I pounded the wall with the heel of one hand, the strangled sob emerging from my throat again. Move! The killer, if he heard me, had no need to wait for the ancient elevator to come back. He only needed to step past the rope closing off the stairs to beat me to the hall and meet me there.
The car creaked patiently to the ground floor, and I peered out the window. The front hall was empty. When the elevator had stopped and silence fell again, I hesitated for only a moment, weighing the possibility that the murderer was waiting in a spot I couldn’t see against the possibility that he had not yet come down the stairs. In either case, it was impossible to stand in this stinking car any longer, waiting to be killed. I gripped the door handle and pulled it back, sliding the metal grate with my other hand.
The door creaked with a sound like a scream. I slid out into the hall before it was all the way open and ran to the building’s front entrance, my heels clicking on the tile. From upstairs came the sound of unhurried footsteps descending the stairs.
I burst out onto the front walk, gasping. The street was empty, darkness falling in pillowy folds. A thin, misty rain was beginning. I looked left to right and for a horrifying second my body froze in the most paralyzing, utter indecision I had ever experienced. I should run from the murderer behind me. I have nowhere to hide from him. I should turn and identify him. I gasped another breath, wasting time, before self-preservation asserted itself and won out. I darted around the side of the building, ducking into the narrow alley that separated it from its neighbor.
I moved as quietly as I could, the walls of the two houses nearly brushing my shoulders in the dim, narrow space. At the end of the alley, I braced myself against the corner and glanced behind me. There was no sign of movement, but the hairs standing upright on the back of my neck prompted me to keep running.
The alley emptied into a ragged back garden, its few paving stones overgrown with weeds, a pot of dying flowers in one corner. I crossed the space quickly, thought about exiting by the open back gate, then changed direction and ducked around the other side of the building. In the alley on this side, just as narrow as the other, stood two large dustbins smelling of old rot. I slid behind one of them, crouched low to the ground, and waited.
It didn’t take long. Footsteps came from the alley into the back garden. They stepped forward once, twice, and stopped.
I closed my eyes. I could hear my own breathing inside my rib cage. I pressed my back to the brick wall, trying not to move.
Another footstep came from the garden, unhurried.
I pressed a hand over my mouth. For the first time, it fully bloomed in my mind what a deadly game I was playing. The rope on the stairs with the sign—why had I not seen it before? It had been a sham, a ruse calmly set up by a murderer going about his business. Put up a rope and a sign, and anyone who approaches during your deadly work would have to take the noisy lift. Just as I had.
And when he had heard the clatter of the lift, indicating he had an intruder, he had calmly finished his killing and started down the stairs after me. Even now he was in no hurry, his footsteps measured in the back garden.
Passionless and planned—just as Gloria’s murder had been. What had I thought of when George Sutter first told me of it? Someone who hadn’t even cared enough to hate her.
Two more steps sounded; they seemed to aim for the back garden gate, which I remembered stood open. A careless neighbor, perhaps, or one of the residents leaving by the back way and not bothering to close the gate. Outside the gate was a lane that ran between the backs of the two sets of buildings, a convenient path to quickly get from building to building or out to the street. It would have been a logical assumption that I’d fled that way—in fact, it would have been the smartest route if I’d been thinking properly, instead of hiding behind dustbins six feet away. If I’d had the presence of mind to flee out the back gate, I’d be hidden in the crowds on the Streatham High Road by now.
Decided, the steps now fully approached the gate. My hand still pressed to my mouth, my breath still heavy in my chest, I shifted carefully on my numbed, squatting haunches and leaned forward. One inch, two. I looked past the edge of the dustbin.
The man stood at the garden gate, his back to me. He was not tall, though taller than me; not bulky, though of average size for a man; not fat, nor thin. Something about his very blankness frightened me. He wore a black overcoat that fell without a flaw from his shoulders to the middle of his calves, beneath which I glimpsed black trousers and expensive shoes. His hat was also black, as if he were dressed for a funeral, its shadows smeared in the rainy, darkening light of early evening. As I watched, he put one black-gloved hand on the open gate and looked out into the lane, one way and then the other.
I pressed my hand tighter to my mouth and did not breathe.
Still, he did not turn. He reached into his overcoat pockets, as unhurried as a man taking a leisurely break, and removed a cigarette case. His back still to me, he raised a cigarette to his unseen lips, and I heard the scrape of a match. He tilted his head as the flame briefly lit the side of his face, and I glimpsed an ear below the brim of the hat, a tuft of dark hair combed neatly behind it, a smooth temple and the knob of the back of his jaw. Then he righted his head again and his face retreated into the shadows under his hat brim.