The smell hit him before he could fit the final puzzle piece into the image. It was just a memory in the air at first. Late evenings sat at his father’s side in the summer, burning off the clippings from the garden. Lobbing sticks onto the bonfire from a safe distance. This aroma was neither woody nor so pleasant, though. It was man-made fibres and fabric, paper, and carpet. The noise was louder now, the sound of consumption, of the fire below flicking out its tongue to taste the room.

Ripping his top as he fought to pull it over his head in the fourteen inches of space, Xavier wrapped the material around his head. There was no heat yet, but the first tendrils of smoke were curling in through the hole, seeking him out. The smoke would kill him before the flames could get to him. The thought was both terrifying and comforting.

He pulled madly at his ankle to get free, knowing he was kidding himself. Suppose he could get to the hole, what then? Was he going to let himself drop to the floor below? By that stage, there was every chance another floor would simply give way and he’d drop into the heart of the fire on the ground floor. Going up into the flat left him behind a locked door, waiting for a slower death. Getting hotter now, and the crawl space seemed smaller and darker than before. His eyes were tearing up.

‘Help!’ Xavier screamed. ‘Somebody help me!’

A window smashed somewhere below. There was still real glass on the ground floor, then. A loud bang, possibly furniture, maybe a door giving way. Not mains gas, please, he thought. If there was mains gas, he could be counting the time he had left in the world in seconds rather than minutes.

‘Please,’ he yelled, aware of the dryness of his throat and the chemicals entering his system. ‘Please, I’m trapped. Help me!’

He began coughing. The air was thicker. Grey.

Xavier screamed and coughed and cried until he began to choke.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Connie heard the sirens before she saw the fire engines. Two had overtaken them en route, and her taxi driver had pulled over to allow them to pass. As a result, the road they wanted to go down was closed off.

‘No way I’m getting down there, love,’ the cabbie told her. ‘Doubt you will, either. Is there somewhere else I can take you? It’s a few miles if I go round and approach from the other end of the road.’

‘Just let me out.’ She thrust cash into his hand and jumped out.