Blood Rush (Lilly Valentine) (33 page)

Then there’s a blast of hot air. It knocks them backwards with the force of a car. And a sheet of burning gas streaks towards them.

‘Get back,’ the woman shouts, and pulls them all back into the room they have just left, slamming the door as the fireball soars past.

‘What the hell is going on?’

Jack was furious when he found Annabelle hovering at the foot of Clancy Block.

‘Actually,’ he put up a hand, ‘I don’t care. I’m taking you back home and we’re calling in the station on the way so I can get a DNA swab from you.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

 ‘Because I’m bloody pissed off with all this nonsense,’ he said. ‘Someone else besides Tanisha touched that knife and I’m pretty damn sure it was you.’

Annabelle looked horrified, opening and closing her mouth.

‘Save your arguments,’ Jack turned away, ‘and tell me where Lilly is, so we can just get on with this.’

When Annabelle’s voice came it was tiny. ‘We thought Tanisha might be trying to find Daniel and we thought he might live here.’

Mary, Mother of God. What was the woman planning to do? Knock on every door in Clancy?

He gazed up at the tower block, rubbing the ache it gave him in the back of his neck. The lift was out of order and he really, really didn’t want to walk up all those stairs to find her.

He was about to ask Annabelle to give him one good reason why he shouldn’t arrest the pair of them for wasting police time, when he spotted something unusual. Around halfway up the block, an orange glow lit up one of the walkways. Then a woman appeared and leant over the railing.

Jack’s stomach flipped as he remembered Chika in exactly the same position.

But this woman wasn’t reaching out to him. She was shouting something. He strained to hear.

‘Fire!’

More figures appeared on the walkways, both above and below, some peering up, some down, all focused on the orange glow.

Soon an alarm began to wail and the residents of Clancy began to evacuate the building. Jack ran to the stairwell, checking each person descending. There was no sign of Lilly. He took the stairs two at a time until he reached the sixth floor and knew by the pall of black smoke that he was at the right floor. When he opened the exit, he was hit by a wall of heat and a choking cloud of toxic fumes.

He ran down the walkway, trying to get as near to the source of the fire as he could. He held up his hand to shield his face as he reached the flat which was ablaze. He couldn’t get closer than ten feet before being driven backwards. The flames leapt from the open door, dancing out and up, to the flat above. If the fire crews didn’t get here soon, the whole block would become an inferno.

He ran back down the walkway, thumping on every door and window as he went.

‘Fire,’ he shouted. ‘You need to get out now.’

He was at the flat nearest to the stairwell when the door opened and a young mum with her toddler appeared.

‘We were asleep.’ Her eyes were wide with fear.

‘Don’t worry.’ Jack guided her to the exit. ‘Just make your way downstairs quickly and calmly.’

She scooped up her child and headed away.

‘I knew this would happen one day,’ she said. ‘Making drugs in there. All those young kids coming here and that gangster with his big black car.’

Jack skidded to a halt. ‘What car?’

‘There,’ the woman pointed to a black Mercedes, parked at the far end of the quad.

Oh Jesus, no. Jack looked back at the flat being swallowed by the raging fire. The flat belonged to Daniel Kanio. Tanisha had come looking for him. And Lilly had come looking for Tanisha.

Trapped.

Lilly looked around wildly for an escape route. There were no other doors and the windows were boarded with metal sheets.

No way out.

‘Lilly, look.’ Tanisha pointed to the thick smoke creeping under the door.

 Somewhere in the back of her mind, she half remembered that most victims died of smoke inhalation before the flames even got to them.

‘Give me that.’ She grabbed the blazer that the schoolgirl was still holding over her head, and stuffed it across the gap between the door and floor.

The girl stared at Lilly, her face criss-crossed with cuts from the flying glass.

‘What are we going to do?’ she asked Lilly.

Lilly blinked at the girl, sweat and blood trickling from her forehead, then at the boy lying on the floor with his clearly dying friend in his arms. Finally, she looked at Tanisha, anxious and pregnant.

‘What are we going to do?’ the girl repeated.

Lilly tried not to laugh. Or cry. How the fuck was she supposed to know?

