Flashes of blue and red reflected off the waterlogged road, where two fire engines, a couple of police traffic units, and a standard patrol unit were lighting up the junction like Blackpool Illuminations and acting as a lure for a crowd of bloodthirsty but ultimately disappointed onlookers.
Zipping up her high-vis jacket, Jem picked a route across to the closest traffic officer. Cubes of safety glass crunched beneath her boots as she surveyed the scene, judging the damage to the vehicles and the likely speed of impact. The two cars sat at angles to each other, one tiny and crumpled beyond repair, the other built like a tank and slightly dented at the front.
“Four in the Range Rover,” the traffic officer said as Jem raised a gloved hand in greeting. “Dad reckons they’re all fine, though, and the driver of the Picasso legged it.”
“I’m so glad we haven’t risked life and limb to rush here,” Jem said, deadpan. A newly forming habit had her checking the scene for Rosie, just in case, but she couldn’t see her amongst the rabble. “Do we know who dropped the nines for it?”
“That stupid sod over there.” The officer pointed to a slouching lad wearing a tatty Man United cap and a knockoff Adidas tracksuit. He was snapping selfies, using the cars as a backdrop. “He swears there was a fire at first, but—and I quote—‘the rain done put it out.’”
The job had been passed to Jem as Multi-vehicle collision, one car on fire, four people trapped, which explained the large number of resources deployed. She blinked droplets from her eyelashes, ruing her decision to cut the hood off her coat because it flapped and looked stupid and because drunk patients liked grabbing hold of it.
“Suppose it didn’t occur to him that those trapped victims might simply have wanted to stay dry,” she said.
“Suppose not.” The officer opened a packet of toffees and offered Jem one. “I’d arrest him for wasting everyone’s time if I could be arsed filling in the paperwork.”
“Fair enough. I’ll make sure no one’s suddenly developed whipcash. Is my car all right where it is?”
“It’s fine. We’ll be clearing up for a while yet.”
The Range Rover’s tinted glass concealed its occupants until the driver lowered his window. He gave Jem a thin smile, obviously tolerating the fuss under duress and keen to be on his way. The woman beside him continued to speak into her mobile and didn’t deign to acknowledge Jem was there. With a new headlight and a dab of superglue on the vanity plate, no one would suspect their car had been in a collision.
“Hello, sir,” she said. “My name’s Jem, and I’m with the ambulance service. The police officer said no one in your car is injured. Is that correct?”
“Yes, that’s correct.” He tapped an impatient beat on the handbrake, striking a chunky gold ring against the lever. “Did the officer say when we might be able to get going?” The civility of his tone couldn’t disguise his broad Mancunian accent, and angry streaks of red coloured the black tribal tattoo on his neck when Jem shook her head.
“Sorry, no, he didn’t. I’m sure it won’t be long, though.” She moved closer until she could see the back seat passengers: a lad and a girl in their mid-teens. “Hey,” she said, making eye contact with the lad as the girl played on an iPhone with a bejewelled case. “Are either of you hurt?”
“Naw,” the lad said. “I thought he’d hit a speed bump.”
The girl sniggered and twirled the stud in her nose. “You’re such a dick,” she told the lad.
Soaked through and also feeling narky, Jem ripped off her nitrile gloves and shoved them into her pocket. “Right, then. I’ll leave you in peace.”
“Hey, it’s easy money,” the traffic officer said, when she told him she was clearing. “We get paid for this shit regardless.”
It was true, and she dealt with enough bad jobs to appreciate those that turned out to be false alarms. She hung her jacket over the RRV’s passenger seat and started the engine. Rosie had sent a WhatsApp while Jem had been on scene, a stock photo of a Twix next to a cup of coffee, with the caption, Do you have time for a tutorial?
Hold that thought, Jem replied. I’ll let you know where I am in a couple of hours.
* * *
Rosie tore onto the street, her blues and siren still blaring, the Clayton van less than thirty yards behind her and making just as much noise. An elderly man grabbed his poodle, cradling it to his chest as if the vehicles might snatch it away, while a postie stamped out his fag and crossed himself. Rosie counted the numbers down, screaming to a halt in front of thirty-nine, her seat belt already off and her Taser unbuckled.
“This one!” she yelled to the officers scrambling from the van. “Wife said they were round the back.”
Guided by the sound of raised voices, they moved en masse, no plan or formation, just five uniformed officers itching for a scrap after a shift spent dragging cars out of floodwater and supervising sandbag distribution. Rosie pushed the side gate with the hand that wasn’t holding her baton. She lived for calls like this, pelting full-tilt into the gods only knew what, with an assortment of crappy weapons at her disposal and a team of her best mates backing her up.
