MONOLITH (19 page)

Jess pulled her arm clear in the nick of time as the lift fell a full ten feet.

She stumbled backwards, falling against the rear wall of the lift, the realisation that her arm may well have been torn off by the sudden movement sweeping over her and making her breathe even more rapidly.

‘Jess.’

Hadley looked down into the lift, calling her name.

‘I’m ok,’ she told him none too convincingly. ‘Just get me out of here.’

‘That’s what I’m trying to do,’ Hadley called back.

She heard his voice again as he spoke to the estate agent, quickly spoken words that she couldn’t make out clearly.

‘There must be some workmen in the building somewhere who can open these doors,’ Jess shouted. ‘Go and find them.’

‘I’m not leaving you,’ Hadley shouted back.

There was a deafening sound of metal on metal and the lift slipped another inch or two.

Jess steadied herself against the back wall, her heart hammering against her ribs even more strongly.

‘Alex,’ she called, her voice catching.

Hadley peered through the gap once more, the concern on his face mirrored by that which Jess felt coursing through her like adrenalin. That feeling intensified when the lift began to rise once again. Jess braced herself as the lift filled with the strident screech of metal against metal. Hadley and Tyler, aware that the car was moving once again also stepped back, Hadley glancing at the gap between the doors where, seconds later, he saw Jess’s distraught face appear.

The lift stopped.

As precisely as if it had been called to that floor it stopped.

The doors slid open with the smoothness usually expected of them.

Inside the lift Jess stood motionless, seeing Hadley and Tyler gazing in at her.

Hadley took a step towards the lift, eyes fixed on the still open doors.

‘Get out,’ he said quietly as if afraid that his instruction would somehow trigger another movement of some kind.

Jess stood where she was, staring ahead, afraid that this was some kind of bizarre trick. If she moved towards the open doors she felt sure they would slam shut. If she stayed put she felt certain that the lift would fall or rise and she knew what the eventual outcome of that must be.

‘Jess,’ Hadley said quietly. ‘Get out, now.’

She took a step forward.

The doors remained open.

‘Come on,’ Hadley urged, reaching out with one hand towards the open doors, preparing to hold them apart if possible should they attempt to slide shut once again. He nodded towards Tyler who also moved forward and did the same, his fingers poised only inches from the other side of the doors.

Jess was still standing in the middle of the lift car, her breath now frozen in her mouth, drawn by the possibility of freedom but also convinced that she might be once again imprisoned.

‘Come on,’ Hadley said again, his fingers now actually touching the open doors.

Jess hesitated, inching forwards, her eyes darting towards the doors then at Hadley who was nodding slowly as if to coax her.

He beckoned with his hand, moving slowly as if even the movement would spark some kind of reaction from the lift or the doors that still stood open.

Jess moved another few inches towards the sanctuary of escape, her breath catching in her throat. She saw Tyler move closer to the doors, slipping his arm across the yawning gap.

‘Jess,’ Hadley said, quietly, still motioning her forward.

She could feel her entire body shaking now but with one monumental effort of will she practically ran forward and between the open lift doors. She slipped and almost overbalanced but she didn’t care, she was out. That was all that mattered.

She saw the smile spread across Hadley’s face as he bent to help her up and Tyler too smiled as he prepared to step away from the doors. Doors which, a second later slammed shut on his left arm.

Tyler screamed in pain as the doors crushed his arm, slamming together with such speed that he had no chance to pull the limb free.

Like the jaws of a huge mantrap, the lift doors crashed together catching him just below the shoulder and pinning him there, holding him upright. He struggled to free himself, fear and pain flooding through him, the loud crack of shattering bone still reverberating in the air. Jess could see the look of agony on the estate agent’s face and she was surprised that the arm hadn’t been severed outright such had been the speed and force with which the doors had slammed shut on his arm.

Hadley tried to dig his fingers into the gap between the two lift doors, hoping once again to prise them open but they were immovable. And all the time Tyler screamed uncontrollably, his legs almost buckling beneath him.

