Holy Terror (9 page)

Looking in through the door, Lieutenant Slyman and his two officers must have been able to see her – if only a dim, angled reflection. They were silent, and they didn't shout out any more.

She slipped her sleeves off her shoulders and then wriggled her hips so that the dress dropped down to the floor. She stepped out of it, and now she was wearing nothing but a white bra and a white lacy thong.

Conor rolled quietly over the bed. He went to the window and eased it open. Fortunately their old air-conditioning unit was making such an irregular racket that he could have set off Chinese firecrackers and nobody would have heard. He could see that Lacey was reaching behind her to unfasten her bra but he didn't want to look, not directly, knowing that Lieutenant Slyman was watching her.

The window gave onto the narrow triangular airshaft. Conor cautiously put his head out and looked down to the rubbish-strewn area below. A wave of vertigo came over him and he felt as if it were almost physically lifting him up, like a wave in the ocean. What frightened him so much was the urge
he felt to throw himself out, as if he
wanted
to kill himself. He swallowed, and clamped his hand to his sweaty forehead. He couldn't do it. He simply couldn't do it.

He glanced back and Lacey was dropping her bra on the floor, her big pale breasts swaying as she did so. He almost gave himself an excuse not to climb out of the window. How could he leave her, naked and unprotected with Drew Slyman and his men? But he knew what would happen if he didn't escape, and he knew that Lacey would never forgive him, every time she put flowers on his grave.

Quaking, he lifted his leg over the sill and found some purchase for his toes on the narrow ledge outside. Then he climbed right out, trying not to think how high up he was, and what would happen to him if he fell. Even though it was dark now, the heat was still overpowering. Sweat rolled down his forehead and stung his eyes. He gripped the windowsill with one hand and swung the window shut with the other. For a split second, he saw Lacey turn toward him, but then he looked away. He had to concentrate on where he was going, and that was all.

He edged his way along the ledge. The concrete was corroded by weather and traffic fumes, and after only two or three feet it began to crumble, so that he almost lost his footing. He managed to get a grip on a stubby overflow pipe, but there was a moment when he felt that he was going to fall backward. However, he managed to stretch out his right leg and find the next section of intact ledge.

Sweating, gasping, he turned his head and looked
downward. Seven stories below, the yard was cluttered with trashcans and broken beds and rusty sheets of corrugated iron. He was only four feet away from an old iron ladder which led up to the roof, but in between the ledge and the ladder was a large ventilation pipe, which he would have to climb around.

He reached out and gripped the drainpipe. The black paint was scaly and blistered, but the pipe seemed to be securely anchored. All he had to do was take hold of it in both hands and swing himself around until his feet found the ladder on the opposite side.

‘Come on, Conor,' he told himself. ‘You've done scarier things than this.' And then he said, ‘No, you haven't. Who are you kidding?' He found himself whispering a prayer, ‘
Mary, Mother of God don't let me fall because if I do I'm going to be guillotined by rusty sheets of corrugated iron and I don't want to die like that
.'

He took three deep breaths. He was about to launch himself around the pipe when the bedroom window behind him suddenly racketed open. He looked back and saw one of the police officers waving his gun at him. ‘
Freeze
!' he shouted.

‘I'm frozen already,' Conor told him, trying not to sound calm.

‘Come back here. Make it slow and make it as easy as you like.'

‘I can't come back. The ledge is broken.'

The officer leaned even further out of the window. He hesitated for a moment, and then he disappeared back into the bedroom.

Conor thought: this is it, this is my only chance. He grabbed the ventilation pipe with his other hand
and swung himself around it. He was wrong: it wasn't fixed securely. As he pulled on it with all his weight, one of the upper brackets was wrenched out of the brickwork with a high-pitched screech and the pipe tilted outward at nearly 45 degrees. He was showered with grit and fragments of mortar.

He hung onto the crazily leaning pipe, trying to locate the iron ladder with his right foot. But every time he tried to swing toward it, the pipe creaked and bent a few inches further outward. He stared at the brick wall in front of him. He didn't dare to look down.

