Seventy Times Seven by John Gordon Sinclair Page A

thought about checking her mailbox, but she didn’t even have the energy to do that.
    The lingering smell of Indian food was making her mouth water. First thing she’d do was order some to be delivered, then mix herself a large whiskey sour and hope that the alcohol might blind her mind’s eye enough to stop the flashbacks.
    Every time she closed her eyes she could see the creepy guy in the shades flying through the air with his chest ripped open. The ringing in her ears seemed to grow louder with each replay. And the bitch of it all was that her mind kept playing the scene back in slow motion.
    She would run a bath and change into some fresh clothes and get drunk.
    Marie was still wearing the sweatshirt from work that said ‘McHales’ on the front: she’d only just noticed it was speckled with tiny spots of blood. Who the blood belonged to was a question for another time. Her hair looked like shit too.
    She pushed through the double doors into the main stairwell and climbed to the first landing, then stopped for a moment. It was the first time she’d been on her own all day.
    She wished there was someone waiting for her in the apartment, someone she could offload to, tell everything she’d been through, how it had made her feel, how scared she’d been, then cuddle up and fall asleep, wrapped up safe.
    Marie stood there in the dark empty stairwell with her head bowed and let a tear run down her face. She’d never seen violence like that before: for real, up close. The memory of it made her shudder.
    It was much more brutal, much more savage than she could ever have imagined. And yet, at the same time there was something so matter-of-fact, so ordinary about it. That’s what had taken her by surprise and left her feeling sick to the stomach. Alive one minute, dead the next.
    She’d seen footage once of a Viet Cong prisoner being shot in the head – watched in disgust as blood spurted from the hole in the guy’s skull while he sank slowly to the ground: his eyes still focused.
    She had the same sense of repulsion now, but a hundred times worse.
    The tears were falling freely.
    *
    Marie wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing like that, when she was startled by a sudden noise echoing along the lobby.
    Someone was pulling at the main door.
    From the din they were making it was obvious they were eager to get in, but didn’t have a key.
    Marie tried to stay calm, but the day’s events had left her feeling edgy and vulnerable.
    They were rattling the door, kicking it, trying to force it open: the sound amplified and distorted by the marble floor and solid concrete walls.
    She flipped the light switch on the landing, but there was no bulb so she had to clamber up two flights of stairs in darkness: her heart pumping like it was going to burst out of her chest and grab her by the throat.
    When she reached the third floor she pushed her shoulder against the heavy inner door.
    It opened on to a long, covered balcony overlooking a large inner courtyard that served all of the apartments. There was a lit pool and flat grassy lawn with uplighters illuminating some of the bigger plants.
    Marie tried the light switch there too, but it wasn’t working either.
    She stopped.
    There was a movement in the shadows halfway along the balcony.
    Marie could make out the tall figure of a man standing outside her apartment door . . . standing there like he was waiting for her. It was difficult to tell – the light was so bad – but it looked like the guy from downstairs who had pushed past her at the main door a few minutes ago.
    She wanted to turn and run, but whoever had been trying to get into the building had obviously succeeded and the sound of footsteps could be heard echoing noisily up the stairwell behind her.
    Her only option was to move forward: meet the guy head-on and ask him what the hell he was doing standing outside her front door.
    She wished she could remember his name.
    As she drew near he started speaking.
    ‘What