“Luke?” Charlie prompted gently.
“Some of the other lads—the football guys—they didn’t want me hanging around with him. Told me to cut him off. I refused, so they cutmeoff. Out of the school team, out of their gang, out ofeverything. I stuck it for a while, but...”
“But then you wanted back in?” Charlie finished for him.
“Yes, so they set me a challenge. A test... and I bloody did it.”
Now tears came, coursing down his cheeks. “They told me to humiliate him. I wanted my old life back, so... the next time he came up to me—it was in the canteen—I told him I didn’t want him talking to me. When he asked me why... when he asked me why, I told him it was because he was a fucking freak...”
Luke broke down now, the full import of his actions finally making itself felt. His father rocked him back and forth in his arms, trying to stem the tears. Charlie stayed for ten minutes more, but there was little she could do now and she felt that her presence was neither helpful nor welcome. She would keep an eye on them, of course, but this was something they had to face alone. Luke had done something unpleasant and mean-spirited and had been repaid in savagefashion by a boy unable to cope with the slingshots life constantly threw at him.
It was an awful retribution out of all scale to the crime and Charlie hoped that in time Luke would come to see this and learn not to blame himself. Some hope, Charlie thought to herself, as she walked disconsolately back to the car, Luke’s cries still ringing in her ears.
133
He had never been in the basement before, which added to the thrill. He had seen it on the building’s plans, which he’d “borrowed” from his mother’s home office, but he had been wary of scoping it in advance for fear of drawing attention to what he was up to. It was unheard of for him to turn up at his parents’ place of work unannounced.
It was pitch-dark and no amount of fumbling could locate the light switches, so Ethan pulled the heavy flashlight from his rucksack and clicked it on. As he did so, a broad smile spread across his face. Sometimes the apples really did fall into your lap. There were several pieces of discarded office furniture—mostly desks and chairs—which would provide adequate fuel, but the real gift was the huge amount of shredded paper that lay on the floor in loose plastic sacks. They would help to get the fire going, and after that...
Ethan quickly set about moving the old bits of furniture to the center of the room, using his hips to shove the heavier pieces in theright direction. He knew from his mother’s plans that the base of the lift shaft was located here, and that was where he intended to make his fire. The flames would leap up the shaft, spreading quickly to upper floors while also taking the lift out of action as a means of escape. This fire would be the biggest one yet and he couldn’t wait to see it. He could feel his fingers tingle as the excitement grew.
When he first rehearsed this climax to their project with Naomie, she had raised objections. Too much collateral damage—meaning the seven other businesses that occupied this sizable building. But that made it all the better in his view. By the time the dust settled,everybodywould know that his parents were to blame. These deaths would be on their conscience, and while his father mourned his mother, he would have plenty of time to contemplatethat.
As planned, there would be no diversionary fires today. There would be no warning of this attack. Ethan walked back now to gather the shredded paper, then suddenly jumped like he’d been shot. A piercing alarm rang out, long and loud, echoing around the dingy brick basement.
“What the fuck . . . ?”
This had to be a joke. Ithadto be. They couldn’t be having a fire drill today. He’d checked his mother’s diary. Fire drills were on the first of the month, regular as clockwork. What cosmic fuckup could make them have one today...?
Now a thought seized him. There was a chance, of course, that this alarm wasn’t a coincidence. That somehow theyknew. Naomie wouldn’t have said anything—he was sure of that—and he had only posted his most recent offering an hour or two ago, but even so...
Now Ethan was on the move. Something told him that Helen Grace was here. That for the first time since this started she was ahead of him. And now he wasn’t thinking of fire.
He was thinking of flight.
134
“Everybody out. We need to get everybody out.”
The alarms were still wailing, but the flow of office workers exiting the building was still just a steady trickle. It was what Helen had expected, but still it infuriated her. Why did office workers assume every fire alarm was a drill or a mistake? Did it never occur to them that the fire might be real, that the nightmare that had visited several other families in the run-up to Christmas might be visitingthem?
Helen grabbed the fire officers as they presented themselves, urging them to get people moving faster. She couldn’t smell burning, but instinct told her that Ethan Harris was here somewhere, plotting his final move in the game. McAndrew had alerted Helen to Ethan’s latest and possibly final post as “firstpersonsingular,” and as soon as Helen read the text of it, she knew that his mother would be his last victim.
Jacqueline Harris was a workaholic and, reading between the lines, probably an alcoholic too, so unless he was going to burn down herfavorite bar, there was one obvious place to strike. The business she had spent twenty years building up. The realization had sent a chill down Helen’s spine: the number of innocent victims from a fire in this building would be pushing a hundred—and Helen was determined not to let that happen.
The human flow seemed to be picking up pace now and Helen scanned the faces that went by. Ifshewere Ethan, where would she go? What would be the best place to start a fire? Ethan had taken the lift up, according to the receptionist, but had never arrived at his mother’s office. So where? The floor beneath? Possible, but that was an open-plan office—how easy would it be for Ethan to talk his way in there and start a fire?
Something told Helen that that was too localized anyway, not grand enough for Ethan’s finale. And as her mind turned on this, her eyes alighted on the lift bank. That was more like it. The fire would spread quickly that way, fanning out on to the other floors. If you started a decent enough blaze at the bottom...
The basement. If he was smart, he would have gone to the basement. Helen’s eyes moved to the left of the lift bank, then to the right. And there it was. A simple, unassuming door markedSTAFF ONLY.
Helen took a step forward, but suddenly cannoned backward. Immediately she raised her arms to defend herself—but it was just a tearful PA racing for the main exit. The mood in the building had changed now, as the fire wardens scoured the floors, accompanied by uniformed officers, urging people to leave. The sight of a police presence had obviously spooked the building’s occupants—perhaps now they were making the connection between this alarm and the spate of recent fires. They looked scared, confused and very keen to be elsewhere.
Now Helen was fighting a torrent of humanity, surging past her, knocking her this way and that, as she fought her way toward the basement door. She did her best to let them pass, but instinct told herto move fast, so she dodged the fleeing workers as best she could, stumbling as she went. She was so involved in the fight, so determined to get through the human barrier in front of her, that she didn’t see the young guy, dressed in the dirty overalls and cap of the building’s maintenance team, gliding past her on his way to the exit and liberty.
135
“Where is he?”