The commotion became louder and more distinct as she jogged between two garages: a woman’s voice, high-pitched and hysterical, and two men shouting over each other.
“Help!” the woman shrieked. “Someone please help us!”
Rosie bolted around the corner expecting carnage—an ongoing fight to the death, blood spraying, bones breaking, perhaps a severed limb or two—and found a housewife whacking at her neighbour over a neatly trimmed privet hedge, as her husband waved a pair of loppers like the spoils of battle.
“What the actual fuck?” one of the officers said, almost going arse-over-tits on a tub of slug pellets.
“Help!” the woman screeched again, still brandishing what appeared to be a rolled-up apron. “Help!”
“Oi!” Rosie’s bellow was loud and low enough to cut through the melee. “Police! What the hell is going on here?”
The three potential perps froze in unison and looked across at their audience. Confronted by a wall of solid blue, they swiftly surrendered their garden implements and raised their empty hands.
“He stabbed him,” the woman wailed, fanning herself with a hanky. “Oh, my heart can’t stand this. I might faint, or have my angina.”
“Shall I zap the buggers anyway?” the officer asked.
Tempting though the suggestion was, Rosie holstered her baton and breached no man’s land by stepping onto the lawn. “Who exactly stabbed whom, ma’am?”
“He”—the woman flapped her hands at the neighbour—“stabbed my Malcolm. Show them, Malcolm.”
Now looking sheepish, Malcolm lifted his shirt to reveal a taut beer belly with a smudge of green on it. “Here,” he said, indicating the smudge.
Rosie touched the mark. It was a piece of privet leaf, which fell off onto her palm. “I think you’ll live,” she said. “What did he use? A garden cane?”
The man toe-poked the loppers. “He was cutting our side of it. We’ve asked him not to umpteen times, but he’s sneaky. He’ll wait till we’ve gone out or the weather’s like this and we’re not watching for him.”
“Sir?” Rosie turned to the neighbour. “Do you have anything to add to this?”
“He threatened to break my loppers,” he mumbled. “And I only bought ’em on Saturday.”
Rosie had heard enough. “Do any of you think it’s appropriate to drag five very busy members of the local police force into your privet dispute?”
The men shook their bowed heads. The woman continued to waft her hanky about but had the sense not to remonstrate.
“In which case, we’ll leave you to reach some sort of resolution that does not result in any further ructions,” Rosie said. “If we have to come back here, we’ll arrest the lot of you. Is that understood?”
Taking their silence as acquiescence, she rejoined her colleagues.
Smiffy, the eldest on the van, clapped an arm around her shoulders. “‘Privet dispute,’” he said. “I liked that part the best, PC Jones.”
“I can’t help it, Smiffy. I am naturally punny.” Rosie checked her phone and extricated herself from his grip. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, gents, I have to rendezvous with a lovely young paramedic who’s got a nifty trick to teach me.”
* * *
“There you go, sweetheart. And you can put that bloody money away.”
Jem knew better than to argue with Paula. She dropped a couple of quid into the cafe’s charity box and shoved the chocolate into her pockets to leave her hands free for the drinks. Reminded of her B&Q conversation with Rosie, she tapped the box, the proceeds of which were being donated to a city-centre homeless charity.
“You ever hear of a shelter called Olly’s, Paula?”
Paula’s vigorous wiping of the counter became slow, contemplative circles. “No, I haven’t. Is it local?”
“I think so, but I’ve never heard of it either.” Making a snap decision, Jem wrote “Tahlia Mansoor” on a blank section of the takeaway menu. All sorts of gossip passed through the small cafe, and Paula was perfectly placed to eavesdrop. What she didn’t know about local affairs probably wasn’t worth knowing. Jem slid the menu across the countertop. “Police are looking for this lass, and that shelter was mentioned as a possible place of safety for her. She’s fourteen, mixed race, been missing from home for a couple of weeks. Can you keep your ear to the ground for me?”
“Of course I can, love.” Paula folded her dishcloth into a neat square. She had mild OCD when it came to cleanliness and tidiness. “Was that you, out on your own with the lad by the river the other night?”
“Aye. Did one of the papers give my name?”
“No, I just bloody knew it. I told Dan as much. ‘That’ll have been our Jem,’ I said, and he bet me fifty pence I was talking shite.”
“He owes you fifty pence,” Jem said. “Make sure he pays up, as well. He’s tighter than a duck’s arse.” She collected the drinks and waited until Paula came round to get the door for her. Paula shimmied in front of the counter and then rolled up her left trouser leg to reveal a newfangled prosthesis.
“What do you think of this? Swanky, eh?”
“Hey, check you out!” Jem said. “That’s fab.”
“I’m jogging again.” Paula did a little jig on the spot to demonstrate. “Not far, just around the lake, but it’s a start, right?”