Jess saw blood pumping from the area around his shoulder and shuddered again at the thought that the doors had shut with such force that they had indeed almost amputated the limb. There was crimson soaking into Tyler’s shirt and jacket, his face spattered with it and flecked with perspiration too. He looked imploringly at Hadley and Jess who watched helplessly as he tried to tug himself free of the doors grip. Jess got next to Hadley and both of them tore wildly at the doors but to no avail.

Then Jess heard an all too familiar metallic grinding and realised with horror that the lift was about to move again.

Whether its movement was up or down she realised, as did the two men, that Tyler’s predicament had suddenly grown even more serious.

The estate agent himself started panting wildly and attempting to drag himself even more frantically from the grip of the doors.

‘Help me,’ he shrieked. ‘Please.’

Jess looked right into his bulging eyes and saw that tears of pain and fear were welling up there.

Again the lift moved slightly, rising a couple of inches and continuing its inexorable ascent at a monstrously even pace which Jess guessed gave them less than thirty seconds to free the trapped man.

Hadley tore impotently at the doors, Tyler tried his best to pull himself free and Jess felt as helpless as she’d ever felt in her life as she stood beside the doors now able to see through the small gap that the lift was still rising. Tyler began to struggle more frantically now, like a tethered animal left as bait for a beast of prey he became more terrified by the second, trying to haul himself clear of the clinging doors, his moans of pain turning to wails of despair. He kicked against the doors as Hadley continued to push and pull at them. Jess could see blood running down the metal doors now, puddling at the bottom. Tyler’s jacket was already soaked around the shoulder, the garment like a crimson sponge where his arm was caught. He shouted something frantically that Jess couldn’t make out then, with a loud hiss, the lift shot upwards.

It severed Tyler’s arm effortlessly.

He fell to one side as his arm was sliced off at the shoulder, blood spurting madly from the stump.

Some of the crimson fluid spattered Hadley and Jess but the majority of it shot up the metal doors of the lift and across the floor, spreading out in a large pool around his twitching body.

Jess was already grabbing for her mobile and calling the emergency services while Hadley knelt beside the stricken estate agent, gazing down helplessly at the piece of bone visible through the pulped shoulder muscle and torn flesh.

Hadley pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and stuffed it uselessly against the spurting stump, the material soaking up Tyler’s blood almost immediately. The estate agent was already close to unconsciousness and Jess held his head, feeling the sweat and blood on his skin as she cradled him. The blood that was spilling out around him washed against her shoes and she shuddered, trying to fight back the feelings of nausea that filled her.

‘Sit him up,’ Hadley said, helping Jess prop Tyler against the wall close to the lift.

‘He’ll bleed to death before the ambulance arrives,’ Jess gasped.

Tyler moaned feebly beside her, his body still shuddering as if an electric shock had been pumped through it.

Hadley looked despairingly at her then at the estate agent whose face was the colour of milk.

Blood was still jetting from the veins and arteries in his shoulder and every time Hadley tried to apply more pressure to the savage injury he was sprayed with more crimson fluid. The handkerchief he’d used as a temporary and woefully inadequate dressing was now completely drenched with blood and dripping. He blenched as he wondered whether or not he should wring it out. Tyler spasmed violently in Jess’s arms then lay still.

‘Oh Jesus,’ she whispered.

Hadley looked down blankly at her, his face pale.

The estate agent wasn’t moving now and his eyes had rolled upwards in their sockets. Hadley bent and pressed two fingers to the man’s neck, feeling frantically for a pulse.

He looked at Jess and shook his head.

Jess backed away, allowing Tyler’s head to fall to the ground where it landed with a rather loud crack. With one shaking hand she held the camera phone before her and clicked off several shots.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Hadley snapped.

Jess didn’t answer him she was gazing fixedly at the body of Tyler.

‘The blood,’ she said, softly.

Hadley nodded.

He glanced at the body of Tyler again, his face dropping, his mind struggling to cope with what he saw.

The estate agent, his arm severed at the shoulder, had been surrounded by a spreading pool of blood, some of which had also spattered the walls and the doors of the lift.

