He hit Dial once more and winced his eyes closed while he listened to the great clanging of the ringtone.
‘Blue Circle Cement. Can I help you?’
Marvel hung up.
He stared at the phone. The cigarette burned down until his fingers got hot.
He stared at the phone.
Blue circles on the wall of Anna Buck’s bedroom.
The sound of the radio seeping through the walls.
What was it she’d said? Sometimes I hear him crying.
Chasing Brady chasing Ang through the garage. Almost falling into the inspection pit …
From where you’d have the perfect view of a Billy Boat exhaust on an Audi TT.
44
MARVEL WAS SO drunk, he drove.
And as he drove he hit Dial again.
‘Blue Circle Ce—’
‘This is Detective Chief Inspector Marvel from Lewisham police. Have you got a job booked at Pigeon’s garage in Bickley?’
There was a pause while someone decided whether it was a prank call. Then she said, ‘Yes. Why?’
‘What is it?’
‘Ummmm … filling in an inspection pit.’
‘When?’
There was a suspicious beat. ‘Can I ask what this is about, please?’
‘No you bloody can’t!’ he shouted. ‘When is the job? WHEN?’ An offended silence.
And then the woman said, ‘Now.’
Open the door.
Open the door.
Edie watched the door through the smallest of slits in her eyelids.
Even that hurt.
Everything hurt. Her empty tummy, her ripped fingernails, her raw, swollen lips and tongue and throat.
She had stopped trying to swallow when one got stuck halfway like a lump of coal, and only slowly, slowly relaxed. Next time she might not be so lucky.
Her lips had stuck together and she didn’t try to tear them apart. Her nostrils were so dry they bled now and then, but she barely noticed any more.
She drifted between sleep and this, whatever this was. She hoped it wasn’t death, because death should be better than this. All she knew was, it was always a blow to wake up and find herself still in this tiny room.
Open the door.
Open the door.
She saw it happening. A thousand times she heard the bolt click; she saw the door swing open on to the black velvet sky, and the diamond pinpricks of other worlds guiding her home.
Edie Evans hoped she was in space.
Otherwise, dying seemed like such a waste.
45
ANNA PUT THE toast in the bin and washed the mugs.
As she dried them, she looked out of the kitchen window and her heart clenched painfully.
Daniel.
She dropped the mug. It smashed silently at her feet.
There was a cement lorry parked on the garage forecourt.
Just as there had been on 5 November.
The smell of fireworks and the dull, white light of the coming winter. James’s arms slipping around her from behind, and the little chocolate frog that kept hopping in and out of Daniel’s lunchbox.
The horror of hindsight unfolding once more outside her kitchen window.
A man in overalls, boots and gloves was laying broad white corrugated piping up the forecourt and through the open garage doors.
As Anna watched, he went back to the cab of his lorry and, somewhere deep in her guts, she felt the machinery thrum into life as the giant drum on the back of the vehicle slowly rotated, mixing the cement and the stone into concrete.
And every time it turned, there was a blue circle.
It was only when she began to feel faint that Anna realized she had stopped breathing some time ago. When she started again the air dried her mouth so fast that it hurt.
She reached for the tap. Then stopped.
No time, she thought. No time for water.
She went downstairs and opened the front door. A bitter wind slashed at her body.
No time for a coat.
She crossed her arms for warmth and stepped outside.
By the time she reached the lorry she was almost running and almost crying.
She didn’t know why. She didn’t know what she was doing and she didn’t know what she would do when she got there.
‘Hello!’ she shouted and banged on the driver’s door. ‘Hello!’
She reached up and yanked it open. The driver wasn’t there.
Her stomach cramped and she doubled over and cried out. People looked at her, then looked away. She ran across the forecourt, past the five footprints and into the garage.
The radio wasn’t on. Nobody was there.
‘Stop!’ she shouted –panic making her voice small and squeaky. ‘Stop!’
She followed the juddering pipe across the floor, under a car on a lift, and to the back of the garage.
Too late.
It was too late.
The white pipe was draped over the lip of the old inspection pit, and thick grey concrete sprayed from the end in great juddering pulses.
Something hit the steel door.
It shuddered and bumped. Was the key turning? Were the hinges about to squeal? Who was out there?
What was out there?
And what was coming in?
Sssh! Sssh!
The door vibrated and the noise was like a million stones hitting it all in a rush.
BUH-BUH-BUH-buh-buh-buhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuh
‘Hey. Hey!’ The words fell dead to the ground like autumn leaves – too small to make a sound.
But the apprehension was huge.
Something amazing was about to happen! Better get ready!
The rumbling got louder and louder and the note of it against the door changed to something deep and underwater.
Whatever was outside, it was getting …
… more.
Edie’s in the pit. Edie’s in the pit. Edie’s in the pit.
The bees in John Marvel’s head were like Spitfires.
He could hardly hear the responses from the woman at Blue Circle over the buzzing and the roar of the BMW. But that wasn’t important. What was important was that she heard him.
‘You stop it!’ he shouted. ‘Call him and stop it!’
‘Szzshwwzzzszzshwss,’ said the woman.
‘If he hasn’t got a phone, call the garage. Tell them to stop pouring!’
‘Ssshwzzzsshwwzzzshsssh,’ said the woman.
‘Right now! You understand me? This is a matter of life and death! Call him right now or I’ll fucking arrest the shit out of you!’