It looked to her as if the building had been constructed in two stages. The gym at the front, facing the street, would have been the original part-once a garage, perhaps, or a workshop. It had a pitched roof spanning the width of the plot, and Kathy recalled the industrial steel trusses she had seen inside the gym. The rear half of the building looked more recent, and had a flat roof, on which Kathy was now squatting. Windowless, its natural light was provided by rows of square roof lights raised on kerbs above the granulated roof surface. As she moved forward to have a closer look at them, she caught sight of a lit window in a neighbouring building, the white light of a TV flickering soundlessly inside.
The roof lights looked strong and new and, Kathy guessed, alarmed. Their plastic surface was thick and translucent, so that when she shone her flashlight the beam couldn’t penetrate to illuminate the interior below. Kathy imagined the filtered milky light that would come from them, as if the people beneath didn’t want the sight of a cloud or the sound of a dog barking to disturb whatever they did down there.
She walked the length of the flat roofed section and came to the triangular gable of concrete blockwork that formed the back wall of the gym. There were roof lights in that section too, she recalled, remembering daylight in the gym, but there they were formed simply as panels of clear corrugated plastic inset into the metal roof sheeting. Peering over the edge of the gable she could make them out, paler rectangles in the dark sloping surface. She climbed onto the pitched roof and edged forward to the nearest one, crouching low so that her silhouette would stay below the ridgeline of the roof. Though she was reasonably fit, the unfamiliar movements and the strain of trying to do everything in total silence were having their effect. She was breathing heavily, her heart pounding, her fingers and ankles aching from trying to keep a grip on the corrugated metal roofing. As she eased her backpack off she imagined it sliding down the smooth pitch, and herself following it into the void.
She thought the larger screwdriver might do the job, and managed to force its blade under the edge of the plastic sheet. But the metal roof gave her no leverage, and she had to pull the two parts of the crowbar out of her bag, screw it together and lay it alongside the edge of the plastic to act as a fulcrum. She put all of her weight on the handle of the screwdriver, and felt the sheet begin to rise, then switched tools and used the jemmy to try to force it up. There was a creak of protest from the restraining screws, then a sudden explosive bang as they gave and the plastic sheet jerked open. Kathy froze, feeling her arms trembling from the effort.
There were no shouts, no sounds of doors opening or dogs barking. She lay against the metal sheeting, letting her breathing return to more like normal, then carefully put the tools back into her bag and slipped it back over her shoulder. The ache in her ankles had spread up to her thighs now, from the tensing of her legs against the roof, and she thought she should have begun with stretching exercises, and how ridiculous it would be to pull a muscle breaking into a gym.
She lifted the edge of the plastic roof light sheet and squeezed her head and shoulders inside, looking for the winking red light of a movement detector. Nothing. She pointed a pocket torch into the darkness. The beam picked out a steel truss right in front of her, and in the dimmer distance a row of exercise bikes on the floor below, their handlebars erect like bulls’ horns. It wasn’t too far to the ground, she thought optimistically, perhaps twelve feet from the bottom chord of the truss, maybe only ten. She reached out to take hold of a vertical bar of the truss, and began to wriggle herself and her pack through the gap beneath the edge of the sheet, swinging one foot then the other onto the bottom chord, an inverted T in section and uncomfortable to stand on, but strong enough to take her weight. She pulled the roof sheet down behind her as well as she could, and stood clinging to the steelwork of the truss, feeling like Spiderwoman. Then she lowered herself to hang from the bottom bar and dropped to the floor.
She sprawled on all fours, but felt thankfully intact. Checking again for alarm sensors, she felt the guilt pangs of the novice burglar. The musty smells of the gym accused her; she was an intruder, an illegal, beyond the pale of decent bodybuilders. And looking around, her eyes growing accustomed to the dim light filtering down from the roof, she realised she wasn’t going to be able to climb out the way she’d come in.
The door at the back of the gym hall was neither wired nor locked, and she found herself in the corridor that led to the fire exit in the external wall to the alley. That would have to be her way out. Across the corridor was the door to the rear half of the building. She used the screwdriver and jemmy in combination again to try to force the lock. As she applied pressure she imagined the possibilities. The door might be bolted on the other side, it might be alarmed. As she gave a final jerk it sprang open with a crash and she tensed, waiting for the siren howl or clanging bell, but none came.
Her torch showed a short corridor ahead, with three identical doors on each side, each with a circular porthole window, and beneath that an empty slot for a name. She tried the first door on her left. It was empty, but the furniture and fittings it had once contained had left their traces. There were the imprints on the vinyl floor sheeting of four heavy casters where a bed had been, the scuff marks of a side chair, the blank rectangle of a bedside cabinet. On the walls were brackets and connections for a TV, a light, headphones and a call button.
Kathy continued to the end of the corridor, pushing open the door to a further suite of rooms. There was what had probably been an office, two storerooms with empty shelving, and a room that might have been an operating theatre, with mountings on the ceiling for heavy lights and a washbasin with extended lever taps such as a surgeon might operate with his elbows. Every fitting, every notice on the pin boards, every paper roll in the toilets, had been scrupulously removed, and from the smell of cleaning fluid in the stale air, every surface had been scrubbed.
She made her way back to the fire exit and pushed the bar. Still no alarms sounded. The night was cool and she could hear the faint murmur of surf and the moan of a siren. When she reached the street she noticed a blue lamp flashing above the front door of the gym, and realised she must have triggered a silent alarm. The siren’s howl was louder now. She turned and jogged to her car, keeping to the shadows close to the garden walls. Once safely inside, she did a quick U-turn and headed back through the city to the highway beyond.
27
Plan B. When she got back to Barcelona, Kathy drove into the centre of the city and parked near the hotel where they had stayed ten days ago. She wondered about asking if they had a room, but she guessed it would be expensive and postponed a decision, though it was now gone ten p.m.
She approached the Placa de Catalunya on foot along a narrow twisting lane, and, turning a corner, suddenly found her way blocked by a police car and a small knot of people. She recognised English accents. A man was saying loudly, ‘… all over me, then this other bloke offered to help. Next thing he’d taken my wallet…’
As she got closer Kathy saw that his shirt was covered in some brown liquid, and a foul smell hung in the air. A woman said, ‘We were warned about this!’
The two cops, looking bored, made room for Kathy to get past.
‘They looked so respectable,’ the woman complained, and Kathy thought, yes, you just can’t tell who’s a thief these days.
‘Hey!’ A man’s voice, calling after her. She turned and saw one of the policemen wave at her. He began to walk towards her. For a moment she thought of running, but instead gave him a smile. He looked stern and pointed at the pack slung over her right shoulder, then waved an admonishing finger. He made a gesture like someone snatching it, then mimed wearing it properly on her back, with both straps. She grinned and thanked him, and he gave her a wink. Clearly she was more interesting than the tiresome middle-aged tourists who were making such a fuss.