Pauline McGregor walked quickly towards the lift; the smell of petrol and exhaust fumes was making her feel nauseous. She was getting too old for this subterfuge. Not only too old, she was too pregnant – eight months now. It was nine weeks since she had been able to button her coat, and exactly seven weeks and three days since she had last worn her stilettos. Was she going to be a bad mother? Probably. But at least she would be a stylish one.
She hated the red pumps she had on; they made her ankles look fat and she could feel the cold of the concrete beneath her feet nibble through the soles. She pulled her scarf up round her neck. The forecast said it was going down to minus five tonight but the chill in the wind that funnelled through the first level of the multi-storey car park promised an even colder night was on its way.
She stopped at the lift doors and pressed the mangled button with a gloved finger, swaying from side to side as she waited, rocking the baby. The lift doors opened with a reluctant whine and she stepped forward, then back again, cupping her hand to her mouth as the stink of stale urine swept out to meet her. A discarded beanie hat lay in the corner, a syringe lying neatly on top of it. The mess that splattered the wall looked like a half-digested kebab.
One advantage of her flat shoes was that she could take the stairs. But at the door to the stairwell she heard voices higher up – hard, violent words answered by the sing-song anger of the drunk. She thought better of it and decided to walk up the narrow pavement that edged the spiralling exit at the centre of the car park. She shivered, and placed a protective hand over her stomach. It was dark and cold, and the sooner she was in her car and out of here the better.
She knew she was parked on the second storey, on the side that faced down on to Mitchell Lane. Sound travelled far on the cold evening air, and she could hear bursts of chit-chat from the pub on the street below, which echoed strangely off the bare walls, slightly disorientating her. Her gloves patted the way along the wall, the cashmere wool catching occasionally on the roughness of the concrete, and her breath billowed in front of her as she walked round a hairpin bend up to Level 2, her back and legs aching. She could hear fighting in the stairwell, then the slam of a door. A figure shot past the glass panel in the stairwell door, followed by another. Another slam and a nearby car alarm started to shriek, then fell silent. For the first time she hesitated, feeling a vague prickle of apprehension that she was being watched. All noise had ceased now, the silence in here somehow separate from the sounds of life going on down in the street. It was quiet. Too quiet.
She quickened her step, pulling the bone-handled knife from her handbag. She always carried it – it was part of her, a gift from her father. Then she heard a car door open on an upper floor, and she moved to the inside of the pavement, in case the car came past her. She wasn’t so nimble on her feet these days.
She could see her own Merc waiting for her in the far corner. Looking carefully left and right, she stepped off the pavement to make her way towards it. All the spaces between her and her car were full.
She sensed him rather than heard him, and her grip on the knife tightened. He came out of the darkness between two cars. There was a few seconds’ slow dance between them. Then his blade went low and into her ribs, like a hot knife through snow. Hers went high, into his face. Neither made a sound.
He raised his hand to stem the blood – a thick curtain of red, pouring down his cheek into his scarf – and walked off, making his unhurried way to the level above, leaving her to stagger against the bonnet of the car. She felt her knife slip from her fingers, felt the baby kick, then she sank to her knees on the ice-cold concrete. She punched the car on her left hard, and kicked the one to her right, relieved at the cacophony of alarms.
She curled up between the cars, her hand pressed to the wound. She watched the flow of her own blood spreading on the concrete. She raged silently at the betrayal. The baby kicked again, and she spread her fingers on her belly. Be calm, be calm. She was hidden from view, she realized; if anyone came past, they wouldn’t be able to see her. Her fingers scrabbled against the wheel arch and she pushed her body a few inches, so her feet in their red shoes would be visible to anyone driving past. But would they see the red shoes, in the blood? She tried again, another few inches, then fell exhausted, out of breath.
But nothing was happening. There was no air coming into her lungs. She felt her chest collapsing to nothing.
The baby kicked, then kicked again, demanding oxygen.
She heard the shriek of a cold engine being gunned, the screech of tyres. A black car swung round the spiral, steering wide, then jerked left, aiming straight for her. She never felt the tyres go over her legs, crushing her ankles, ripping her shoes off. She only saw the raw ends of her own bones, so beautiful and pink.
A billow of exhaust hung in the air as one blood-red shoe bounced and rolled, and came to rest in a puddle of oil.