Mr. Nobody(73)

My blood runs cold—he’s going to hurt me, I can hear it in his voice. I suddenly realize just how vulnerable I am and momentarily lose my footing on the smooth concrete steps. I manage to grab the handrail again before my ankle twists beneath me and a flash of memory from fourteen years ago blazes through my mind. A fully grown man running at me from across a road, his arm raised, his face contorted, his words loud and filled with hate. And then, out of nowhere, Joe pushing me out of the way. I’d hit the ground hard but Joe had taken the brunt of the man’s impact. The anger people had toward us back then, the family who stole their money. All the events like it in the days and weeks that followed, the fear, the hatred, until we finally left our home. Until the police finally had to move us for our own safety. I foolishly thought it couldn’t be as bad this time around. But here we are. I guess I was wrong.

I can’t let him reach me. There’s no Joe here to protect me this time. No police to change my name and relocate me. It’s just me, all alone and already wounded. My feet smart as I leap down onto the second-floor landing and swing around on the banister to the next flight, my chaser coming into view a flight above me. Medium build, graying hair, a neat goatee, a flak jacket, but the thing that makes me jolt forward suddenly, barely in control of my own movements, is what I see in his hand.

    He has a gun.

I open my mouth to scream for help, but like in a nightmare, I can’t catch my breath. No noise comes. Oh God, I am going to die. I’m going to die. Images of my father’s faceless body flash through my mind. A shotgun wound to the head. The blood and bone and skull.

I hear myself whimper as I crash down another flight, praying there is someone at the base of the stairs who can help me.

I hear the gunman’s footsteps closing in on me, but I know he’ll need to slow before he can raise his weapon steady in his hands and fire. As long as I hear him running I am safe, I tell myself.

Below me the ground-floor doors loom into sight and somehow I manage a shout. My voice echoes loud, reedy and terrified, down the empty stairwell ahead of me, frightening me even more. Behind me he clears the corner as I hit the ground floor hard, scramble to my feet, and burst through the double doors into the service corridor.

Then I see them both at the other end of the hallway, silhouetted in the open doorway, daylight framing them. Rhoda and Matthew. They stare wide-eyed at me, startled, unsure what exactly is happening. Then suddenly Matthew is moving, somehow making sense of the situation. He bursts toward me at a sprint. I want to warn him that the person behind me has a gun, but even as the words reach my lips I hear the doors behind me explode open, the gunman careening through after me. He must see Matthew and Rhoda—I hear him slow. And I whip my head around just in time to see him raise his weapon.

“Get down! NOW!” Matthew shouts, and I do not think, I dive onto the slippery concrete floor, crashing down hard, the impact vibrating through every bone in my body. Matthew flies past me.

    A shot rings out, deafeningly sharp as it echoes through the thin corridor. I roll and see Matthew slam into the gunman. But there is no struggle. In one concise movement Matthew twists the weapon from the man’s hands, sliding it away and clear. He spins the gunman around as if they were dancing. A sharp kick to the back of the man’s knees forces him to the floor and then Matthew is on him, pressing my attacker’s screaming face into the ground.

I rise to all fours and look up the corridor to Rhoda, unsure if the shot fired connected with anyone. She’s crouched low to the floor, her mobile phone in her quivering hand, her eyes as aghast as mine must be, but she isn’t injured. Somewhere along the corridor, out of sight, there are more shouts. Without thinking, I crawl toward the abandoned gun. And that’s when I see it. A white tuft of feathers sprouting from the shoulder of Matthew’s down jacket. He’s been wounded. The bullet clipped him. I search his face for a reaction but his expression is unreadable as he watches me reach for the gun.





36


DR. EMMA LEWIS


DAY 12—FIVE’S A CROWD

Outside, with dirty bandaged hands that won’t stop shaking, I bum a cigarette off a security guard and carefully light it with his Day-Glo pink lighter.

I start to give Graceford a brief and garbled rundown of events, but she notices the tremors of shock running through my muscles and sends someone to fetch me sugary tea.

I take a greedy pull on the cigarette and let the hot surge of it fill my chest, the engulfing burn and release of it. A little death. God, I’ve missed that feeling. I know people shouldn’t smoke—I’ve seen a smoker’s lung, I know—but everything will kill us in the end, life itself kills us in the end, and like it or lump it, smoking feels good. And right now, it’s making me happy.

I’m sheltered here around the back of the building, and although the press are aware of some kind of commotion on this side of the hospital, they can’t get to us here, security gates and guards block their way. I don’t know how my attacker got through all the security. I think of what could have happened to me if Matthew hadn’t been there, if that man had got hold of me, and I shudder. His words as they took him away. She’s done more harm than me. Who paid for her training, eh? How many people have to suffer for her? Ask her that! I feel shame, thick and inescapable, pulling me under.

    Rhoda walks over to join me. She eyes my cigarette, and I manage to hide the tremor in my hand as I lift it back to my lips. Not that I think she would judge me, not after what just happened.