“Absolutely. It’s bloody brilliant.” Jem gave her a brew-restricted but heartfelt hug. It was less than eighteen months since a truck had mounted the pavement and hit Paula while she’d been out running. Jem had crawled beneath the chassis and clamped her fingers around Paula’s exposed femoral artery. It had taken over an hour to extricate them, and a further half-hour until the surgeons at A&E had allowed Jem to let go. As bonding experiences went, it was certainly a unique one.
“Are you on a bus today?” Paula asked, indicating the two cups.
“No, the car. One of these is for a friend.”
“Is it, now?” Paula elbowed her. “A ‘friend’ you’re meeting mid-shift?”
“She’s a police officer, Paula. We did the Kyle Parker job together and got talking, that’s all.”
“Mm-hm,” Paula said, scepticism radiating from every inch of her. “Your hair looks gorgeous, by the way.”
“Thanks.” Jem took a nonchalant sip of her tea. “She cut it for me.”
Paula hooted, her hands flying up as if she’d just scored the winner in added time. “Name,” she demanded. “So I can tell Dan all about her.”
Jem kissed her on the cheek. “Her name is Rosie, and she’s very sweet, but do feel free to make something more salacious up for Dan.”
“I most certainly will.” Paula held the door open. “Take a sneaky pic and send it to me.”
“I most certainly will not,” Jem said, and walked out into the rain.
Her radio buzzed as she put the key into the RRV’s ignition. “Hey, Ryan. What’s up?” She punched her pin into the data screen and winced. She would go out of the system for her break at four o’clock, which meant he had one hundred and fifty seconds to pass her a job before he lost her for twenty minutes.
“Sorry, Jem. I know you’re heading in for your rest, but would you mind checking out a possible Joey on your way? There’s no one else available, and we need to get it out of the stack.”
She relaxed into her seat. Hoax calls were easy to deal with: drive past the telephone box, have a look whether anyone was there, and confirm with control that the time-wasting little shitbags had scarpered.
“Put it through,” she said. “And think kindly of me at home time.”
“I always think kindly of you. We’ve got a mobile number for this one. Young lass shouted for help and gave a garbled address, then hung up. You’re about six minutes from the street we’ve pinned the call to.”
“Right-o, thanks. Speak to you in a bit.” She acknowledged the job as the screen started to bleep, and then used hands-free to call Rosie.
“How do,” Rosie said, sounding uncharacteristically harried. “If this dopey pillock in front of me slams on to read another road sign, I’m having him for reckless endangerment. Where are you? Because at this rate I might miss you.”
“Worry not, I’m going to be late anyway,” Jem said, rather touched by how stressed Rosie was. “I’m making a detour to an abandoned call first. It’s only on Mansfield Street, so I shouldn’t be too long.”
“Mansfield Street? Is that off Dunnock?”
Jem adjusted the satnav to widen the view. “Yes, it’s the one with the big detacheds on it. There’s a nursing home at the bottom end.”
“And a beautiful patch of wasteland opposite,” Rosie added. “It’s very scenic after dark or in a pea-soup fog.”
Jem laughed and turned onto Dunnock, muting her sirens as she decelerated for a speed bump. Dusk was well established, helped along by the ever-present rain and a thin shrouding of mist. “In which case, we have the perfect conditions. And it’s got to be prettier than the B&Q car park.”
“Not to mention closer.” Rosie swore, and there was a distinct squeal of brakes in the background. Jem tensed, waiting for the crunch of metal on metal, but all she heard was Rosie slap something hard and mutter something very impolite.
“Ooh, are you going to arrest him?” Jem asked.
“No, I am not,” Rosie said through teeth that were audibly gritted. “I am going to sit calmly at this red light and tell my lot that I’m coming to help you with access or something. I shall see you in three.”
“Okay, great,” Jem said, delighted to have her company. “Bit of luck, we’ll be done before the brews go cold.”
She disconnected and drove slowly past number five Mansfield Street, craning her neck to examine it for signs of life. The large, three-storey Edwardian sat in darkness, its driveway empty and all its curtains drawn. The lower two floors had ornate wrought iron bars across their windows, although in this area they were unlikely to be there for decoration. The same style of metalwork had been used to construct the balcony jutting from the top floor, as if the view at some point might have been worth sitting out for. From the safety of her seat, Jem looked at the cracked driveways and unkempt front gardens. Originally built for the local mill owners, the houses would once have been desirable properties, but half of them were boarded and derelict and the remainder had been split into bedsits and hostels, the grandeur of their architecture lost on the drunks and no-fixed-abodes who passed through them now.
