Some effort had been made to secure access to the bottom of the scaffold by building a twelve foot cage around it, but since it was only as secure as the padlock on the wire door it could only keep out the opportunist climber. I kicked the cut padlock out of sight. From the inside I replaced it with a similar one I had brought by sticking my hands through the wire mesh, just in case someone decided to check while I was up there. I stashed the heavy bolt cutter out of sight. Then it was time.
I took a deep breath and gripped the bottom of the first ladder. My strategy for coping with my fear of heights was to take everything in stages. This was just one ladder. Nothing to it. Nothing. I took it steady and stepped out sideways on to the first of the four levels. It was dark in here but relatively dry under the tarpaulin, which creaked and snapped and dripped with the wind and rain. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I could see that the next ladder was at the opposite end. I traversed the level on the narrow boards, which moved ominously under my weight as I walked on them, by pulling myself from handhold to handhold until I made it to the other side. At the bottom of the next ladder I stopped to collect myself. If I started each climb in a calm frame of mind I would be fine.
Level two. Perhaps I could treat it like a computer game. It occurred to me just how cosy the world of virtual adventure was. It also occurred to me that scaffolders the world over would laugh at my palpitations as I climbed further into the darkness.
Level three. The wind was stronger up here and made me grip my handholds harder each time the tarpaulin filled with air like a giant sail threatening to pull me from the wall. I was sweating with the exertion of the climb and my breathing never seemed to slow down even when I paused. There was definite movement in the structure when the wind freshened and I wished there was someone to ask whether this was normal or not.
Last ladder. There was no longer any point in trying to calm myself, I was panicked and listening to my heart pounding as I stood there didn’t help at all. My legs, unused to climbing, had acquired a slight tremor. I might stand here all night, it wouldn’t get any better. I simply couldn’t turn back. I had to go forward. Last ladder, last ladder. Surely this one was longer than the others. There was more construction above me, looking complicated in the dark as it stretched away towards the cupola of the Guildhall, where the storm damage had occurred, but I knew I was now level with the roof of the covered market to the right of the scaffold. With my pocket knife I simply slashed through the tarp from head height to the bottom and carefully stuck my head through the gash. I was staring into a yawning chasm. I had climbed too high and was an entire level above the market roof. I withdrew my head sharpish and worked my way hand over hand along the side of the building to the ladder and climbed down. I was happy about no longer being so high up — though falling from the third floor wouldn’t be much more fun than from the fourth — but it was merely a cerebral happiness I didn’t feel in my diaphragm, and was very short-lived. I cut a hole into the tarpaulin on level three. I stuck my head through. There was the market roof. And there was the gap. There shouldn’t have been a gap, a four-foot gap between the scaffold and the neighbouring roof, a black gap into which rain and people and darkness fell and disappeared from view for ever. The roof was glistening with wet and might as well have been twenty feet away. I withdrew my head into what suddenly felt like a cosy protective shell, before the view could scare me witless. Calm down, it’s not a big gap. Four feet. Four feet was nothing. It was just. . the width of a man with a full rucksack.
I fumbled for a cigarette, lit it, sucked on it hard. Sod forensics. There was no chance we’d pull this off and get away with it anyway. Even if I’d ever manage to leave this scaffold. My legs screamed for me to sit down, just for a little while, just for a minute, but I knew it would make it worse. It seemed ages since I’d last eaten and the cigarette made me a little dizzy. In a side pocket of my rucksack were a couple of cereal bars but perhaps Tim was right, this was not the time or place to be picnicking. I teased the glowing tip off my cigarette and stepped on it as it fell and pocketed the fag-end. Time to have another look. Just a look, no obligation. I pulled the flapping tarp aside. I looked at the roof opposite. I looked down. I suddenly slipped, grappled hopelessly for a handhold, fell into the darkness, my head smashing against the boards as I passed on my way into the chasm. I could taste blood in my mouth, my flailing legs grazed the side of the building, the air rushed past and didn’t leave me enough breath to scream before I dashed myself to pieces and crumpled on the tarmac below and died.
