One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night (24 page)

Matt’s thighs applauded the decision with a pumping burst of speed along the flat, making him understand why the late Jock Wallace used to run Rangers players up and down sand dunes all day. He suddenly halted two‐
thirds of the way along, having encountered a set of double swing‐
doors and noticed electric light shining upon a stairway beyond. It was a tight, zig‐
zagging affair with a railed banister, offering faster ascent or descent than the wide spiral encirding the lifts. This was what he’d been relying upon, having as a child spent many a wedding reception playing hotel‐
tig, a more strategically complex variation on the simple cat‐
and‐
mouse game, due to the randomising element of having two staircases. Where the plan fell down was that this guy’s parents weren’t going to show up and take him home after a while.

Matt went through the swing‐
doors, gripped the banister and resumed climbing. Simone had mentioned something about there still being work in progress on the upper levels, so with nothing but locked doors further down, it sounded like his only chance of somewhere to hide. He burst back through the corresponding swing‐
doors on the fifth floor and looked in either direction: the tiny red lights of more card‐
locks twinkled at him along the passageway.

He turned back and climbed the final storey, reaching the top landing as the double doors flew open two floors beneath and the gunman charged through, aiming up the stairwell with his silenced pistol. A bullet struck the banister two feet away, another embedding itself in the ceiling above. Matt jumped backwards and fell halfway through the swing‐
doors – legs on the landing, head and torso in the corridor – as the crunch of boots on concrete reverberated around the narrow shaft. There were no card‐
lock lights on this level, but that was because there were no lights at all, and as far as he could see, no doors either. Nonetheless, as he turned around on to his front he could make out the identifiable shape of a fire extinguisher, sitting in a niche just inside the corridor. He ripped it from its Velcro strap and lugged it through the double doors with both hands.

Action Man had almost reached the fifth floor, hugging the inside of the banister in search of a clear shot upwards. He could see the gun, gripped in two hands, moving along the railing like it was on a track. The man himself was out of sight, but that meant so was Matt. He waited for the tell‐
tale change of pace as the gunman reached the next flat section, then hurled the extinguisher down and jumped back again.

There was a deep tolling sound and a sharp cry as the vessel struck, then further peals as it rolled and tumbled down the next flight. The footsteps ceased, breathy moaning and swearing taking their place. Matt looked down through the railings, edging cautiously nearer the banister until something other than grey stairs was in view below. The gunman was crouched on the landing, clutching at the lower half of his left leg. He noticed the movement above him immediately and aimed the pistol, rolling on to his back and loosing off three more rounds. They all zipped into the ceiling, but Matt felt a rush of air terrifyingly close to his cheek as the first one passed.

He clattered back through the swing‐
doors and looked either side of himself. This time, to his right, he noticed that there was dim light shining in two shafts on the corridor floor, between where he stood and the main stairs. Open doors. Had to be. A sign opposite the stairwell read ‘Mayfair and Splendide Suites’, above an arrow pointing right. Matt began running again, figuring that with Action Man limping a little, he’d get to the main stairs before he was in range again. If he kept leading him round in circles, perhaps the guy would die of boredom.

Matt reached the entrance to the first suite as he heard the inevitable crash of his pursuer emerging behind. He dived through the open doorway, skidding across the tiled floor as the ricochet of another bullet zinged along the corridor. His heart was hammering and his brain couldn’t spare even one synapse to wonder what the hell this was about. He was operating on reflex and sheer survival instinct, and the grey‐
matter Pentium was channelling all processing power into simply keeping him alive.

Matt climbed to his knees and looked around the interior of the suite, the shuffling gait of now‐
limping footsteps like a countdown. He had until zero to improvise.

The suite was, as Simone suggested, still undergoing work. Unfortunately, the joinery tasks in progress had not required the use of a chainsaw or a nailgun. The door had not been hung yet, presumably held off until they had finished carting certain bulky items in and out. It stood resting at an angle against one wall, next to a two‐
seater sofa wrapped thickly in polythene. The room’s king‐
size bed, also mollycoddled in plastic, had been shunted undeferentially into a corner to create working space. Lengths of timber lay schematically around where a walk‐
in wardrobe was under construction, next to one of two robust and heavy‐
looking workbenches, which sat three or four yards apart. The one nearer the wardrobe bore a hammer, a plain and an electric drill, the flex of which was plugged into a socket by the doorway, via an extension. Exposed back‐
boxes elsewhere in the skirting demonstrated that the electricians hadn’t finished in here either.

