Mind the Gap

The silence of the house was intimidating. Such a big place, so little activity... She was glad, but it also felt strange. It felt as if, even though she thought she was being careful and quiet, the whole house was watching her. The tall ceilings pressed down, the walls closed in, and she was sure she could smell the must of ages drifting up from the carpets beneath her feet. She looked around for cameras but saw none.

She listened for footsteps.

The front doors slammed shut. Jazz fell to her stomach and crawled quickly to the balcony, looking down into the hallway. If someone had shut the doors and was heading for the stairs, she'd have maybe a dozen seconds to find some-where to hide.

There was a tall bald man in the hall. He engaged the locks on the front door and turned, heading right into one of the rooms Jazz had not seen.

She turned the corner of the balcony and headed toward the front of the house. There was one long wall here with a single door, and she paused outside, listening. There was someone inside —she heard murmuring, muttering, whis-pers interspersed with what could only be sobs.

Was this "that room" where the mayor always wanted to be alone?

There was the tang of something in the air, like the stench of hot electrics, only more animal, more natural.

Jazz knelt and tried to see through the keyhole, but it was blocked with a key on the other side.

She grabbed the handle, placed her ear against the wood again, and turned. If the whispering stopped, she'd have to run. If its tone or volume changed, the person talking could have turned their head to look at the door, and she would have to flee.

Concentrating, listening for footsteps from behind as well as a change in the voice beyond the door, she turned the old ivory handle some more. Felt the latch release. Pushed.

She blessed whoever maintained the house for keeping its hinges well oiled.

The wedge of room revealed did not seem to fit the di-mensions or shape made apparent by its outside. The inside walls were curved, forming a perfectly circular space. There were no windows, and the only other opening was a closed door directly opposite Jazz. The walls were painted a dull purple. The ceiling was cream, the floor was covered with a pale, hard covering, and at the center of the room, the mayor sat cross-legged, naked, and shivering.

Sweat dripped from his straggly hair and landed on his flabby stomach. He stared down at the floor just before him, his right hand six inches above, index finger forming small, irregular circles in the air. He mumbled a few words in a lan-guage Jazz did not know.

Fiddlin', Philip had said. In that room of his.

The mayor's strange words seemed to travel around the curved walls, repeating themselves again and again until they were even more jumbled and unknowable than before.

A small weak light appeared on the floor before him, squirming like a slug sprayed with salt. It quickly faded away to nothing, and the mayor cursed and shook his head.

Magic, Jazz thought. I'm seeing magic. But ...is that it?

And then the door across the room from her opened, just a crack, and Stevie peered in. He didn't see her, of that she was sure. His attention was too fixed on the mayor and what he was doing, eyes wide, fearful and excited at the same time.

Jazz opened her door another inch, willing Stevie to see her. He did not. Instead, he pointed at the mayor, and at first Jazz thought he was going to laugh. But she realized too late that the laugh was actually a grimace, and Stevie was not pointing with his hand.

The gun was black and ugly in the boy's pale hand.

"No!" Jazz screamed.

The mayor turned to look at her. And then his right eye and cheek erupted as Stevie shot him in the back of the head.

Chapter Eighteen

deeper

Mayor Bromwell tipped sideways and struck the floor, his shattered face making a wet thunk as it hit. Blood, fluids, and shreds of bone had spattered the floor, and more pulsed from the wounds. He moved slowly, like a creature uncurl-ing from a long sleep, and made a terrible keening sound deep in his throat.

Then he was still.

Jazz looked up at Stevie, and he looked at her. There was a moment of doubt in her mind, an urge to flee for her own safety, because Stevie still had the gun half raised. There was a blankness to his expression, as though he was looking through her to what might happen beyond, and Jazz thought, He's going to shoot me because I saw. But then his face fell slack, his mouth hung open, and life came into his eyes once again.

They looked at each other for what felt like forever. And then the shouting began, and the footsteps, and Stevie's mouth closed right.

"Jazz, we have to —"

"What the hell —"

"Later. Let's go."

Jazz turned around. A door burst open on the other side of the landing, across the hallway from her.