A sudden flare of white behind Jem made her snap upright and then feel stupid as the headlights from Rosie’s patrol car became more distinct. She met Rosie on the kerb, her arms folded against the chill and the street’s eerie stillness.
“Chuffing hell.” Rosie shuddered, a frown creasing lines into her forehead. “Were you going to go in on your own?”
Jem took her response bag from the back, preferring to err on the side of caution, even if the job did turn out to be a hoax. “My dispatcher messaged me to say they had no previous calls from the address, so yeah, I’d have gone in on my own. Or knocked, at any rate. I don’t think anyone’s home.”
“They better not be.” Rosie aimed the beam of her torch at the ground-floor windows. “My goose pimples have got goose pimples.”
Feeling braver for having Rosie there, Jem led the way along a path that curved through an overgrown lawn and up the steps to a covered porch. “There was no answer when the call-taker tried ringing the mobile number back,” she said, using a solid brass knocker to thump the front door. “It went straight through to voice mail.”
“I hope he left a nowty message.”
Jem peered through the letterbox. “Can’t see a damn thing, and it smells…” she paused, grappling for the right word, “very unwashed.”
Rosie squatted at her side and nudged her over. “Police!” she shouted, pitching her voice a notch lower to lend it an impressive authority. “Open the door or lose it!”
Jem looked at her askance. “Are you going to kick it in?”
“Am I ’eck as like, but they don’t know that.” Rosie stood and assessed the doorframe, pressing down its length. “It’s locked, and I think it’s bolted top and bottom. I’d break my bloody foot.”
“Ambulance!” Jem called. “Is anyone there?” She counted to ten and then lowered the flap and shrugged at Rosie. She was unhooking her radio from her belt when a sharp bang made them both jump.
“Whoa!” Rosie said. “Where the hell did that come from?”
“I’m not sure.” Jem reopened the letterbox. “Hello? Can you hear me?”
Another bang prompted them to look down, and they scoured the undergrowth with their torches.
“Cellar,” Rosie said, circling the lowest point of the wall with her light. Before Jem could voice a caution, Rosie was off the steps and tearing at the weeds, clearing a space large enough to reveal a tiny barred window. She tapped the pane and then gasped, falling onto her arse as something hit the glass from the inside. “Jesus wept!” She redirected the torch she’d dropped, but nothing else appeared. With one hand splayed across her heart, she flopped back, her legs outstretched. Her breath misted in front of her as she panted. “The little bastard. That’s taken years off my life, that has.”
Jem giggled nervously and jumped down to help Rosie brush wet grass from her trousers. “Can we get in anywhere?” she asked.
Despite the rust coating the bars, they held firm when Rosie shook them. “I’ll have a scoot around the back. If there’s no access, I’ll call up for an enforcer ram. Are you all right here for a minute?”
“Yep.” Jem pulled a piece of dandelion from Rosie’s hair. “How’s your ticker?”
“Still going like the clappers. I won’t be long.”
Jem gave her a few seconds to scramble clear and then returned to the letterbox. “Okay, love, we saw you there. Bang once for yes and twice for no. Can you get to the front door?”
Her skin prickled as a rapid couple of thumps sounded.
“Are you hurt?”
A single thump.
“Are you on your own?”
A pause, followed by two thumps.
“How many are there of you?”
Two deliberate thumps.
Jem nodded, somewhat reassured by that. “Hold on, we’re getting help. Try not to be scared.”
That earned her a frantic series of bangs. She closed the flap and voiced Ryan. “This isn’t a hoax,” she said. “I’m with a police officer, and we’re going to force entry. I’ll need a bus. We have a person injured, condition unknown, but they’re conscious and breathing.”
“Aw, hell,” he said, and she knew what was coming. “I’ve got nothing at the moment. There’s six crews stuck on the corridor at West Penn.”
“No worries. Just bear us in mind.” There was no point stressing him out if they were going to have to wait for police backup regardless.
A triumphant yell from Rosie cut across his acknowledgement, and Jem ran to find her, following the fresh boot-prints through the undergrowth. She stopped at a tall metal gate that barricaded the side of the house. Rosie was already on the other side, poking her fingers through the thick bars like an inmate in an old-fashioned jail.
Jem leaned forward, winded by the exertion and the stress. “There are two people in the cellar,” she said. “One of them is hurt, and they can’t get out. It’s probably kids who’ve broken in and come a cropper.”
“I should’ve bloody seen this coming,” Rosie said. “We could have been at B&Q slurping up coffee through a Twix, but no…” Her protest lacked any genuine rancour, and she waggled her fingers until Jem touched their tips. “Can you get over? There’s a window round the back we should be able to break and squeeze through. My lot have okayed it, because anyone who might be able to help us is buggering about in the floods.”