The second workbench sat at ninety degrees to the doorway, forming a channel between itself and one wall, leading towards a set of patio doors, beyond which was an exterior terraced area. Two paving slabs and a fine covering of masonry dust rested on top of the workbench; but still no chainsaw, nailgun or grenade launcher. There was, however, some kind of circular sander lying on the tiled floor by the bench. Maybe he could buff him to death.

The shuffling countdown continued. Matt had another desperate look around, like there might be another exit he’d missed the first time. There were two sets of patio doors leading to the suite’s terrace, a section of blank wall between them. What if he could climb down to the balcony below? he wondered, but the answer to the corresponding ‘what if he couldn’t?’ made him drop the idea.

Matt looked at the workbench and the electrical flex again, and had what in the circumstances passed for an idea. He ran to one set of patio doors and pushed them slightly open, just enough to squeeze through, then retreated to behind the workbench, where he crouched down and gripped the power cable.

He could only see Action Man’s legs as he entered. He was dragging the left one behind him, a dark dampness staining the bottom of his trouser leg. Matt feared there’d be a yellow dampness staining his own, a bit higher up, as the gunman paused just inside the doorway, looking around. If Matt was spotted, it was over. The moment stretched to unfeasible duration. Leaves fell from trees. Winter set in. Lambs gambolled in the springtime. Rivers dried. Generations were born and died. Civilisations rose and fell. Man abandoned religion, explored space, cured disease, ended conflict, evolved to a higher plane of existence, and at the end of it Matt was still stuck cowering behind a bench waiting to see whether this fucker would clock the open patio door or notice him and blow him away.

The fucker clocked the open patio door and began moving purposefully towards it. Matt yanked at the flex, pulling it taut at shin‐
height as planned. Not planned, as soon as Action Man’s right leg hit it, the plug came flying out of the socket. Before Matt’s bowels could respond accordingly, the cable snagged under the gunman’s descending boot and tightened again, tangling further around his ankles as his left leg caught up. He tumbled forward, spinning as he did so, and landed on his back on the floor. Before he’d hit the ground, Matt was already charging the workbench to tip the thing sideways on top of him.

Matt spilled to the floor alongside it, sprawling flat‐
out next to the electric sander. The bench was now on its side between them, the weight of its worktop pinning Action Man to the deck at his right shoulder, so that only his arm was visible from where Matt lay. Matt hauled himself up to his knees in time to see that the arm, though trapped, was laboriously turning to point the pistol in his direction. Still kneeling, he grabbed the sander in both hands, but it was about five times as heavy as he was expecting, and the weight of it toppled him forwards again. He gave a diaphragmic grunt of effort as he fell, and managed somehow to land the device on the outstretched limb.

The gunman roared with pain, but still he gripped the gun and still his wrist slowly turned, the trigger‐
finger squeezing off shots closer and closer to Matt’s head. Matt was flat‐
out and face‐
down on the tiles, the end of the silencer just out of his reach. About ten more degrees and it would be pointing between his eyes. He looked to his outstretched hand, still resting on the sander, and noticed the lettering on the device’s distinctive semi‐
circular protruberance. This informed him, better late than never, that the sander was in fact a masonry saw.

Click. Whirr. Spray.

Disarmed.

Matt wiped the blood from his eyes, the gunman’s cries slightly muffled by the screening effect of the worktop. He turned the saw off again and crouched beside it. The severed forearm lay absurdly on the floor nearby, its hand still gripping the pistol. It was a bit late for being squeamish, but he couldn’t yet bring himself to prise the weapon from its fingers.