Philip and the other man came out, staring at her, and even though she thought she was disguised, the recognition in the BMW man's eyes was instant and obvious. "You!"

Jazz entered the dead mayor's room and slammed the door behind her, turning the key. She skirted around behind the corpse, keeping to the curved wall so that she did not tread in any blood, and Stevie threw the door wide for her.

"Terence," Jazz said.

"He'll be okay."

"He didn't know?"

"Later." Stevie grabbed her arm hard and steered her along a small narrow corridor toward the rear of the house. He was still carrying the gun in his other hand. "Go!"

Jazz ran, heart thumping, sweat chilling her back, and the implication of what she had just seen was still very far away. There was no detail, though she felt it hovering around her, waiting to strike home. Her mind was a haze, the only clear thing in that haze the image of her dead mother. So much blood. Such murder.

"Turn right," Stevie said. He pushed her that way just in case she hadn't heard.

The house was coming to life. People shouted, footsteps pounded, doors burst open. She had thought the building all but deserted as she sneaked around, looking for something she knew nothing about, but it seemed that first impression had been wrong.

Voices came close, then moved away again. A door was smashed open to bang against a wall.

Someone shouted in shock, and another voice wailed in grief —a sound that chilled Jazz. She stopped, the corridor before her ending in a sash window that was half open, and Stevie shoved her hard in the back.

"Through there and up!" he whispered.

"But —"

"Just fucking go!"

Jazz lifted the sash higher and peered out. She looked out upon landscaped gardens, and below and to her right was the roof of the large conservatory through which they had entered. That seemed like days ago but probably wasn't more than fifteen minutes. Everything's changed, she thought, and someone appeared in the conservatory. A tall thin man, standing beside the low table in there, partly visible to Jazz through the glazed roof.

Stevie placed his hand on her ass and pushed, but she slapped back at him and held her hand upright:

wait!

The man looked around, scanning the garden, then he seemed to speak into his sleeve. He shook his head and went back into the kitchen.

Stevie pushed again. Someone must be getting close. He still had that gun, and Jazz didn't want anyone else dead. Not even Philip, that mad monster who'd battered and kicked Cadge to death. Not even him.

Below the window a steel platform was bolted into the wall, and to the left a hoop ladder rose eight feet to the roof. Jazz went for it, moving quickly when she felt Stevie press up close behind her, jumping up the first few rungs and then climbing quickly. Surely we should be going down? she thought, but perhaps that was the point. They'd be looking for people trying to escape, not those holing up on the roof.

But they'd be trapped up there.

Jazz reached the roof. There was a small platform and then the roof pitch, shallow enough to climb but still dan-gerous if she happened to slip. Beyond the ridge, she did not know.

"Up," Stevie said. "We've got to get out of sight."

"They'll shut the building down," she said. "We'll be trapped up here."

"We've got a couple of minutes to get away, that's all."

"You planned this?"

"Over the ridge in the middle of the roof, there's a flat area for air-conditioning and heating equipment. We turn right there, back up and down another pitched area, then there's a tree growing really close —"

"A tree?" Jazz said, aghast. "And what, we jump?"

"Yeah." Stevie pushed past her and started climbing the sloping roof, crawling on hands and knees, gun still clasped in his right hand.

"Stevie —"

"Later, Jazz! We don't get away, we're both dead."

She followed him up. They passed between two dormer windows. Jazz expected them to open at any moment. Men would climb out and come for them, grab her ankles, tug just hard enough to set her sliding and falling... She fell. How tragic. The police would believe them. They owned the police.

Stevie was right. They crested the ridge, dropped down the opposite slope, and stood on a large flat section of roof hidden away from outside view by pitched areas all around. There were no dormer windows on this side, but there were two doors, both of them closed. Various pieces of machinery sat on paving-slab plinths, humming and buzzing away as they heated or cooled. Pipes lay everywhere.

"Over here," Stevie said. And then one of the doors opened.

Jazz froze. Her view was partially blocked by a big con-denser, but she saw the shape step quickly through the door and close it. Terence! she thought. Let it be Terence!