‘We’re going to wrench off the shutter,’ she said.

The others watched, spellbound, as Lilly crossed the room and began pulling at the metal sheet covering the window. It was bolted to the walls and there was nothing to grasp. She smacked at one of the bolts with her open palm, the force juddering through her arm.

In the middle of the room was the ruined table. Next to it, the author of its downfall. An axe. Lilly sprinted over, grabbed it in both hands and wielded it over her head. She smashed it down on one of the bolts, the impact sending waves of pain through her body. Regardless, she raised the axe and once again brought it crashing down.

Panting, she looked over at the kids. The boy carefully placed his companion’s head on the floor and ran to the pile of splintered wood. He scrabbled through until he found a leg of the coffee table. Brandishing it like a club, he attacked the other side of the metal sheet. Immediately, Tanisha and the other girl joined them, all four raining blows on the metal with whatever they could find, screaming with pain and effort.

‘It’s no good.’ Tanisha pulled at one of the bolts. ‘It’s not working.’

‘Keep trying.’ Lilly swung the axe again.

At last, one of the bolts snapped with a ping. The kids laughed in giddy delight, but Lilly knew there was no time to celebrate. She had seen the paint on the door, bubbling and popping in the extreme heat. It could only be a matter of minutes before the door caught light and the fire spread.

‘Come on,’ she roared, hitting another bolt with fresh energy.

The boy abandoned the table leg and reached for a thinner plank of wood. He slid it under the part of the sheet now freed from the wall, and levered it back and forth. Little by little, the metal was prised from the wall and there was a gap big enough to get his hand through.

‘If we get another bolt off we can rip it away,’ he said.

Lilly nodded. She could do this. She placed the axe between her legs and wiped her hands down her skirt. Sweat and ripped skin came away on the material. She didn’t care. She grasped it as tightly as she could and swung in a long slow arc, letting the weight of her body carry it over. It hit the bolt with a clang,
sending
it spinning across the room.

‘Yes,’ Lilly panted, ‘you beauty.’

As she let her arms fall to her sides in exhaustion, the other three began forcing pieces of wood under the metal sheet,
prising
it up. Putting aside the agony in her upper arms, Lilly lifted the axe and squeezed the head under the gap. She rolled it with the handle.

‘It’s coming,’ Tanisha screamed.

Lilly glanced across to the door. The paint was now black, small blue flames appearing in pockets. It was now or never. She jammed the axe head as far under the metal as it would go and pulled the handle towards her.

With a groan, the shutter began to give and Lilly could feel the night air outside. They were almost there. Almost free.

Then came another groan. Not from the window. Lilly looked up. Above their heads something groaned again. Plaster showered down. Then a rumble like thunder in a summer storm.

Then nothing.

Lilly assumed she must be dead.

She had no idea where she was, or how she had got there. Her body appeared to be floating in a thick blackness and every muscle was paralysed.

Then she felt a sharp pain stab her leg.

Not dead then.

She tried to move but a heaviness enveloped her, like a dense blanket. She concentrated on her eyelids. If she could at least see, she might be able to make sense of what was happening.

Summoning all her energy, Lilly attempted to open her eyes. They refused and remained glued shut.

One at a time then.

She focused on her right eye until it flickered open. It closed almost immediately, but, undeterred, she tried again. This time, she managed to lift the lid halfway. Something gritty filled her iris and she blinked away the sting.

Seconds later, she forced her left eye to join in and squinted into the surrounding nothingness.

As a child, Lilly and her mum had often been plunged into darkness when the electricity ran out, and there was nothing left to feed the meter. Lilly would crawl under the itchy blankets on her mum’s bed and snuggle up. If she was lucky, Mum might tell her the story of the Little Chocolate House before she fell asleep, exhausted by her shifts at the textile factory. Then Lilly would feel happy and safe, listening to her wheeze.

But this was different. It wasn’t the darkness of childhood, punctuated by lamp-posts and car headlights. It wasn’t even the darkness of the countryside where the moon would cast its
pallor
over the garden.

This was total. Eyes open or shut, it was the same.

