She lifted his legs. Below, several men had reached the bridge. With one final heave she lifted him clear of the balcony rail, watched him fall silently, arms and legs spread wide, and hit the surface with a gigantic eruption of white water.
With the heat of the fire on her, she stepped back a pace. At that moment flames, rising from the floor below, threw up an impenetrable wall between Nan Luc and the window over the canal.
Chapter Forty-Three
An orange glow had settled in the sky over Meyerick, a dome of light through which snow fell steadily upon the town. By now large crowds were pressing into the waterfront area and fire tenders, klaxons braying, lights flashing, were obliged to force their way through corridors in the crowds opened up by the police.
At the far end of the waterfront the fire blazed uncontrollably. Wooden flooring and old timber staircases fuelled flames which had already collapsed the roof. Sparks and snowflakes swirled upwards and a strange, leaden light was reflected from the surface of the water.
‘There were two people, a man and a woman,’ the wharf-patrolman said. ‘I could see them in the top window.’
‘You say they were fighting, you could see that?’ Jason Rose said.
‘It’s not far, Jason.’ Ruth turned him slightly to face the burning building. ‘From here up to the main office window is no more than thirty, forty yards.’
Jason nodded, turning back to the patrolman. ‘Did you see the fire start?’
‘No, sir. Perhaps it was smouldering away somewhere downstairs. But when it went up it was like a box of firecrackers. One moment there was no fire. Next moment the whole building had burst into flames. What I don’t understand is why the sprinkler system couldn’t slow it down.’
‘Is it right that the alarm system failed too?’ Ruth asked.
‘Seems like it,’ the patrolman said. ‘I sure as hell didn’t get no warning.’
‘OK, so then what happened?’
‘There were lights up on the top floor, the Meyerick Fund offices. That balcony window up there’s a long one, Mr Rose. Goes right down through the length of the room. So as I ran forward I could see clear enough there were two people up there, struggling it seemed as the room filled with smoke.’
‘Two people,’ Ruth said. ‘A man and a woman.’
‘That’s the way it looked. I’d even be pretty sure the man was Mr Stevenson.’
‘Then what?’ Jason said.
‘I ran back to the canal bridge to sound the manual alarm. I guess I was shouting to them to jump, I don’t know. When I looked again the woman had the window open. She was dragging something heavy from inside. She got it up on the ledge and toppled it over.’
‘The man she was fighting with? She toppled him out into the canal?’
‘He must have been pretty nearly dead then. His clothes were smouldering as he fell. Maybe he was dead already.’
‘And she jumped right after him?’
‘No. She seemed to disappear in a rush of flame. The next thing I saw was someone at the loading bay there.’ He pointed.
‘One floor down from the fund office,’ Ruth said to Jason. ‘Directly above the canal.’
‘The doors slid open,’ the security man said, ‘and the woman stood there for a moment, looking down at the water. Smoke was pouring out past her. Maybe she was scared to jump. I don’t know. But then the flames roared out of the loading door and she was blasted clear into the water.’
‘Did she come up?’
‘I don’t know, sir. She was below my line of sight. By this time the police were arriving and that many people running to see the fire, it was chaos. Maybe she swam clear, I don’t know. All I know is she went in just down there beside the canal bridge in the same spot the man dropped. If they’re down there, they’re down there together.’
With shocking suddenness, the warehouse buckled. A crack opened up in the brickwork the length of the building and flames and smoke, like a dragon’s breath, roared out across the wharf. From the fire hoses, glittering spouts of water arced through powerful lights. As the front wall crashed on to the waterfront a deep baying sound rose from the crowd cordoned off beyond the canal.
On the canal bridge a powerful searchlight had been set up, its beam pointing down into the water where the figures of two frogmen moved slowly like undersea monsters. Hector Hand bustled through the police line and rejoined Jason and Ruth where they were standing in the lights of a half circle of police cars.
‘Appalling, appalling,’ Hand said. ‘The fire chief says it was almost certainly started deliberately.’
‘Arson?’
‘Or murder,’ Hand said. ‘Both the sprinkler and alarm systems had been turned off. Do we know for sure the Vietnamese woman was here?’
‘We don’t know anything for sure, Hector,’ Ruth said.
At two in the morning, with the fire at last showing signs of burning itself out, the first body was brought up from the canal.
Water poured from the black bundle of clothing as the two frogmen manhandled it on to the canal path. Leaving Jason and Hector, Ruth ran quickly up on to the bridge. The body was face down, six feet below her. As one of the frogmen turned it over she saw, with horror, Cy Stevenson’s face green in the searchlight glare, water pouring from the side of his mouth. Returning to Jason’s side, she slipped her arm back in his.
‘I heard someone say it’s a man,’ Jason said. ‘Is it Cy?’
‘It’s Cy,’ Ruth said. ‘On the bridge they’re saying there’s a woman down there too. The frogmen are trying to release the body from all the junk lying on the bottom.’ She paused. ‘It could be some time yet. Why not come home?’
‘I want to wait, Ruth.’
‘You can’t blame yourself for what’s happened.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ he said. ‘I already had a feeling she might be planning to go it alone. Something in her voice. A lot of resolution. A hell of a lot of pain.’
It was an hour later before a woman’s body was disentangled from the hundred years of iron junk which lay along the bottom of the canal. Jason and Ruth had already moved on to the bridge. The crowd, hearing the winch begin to whirr, pressed forward. The silvery chains glittered in the searchlights, rippling the flat blackness of the canal as they drew a weight from the depths. The crowd fell silent as a woman’s body broke the surface, the whiteness of her dangling legs caught in the light beam.
‘They’re swinging the body on to the canal bank,’ Ruth whispered.
Jason tightened his grip on Ruth’s hand. ‘Is it her?’ His voice was flat.
Ruth was craning forward. ‘No,’ she said suddenly; ‘whoever it is, it’s not Nan Luc.’
The body swung slowly past and was brought to rest below them on the canal bank. Looking down from the bridge Ruth thought the face of Mary Page Butler could have been sculpted in pale Italian marble.
Chapter Forty-Four
She awoke to daylight bright enough to hurt the eyes. Ruth Caswell was standing beside the bed, a cup of coffee in one hand and clothes draped on her arm. ‘There’s a visitor downstairs for you,’ she said, putting down the coffee and laying the clothes on the bed. ‘There, jeans, sweater, trainers. We’re about the same size I guess.’
‘This visitor, he’s from the police?’
Ruth shook her head. ‘Get dressed and come downstairs. Doctor Harkness said it was OK for you to get up as soon as you’d slept it out.’