‘I’m putting the alert out now. Anything else?’ Baarda asked.

‘I need to review that call somewhere quiet so I can really listen to his voice and see what I can get from his language. Let’s go up to my room, and don’t waste any more units here. Get them out on patrol. We’re safe, but thanks to Nick fucking Bowlzer, Elspeth is most definitely not.’

Chapter Thirty

‘We have to barricade the door first,’ Xavier said. ‘If he walks in on us when you’re dangling from the ceiling, Elspeth, we’re all dead.’

‘There’s no time,’ Elspeth complained.

‘We’ll make time. It’s too dangerous any other way. I’ll be tied to you and unable to protect Meggy. Just run that scenario through your head for a moment.’

‘That’s fine, but what do you suggest we use? Almost everything in the flat is bolted to walls or to the floor. The sofa’s too big for us to get through the doorway – it must have been put together in here – and we have no tools.’

‘There are three mattresses – that’s a start. Use mine and Meggy’s first as they’re singles, then you’ll have to bend yours as much as you can. Lean them against the door. Add all the other items from cupboards you can. Toys, clothes, pots and pans. Anything not pinned down. It may not hold him for long, but it’ll make it hard to get in quickly.’

Meggy and Elspeth got to work, with Xavier issuing directions from the lounge. The double mattress was hardest to move, bulky with old-fashioned springs that complained as they shifted it. Shoving it as hard as they could against the door, they flung everything else into a pile.

‘Well, now we have to escape,’ Meggy said. ‘We can’t put that lot back.’

‘I like it better like this,’ Elspeth said. ‘It feels more homely.’

At the base of the hole in the floor, the plasterboard was proving strong and unyielding, the close-set rafters added to its strength. By the time Xavier had concluded that Elspeth would need to jump up and down to break through, he’d also had time to think about the height of the ceiling in their own flat. If that was matched in the room beneath, then Elspeth was looking at a drop of perhaps fifteen feet. Without a means of controlling that fall, she’d be lucky to escape with just a broken ankle or two, and that was if she went straight down. More likely, she would slam her head into one of the rafters on the way, risking damage to her head and neck.

Fifteen minutes later of time they could barely afford, and they’d tied three sheets together and wrapped them around Elspeth’s chest beneath her arms, securing the loose end with the armchair as an anchor.

‘Ready?’ Xavier asked.