“Of course I can get over.” Jem hoisted the bag above her head, standing on tiptoe so Rosie could reach it. “I climbed a fifteen-foot wall on Tuesday.”
“Good point.” Rosie stood clear, giving Jem space to kick off from the top and land on the narrow path. Jem’s boots skidded on the lichen-slickened stone, and Rosie grabbed her arm to stop her from falling.
“Thanks.” Jem clung on for a moment and then stepped cautiously across the most treacherous slab. “Lead the way.”
Rosie had set a wheelie bin and a hefty stone in readiness beneath the window, and she shinned onto the bin as if she’d been born to break and enter. Jem found herself admiring the easy athleticism and the flattering cut of Rosie’s uniform.
“What are you smiling at?” Rosie asked.
Caught red-handed, Jem shrugged. “You,” she said, and Rosie laughed, striking a pose on the lid.
“Is it the Taser? All the girls love the Taser.”
“Amongst other things.” Jem handed her the stone, and Rosie accepted it without question, refocusing on the business at hand. “I’ve got the oxygen cylinder if you prefer a battering ram,” Jem added.
“This’ll do.” Rosie rolled the stone in her gloved palm, assessing its shape, before bashing its sharpest edge against the glass. The outer layer of the double glazing splintered but held, so she tried again, knocking out the pieces as they fell loose. She finished the remainder with her feet, sitting on the bin and booting the stubborn shards into submission. Then she was gone, shimmying through the gap and disappearing into the gloom on the other side. She reappeared just as swiftly. “What a shithole,” she said, lighting the way for Jem.
They paused to get their bearings in a poky kitchen apparently fitted sometime in the 1960s. Every shelf was bare, and the fridge was open, its only contents an ancient carton of sterilised milk. The air smelled fusty, as if this was the first time in years that the room’s seal had been breached.
“It doesn’t look like anyone lives here,” Rosie said, running her finger through a thick layer of greasy dust.
“Not for a good while,” Jem said. She could see the front door at the far end of a dingy hallway and a flight of stairs at the midpoint. The house had been elegant in its heyday, and the staircase swept upward to a broad landing. “Hello?” she shouted from the kitchen door. “Can you hear me?”
The familiar thud sounded in response, close by and beneath her feet.
“Where’s the hatch?” Rosie asked.
Jem went to the stairs. “I don’t know. These only go up.”
Rosie knelt, aiming her next question at the floorboards and pressing her ear against them to catch any reply. “How do we get to you?”
“Ladder,” a tremulous voice called back. It was a girl, her words only just audible. “Through a cupboard.”
“A cupboard?” Rosie looked at Jem for clarification. “Where the hell are they? Narnia? Can I arrest her for taking the piss? That’s reasonable, isn’t it?”
Jem shook her head, deciphering the directions with ease. “Didn’t you ever have an under-the-stairs cubbyhole? For coats, shoes, Hoovers, general junk? It must have a trap or something.” She led Rosie to a small door cut into the side of the flight. Everything in the hall was covered in psychedelic floral wallpaper, and the door had been all but camouflaged in the darkness. Its hinges creaked, the sound as grating as fingernails on a chalkboard, and a cloud of dust flew up when she knelt in the narrow space. She covered her nose and mouth with one hand as she crawled beyond the threshold, her torchlight bouncing off wellies and moth-eaten anoraks. Toward the back, a square of carpet had been tossed on the floor. It came away easily when she pulled at it, and she froze, her torch slipping from her fingers. “Shit. Rosie?” She scrabbled for the light, hoping she’d been mistaken.
“What is it? What’s up?” Rosie pushed her way in just as Jem managed to refocus her torch. “Oh hell, you’re fucking kidding me.”
Jem touched the padlock, shifting it from side to side. It was heavy duty, brand new, and firmly locked. She leaned low, her ear almost touching the wood, and knocked on the hatch. “Can you hear me?” she called.
“Yes!” The girl sounded terrified, and sobs broke her words apart. “Yes, we’re down here! Please get us out!”
Jem had a thousand questions, but Rosie was up and moving, speaking urgently into her radio as she ran back to the kitchen. She returned within seconds, carrying a dilapidated knife block and the stone.
“We need to jemmy it,” she said, flinging out a carving knife and a long, thin sharpener. She fitted the latter into the loop of the padlock and used it like a lever, changing her angle of approach repeatedly as she felt for a weak spot. Jem took the stone instead and bashed it into the slats. The shock of the blow reverberated up her arms, but she’d sheared off a chunk of wood that flew past Rosie into the hall.