There wasn’t a single drop of the crimson fluid to be seen.

Hadley shook his head and backed away from the estate agent, stopping when he was standing beside Jess, both of them gazing down as if in a trance.

‘Where’s the blood?’ Jess murmured.

‘How many times do we have to tell you? That’s what happened. That’s what we saw. If we could have saved him we would.’

Jess puffed on her cigarette and leaned back against the wall behind her.

The policeman before her regarded her with a combination of disbelief and surprise as she went on, occasionally brushing strands of hair from her face.

‘It is a little difficult to believe,’ the policeman said, glancing first at Jess and then at his notebook.

‘Tell me about it,’ Jess chided. ‘I saw it and I still don’t believe it.’

The uniformed man looked her up and down and Jess shot him an irritated glance.

‘If you’ve got all the information you need, would it be ok for us to go and get cleaned up?’ she snapped.

‘All right miss,’ he said, quietly. ‘I think that’ll be all for now.’

Jess dropped her cigarette to the ground and walked towards where Alex Hadley was speaking to another uniformed man. They both turned as they saw her approaching. She heard Hadley say something to the policeman then he nodded and moved away towards Jess.

‘What did you tell them?’ she enquired.

‘I told them what we saw,’ Hadley informed her. ‘What the hell else was I going to say?’

‘What could have caused the lift to do that?’

Hadley could only shake his head.

‘Do you believe me now about these accidents?’ she went on. ‘It was like the lift was …’

‘Was what?’ he asked as she hesitated.

‘It was like it was trying to kill me,’ Jess said, flatly.

‘Fuck off, Jess, that’s ridiculous,’ he grunted.

‘First me, then the estate agent and you saw what happened with the blood from his shoulder. There was lots of it, Alex and then it was gone. Explain that to me.’

‘I can’t at the moment but there has to be some logical explanation, it’s …’

‘What? What were you going to say?’

‘I don’t know what I was going to say. Listen, we’ve both been through a lot, this isn’t the time to start trying to analyse it. We need to sit down and look at all the facts.’

‘The fact is that another man just died because of that fucking building,’ Jess snapped, jabbing an accusatory finger in the direction of the Crystal Tower. ‘Another one, Alex. Another in a long list.’

‘He died in an accident, Jess.’

‘Just like the others did.’

‘An accident,’ Hadley said more forcefully.

‘Then explain the blood,’ she said, defiantly. ‘His arm was cut off, there was blood everywhere and then it just disappeared without a trace. Was that another accident, Alex? Was that something you can just explain away?’

Hadley shook his head.

‘No, I’ll give you that,’ he sighed. ‘That was strange.’

Jess grunted.

‘Strange,’ she repeated. ‘Everything about that building is strange.’

Hadley raised his eyebrows but didn’t speak.

‘And what about this?’ Jess said, reaching for her phone. ‘What the hell is it?’ She pushed the phone towards Hadley who frowned when he saw the picture of the shape that she’d photographed in the penthouse apartment. ‘And what’s it doing in Voronov’s private apartment?’

Hadley studied the shape; scrolling through the other pictures of it Jess had taken.

‘It’s a statue,’ he said.

‘What of?’ Jess wanted to know. ‘What the hell is it supposed to be?’

Hadley looked more closely at the picture that showed the head of the figure. He frowned. Jess saw his expression darken and moved closer to him.

‘I used to know someone in Voronov’s press office,’ Hadley murmured. ‘I’m not even sure if she’s still there.’

Jess shrugged, looking blankly at her companion for a moment.

‘She might have some inside information?’ he revealed.

‘Like she’s going to give it to you?’ Jess sighed. ‘That man is locked down tighter than Fort Knox, Alex and you know it.’

‘Might be worth a try,’ he insisted.

‘So you do think there’s something going on?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Have you still got her number?’ Jess wanted to know.

Hadley nodded.

‘I think so,’ he said.

He handed the phone back to Jess and, as he did, he glanced once more at the picture of the statue.

Jess noticed that his hand was shaking slightly but she didn’t ask why.