Chapter Nineteen
I stepped back and stood, panting, gripping the struts to either side of the loose tarpaulin. Four feet. Four feet was nothing, a long stride, a hop and a skip, a skip and a jump, a jump and a fall. Unenthusiastically I slashed more of the tarpaulin away until I had a clear opening. There were no snags, nothing my rucksack could catch on. Asimple jump. Less, a hop. On the count of three. One, two, three, four, five. Pathetic. Four feet. Nobody needs a running jump for four feet.
I jumped, with three times the necessary force, and hit the roof running. I was free of the scaffold. Crouching down I worked my way forward over the gently curved roof towards the octagonal central structure of the market. I forced myself to admire the cast-iron construction of the lights. Lovely intricate ironwork, needed painting here and there but otherwise, oh, who was I kidding. I felt naked up here, opposite the old Empire Hotel. Row after row of darkened windows faced my way, watching me scuttle like a big black beetle into the darker shadows at the back. A minute to get my breath back. Another minute to get my breath back. A cigarette, I needed another cigarette. They said an enemy bomber could see the glow of your cigarette from fifteen thousand feet. What about enemy insomniacs in the Empire Hotel? No cigarette, then. Go forward. Stage by stage, up a slate incline, down into a leaded trough. I followed its curve, counted off the three sets of skylights above, reached the end. Nearly the end. Climb up before the end. I had memorized every detail from the aerial photographs I’d found in my guide books. The details were all there, yet the scale was so immensely different it was hard to believe the landmarks when I came to them. Up, passing the last skylight on the left, and down again on the other side, sliding on my bum, feet first, until I reached a parapet, a level piece of masonry, a reprieve. I took my time but tried not to check my watch. Every minute I delayed increased the danger of Annis being discovered clinging to the landing stage. Below. Far below.
A dark chasm opened on my left as I followed the curve of the roof space towards a three-storey addition to the back of the museum, lower than the original and stuck on at a curious angle. Deep below, it created the strangest-shaped, darkest canyon into which Private Investigators traditionally threw themselves head first during sudden attacks of vertigo. .
Despite the tremor in my legs I managed to walk, as far from the edge as possible, never taking my eyes from the wall ahead. When I got there I leant against it. Wet, but solid. Now I had to get up it. It was only two feet or so higher than me and a round metal vent gave me a good foothold. I pulled myself up on to the next flat bit and lay there for a moment. Two tall chimneys reared to my right. The next bit was easy. Here the roof was constructed in giant steps; I climbed up easily. I had reached the corner where the southern cupola of the museum joined the roof over the upper exhibition space, with its pitched, old-fashioned skylights, beloved of burglars. To reach them, I would have to heave myself up to the flat, outer rim of the roof, twelve feet above me, which would have presented me with considerable difficulties had it not been for the tangle of downpipes, aerials and lightning conductors in the corner. I tackled this climbing frame quickly and methodically, spurred on to greater heights by the closeness of the goal, and heaved myself gratefully on to the roof of the gallery, panting and sweating despite the wet and the wind and the cold fear of being blown off it if I moved even one muscle up here. From this vantage point one could see the river Avon wind its way west through the town, or look south and see the entire length of Great Pulteney Street as far as the Holburne Museum and Sydney Gardens, and the dark mass of Bathwick Wood and Bathampton Down beyond; if one dared look, which I didn’t. When I recovered the will to move it was on all fours and as far as the edge of the skylight. This was where all my theories about the quaint old museum and its robb-ability hinged on the yet unanswered question: were these skylights alarmed or not? I fully expected to set off the alarms as soon as I opened any doors inside — the first on the upper floor, the second on the ground floor — but calculated I’d have just enough time to make my escape before it occurred to the police to surround the place. These were not the kind of calculations made with military precision, they were done on my fingers and quite probably contained a large measure of unfounded optimism. They had also been done before I realized how long it would take me to traverse all that roof space just to get here.