MONOLITH (26 page)

Andrei Voronov poured himself another measure of Jack Daniel’s and sipped it, ice clinking against the expensive crystal tumbler as he raised it to his lips.

It was quiet inside the Penthouse apartment of the Crystal Tower despite the fact that there were five people gathered there in one of the sitting rooms. Voronov himself looked slowly from each expectant face to the next. The two bodyguards who stood impassively near the door, then the man with the goatee beard and finally the woman in the grey suit. Voronov cradled the glass in his hand for a moment longer then walked slowly back towards the sofa near the middle of the room. There were two others identical to it arranged around a marble topped coffee table.

Spread out on the top of this table were a number of photographs and Voronov looked at them as he sat down, taking another sip of his drink.

‘You’re sure of their identities?’ he said, finally, moving one of the photos with a long index finger.

‘Jessica Anderson and Alex Hadley,’ the woman in the grey suit told him. ‘Both reporters. If there’d been any way of knowing what they were going to ask …’

Voronov raised a hand to cut her short.

‘It doesn’t matter about their questions,’ he said, flatly. ‘If I had reacted the way they wanted me to then it would have been more of a problem. As it is …’ he allowed the sentence to trail off and shrugged.

The man with the goatee shifted uncomfortably in his seat, looked first at the woman and then at Voronov.

‘How do you want to deal with it?’ he asked.

‘I cannot have stories circulating about this building,’ Voronov said. ‘Or about my own family. It is no one’s business but mine. I certainly don’t want it all over the newspapers.’ He took a sip of his drink. ‘These people must be made to understand that.’ He looked down at the table top and the photos of Jess and Hadley. ‘I wonder how they found out about my grandfather?’

‘They’re reporters,’ the woman said, dismissively. ‘They have ways of finding out about anything.’

‘I have always tried to maintain a certain anonymity,’ Voronov said. ‘You know that.’

‘It is difficult in a world with the internet and …’ the woman began.

‘Difficult perhaps but not impossible,’ Voronov interrupted. ‘Trust is an important thing. Perhaps I have too much of it. Or it is misplaced.’

‘No one in this organisation would ever betray you,’ the man with the goatee protested. ‘They are all loyal to you.’

‘You seem very sure of that,’ Voronov said, quietly. ‘For the right price and under the right circumstances anyone’s loyalty can be bought or tested. Perhaps the time has come to re-evaluate the natures of some of those who work for me.’

He drained what was left in his glass and got to his feet.

‘I want these two dealt with as soon as possible,’ Voronov said, pointing at the pictures of Jess and Hadley. ‘Is that understood?’

The man with the goatee and the woman nodded. The woman was about to speak when Voronov simply turned his back on her, wandering towards a door at the far end of the room. He turned and glanced at the other occupants of the penthouse then reached for the door handle and turned it. The others watched him enter, closing the door behind him.

The room was cooler than the main sitting room, the walls and floors bare stone. Voronov could hear the gentle hum of air conditioning but other than that it was silent too. His footsteps echoed as he walked slowly across the floor.

The room was empty but for the one solitary figure at the centre of it.

Voronov crossed to the figure, running his gaze up and down the massive form, studying the blank expressionless features.

He reached out gently and touched one of the arms, rubbing the grey stone and rolling some fragments between his fingers. Motes of dust turned in the air and Voronov walked around the figure, studying it from all angles with a combination of awe and foreboding. He murmured something unintelligible under his breath and looked down at the grey specks of stone on his fingertips.

He spat gently onto his fingers and rolled the fragments of stone around in the saliva then he reached out and pressed those moist fingers to the chest of the figure, drawing them downwards as if he were anointing it. He looked directly into the face, deep into the tunnel like eye sockets.

They stared back blindly at him.

Jessica Anderson rubbed her eyes with both hands then peered myopically back at the computer screen before her.