Sudden panic made Lilly gasp and her mouth filled with the same dry grit that had filled her eyes. She spat it out, trying not to gag.

What the fuck was going on?

She couldn’t think straight and her mind began to dance. Her breathing became faster and her pulse began to race.

Then from nowhere, there came a long creak. Not the high shriek of the last stair in her cottage, or the door that perpetually needed oiling, this was low, like a groan.

There it came again.

Lilly held her breath and listened. She’d heard that sound before.

It all came flooding back to her. Searching for Tanisha. The flat on Clayhill. The fire. The kids trying to rip off the metal shutter. Then the groan above her head …

As the ceiling collapsed.

In that second Lilly knew exactly where she was. She was trapped under feet of concrete slabs and bricks and dust. Pinned down like a butterfly in a collection.

Buried alive.

Terror ran through her body like a lit fuse. She opened her mouth and screamed.

Jack stood at the foot of Clancy, his hand cupped over his eyes, trying to make out what was happening.

‘Is the fire out?’ Annabelle grabbed his arm.

Jack surveyed the walkway. There was still a black pall of smoke hanging in the air, but the bright oranges and reds had stopped glowing.

‘I think the fire crew are dealing with it,’ he told her.

At last, the crew appeared from the stairwell, their faces grimy under the bright yellow of their helmets.

‘Do they have Tanisha?’ Annabelle was already sprinting towards them.

Jack followed. There were five men, sweating and leaning against one another, but no sign of Tanisha. Or Lilly.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

‘I’m sorry but all civilians will have to step back.’ The chief pointed to a line being set up by uniform. ‘It’s really not safe here.’

Jack flashed his badge. ‘I’m job.’

The ID on the chief’s helmet stated he was Andy Freeman. He took it off and wiped his face with the heavy sleeve of his
protective
jacket. ‘Didn’t realize.’

‘Just tell me what’s happening. Is the fire under control?’

Freeman nodded and reached for one of the bottles of water being handed out to the crew.

‘What about the people inside the flat?’ Jack shouted.

Freeman held up a gloved hand, while he drank. When the bottle was empty he held it to his lips panting.

‘Sorry,’ said Jack, ‘but there were people inside the flat. I have to know what’s happened to them.’

‘The fire’s all but out,’ said Freeman.

‘So where are they?’ Jack interrupted.

‘There’s been a collapse,’ said Freeman. ‘The entire upstairs
ceiling
has come down.’

‘What?’

‘This was more than a fire. There must have been some sort of explosion. Walls, ceiling, everything, it’s all come down.’

Jack was stunned into silence.

‘The load-bearing walls should have held up,’ Freeman shook his head, ‘but they’ve just gone. Like someone took a
sledgehammer
to them.’

Lilly screamed until the skin of her throat was ragged.

Please God, let this be a nightmare. Any moment the alarm would go off and she would drink in the daylight and kiss her children.

She closed her eyes, willing herself to wake up. Instead there was a noise. Not the stomach-churning moan, like the bowels of a ship, this was muffled, irregular. Lilly listened hard. It sounded like two notes. One high, the other lower. De-de. De-de. Lil-ly. Lilly.

Her eyes flashed open. Someone was calling her name.

‘Yes,’ she shouted, ‘it’s me, I’m here!’

Her voice seemed to reverberate back at her, as if something were blocking it. She took a breath and blew. Hot air came back at her. Whatever it was, was inches from her face. She had to move it.

Her left arm was completely immobile, tucked partly by her side, partly under her body, but the right was across her chest. Like half an angel. This was the one she had to use.

She tried to lift her hand, but something held it in place. She wiggled her fingers and was relieved to find a degree of give. She pressed them first into her chest, then up against the obstruction. She repeated the movement again and again until she could lift them at least a centimetre, then she slid her hand across her
collarbone
, towards the opposite shoulder.

At last it was free.

Slowly, carefully, she brought her palm level with her face, the knuckle of her thumb grazing her cheek. A fraction further and the heel of her hand met something solid. She passed her fingers along it, feeling her way in the darkness. It was rough to the touch and her nails made a scratching sound against it. Definitely not stone or wood. It felt like plaster board.