Hide and Seek (5 page)

CHAPTER 10

14:19pm

The Excellent Eight used to play games at Bilton flats, which lay on the outskirts of the town near the primary school he’d gone to. The flats had been built in the late '70s and even when he was a kid they already looked old. There were ten floors to the flats and twelve apartments on each floor. The top two floors were no longer occupied; back in ‘88 a storm damaged the roof and the rain had got in and completely ruined the top floor flats and sufficiently dampened the floors to affect the ceilings of the 9
th
floor as well. The roof had been repaired but the rooms had never been renovated because there wasn’t enough demand for the eight remaining floors anyway. Therefore, this is where the kids usually played.

T
he rest of the clue then made perfect sense to him.

Don’t play on the stairs or you will cry. Colin Clark has bad memories of this place.

The Excellent Eight had been playing on the 10
th
floor. They’d been catapulting gobstoppers from an empty apartment window to see who could get it the furthest. The lifts weren’t working and so they were coming down one of the stairways. They took it in turn to run and jump down entire flights. Sometimes over-jumping and smashing into the walls. By the time they reached the last three flights of stairs they were tired. Steve decided to start sliding down the banister railings and went flying down fast but perfectly dismounted at the end like a gymnast coming off a pommel horse. Colin decided to copy Steve and slid down on his front, balls first. He caught his leg on the corner of the railings, span off the banister and threw his hands out to protect himself. He fell onto the next flight of stairs and bounced down them to the floor below. It all happened so fast, everybody was stunned into silence.

Steve
eventually shouted out ‘Colin!’

Then they h
eard the shocked sobbing begin.

The group ran down the stairs. They found Colin sat upright against the wall holding his right hand with his left. He looked up as they came down the stairs, his eyes red and wet
, tears streaming down his face. His cheeks were covered in little cuts but those were minor, the major concern was the angle at which his hand was pointing. It was obvious straight away that he had broken it and the group quickly helped him home. Colin’s mother was ironing clothes when they arrived and as soon as she reacted he started to cry again. The group had to endure both interrogation and scolding from Colin’s mother but it was mercifully brief as she realised that she needed to get him to the hospital. The group stood and watched as Colin, feeling very sorry for himself, was driven away.

Peter considered his options for getting to the flats. He had no car and no money for a taxi. Celo presumably had his wallet, which removed a lot of his options. It was all part of his sick game not to make it too easy for him to get around. He reckoned it was at least a twenty-five minute walk. He could probably make it in fifteen minutes if he ran, although he knew that he wasn’t in the best of shape and even though Colin’s life depended on him, he knew he probably couldn’t run for fifteen minutes flat. Peter remembered that Colin and Michelle’s cars were parked on the driveway. There had to be spare keys somewhere, perhaps even some money.

His eyes darted around the living room and spotted a chest of drawers. He rifled through each drawer looking for anything that could be useful but they were full of letters, bills, pictures and old telephone directories. He ran upstairs and began a frenzied search through the wardrobes and cupboards in each of the bedrooms. He could find nothing of use and so he made his way back downstairs and went into the study. Peter continued his search through the drawers of the computer table but was already beginning to feel
panicked; worried that this was a futile exercise that was wasting precious time. His last attempt was the kitchen. He ran in, completely forgetting about the severed arm in the middle of the floor, and stopped dead in his tracks. He decided to abandon searching the kitchen and walked back into the living room. He had just wasted at least ten minutes searching through the house and he was no further forward. He had to leave now and get to the flats - time was running out.

