunity we hold on to him and never mind how little he likes it.'

Tessa joined them, drying her hands on a towel. ‘I agree. Too many odd and dangerous things are happening. There are only two choices – either Midge is behind them or someone else is. Who do we consider more likely to be rifling through our belongings, stealing keys and attacking us? Do we really think there's another Care in the Community case wandering round up here?'

‘All right,' conceded Richard, ‘some of it was obviously him. It was him knocked over Mrs Venables'tray, and it was him rooting round in Sheelagh's belongings. I don't think he meant any harm – he's like a child, he likes pretty things. But he swears he didn't hit Miriam, and if he wanted to harm us why did he help rescue Will?'

Tessa shrugged. ‘You're talking as if he's normal. He's not. He may not be able to form and carry through coherent plans the way you and I can. He may not be capable of sustained logic. Anyway, what's the alternative? If it wasn't him it was one of us.'

‘Don't let's get silly.' Tariq fetched a cloth from the kitchen, scrubbed the grease off the lift door. Feeling their eyes, a little bashfully he explained. ‘If he didn't put it here it's more of a danger to Midge than to anyone. You don't really want him to fall.'

Sheelagh shook her head in wonder. ‘God forbid.'

By then it was full day. Because it was Saturday the streets below were not filling at the customary rate with jostling, blaring traffic but there were signs of life that made their isolation atop a pinnacle of glass and masonry more pointed somehow, more offensive. Six hundred feet away, which is nothing measured in strides along the ground, there were people who could help them: turn on the power, send up the lift, summon the police to investigate the violence they had suffered.

But the people below, delivering milk and papers, hurrying to their high-powered breakfast meetings or Saturday morning exercise classes, didn't know there were others marooned in the empty building, and those in the penthouse didn't know how to tell them. They might have dropped messages – a hundred might have blown away but eventually one would have been found and read – if they could have opened a window. But it was a modern air-conditioned building, its toughened windows impervious to all but light. They could have launched their paper planes from the roof, but wherever the access was it wasn't in the small block of rooms between the blank wall and the locked door. Anything they dropped down past the lift would only be found when the builders returned on Monday morning.

‘It's incredible,' said Larry, shaking his head in savage amusement. ‘Here we are in the heart of one of the great cities of the world, with thousands of people inside a half-mile radius, and we could die up here before we could attract their attention.'

‘I've got an idea about that,' murmured Will. There was a purpling bruise on his temple and he moved stiffly, his ribs bound up beneath his shirt. ‘But it'll have to wait till tonight – it won't work in daylight.'

‘Go on.'

‘We've got lights, haven't we? This high up we must be visible for miles. If we start flashing an SOS somebody's bound to notice.'

‘They'd just think we were having trouble with the power,' objected Sheelagh.

‘Maybe most of them would. But as Larry says, there are thousands, maybe millions of people who can see this building. All it needs is for one of them to be looking, to recognize the most identifiable piece of Morse code in the world and to pick up the phone. It might take a couple of hours but it could save us a day and a half.'

Richard was nodding with growing conviction. ‘He's right. Something like that, somebody would notice. Why did nobody think of it last night?'

‘Stupidity?' hazarded Tariq, and they grinned. ‘At least somebody's thought of it now. Another twelve hours and it'll be dark again. What shall we do till then?'

‘Come and eat your breakfast,' said Mrs Venables firmly, coming in with a tray. Joe carried another and together they set the table. ‘It's a bit skimpy, I'm afraid – I don't want to run out of things if we're not sure how long we're going to be here. Incidentally,' she added, gazing round with a certain censure, ‘it would be easier to judge what we're going to need if people would stop raiding the pantry. Somebody must be eating butter with a spoon!'

There was a sharp intake of breath around the table. ‘So much for the builders'sandwiches,' murmured Tariq, his eyes low. Against all the odds he'd still hoped it was an accident. It was impossible to go on believing that now.

‘Why?'
whispered Richard, appalled.

Tariq shook his head. ‘The question is
who?
‘

‘You do know what you're saying?' Sheelagh's small, strong body was taut. ‘That while Richard was hand-over-handing it down the lift shaft in the hope there was enough left of Will to be worth rescuing, one of us was greasing the door so they'd both fall, and this time maybe they'd die. Is that what you believe? Honestly?'

Tariq would have given anything to be able to deny it. But the situation was too serious for good manners. His eyes were steady. ‘Yes.'

Larry said tightly, ‘I was there from when Richard went down until he came up. I never left the door – if I had it would've closed. You're saying either I did it or I stood by and let someone else do it.'

‘I'm not accusing anyone,' Tariq insisted. But in the circumstances the words lacked conviction.