Lacey had been teaching him to control his breathing; to concentrate his strength. But the ventilation pipe was making a steady tortured noise like
ih – ih – ih – ih
–' and he knew that it was only a matter of seconds before it ripped away from the wall completely.

The police officer reappeared at the window.

‘O'Neil!'

He didn't answer – couldn't. He had much more critical matters to take care of.

‘O'Neil – you get your ass back in here or else I'm going to have to shoot!'

Conor closed his eyes for a moment. You would. You would shoot. That's your answer to everything, isn't it? If it frightens you, if you don't understand it, if it threatens your miniaturized view of the world, you shoot it. If Jesus showed up tomorrow morning, you'd probably shoot Him, too.

He thought: what the hell, I'm going to die anyhow. He swung his body to the left, and then to the right. He managed to touch the edge of the iron
ladder with the tip of his right shoe, but he wasn't close enough to get his foot onto the rungs, and he swung away again. The ventilation pipe bent away from the wall even further, and its rusted paint ground even more deeply into the palms of his hands.

Conor heard Lieutenant Slyman's voice. ‘O'Neil! You're resisting arrest! If you don't get back here, I'm going to open fire!'

Conor ignored him. He swung to the left for a second time, and then back to the right, trying to build up as much momentum as possible. He nearly managed to hook his right foot into the iron ladder, but his shoe slipped and he had to swing back again.

Lieutenant Slyman fired a warning shot. It ricocheted from one side of the triangular airwell to the other, and finally hit one of the corrugated-iron sheets with a bang like summer thunder.

‘Next one's aimed for the head,' he called out.

‘
Mary, Mother of God
,' Conor breathed. He swung himself to the left as forcefully as he could, and then threw himself off to the right, letting go of the ventilation pipe altogether. His foot found the ladder, and slipped, but he grabbed at it, too, and clung on. Lieutenant Slyman fired two more shots in quick succession. His first bullet hit the ventilation pipe and whined off into the darkness: his second broke a window on the opposite side of the airshaft.

Conor climbed die ladder as rapidly as he could, his whole body surging with adrenalin. He heard Lieutenant Slyman shout, ‘Up on the roof! The bastard's gone up on the roof! Don't just fucking stand there! Go after him!'

Conor reached the flat, asphalt-covered roof. He ran across it and vaulted the low brick wall which separated it from the roof of the building next door. It was so hot and humid that he could hardly breathe, but he climbed another ladder to the building after that, which was three stories taller, and then down to the next building, which was two stories lower. He was greasy with sweat and his calf muscles were trembling, but he carried on running and jumping across parapets and pipes, dodging behind chimneys and ventilation shafts whenever he could. Eventually he reached the Dane & Bulziger Building, which stood thirty-four stories high, a towering cliff of silvery steel and shining glass, and there was no way round it. Conor could see himself reflected in its windows, hunched up, gasping, like a primitive caveman encountering his mirror-image for the first time.

He turned around. Above the thrumming and parping of the traffic on Third Avenue, he heard a persistent, echoing knock. Lieutenant Slyman's men were trying to break open the door to the roof.

He took a deep breath and leaned over the railings. He was standing on top of a 1950s office building with Manzi's Italian restaurant on the first floor: he recognized the red-and-green-striped awning and the bay trees on the sidewalk, seven stories below. He went across and tried the door to the stairs, furiously rattling the handle, but it was locked. He kicked it two or three times, but it still wouldn't budge. He heard Lieutenant Slyman's men bursting out of their door and shouting out, ‘Where is he? He can't have gotten far! You try that way!'

Quickly Conor looked around. There was an old neon sign on the roof, partly dismantled. There were rusty pipes and something that looked like a beehive. On the far side, he saw a window cleaner's cradle. It must have been abandoned, because its cables were all wound up around it, and its remote control had lost its innards. But at least it gave him a chance of escape. Ducking down low, so that Lieutenant Slyman's men couldn't see him, Conor ran across and picked up one of the cables in both hands. It was thick with dirty oil, but it had a heavy-duty clip on the end and it still seemed to be firmly attached to the cradle itself.