He made his way towards the door and then suddenly recalled what Celo had said on the phone.
There was something in Colin’s clenched hand, something which would help him with the game. He crossed back into the kitchen and knelt down by the arm. The stench of the already decomposing flesh stung his nostrils. He held his nose with one hand as he prodded the clenched fist with a finger cautiously, as if it might scurry away like Thing from The Addams Family. But the hand was cold to the touch and stiff. What was it concealing? As he moved his head closer to inspect, he saw a glint of metal through a small gap between the fingers. He decided to approach the task like the principle behind taking off a plaster. He would do it as quickly as possible. He took a deep breath and held it. He gripped the upper wrist steady with one hand and used his other to prise the stiff fingers away from the palm. The fingers came away one by one. He baulked every time he heard the sickening snap of bone at the knuckle and finger joints. After he had prised the third finger away he could see a key ring holding three keys nestled in the palm of Colin’s hand. He grabbed at them and pulled them briskly away, then ran back into the living room. He emptied his lungs of the air he had been holding and took in a deep breath now that he was away from the stench of the dismembered arm.

He looked down at the keys wondering what they could be used for. For one of the cars on the driveway he
hoped, but he could see now that they were all Yale lock keys. He rattled them in the palm of his hand and noticed that one key had the number nine engraved on it. He thought for a second, was there anything in the house that could be unlocked with one of these? He couldn’t think of anything.

Peter picked up the mobile phone from the mantelpiece. He read the time on the display. He had to go
now
; too much time had been wasted here already. He grabbed his jacket, shoved the phone and the keys in a pocket - took a final brief pause by the front door - then took a deep breath and set off.

CHAPTER 11

14:36pm

Peter walked out onto the main road. He felt jittery and jumpy; the sounds of the outside world all seemed jumbled together chaotically. It had been quiet inside Colin and Michelle’s house but now the sounds of cars, the gusting wind, the beeping of a pedestrian crossing, all ordinary sounds which now seemed suddenly noticeable and extremely loud. He took a look up at the buildings opposite the house, his mind playing with the thought that Celo could be behind one of those windows right now watching him. He shuddered as he turned and walked up to the junction. He stood at the corner watching the traffic go by, waiting for a break to cross the road. He felt like he was in the middle of a time lapse movie and everything was speeded up and rushing past him.

The air was cold, sudden erratic bursts of the whistling wind ruffled his clothes and bit at his exposed skin. The stark white light of the afternoon was fading and quickly being replaced by grey skies dotted with
dark clouds. He didn’t know if it had actually got colder or whether he was trembling through fear. He zipped up his jacket as he felt a light spray of rain brush across his face. He crossed the junction and started walking briskly up the street, almost jogging. The path ahead was a long road on a steep incline that cut straight up through the west side of the town. At the top of the road he knew there was a busy three way junction. If he turned right he’d be at the entrance to the high street which snaked diagonally down through the centre of town. He had to continue straight on at the junction towards the northwest of the town, which lay at the foot of the hills. He would head towards the primary school and continue past it to the flats at the end of a cul-de-sac.

As h
e passed people on the street, they seemed to stare at him. And the further he walked, the more his paranoia grew. He felt as if everyone was watching him. A thought crossed his mind that any one of these people could be Celo. He felt he couldn’t trust anyone and yet he had the overwhelming urge to stop someone and ask for help. He envied the fact that each of them was going about their normal lives, whilst he carried the burden that there was a mad man somewhere in town threatening to kill his friends. He checked the time on the mobile phone and immediately picked up the pace.

Peter was
practically running now as he continued up the road, thoughts racing round in his mind, firing up his synapses like lightning in an electrical storm. The name Celo, why was he using a Latin word? Was there any other significance to it, beyond its basic meaning? A sign that Celo was educated? Or a lame attempt to appear intelligent? Peter figured you could easily find out the Latin word for anything through a quick search via Google. It did suggest that he must be someone Peter knew, or else why the need for an alias and a disguised voice? He’d immediately assumed from the depth of the voice that it was a man, but on further reflection he had no idea how good these devices were so it could just as easily be a woman. He shook his head in frustration; his questions were just throwing up more questions than answers.

As he reached the busy junction at the top of the road, he could see the dilapidated flats looming in the distance. They did seem to be reaching up and touching the sky, as Celo
’s clue suggested. He stopped at the junction and waited for a gap in the traffic, bending over at the waist to catch his breath. Despite the intense burning in his stomach and face from running he still felt bitterly cold, and his hands were trembling violently. He negotiated his way through the traffic and crossed over the junction onto Plumer Drive, then continued towards the flats.

