Skypoint

TWELVE

Toshiko had slipped the gun back into her belt just before she reached the elevator in the basement. When Lucca moved out of the darkness there like a phantom she wasn’t sure if he had seen it, or if perhaps she should show it to him anyway – business-end first.

She knew who Lucca was; Gwen had pulled the villain’s files up in the Hub Boardroom and given them all a run-down on the guy who lived at the top of SkyPoint. There wasn’t much likelihood that he had anything to do with what had brought Torchwood to the apartment tower, but he was a nasty complication that Gwen believed Toshiko and Owen would do well to avoid.

So much for that.

Toshiko jumped as Lucca materialised out of the dark, his face lit up like a Halloween mask by her flashlight. He had been lucky, she realised, that she hadn’t pulled the gun on instinct and blown his head off there and then. From what Gwen had told her, he wouldn’t have been missed.

‘You made me jump!’ she gasped, at once recognising Lucca and making ready with some kind of story to cover being down there.

Lucca’s eyes glittered like diamonds in the torchlight. When he smiled his teeth shone, white and sharp.

The smile didn’t make Toshiko feel any more comfortable.

‘You’re not supposed to be down here,’ he said.

‘I was just looking for somewhere to smoke,’ she said, hoping she got the mix of apology, embarrassment and what’s-it-got-to-do-with-you just right. ‘My husband doesn’t like me lighting up in the apartment.’

‘You could have gone outside.’

‘And look like one of those sad people that they make hang around doorways these days? No thanks.’

She just hoped he didn’t get too close to her. She wouldn’t smell of tobacco.

Lucca pulled a pack from his leather jacket and flipped it open with his thumb, then took an unfiltered cigarette from it with his lips the way they did it in old movies. Maybe he thought it would impress her – he looked the type. They were foreign cigarettes – Toshiko thought she could relax on him sniffing out her lie; those things would have destroyed his nasal receptors.

‘We’re like a couple of kids behind the bike sheds, yes?’ he said, and lit the cigarette with a lighter. There was an accent, but it wasn’t strong. ‘I see you came prepared.’

He was talking about the flashlight.

‘Basements are the only place you can go these days. It was the same at our last building. And the locks to keep us out are never really any good. I work in security.’ She extended her hand. ‘Toshiko Harper.’

Lucca’s hand closed around hers like a rattlesnake.

‘Besnik Lucca. Your secret is safe with me, Toshiko.’

‘If you won’t tell anyone, neither will I,’ she said and turned towards the elevator, hoping that would signal an end to the conversation. The elevator doors parted at her touch of the button and she stepped into the light of the cabin.

But Lucca came after her, carelessly tossing his cigarette onto the concrete basement floor. His movement was quick and predatory. Toshiko instinctively pressed herself against the elevator’s mirrored wall. The doors closed behind him, and Toshiko felt trapped and more frightened than she had been by whatever was in the ducting. She slid one hand behind her back and felt it rest on the grip of the automatic under her jacket.

‘Which floor?’ he asked.

‘Thirteen. Thank you.’

Instead he hit the button for the twenty-fifth. His floor.

‘I said thirteen,’ Toshiko said, trying to keep the tension out of her voice as she felt the elevator start to climb.

Lucca flashed Toshiko a smile that made her stomach quake. It wasn’t some kind of sinister Bond-style villain smile. It was quite the opposite. She had heard Gwen list the crimes that the police had tried but failed to pin on Lucca; he was the kind of man you didn’t want to share a lift with. But he was a good-looking man and that smile could make you forget all the bad stuff. That kind of smile could seduce a nun.

‘I know,’ he said, casually. ‘But that was the basement. I thought now you might like to see the view from the roof.’

‘The roof?’

‘I have the penthouse. There’s a roof garden.’

Well, it beat etchings.

‘Owen,’ she said, apologetically. ‘He’ll wonder where I am.’

‘Your husband.’

‘That’s – that’s right,’ she said.

Lucca touched the button for the thirteenth floor, and Toshiko felt the elevator begin to slow. At the same time, she felt his eyes on her. He made sure that she felt them.

‘So be it,’ he said. ‘But you must come. I promise you – up there – it will take your breath away.’

The elevator doors opened on to the thirteenth floor. Lucca moved aside and motioned with an open hand for her to step out. Toshiko released her hold on the pistol behind her back and stepped out into the corridor.

‘I’ll see you soon, Toshiko,’ he said.

The elevator doors closed on him, but somehow it was as if she could still feel him watching her. It felt uncomfortably like the sensation she had experienced in the basement, that the thing in the ducting was watching her. The thought disturbed her.

What disturbed her more was that for a moment – just a moment, she told herself – she had nearly gone with him to the twenty-fifth floor.