“Right. Brute force and ignorance it is,” Rosie said. She adjusted her grip on the knife sharpener so she was holding it like a spear and aimed it between the slats. “Get clear of the hatch!” she yelled, stabbing the sharpener into the crease as Jem resumed her indiscriminate hammering. The boards began to bow beneath the combined onslaught, cracks appearing at random, before one entire length snapped cleanly in the middle. Rosie joined Jem to stomp on the weakened planks, until their boots smashed a hole large enough for them to climb through.
“There’s a fixed ladder,” Jem said, tapping the top rung with her toe and then pressing harder to test its integrity. The ladder squeaked and juddered beneath the pressure, but it seemed robust enough.
“Do you want me to go first?” Rosie asked.
Jem shook her head and grabbed her response bag. “I’ll see you down there.”
The smell was the first thing to hit her, a foetid cocktail of human waste and wet rot, undercut with a trace of vomit. She breathed through her nose, acclimatising to the stink, and panned her torch around as she reached the bottom of the ladder. The light picked out an empty water bottle, the wrapper from a loaf of white bread, crisp packets, and a roll of toilet paper. She found the children in the farthest corner: two girls huddled beneath a blanket, their hands raised to shield their eyes. They were filthy and shivering and obviously traumatised.
“Please don’t hurt us,” one of them said. Her voice was hoarse, as if she’d been screaming for days. Wincing, she licked her chapped lips and tightened her hold on her friend. “We didn’t do nothing wrong.”
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Jem said. She took a cautious step, aware of Rosie a couple of paces behind her. “I promise we’re not going to hurt you. My name’s Jem and I’m a paramedic, and Rosie here is a police officer. You’re safe now, okay?”
“Okay,” the girl said. She was the elder of the two, perhaps fifteen, and Jem could see streaks of blood on her fingers as she stroked the younger girl’s hair. Dark shadows encircled her eyes, and she looked half-starved, her cheekbones too prominent in her muck-streaked face.
“What’s your name?” Jem asked, still slowly approaching them.
“Ava,” the girl said, sitting up straighter, her confidence growing. Her hair was dyed bright pink beneath the grime, and both ears sported multiple piercings, as if she’d been the class rebel before someone shoved her in a cellar and knocked all the fight from her. “I think Chloe’s broke her ankle. She fell off the crates, and I heard it snap. We were trying to get her phone to work.”
Jem looked at the shattered wooden boxes Ava indicated. Although the girls had managed to improve the phone’s signal, the collapse of the stack explained why no one from ambulance control had been able to contact them again. Jem set her bag at the girls’ feet and unzipped it, ignoring the trickle of cold sweat between her shoulder blades, and trying not to think how easily the call might have been dismissed outright by an overburdened dispatcher, or how many times she had given up after a cursory knock at a probable hoax.
“You did a great job,” she said, forcing brightness into her voice. “Don’t worry, I’ll sort Chloe’s leg for her. Which one is it, Chloe?”
Chloe stared at her for a long moment, her nostrils flaring and her good leg scuffing the floor. Tears had bled mascara down her cheeks, and little remained of her crimson nail varnish. Jem had grown up with girls like Chloe, all attitude and aggression until someone bothered to scratch the surface.
“He said he’d come back for us,” Chloe whispered. “But he never. He just left us in here for days and days.” She started to cry. “I want to go home.”
Rosie knelt beside Jem and put a hand on Chloe’s thigh. Jem could sense the tension radiating off every inch of her, the urge to pepper the girls with questions, to get them to name names and provide descriptions and a full account, but all she did was pass Chloe a tissue.
“Let Jem take a look at your ankle,” she said. “She’s dead gentle, and as soon as she’s done, I’ll give you a piggyback out of here. What do you reckon? Does that sound like a plan?”
Chloe’s head bobbed. She’d cried herself out within seconds. “I’m hungry,” she said.
Jem patted her pockets and pulled a Twix from each. She was happy to take the blame for not keeping Chloe nil by mouth, if it turned out she needed an anaesthetic.
“Don’t stuff it all in at once,” she said as wrappers went flying. “Rosie won’t be impressed if you puke down her neck.”
Chloe sniggered through a mouthful and tapped her left leg. “It’s this one.”
Jem raised the blanket, finding Chloe’s shoe and sock already removed and a black-and-blue ankle swollen to the size of a grapefruit. “Can you wiggle your toes for me? Good girl. Feel me touching you here? How about here?”
Chloe nodded, her cheeks bulging. “Is it broke?”
“I’m not sure,” Jem said, delving into her bag for ibuprofen. “Ankles tend to swell a lot even if they’re not broken, but it’ll definitely be sore for a while. How old are you?”
“Thirteen and a half.”
“Any allergies to medicines?”
“Nope.”
“Excellent. Get these down your neck.” Jem handed her the tablets and turned to Rosie. “All my splints are in the ambulance. Grab some of that wood, and I’ll improvise.”