There was a grinding rumble of wood and metal on tile, accompanied by a bellowing scream. In a rage of anger, pain and sheer desperation, the gunman had hauled his shoulder and the stump of his arm from beneath the worktop and got to his knees. His left hand reached to the floor for the Uzi, the strap of which was tangled around one of the bench’s legs. Matt hefted the saw once more and threw both it and himself across the barrier at the gunman, flicking the switch as he fell.

Action Man’s howls were matched by Matt’s own primal, animal yell as he pinned his pursuer under the saw, which tore ravenously into his chest and upper abdomen. The man’s screams were suddenly silenced when blood began flowing up out of his open mouth, at which point Matt estimated it was safe to turn the saw back off. He stood up woozily, shaking and shivering, looking down in awestruck incomprehension at what he had wreaked. He was soaked from the crotch upwards in blood and fuck‐
knew what else. Even his hair was wet with it.

Matt stepped unsteadily away and rested his bottom on the edge of the toppled worktop. He was breathing heavily through his nose, the sound seeming to fill the room. The shivering continued, even though he was sweating from exertion, and his hands trembled like he had the DTs. He gripped the bench to right himself, feeling like if he sat on the floor he might fall off the world. Blood continued to seep from the corpse, puddling towards his feet.

‘Oops,’ he said throatily.

His attempts to reinvent himself as a more morally responsible individual didn’t appear to be going quite to plan. He’d managed to resist taking sexual advantage of a vulnerable female, but had ended up slaughtering someone instead. That was the big weakness when fate played the comedian: once it was on a roll, it tended to get carried away with itself and its sense of irony became less and less subtle.

He needed air. He desperately needed air. He stumbled over to the patio doors and through the gap he’d left.

The dim glow lighting the suite and the corridor was from the Lido’s illuminations beneath, darkness now having fallen across the highland skies. Over in the Laguna, there was one lonely light shining up in the residential floors, its empty rooms also equipped with Gavin’s NRG‐
Sava system. ‘Welcome to the Pleasuredome’ pounded out from ground‐
level.

Matt walked to the edge of the terrace and looked over the balcony, then ducked immediately back out of sight. He crouched on the uneven floor, still missing some slabs, and peered down through the railings. There were two more guys in combat gear outside the Laguna’s main entrance, evidently standing guard, or standing by.

A radio crackled on the deceased Action Man’s belt.

‘Booth, this is Jardine. Come in, over.’

‘Christ,’ Matt muttered, walking back inside. Revulsion turned once again into fear as he remembered the gunman telling his radio‐
buddy he was ‘dealing’ with ‘a stray’.

‘Booth, this is Jardine. Are you there? Over.’

Matt took a deep breath then crouched down by the body, unhooking the blood‐
spattered radio and lifting it to his blood‐
spattered face. He pressed the Talk button.

‘Yeah, Booth here,’ he growled, trying to remember Action Man’s accent. He hadn’t heard enough to get more precise than ‘English’, but what the hell, everyone sounded much the same on these things.

‘Did you lock down the problem?’

‘Yeah, I got him.’

‘Is he dead?’

Matt looked at the Sam Raimi special effect beside him on the floor. ‘Safe to say, yeah.’

‘So the area’s secured?’

‘Yeah. Hotel B secured.’

‘Good. Remain in your position until further orders. Out.’

Matt exhaled very slowly. He wasn’t going to waste brain‐
time asking himself what this might be about, but he knew one thing for sure: it was only beginning.

Bad‐
ass perpetrators and they’re here to stay.

He pulled the Uzi free of the workbench and slung it over his shoulder, then removed the spare clips from the dead man’s belt and stuffed them into his trouser pockets. Slung around the man’s back there was also a compact pump‐
action shotgun, which he tucked under his arm. He attached the radio to his waistband, then moved around the workbench again and ungripped the pistol from the fingers of the severed arm.

Such a sweet thing …

You said it, Alice.

No more Mister Nice Guy.

Matt pulled the keycard from his back pocket, then thought better of it as he noticed the state of his hand and remembered what the rest of himself looked like. ‘Out damned spot’ wasn’t going to make it. He gently knocked on the door, covering the spyhole with his hand.

He heard footsteps, then Simone’s voice: ‘Matthew?’

‘Simone, it’s me. Don’t open the door.’

‘What?’