Thursday, February 5
All was in darkness, and though Dan had a flashlight and desperately wanted to use it, she braced herself for the dark and stepped into it.
She didn’t have to do it, didn’t have to go in there, not now, not again, not alone, but she needed to. To prove to herself that Hamilton wasn’t right, didn’t know everything, hadn’t guessed where Cox would be when Dan couldn’t.
She walked toward the door that led to the shop’s storeroom, shivered again as she thought of David Simmons dragging Evelyn in there, almost killing her. Dan listened outside the door, but there was nothing, no car, no light, no sign of life. She could turn around now, walk back down the dark lane to her own car, and drive home; she’d been here, returned to the building and faced the darkness, and she could go now. Except she would have done it all for nothing. Without looking inside the shop, without checking that Cox really wasn’t there, it would all have been for naught.
The memories of when she’d last done this, while Simmons was up on the roof threatening to kill his wife, who was trussed up below, gave Dan a sense of what she would see once she opened the door.
She flashed her light on quickly once inside, shone it straight at the far door that led to the front shop area. The door was shut, and so she switched it on again and scanned the storeroom. Nothing had changed and it was empty. No signs of life.
She moved across the storeroom quickly, moving straight to the door, then doubling back and shining her light into the office area to make sure there was no one hiding in there; there wasn’t.
She moved to the door that would lead through to the main shop and listened.
Nothing.
She felt the way she had as a child, daring herself to go to the toilet in the dead of night. Each time, nothing attacked her, yet every night she was just as terrified as she’d been the night before.
She waited by the door.
She knew there were shelves directly opposite her, running the whole length of the shop. If she went right, that took her to the fire escape; left headed down toward the tills and was closer to where she’d fought with Simmons.
She looked down at the handle, opened it quickly; no point in hesitating or messing around.
The door came open easily and she stepped back and out of the way, grabbing her baton from her pocket and extending it in a single movement.
Nothing came through the door save a stream of light.
The shop’s main lights were on and they made Dan blink as she looked out into the brightly lit space. Those lights hadn’t been on a few minutes ago. They hadn’t been on a few seconds ago.
Her heart thumped and she took a step backward, edging toward the door.
She heard a noise, a whimper like a trapped animal, and listened again, her senses hyperaware. She moved back to the door and leaned her head to look as far through it as possible in one direction, seeing nothing but shelves and stock. Then she moved into the doorway and looked the other way and waited. Animals didn’t turn lights on.
She turned and moved quickly back to the door she’d entered the storeroom through. She’d go back, phone for help from the car, get other people up here, Roger, Josie, and some of the team. They’d go in together.
As she reached the door her heart skipped a beat.
It was shut.
She tried the handle. It was wedged shut, the door wouldn’t move at all.
Dan turned, put her back to it, and held the baton out in front of her.
No one was coming, no one was sneaking up behind her, so she turned again, took a deep breath, and tried the door, pushed it, pulled it, levered the handle. It was wedged tight; she wouldn’t be going out that way.
She had two choices, the fire exit and up onto the roof, and trying to get out one of the front windows and doors. Both meant heading back through the main shop.
She walked over, her baton resting on her shoulder, her flashlight on but becoming less useful as she approached the lights in the main shop.
She looked in again. There was nothing there—well, nothing that shouldn’t have been there. The shop looked dusty but ordered, identical to how it’d looked the last time she’d been here, though this aisle hadn’t seen any of the action.
She looked to the right, toward the fire escape door, and saw it was shut. The bar was there and she knew it should open from the inside, but she also knew how easy it would be to block it. Then she looked to the left, considering whether to check out the shop first, but the door was there, tempting, and she needed to know if it was locked, needed to eliminate that route from her mind before she spent time looking elsewhere.
Whoever turned the lights on knew she was coming anyway.
She stepped through the door and turned right, walking slowly along the aisle and listening to the sounds around her as she took each step.
The shelves ended about six feet from the far wall, and the fire escape door was set into it. As Dan reached the end, she changed course, moving away from the shelves, swinging out wide toward the exit, so anyone waiting at the end of the shelves would need to show themselves before they could be on her. She had the baton raised, and became aware of the aching and tension in her shoulders, suddenly feeling weak and tired, thoughts creeping into her mind telling her to just sit down, get some rest, put her back to a wall and wait.
She flexed the baton down, stretching out her shoulders and taking a deep breath; then, raising it again, she steeled herself, ready for anything, and stepped away from the cover of the shelves and into the area at the end of the shop, heading for the fire exit.
It hit her instantly, but not from close, not from behind the shelves as she’d expected.
Dan stumbled back, dazed, dropping her left arm as pain shot through her shoulder. She gasped. The impact of something heavy and hard, combined with a clattering noise and another human screaming, was overloading her senses and her vision blurred for a moment, the room whirling around her. Her legs felt weak, as though she might go down, might collapse there and then.
She staggered back behind the shelves and looked down, rubbing her shoulder. It felt dead, as though she’d been punched hard, and it’d left her with no feeling in that arm. She looked at the floor and against the wall, saw a can of food lying there that hadn’t been there before.
She took some deep breaths and tried to listen above the sound of her own breathing, her own heartbeat, and a screaming in her body, from her head and her shoulder, that was degrading all of her senses. She readied the baton in case someone rushed her, but her left arm wouldn’t go up past her shoulder now, and so she held the baton ready with her right arm and listened.
Nothing.
“Who is that?” shouted Dan.
She edged closer to the end of the aisle and turned her head so she could peek in the direction that the projectile had come from. She readied herself to recoil quickly in case another tin was coming down the same flight path, but there was nothing there, no one there.
Footsteps sounded, but she couldn’t place them. They stopped again and there was silence.