“Wilco.” Rosie moved with alacrity, returning with numerous pieces of wood she’d kicked off the crates. Jem selected a matched pair and set them either side of Chloe’s ankle.
“Hold these for me?” she asked Rosie. She began to wind a bandage around the makeshift splint, her face close to Rosie’s as she worked. “What the hell is going on?” she murmured.
“I don’t have a fucking clue,” Rosie said. “Let’s get them out and worry about the rest of it once they’re safe. Will your radio work down here?”
“No.”
“Mine neither.” Rosie took an uneven breath. “But backup should be on the way. We can put them on a priority as soon as we get a signal.”
“All right.” Jem felt calmer for having a plan. She added a final piece of tape to the bandage. “How’s that?” she asked Chloe. “Can you still wiggle your toes?”
“Yep,” Chloe said, demonstrating.
“Fab. Are either of you hurt anywhere else?” Although Jem kept her question nonspecific, she shared a relieved glance with Rosie when the girls shook their heads. “We’re all set then,” she said, shrugging into the straps on her response bag so she could wear it like a rucksack. “Chloe, loop your arms around Rosie’s neck. Ava, you stand up with me and get your sea legs.”
They did as she instructed, Ava swaying as a head rush hit her but staying on her feet. Rosie lifted Chloe with ease, settling her in place, and then led the way to the ladder at a pace that suited Jem and Ava. Her foot was on the bottom step, her hands poised to pull herself up, when she froze and peered toward the hatch. Even in the torchlight, Jem saw the colour drain from her face.
“Shit,” Rosie hissed. “Can you smell smoke?”
“No,” Jem said, still supporting Ava and a few feet shy of the ladder. “What? From upstairs?”
“Yeah, I think so. Shit.” Rosie turned in a full circle, searching for another way out, her light exploring every inch of the barred window.
“Has someone set the house on fire?” Ava whispered. Her fingers dug into Jem’s arm with bruising force.
“I don’t know,” Jem said, but she could smell the smoke now, an insidious hint drifting down and getting stronger by the second. “We’ll have to go up,” she said to Rosie. “We don’t have a choice. Go on, go!”
Rosie didn’t argue. Jem followed on her heels, crawling into the cubbyhole and practically dragging Ava off the top rung. The tiny room was full of smoke, the violent crackle of the fire close by and growing in intensity. Still on her hands and knees, Jem could barely see Rosie, but she could hear Chloe crying. She reached out, finding Rosie’s ankle and squeezing it. “Right behind you,” she said.
It was worse in the hallway, the smoke thick and noxious, with eager flames eating along the carpet and the front door. A small explosion in the kitchen confirmed both exits were blocked.
“Up,” Jem said between bouts of coughing. “Top floor. There’s a balcony.”
“All together,” Rosie said. “Stay as low as you can.”
Jem did her best to keep up, forcing one foot in front of the other, one arm tucked around Ava, and the weight of the bag almost dragging her back to the bottom. Her lungs ached, and she felt dizzy and sick and more scared than she had ever been. She heard Rosie yelling into her comms, but she didn’t have the breath to do likewise.
There was less smoke on the first floor, and they spent a moment gulping in the cleaner air before Rosie forced them on again like a drill sergeant. Six steps, seven, eight. Jem took to counting them: fifteen between each floor, then a further two as the landing split.
“Left,” she gasped at the top of the second flight. “There were patio doors.”
Rosie took her word for it, ushering them all inside the first bedroom. She set Chloe down and used her jacket to plug the gap at the bottom of the door before trying to open the patio. It was locked. Jem threw off the bag and dragged the oxygen cylinder out.
“For the window,” she said, but when she tried to raise it, she found it too heavy. Rosie plucked it from her hands.
“Should be using this for you,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe later,” Jem conceded. Her lungs felt like stone, dull and unresponsive, and it was getting harder to make them work. “Just get us out of here.”
Rosie nodded and battered the cylinder against the glass. A fine pattern of cracks appeared in the first pane, and she grunted with the effort, hefting the cylinder for another attempt. She had taken in smoke as well; her chest was heaving, and her eyes were red-raw and streaming.
“Ava, help me move Chloe into the corner,” Jem said. Wisps of smoke were beginning to eddy around the doorframe, and the carpet seemed to undulate as something collapsed on a lower storey. She didn’t want the girls in the middle of the room. She had been in several burned-out buildings where the centre of the floor had been the first thing to fall.
“Almost there,” Rosie yelled, as Jem sat Chloe by the wall and ripped her radio from her belt. Ignoring the priority button, she hit the open channel and shouted over the din of Rosie smacking the cylinder into the glass again.
