‘I didn’t miss him,’ Steffi said, clearly pained. ‘Do you think he bled spontaneously? Of course I hit him.’
‘But you didn’t stop him though, did you? You let him get out.’ Bob was clearly in no mood to be kind to his lover. ‘I told you to guard the goddamn door. If you’d done what you were told, we wouldn’t be in this mess.’
My eyes were down at floor level and I could see their feet under the cupboards, over by the door. I watched as Bob’s moved. He started walking slowly down the first line of workstations. I crawled the other way.
For some reason, it reminded me of the children hiding from the Velociraptors in the Jurassic Park movie.
Who would be the T. rex that would come to my aid? No one. The racing was all over for the day, and everyone had gone home.
If Bob and Steffi had worked together as a team they would have caught me easily. But, they didn’t.
‘You stay by the door,’ Bob said sternly to Steffi. ‘And don’t move this time.’
‘All right.’ She sounded cross. ‘But there must be another way out of here. The door to the restaurant can’t be the only one. How do the staff get in and out?’
That was a good question, I thought. Could I find it?
There followed a game of cat and mouse, where I was definitely the mouse, scampering around on all fours.
Bob moved up and down the lines of chef workstations, slowly advancing across the room. I did the same on my hands and knees, always keeping at least one line ahead of him. But I was running out of space — and of time.
Whenever I crawled round one end or the other of the workstations, I looked for the exit. Get it wrong and I’d be finished. There would be no prizes for trying to escape into a dead end.
I took a big gamble and doubled back. Instead of crawling down the last line, I turned the other way and went back where Bob had just been. It was another dangerous strategy as it put me between the lovers, hence there was definitely now one of them between me and any exit. But the alternative was no more attractive — guessing where to go and ending up with a bullet in the head if I were wrong.
‘Where the hell is he?’ Bob said, sounding so close that it was as if he was standing on top of me.
‘He must have gone out another exit. He certainly didn’t come past here.’ There was something of a sarcastic edge to Steffi’s voice, as if she was still somewhat miffed by Bob’s earlier comments.
‘You wait here,’ Bob instructed. ‘I’ll go check.’
I heard Bob walk away, his shoes making a slight squeak on the scrubbed tile floor with each step. He soon returned.
‘The only other exit door is locked from the inside,’ he said. ‘He must still be in here.’
Bugger, I thought. This isn’t going well.
Where could I hide?
Nowhere.
Most of the worktops had cupboards beneath, which were all shut with sliding doors, and there was no way I could open one without Bob or Steffi hearing. But, at a few places, there was just a single shelf about six inches from the floor that stretched right through from one side of the worktop to the other. Most of them were covered in pots and pans, and there was no chance of moving those silently either.
However, on my crawling travels I remember spotting one empty shelf. It was where I had seen Bob not just from the ankles down but everything below his knees.
‘I knew this was a bad idea,’ Bob said.
‘But we need that extra money if you’re going to divorce Angie and marry me,’ Steffi said. ‘She’ll take you for everything she can.’
Good old Angie, I thought. I wished she’d take him right now.
‘I need to talk to you about that,’ Bob said.
‘About what?’ Steffi demanded.
‘Not now. We’ll talk later. Let’s find him first.’
‘Not changing your mind are you?’ Steffi was getting quite agitated.
‘No, of course not,’ Bob replied, but his tone suggested the completely opposite answer. He very clearly had changed his mind. ‘Come on. Let’s find him.’
‘What if he’s managed to escape?’ Steffi said, panic audibly rising in her voice. ‘Then we’re done for. You heard what he said about the death penalty.’
‘Shut up,’ Bob replied sharply. ‘He can’t have. He must be here. In one of these cupboards.’
I heard him slide open one of the cupboard doors.
‘But what if he has escaped?’ Steffi’s voice had risen so that it was little more than a squeak. She was now in full panic-attack mode.
‘Shut up, woman,’ Bob said angrily. ‘And help me find him.’
Perhaps he thought it was better for her to be occupied than standing by the door dissolving into jelly. But it was more bad news for me. With two of them looking, they were bound to find me now.
‘I think we should go,’ Steffi said suddenly. She hadn’t moved. I could still see her feet over by the door.
‘What do you mean, go?’
‘Go. Leave. Get out of here before the cops arrive.’ All her earlier bravado about wasting me seemed to have evaporated. My talk of electrocution and Bob’s change of heart over a divorce had clearly unnerved her.
Bob was far more relaxed. ‘If the cops were coming they’d have been here by now. He was lying about that, and about everything else.’
‘I still think we should leave, now,’ Steffi said determinedly.
Go on, Steffi, convince him.
‘No way,’ Bob said. ‘We finish this.’ I heard him slide open another cupboard door.
‘But I don’t want to get arrested for murder,’ Steffi said.
‘You won’t,’ Bob said. ‘He was lying, I tell you. We find him and kill him. And then we get out of here.’
All the while they had been talking, I had been crawling until I found the empty shelf.
Silently, I eased myself onto it so I was lying with my back to the metal, with my knees drawn up. Maybe Steffi would pass the end of the workstation and not see me. I would then be behind her again, and closer to the door into the restaurant.
My plan almost worked.
As I had hoped, she walked right past the end without spotting me.
Now all I had to do was roll off the shelf in the direction she had come from. Then I’d be behind her. Easy.
But it was at that point when things started to go badly wrong.
In Jurassic Park, it was a falling soup ladle that gave away the children’s position to the Velociraptors. In my case it was a large metal saucepan lid.
It had been standing vertically on its edge on the far side of the large saucepan to which it belonged. I only touched the pan fractionally with my foot as I manoeuvred myself back onto the floor but it was enough to upset the equilibrium.
I watched in horror as the lid rolled gently off the shelf away from me and clattered to the floor, going round and round like a coin dropped onto a granite top, only ten times louder.
‘Get him,’ shouted Bob.
I stood up and ran.
A bullet zinged off the extractor hood next to my ear causing me to duck involuntarily. I reached the end of the line to find Steffi, but she was facing away from me and towards where the noise of the lid had come from.
I grabbed her from behind, holding her tight to me with my left arm and placing the vegetable knife up against her windpipe with my right hand.
‘Drop it,’ I shouted into her ear.
She wriggled and squirmed so I cut her neck. Only a little cut but enough to draw blood. She gasped and went very still, dropping her gun with a clatter to the floor. I used my foot to slide it backwards but I had no chance of bending down to get it because Bob was standing right in front of us, about ten feet away.
‘Drop your gun,’ I shouted at him, ‘or I’ll slit her throat.’