One of the officers had reached the top of the taller building behind him. ‘I see him!' he shouted. ‘Lieutenant, he's right over here!'

A shot cracked out, and then another. One of them hit the asphalt close to Conor's foot: the other starred a window in the Dane & Bulziger Building. Conor knew that it was time to go, no matter what.

Dragging the cable after him, he hurriedly hunched his way to the railings. Another shot, and chips of concrete spattered his cheek.

He climbed over the railings and wound the cable around them. He glanced down and saw tiny people walking up and down the street and miniature taxis drawing in to the front of the restaurant. The wave came again, and that sickening urge to throw himself into the street. He heard Lieutenant Slyman yell, ‘Hold it, O'Neil! Hold it right there!' He wound the cable around his waist and fastened the clip to form a loop. He didn't even have time for a prayer: he just dropped down the side of the building, colliding with
windowsills and architraves. The cable made a furious zizzing noise against the railings as he fell. But he had only gone down three stories before it abruptly snagged. The jolt almost cut him in half, and he couldn't stop himself from letting out a shout of pain. He hung there, twisting around and around, winded, bruised, grazed and a dangling target for Lieutenant Slyman and his men.

But even Lieutenant Slyman couldn't justify shooting a man hanging helplessly suspended on the end of a cable. He shouted down, ‘We're pulling you up! Do you hear me, O'Neil? We're pulling you back up!'

The cable had kinked itself into a knot. The two officers leaned over the railings and took hold of it, trying to take the strain of Conor's weight so that Lieutenant Slyman could ease the knot free.

Conor put out one foot and managed to stop himself from twisting around. Then he put out the other foot, and braced it flat against the building. Gripping the cable tight, he began to walk up the wall.

He wasn't as fit as he used to be, and he grunted with effort. But he managed to walk up six or seven steps, until he reached the fifth story. His hands kept sliding on the oily cable and its coarse wire strands sliced his skin. Blood ran down his wrists and dripped off his elbows.

‘What are you trying to do?' called one of the officers. ‘Keep still, will you, for Christ's sake – we'll haul you back up!'

Conor reached out with his left hand and pulled himself toward one of the fifth-story windows. He
climbed unsteadily onto the narrow stone ledge, and clung there. ‘OK, that's better,' said the officer, with relief, and the cable relaxed.

Conor craned his head right back so that he could see what Lieutenant Slyman was doing. The knot had caught tight between the cable and the railing, but Slyman was gradually forcing it off the pipe with a length of TV antenna he had found on the roof.

At last, he managed to release it. Conor saw him stand up, toss the length of metal aside, and say, ‘That's it. Pull the bastard up.'

At that instant Conor jumped backward off the window ledge. It was marginally less horrifying than jumping forward, because he couldn't see where he was going. All the same, there was a heart-stopping millisecond of free fall when he was sure that he was going to die. But then the cable tightened with a crack and a boom and a twang. ‘
Shit
!' shouted one of the policemen. ‘He's almost cut off my fucking fingers!' Lieutenant Slyman called out, ‘Hold him! Hold him!' but they could only keep their grip on the cable a few moments longer before they both swore loudly and let go. Conor plunged downward again, kicking at the wall and dragging his feet on the brickwork to slow his helter-skelter rush toward the red-and-green awning below.

He had almost reached it when he was jolted to another violent stop, and swung from side to side like a human pendulum. Badly winded, he was breathing in high-pitched screams, but he was so close to the top of the awning that with every swing of the cable his shoes were actually scraping the canvas.

Conor looked up. He could see Lieutenant
Slyman's pale face staring down at him with malicious glee. He could also see what had stopped him from falling any further. As he fell, he had dragged the cradle clear across the roof, and it was now precariously tilted sideways against the railings.

‘Hey! O'Neil!' Lieutenant Slyman shouted down to him. ‘Don't you know it's against the law to hang around the streets?'

Conor didn't have the breath to answer. He gripped the cable in his left hand and tried to heave himself up. That last jolt had yanked the cable right up underneath his armpits and tightened it so much that he found it impossible to release the clip. Lieutenant Slyman and his men had already left the roof and it was only going to be minutes before they made their way down.