She read the first two thousand words of the article she’d written, nodding approvingly to herself or shaking her head dismissively as she corrected mistakes or changed a word here and there. She had learned early on in her career that to re-read something one has written too many times leads only to disappointment (and also to endless editing). An older colleague had taught her that valuable lesson and she was sure that it had been Hadley. He had taught her a great deal about work, life and lots of other thing too. She sat back in her seat and gently rotated her neck, hearing the bones crack loudly as she did.

She wondered for one brief second if she should e-mail the article over to Hadley now. Just let him run his expert eye over it and give her some instant feedback. Maybe, she thought, when she was finished. Just let him have a quick look.

Just for old times’ sake?

Jess wrote another three hundred words and re-read those too.

She had photos of Voronov to accompany the article and she quickly scrolled through them, selecting the ones to use. She chose a couple she’d taken at the press conference earlier and also one of the Crystal Tower itself. For a moment she wondered about adding one of Brian Dunham complete with the caption;

POLICE HAVE YET TO QUESTION VORONOV OVER BRIAN DUNHAM’S DEATH

But she thought better of it. The article she’d written was accurate, informative and challenging (and probably lots of other clichés too but she could only think of those three at the moment) but it couldn’t be libellous and until a definitive link was found linking the billionaire to the death of Dunham she could not add anything that might imply Voronov knew how the other man had died.

She hit the final full stop on the article and leaned back in her chair looking at the screen for a moment before she got to her feet and padded to the bathroom.

She’d barely pushed the door closed behind her when she heard the ringing of her mobile.

Jess muttered under her breath but decided to wait. Whoever it was would ring back or leave a message on voice mail. When she was finished she headed back towards her laptop.

It was as she was passing the door of her flat she heard movement outside.

She put her eye to the spyhole and squinted out into the gloom beyond.

It was pitch black in the hall way. She couldn’t see a thing. Normally when someone entered the building the lights on the stairs came on, triggered by a motion sensor in the main entryway but this time it was still dark out on the stairwell.

Jess lingered at the spyhole for a second longer then stepped away from the door.

More movement outside her door.

She spun round, this time reaching for the lock, preparing to turn it, to step outside into the stairwell and see who was moving about at this time of the night. It was just past 12.46 a.m. and the building was normally silent by this time. Jess’s hand hovered over the lock but she didn’t turn it. Why she didn’t she wasn’t sure but something stopped her and she swallowed hard, pressing her eye to the spyhole and trying to see through the blackness beyond.

She stood there for almost a minute and was relieved when she heard nothing else. Jess turned away and headed for her laptop and phone, wanting to see who was calling her so late. She guessed it was Hadley.

When she reached the phone she saw that the screen was displaying the words ‘Missed Call’. She checked the number but there was nothing in the call log. Whoever had been ringing, it wasn’t Hadley.

She held the phone in her hand for a moment, seeing her own reflection in the screen. She hesitated a moment longer then called Hadley’s number. It began to ring.

Jess scanned the story she’d written once again as she waited for Hadley to pick up. Perhaps, she thought, smiling, he too was in the toilet. Fifteen rings later there was still no answer. She dialled again. Still no answer.

Could he have gone to bed? Jess shook her head. He wasn’t one for early nights, she knew he didn’t sleep too well at the best of times.

She called the number again.

Still no answer.

Feeling a little more concerned than perhaps she should have and not knowing why she put down the phone and typed a quick e-mail to him.

Hey you … want to read the article? I’ll send it over now. Jess.

Message sent, the server assured her. Jess waited for the reply and as she did she hit his number on her phone once again and waited.

And waited.

Still nothing.

Even if he’d fallen asleep she told herself, surely the ringing of the phone would have woken him. Even if it had been on silent then the buzzing or vibration would have caused enough noise to rouse him. Wouldn’t it? Jess wasn’t sure why she was suddenly feeling so anxious or why she was equally desperate to hear the sound of Hadley’s voice. She looked at the computer screen as if the simple act of staring at it was going to provoke some response from Hadley by way of an e-mail.

It didn’t.