The man stepped lightly across the roof between some equipment. He disappeared for a moment.

Stevie was crouched down several feet away, looking at her, eyebrows raised. Jazz shrugged.

The man emerged a few steps from her and smiled. "Little girl," he said.

Stevie stood up and aimed the gun, holding it with both hands as if he knew what he was doing.

"Don't fucking move."

"Or what?" the man said. "You'll shoot me?" He was smart, short but strong-looking, and his expression betrayed only confidence. He didn't seem to be carrying any weapons.

"I shot that bastard mayor."

"No you didn't," he said, frowning, and Jazz thought, Maybe some of them don't even know yet. But then the frown turned into a sad smile. "He committed suicide. Tragic. But at least that means the police won't be looking for anyone else in connection with his death."

Stevie shifted from one foot to the other, but the gun never wavered. "Kneel down," he said.

"No." The man shook his head.

"Turn around, kneel down, and put your hands —"

"Fuck you, shit for brains." The man's voice was soft and calm. He shifted his gaze from Stevie to Jazz. "This turn you on?" he asked, nodding at Stevie. "This hard-man act?"

Stevie fired.

The man's eyes went wide in surprise, then his left leg folded and he went down.

To begin with, Jazz couldn't see where he'd been hit, and she looked frantically for the wound. Then the man's trouser leg turned dark as blood pulsed from his thigh.

"Shit for brains," Stevie said.

The man smiled, a pained grimace.

"People will have heard that," Jazz said. "We need to go now!"

Stevie glared at the downed man, gun still pointing at him, and Jazz gave him a hard nudge. "Now!"

Jazz pushed past him, skirted around a piece of hum-ming machinery, and started climbing the slope.

Her foot slipped on a loose slate and she fell, the slate sliding down to the flat roof. She climbed again, more careful this time, and she heard Stevie scrambling up the slope behind her.

"Here!" the wounded man started shouting. "On the roof!"

When she reached the ridge, she paused and took a careful peek over. The other side of the house was mostly lawn, and there was the huge old oak tree that Stevie had mentioned. It grew very close to the house, a thick branch pointing at the building like an old finger. It was a six-foot jump at least.

"You're kidding," Jazz said.

"Got a better idea?"

"On the roof!" the man screamed again, and they both heard a door burst open behind them.

"Go!" Stevie said.

Jazz swung one leg over the ridge and started sliding. She clawed at the slates, a fingernail snapping back as it caught, but her weight pulled her down. She tried to gain her knees but she rolled instead, and with each roll she saw the edge of the roof coming frighteningly closer.

A hand closed around her ankle. She gasped as Stevie clasped tight, and her left foot and hand dipped into the gutter at the roofs edge. It was filled with dead leaves and slime, and it flexed and dipped alarmingly beneath her weight.

Looking back, she saw Stevie stretched headfirst down the roof. He still held his gun, and his lips were pressed to-gether, veins standing out on his forehead as he struggled to keep hold of her.

Jazz carefully knelt, then sat on the roof, leaning back so that her center of gravity was lower. Stevie let go of her leg and gasped in relief.

"Thanks," Jazz said.

"Jump," Stevie said. "We have seconds."

She glanced at Stevie and the gun in his hand and wanted to say, Don't make things any worse, but she realized they were as bad as they could get. If these men caught them, they'd be dead.

Jazz eyed the limb of the oak tree, balanced on her feet with her arms outstretched for balance, then leaped. The branch punched her in the chest and she held on, legs swinging, hands scrabbling for purchase.

"Swing left!" Stevie called, and behind his voice were others, quieter and less panicked, more in control.

Jazz swung her legs to the left and kicked a branch. One trainer caught and she heaved her other leg up, swung both arms over the branch before her, and then lay across it, look-ing back to Stevie.

"Come on!" she said, but he had already turned to look up the slope of the roof. A shape appeared above the ridge and he shot at it, aiming again even as Jazz saw that it was a diversion.

"Look out!" she shouted. Farther along the ridge a man rose up —Philip, a loose slate in each hand.