a little out-of-the-way corner. Knowing Gavin I figured that they would want him as out of the way as possible, so I took that staircase.
This one was narrower and it creaked badly. The first step screeched and groaned as though it were playing a song from the flames of hell. I nearly bit my lip with the anxiety of trying to stand on it without any sound. I waited a full minute and then tried the second step. It was even worse. My throat was as dry as Antarctica. I couldn’t believe no-one had burst out of the room brandishing a gun and looking for the intruder. I decided to go for the big one and, stretching my right leg as far as I could, which isn’t very far, managed to skip the next two steps and go straight up to the fifth. Landing on it like that made even more noise, but I hoped one huge noise was not as bad as three big ones. I brought my left leg up as well, and stood there trembling, with sweat pouring off me. If only I could have sweated as much on the inside, then my throat might not have felt so parched, and my tongue might not have been sticking to the roof of my mouth.
Still no-one came, and I took the last two steps in another single movement. Well, a double movement by the time I got my left leg up there as well.
The darkness was pretty severe. There was a shape on my right that felt like a large photocopier, which surprised me a bit. I suppose terrorists have to photocopy stuff. On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t a photocopier but a nuclear reactor or a superweapon. I’ve never seen a nuclear reactor, so I wouldn’t know.
On my immediate left was a door, and I thought there were two doors ahead of me, one further up on the left, and one straight in front. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I became more confident about what I was seeing. It was definitely a photocopier.
The difficult part was knowing what to do next. I chose the stupidest way of all, and did ‘eeny meeny, miney mo’. The winner was the door straight in front. So, on tiptoes this time, I went towards it.
I was almost touching the handle when I heard someone coming up the steps. This was another entry on the list of sounds you don’t want to hear. I broke out in a sweat that made my previous efforts seem like a faint mist compared to a torrential downpour. The footsteps were heavy and confident, as though the person had climbed these steps many times and felt right at home. I got down low to my left and squeezed in between the end of the photocopier and the wall, hoping that the person was not planning on running off a few copies of his favourite poem in the middle of the night.
He reached the landing below the one I was on, and paused. I shifted a little, to make myself more comfortable, although that’s a pretty silly word to use, as comfort wasn’t really a factor in my situation. I did want to avoid cramping though.
He turned up the other flight of steps, and as his footsteps started moving away from me, and I realised that I was safe for a few more moments, I peeked out. He opened what was the furthest door from me, although I could not see that until he turned on the light inside the room. From the glimpse I got it looked like a regular bedroom, but with a lot of stuff — just clothes — strewn on the floor. Then he shut the door, and the only light left was the thin ribbon down at carpet level.
I eased myself quietly out from the photocopier and went back to the door behind me. With all the stealth of a burglar I turned the handle, then gently squeezed the door open an inch. Nothing happened, so I pushed it open a little further. The air felt cold and dry. Somehow, although I had never noticed it before or thought about it, the air in a room where someone is sleeping or living or just being is moister. I opened the door further and slipped inside.
Again, the silence and emptiness told me no-one was there. I closed the door behind me, scrabbled for the light switch, turned it on for an instant, then off again. It wasn’t a bedroom at all, but a storage room.
Most storerooms hold, I don’t know, old towels, suitcases, preserved fruit. Piles of paper, your parents’ old tax returns. This one didn’t. What it held got my skin crawling and prickling again. This one held guns, more guns than I’d ever seen in one place. More guns than they’d use in a Hollywood movie even. Most of them in pretty good condition too, I thought, from the quick look I’d allowed myself.
Well, there was no getting away from it now. I’d found the right house. I didn’t know for sure whether Gavin was here, but this was the kind of house where I could expect him to be, and these were the people I needed to interview about him.
At least the knowledge gave me confidence. I went back to the door, eased it open again, and peered down the corridor. Dark and deserted as before. The thin strip of light at the base of the door opposite was no longer there. Either the guy had left the room again or, more likely, he’d gone to bed.
I groped my way to the window and drew the curtains. Then I took off my jacket and laid it along the floor, to block any light going through. Only then did I think it was safe to turn the light back on. There sure were a lot of guns, but I’d been a bit over the top in my first guesses. There were probably forty altogether. More than enough to blow holes in Ellie, Gavin and quite a few others. I wanted to sabotage them in some way but couldn’t think of how to do it. I opened a few cupboards. Ammunition, heaps of that too. It reminded me and I took out the magazine from my jeans and shoved it behind some of the boxes. Then other things, more like you’d expect in a storeroom. Boxes of tinned food. It made me feel very hungry. Slabs of Coke. Coke. A memory came back to me, of putting a tooth in a glass of Coke, years ago, to see if it would rot away like everyone said it would. Then Dad came along and drank the Coke, tooth and all, before I could stop him, so I never found out the result of my experiment. Instead I found myself in a different experiment: observing the effect on your father when you tell him he’s just swallowed one of your baby teeth.
Yes, Coke should do the trick. Fill each barrel and I reckon it would do them terminal damage. I opened a can, took a swig, then went to work.
CHAPTER 13
Mission Coke took quite a while. I gave each weapon a couple of applications. It didn’t necessarily matter that I took a while, because I figured that the longer I stayed in the house the safer I’d be. The later it got the less chance there’d be of people wandering around the corridors. I was hoping the guy I’d seen had gone to bed and that there weren’t too many more after him.
But also I was a little afraid to open the door again. It sounds crazy, but for half an hour or so I felt quite secure. In that short time the room almost became my space. A little world where I could work away secretly, without interruption, and forget what was on the other side of the door, and even forget why I had come to the house in the first place.
Reality’s always waiting for you though. Even when you think you’re hiding from it really cleverly, it still ambushes you sooner or later. The time came when, with a sigh, I turned off the light, opened the curtains and went back to the door. ‘Here we go,’ I thought, except that there was no we, only one poor I. I took a breath, thought of all the people who were sustaining me right now, Bronte and Jeremy and Homer and Lee and Fi and even Jess and probably the spirit of Robyn and Corrie too, and slid out into the corridor again.
There was now a strip of light under a second door, the one next to the guy I’d seen earlier. I ignored that and turned to the door just down a little way and on my right. The thought of opening every door in the house disturbed me, but I couldn’t think of any other way to go about this. I squeezed the handle and nudged it, listening carefully. I decided on the spot that I’d try a new policy. I’d open each door and see if I got a Gavin vibe. If not I’d close it and continue. I just had to trust that when I opened the right door I’d know it.
This room was much darker than the previous one. There was no way I could tell what was in there but I thought that I could probably tell what wasn’t in there, and what wasn’t in this room was Gavin.
I went on up to the only other room at this end of the building. I hoped to God he was in here. I really didn’t want to be in this house much longer. I hoped we weren’t operating on Murphy’s Law, or whoever wrote the law that the last room you look in is the one where they’ve stored the hostage. But this room felt cold, like no-one had been in it for a long time.
Time to go to a different part of the house.
The other light had gone off again. I didn’t feel like exploring those rooms now that I knew at least two of them were occupied, and at least one of those by a non-Gavin. Would have been funny if the guy’s name was Gavin. Funny but irrelevant. I suppressed that thought and moved down the stairs. They seemed to creak more going down than they had going up, and that’s saying something. Again I tried to take big steps, and I waited a long time