His
first goal had been to simply get to the flats, but as the towering structure grew closer he began to feel more worried. What was he going to do when he actually got there? How was he going to find Colin in that sprawling maze of over a hundred apartments? Celo’s clue had indicated something to do with the stairways but Peter doubted that he would be there - surely one of the residents would have discovered him? Colin had to be inside one of the apartments, but which one? He couldn’t think of anything in the clue that pointed to a more precise location.

Peter was distracted for a moment as he passed by Bilton primary school. It was the school
they’d all gone to as children. The building, the adjoining playground and field used to be open plan but were now surrounded by a foreboding seven foot metal fence. An ugly visual reminder, he thought, of these wary times; as if dangerous people were a new phenomenon. People seemed scared of everything these days, and determined to wrap their children in a cocoon of cotton wool. They seemed to forget that previous generations had negotiated through the same dangers and had emerged relatively unscathed. Peter felt very strongly on the subject and usually reacted with disdain upon reading any news that yet another protective bubble was being created because a so-called professional had theorised that someone might get hurt. However, all of his natural feelings on the subject were confused at present, given his current predicament. The desire to be overprotective seemed to make much more sense with people like Celo in the world. An irony being that this time the adults were the ones who needed protecting.

Peter passed the school and rounded the corner into the cul-de-sac. The flats were built in a dip below street level so
at the end of the road was a driveway that spiralled down to the entrance. The grounds surrounding the flats were closed in by a brick wall about eight feet in height, with a steep grass verge leading up to the roadside which was cordoned off with a waist high fence. Peter remembered that when they were younger they used to jump the fence, slide down the grass verge and jump off the edge of the brick wall to land on the ground. As he approached the fence he stopped short, and looked down at the almost vertical drop - age made it look more forbidding.

He ran down by the side of the fence, then down the steep embankment and arrived at the front door to the flats. He tried the door
but it was locked. To his right was a keypad and next to that a larger pad with numbers and little slider views next to each. A lot of the apartments looked empty with no names next to them, especially for the 9
th
and 10
th
floor. He scoured the list looking for any clue and felt his heart skip a beat when he saw the name C Clark next to Apartment 9 on the 10
th
floor. He pressed the button and waited anxiously, half expecting Celo’s voice to come over the speaker, but nothing happened. He tried pressing the button again but there was no response and the door didn’t buzz to allow him entry. For a moment he considered pressing every button on the 1
st
floor - something they used to do as a childhood dare.

Then he remembered the key
with the number nine engraved on it. He pulled the bunch from his jacket pocket and fumbled the correct key into the lock. It slid in easily, he turned the key and the door opened.

Peter
went inside and crossed the lobby area, pressing both buttons for the lifts. The one to his left opened straight away and he hurriedly pressed the button for the 10
th
floor. As the lift noisily and shakily rattled and shuddered its way towards the 10
th
floor Peter wondered what awaited him. Would Colin be there? Alive, dead? Was Celo there? He wished he had some kind of weapon, and cursed his lack of thought for not grabbing a kitchen knife or something from Colin and Michelle’s house. He pulled the mobile phone from his jacket pocket - the time display read 14:51pm.

‘Hurry up, hurry up.’

The lift jolted to a stop and pinged to signal its arrival. The doors wobbled opened. Peter stepped out into a corridor lined with doors to each of the apartments. To his left and right were the exits leading to the stairwells. He cautiously crept up the corridor looking for apartment nine. There it was. He put his ear to the door. All was quiet except for the hum of a television coming from one of the other apartments on the floor. He hesitated for a moment wondering whether to knock or just barge in. He leaned in again, and knocked loudly. Immediately he heard a muffled sound. He tried the door handle and found it wasn’t locked. He opened the door with his left hand, his right hand clenched tightly into a fist.