“I need urgent backup to five Mansfield Street, Stamford. House fire with four trapped on the top floor.” She had to stop to get her breathing back under control. “We’re trying to break a window—”
Ryan’s voice cut across her. “Jem? Are you trapped?”
“Yes,” she said, surprised by her own composure. “Send whatever you’ve got, mate.”
“Fucking shit,” he said, and pandemonium erupted on the channel as crews began to call up with their locations and availability.
She listened for a few seconds, reassured by how close some of the vehicles were, but let the radio drop when she heard Rosie cry out in pain.
“Rosie?” It was difficult to see clearly; the smoke was distorting the finer details, like a cobweb caught on her retina. She inched across to the lighter part of the room, her hands outstretched for obstacles.
“It’s nothing, stay put,” Rosie said, but she didn’t resume her hammering. Instead, Jem heard the cylinder drop to the floor and a whispered “damn it.”
She found the cylinder first, stubbing her toe on the metal and staring in horror at the blood coating its length. “What the hell have you done?” she said, yanking Rosie’s shirt to pull her around.
“Nothing.” Rosie stooped for the cylinder, but her fingers were bloody and she couldn’t grip it. “I cut my arm on the glass. Wrap it with something, Jem. Quickly, come on!”
“Put some pressure on it and keep it elevated,” Jem said, using her scissors to hack a strip from the closest curtain. Rosie’s “cut” was a deep laceration extending from her wrist to mid-forearm, and it was bleeding heavily. Jem bound the cloth around the gash, pulling it tight and knotting the ends. “Here, I can—” She went to pick up the cylinder, but Rosie took it from her.
“Fetch the girls. I just need to knock a couple more pieces out,” she told Jem. Then, softer, “Go on. I’m fine.”
Jem did as she asked, hopping Chloe across the floor to the window in time to feel the first rush of cold air on her face. Rosie was waiting on the balcony, while a dishevelled crowd gawped up at her from the pavement. Three of them had brought buckets of water.
“I think it’ll hold us all,” she said, but it wasn’t as if they had another option, so Jem boosted the girls through the empty frame. As Ava dropped clear on the other side, Jem sagged onto her knees, coughing and choking and only vaguely aware of someone shaking her shoulders. Then she was standing, Rosie’s arms around her, the smell of blood and smoke and sweat all over her, and Rosie was pushing her and cajoling her and pleading with her to “fucking move, right fucking now!”
Jem reacted more to the stark panic than the command, landing in a heap on the metal. She could feel Rosie slapping and tearing at her pockets, though she wasn’t sure why. Below them, the road was a sea of blue lights, their intensity dazzling after so long in the dark, and everyone around her seemed to be yelling.
“Here,” Rosie said, not yelling, just insistent. She pressed the inhaler against Jem’s lips, lifted Jem’s hand, and closed her fingers around the plastic. “Come on, Jem. I don’t know what I’m doing with it.”
Jem pushed the spray three, four times, doing her best to synchronise her breathing with it but mostly failing.
“Someone fucking help us!” Rosie screamed over the side of the balcony. Smoke billowed from the ruined window, and something disintegrated with enough force to rattle the foundations. The girls cried out, clinging to the railings and each other. Jem heard the mechanised whir of a ladder platform and a man barking instructions she couldn’t understand.
“Ava, get Chloe up,” Rosie said, and knelt beside Jem. “Can you stand with me?”
Jem nodded but then slumped to the side when she tried to get her legs under her. “Sorry,” she whispered. Nothing was working properly, and her vision was failing too; Rosie’s face kept disappearing at the edges. The balcony rocked again, banging her into its bars as a firefighter hurried over to crouch by them.
“She’s asthmatic,” Rosie said. “I don’t think I can carry her on my own.”
“I’ve got her, love,” the man said, hauling Jem into a sitting position. “You go on ahead. The lift won’t take all of us at once.”
Rosie seemed on the verge of refusing, before her common sense kicked in. She touched Jem’s cheek. “I’ll see you in a minute,” she said, and bolted to the ladder.
An alarm blared as the lift began to descend. Jem listened to its progress, her view blocked by the man in front of her. “Are we…we waiting for…the next ride out?” she asked.
“Yes, but I got us a FastPass, so we’ll be able to jump the queue.”
She couldn’t reply for coughing, but she managed to give him a thumbs up that made him smile.
“Stick your arm around my neck,” he told her, when the alarm began to sound again. He cradled her against his chest and lifted her as if she weighed nothing at all. What little she could see suddenly pitched and rolled, and the sky, bright with fire and blue neon, swapped places with the balcony and the drunks holding their vigil on the road. She squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out the nausea and the noise and the relentless ache in her ribs, and let the man carry her down.