And now, in the stillness of the night she heard more sounds of movement from the direction of the flat’s door.

Jess got to her feet and padded towards the front door, leaving her own hall light off so as not to alert whoever was outside (the light from inside her flat was visible as a pinprick through the spyhole from the outside). She pushed her eye against the spyhole, her heart bumping hard.

The light in the stairwell still hadn’t come on, still hadn’t been activated by the movement of someone ascending or descending the steps but as she squinted more intently through the small aperture she was sure of one thing.

There was someone standing outside her door.

Jess stifled a gasp as she peered through the spyhole, trying to make out the size and features of whoever was standing outside her door.

In the gloom and with only the benefit of such a small hole to look through she couldn’t be sure about anything regarding the intruder. If indeed it was an intruder but then, why the hell would another resident of the building be standing motionless a few feet from her door just staring at the partition?

Jess remained up against her door, angry that she could see nothing more than a vague outline of whoever was outside.

She heard low whispering.

Her heart was beating faster now. She looked around.

For what? What the fuck are you looking for? Something to attack them with? Something to defend yourself with?

If there was whispering, she told herself then there must be more than one person out there on the stairs and in the passageway. But had she heard the muted sounds correctly or had her mind simply been playing tricks on her? Was she even completely sure that there was a figure out there? In the blackness it was almost impossible to tell. Dull light filtered into the passageway from a picture window built into the outside wall of the building but it didn’t allow enough illumination to be completely sure of the size, build or appearance of the figure she was increasingly sure was standing outside her door.

In order for someone not resident in the building to get inside they would have had to break in she told herself. Unless they’d slipped in when a resident had entered, perhaps posing as a visitor. Thoughts and ideas tumbled through Jess’s mind without any kind of logic or coherence. A mind flooded with fear tends not to be logical.

Why hadn’t the sensor in the stairwell or hall caused the lights to come on when this intruder had been climbing the steps? Had it been disabled? Smashed?

Jess kept her eye to the spyhole, not daring to move her gaze from the figure that was still merely standing motionless before her door.

Like a statue?

She felt a shiver run down her spine.

That’s what you wanted isn’t it?

Jess peered more closely, her eye shoved up hard against the spyhole as if she was a scientist peering through a microscope at the cure for cancer.

Like a statue.

It couldn’t be, surely. Had Voronov sent the creature after her? Was it the Golem that was standing out there on her landing? If it was, she reasoned, then nothing would be able to protect her. There would be no fighting back against this monstrosity. Except, she told herself, with speed. Perhaps she could outrun it. If she could slip past it and …

She took a deep breath and tried to control her racing imagination.

She hadn’t got a clue who or what was outside her door. There might be nothing there. It could be a trick of the light.

And the whispering?

Air rushing up or down the stairs? A breeze perhaps?

Standing in the gloom like this didn’t exactly help her find a logical explanation. In times of fear and uncertainty, the conclusions the mind reached were invariably the worst and darkest.

Jess looked down and realised that she hadn’t locked the door when she came in.

Often she would leave it unlocked, satisfied that the main door downstairs that led into the entryway was secure and now, when she needed security more than ever, her door was unlocked. She wondered if she could turn the lock without alerting the figure outside. Dare she chance it? Moving with infinite slowness she slipped the chain into place, terrified that it might rattle when she let it go. It didn’t. She reached for the lock and prepared to turn it, her hand shaking.

If it is the Golem standing out there then all the locks and chains and bolts in the world won’t keep it out.

Jess rested her fingers on the lock and stood there motionless. Then, after what seemed like an age, she turned it very slowly to the right.

In that position she couldn’t see if whoever was outside had heard any movement. She didn’t know if they were aware that only two inches of wood separated them now. She turned the lock a little further, peering through the gloom to see that the bolt was a fraction of an inch from sliding into the housing on the other side of the mechanism. There would be a click when that happened, she couldn’t avoid it. It would sound like a rifle shot in the silence. Jess kept on turning.

She almost screamed when the knock came on the door.